It is necessary that the action and dramatic event in so far as they apply strictly to the Ideal and classic art, should be referable to an essentially true or, in other words, independently explicit and necessary end, in whose conformation that which is also the determinating factor for the external form, for the particular type and mode of execution, is an object of real existence. In the case of the acts and events of romantic art this is not the case. For, although essentially universal and substantive ends are also presented in their manner of realization by this type, the definition of the action which is referable to such ends, and the principle of co-ordination and articulation which appears in its progress on its spiritual side[289] is not the direct result of those ends themselves; this aspect of realization is inevitably left independent and subject to the operation of contingency.
(α) The romantic world had one and only one absolute work to accomplish, namely, the extension of Christendom, and the bringing into manifest performance the spirit of the community[290]. Situated in the midst of a hostile world consisting in part of the unbelieving ancient régime, and in part of a human life which was barbarous and coarse, the character of its actual accomplishment, in so far as it passed from mere theory to deeds, was, in the main, the passive endurance of pain and torture, the sacrifice of its own temporal existence for the eternal salvation of the soul. A further product of its energies, which is equally a portion of the same essential content, is, in the Middle Ages, that carried out by Christian Chivalry, the driving forth of the Moors, Arabs, and Mohammedans generally from Christian countries, and, above all, along with it, the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre in the Crusades. This, however, was not an object which affected man simply as human[291], but one which a mere collection of isolated individuals had to accomplish under conditions in which the individuals which composed it streamed together at their own free will and pleasure as such. From such a point of view we may call the Crusades the collective adventure of the Christian Middle Ages; an adventure, which was essentially subject to lapses[292], and fantastical, of a spiritual tendency, and yet devoid of a truly spiritual aim, and in its relation to action and character delusive. For in its relation to the processes of religion, the supreme object of the Crusades is in the highest degree empty and external. Christianity purported to secure its salvation solely in Spirit, in Christ, who is raised to the right hand of God; it finds its living reality and stay in Spirit, not in the grave of Spirit, or in the sensuous, immediately present localities of its former temporal abiding-place. The impulse and religious yearning of the Middle Ages, however, was centred on the spot, the external locality of the Passion and the Holy Sepulchre. In just the same direct contradiction with the religious object we find that wholly worldly one which was bound up with conquest; a possession, which in its relation to the secular world, carried a totally different character to that of a truly religious purpose. Men would fain win for themselves what was spiritual and health to their souls, and they set before them as an aim a purely material locality, from which Spirit had vanished; they strained after a gain that was temporal, and united this which was of the world to the pure substance of religion. It is this distraction which gives us the discordant and fantastic note in such enterprises in which we find that which is of the world confound the life of soul, or the latter prove the confounding of the former instead of a harmony which is the result of both. And for the same reason much that is contradictory appears in the execution unresolved. Piety is carried to the point of rawness and barbarous cruelty. And this rawness permits every kind of selfishness and passion to break forth, or casts itself conversely once more upon the eternal depths which either move or bruise the human spirit, and which are, in truth, the heart and substance of the matter. In the medley of elements so discrepant, there is also an absence of all unity in the object proposed by the exploits and events themselves, or in the consequential power of authority. The host of men is diverted and split up in single adventures, victories, defeats, and a variety of accidents; and the outcome of it all fails to correspond to the means and enormous preparations which were involved. Nay, the object itself is stultified in the execution. For the Crusades would once again bring truth to the sentence: "Thou couldst not leave him in peace in the grave, thou didst not suffer thy holy one to see corruption." But it is precisely this longing to find Christ and spiritual content in such places and spaces, even the grave itself, the place of death, which is itself, whatever essential worth even a Chateaubriand may make out of it, a corruption of Spirit, out of which Christianity must rise in resurrection in order to return once more to the fresh and abundant life of the concrete world.
An object of much the same kind, mystical from one point of view, equally fantastical from another, and adventurous in its undertaking, is the search of the Holy Grail.
(β) A more exalted emprise is that which every man has to go through in his own domain, his life, in the course of which he determines his eternal destiny. It is this object which Dante has, consistently with the catholic standpoint, seized upon in his "Divine Comedy" as he conducts us in turn through hell, purgatory, and paradise. In this poem, too, despite the strenuous co-ordination of the whole, we have abundant evidence of conceptions which are fantastic[293], aspects that are suffused with the spirit of adventure, in so far, at any rate, as this work in its blessing and cursing is not carried through merely in the explicit form of universal statement, but as referable to an almost innumerable company of distinct personalities, not to mention the fact that the poet takes upon himself the fiat of his church, seizes the keys of heaven in his hand, adjudicates both bliss and damnation, and so constitutes himself the judge of the v world, who places the best known individuals both of the ancient and Christian eras, whether poets, citizens, cardinals, or popes, respectively in hell, purgatory, or paradise.
(γ) The remaining material, on the basis of the worldly life, which leads up to action and event, consists in the infinitely manifold and venturesome experiments of imaginative idea, all that element of chance in what arises either without or within the soul from love, honour, and fidelity. At one time we may see men thus affected box the compass for their own reputation's sake, at another leap to help persecuted innocence, carry out amazing exploits in defence of the honour of their lady, or vindicate some right that is invaded with the strength of their own arm, and the able use of their own weapons; and this albeit the innocence which is delivered prove only a company of knaves. In the majority of such cases there is absolutely no condition, no situation, no conflict before us in virtue of which we can assert that action follows as a necessary result. The soul simply wills it and intentionally looks out for adventure. The exploits of love, for instance, in such cases have for the most part, if we look at their more specific content, no other real principle of determination beyond the effort to give proof of the steadfastness, fidelity, and constancy of love, to testify that all the surrounding world, together with the entire complexus of its relations, is merely of value as so much material in which love may be brought to light. For this reason the specific act of such manifestation, since the only thing that matters is the proof, is not determined by its own course, but is left dependent on a freak of chance, the mood of the lady, the caprice of external accidents. The same principle holds where the objects are honour or bravery. They are proper to an individual who holds himself far aloof from all further content of a more substantive character, who is perfectly able to enter into any and every content as it may chance to occur, to find himself the object of insult therein, or to look for an opportunity in which he may display his courage and shrewdness. As we have here absolutely no criterion as to what should or what should not form part of this content, in the same way also we have no principle in accordance with which we can fix what in each case is really an attack upon honour or the true subject-matter of bravery. It is just the same with the treatment of right, which is likewise an object of chivalry. In other words, right and law are here not as yet asserted as a condition and object which is of essentially independent stability, or as a system which is continuously made more perfect in accordance with law and its necessary content, but as themselves purely the product of individual caprice, so that their interposition, no less than the judgment passed upon that which in every particular case is held to be right or wrong, is throughout relegated to the entirely haphazard criteria of individual judgment.
(b) What we have before us generally, more particularly on the secular field, in chivalry and the formalism of character above indicated, is not merely, to a more or less degree, the contingency of the circumstantial conditions of human action, but also that of the soul in its attitude of volition. For individuals of this one-sided characterization are capable of accepting as the substance of their life that which is wholly contingent, conduct that is only sustained by virtue of the energy of their character, and is carried out, or fails in its contact with the inevitable collisions which the condition of the world opposes to it. The same thing is true of the chivalry which receives in honour, love, and fidelity a more lofty ground of justification, and one entitled to rank with a truly ethical basis. On the one hand, it is still emphatically a matter of chance on account of the particular aspect of the circumstances on which it reacts; we find that here the object is to carry out aims peculiar to some particular person, instead of some work of general significance, and the modes of its attachment with the rest of life fail to possess independent stability. On the other hand, precisely at the point where we consider such action as part of the personal life of individuals, we are aware of the presence of caprice and illusion in respect to all that it either projects, originates, or undertakes. The net result of such a spirit of enterprise consequently, through all that it performs or enters upon, no less than in its ultimate effects, is no other than a world of events and fatalities which is self-dissolvent, a world of comedy for this very reason.
This self-dissolution of Chivalry we find set before us and artistically reproduced, pre-eminently and with unsurpassed adequacy, by Ariosto and Cervantes, and, so far as it affects the fate of such highly individual characters as those above described in their isolation, by Shakespeare.
(α) In Ariosto, more particularly, an attempt is made to delight the reader with the infinitely varied developments of personal destiny and aims, the fabulous complexity of fantastic relations and ludicrous situations over which the adventurous fancy of the poet plays to the point of absolute frivolity. The heroes of these dramas are seriously engaged in what is often unadulterated folly and the wildest eccentricity. And, to note especial points, love is frequently degraded from the Divine love of a Dante, or the romantic tenderness of a Petrarca, to sensual tales and ludicrous collisions; or heroism appears to be screwed up to a pitch that is so incredible it ceases to amaze, and merely excites a smile over the fabulousness of such exploits. By virtue, however, of this indifference in respect to the particular manner in which dramatic situations are brought about, astonishing complications and conflicts are introduced, broken off and once more interwoven, chopped about, and finally resolved in a surprising way; yet, despite his ludicrous treatment of chivalry, Ariosto is as able to secure and display to us the true nobility and greatness which we may find in chivalry, or the exhibition of courage, love, honour, and bravery, as he can on occasion excellently depict other passions, cunning, subtlety, presence of mind, and much else.
(β) Just as Ariosto inclines more to the fabulous element in this spirit of adventure, Cervantes develops that aspect of it which is appropriate to romantic fiction. We find in his Don Quixote a noble nature in whose adventures chivalry goes mad, the substance of such adventures being placed as the centre of a stable and well-defined state of things whose external character is copied with exactness from nature. This produces the humorous contradiction of a rationally constituted world on the one hand, and an isolated soul on the other, which seeks to create the same order and stability entirely through his own exertions and the knight-errantry which could only destroy it. Despite, however, this ludicrous confusion we have still in Don Quixote that which we have already eulogized in Shakespeare. Cervantes has created in his hero an original figure of noble nature endowed with varied spiritual qualities, and one which at the same time throughout retains our full interest. In all the madness of his mind and his enterprise he is a completely consistent[294] soul, or rather his madness lies in this, that he is and remains securely rooted in himself and his enterprise. Without this unreflecting equanimity respectively to the content and result of his actions he would fail to be a truly romantic figure; and this self-assuredness, if we look at the substantive character of his opinions, is throughout great and indicative of his genius, adorned as it is with the finest traits of character. And, further, the entire work is a satire upon the chivalry of romance, ironical from beginning to end in the truest sense. In Ariosto this genius of adventure is merely the butt of frivolous jest. From another point of view, however, the exploits of Don Quixote are merely the central thread around which a succession of genuinely romantic tales are intertwined in the most charming way, in order to unfold the true worth of that which the romance in other respects scatters to the winds with the genius of comedy.