ABSTRACT
the guiding thread of modern æsthetic theory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the thread in which its consistent character and its strength were most marked, was its criticism of all doctrines which understood art as the servant of philosophy and morality, as an attractive form of instruction or a lofty oratory. Against all such doctrines, in whatever various, fanciful and complicated forms they were disguised, the independence of the æsthetic activity was now proclaimed. Plausibility had been lent to these doctrines by some aspects of contemporary works of art, not only the more or less academic but also the greatest and most inspired, which, by certain claims that they put forward and in certain parts of their compositions, seemed to pay homage to the maxims of docere and prodesse. Moreover, though these venerable traditions, going back to classical antiquity, failed to define the essential nature of art, they were at least inspired by the desire to elevate it by allying it with all that is noble in the human mind, with the search for truth and with the love of good. They rescued it from the degradation of mere entertainment and amusement, to which other theories banished it, and gave it an honourable function in the moral sphere.
