But the content is always transitory, relative, subject
to moral laws, and judged by them. The form alone is perennial,
absolute, and free. The true catharsis can only be effected by
separating the form from the content. Concrete art may be the sum of two
values, _but the aesthetic fact is form alone_.
For those capable of penetrating beneath appearances, the aesthetic
doctrines of Herbart and of Kant will appear very similar. Herbart is
notable as insisting, in the manner of Kant, on the distinction between
free and adherent beauty (or adornment as sensuous stimulant), on the
existence of pure beauty, object of necessary and universal judgments,
and on a certain mingling of ethical with his aesthetic theory. Herbart,
indeed, called himself "a Kantian, but of the year 1828." Kant's
aesthetic theory, though it be full of errors, yet is rich in fruitful
suggestions. Kant belongs to a period when philosophy is still young and
pliant. Herbart came later, and is dry and one-sided. The romantics and
the metaphysical idealists had unified the theory of the beautiful and
of art. Herbart restored the old duality and mechanism, and gave us an
absurd, unfruitful form of mysticism, void of all artistic inspiration.
Herbart may be said to have taken all there was of false in the thought
of Kant and to have made it into a system.
The beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany is notable for the
great number of philosophical theories and of counter-theories, broached
and rapidly discussed, before being discarded.
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