ABSTRACT
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century German thought, notwithstanding the glaring errors which vitiated it, and were soon to bring about a violent and indeed exaggerated reaction, must on the whole be awarded the foremost place in the general history of European thought as well as in the individual study of aesthetic, the contemporary philosophy of other countries standing on an inferior level of the second and third degree. France still lay under the dominion of the sensationalism of Condillac and, at the opening of the century, was quite incapable of grasping the spiritual activity of art. In Italy, where neither Parini nor Foscolo1 had been able to shake off the fetters of the old doctrines, many treatises and essays on Aesthetic were published during the earlier decades of the century, the greater part showing the influence of Condillac's sensationalism, which had a great vogue in Italy.
