OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 



57 



the aspect of beauty in natural things, or to give a 

 systematic representation of this beauty. 1 Lotze has 

 appropriately remarked that Hegel must have forgotten 

 what Schelling said in the Address mentioned above, in 

 which the idea is, not worked out, yet certainly sug- 

 gested, that the beautiful in nature might be the key to 

 her deeper significance. My readers will here already 

 expect a reference to the poetry of Wordsworth and the 

 writings of Euskin, to which my narrative will lead me 

 further on, and they will also understand that Hegel 

 had abandoned, or never realised, the truth of Goethe's 

 magnificent poetic comprehension of nature. 



Before leaving that region of ideas in which Schilling's 

 and Hegel's expositions move, the idealist view of Art 

 and Beauty, I may briefly note the writings and posthum- 37 . 

 ously published lectures of Solger, 2 who was inspired by 



1 Loc. cit., p. 5. 



2 K. W. F. Solger (1780-1819) 

 was a native of Prussia. His home 

 was not only locally distant from 

 that of Schelling and Hegel, but 

 he also differs from Reinhold, 

 Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in not 

 having come to philosophy through 

 theology. He approached it rather 

 from the side of polite literature 

 and classical learning, being inspired 

 by the teaching of F. A. Wolf. Of 

 his philosophical writings the only 

 larger production that appeared 

 during his lifetime was a Dialogue 

 ('Erwin,' 2 vols., 1815), in the 

 platonic style, in which he intro- 

 duces and combats, under fictitious 

 names, the views of Fichte and 

 Schelling, treating them, especially 

 the latter, with little sympathy, al- 

 though there is, no doubt, a great 

 resemblance between his own views 

 and those of Schelling. Historians 

 like Schasler, who see in the 



Hegelian point of view the con- 

 summation of the modern idealistic 

 tendency of thought, consider that 

 Solger as well as Schelling stuck, 

 as it were, half way in the develop- 

 ment of a correct idea. This 

 criticism is expressed by saying 

 that neither Schelling nor Solger 

 got beyond the position occupied by 

 Plato, who saw in the ideas of the 

 True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 

 the archetypes which lived in 

 the Divine Mind ; they did not 

 advance to the conception that 

 these archetypes do not live only 

 in the Divine Mind, but that they, 

 of necessity, descend into the ac- 

 tual world where they appear as 

 living powers in things that are 

 true, beautiful, and good. In fact, 

 there exists, according to this view, 

 the same difference between Hegel's 

 conception of a necessary scientifi- 

 cally demonstrable development of 

 the content of the Divine Mind, or 



