Secondly, if there is one feature more striking than any other in this work, which is bound at least to surprise anyone who still harbours the obsolete notion that this philosopher moved in an exclusively abstract region of idea remote from the concrete experience of life and scientific or artistic knowledge, it is the wealth and extraordinary range of the illustrations in these volumes no less than the vigour and freshness of their application. In this respect two translations which merely amount to a summary of theoretical content simply omit the vital or at least the most attractive heart of the interest. As to the present claim of this laborious work to recognition and study, its historical significance is, I think, admitted by the most acknowledged authorities on the subject. As Schasler has called it, it is the first complete system of a philosophy of Art. The nature of its importance to our own most able and learned historian of the Philosophy of Fine Art may not only be deduced from his own summary of its contents and significance in his invaluable historical survey[10], but is further illustrated by the fact that he has reproduced the concluding portion of Hegel's Introduction _in extenso_ in an Appendix to this work. Other writers have been less judicious both as hostile critics and in the degree of their praise or enthusiasm. One German authority has called it Hegel's masterpiece. Such a title is, apart from any other ground, sufficiently excluded by its history alone. Whether Hegel might have made it his masterpiece had he lived is of course another question.