This has an unctuous sound, and one gets a vague impression that the old story has been dressed up for the sake of some modern application. One is piqued to reflect upon it; but the more one reflects the more clearly one sees that there is no real instruction in it. But if there is no instruction, there is nothing at all; since the mysticism is of a kind that appeals solely to the intellect. Far more interesting is the poem which was at first called 'The Realm of Shades' and later 'The Ideal and Life',--a difficult production, which resembles 'The Artists' in its suggestion of a voyage through the imponderable ether. We begin with the blessed gods in Olympus and end with the apotheosis of Hercules; and the intervening stretch is like the vasty realm of the Mothers in 'Faust'. The poem is intellectual, in the sense that its theme is a concept of the mind, and its structure logical throughout; yet every strophe is surcharged with feeling, and the diction presents a marvelous wealth of imagery. It must be conquered by study before it can yield any great pleasure; but the conquest once made, one finds a noble delight in the gorgeous coloring with which Schiller invests his idealistic rainbow in the clouds. Good critics, favorable to Schiller's genius, regard 'The Ideal and Life' as the greatest of his philosophic poems and the most characteristic expression of his nature. He himself felt a sort of reverence for it. 'When you receive this letter', he wrote to Humboldt, 'put away everything that is profane and read this poem in solemn quiet.' And Humboldt replied: 'How shall I thank you for the indescribable pleasure that your poem has given me? Since the day on which I received it, it has in the truest sense possessed me; I have read nothing else, have scarcely thought of anything else.' The general drift of the wonderfully pregnant verses is that man attains peace only by renouncing the things of sense and living in the realm of shades, that is, among eternal ideals. Here he is free--like the gods. The Weavers of the Web--the Fates--but sway The matter and the things of clay; Safe from each change that Time to Matter gives, Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day, The FORM, the ARCHETYPE, serenely lives. Wouldst thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing? Cast from thee Earth, the bitter and the real, High from this cramped and dungeon being, spring Into the Realm of the Ideal.[104]