culty. The perception of purpose is always
accompanied by a feeling of pleasure; in the first case, where the pleasure
is based on a concept of the object, it is a logical satisfaction, in the
second, where it springs only from the harmony of the object with our
cognitive powers, aesthetic satisfaction. The objects of the teleological
and the aesthetic judgment, the purposive and the beautiful products of
nature and art, constitute the desired intermediate field between nature
and freedom; and here again the critical question comes up, How, in
relation to these, synthetic judgments _a priori_ are possible?

%(a) Esthetic Judgment.%--The formula holds of Kant's aesthetics as well as
of his theoretical and practical philosophy, that his aim is to overcome
the opposition between the empirical and the rationalistic theories, and to
find a middle course of his own between the two extremes. Neither Burke
nor Baumgarten satisfied him. The English aesthetics was sensational, the
German, _i.e._, that of the Wolffian school, rationalistic. The former
identified the beautiful with the agreeable, the latter identified it with
the perfect or with the conformity of the object to its concept; in the one
case, aesthetic appreciation is treated as sensuous pleasure, in the other,
it is treated as a lower, confused kind of knowledge, its peculiar nature
being in both cases overlooked. In opposition to the sensualization of
aesthetic appreciation, its character as judgment must be maintained;
and in opposition to its rationalization, its character as feeling. This
relation of the Kantian aesthetics to that of his predecessors explains
both its fundamental tendency and the elements in it which appear defective
and erroneous. In any case, Kant shows himself in this field also an
unapproachable master of careful analysis.

The first task of aesthetics is the careful distinction of its object from
related phenomena. The beautiful has points of contact with the agreeable,
the good, the perfect, the useful, and the true. It is distinguished
from the true by the fact that it is not an object of knowledge, but
of satisfaction. If we inquire further into the difference between the
satisfaction in the beautiful and the satisfaction in the agreeable, in the
good (in itself), and in the (good for something, as a means, or in the)
useful, which latter three have this in common, that they are objects of
appetition--of sensuous want, of moral will, of pr