42 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



memoranda which seem to refer to that period. 1 The 

 drift of the argument which was systematically de- 

 veloped by Schelling may be found in a short reference 

 of Goethe's entitled ' Intuitive Judgment.' He there 

 refers to his desire to utilise, if not to penetrate, -Kant's 

 speculation in the third of his Critiques, admitting that 

 this attempt had wellnigh driven him to desperation. 

 " In this respect," Goethe says, " the following passage 

 [viz., from Kant] seemed to me to be most important : 

 'We can imagine an intellect which, not being dis- 

 cursive like our own, but intuitive, proceeds from the 

 synthetically universal, the sight of a whole as such, to 

 the particular, i.e., from the whole to its parts. Not that 

 it is at all necessary to prove that such an intelledus 



1 These are contained in the llth 

 vol. of the 2nd section of the 

 Weimar edition of Goethe's Works. 

 The passage referring mainly to 

 Kant's influence is to be found on 

 p. 47 sqq. After explaining that 

 he listened with interest to the 

 manifold discussions which arose in 

 the circle of his friends over the 

 First and Second ' Critiques ' of 

 Kant, without being able to pene- 

 trate beyond the introduction and 

 below the surface, Goethe con- 

 tinues : " But now the ' Critique of 

 Judgment ' came into my hands, 

 and to it I owe a most joyful period 

 of my life. Here I saw my most 

 disparate occupations brought to- 

 gether ; the creations of art and 

 nature treated one like the other, 

 aesthetic and teleological judgments 

 mutually illuminating each other. 

 Though my manner of regarding 

 things could not always fit into 

 that of the author, if here and 

 there I found something wanting, 

 yet the great leading ideas of the 

 book were analogous to my own ; 



the creating, doing and thinking of 

 the inner life of art as well as that 

 of nature, both acting from within, 

 were clearly expressed in the book. 

 The productions of these two in- 

 finite worlds were to be there for 

 their own sakes, near each other 

 and for each other, but not inten- 

 tionally in consequence of each 

 other. ... I rejoiced that the art 

 of the poet and the comparative 

 study of things natural were so 

 intimately related, both submitting 

 to the same power of judgment." 

 Goethe then goes on to remark that 

 the Kantians could not follow his 

 interpretation of Kant, but that his 

 discussions with Schiller led the 

 latter to consider the difference of 

 ancient and modern poetry, and 

 resulted in his Essay on ' Naive 

 and Sentimental Poetry,' which 

 became the foundation of all mod- 

 ern aesthetics. In the sequel of 

 these biographical memoranda we 

 come upon the passage quoted in 

 the text. 



