114 CEITICAL NOTICES : ciples derived from Lessing can ; but at least they give occasion for abundance of interesting comparison of the methods of the various arts and their diverse modes of treatment of similar sub- ject-matter. It is, however, a curious example of the power of theory to modify the facts when, in the middle of an interesting passage on the relations of artistic genius to its predecessors and to the past development of the race, we find the author illustrat- ing the general law of dependence by a remark which implies that the culmination of dramatic art in Shakespeare was impossible till the epic and the lyric had been perfected in English literature (i. 537). At the same time, while a law of the development of poetic art seems here to be forced on the facts rather than inferred from them, no attempt is made in Prof. Carriere's classification to subordinate one art to another in accordance with this law. Each is said to be, in its own manner, an expression of the whole. This absence of any attempt to place the arts above or below one another in rank is an example of avoidance of the dangers of the method of purely speculative deduction, to which, indeed, it was from the first the author's aim to oppose a more concrete treat- ment of aesthetic questions. According to the author's view, the ideal unity expressed in art, in science and in religion is essentially the same. But here again, as has been seen already, he does not subordinate any one of these ideal ends to another. Indeed, he says explicitly, "Art, Religion, Science, each of these in its kind is a highest point, a summit of human life " (i. 287). The metaphysical doctrine stated above implies, however, that each ideal has relations to the others; and in one place beauty is described as the completed form, in the world of appearances, of the true and of the good. In all art we are to see the reconciliation of the principles of order and freedom, and in the drama especially the reconciliation of the individual with the moral order of the world. Since the drama, in the author's view, if not the supreme, is yet the most developed form of poetic art, as poetic art is of art in general, this application of his metaphysical doctrine may be selected for special examination. But first of all it is necessary to point out that whether this theory be accepted or not, it in no way implies a departure from the most general principle of aesthetic criticism, that art must be judged according to its formal quality. For this theory is an attempt to determine the relation of matter to form in art, not an attempt to substitute judgment on matter for judgment on artistic form. It affirms that actually the highest types of dramatic art, already accepted as such on grounds distinct from any opinion about their meaning or purpose, will be found as a matter of fact to contain a reconciliation of man with the external order, and that this order is conceived by the dramatist, consciously or unconsciously, as ethical. The hero of a tragedy, according to this view, is represented as triumphing (at least subjectively) by submission to the moral order of the
