OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 



47 



floating about in the intellectual and artistic atmosphere 

 which surrounded him. If, nevertheless, his writings 

 are now rarely studied, we must attribute this not to 

 the want of finish of his exposition and style, but to the 

 absence of an element of which that age was particularly logrcaf' 



° -^ "^ method in 



proud, not to say boastful : the strictness and rigour of scheiiing. 

 logical method.-^ 



30. 

 Want of 



^ Nevertheless Schelling's writ- 

 ings abound in luminous passages 

 on special subjects of art and 

 poetry, as has been recognised 

 by later writers. Prof. Bosanquet 

 has, inter alia, made Schelling's 

 remarkable paper on Dante the 

 basis of his treatment of the sub- 

 ject in chap. vii. of his ' History 

 of ^Esthetic' He has also pointed 

 out (p. 326) how Schelling's state- 

 ment " that Naturphilosophie is 

 the first adumbration of the future 

 world - mythology, may be taken 

 as an anticipation of the Modern 

 Painters in as far as the essence of 

 the latter work is to disclose the 

 rational and symbolic content of 

 natui-al phenomena." Another in- 

 stance of Schelling's anticipation of 

 later artistic movements and dis- 

 cussions in artistic schools may 

 be found in the fact that already, 

 in the year 1807, he had written 

 the following passage in which he 

 emphatically states that the birth 

 of modern art in Italy did not 

 consist in an imitation of the 

 antique, but in a return to an 

 original study of nature: "The 

 demand that art, like every other 

 living thing, must start with the 

 first beginnings, and in order to 

 celebrate its revival must always 

 return to them, may appear to be a 

 severe precept in an age which has 

 so frequently been told how it finds 

 the highest beauty formed already 

 in existing works of art, and that 

 it could, therefore, with one step 



arrive at its goal. Have we not the 

 excellent and perfect before us, and 

 how should we go back to the primi- 

 tive and the unformed ? Had the 

 great founders of modern art 

 thought in this wise we should 

 never have seen their wonders. 

 . . . The assimilation of a beauty 

 which they had not gained for them- 

 selves, and which was therefore 

 unintelligible to them, did not 

 satisfy their artistic instinct which 

 went straight to the root out of 

 which the Beautiful was freely to 

 create itself anew with original 

 power. They, therefore, did not 

 shrink from appearing simple, art- 

 less, and dry if compared with 

 those sublime antiques, sheltering 

 art for a long time in an unseemly 

 bud till the time of graceful un- 

 folding should come. How is it 

 that we still gaze at the works 

 of those old Masters from Giotto 

 down to Raphael's teacher, in a 

 devout spirit as it v/ere, even with 

 a certain predilection, if not because 

 the truthfulness of their endeav- 

 our and the deep earnestness of 

 their self-imposed limitation com- 

 mands our esteem and admiration " 

 (see the Munich Address, ' Works,' 

 1st sec, vol. vii. p. 324). This 

 was written thirty years before the 

 pre-Raphaelite movement, follow- 

 ing on the return to nature under 

 the guidance of Wordsworth, 

 Turner, Constable, and Ruskin in 

 this countrj'. 



