R OMANTICISM has been defined by Lionel Trilling as
the movement to "secularize the spiritual" which, he says, pre-
vailed through the nineteenth century and continues to dominate
the twentieth. We are still devoted to the enterprise of realizing in
the daily world of experience the blessings and beatitudes that
were formerly associated with a divine dispensation. Transcenden-
talism is an aspect of romanticism to which this definition particu-
larly applies. Seeing nature as the symbol and incarnation of
spirit, the transcendentalist fused the secular and the spiritual. For
him, science and intuition were equally fruitful ways to realize
man's aspirations in the tangible present. Naturalism, as I have
sought to show, flows with this great modern stream. Its inspira-
tion is the conviction that scientific knowledge can release man
from superstition, from fear, from the tyranny of tradition, from
physical ailments, and from poverty--release him into an era of
personal enrichment and fulfillment beyond anything the world
has seen.

The prophetic visions of Shelley, the despair of Manfred, the
frantic defiance of Ahab, however bitter, magnify a vision of man
to the superhuman. The human agony cries out to the farthest
reaches of mind and proclaims its supreme destiny. Man's vision of
good and evil measures his greatness, for in these romantic terms
man thinks Himself against the universe. The effect is not very
different whether like Ahab he defies God, like Hardy denounces

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