The Philosophy of Art - An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Æsthetics #268725

Notwithstanding all that has been lately so well said of this modern Sphinx, as he still sits in placid contem platica by the busy highway of contemporary thought, and notwithstanding all that has been so patiently and perseveringly done to penetrate into the strange deep riddle of his proposing, it has been well-nigh overlooked, in our haste and perplexity and self-forgetfulness, how the solution of his enigma is to be most easily divined, or where it is even to be seen in letters of light, so plainly inscribed over the holiest mysteries by the consecrating hand of Art, that he who reads may run. It is more than time we should be turning from the etherial aridities and the unnavigable seas of darkness in Hegel's Dialectic — whatever be its ultimate value — to the brightness and warmth of his own free world of beauty. Owe it to the great thinker himself, who has been too long exposed to the inane mockery of shallow witlings and the revengeful hatred of baflled sciolists: And, above all, we owe it to ourselves, who need, ever more urgently, the aid of his strength and light and guidance in this sphere of ideal aspiration, where, at the best, our movement is but weak and dubious and slow.