68 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



the Beautiful stands at the end of the idealistic move- 

 ment of thought. It has been remarked that in this 

 statement Lotze does not do justice to sundry develop- 

 ments which have equally their starting-points in sug- 

 gestions which were more or less distinctly expressed in 

 the writings of Schelling. And, as I said before, we 

 may look upon the latter as the centre of the idealistic 

 movement. 1 Among those developments it is of interest 



1 Lotze's theory of Beauty and the 

 Beautiful, which he himself traces 

 back to Schelling and Kant, has not 

 received that attention on the part 

 of historians which it deserves. 

 This neglect is, I believe, largely 

 due to the criticism to which 

 Lotze's sesthetical writings have 

 been submitted by Von Hartmann 

 and by Schasler : by the latter in 

 a lengthy Review, which he pub- 

 lished shortly after the appearance 

 of Lotze's ' History ' in his Art 

 Journal ' Die Dioskuren ' ; this 

 he quotes in an appendix to his 

 ' History,' and considers as does 

 likewise Hartmann that it has 

 finally disposed of Lotze's aesthetics 

 as a popular exposition of Weisse's 

 ideas. On the other side, Erdmann, 

 on whose mind the importance of 

 Lotze's ideas grew, did more jus- 

 tice to Lotze in proportion as he 

 emancipated himself from the early 

 control of the Hegelian formalism. 

 In fact, the best and concisest 

 rendering of Lotze's central idea 

 is given by Erdmann, when he 

 defines Lotze's difference from 

 Schelling: "The defect in Schel- 

 ling's system which caused the 

 antagonism of the natural sciences 

 has also been fatal to his ^Esthetics 

 in spite of all the credit which is 

 here due to him. This defect lies 

 in his misunderstanding of the 

 difference of Ideas and Appear- 

 ances : the former denote values, 

 tasks, imperatives ; the latter are 

 governed by mechanism i.e., by 



rigid causality or necessity. Inas- 

 much as Schelling, instead of 

 modestly admitting the latter, 

 claims to have demonstrated what 

 must be through that which ought 

 to be, he has made natural science 

 his enemy. But it has likewise 

 become to him aesthetically im- 

 possible to see that the joyful 

 surprise afforded by the Beautiful 

 (in nature) has its ground in this, 

 that by the entirely different pro- 

 cesses of necessity that has come 

 about which ought to be, and. as 

 such, possesses value. That the 

 manifoldness of visible things, 

 though not subject to any moral 

 obligation, deports itself in ideal 

 forms, fills us with reverent en- 

 joyment through the semblance of 

 a world in which the eternal laws 

 of what ought to be appear in 

 flesh and blood " (Erdmann, ' Ge- 

 schichte der Philosophic, ' 3rd ed., 

 vol. ii. p. 854). According to Lotze, 

 without a conflict between what 

 ought to be and what is, there 

 could exist neither the Beautiful 

 nor its opposite. That such a con- 

 flict is solved in the totality 

 of actual existence is a matter 

 of religious faith, a fundamental 

 conviction ; that in single in- 

 stances and moments this conflict 

 appears solved to us in actual 

 life produces in us the feeling 

 of joyful surprise, as it were an 

 unsuspected gift of good fortune 

 confirming our fundamental spirit- 

 ual conviction or hope. 



