aesthetics, and finds again its proper place.

But it may be urged that art is not worthy of a scientific treatment.
Art is no doubt an ornament of our life and a charm to the fancy; but has
it a more serious side? When compared with the absorbing necessities of
human existence, it might seem a luxury, a superfluity, calculated to
enfeeble the heart by the assiduous worship of beauty, and thus to be
actually prejudicial to the true interest of practical life. This view
seems to be largely countenanced by a dominant party in modern times, and
practical men, as they are styled, are only too ready to take this
superficial view of the office of art.

Many have indeed undertaken to defend art on this score, and to show
that, far from being a mere luxury, it has serious and solid advantages.
It has been even apparently exaggerated in this respect, and represented
as a kind of mediator between reason and sense, between inclination and
duty, having as its mission the work of reconciling the conflicting
elements in the human heart. A strong trace of this view will be found
in Schiller, especially in all that he says about the play-instinct in
his "Aesthetical Letters."

Nevertheless, art is worthy of science; aesthetics is a true science, and
the office of art is as high as that assigned to it in the pages of
Schiller. We admit that art viewed only as an ornament and a charm is no
longer free, but a slave. But this is a perversion of its proper end.
Science has to be considered as free in its aim and in its means, and it
is only free when liberated from all other considerations; it rises up to
truth, which is its only real object, and can alone fully satisfy it.
Art in like manner is alone truly art when it is free and independent,
when it solves the problem of its high destination--that problem whether