warn, comfort, and lift them up, religion is, nevertheless, in its origin independent of knowledge and moral will.  Faith is older than science and morals:  the doctrine of religion did not wait for astronomy and cosmology, nor the erection of temples for ethics.  Before the development of the moral concepts religion already existed in the form of wonder without a special object, of a gloomy awe which ascribed every sudden inner excitement to the impulse of an invisible power.  Since a speculative knowledge of the nature of God is impossible, the only task which remains for metaphysics is the removal of improper determinations from that which tradition and phantasy have to say on the subject.  We are to conceive God as personal, extramundane, and omnipotent, as the creator, not of the reals themselves, but of their purposive coexistence (Zusammen).  In order, however, to rise from the idea of the original, most real, and most powerful being to that of the most excellent being we need the practical Ideas, without which the former would remain an indifferent theoretical concept.  Man can pray only to a wise, holy, perfect, just, and good God.

This, in essential outline, is the content of the scattered observations on the philosophy of religion given by Herbart.  Drobisch (Fundamental Doctrines of the Philosophy of Religion, 1840), from the standpoint of religious criticism and with a renewal of the moral argument, and Taute (1840-52) and Fluegel (Miracles and the Possibility of a Knowledge of God, 1869) with an apologetic tendency and one toward a belief in miracles, have, among others, endeavored to make up for the lack of a detailed treatment of this discipline by Herbart—­from which, moreover, much of value could hardly have been expected in view of the jejuneness of his metaphysical conceptions and the insufficiency of his appreciation of evil.

It remains only to glance at Herbart’s Aesthetics.  The beautiful is distinguished from the agreeable and the desirable, which, like it, are the objects of preference and rejection, by the facts, first, that it arouses an involuntary and disinterested judgment of approval; and second, that it is a predicate which is ascribed to the object or is objective.  To these is added, thirdly, that while desire seeks for that which is to come, taste possesses in the present that which it judges.

That which pleases or displeases is always the form, never the matter; and further, is always a relation, for that which is entirely simple is indifferent.  As in music we have succeeded in discovering the simplest relations, which please immediately and absolutely—­we know not why—­so this must be attempted in all branches of the theory of art.  The most important among them, that which treats of moral beauty, moral philosophy, has therefore to inquire concerning the simplest relations of will, which call forth moral approval or disapproval (independently of the interest of the spectator), to inquire concerning the practical Ideas or pattern-concepts, in accordance with which moral taste, involuntarily and with unconditional evidence, judges concerning the worth or unworth of (actually happening or merely represented) volitions.  Herbart enumerates five such primary Ideas or fundamental judgments of conscience.