OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 91 



and interests which it desires to harmonise. In poetry 

 and art the material is completely mastered by the 

 form. " The poet creates by the free play of his mind 

 a world, according to his pleasure, in order to impress 

 the easily moulded material with a form which has its 

 value and meaning outside the tasks of knowledge. . . . 

 The same principle which reigns supreme in the realms 

 of the Beautiful in art and poetry appears in the realm 

 of action as the true ethical rule, the foundation of all 

 moral principles ; and it appears in the region of know- 

 ledge as the formative factor of our world-view." 



All these activities are the outcome of a process of 

 bringing together or of synthesis ; the freer this synthesis 

 is, the more poetical will be our view of things and the 

 more ethically elevating its reaction on our doings and 

 strivings in this world. Not only poetry but speculation 

 itself has an essentially aesthetical, and through the 

 educational power of the Beautiful, an ethical intent. 



The expositions of Lange remind us of Lessing and 51 

 Herder, of Schiller and Fichte. Lange himself quotes w?ti/simiiar 

 Schiller and Fichte; indeed, all that he says is more earlier 



thinkers. 



impressively stated in the prose and poetry of these 

 earlier thinkers, for their works contain an element 

 which is characteristic with them but which is wanting 

 in Lange : this is the element of faith or hope. They 

 believed — or at least had a firm hope — that their Ideal 

 was somewhere realised ; the Ideal, in fact, was to them 

 the truly Eeal. With Lange this assurance seems to 52. 



■^ ° Problem 



have vanished.-^ The element of doubt and resignation f^*a^^J^gJ 



^ The relevant passages in Lange's deals with the "Reaction against 

 work will be found in the last j Materialism in Germany at the 

 chapter of the first book, which end of the eighteenth ceuturj'," 



