108 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



as well as in ethics the idea of value is made the start- 

 ing-point, we cannot get rid of the question what it is 

 that gives value to anything, be it a natural object, 

 a creation of art, or an act of the human Will. Kant 

 had not made the idea of value the starting-point of his 

 practical philosophy, though it had served him under the 

 name of purpose to define the Beautiful. In ethics he 

 had made the idea of obligation or duty in the form of 

 the Categorical Imperative, the starting-point and domin- 

 ating conception. Had he attempted to explain psycho- 

 logically why the highest moral law meets with our 

 approval he would have, to some extent at least, bridged 

 over the distance which separates the good from the 

 beautiful. This was done by that line of reasoning 

 which begins with Herbart. Now although in the 

 sequel very different views have been taken by different 

 thinkers on the relation of aesthetics to ethics, or of the 

 beautiful to the good, there is an unmistakable tendency 

 manifested among the later philosophers of the nineteenth 

 century to emphasise the ethical, educational, and socio- 

 logical importance of art, and this has frequently 

 happened with those thinkers who have recognised and 

 painfully experienced the decline of the religious factor 

 in modern civilisation. To their view art has in propor- 

 tion gained in importance, the beautiful has appeared as 

 a kind of receptacle of those truths which formerly pre- 

 sented themselves more naturally in the form of religious 

 beliefs ; the vanishing ideals of earlier phases of culture 

 are to be preserved in the works of art and in the region 

 of the beautiful. I have already pointed out how this 

 aspect found expression in the writings of Lange, and 



