112 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



bring about this combined energy, this unity of interests 

 and of life in human society, is the task of the future 

 and the ideal of Guyau. It is this which he sees 

 realised in the future ; it is this that gives him faith and 

 hope. Inasmuch as his writings and speculations are 

 inspired by this faith and hope, by the prophetic view of 

 the future, his philosophy contains that element which 

 existed in a high degree in German idealism in the 

 beginning of the century, giving it a propelling force 

 and animating it with life and vigour. It is interesting 

 also to note that, as the German idealists attached them- 

 selves closely to the poetical and artistic creations of 

 their age and drew inspiration from them, so likewise 

 Guyau stands in immediate contact with the great liter- 

 ary forces of his country, notably with Victor Hugo, in 

 whose poetical creations he finds many conscious or un- 

 conscious confirmations of his ideas, the poetical fore- 

 shadowing of his doctrine. 



I shall have occasion to refer again to the fundamental 

 conception which pervades all Guyau's writings. At 

 present what interests us is, not so much his ethics and 

 his religious philosophy, as his views on Art and the 

 Beautiful. Next to Plato and the German idealists 

 Guyau is the most important name in the philosophy of 

 the Beautiful. His Esthetics do not deal only with 

 questions of taste, with psychological analysis and literary 

 criticism, to which they have been confined in this 

 country and latterly also in Germany ; they deal also and 

 pre-eminently with the larger question regarding the 

 nature and essence of the Beautiful and the place which 

 has to be assigned to the Beautiful and to Art in any 



