non complete quidem certi sumus, neque tamen falsitatem aliquam in iisdem appercipimus, sunt verisimilia. Est ergo veritas æsthetica, a potiori dicta verisimilitudo, ille veritatis gradus, qui, etiamsi non evectus sit ad completam certitudinem, tamen nihil contineat falsitatis observabilis._"[50] And especially the immediate sequel: "_Cujus habent spectator es auditor esve intra animum quum vident audiuntve, quasdam anticipationes, quod plerumque fit, quod fieri solet, quod in opinione positum est, quod habet ad haec in se quandam similitudinem, sive id falsum (logice et latissime), sive verum sit (logice et strictissime), quod non sit facile a nostris sensibus abhorrens: hoc illud_ est εἰκός _et verisimile quod, Aristotele et Cicerone assentiente, sectetur æstheticus._"[51] The probable embraces that which is true and certain to the intellect and the senses, that which is certain to the senses but not to the intellect, that which is probable logically and æsthetically, or logically improbable but æsthetically probable, or, finally, æsthetically improbable but on the whole probable or that whose improbability is not evident.[52] So we reach the admission of the impossible and absurd, the _αδύνατον_ and _ἄτοπον_ of Aristotle. If after reading these paragraphs, highly important as revealing the true thought of Baumgarten, we turn once more to the Introduction to his work, we notice at once his commonplace and erroneous conception of the poetic faculty. To a friend who suggested that there was no need for him to concern himself with confused or inferior consciousness both because "_confusio mater erroris_" and because "_facilitate inferior es, caro, debellandae potius sunt quam excitandae et confirmandae,_" Baumgarten replied that confusion is a condition wherein to find truth: that nature makes no sudden leap from obscurity to clarity: that noonday light is reached from night time through the dawn (_ex node per auroram meridies_): that in the case of the inferior faculties a guide, not a tyrant, is needed (_imperium in facilitates inferiores poscitur, non tyrannis_).[53] This is still the attitude of Leibniz, Trevisano and Bülffinger. Baumgarten is terrified lest he should be accused of treating subjects unworthy a philosopher. "_Quousque tandem_" (says he to himself), "dost thou, professor of theoretic and moral philosophy, dare to praise lies and mixtures of true and false as though they were noble works?"[54] And if there is one thing above all others from which he is anxious to guard himself it is sensualism, unbridled and non-moralized. The sensitive perfection of Cartesianism and Wolffianism was liable to be confused with simple pleasure, with the feeling of the perfection of our organism:[55] but Baumgarten falls into no such confusion. When in 1745 one Quistorp combated his æsthetic theory by saying that if poetry consisted in sensuous perfection it was a thing hurtful to men, Baumgarten answered disdainfully that he did not expect