The present volume is composed, with a few additions, of six lecturesread at Columbia University in February, 1910, and repeated in April ofthe same year, at the University of Wisconsin. These lectures, in turn,were based on a regular course which I had been giving for some time atHarvard College. Though produced under such learned auspices, my bookcan make no great claims to learning. It contains the impressions of anamateur, the appreciations of an ordinary reader, concerning three greatwriters, two of whom at least might furnish matter enough for thestudies of a lifetime, and actually have academies, libraries, anduniversity chairs especially consecrated to their memory. I am nospecialist in the study of Lucretius; I am not a Dante scholar nor aGoethe scholar. I can report no facts and propose no hypotheses aboutthese men which are not at hand in their familiar works, or inwell-known commentaries upon them. My excuse for writing about them,notwithstanding, is merely the human excuse which every new poet has forwriting about the spring. They have attracted me; they have moved me toreflection; they have revealed to me certain aspects of nature and ofphilosophy which I am prompted by mere sincerity to express, if anybodyseems interested or willing to listen. What I can offer the benevolentreader, therefore, is no learned investigation. It is only a piece ofliterary criticism, together with a first broad lesson in the history ofphilosophy—and, perhaps, in philosophy itself.
G.S.
Harvard College
June, 1910
I
Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe sum up the chief phases of Europeanphilosophy,—naturalism, supernaturalism, and romanticism—Idealrelation between philosophy and poetry.
II
Development of Greek cosmology—Democritus—Epicurean moralsentiment—Changes inspired by it in the system ofDemocritus—Accidental alliance of materialism withhedonism—Imaginative value of naturalism: The Lucretian Venus, or thepropitious movement in nature—The Lucretian Mars, or the destructivemovement—Preponderant melancholy, and the reason for it—Materialityof the soul—The fear of death and the fear of life—Lucretius a truepoet of nature—Comparison with Shelley and Wordsworth—Things hemight have added consistently: Indefeasible worth of his insight andsentiment.
III
Character of Platonism—Its cosmology a parable—Combination of thiswith Hebraic philosophy of history—Theory of the Papacy and the Empireadopted by Dante—His judgement on Florence—Dante as a lyricpoet—Beatrice the woman, the symbol, and the reality—Love, magic, andsymbolism constitutive principles of Dante’s universe—Idea of theDivine Comedy—The scheme of virtues and vices—Retributive theory ofrewards and punishments—Esoteric view of this, which makes evenpunishment intrinsic to the sins—Examples—Dantesque cosmography—Thegenius of the poet—His universal scope—His triumphant execution of theComedy—His defects, in spite of which he remains the type of a supremepoet.
IV
The romantic spirit—The ideals of the Renaissance BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!
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