The name is absent

II

PREJUDICES RELATING TO ART

THERE can be no doubt that the process of distinction
of art from the facts and the acts with which it has been
and is confused, which I have summarily traced, necessitates
no small mental effort; but this effort is rewarded with the
freedom which it affords of handling the many fallacious
distinctions which disfigure the field of æsthetie. These, al-
though they do not present any difficulty in thinking out (in-
deed, at first they seduce by their very facility and deceitful
self-evidence), yet imply the other and greater annoyance of
preventing all profound understanding, and indeed of mak-
ing it impossible to understand anything as to what art truly
is. It is true that many people, in order to retain the power
of repeating vulgar and traditional distinctions, voluntarily
resign themselves to this ignorance. We, on the contrary,
now prefer to throw them all away, as a useless hindrance in
tire new task to which the new theoretic position that we
have attained invites and leads us, and to enjoy the greater
facility which comes from feeling rich. Wealth is not only to
be obtained by acquiring many objects, but, on the contrary,
by getting rid of all those that represent economic debt.

Let us begin with the most famous of these economic
debts in the circle of aesthetic: the distinction between con-
tent and form, which has caused a division of schools even
in the nineteenth century: the schools of the æsthetie of the
content (Gehaltsaesthetik) and that of the æsthetie of form
(Formxsthetik). The problems from which these opposed
schools arose were, in general, the following: Does art con-
sist solely of the content, or solely of the form, or of content
and form together? What is the character of the content,

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