Like all the other idealistic philosophers, Schelling held firmly to the fusion of the theories of art and the beautiful already effected by Schiller. From this point of view it is interesting to note his explanation of the condemnation of art by Plato: this condemnation, says Schelling, was directed against the art of his time, the natural and realistic art of antiquity in general, with its character of finitude: Plato could not have uttered such a condemnation (as we moderns are unable to utter it) if he had known Christian art, whose characteristic is infinity.[16] The pure abstract beauty of Winckelmann is not enough; no less inadequate, false and negative is that concept of the characteristic which would try to make art something dead, hard and ugly by imposing upon it the limitations of the individual. Art is beauty and characteristic in one; characteristic beauty, character from which beauty is evolved, according to Goethe's saying; it is therefore not the individual but the living concept of the individual. When the artist's eye recognizes the creative idea of the individual and draws it forth, he transforms the individual into a world in itself, into a species (_Gattung_), an eternal idea (_Urbild_), and fears no more the limitation or hardness which is the condition of life: characteristic beauty is that plenitude of form which kills form; it does not inflame passion, it regulates it, like the banks of a river which are filled but not overflowed by the waters.[17] In all of this we feel the influence of Schiller, with something added which Schiller could never have expressed. [Sidenote: _Art and Philosophy._]