HE dispute as to the dependence or independence of art was at its hottest in the romantic period, when the motto of “art for art’s sake” was coined, and, as its apparent antithesis, that other of “art for life”; and from that time it was discussed, to tell the truth, rather among men of letters or artists than philosophers. It has lost interest in our day, fallen to the rank of a theme with which beginners amuse or exercise themselves, or of an argument for academic orations. However, traces are to be found of it even previous to the romantic period, and even in the most ancient documents containing reflections upon art; and philosophers of Æsthetic themselves, even when they appear to neglect it (and they do indeed neglect it in its vulgar form), really do consider it, and indeed may be said to think of nothing else. Because to dispute as to the dependence or the independence, the autonomy or the heteronomy of art, does not mean anything but to enquire whether art is or is not, and, if it is, what it is. An activity whose principle depends upon that of another activity is substantially that other activity, and retains for itself an existence that is only putative or conventional: art which depends upon morality, upon pleasure, or upon philosophy, is morality, pleasure, or philosophy; it is not art. If it be held not to be dependent, it will be advisable to investigate the foundation of its independence—that is to say, how art is distinguished from morality, from pleasure, from philosophy, and from all other things; what it is—and to posit whatever it may be as truly autonomous. It may chance to be asserted, on the other hand, by those very people who affirm the concept of the original nature of art, that, although it preserve its peculiar nature, yet its place is below another activity of superior dignity, and (as used at one time to be said) that it is a handmaid to ethic, a minister’s wife to politics, and interpretess to science; but this would only prove that there are people who have the habit of contradicting themselves or of allowing discord among their thoughts: giddy folk who never seek proof of anything. For our part, we shall take care not to fall into such a condition; and having already made clear that art is distinguished from the physical world and from the practical, moral, and conceptual activity as intuition, we shall give ourselves no further anxiety, and shall assume that with that first demonstration we have also demonstrated the independence of art.