But there is a spice of devil in this angel. Of old, when the sons of God came together, Satan came with them; and still, when the primal powers of man's soul assemble to perform their grand act of worship, which is the complete upbuilding of a human spirit, Factitious Tendency, the father of mischief, is punctually at hand. So in young Wilhelm. He craves free _play_ for the divine energies of his being. But the hard actual world resists him; instead of offering itself humbly as a vehicle for his fine imaginings, it tries to make a mere tool of _him_. So he flies from it in scorn. The cold, spacious emptiness of his father's life, the shrivelled content of old Werner's,--these show him the quality of real life. Fie upon reality, then! He will away, and find a concocted play-world, where all shall suit his purpose, and where he shall have nothing to do but picture forth in beauty his inward being. He finds this, poor boy, in the stage. There no reality will exist but such as is _made_ for his purposes. There his fine imaginations may have it all their own way. There, in heroic costume and by gas-light, his sole business shall be to express sublime sentiments in the most effective manner, while all the surroundings are strictly accessory. How fine to discover an heroic situation dumbly begging him to appear and be its speaking lay-figure! _Making_ play, instead of ennobling work till through that the soul can play,--that is child's play. Finding spiritual deliverance in a _there_, in a "got-up" situation,--that is romanticism. And it is the representative error of nobly imagining youth. But lay-figure heroics are not heroism; and the made-up situation proves more straitening than that situation which God has made for all, namely, the real world. The stage is found to be wooden as its own boards. It gives Wilhelm for companions a crew of spiritual incapables, who have excellent appetites at others' cost, who higgle, bicker, sneak away from duty, are good for nothing, and pretend everything; while, but for his escape, it would make his own life a mere cul-de-sac with a slough at the end. Yet he is boy-wise as well as boy-foolish. His imaginations fertilize, though they mislead him. His impulse to live _over_ the world, rather than under it, is the vital impulse of the human soul.