64 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



only, yet fully, in the mental developments of finite 

 beings, Weisse sees the beginning and end of all de- 

 velopment in a personal Deity. Above and beyond the 

 form^ of the appearance of this Divine Spirit in the 

 finite world there exists the Absolute Spirit as such. 



Further, the mind seemed, in Hegel's system, to ex- 

 haust its own essence and fully to grasp the Absolute in 

 the intellectual (individual and historical) movement 

 of thought. According to Weisse, the thinking process, 

 or thought, does not exhaust the essence of the Divine 

 Spirit, nor does it exhaust the world of finite things 

 themselves. In the Divine Being, as well as in the 

 many things which surroimd us, there is something 

 more than what we can reach by thought. This some- 

 thing more is not a dark and unfathomable matter which 

 lies beneath thought and cannot be grasped by it, but 

 is something higher. It is the infinite productivity 

 of the Divine Being, the life of the Creating Spirit. 

 " This process exists in all the regions of the universe, 

 in the Divine Mind as much as in the created world 

 and in the human soul, from eternity to eternity : to 

 show that it is so is the object of the science of the 

 Beautiful or Esthetics." ^ 



In further expounding this view," which originated in 



1 Freely translated from the quo- 

 tation as given by Lotze from Weisse 

 in ' Geschichte der Aesthetik,' p. 

 209. 



- Into his exposition of Weisse's 

 ideas Lotze has imported a concep- 

 tion peculiar to himself, but which 

 does not seem to be brought out with 

 the same definiteness in Weisse's 



as this word has in the sequel, both 

 in German philosophy and in that 

 of other countries, received cur- 

 rency as expressive of a special 

 philosophical creed, it is as well to 

 note it here. To express the highest 

 conceptions, which are termed by 

 Weisse Ideas or Ideals, Lotze very 

 early adopted the term Values or 



own statement. To some it may \ Worths, importing into this con- 

 appear to turn on a mere word, but ception the meaning that they must 



