 The “Aesthetic Letters” begin with an almost despondent analysis of the modern human  condition.[6]  The state is tottering, its “rotting foundations giving way”. Hopes for freedom and progress prove to be vain in the face of “crude, lawless instincts” among some citizens and a “repugnant spectacle of lethargy” among others (NA XX, 96/E 96). Schiller lauds the Greeks for their simple, harmonious relation to their world and laments modern society’s enslavement to its manufactured needs. Recent history had shown with painful clarity that if the moral character of the people is not developed, even the most idealistic revolution will fail. A vicious cycle suggests that without the state there can be no morality and without morality there can be no state. Despite the Enlightenment’s lofty goals, Schiller laments,