OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 125 



interest, we see the same springing up in France, notably 

 in the writings of Guyau. 



The reasons why the speculations with which this 

 chapter has been mainly concerned have come to an end 

 in Germany, or have at least been temporarily pushed 

 into the background, may be traced to the circumstance 

 that it is impossible to treat these higher problems of 70 . 

 ^Esthetics without an openly admitted, or tacitly implied, recurring to 



other 



reference to two other philosophical problems. For to problems, 

 begin with, we cannot hope to answer the question re- 

 garding the essence and the meaning of the Beautiful 

 without having previously settled the metaphysical 

 question : What is the truly Eeal ? This implies the 

 necessity of a settled philosophical or religious creed, and 

 that is what all thinkers who occupied themselves with 

 these higher questions were either in search of or had 

 tacitly accepted ; the latter was the case with Coleridge, 

 Carlyle, and Euskin, who stood firm in the belief of the 

 Divine government of the World ; the former was the 

 case with the Idealistic thinkers in Germany who aimed 

 at establishing a philosophical creed. 



But, secondly, even if we abandon this reference to 

 the problem of Reality, and proceed merely on the lines 

 indicated by Herbart, and adopted to some extent like- 

 wise by Lotze and more fully developed in quite recent 

 times, and consider sesthetical questions merely as 

 psychological phenomena, or bring them under the larger 

 conception of value, thus reducing ^Esthetics to a chapter 

 in psychology, or to one in a general theory of Value, we 

 are at once face to face with a larger problem. This is 71 

 the Ethical problem the problem of the Good. This problem. 



