ideal and the real, mind and nature, form (or purpose) and matter,
are one; here the harmony aimed at by philosophy lies before our very
eyes, and may be seen, touched, and heard. The creative artist creates
like nature in realizing the ideal; hence, art must serve as the
absolute model for the intuition of the world--it is the true and
eternal organ of philosophy. Like the artistic genius, the philosopher
must have the faculty for perceiving the harmony and identity in the
universe; esthetic intuition is absolute knowing. Art aims to reveal
to us the profoundest meaning of the world, which is the union of form
and matter, of the ideal and the real; in art alone the striving of
nature for harmony and identity is realized; the beautiful is the
infinite represented and made perceivable in finite form; here mind
and nature interpenetrate. In creative art the artist imitates the
creative act of nature and becomes conscious of it; in esthetic
intuition, or the perception of beauty, the philosophical genius
discovers the secret of reality; nature herself is a poem and her
secret is revealed in art. This philosophy is a far cry from the
logical-mathematical method of the _Aufklaerung_; it is a protest
against this, a protest in which the leaders of the new German
literature, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, as well as the Romanticists,
willingly joined. Goethe's entire view of nature, art, and life rested
upon the teleological or organic conception; he, too, regarded the
ability to peer into the heart of things--to see the whole in its
parts, the ideal in the real, the universal in the particular, as
the poet's and thinker's highest gift. He called it an _apercu_, "a
revelation springing up in the inner man that gives him a hint of
his likeness to God." It is this gift which Faust craves and Mephisto
sneers at as _die hohe Intuition_.

Dass ich erkenne was die Welt
Im innersten zusammenhaelt,
Schau alle Wirkungskraft and Samen
Und tu' nicht mehr in Worten kramen.

There was much that was fantastic in the _Naturphilosophie_ and much
_a priori_ interpretation of nature that tended to withdraw the
mind from the actualities of existence; it often dealt with bold
assertions, analogies, and figures of speech, rather than with facts
and proofs. But it had its merits; for it aroused an interest in
nature and nature-study, it kept alive the _philosophical_ interest
in the outer world, the desire for unity, _Einheitstrieb_, which