giving prominence to what is essential and eliminating what is unessential, presents the things more distinctly and characteristically, but just as much on the fact that the absolute silence of the will, which is demanded for the purely objective comprehension of the nature of the things, is attained with the greatest certainty when the perceived object itself lies entirely outside the province of things which are capable of having a relation to the will, because it is nothing real, but a mere picture. Now this holds good, not only of the works of plastic and pictorial art, but also of poetry; the effect of which is also conditioned by indifferent, will‐less, and thereby purely objective apprehension. It is exactly this which makes a perceived object _picturesque_, an event of actual life _poetical_; for it is only this that throws over the objects of the real world that magic gleam which in the case of sensibly perceived objects is called the picturesque, and in the case of those which are only perceived in imagination is called the poetical. If poets sing of the blithe morning, the beautiful evening, the still moonlight night, and many such things, the real object of their praise is, unknown to themselves, the pure subject of knowledge which is called forth by those beauties of nature, and on the appearance of which the will vanishes from consciousness, and so that peace of heart enters which, apart from this, is unattainable in the world. How otherwise, for example, could the verse— “_Nox erat, at cœlo fulgebat luna sereno,_ _Inter minora sidera_,”