76 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



doctrine of ideas. The actual world around us, the world 

 as seen by our senses and understood by our intellect, 

 is the imperfect appearance, the semblance, of the 

 world of ideas, of the underlying reality. Science, the 

 work of the intellect, follows the ideas in their endless 

 phenomenal existence, in their appearance, governed by 

 the law of Cause and Effect ; tracing everywhere the 

 antecedent and the consequent, never getting hold of 

 anything in rest and repose, it gives us an insight only 

 into the apparent ; it never grasps the underlying 

 reality. This latter cannot be grasped through so un- 

 stable a medium as that of our senses, nor by so rest- 

 less a process as that of our thought ; the real, in its 

 different stages, can only be grasped by contemplation, 

 by an attitude of the mind where effort and self-interest 

 cease, where the self is forgotten and the Will annihilated, 

 in a state of perfect repose. This is attained in a con- 

 templation of the Beautiful ; it exists everywhere where 

 and when the contemplating soul can entirely forget 

 itself, becoming one with the object it beholds. 



The Beautiful in nature is the same as the Beautiful 

 in art ; the difference between the two lies only in this, 

 that the artist is better able than we are to rise to the 

 position of serene and self- forgetful contemplation. In 

 this consists his genius, through it he becomes one with 

 the thing he contemplates, he understands better than 

 we do the half-uttered speech of nature ; he is able to 

 do so by completely identifying himself with his object, 

 and this identification is possible because the underlying 

 reality in the contemplating subject and in the contem- 

 plated object is one and the same — viz., the Will. Thus 



