OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 63 



region of feeling, or, as we may figuratively say, by the 

 human heart. To the human intellect they present 

 themselves as Ideas, not as an Idea, which is the term 

 continually used in Hegel's writings. The Idea is only 

 the logical or intellectual form in which those supreme 

 Ideas represent themselves to the human mind and in 

 which they can be grasped by human thought. 



Having, however, put prominently forward the logical 

 process in the form of the unfolding of an idea, and 

 developed a logical mechanism of this process, Hegel 

 appears too much interested in showing how this 

 mechanism or formula is continually repeated in the 

 actual world ; the latter becoming, as it were, merely an 

 array of instances in which the highest content is seized, 

 pictured, and repeated. All the different regions of 

 mental life had therefore found in Hegel's systematic 

 speculation an inadequate treatment, inasmuch as 

 their special value was only estimated according to 

 the perfection with which they brought it into appear- 

 ance in an intrinsically worthless and indifferent logical 

 formulary. 



Beauty has shared the same fate. Hegel did not 

 conceive it to be one of the eternal ends of existence, 

 as an integral constituent of the world-plan ; it ap- 

 peared to him only in the shape of Art as one of the 

 means through which the finite mind recalls and assures 

 to itself its essential unity with the Infinite. Weisse, on 

 the other hand, looks upon beauty as one of the great 

 things or tasks which have to be realised in and by the 

 world-process. Whereas it might appear as if in Hegel's 

 system the Absolute or World-spirit attains to reality 



