art in precisely the same manner as he has treated all other important
problems: he has shown that no great art is possible unless it is rooted
in a creativeness which is _spiritual_. In his _Main Currents of Modern
Thought_ we get an instructive account of art and its relation to
morality. His account of the development of art in modern times, from
the Renaissance to the present day, shows the ebb and flow of the
conception of the Beautiful. The check which the Renaissance received
through the Reformation in relation to art had its good as well as its
evil side. Intense scorn arose in the Protestant world for every kind of
image and decoration, because these were supposed to posit life on what
was purely sensuous and natural, and so bar the way to the Divine.
Still, the obstruction [p.120] created by Protestantism in this
direction opened a door in quite another direction. Art of a higher kind
than picture or statue arose, which was far removed from the sensuous
level and which emerged from a deeper soil within the soul. The whole
series of musical composers produced by Germany is a proof of this. The
period of the _Aufklärung_ viewed art with scant favour, but with the
rise of the New Humanism a change in favour of art took place.

The origin of this change is to be found where one might least expect
it--in the soul of the sage of Königsberg. Kant's _Critique of Judgment_
is unanimously allowed to be the greatest book ever produced on the
subject. Goethe and Schiller were influenced by it--the latter in a
remarkable manner. We find in these writers an effort to unite the Good
and the Beautiful. It is impossible to read the poetry of Goethe without
finding that great moral problems are imbedded in his conceptions of the
Beautiful. His poetry is an attempt to bridge the chasm between the
external world and the soul. His nature was too deep to remain satisfied
with the mere impressions of the senses. The union of the world
_without_ with the world _within_ gave him a view of the universe and of