Coster held that the ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true are innate. These ideas illuminate our minds and are identical with God, who is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. The idea of Beauty includes unity of essence, variety of constitutive elements, and order, which brings unity into the various manifestations of life.[87]
For the sake of completeness, I will further cite some of the very latest writings upon art.
"La Psychologie du Beau et de l'Art, par Mario Pilo" (1895), says that beauty is a product of our physical feelings. The aim of art is pleasure, but this pleasure (for some reason) he considers to be necessarily highly moral.
The "Essai sur l'Art Contemporain, par Fierens Gevaert" (1897), says that art rests on its connection with the past, and on the religious ideal of the present which the artist holds when giving to his work the form of his individuality.
Then again, Sar Peladan's "L'Art Idealiste et Mystique" (1894), says that beauty is one of the manifestations of God. "Il n'y a pas d'autre Réalité que Dieu, il n'y a pas d'autre Vérité que Dieu, il n'y a pas d'autre Beauté que Dieu" (p. 33). This book is very fantastic and very illiterate, but is characteristic in the positions it takes up, and noticeable on account of a certain success it is having with the younger generation in France.
All the æsthetics diffused in France up to the present time are similar in kind, but among them Véron's "L'Esthétique" (1878) forms an exception, being reasonable and clear. That work, though it does not give an exact definition of art, at least rids æsthetics of the cloudy conception of an absolute beauty.
According to Véron (1825-1889), art is the manifestation of emotion transmitted externally by a combination of lines, forms, colors, or by a succession of movements, sounds, or words subjected to certain rhythms.[88]
In England, during this period, the writers on æsthetics define beauty more and more frequently, not by its own qualities, but by taste; and the discussion about beauty is superseded by a discussion on taste.
After Reid (1704-1796), who acknowledged beauty as being entirely dependent on the spectator, Alison, in his "Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste" (1790), proved the same thing. From another side this was also asserted by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of the celebrated Charles Darwin.
He says that we consider beautiful that which is connected in our conception with what we love. Richard Knight's work, "An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste," also tends in the same direction.