HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



Helmholtz also recognised the ethical importance 

 of art, or rather, as expressed by Herbart, that ethics 

 constituted a, perhaps the most, important part of 

 aesthetics. Kant also held that the beautiful claims 

 the assent of all as a symbol of the morally good. 

 Helmholtz writes, * Remembering the poet's words 



Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst, 1 



we see that those intellectual powers which were at 

 work in the artist are far above our conscious mental 

 action, and that, were it even possible at all, infinite 

 time, meditation, and labour would have been necessary 

 to attain by conscious thought that degree of order, 

 connection, and equilibrium of all parts and all 

 internal relations, which the artist has accomplished 

 under the sole guidance of tact and taste, and which 

 we have in turn to appreciate and comprehend by our 

 own tact and taste, long before we begin a critical 

 analysis of the work. It is clear that all high 

 appreciation of the artist and his work reposes 

 essentially on this feeling. In the first we honour 

 a genius, a spark of divine creative fire, which far 

 transcends the limits of our intelligent and conscious 

 forecast. . . . Herein is manifestly the cause of that 

 moral elevation and feeling of ecstatic satisfaction 

 which is called forth by thorough absorption in 

 genuine and lofty works of art. We learn from them 



1 Thou art like the spirit thou conceivest. 



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