THE TRICHOTOMY
- emotions the driving force of one's life
- nature replaces the church as the source of inspiration
- aversion to industry, mechanics, rigidly rational things
So, the pendulum swings. The eternal trichotomy of the heart versus the brain vs. God. Who do you follow?
Follow your heart? Some people prefer anarchy. Some people's heart lead them to become pedophiles. "The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it?"
Follow your brain. Cold rationalism has led to euthanasia, the Holocaust. These people are not useful; they do not benefit "the System." Rationalism leads to order and efficiency and incidental cruelty to anything outside of it.
God tells you what to do with your heart and your brain. These are the 10 Commandments, or the 10 Words. You worship God alone, His day is holy (His time is sacred), you honor your parents (family is sacred), there is no adultery (your body is sacred) there is no lying (your word is sacred), there is no stealing (property is sacred), there is no killing (others are sacred), there is no jealousy (your desires are sacred). Do you understand this? Because you are made in the image of God, everything flows from this. If God's image is stamped on your very self, you are sacred simply because you are human. If you are sacred, then your word becomes sacred, and therefore it is sacrilege to lie because an untrue word coming out of the mouth of a being that resembles God is a shocking thing. Do destroy the image of God is shocking, therefore killing becomes sacrilege. If I use the body that is stamped with the image of God to go to work and earn money to buy a car, I have traded myself for the car, and it is mine, therefore if you take it, you are violating myself. Stealing becomes sacrilege.
This is why courts have marble plaques of the 10 commandments: because there is no justice outside of God, and these 10 Words carry through the thought of the sacred and how it affects everything in life. Think about it. Try to explain something being wrong outside of the concept of God. It cannot be done.
So, let's see how Romanticism compares. Is it wrong that a train should go through the country, if we apply this lens? Nothing really. Grass and sheep are not sacred.
If a young man desires a married woman, what could be wrong with that? Everything, since marriage is sacred since both men and women are made in the image of God, and together they represent all the strength and power and fairness and tenderness and compassion and mercy that is God, and to divide them is an unholy thing.
So, if a young man considers himself misunderstood because his poetry is not popular, and he kills himself, is that admirable and noble and deserving of our sympathy or not? Is he the victim a of cold, unfeeling and rigid society who cannot understand his intense feelings, or is he an impulsive wretch who refused to possess his own emotions and committed the ultimate heresy by defacing and destroying the image of God, namely himself? It depends on your worldview.
This moment in change reflects a change in the entire world, of which art is only a small part. Art reflects what happened; the changing worldviews are the engines that drive history.