y age or
country have been gifted. Meaner men, however, ought to recollect that
where we do not understand, we should postpone deciding, or, at least,
keep our decision for our own exclusive benefit. We of England may
reject this Kantean system, perhaps with reason; but it ought to be on
other grounds than are yet before us. Philosophy is science, and
science, as Schiller has observed, cannot always be explained in
'conversations by the parlour fire,' or in written treatises that
resemble such. The _cui bono_ of these doctrines may not, it is true,
be expressible by arithmetical computations: the subject also is
perplexed with obscurities, and probably with manifold delusions; and
too often its interpreters with us have been like 'tenebrific stars,'
that 'did ray out darkness' on a matter itself sufficiently dark. But
what then? Is the jewel always to be found among the common dust of
the highway, and always to be estimated by its value in the common
judgment? It lies embosomed in the depths of the mine; rocks must be
rent before it can be reached; skilful eyes and hands must separate it
from the rubbish where it lies concealed, and kingly purchasers alone
can prize it and buy it. This law of _ostracism_ is as dangerous in
science as it was of old in politics. Let us not forget that many
things are true which cannot be demonstrated by the rules of _Watts's
Logic_; that many truths are valuable, for which no price is given in
Paternoster Row, and no preferment offered at St. Stephen's! Whoever
reads these treatises of Schiller with attention, will perceive that
they depend on principles of an immensely higher and more complex
character than our 'Essays on Taste,' and our 'Inquiries concerning
the Freedom of the Will.' The laws of criticism, which it is their
purpose to establish, are derived from the inmost nature of man; the
scheme of morality, which they inculcate, soars into a brighter
region, very far beyond the ken of our 'Utilities' and 'Reflex-senses.'
They do not teach us 'to judge of poetry and art as we judge of
dinner,' merely by observing the impressions it produced in us; and
they _do_ derive the duties and chief end of man from other grounds
than the philosophy of Profit and Loss. These _Letters on AEsthetic
Culture_, without the aid of anything which the most sceptical could
designate as superstition, trace out and attempt to sanction for us a
system of morality, in which the sublimest feelings of the Stoic