this conflict, aesthetic education must come in to effect the
reconciliation of the two principles; for, according to Schiller, it has
as its end to fashion and polish the inclinations and passions so that
they may become reasonable, and that, on the other hand, reason and
freedom may issue from their abstract character, may unite with nature,
may spiritualize it, become incarnate, and take a body in it. Beauty is
thus given as the simultaneous development of the rational and of the
sensuous, fused together, and interpenetrated one by the other, an union
that constitutes in fact true reality.

This unity of the general and of the particular, of liberty and necessity
of the spiritual and material, which Schiller understood scientifically
as the spirit of art, and which he tried to make appear in real life by
aesthetic art and education, was afterwards put forward under the name of
idea as the principle of all knowledge and existence. In this way,
through the agency of Schelling, science raised itself to an absolute
point of view. It was thus that art began to claim its proper nature and
dignity. From that time its proper place was finally marked out for it
in science, though the mode of viewing it still labored under certain
defects. Its high and true distinction were at length understood.

In viewing the higher position to which recent philosophical systems have
raised the theory of art in Germany, we must not overlook the advantages
contributed by the study of the ideal of the ancients by such men as
Winckelmann, who, by a kind of inspiration, raised art criticism from a
carping about petty details to seek the true spirit of great works of
art, and their true ideas, by a study of the spirit of the originals.

It has appeared expedient to conclude this introduction with a summary of
the latest and highest theory of art and aesthetics issuing from Kant and