OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 



61 



and too voluminous for present use.^ Lotze himself has 

 said that " Weisse's Esthetic is the most perfect con- 

 clusion of the lines of thought which in that region 



1 Chr. H. Weisse (1801-1866), 

 a native of Leipsic, descended from 

 and moved in a literary circle with 

 a distinct religious though not a 

 specifically theological interest. 

 His studies were literary, classical 

 (under Gottfried Hermann), and 

 juristic. He was, for a time, under 

 the iniiuence of Hegel's dialectic as 

 expounded in the ' Logic ' and the 

 ' Encyclopa3dia,' but his indepen- 

 dent philosophical speculations be- 

 gan and were publislied before the 

 applications which Hegel made in 

 his Lectures on ' History of Philo- 

 sophy,' ' ^Esthetics,' and ' Philo- 

 sophy of Religion ' were generally 

 known outside the circle of his 

 academic hearers. Starting thus 

 at a time before the full breadth 

 and depth of Hegel's speculations 

 were known, Weisse was able to 

 work out the Hegelian idea in an 

 independent manner, and neither 

 he nor Lotze can be considered as 

 a disciple or follower of Hegel. In 

 fact, Weisse prepared that opposi- 

 tion, within the Idealistic school, to 

 Hegel's Panlogism which Schelling 

 had only indicated in those polemics 

 with Jacobi which he harboured in 

 his mind during thirty years, and 

 to which he only gave official ex- 

 pression after he had been called to 

 the philosophical Chair at the Uni- 

 versity of Berlin as one of Hegel's 

 successors in the year 1840. In the 

 meantime the transmutation of the 

 strictly logical process, unfolded by 

 Hegel iu his published works, into 

 its expression in the more easily 

 assimilated idea of historical de- 

 velopment, had attracted so many 

 disciples and followers, and pro- 

 duced such an enormous historical 

 literature, that the purely philo- 



sophical criticism was neglected ; 

 nor was it the latter as contained 

 in the works of Weisse and some 

 of Hegel's own followers, such as 

 Goschel, that prepared the violent 

 reaction which set in against the 

 whole of the Hegelian philosophy. 

 This came from the side of the 

 Positivists : the exact mathematical 

 and natural sciences on the one 

 side and positive theology on the 

 other. The former pointed to the 

 sterility, the latter to the scepti- 

 cism produced by the current Heg- 

 elian formalism. The historic 

 succession from Kant, Fichte, the 

 earlier works of Schelling, the 

 logical writings of Hegel, to Weisse 

 and Lotze has never been clearly 

 brought out in the History of 

 Modern Philosophy, with the result 

 that Weisse has remained practically 

 unknown in wider circles, and that 

 Lotze's philosophy stands somewhat 

 isolated. This succession may, how- 

 ever, be studied without much 

 trouble through the publications 

 of Weisse's friend and disciple, 

 Rudolph Seydel (1835-1892), in his 

 ' Religion und Wissenschaft ' (1887), 

 in his edition of Weisse's ' Kleine 

 Schriften ' (1867), and in his publi- 

 cation of the last form which 

 Weisse's Lecture Syllabus on 

 ' ^Esthetics ' assumed, in the year 

 1865. To this must be added the 

 important section in Lotze's 'His- 

 tory of ^Esthetics ' mentioned in 

 the text. I may remark that in an 

 Appreciation, which I published in 

 'Macmillan's Magazine,' May 1878, 

 of Edward Caird's ' Philosophy of 

 Kant,' I referred to Kant's later 

 succession in Weisse and Lotze as 

 distinguished from that of pure 

 Hegelianism. 



