OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 13 



the second Critique, started from a moral dictum, demand- 

 ing categorical realisation without being able to show that 

 such was possible. The third Critique professedly aimed 

 at meeting this want, by filling the gap which was left 

 in the architecture as well as in the ideas of the system. 

 The two main conceptions which were introduced for 

 this purpose — though their connection was never satis- 

 factorily explained — were the conception of the Beautiful 

 and the conception of final causes or Ends. To what 

 extent Kant was influenced by the prominent part which 

 isolated questions of taste played in some of his favourite 

 English authors, as well as in Eousseau's writings, or by 

 the recent introduction by Baumgarten of sestheties as 

 a separate discipline, it is impossible to say. There is, 

 however, no doubt that by assigning to poetry and art, 

 to beauty and the beautiful, a prominent function in the 

 world of thought and in the philosophy of life, he fell in 

 with a current of ideas which was runnins; verv strono- 

 in the minds and works of the foremost German writers 

 of his age. 



Before Kant's ' Theory of the Beautiful ' was published, lo. 



Schiller 



and before it became generally known, Schiller had 

 already speculated independently on the same subject. 

 It was subsequently largely owing to Schiller's appre- 

 ciation and partial assimilation of Kant's views that the 

 latter were extensively studied. In this respect he did 

 for Kant's sesthetical what Eeinhold had done, ten years 

 earlier, for his intellectual and practical philosophy. In 

 addition to this, Schiller was probably the first genuine 

 and great artist who felt the necessity of accompanying 

 his poetical creations by theoretical reflections on the 



