RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 601 



of things. Christian archaeology is counted as a subject belonging 

 to theology, while it is really nothing else than a part of the history 

 of art. So far as it deals with ancient Christian art, its subject-matter 

 can be historically grasped only by one who can survey the whole 

 later antique art, and who is able to connect that special art-group 

 which draws its content from Christian belief with all the other con- 

 temporary art-forms. The alliance with theology, which is divided 

 on the basis of creed into Catholic and Protestant, can naturally not 

 be advantageous to an historical treatment of ancient Christian 

 research. Christian archaeology ought to be set off as a special bran?h 

 of classical archaeology, which would certainly be for its gain. At 

 present the historical understanding of the content of ancient 

 Christian religious imagination is on the point of experiencing a 

 tremendous furtherance not from theology, but from philology, 

 which is treating those ideas in connection with the rest of the later 

 antique religious concepts. 



Finally, we have still to consider the relation of classical archaeology 

 to philosophy, especially to aesthetics. In earlier time the Greek art- 

 forms were taken to be, as a matter of course, the canons of taste, the 

 forms in which the Idea of Beauty comes to its purest expression. 

 Aesthetics, as the doctrine of the beautiful, was then most closely linked 

 with archaeology. So was it, too, with Winckelmann and his disciples. 

 Later, when the historical viewpoint in archaeology w r as fully dom- 

 inant, aesthetics and archaeology drifted apart more and more; and 

 at present they are quite far asunder. But aesthetics, too, is another 

 thing to-day; it hardly believes any longer in the possibility of de- 

 termining absolute beauty from itself, but limits itself more and more 

 to the psychological problem of what appears beautiful to us, and 

 why it does so. Now it must be emphasized that for the understand- 

 ing of a work of art, in the sense of archaeology, it is by no means 

 enough to have determined the relative position within the circle of 

 other works of art: the question must also be put, how far it can be 

 determined why such and such forms were chosen by the artist, 

 whereby one has to put himself to the extent of his power into the mind 

 of the ancient artist and the further question, why those forms 

 produce such and such an effect upon me for only of my own 

 emotions can I give an exact account. Now if one is prepared to 

 accept the solution of these questions as the function of the psycho- 

 logically grounded aesthetics, then is aesthetics also a necessary part 

 of the science of art. Then, however, the professional philosopher in 

 the hitherto current sense will certainly be less fitted to pursue aes- 

 thetics; for he usually fails entirely of that full knowledge of the sub- 

 stratum of his inquiry, art, which is indispensable for the solution of 

 those problems. For. in fact, even those aesthetic laws hitherto con- 

 cocted by the philosophers, which were put forth without a thorough 



