OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 31 



has become superfluous. . . . Schiller distinguishes 

 three stages in the development of mankind : the 

 physical, the eesthetical, and the moral. In the first 

 stage we are controlled by the force or might of things, 

 and experience the world as a ' dark and hidden ' fatality ; 

 in the second we liberate ourselves from this power; in 

 the third we control it." 



As Kuno Fischer has shown, Schiller has not solved 

 this contradiction. With one foot he stands within 

 the rigorism of Kant's ethics, with the other he stands 

 in the world of the artist or poet, and draws the picture 

 of the beautiful soul in which the highest moral law 

 is obeyed, not as the result of a conflict, but as the 

 inevitable outcome of its own beautiful nature. The 

 letters on the " sesthetical education of mankind " were 

 succeeded by the essay on " Naive und sentimentalische 

 Dichtung." This is probably among Schiller's philo- 

 sophical essays the one which possesses most permanent 

 value. In it he has attained a complete understanding 

 of the great change which had come over modern art 

 and poetry in his age, to which he himself so largely 

 contributed, and of which his own later works belong to 

 the most brilliant examples. To this insight he had 

 risen through a third influence which made itself felt 

 during the last decade of the eighteenth century, 

 namely, the influence not only of Goethe's works but of 

 Goethe's personality. Schiller's early speculations upon 

 art and poetry went hand in hand with the first period 

 of his greater poetical productions. He then lived 

 under the influence of the neo-classical ideal. When 

 this was destroyed or was found to be inadequate, he 



