26 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



In this passage, taken from Lotze's ' History of 

 ^Esthetics in Germany/ various theories are touched 

 upon which philosophers before Schelling had framed 

 regarding special questions and problems in which the 

 larger comprehensive problem of the Beautiful had pre- 

 sented itself to them. These theories can be divided 

 into two classes. Notably to the earlier English philo- 



third of the eighteenth century, 

 and there we find it introduced, as 

 stated in the text, from two sides : 

 first, in the interest of an aspiring 

 conception of the task of educa- 

 tion ; and, secondly, as a connect- 

 ing link between the two great 

 divisions of Kant's doctrine. These 

 two interests met for the first time 

 with full appreciation in Schiller, 

 and his influence in this sense can- 

 not be overestimated. The direc- 

 tion which, through this combina- 

 tion, was given to philosophical 

 thought, and which helped materi- 

 ally to raise it to a level which it 

 had not occupied since the time 

 of Plato, is very largely owing to 

 him, and this has been recognised 

 from very different sides in the 

 historical treatment of ^Esthetics 

 and Philosophy by Hegel, Kuno 

 Fischer, Lotze, and Schasler, al- 

 though his dependence on Kant has 

 sometimes been overestimated. 

 " Full of the warmest reverence 

 for Kant, subjecting the mobility 

 of his poetic mind to Kant's severe 

 training, he tried to reconcile the 

 rich intuitions of an artistic con- 

 sciousness with the ever - present 

 maxims of his master," embodying 

 his reflections " in that brilliant 

 series of tcsthetical dissertations 

 which form, for all time, one of the 

 finest ornaments of our [German] 

 national literature " (Lotze, loc. cit., 

 p. 87). In consequence of this the 

 problem of the Beautiful has, 

 first in Germany, and later in 



France, England, and Italy, become 

 of importance in philosophical 

 thought : aesthetics has been en- 

 riched by a new chapter. It is 

 only with this that we have to do 

 at present. The large volume of 

 art - criticism based upon a study 

 of the masterpieces- in poetry, 

 art, and composition in its various 

 branches, and the attempt to arrive 

 at standards, rules, and canons of 

 taste do not enter into the history 

 of philosophical thought, although 

 treatises of aesthetics very fre- 

 quently intermix what we may 

 term the rational and the em- 

 pirical treatment. As in the case 

 of the problem of Knowledge we- 

 did not occupy ourselves with the 

 details of logical doctrine, and shall 

 not hereafter, when treating of the 

 ethical problem, deal with the detail 

 of systems of morality, so we are 

 not now interested in the detail of 

 sesthetical theories dealing with 

 different arts in their historical 

 development. The fact that many 

 of the best writers on these sub- 

 jects have got their inspiration 

 from a very different quarter 

 viz., from the source of purely 

 individual thought shows that 

 aesthetics, as well as science, logic, 

 ethics, and theology, as a separate 

 body of doctrine, has its root 

 and origin, not so much in philo- 

 sophical reflection as in the needs 

 of practice or in the more hidden 

 recesses of the human soul. 



