Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Schiller and Our Times
GA 51

11 February 1905, Berlin

IV. Schiller's Weltanschauung

We cannot talk of Schiller's view of life as we can of that of other men, for it is in continual flux and continual process of ascending. Lesser personalities find it easy to reach a view of life; greater struggle through with difficulty. This is because lesser personalities are incapable of seeing into the great riddles. For the greater every experience provides a new riddle; a new basis is given for the philosophy, which has to take on a new form. This was Goethe's experience all through his life and with Schiller it was the same. Schiller himself remarked that fundamentally he knew very little of the sphere of his own development; but his spirit worked incessantly to deepen and harmonise his ideas and experience of life. Very characteristic is the way in which Schiller carried on a conversation; in which he was the antithesis of Herder; and we can get a conception of his nature by that antithesis.

When Herder was in the society of interested people, he used to develop his own views, and there were seldom any objections; his position was so firm and clear that he could not have gone any deeper into a problem by a dialectic conversation. Schiller was quite different. With him every conversation became alive; he took up every objection, every aspect was touched on, and consequently the conversation went along all sorts of side-paths; everything was illuminated from every side. In his conversation, in the personal life that existed round Schiller, we can see best how his views were in a continual flux. There is the same striving after truth which is expressed in Lessing's words: “If God stood before me, the truth in one hand, in the other the striving after truth, I should beg of him: Lord, give me the striving after truth, for the whole truth indeed exists for God alone.”

We see similarly how Schiller, in all periods of his life, is engaged in a continual struggle for a higher view of the world; how he was driven, when he took up his professorship at Jena, to make his ideas living, how he strove to grasp the great forces which are effective in the world and to fructify them in really vivid lectures. The smaller essays on subjects of world history show us how he wrestled with these ideas. Apart from the above-mentioned essay on “What is, and how should we study history universally?” he tried to describe the significance of a law-giver like Moses. Then he dealt with the period of the Crusades; and perhaps, there is nothing finer and more interesting than the way in which Schiller depicts the conditions of ownership and vassalage in the Middle Ages. From his account of the Netherlands' struggle for freedom we can learn on what inner principles historical development moves. Then he comes to the Thirty Years' War, in which he is already particularly fascinated by the figure of Wallenstein, a man with the law of his will within himself, firm in his own person but fettered by a petty ambition, unstable in his aims and in the confusion of his ideas concerning himself with the message of the stars. Later on he tried to disentangle this puzzling character in poetry. But before then he had to clear things up by studies in the work of Kant. Nor did he approach Kantianism without philosophical preparation. There was something in him which could only come out by reference to Kant.

We have to understand this point in Schiller thoroughly if we wish to understand the greatness of his personality aright. There is a series of letters, “Philosophical Letters” between Julius and Raphael; and the philosophy which he develops there is something that is born in himself. The view which grew out of the depths of his personality, is represented by the man called Julius, while in Raphael we have to imagine a man like his friend Körner who had reached a certain completeness, even if without the same depth. For in life the less often appears the cleverer and the superior over against one who struggles higher. This struggling (philosopher) who is still living amid disharmonies, outlines his view, in the “Theosophy of Julius” somewhat as follows: “Everything in the world derives from a spiritual basis. Man also originated here; he represents the confluence of all the forces in the world; he is the epitome and unification of all that is extended in nature; all existence apart from him is only the hieroglyph of a force which is like him: thus in the butterfly which rises into the air with its youth renewed from the caterpillar stage, we have a picture of human immortality. Satisfaction is only attainable if we rise to the ideal planted within us.” This view he calls the “Theosophy of Julius.” The world is a thought of God, everything lives only in the infinite love of God; everything in me and outside of me is only a hieroglyph of the highest being.

As Goethe in his Prose Hymn to Nature had put it, that man is set by nature, unasked and unwarned, into the cycle of life, that nature herself speaks and acts in him, so Schiller comes in this theosophy of Julius, to some extent, to a similar standpoint. But he is still unsatisfied, for none but God could, he feels, regard the world from this standpoint. Is it really possible for the human soul, so small and limited, to live with such a picture of the world?

From Kantianism Schiller got a new world-picture which lasted till the middle of the nineties. The problem of the world has become a problem of man, and it is the problem of freedom which now concerns him. The question that now demands answer is how man can reach his perfection. Schiller's view of things appears before us in its clearest and finest form in his “Aesthetic Letters”: on the one hand man has a lower nature and is subjected to animal impulses; and nature is thus far necessity in the things of the senses which press upon him. On the other side there is an intellectual necessity in man's thinking; and it is logic to which he must subject himself. He is the slave both of necessity in nature and of the necessity of reason.

Kant answers this contradiction by depressing the necessity of nature in favour of intellectual necessity. Schiller seized upon this gulf between the two necessities in all its depth. To him it was a problem which extends over all human relationships. The laws which control men have come partly from the necessity of nature, the dynamic forces which are active in men, partly from asserted. That was not the case, especially with his Wallenstein. Schiller started from an inner musical mood, as he called it, not from ideas. The stream of complex forces in man appeared in his inner being as melody, and solved themselves in a harmony or collapsed in disharmony. Then he looked for the thoughts, the characters, the single moods; and thus there appeared before his eyes the conflicting soul-forces of Wallenstein which led him of necessity to a vast catastrophe. Unfortunately, we cannot reproduce this mood except with intellectual means.

There may be in one case a personality built upon itself which suffers tragic collapse. But the effect is truly tragic only if it collapses upon itself. What Hebbel demanded as the necessary pre-supposition of tragedy, “That things had to happen thus,” that nothing can be tragic which might have happened otherwise, was grasped intuitively by Schiller, though he never puts it thus in words. But there is another tragic idea under the influence of which Schiller stands which does not admit of solution and which was expressed particularly in Wallenstein. This is the consciousness that there is something higher acting within human life which cannot be solved within this framework. Not till the world's end when men have reached perfection, will man's eyes be able thus to survey their destiny. Till then there must always be errors, something insoluble, for which Wallenstein looks for the solution in the stars, something imponderable in his heart.

Wallenstein believes that he can read his destiny, firmly pre-established in the stars and yet he has to see how Octavio, contrary to the oracle of the stars, deceives him.

But man's freedom still remains the highest; an inner necessity makes him search for the solution in the stars: so he faces a new riddle:—that the stars have lied.

Yet again, the stars cannot lie; man, who offends against the most sacred laws of feeling and the heart, brings the harmony of the stars into disorder.

There can be no order in nature which opposes the laws of the human spirit.

If we look at the character of Wallenstein in this way, we shall see Schiller's own personality shining through the person of Wallenstein. Schiller wanted to look this contradiction in the face and show how man lives with it. There must be a truth in the world, he tells himself, and he has sought it as he does in the letters of Julius.

The contradiction lies in the single appearances; and here Schiller reaches to the knowledge, to what the old Indians and other wise men recognised as illusion.

He wanted to live in truth, and he regarded art as a gateway through which man must travel so as to reach the dawn of beauty and freedom. In his poem “Der Künstler” he calls on artists to take their place in the world-scheme and to help in the realisation of the ideal. He cries to them: Human dignity is in your hands. Preserve it.

IV. Schillers Weltanschauung und sein Wallenstein

Von Schillers Weltanschauung kann man nicht in dem Sinne sprechen wie von der philosophischen Weltanschauung anderer Menschen, denn sie ist in einem fortwährenden Flusse, in stetigem Aufsteigen. Kleine menschliche Persönlichkeiten haben es leicht, zu einer Weltanschauung zu kommen. Größere können sehr schwer sich durchringen. Dies kommt daher, weil eine kleine Persönlichkeit nicht imstande ist, die großen Rätsel zu durchschauen. Für den Größeren stellt sich mit jeder Lebenserfahrung ein neues Rätsel ein; es modifiziert auf einer neuen Grundlage die Anschauung, die neu gestaltet werden muß. Diese Sache hat Goethe bis zu seinem Lebensende durchgemacht und auch Schiller ging es so. Gerade Schiller hat es ausgesprochen, daß er im Grunde nur einen kleinen Umkreis des eigenen Werdens kannte, aber sein Geist arbeitete fortwährend an einer Vertiefung, einer Harmonisierung dieses seines Begriffs- und Lebenserfahrungsvorrats. Geradezu charakteristisch ist, wie Schiller Gespräche führte. Darin war er ein Gegenpol von Herder, und ein gewisses Licht fällt auf Schiller durch diese Gegenüberstellung.

Wenn Herder in Gesellschaft von Leuten war, die sich dafür interessierten, entwickelte er seine Anschauungen; selten wurde ein Einwand gemacht; er stand so fest, so klar, daß er im dialektischen Gespräch nicht hätte eine Frage weiter bringen wollen. Ganz anders war es bei Schiller; bei ihm wurde jedes Gespräch lebendig: er nahm jeden Einwand auf, jedes Thema wurde angeschlagen, und dadurch brachte er das Gespräch auf alle möglichen Seitenpfade, alles wurde von allen Seiten beleuchtet. Im Gespräch drückt sich am schönsten aus in dem Leben, welches Schiller im persönlichen Verkehr umfloß —, wie seine Anschauungen im ewigen Flusse waren. Wir haben hier dasselbe Streben nach Wahrheit, das Lessing in den Worten zum Ausdruck brachte: «Wenn Gott vor mir stünde, in der einen Hand die volle Wahrheit, in der andern das Streben nach der Wahrheit, so würde ich ihn bitten: Herr, gib mir das Streben nach der Wahrheit, denn die volle Wahrheit ist wohl nur für Gott allein da.»

So sehen wir, wie Schiller durch alle Perioden seines Lebens hindurch in einem fortwährenden Streben nach höherer Weltanschauung begriffen ist; wie er, als er zur Professur nach Jena ging, genötigt war, seine Ideen lebendig zu machen; wie er rang, die großen Kräfte, die in der Welt wirkend sind, zu erfassen und in lebendigem Vortrage fruchtbar zu machen.

Die geschichtsphilosophischen kleineren Aufsätze zeigen uns, wie er mit diesen Ideen rang. Außer dem schon erwähnten Vortrag: «Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?» — versuchte er die Bedeutung eines solchen Gesetzgebers wie Moses zu charakterisieren. Dann behandelt er die Zeit der Kreuzzüge; und es gibt vielleicht nichts Schöneres und Interessanteres als die Art, in der Schiller die Besitzund Lehnsverhältnisse des Mittelalters schildert. Die großen Freiheitskämpfe der Niederlande werden so erfaßt, daß man daran lernen kann, wie die Geschichtsentwickelung innerlich vor sich geht. Dann die Geschichte des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs, in der ihn schon vor allem die Figur des Wallenstein fesselt, die ihm den Menschen mit dem Gesetz des Willens in sich selbst zeigt, fest in seiner Person, aber mit kleinlicher Ehrsucht behaftet, schwankend in seinen Zielen, und, voll von unklaren Begriffen, über Sterndeutung grübelnd. Später versucht er dichterisch diese Figur zu enträtseln. Doch vorher sucht Schiller sich noch zu klären durch philosophische Studien in Kants Werken. Nicht unvorbereitet trat Schiller auch als Philosoph an den Kantianismus heran. Es war damals etwas in ihm, das nur durch die Anlehnung an Kant herauskommen konnte.

Man muß diesen Punkt in Schillers Wesen tief fassen, um seine große Persönlichkeit recht verstehen zu können. Es gibt eine Reihe von Briefen, «Philosophische Briefe» zwischen Julius und Rafael: die Philosophie, die er da entwikkelt, ist etwas, was ihm eingeboren ist. Das Weltbild, das er sich gebildet hat aus seiner tiefen Persönlichkeit heraus, stellt der dar, welcher Julius heißt, während wir uns in Rafael einen Mann charakterisiert denken müssen, wie seinen Freund Körner, der zu einer gewissen Abgeschlossenheit gekommen ist, wenn auch nicht in so tiefer Weise. Denn im Leben erscheint der Geringere oft als der Klügere, Übergeordnete, gegenüber dem Höherstrebenden, Ringenden. Der Ringende, der aber hier noch in Disharmonien unbefriedigt lebt, entwirft in der «Theosophie des Julius» sein Weltbild etwa in folgender Weise: «Alles in der Welt entstammt einem geistigen Urgrunde. Auch der Mensch ist zunächst hervorgegangen aus diesem Urgrund; er ist ein Zusammenfluß aller Kräfte der Welt. Er wirkt wie ein Auszug, wie eine Vereinigung alles dessen, was in der Natur ausgebreitet ist. Alles Dasein außer ihm ist nur Hieroglyphe einer Kraft, die ihm ähnlich ist. Im Bilde des Schmetterlings, der sich aus der Raupe neu verjüngt in die Luft erhebt, haben wir ein Bild der menschlichen Unsterblichkeit. Nur, wenn wir uns erheben könnten zu dem Ideal, das uns eingepflanzt ist, könnten wir zur Befriedigung gelangen.» Er nennt dieses Weltbild «Theosophie des Julius». Die Welt ist ein Gedanke Gottes; alles lebt nur in der unendlichen Liebe Gottes; alles in mir und außer mir ist nur eine Hieroglyphe des höchsten Wesens. Wie Goethe in seinem Prosahymnus an die Natur es ausgedrückt hatte, daß der Mensch ungefragt und ungewarnt in den Kreislauf des Lebens durch die Natur gestellt sei, daß sie selbst in ihm rede und handle, so kommt Schiller in gewisser Weise in dieser Theosophie des Julius zu einem ähnlichen Standpunkt. Aber er fühlt sich zunächst unbefriedigt: nur ein Gott könnte von einem solchen Standpunkt aus die Welt betrachten, meint er. Kann denn wirklich die Menschenseele, die so klein und beschränkt ist, mit einem solchen Bilde der Welt leben?

Aus dem Kantianismus hat Schiller nun zunächst ein neues Weltbild gewonnen, das bis zur Mitte der neunziger Jahre vorhält. Das Welträtsel ist ihm zum Menschenrätsel geworden; das Problem der Freiheit ist es zunächst, das ihn beschäftigt. Die Frage tritt vor seinen Geist: Wie kann der Mensch seine Vollkommenheit erlangen?

Am reinsten und schönsten tritt uns hier Schillers Weltanschauung in den «Ästhetischen Briefen» entgegen: Auf der einen Seite ist der Mensch seiner niederen Natur, seinen Trieben unterworfen; die Natur ist hier Notwendigkeit in den Sinnendingen, die auf ihn einstürmen. Auf der anderen Seite liegt im Denken des Menschen die geistige Notwendigkeit; da ist die Logik, der er sich unterwerfen muß. Er ist Sklave der Naturnotwendigkeit und zugleich Sklave der Vernunftnotwendigkeit. Kant antwortet auf diesen Widerspruch mit einer Herabdrückung der Naturnotwendigkeit gegenüber der geistigen Notwendigkeit. Schiller erfaßte in ganzer Tiefe die Kluft zwischen Naturund Vernunftnotwendigkeit. Er sah hier ein Problem, das über alle menschlichen Verhältnisse sich ausbreitet. Die Gesetze, die die Menschen regieren, sind teils hergenommen aus der Naturnotwendigkeit, aus den dynamischen Kräften, die in den Menschen wirken; teils aus der moralischen Ordnung, die sie in sich tragen. Disharmonie, Unterdrückung muß daraus folgen. So haben wir den dynamischen Staat und den moralischen Staat; beide wirken als eine eiserne Notwendigkeit.

Derjenige Mensch nur kann sich frei nennen, der sich die ehernen Gesetze der Vernunft und Logik so zu eigen gemacht hat, daß er ihnen ohne Zwang folgt, der so weit sein sittliches Gefühl geläutert hat, daß er gar nicht anders kann, als das Reine wollen, weil seine Neigungen sich hinauforganisiert haben zum geistigen Leben. Der Mensch, der die Vernunftgesetze heruntergeholt hat in die Triebe und Neigungen der Seele, und die menschlichen Leidenschaften heraufgeholt zur Erkenntnis der moralischen Ordnung, der wird die dynamischen Gesetze so beherrschen, daß Harmonie entsteht zwischen seinen Trieben und der Vernunft. Schiller nennt die Stimmung, in der der Mensch sich befindet, der seine Triebe so gereinigt hat, die ästhetische Stimmung, und den Staat, in dem solche Menschen wirken, die ästhetische Gesellschaft. Der Mensch muß verwirklichen, was ihm als seine höchste Würde erscheint.

In der Theosophie des Julius hatte Schiller ein ideales Weltbild aufgestellt. Eine Erziehung zu dem Ideal ist es, was Schiller vom Menschen und von der menschlichen Gesellschaft verlangt. Entwickelung ist es, was Schiller den Menschen vorhält.

Das drückt sich aus in dem Gedichte: «Der Spaziergang». Nicht als etwas Erreichtes erscheint ihm die Harmonie der Welt, sondern als ein Entwickelungsziel. Schön erscheint ihm die ewige Harmonie der Natur, aber als etwas, was auch der Mensch in sich erstreben sollte. Es muß das Ideal des Menschen werden, daß ein Zustand herbeigeführt werde, wo die Menschen in solcher Harmonie dahinleben, wie sie in der Natur vorbildlich sich uns zeigt. Was Schiller früher angestrebt hatte als Inhalt der Erkenntnis, wurde ihm jetzt sittlich-ästhetisches Ideal. Jetzt, unter dem Einfluß Goethes, wurde er wieder zum Dichter: so glaubte er am besten zeigen zu können, wie der Geist des Menschen in Entwickelung begriffen ist, wie die verschiedenen Kräfte in ihm zusammenwirken, wie er von den Tiefen zu den Höhen strebt.

In einer ganz bedeutsamen Weise hat er im «Wallenstein» sein ureigenes Problem dichterisch hingestellt. Schwer ist es ihm geworden, die Menschennatur darzustellen, schwerer wie kleineren Naturen. Nicht aus abstrakten Ideen heraus hat Schiller seine Gestalten geschaffen und dann erst gleichsam zu seinem Gedankenskelett das Fleisch gesucht, wie man vielfach behauptet hat. So war es nicht bei seinen Gestalten, so war es vor allem nicht beim «Wallenstein». Schiller ging aus von einer innerlich musikalischen Stimmung, wie er es nannte, nicht von Ideen. Gleichsam in Melodien ergoß sich in sein Inneres der Strom der im Menschen verwickelten Kräfte, die sich lösten in Harmonie oder untergingen in Disharmonie. Dann suchte er die Gedanken, die Charaktere, die einzelnen Stimmungen. So standen ihm vor Augen die kontrastierenden Seelenkräfte Wallensteins, die diesen mit Notwendigkeit zu einer großen Katastrophe führen. — Man kann leider diese Stimmung nicht anders als mit gedanklichen Mitteln wiedergeben. — Es gibt eine auf sich selbst gebaute Persönlichkeit, die tragisch zugrunde geht. Tragisch in wahrem Sinne aber wirkt sie nur, wenn sie an sich selbst scheitert. Was Hebbel als notwendige Voraussetzung des Tragischen fordert, «daß es so hat kommen müssen», daß nichts tragisch sein könne, was auch in anderer Weise hätte getan werden können; wie intuitiv ist diese Ansicht von Schiller erfaßt worden, obgleich er sie nocht nicht ausspricht!

Aber Schiller steht unter dem Einflusse noch einer andern tragischen Idee, die sich nicht auflösen läßt, die vor allem in der Person des Wallenstein selbst zum Ausdruck kommt. Es ist das Bewußtsein, daß in das Menschenleben etwas Höheres hineinspielt, das in diesem Rahmen nicht zu lösen ist. Erst am Ende der Welt, wenn die Menschen zur Vollkommenheit gelangt sein werden, wird der Blick des Menschen so sein Schicksal überschauen können. Bis dahin werden immer Irrtümer sein müssen, etwas Unlösbares, für das Wallenstein in den Sternen eine Lösung sucht, das etwas Imponderables im eigenen Herzen ist. Fest vorherbestimmt glaubt Wallenstein in den Sternen sein Geschick zu lesen und muß nun sehen, wie Octavio ihn, entgegen dem Sternenorakel, betrügt. Doch die Freiheit des Menschen bleibt das Höchste; eine innere Notwendigkeit läßt ihn in den Sternen die Lösung suchen: er steht vor einem neuen Rätsel, die Sterne haben ihm gelogen. Doch nein, die Sterne können nicht lügen: Der Mensch, der gegen die heiligsten Gesetze des Gefühls und Herzens verstößt, er bringt die Harmonie der Sterne in Unordnung. Es kann keine Ordnung in der Natur geben, die den Gesetzen des menschlichen Geistes widerspricht. Wer in dieser Weise den Charakter Wallensteins betrachtet, wird Schillers eigene Person in tiefer Bedeutung durch die Person Wallensteins hindurchblicken sehen.

Ins Auge schauen wollte Schiller dem Widerspruch der Welt und zeigen, wie man mit diesem Widerspruch lebt. Es muß eine Wahrheit in der Welt sein, sagt er sich, und diese hat er gesucht, wie er es schon in dem Briefe des Julius tut. Der Widerspruch liegt in den einzelnen Erscheinungen. Schiller kommt hier zu der Erkenntnis dessen, was die alten Inder und andere Weise als Illusion erkannten. In der Wahrheit wollte er leben, und er betrachtete die Kunst als ein Tor, durch welches der Mensch wandeln muß, um ins Morgenrot der Schönheit und Freiheit zu gelangen. In dem Gedichte «Die Künstler» fordert er es geradezu von den Künstlern, sich hinzustellen auf den Weltenplan und mitzuschaffen an der Verwirklichung des Ideals. So ruft er ihnen zu: «Der Menschheit Würde ist in eure Hand gegeben. Bewahret sie!»

IV. Schiller's worldview and his Wallenstein

One cannot speak of Schiller's worldview in the same sense as the philosophical worldviews of other people, because it is in a constant state of flux, in a state of constant ascent. Small human personalities find it easy to arrive at a worldview. Greater ones find it very difficult to make up their minds. This is because a small personality is incapable of understanding the great mysteries. For the greater personality, every life experience presents a new mystery; it modifies the view on a new basis, which must be reshaped. Goethe went through this until the end of his life, and Schiller did too. Schiller himself stated that he was basically only familiar with a small sphere of his own development, but his mind was constantly working on deepening and harmonizing his store of concepts and life experience. Schiller's manner of conversation was quite characteristic. In this respect, he was the opposite of Herder, and this contrast sheds a certain light on Schiller.

When Herder was in the company of people who were interested in his ideas, he developed his views; objections were rarely raised; he was so firm and clear that he would not have wanted to pursue a question further in a dialectical conversation. Schiller was quite different; with him, every conversation came alive: he took up every objection, every topic was touched upon, and in this way he took the conversation down all kinds of side paths, everything was illuminated from all sides. The conversation most beautifully expresses the life that surrounded Schiller in his personal interactions—how his views were in a constant state of flux. Here we see the same striving for truth that Lessing expressed in the words: “If God stood before me, holding the whole truth in one hand and the striving for truth in the other, I would ask him: Lord, give me the striving for truth, for the whole truth is surely only for God alone.”

Thus we see how Schiller, throughout all periods of his life, was engaged in a constant striving for a higher worldview; how, when he went to Jena to take up a professorship, he was compelled to bring his ideas to life; how he struggled to grasp the great forces at work in the world and to make them fruitful in lively lectures.

The shorter essays on the philosophy of history show us how he wrestled with these ideas. In addition to the lecture already mentioned, “What is the meaning and purpose of studying universal history?”, he attempted to characterize the significance of a lawgiver such as Moses. He then deals with the period of the Crusades; and there is perhaps nothing more beautiful and interesting than the way in which Schiller describes the ownership and feudal relationships of the Middle Ages. The great struggles for freedom in the Netherlands are captured in such a way that one can learn how historical development takes place internally. Then there is the history of the Thirty Years' War, in which he is particularly captivated by the figure of Wallenstein, who shows him the man with the law of will within himself, firm in his character, but afflicted with petty ambition, wavering in his goals, and full of unclear concepts, pondering astrology. Later, he attempts to unravel this figure poetically. But first, Schiller seeks clarification through philosophical studies of Kant's works. Schiller did not approach Kantianism unprepared as a philosopher. At that time, there was something within him that could only come out through his adherence to Kant.

One must grasp this point deeply in Schiller's nature in order to truly understand his great personality. There is a series of letters, “Philosophical Letters,” between Julius and Rafael: the philosophy he develops there is something innate to him. The worldview he formed from his deep personality is represented by the one named Julius, while in Rafael we must imagine a man characterized like his friend Körner, who has come to a certain seclusion, albeit not in such a profound way. For in life, the lesser often appears to be the wiser, superior one, as opposed to the higher-striving, struggling one. The struggling man, who here still lives unsatisfied in disharmony, sketches his worldview in Julius's “Theosophy” in the following way: "Everything in the world originates from a spiritual source. Man, too, first emerged from this source; he is a confluence of all the forces of the world. They act as an extract, as a union of everything that is spread out in nature. All existence outside of them is only a hieroglyph of a force that is similar to them. In the image of the butterfly, which rises into the air rejuvenated from the caterpillar, we have an image of human immortality. Only if we could rise to the ideal that is implanted in us could we attain satisfaction.“ He calls this worldview ”Julius's theosophy." The world is a thought of God; everything lives only in the infinite love of God; everything in me and outside of me is only a hieroglyph of the highest being. As Goethe had expressed in his prose hymn to nature, that man is placed by nature in the cycle of life without being asked or warned, that nature itself speaks and acts in him, Schiller in a certain way comes to a similar point of view in this Theosophy of Julius. But he feels dissatisfied at first: only a god could view the world from such a point of view, he thinks. Can the human soul, which is so small and limited, really live with such an image of the world?

From Kantianism, Schiller has now gained a new worldview that will last until the mid-1890s. The mystery of the world has become for him the mystery of man; it is the problem of freedom that initially occupies him. The question arises in his mind: How can man attain perfection?

Schiller's worldview is presented to us in its purest and most beautiful form in the “Aesthetic Letters”: On the one hand, man is subject to his lower nature, his instincts; nature here is necessity in the sensory things that assail him. On the other hand, there is the spiritual necessity in human thinking; there is the logic to which he must submit. He is a slave to natural necessity and at the same time a slave to rational necessity. Kant responds to this contradiction by suppressing natural necessity in favor of spiritual necessity. Schiller grasped the full depth of the gulf between natural and rational necessity. He saw this as a problem that extends beyond all human circumstances. The laws that govern humans are partly derived from natural necessity, from the dynamic forces that act within humans, and partly from the moral order that they carry within themselves. Disharmony and oppression must result from this. Thus, we have the dynamic state and the moral state; both act as an iron necessity. =

Only those people can call themselves free who have made the iron laws of reason and logic their own to such an extent that they follow them without compulsion, who have purified their moral sensibility to such an extent that they cannot help but want what is pure, because their inclinations have risen to a higher level of spiritual life. The person who has brought the laws of reason down into the instincts and inclinations of the soul, and raised human passions up to the knowledge of the moral order, will master the dynamic laws in such a way that harmony arises between his instincts and reason. Schiller calls the mood in which a person who has purified their instincts finds themselves the aesthetic mood, and the state in which such people operate the aesthetic society. People must realize what appears to them to be their highest dignity.

In Julius's theosophy, Schiller had established an ideal worldview. An education toward the ideal is what Schiller demands of man and human society. Development is what Schiller holds up to man.

This is expressed in the poem “The Walk.” He does not see the harmony of the world as something that has already been achieved, but as a goal of development. He finds the eternal harmony of nature beautiful, but as something that humans should also strive for within themselves. It must become the ideal of humanity to bring about a state in which people live in such harmony as is exemplified to us in nature. What Schiller had previously strived for as the content of knowledge now became his moral and aesthetic ideal. Now, under Goethe's influence, he became a poet again: he believed this was the best way to show how the human spirit is in a state of development, how the various forces within it interact, how it strives from the depths to the heights.

In a very significant way, he presented his very own problem poetically in “Wallenstein.” It became difficult for him to portray human nature, more difficult than lesser natures. Schiller did not create his characters out of abstract ideas and then, as has often been claimed, seek flesh for his skeletal ideas. This was not the case with his characters, and above all it was not the case with “Wallenstein.” Schiller started from an inner musical mood, as he called it, not from ideas. As if in melodies, the stream of forces entangled in human beings poured into his inner being, dissolving in harmony or perishing in disharmony. Then he sought out the thoughts, the characters, the individual moods. Thus, he saw before his eyes the contrasting forces of Wallenstein's soul, which inevitably lead him to a great catastrophe. Unfortunately, this mood can only be conveyed by intellectual means. There is a personality built on itself that tragically perishes. But it only has a truly tragic effect if it fails because of itself. What Hebbel demands as a necessary prerequisite for tragedy, “that it had to come to this,” that nothing can be tragic that could also have been done in another way; how intuitively Schiller grasped this view, even though he does not yet express it!

But Schiller is also influenced by another tragic idea that cannot be resolved, which is expressed above all in the person of Wallenstein himself. It is the awareness that something higher plays a role in human life that cannot be resolved within this framework. Only at the end of the world, when humans have attained perfection, will the human gaze be able to survey its destiny. Until then, there will always have to be errors, something unsolvable, for which Wallenstein seeks a solution in the stars, something imponderable in his own heart. Wallenstein believes he can read his fate in the stars, predetermined, and now has to watch as Octavio betrays him, contrary to the star oracle. But human freedom remains the highest good; an inner necessity compels him to seek the solution in the stars: he is faced with a new mystery, the stars have lied to him. But no, the stars cannot lie: the man who violates the most sacred laws of feeling and the heart brings disorder to the harmony of the stars. There can be no order in nature that contradicts the laws of the human spirit. Anyone who considers Wallenstein's character in this way will see Schiller's own person shining through Wallenstein's character in a profound way.

Schiller wanted to look the contradictions of the world in the eye and show how to live with these contradictions. There must be a truth in the world, he tells himself, and he has sought this truth, as he already does in Julius's letter. The contradiction lies in the individual phenomena. Here Schiller comes to the realization of what the ancient Indians and other sages recognized as illusion. He wanted to live in truth, and he regarded art as a gateway through which man must pass in order to reach the dawn of beauty and freedom. In the poem “The Artists,” he demands that artists stand up for the world plan and help to realize the ideal. He calls out to them: “The dignity of humanity is in your hands. Preserve it!”