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368 SKETCHES.
rabble, good enough to serve as stepping-stones to the ad-
vancement and rise of the hero. In the Epos of modern
times every man can be the hero, every woman the heroine ;
for man is the chosen favorite, loved by God, called to
great destinies, to the possession of a measureless realm.
This is owing to the ancient Epos being a Pagan, where-
as the romance is baptized in the life of Christianity.
Christianity attributes to every human soul an infinite
worth before God, and an infinite possibility of perfection.
It makes man the inmost essence of creation.
The romance, the novel, understood this doctrine, and
grouped round its hero, round the loving, searching,
struggling man, as his world, nature, science, arts, society.
To the romance, man is the centre of life, and it is his task
to explain life. In the romance man is still a conqueror,
but to bless; and his first and greatest victories are won
upon an inward battle-field — within his own breast. If
victorious there, he conquers the world.
The romance became thus essentially a biography. In the
delineation of the individual man, it purposes to show the
human in every sphere of the existence. The hero, or the
heroine, is the representative of the higher, the spiritual
humanity, who through it vanquishes devils and goblins,
and is declared, though often not before death, the victor.
The romance preaches to every body this counsel, “ Learn
to conquer!” It is a multifarious paraphrase of the words
“ Behold the man.”
The romance says further to man, “ Behold thy world, in
all its beauty, its deformity, its greatness, its littleness, its
pleasantness, its bitterness, in a word, in all its reality.”
To a‘clear-sighted criticism no doubts can therefore
arise of the great importance and value of the romance in
literature as a means of higher cultivation. To a clear-
sighted criticism therefore the romance ought to present
itself as one of the most deeply influeucing art-productions
which civilization has prodnced.
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