Critically, when reading there are a few clear inconsistencies present in Schiller’s argument. We are impelled ... (Formtrieb)--The formal drive "proceeds from the absolute existence of man." The Stofftrieb receives, and the Formtrieb creates. This is the force of unity in the self. It is "that drive which insists on affirming the personality," and its quest is for "the abstract, eternal, and absolute." Schiller--Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. At the core of Schiller’s now-classic dictum, “A great moment has found a little people” (which was his response to the French Revolution) are his concepts of Stofftrieb (the sense drive) and Formtrieb (the form drive). He suggested that the Stofftrieb or the material drive and the Formtrieb or the form drive would be mediated by the Spieltrieb. Man, he tells us, must learn to understand and balance these forces, which tug at our dual nature as physical beings and existential persons. Schiller also identifies different classes of artists: the naïve poet, who accepts and represents nature as it is, and the sentimental poet, who seeks nature as an ideal.

Anticipating and inspiring Hegel, Schiller suggests a play, as it were, of opposites, a dialectic, thesis, antithesis, to be reconciled by a third force or synthesis. The mediated interplay of the Stofftrieb and the Formtrieb through the aesthetic reconciliation of man’s sense and reason can thereby be seen as the same means in which the formation of a liberal and organic society can materialize.