ABSTRACT
Philosophy has in our time come to recognise art in the handsomest way. Eucken treats of it among the spiritual forces which govern human life, parallel if not directly connected with morals and religion. Benedetto Croce has given it a place which accords it a supremacy over both. No thinker since Hegel would ever dream of omitting æsthetic in his investigation of human nature and of life. Strange to say, religion is more churlish and dubious in its attitude to art. There is, and always has been, a Puritan strain in Christianity which is inclined to regard beauty as a snare and the pursuit of it as pagan. The result has been to throw artists frequently into an anti-religious attitude.
