the true artist always idealizes his subject—whether it is moral or immoral according to human conventions makes no difference—and places it where the ethical emotions do not exist.
Another matter, distinct from the artistic one, is the question of romanticism as a philosophy of life. We may admire the artistic creations of the romanticists and yet as critics of life reject the romantic Weltanschauung as a whole. In the latter field Mr. Babbitt is on more solid ground; and his chapters on Romantic Morality, Romantic Irony, Romanticism and Nature, are crowded with observations that are interesting and in large measure sound. As a rule of conduct, Kant's conception of the thing-in-itself or Faust's maxim Gefühl ist Alles is a dangerous principle for nine-tenths of humanity to follow. Far safer is the "supreme maxim of humanistic morality" as enunciated by Cicero: "The whole praise of virtue is in action." "Her conduct was reprehensible," says Rousseau of Madame de Warens, "but her heart was pure." Romanticism abounds in just such sophistries as this; and to a large extent Rousseau is the father of them all. The figure of the courtesan who has been rehabilitated through love—that stock-theme of nineteenth century dramatists and poets—goes back directly to La Nouvelle Héloïse. And when it comes to the corrective to such sentimentality, Romantic Irony either cleaves the heart in two, as in Heine; or leaves us hanging over the abyss of indeterminate desire, as in Baudelaire. As to Nature, Mr. Babbitt is equally certain that the romantic attitude is disastrous, though here his ethical bias again plays him strange tricks in evaluating literature. He says:
"It should be plain from what has already been said that the romanticist tends to make of nature the mere plaything of his mood. When Werther's mood is cheerful, Nature smiles at him benignly. When his mood darkens she becomes for him 'a devouring monster.' When it grows evident to the romanticist that nature does not alter with this alteration, he chides her at times for her impassibility; or again he seeks to be impassible like her, even if he can be so only at the expense of his humanity."
It is true, this projection of the ego into Nature leads in many cases to the pathetic fallacy: so in Rousseau or Wordsworth or Chiteaubriand. But along with much that is mawkish, the identification of
