6. THE IMPORTANCE OF HERBART’S PHILOSOPHY.—Herbart’s philosophy is important mainly for its metaphysics and psychology. In the other spheres and activities of the human mind, _e. g._ rights, morality, the state, art, religion, his philosophy is mostly barren of results, and though there are not wanting here striking observations, yet these have no connection with the speculative principles of the system. Herbart fundamentally isolates the different philosophical sciences, distinguishing especially and in the strictest manner between theoretical and practical philosophy. He charges the effort after unity in philosophy, with occasioning the greatest errors; for logical, metaphysical, and æsthetic forms are entirely diverse. Ethics and æsthetics have to do with objects in which an immediate evidence appears, but this is foreign to the whole nature of metaphysics, which can only gain its knowledge as errors have been removed. Æsthetic judgments on which practical philosophy rests, are independent of the reality of any object, and appear with immediate certainty in the midst of the strongest metaphysical doubts. Moral elements, says Herbart, are pleasing and displeasing relations of the will. He thus grounds the whole practical philosophy upon æsthetic judgments. The æsthetic judgment is an involuntary and immediate judgment, which attaches to certain objects, without proof, the predicates of goodness and badness.—Here is seen the greatest difference between Herbart and Kant.
We may characterize, on the whole, the philosophy of Herbart as a carrying out of the monadology of Leibnitz, full of enduring acuteness, but without any inner fruitfulness or capacity of development.
_Schelling_ sprang from _Fichte_. We may pass on to an exposition of his philosophy without any farther introduction, since that which it contains from Fichte forms a part of its historical development, and will therefore be treated of as this is unfolded.