Alexander Gottlieb, an eminent German philosopher, born at Berlin in 1714. He pursued his studies at Halle, and afterwards became professor of philosophy at Frankfort on the Oder; in which city he died in the year 1762. He was a disciple of Leibnitz and Wolf, and was particularly distinguished for his aesthetical speculations, having been the first to develop and establish the Theory of the Beautiful as an independent science. Baumgarten, however, cannot properly be regarded as the founder of aesthetics. Plato, in the Phaedrus and the Hippias, had already made the Beautiful the object of a special analysis, and though confounding the two qualities of goodness and beauty, the profoundness of his speculations has thrown into the shade Baumgarten and all the other followers of Wolf who have pursued the same subject. The very name (*Ästhetikos*) by which Baumgarten distinguished the science of the Beautiful, though now very generally adopted for the sake of convenience, indicates the imperfect and partial nature of his analysis, pointing as it does to an element so variable as feeling or sensation as the ultimate ground of judgment in questions pertaining to beauty. Yet the labours of Baumgarten will only be contemned by those who deny the possibility of a science of aesthetics. The principal works of Baumgarten are the following: *Disputationes nonnullis ad poemam pertinentibus; Ästhetica; Metaphysica; Ethica philosophica; Initia philosophiae practicae prima*.