46 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



factory endings of this romantic movement is to be 

 found in the lectures and writings of Friedrich Schlegel. 



Schelling himself took no part in this one-sided de- 

 velopment, but through a study of mythology was led 

 away towards that of the religious spirit. In these 

 studies, of which he only gave fragmentary evidence 

 in his later writings, he laid great stress upon the 

 historical genesis and growth of the different sides of 

 human culture. This again was as much a result of 

 influences which surrounded him as it was inherent in, 

 and eminently characteristic of, his whole philosophical 

 attitude. 



We may now sum up in a few words what the philo- 

 sophical problem of the Beautiful had gained in the 

 writings, and through the personal influence, of Schelling. 

 It had first of all been brought into immediate contact 

 with the central philosophical, the metaphysical problem, 

 the problem of reality, and it had been brought also im- 

 mediately into contact with the problem of nature as 

 well as the problem of history or humanity. Hence- 

 forward no philosophical writer who desired to do justice 

 to the subject could afford to ignore the problem of the 

 Beautiful. Any conception pertaining to the whole of 

 nature and life would have to deal with the Beautiful 

 not merely as a subjective or accidental phenomenon but 

 as something that touches or reveals the innermost core 

 of reality. With this great truth Schelling, following 

 upon Schiller and with the spirit of Goethe in the back- 

 ground, impressed the early period of the nineteenth 

 century, and he did this as much through the originality 

 of his own speculations as by absorbing ideas which were 



