the will can be the cause of error when it is not more than a mere abstraction or _ens rationis;_ hence errors or the _particulares volitiones_ can be determined, not indeed by the will and by liberty, but _a causis externis_[23] The consciousness of the introduction of the will into the theoretical spirit as production of error has been affirmed by Schleiermacher as well as by Rosmini:[24] "It is the will (he writes) that conceals men from themselves: the judgment cannot err if it turn its gaze really upon itself."[25] Baader frankly reduced incredulity to ill-will and moral corruption.[26] [Sidenote: _Practical taste._] As to the concept of an immediate form of practical discrimination, independent of the intellectual judgment, it is to be remarked that the faculty of _taste_ in Gracian and in other thinkers of the seventeenth century[27] has a practical rather than a theoretical origin, and that the sentimentalists of Ethic (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and others) were led to posit a moral tact sense. Before Herbart talked of a _moral taste (sittlicher Geschmack[28])_ Jacobi, who saw better than others the analogy between practical and æsthetic facts, had written: "The science of the good, like the science of the beautiful, is subject to the condition of _taste,_ without which nothing can be decided, and beyond which nothing can be carried. The taste for the good, like that for the beautiful, is formed by means of models of excellence, and original acts are always the work of genius. By means of genius, nature gives laws to art, both as regards the good and the beautiful. Both are _liberal_ arts; they do not allow themselves to be lowered to the level of mechanical arts and placed at the service of industry."[29] [Sidenote: _V. The doctrines of feeling._] V. With the mention of a few facts and names, it can be proved that the function of the term "feeling" in the history of philosophy has been as shown above. We have already said that the peculiarity of the practical form has been asserted by the use of the word "feeling" or similar denominations ("moral sense," "conscience," and the like), especially by the Scottish School, in opposition to intellectualist reductions. Jacobi appealed to the feeling of duty (_Gefühl der Pflicht_) or conscience in his ethical discussions. In our day, too, it has been affirmed (by Simmel[30] and others), in opposition to abstract and imperative Ethics, that the practical decision is the product of feeling and is not definable by theoreticians. But the principal cause of the importance attached to feeling in the eighteenth century was the æsthetic problem. This is seen in Dubos's book, in the English sentimentalists (who approach the ideas of virtue and of beauty, treating of the moral sense and of the beautiful), and, finally, in the doctrines of Leibnitz himself and of his school, as to _confused cognition,_ which led to the _Aesthetica_ of Baumgarten. [Sidenote: _The Wolfians._]