Discussion has raged around the true relation between Schiller and Kant, and it has lately been maintained that his Æsthetic was not, as would seem to be the case, derived from Kant, but from the pandynamism which, starting from Leibniz, had propagated itself in Germany through Creuzens, Ploucket and Reimarus down to Herder, who had conceived a wholly animated nature.[2] There can be no doubt that Schiller shared Herder's conception, as may be seen from the theosophical tone of the fragment of correspondence between Julius and Raphæl and in other writings. It cannot be denied, however, that whatever personal feelings Kant may have had towards Herder, or Herder towards his former teacher (against whose _Critique of Judgment_ he published his _Kaligone,_ as he had replied to the _Critique of Pure Reason_ with his _Metacritica_), when Kant in a somewhat dubious manner made the first step towards a reconciliation, the breach was at all events partially healed. The dispute is therefore of small importance: we shall find it more useful to observe that Schiller introduced an important correction of Kant's views when he obliterated every trace of the double theory of art and the beautiful, giving no weight to the distinction drawn between pure and adherent beauty, and finally abandoning the mechanical conception of art as consisting in beauty joined to the intellectual concept. It was certainly his own experience of active artistic work that led him to this simplification. [Sidenote: _The æsthetic sphere as the sphere of Play._]