122 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



sesthetical theory in the writings of such thinkers as 

 Schleiermacher, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Steinthal, and 

 other pioneers in the general science of Language. 

 68. He sees the merit of Schleiermacher in exactly those 



Schleier- 

 macher. points of which other historians disapprove. " Schleier- 

 macher," he says, " distinguishes a form of thought 

 which is different from logical thought; he has given 

 aesthetics a non-metaphysical, a purely anthropological 

 character ; he destroys the conception of the Beautiful 

 in order to replace it by that of artistic perfection, going 

 even so far as to maintain that a small work of art 

 and a large one, if each is perfect in its own line, are 

 aesthetically equal ; he has considered the aesthetical 

 phenomenon as an exclusively human activity ; and so 

 forth. ... In the midst of the metaphysical orgy of his 

 age, in the construction and destruction of systems more 

 or less arbitrary, the theologian Schleiermacher, as a true 

 philosopher, has directed a penetrating glance on what 

 is truly characteristic in the aesthetical phenomenon. 

 . . . By pointing to the obscure region of immediate 

 consciousness as that belonging to the aesthetical process, 

 he seems to be saying to his bewildered contemporaries : 

 Hie Rhodus hie salta." * Further on, Signor Croce points 

 to the fact that, at the very time when Schleiermacher's 

 meditations remained unrecognised, a fundamentally 

 novel aspect was gradually being gained by German 

 thinkers as to the nature of language. He shows how 

 Wilhelm von Humboldt regards language " not as a 

 piece of work, an ergon, but as an activity, an energy, 

 being the eternally repeated labour of the mind to render 



1 B. Croce, ' Esthdtique,' p. 322 sqq. 



