All these degrees of beauty are, as has been said, connected with one another by means of the ugly, and even in the highest degree, which has nothing superior to it, the ugly continues its office of beneficent titillation. The outcome of this ultimate phase is the famous theory of the Modifications of the Beautiful. None of these modifications can occur without a struggle, save the sublime and the graceful, which appear without conflict at the side of supreme beauty. Hartmann gives four instances: the solution is either immanent, logical, transcendental, or combined. The idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, the glad, the elegiac, are instances of the immanent solution; the comic in all its forms is the logical solution; the tragic is the transcendental solution; the combined form is found in the humorous, the tragi-comic. When none of these solutions is possible, we have the ugly; and when an ugliness of content is expressed by a formal ugliness, we have the maximum of ugliness, the true aesthetic devil.
Hartmann is the last noteworthy representative of the German metaphysical school. His works are gigantic in size and appear formidable. But if one be not afraid of giants and venture to approach near, one finds nothing but a big Morgante, full of the most commonplace prejudices, quite easily killed with the bite of a crab!
During this period, Aesthetic had few representatives in other countries. The famous conference of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, held in Paris in 1857, gave to the world the "Science du Beau" of Lévèque. No one is interested in it now, but it is amusing to note that Lévèque announced himself to be a disciple of Plato, and went on to attribute eight characteristics to the beautiful. These he discovered by closely examining the lily! No wonder he was crowned with laurels! He proved his wonderful theory by instancing a child playing with its mother, a symphony of Beethoven, and the life of Socrates! One of his colleagues, who could not resist making fun of his learned friend, remarked that he would be glad to know what part was played in the life of a philosopher by the normal vivacity of colour!
Thus German theory made no way in France, and England proved even more refractory.