Here again we have appeals to nature; but the standpoint is an entirely different one. Shelley, the enthusiastic atheist, attributes the principal miseries of social humanity to traditional religion. "Unerring" nature is the divinity he substitutes for the God of the Bible. He considers that man has the right to demand happiness, and, like a true Englishman, contends, without troubling much about the psychology of the matter, for the freedom of the individual from the compulsion of external law. Schleiermacher warns against what is _foolish_, because, once the foolish step is taken, it is binding; but he, the Protestant pastor, only indirectly incites to revolt. George Sand rebels against what is _dishonourable_. In the ethical creed of the French authoress honour plays the same part that wisdom does in Schleiermacher's; it is by the mouth of Jacques, her ideal of manly honour, that she protests in the name of the honour of humanity. Shelley stands forth as the champion of personal liberty; it is _thraldom_ that he desires to abolish. The English apostle of liberty, soon to be an exile, unhesitatingly attacks the institutions of society. George Sand never directly attacked marriage. She actually says in the introduction to _Mauprat_: "It is husbands I have attacked, and if I am asked what I propose to substitute for them, I answer --marriage." But Shelley, who takes cognisance of all evils from the social and political standpoint, proposes to improve humanity by legislation, being persuaded that the state is bound to secure as much liberty of action as possible to the individual as citizen. It is obvious that, of these three representatives of the same idea, Schleiermacher is the most profound thinker and the most reserved. In his estimation character is of the first importance, in George Sand's, the heart, and in Shelley's, happiness. These three great writers are the spokesmen of three great nations, and by comparing them we are better able to understand the character of the whole movement which begins at the beginning of the century, but which can neither settle into shape nor produce good and tranquillising results until the intellectual and social emancipation of woman has advanced so far that she is independent of social prejudices, knows her own needs, and is in a position to supply them. [1] It is the sacred ardour of love that makes of thee a poet; thou aimest at transforming life into a temple, where divine right binds and looses. And that the altar may not lack a victim, thou hast stolen from heaven the noble ardour of the glorious Lucinde. [2] _Briefe über die Lucinde_, pp. 64, 83. IX WACKENRODER: ROMANTICISM AND MUSIC