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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aesthetic as science of expression and
-general linguistic, by Benedetto Croce
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic
-
-Author: Benedetto Croce
-
-Translator: Douglas Ainslie
-
-Release Date: April 28, 2017 [EBook #54618]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon
-in an extended version, also linking to free sources for
-education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...)
-Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.
-
-
-
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC
-
-_As science of expression and general linguistic_
-
-BY
-
-BENEDETTO CROCE
-
-_translated, from the Italian by_ DOUGLAS AINSLIE
-
-THE NOONDAY PRESS
-
-_A division of_
-
-FARRAR, STRAUS, AND COMPANY
-
-1920
-
-
-
-
-THE
-
-ÆSTHETIC
-
-IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE MEMORY OF HIS PARENTS
-
-PASQUALE AND LUISA SIPARI
-
-AND OF HIS SISTER
-
-MARIA
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-EXTRACT FROM INTRODUCTION xix
-
-NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR xxv
-
-AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxvii
-
-
-I
-
-THEORY OF ÆSTHETIC
-
-I
-
-INTUITION AND EXPRESSION
-
-Intuitive knowledge--Its independence with respect to intellectual
-knowledge--Intuition and perception--Intuition and the concepts
-of space and time--Intuition and sensation--Intuition and
-association--Intuition and representation--Intuition and
-expression--Illusion as to their difference--Identity of intuition and
-expression
-
-II
-
-INTUITION AND ART
-
-Corollaries and explanations--Identity of art and intuitive
-knowledge--No specific difference--No difference of intensity--The
-difference is extensive and empirical--Artistic genius--Content and
-form in Æsthetic--Criticism of the imitation of nature and of the
-artistic illusion--Criticism of art conceived as a fact of feeling,
-not a theoretical fact--Æsthetic appearance, and feeling--Criticism of
-the theory of æsthetic senses--Unity and indivisibility of the work of
-art--Art as liberator
-
-III
-
-ART AND PHILOSOPHY
-
-Inseparability of intellectual from intuitive knowledge--Criticism
-of the negations of this thesis--Art and science--Content and form:
-another meaning--Prose and poetry--The relation of first and second
-degree--Non-existence of other forms of cognition--Historicity--Its
-identity with and difference from art--Historical criticism--Historical
-scepticism--Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural
-sciences, and their limits--The phenomenon and the noumenon
-
-IV
-
-HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN ÆSTHETIC
-
-Criticism of the probable and of naturalism--Criticism of ideas in
-art, of theses in art, and of the typical--Criticism of the symbol
-and of the allegory--Criticism of the theory of artistic and literary
-kinds--Errors derived from this theory in judgements on art--Empirical
-sense of the divisions of kinds
-
-V
-
-ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN THE THEORY OF HISTORY AND IN LOGIC
-
-Criticism of the philosophy of History--Æsthetic intrusions into
-Logic--Logic in its essence--Distinction between logical and
-non-logical judgements--Syllogistic--Logical falsehood and æsthetic
-truth--Reformed logic--Note to the fourth Italian edition
-
-VI
-
-THE THEORETIC ACTIVITY AND THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY
-
-The will--The will as an ulterior stage in respect to
-knowledge--Objections and explanations--Criticism of practical
-judgements or judgements of value--Exclusion of the practical from the
-æsthetic--Criticism of the theory of the end of art and of the choice
-of content--Practical innocence of art--Independence of art--Criticism
-of the saying: the style is the man--Criticism of the concept of
-sincerity in art
-
-VII
-
-ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL
-
-The two forms of the practical activity--The economically
-useful--Distinction between the useful and the technical--Distinction
-of the useful from the egoistic--Economic will and moral will--Pure
-economicity--The economic side of morality--The merely economical and
-the error of the morally indifferent--Criticism of utilitarianism and
-the reform of Ethics and of Economics--Phenomenon and noumenon in
-practical activity
-
-VIII
-
-EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS
-
-The system of the spirit--The forms of genius--Non-existence of a
-fifth form of activity--Law; sociability--Religion--Metaphysic--Mental
-imagination and the intuitive intellect--Mystical Æsthetic--Mortality
-and immortality of art
-
-IX
-
-INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR DEGREES AND CRITICISM OF
-RHETORIC
-
-The characters of art--Non-existence of modes of
-expression--Impossibility of translations--Criticism of the rhetorical
-categories--Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories--Their use as
-synonyms of the æsthetic fact--Their use to indicate various æsthetic
-imperfections--Their use in a sense transcending æsthetic, in the
-service of science--Rhetoric in the schools--The resemblances of
-expressions--The relative possibility of translations
-
-X
-
-ÆSTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY
-
-Various significations of the word feeling--Feeling as activity
---Identification of feeling with economic activity--Criticism
-of hedonism--Feeling as a concomitant of every form of activity
---Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings--Value
-and disvalue: the contraries and their union--The beautiful as the
-value of expression, or expression without qualification--The ugly,
-and the elements of beauty which compose it--Illusion that there exist
-expressions neither beautiful nor ugly--True æsthetic feelings and
-concomitant and accidental feelings--Criticism of apparent feelings
-
-XI
-
-CRITICISM OF ÆSTHETIC HEDONISM
-
-Criticism of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher
-senses--Criticism of the theory of play--Criticism of the theory of
-sexuality and of triumph--Criticism of the Æsthetic of the sympathetic:
-meaning in it of content and form--Æsthetic hedonism and moralism--The
-rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of art--Criticism
-of pure beauty
-
-XII
-
-THE ÆSTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-ÆSTHETIC CONCEPTS
-
-Pseudo-æsthetic concepts, and the Æsthetic of the
-sympathetic--Criticism of the theory of the ugly in art and
-of the overcoming of it--Pseudo-æsthetic concepts belong to
-Psychology--Impossibility of rigorous definitions of them--Examples:
-definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous--Relation
-between these concepts and æsthetic concepts
-
-XIII
-
-THE "PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL" IN NATURE AND IN ART
-
-Æsthetic activity and physical concepts--Expression in the æsthetic
-sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense--Representations and
-memory--The production of aids to memory--Physical beauty--Content and
-form: another meaning--Natural beauty and artificial beauty--Mixed
-beauty--Writings--Free and non-free beauty--Criticism of non-free
-beauty--Stimulants of production
-
-XIV
-
-ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSICS AND ÆSTHETIC
-
-Criticism of æsthetic associationism--Criticism of æsthetic
-Physics--Criticism of the theory of the beauty of the human
-body--Criticism of the beauty of geometrical figures--Criticism of
-another aspect of the imitation of nature--Criticism of the theory of
-the elementary forms of the beautiful--Criticism of the search for the
-objective conditions of the beautiful--The astrology of Æsthetic
-
-XV
-
-THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS
-
-The practical activity of externalization--The technique of
-externalization--Technical theories of the different arts--Criticism of
-æsthetic theories of particular arts--Criticism of the classification
-of the arts--Criticism of the theory of the union of the arts--Relation
-of the activity of externalization to utility and morality
-
-XVI
-
-TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART
-
-Æsthetic judgement: its identity with æsthetic
-reproduction--Impossibility of divergences--Identity of taste
-and genius--Analogy with other activities--Criticism of æsthetic
-absolutism (intellectualism) and relativism--Criticism of relative
-relativism--Objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and
-of psychic disposition--Criticism of the distinction of signs into
-natural and conventional--The surmounting of variety--Restorations and
-historical interpretation
-
-XVII
-
-THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND OF ART
-
-Historical criticism in literature and art: its importance--Literary
-and artistic history: its distinction from historical criticism and
-from the æsthetic judgement--The method of artistic and literary
-history--Criticism of the problem of the origin of art--The criterion
-of progress and history--Non-existence of a single line of progress
-in artistic and literary history--Errors committed against this law--
-Other meanings of the word "progress" in relation to Æsthetic
-
-XVIII
-
-CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND ÆSTHETIC
-
-Summary of the study--Identity of Linguistic with Æsthetic--Æsthetic
-formulation of linguistic problems--Nature of language--Origin
-of language and its development--Relation between Grammar and
-Logic--Grammatical kinds or parts of speech--The individuality of
-speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of a
-normative Grammar--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguistic facts, or
-roots--Æsthetic judgement and the model language--Conclusion
-
-
-II
-
-HISTORY OF ÆSTHETIC
-
-I
-
-ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN GRÆCO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY
-
-Point of view of this History of Æsthetic--Mistaken tendencies, and
-attempts towards an Æsthetic, in Græco-Roman antiquity--Origin of the
-æsthetic problem in Greece--Plato's rigoristic negation--Æsthetic
-hedonism and moralism--Mystical æsthetic in antiquity--Investigations
-as to the Beautiful--Distinction between the theory of Art and the
-theory of the Beautiful--Fusion of the two by Plotinus--The scientific
-tendency: Aristotle--The concepts of imitation and of imagination after
-Aristotle: Philostratus--Speculations on language
-
-II
-
-ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE
-
-Middle Ages. Mysticism: Ideas on the Beautiful--The pedagogic theory
-of art in the Middle Ages--Hints of an Æsthetic in scholastic
-philosophy--Renaissance: Philography and philosophical and empirical
-inquiries concerning the Beautiful--The pedagogic theory of art and
-the Poetics of Aristotle--The "Poetics of the Renaissance"--Dispute
-concerning the universal and the probable in art--G. Fracastoro--L.
-Castelvetro--Piccolomini and Pinciano--Fr. Patrizzi (Patricius)
-
-III
-
-FERMENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
-
-New words and new observations in the seventeenth
-century--Wit--Taste--Various meanings of the word taste--Fancy or
-imagination--Feeling--Tendency to unite these terms--Difficulties
-and contradictions in their definition--Wit and intellect--Taste
-and intellectual judgement--The "_je ne sais quoi_"--Imagination
-and sensationalism: the corrective of imagination--Feeling and
-sensationalism
-
-IV
-
-ÆSTHETIC IDEAS OF THE CARTESIAN AND LEIBNITIAN SCHOOLS, AND THE
-"ÆSTHETIC" OF BAUMGARTEN
-
-Cartesianism and imagination--Crousaz and André--The English:
-Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and the Scottish School--Leibniz:
-"_petites perceptions_" and confused knowledge--Intellectualism of
-Leibniz--Speculations on language--J. C. Wolff--Demand for an organon
-of inferior knowledge--Alexander Baumgarten: his "Æsthetic"--Æsthetic
-as science of sensory consciousness--Criticism of judgements passed on
-Baumgarten--Intellectualism of Baumgarten--New names and old meanings
-
-V
-
-GIAMBATTISTA VICO
-
-Vico as inventor of æsthetic science--Poetry and philosophy:
-imagination and intellect--Poetry and history--Poetry and
-language--Inductive and formalistic logic--Vico opposed to all
-former theories of poetry--Vico's judgements of the grammarians and
-linguists who preceded him--Influence of seventeenth-century writers on
-Vico--Æsthetic in the _Scienza Nuova_--Vico's mistakes--Progress still
-to be achieved
-
-VI
-
-MINOR ÆSTHETIC DOCTRINES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
-
-The influence of Vico--Italian writers: A. Conti--Quadrio and
-Zanotti--M. Cesarotti--Bettinelli and Pagano--German disciples of
-Baumgarten: G. F. Meier--Confusions of Meier--M. Mendelssohn and other
-followers of Baumgarten--Vogue of Æsthetic--Eberhard and Eschenburg--J.
-G. Sulzer--K. H. Heydenreich--J. G. Herder--Philosophy of language
-
-VII
-
-OTHER ÆSTHETIC DOCTRINES OF THE SAME PERIOD
-
-Other writers of the eighteenth century: Batteux--The English:
-W. Hogarth--E. Burke--H. Home--Eclecticism and sensationalism:
-E. Platner--Fr. Hemsterhuis--Neo-Platonism and mysticism:
-Winckelmann--Beauty and lack of significance--Winckelmann's
-contradictions and compromises--A. R. Mengs--G. E. Lessing--Theorists
-of ideal Beauty--G. Spalletti and the characteristic--Beauty and the
-characteristic: Hirt, Meyer, Goethe
-
-VIII
-
-IMMANUEL KANT
-
-I. Kant--Kant and Vico--Identity of the concept of Art in Kant
-and Baumgarten--Kant's "Lectures"--Art in the _Critique of
-Judgment_--Imagination in Kant's system--The forms of intuition and the
-Transcendental Æsthetic--Theory of Beauty distinguished by Kant from
-that of Art--Mystical features in Kant's theory of Beauty
-
-IX
-
-THE ÆSTHETIC OF IDEALISM: SCHILLER, SCHELLING, SOLGER, HEGEL
-
-The _Critique of Judgment_ and metaphysical idealism--F.
-Schiller--Relations between Schiller and Kant--The æsthetic sphere as
-the sphere of Play--Æsthetic education--Vagueness and lack of precision
-in Schiller's Æsthetic--Schiller's caution and the rashness of the
-Romanticists--Ideas on Art: J. P. Richter--Romantic Æsthetic and
-idealistic Æsthetic--J. G. Fichte--Irony: Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis--F.
-Schelling--Beauty and character--Art and Philosophy--Ideas and the
-gods: Art and mythology--K. W. Solger--Fancy and imagination--Art,
-practice and religion--G. W. F. Hegel--Art in the sphere of absolute
-spirit--Beauty as sensible appearance of the Idea--Æsthetic in
-metaphysical idealism and Baumgartenism--Mortality and decay of art in
-Hegel's system
-
-X
-
-SCHOPENHAUER AND HERBART
-
-Æsthetic mysticism in the opponents of idealism--A. Schopenhauer--Ideas
-as the object of art--Æsthetic catharsis--Signs of a better theory in
-Schopenhauer--J. F. Herbart--Pure Beauty and relations of form--Art as
-sum of content and form--Herbart and Kantian thought
-
-XI
-
-FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER
-
-Æsthetic of content and Æsthetic of form: meaning of the
-contrast--Friedrich Schleiermacher--Wrong judgements concerning
-him--Schleiermacher contrasted with his predecessors--Place assigned
-to Æsthetic in his Ethics--Æsthetic activity as immanent and
-individual--Artistic truth and intellectual truth--Difference of
-artistic consciousness from feeling and religion--Dreams and art:
-inspiration and deliberation--Art and the typical--Independence of
-art--Art and language--Schleiermacher's defects--Schleiermacher's
-services to Æsthetic
-
-XII
-
-THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE: HUMBOLDT AND STEINTHAL
-
-Progress of Linguistic--Linguistic speculation at the beginning
-of the nineteenth century--Wilhelm von Humboldt: relics of
-intellectualism--Language as activity: internal form--Language and
-art in Humboldt--II. Steinthal: the linguistic function independent
-of the logical--Identity of the problems of the origin and the nature
-of language--Steinthal's mistaken ideas on art: his failure to unite
-Linguistic and Æsthetic
-
-XIII
-
-MINOR GERMAN ÆSTHETICIANS
-
-Minor æstheticians in the metaphysical school--Krause, Trahndorff,
-Weisse and others--Fried. Theodor Vischer--Other tendencies--Theory
-of the Beautiful in nature, and that of the Modifications of
-Beauty--Development of the first theory: Herder--Schelling, Solger,
-Hegel--Schleiermacher--Alexander von Humboldt--Vischer's "Æsthetic
-Physics"--The theory of the Modifications of Beauty: from antiquity
-to the eighteenth century--Kant and the post-Kantians--Culmination
-of the development--Double form of the theory: the overcoming of the
-ugly: Solger, Weisse and others--Passage from abstract to concrete:
-Vischer--The "legend of Sir Purebeauty"
-
-XIV
-
-ÆSTHETIC IN FRANCE, ENGLAND AND ITALY DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE
-NINETEENTH CENTURY
-
-Æsthetic movement in France: Cousin, Jouffroy--English Æsthetic--
-Italian Æsthetic--Rosmini and Gioberti--Italian Romantics. Dependence
-of art
-
-XV
-
-FRANCESCO DE SANCTIS
-
-F. de Sanctis: development of his thought--Influence of
-Hegelism--Unconscious criticism of Hegelism--Criticisms of German
-Æsthetic--Final rebellion against metaphysical Æsthetic--De Sanctis'
-own theory--The concept of form--De Sanctis as art-critic--De Sanctis
-as philosopher
-
-XVI
-
-ÆSTHETIC OF THE EPIGONI
-
-Revival of Herbartian Æsthetic--Robert Zimmermann--Vischer _versus_
-Zimmermann--Hermann Lotze--Efforts to reconcile Æsthetic of
-form and Æsthetic of content--K. Köstlin--Æsthetic of content.
-M. Schasler--Eduard von Hartmann--Hartmann and the theory of
-modifications--Metaphysical Æsthetic in France: C. Levêque--In
-England: J. Ruskin--Æsthetic in Italy--Antonio Tari and his
-lectures--Æsthesigraphy
-
-XVII
-
-ÆSTHETIC POSITIVISM AND NATURALISM
-
-Positivism and evolutionism--Æsthetic of H. Spencer--Physiologists of
-Æsthetic: Grant Allen, Helmholtz and others--Method of the natural
-sciences in Æsthetic--H. Taine's Æsthetic--Taine's metaphysic and
-moralism--G. T. Fechner: inductive Æsthetic--Experiments--Trivial
-nature of his ideas on Beauty and Art--Ernst Grosse: speculative
-Æsthetic and the Science of Art--Sociological Æsthetic--Proudhon--J. M.
-Guyau--M. Nordau--Naturalism: C. Lombroso--Decline of linguistic--Signs
-of revival: H. Paul--The linguistic of Wundt
-
-XVIII
-
-ÆSTHETIC PSYCHOLOGISM AND OTHER RECENT TENDENCIES
-
-Neo-criticism and empiricism--Kirchmann--Metaphysic translated into
-Psychology: Vischer--Siebeck--M. Diez--Psychological tendency.
-Teodor Lipps--K. Groos--The modifications of the Beautiful in Groos and
-Lipps--E. Véron and the double form of Æsthetic--L. Tolstoy--F. Nietzsche
---An æsthetician of Music: E. Hanslick--Hanslick's concept of form
---Æstheticians of the figurative arts: C. Fiedler--Intuition and
-expression--Narrow limits of these theories--H. Bergson--Attempts
-to return to Baumgarten: C. Hermann--Eclecticism: B. Bosanquet
---Æsthetic of expression: present state
-
-XIX
-
-HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF SOME PARTICULAR DOCTRINES
-
-Result of the history of Æsthetic--History of science and history of
-the scientific criticism of particular errors
-
-I. RHETORIC: OR THE THEORY OF ORNATE FORM.
-
-Rhetoric in the ancient sense--Criticism from moral point of
-view--Accumulation without system--Its fortunes in the Middle Ages
-and Renaissance--Criticisms by Vives, Ramus and Patrizzi--Survival
-into modern times--Modern signification of Rhetoric: theory of
-literary form--Concept of ornament--Classes of ornament--The
-concept of the Fitting--The theory of ornament in the Middle
-Ages and Renaissance--_Reductio ad absurdum_ in the seventeenth
-century--Polemic concerning the theory of ornament--Du Marsais and
-metaphor--Psychological interpretation--Romanticism and Rhetoric:
-present day
-
-II. HISTORY OF ARTISTIC AND LITERARY KINDS
-
-The kinds in antiquity: Aristotle--In the Middle Ages and
-Renaissance--The doctrine of the three unities--Poetics of the kinds
-and rules: Scaliger--Lessing--Compromises and extensions--Rebellion
-against rules in general--G. Bruno, Guarini--Spanish critics--G.
-B. Marino--G. V. Gravina--Fr. Montani--Critics of the eighteenth
-century--Romanticism and the "strict kinds": Berchet, V. Hugo--Their
-persistence in philosophical theories--Fr. Schelling--E. von
-Hartmann--The kinds in the schools
-
-III. THE THEORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE ARTS
-
-The limits of the arts in Lessing--Arts of space and arts of
-time--Limits and classifications of the arts in later philosophy:
-Herder and Kant--Schelling, Solger--Schopenhauer, Herbart--Weisse,
-Zeising, Vischer--M. Schasler--E. v. Hartmann--The supreme art:
-Richard Wagner--Lotze's attack on classifications--Contradictions in
-Lotze--Doubts in Schleiermacher
-
-IV. OTHER PARTICULAR DOCTRINES
-
-The Æsthetic theory of natural beauty--The theory of æsthetic
-senses--The theory of kinds of style--The theory of grammatical forms
-or parts of speech--Theory of æsthetic criticism--Distinction between
-taste and genius--Concept of artistic and literary history--Conclusion
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
-
-INDEX
-
-
-
-
-EXTRACT FROM INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, 1909
-
-
-I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to
-have discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he dwells
-on the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antique
-Parthenope.
-
-It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the
-Philosopher of Æsthetic. Benedetto Croce, although born in the Abruzzi,
-Province of Aquila (1866), is essentially a Neapolitan, and rarely
-remains long absent from the city, on the shore of that magical sea
-where once Ulysses sailed, and where sometimes yet (near Amalfi) we
-may hear the Syrens sing their song. But more wonderful than the song
-of any Syren seems to me the Theory of Æsthetic as the Science of
-Expression, and that is why I have overcome the obstacles that stood
-between me and the giving of this theory, which in my belief is the
-truth, to the English-speaking world.
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-The solution of the problem of Æsthetic is not in the gift of the Muses.
-
-This Philosophy of the Spirit is symptomatic of the happy reaction of
-the twentieth century against the crude materialism of the second half
-of the nineteenth. It is the spirit which gives to the work of art its
-value, not this or that method of arrangement, this or that tint or
-cadence, which can always be copied by skilful plagiarists: not so
-the _spirit_ of the creator. In England we hear too much of (natural)
-science, which has usurped the very name of Philosophy. The natural
-sciences are very well in their place, but discoveries such as aviation
-are of infinitely less importance to the race than the smallest
-addition to the philosophy of the spirit. Empirical science, with the
-collusion of positivism, has stolen the cloak of philosophy and must be
-made to give it back.
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-Yet though severe, the editor of _La Critica_ is uncompromisingly just,
-and would never allow personal dislike or jealousy, or any extrinsic
-consideration, to stand in the way of fair treatment to the writer
-concerned. Many superficial English critics might benefit considerably
-by attention to this quality in one who is in other respects also so
-immeasurably their superior. A good instance of this impartiality is
-his critique of Schopenhauer, with whose system he is in complete
-disagreement, yet affords him full credit for what of truth is
-contained in his voluminous writings.
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-This thoroughness it is which gives such importance to the literary
-and philosophical criticisms of _La Critica._ Croce's method is always
-historical, and his object in approaching any work of art is to
-classify the spirit of its author, as expressed in that work. There
-are, he maintains, but two things to be considered in criticizing a
-book. These are, _firstly,_ what is its _peculiarity,_ in what way is
-it singular, how is it differentiated from other works? _Secondly,_
-what is its degree of _purity_?--That is, to what extent has its author
-kept himself free from all considerations alien to the perfection of
-the work as an expression, as a lyrical intuition? With the answering
-of these questions Croce is satisfied. He does not care to know if the
-author keep a motor-car, like Mæterlinck; or prefer to walk on Putney
-Heath, like Swinburne. This amounts to saying that all works of art
-must be judged by their own standard. How far has the author succeeded
-in doing what he intended?
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-As regards Croce's general philosophical position, it is important to
-understand that he is _not_ a Hegelian, in the sense of being a close
-follower of that philosopher. One of his last works is that in which
-he deals in a masterly manner with the philosophy of Hegel. The title
-may be translated, "What is living and what is dead of the philosophy
-of Hegel." Here he explains to us the Hegelian system more clearly
-than that wondrous edifice was ever before explained, and we realize
-at the same time that Croce is quite as independent of Hegel as of
-Kant, of Vico as of Spinoza. Of course he has made use of the best of
-Hegel, just as every thinker makes use of his predecessors and is in
-his turn made use of by those that follow him. But it is incorrect
-to accuse of Hegelianism the author of an anti-hegelian _Æsthetic,_
-of a _Logic_ where Hegel is only half accepted, and of a _Philosophy
-of the Practical_ which contains hardly a trace of Hegel. I give an
-instance. If the great conquest of Hegel be the dialectic of opposites,
-his great mistake lies in the confusion of opposites with things
-which are distinct but not opposite. If, says Croce, we take as an
-example the application of the Hegelian triad that formulates becoming
-(affirmation, negation and synthesis), we find it applicable for those
-opposites which are true and false, good and evil, being and not-being,
-but _not applicable_ to things which are distinct but not opposite,
-such as art and philosophy, beauty and truth, the useful and the moral.
-These confusions led Hegel to talk of the death of art, to conceive as
-possible a Philosophy of History, and to the application of the natural
-sciences to the absurd task of constructing a Philosophy of Nature.
-Croce has cleared away these difficulties by showing that if from the
-meeting of opposites must arise a superior synthesis, such a synthesis
-cannot arise from things which are distinct _but not opposite,_ since
-the former are connected together as superior and inferior, and the
-inferior can exist without the superior, but _not vice versa._ Thus we
-see how philosophy cannot exist without art, while art, occupying the
-lower place, can and does exist without philosophy. This brief example
-reveals Croce's independence in dealing with Hegelian problems.
-
-I know of no philosopher more generous than Croce in praise and
-elucidation of other workers in the same field, past and present. For
-instance, and apart from Hegel, _Kant_ has to thank him for drawing
-attention to the marvellous excellence of the _Critique of Judgment,_
-generally neglected in favour of the Critiques of _Pure Reason and of
-Practical Judgment_; _Baumgarten_ for drawing the attention of the
-world to his obscure name and for reprinting his Latin thesis in which
-the word _Æsthetic_ occurs for the first time; and _Schleiermacher_ for
-the tributes paid to his neglected genius in the History of Æsthetic.
-_La Critica,_ too, is full of generous appreciation of contemporaries
-by Croce and by that profound thinker, Gentile.
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-There can be no doubt of the great value of Croce's work as an
-_educative influence,_ and if we are to judge of a philosophical system
-by its action on others, then we must place the _Philosophy of the
-Spirit_ very high. It may be said with perfect truth that since the
-death of the poet Carducci there has been no influence in Italy to
-compare with that of Benedetto Croce.
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-Of the popularity that his system and teaching have already attained
-we may judge by the fact that the _Æsthetic,_ despite the difficulty of
-the subject, is already in its third edition in Italy, where, owing to
-its influence, philosophy sells better than fiction; while the French
-and Germans, not to mention the Czechs, have long had translations
-of the earlier editions. His _Logic_ is on the point of appearing
-in its second edition, and I have no doubt that the _Philosophy of
-the Practical_ will eventually equal these works in popularity. _The
-importance and value of Italian thought have been too long neglected
-in Great Britain._ Where, as in Benedetto Croce, we get the clarity
-of vision of the Latin, joined to the thoroughness and erudition of
-the best German tradition, we have a combination of rare power and
-effectiveness, which can by no means be neglected.
-
-The philosopher feels that he has a great mission, which is nothing
-less than the leading back of thought to belief in the spirit, deserted
-by so many for crude empiricism and positivism. His view of philosophy
-is that it sums up all the higher human activities, including religion,
-and that in proper hands it is able to solve any problem. But there is
-no finality about problems: the solution of one leads to the posing
-of another, and so on. Man is the maker of life, and his spirit ever
-proceeds from a lower to a higher perfection.
-
-. . . . . . . . . .
-
-I believe that Croce will one day be recognized as one of the very
-few great teachers of humanity. At present he is not appreciated at
-nearly his full value. One rises from a study of his philosophy with
-a sense of having been all the time as it were in personal touch with
-the truth, which is very far from the case after the perusal of certain
-other philosophies.
-
-Secure in his strength, Croce will often introduce a joke or some
-amusing illustration from contemporary life, in the midst of a most
-profound and serious argument. This spirit of mirth is a sign of
-superiority. He who is not sure of himself can spare no energy for
-the making of mirth. Croce loves to laugh at his enemies and with
-his friends. So the philosopher of Naples sits by the blue gulf
-and explains the universe to those who have ears to hear. "One can
-philosophize anywhere," he says--but he remains significantly at Naples.
-
-Thus I conclude these brief remarks upon the author of the _Æsthetic,_
-confident that those who give time and attention to its study will be
-grateful for having placed in their hands this pearl of great price
-from the diadem of the antique Parthenope.
-
-DOUGLAS AINSLIE.
-
-THE ATHENÆUM, PALL MALL, _May_ 1909.
-
-
-
-
-NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR
-
-
-TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION
-
-This second edition of the _Æsthetic_ will be found to contain the
-complete translation of the historical portion, which I was obliged to
-summarize in the first edition. I have made a number of alterations and
-some additions to the theoretical portion, following closely the fourth
-(definitive) Italian edition, and in so doing have received much advice
-and assistance of value from Mrs. Salusbury, to whom I beg to tender
-my best thanks. I trust that this new edition will enable all those
-desirous of studying the work to get into direct touch with the thought
-of the author.
-
-THE ATHENÆUM, PALL MALL, S.W.,
-
-_November_ 1920.
-
-
-
-
-AUTHOR'S PREFACE
-
-
-This volume is composed of a theoretical and of a historical part,
-which form two independent but complementary books.
-
-The nucleus of the theoretical part is a memoir, bearing the title
-_Fundamental Theses of an Æsthetic as Science of Expression and General
-Linguistic,_ which was read at the Accademia Pontaniana of Naples
-during the sessions of February 18 and May 6, 1900, and printed in vol.
-xxx. of its _Acts._ The author has added few substantial variations,
-but not a few additions and amplifications in rewriting it, also
-following a somewhat different sequence with a view to rendering the
-exposition more plain and easy. The first five chapters only of the
-historical portion were inserted in the Neapolitan review _Flegrea_
-(April 1901), under the title _Giambattista Vico, First Discoverer of
-Æsthetic Science,_ and these also reappear amplified and brought into
-harmony with the rest.
-
-The author has dwelt, especially in the theoretical part, upon general
-questions which are side-issues in respect to the theme that he has
-treated. But this will not seem a digression to those who remember
-that, strictly speaking, there are no particular philosophical
-sciences, standing by themselves. Philosophy is unity, and when we
-treat of Æsthetic or of Logic or of Ethics, we treat always of the
-whole of philosophy, although illustrating for didactic purposes only
-one side of that inseparable unity. In like manner, owing to this
-intimate connexion of all the parts of philosophy, the uncertainty and
-misunderstanding as to the æsthetic activity, the representative and
-productive imagination, this firstborn of the spiritual activities,
-mainstay of the others, generates everywhere else misunderstandings,
-uncertainties and errors: in Psychology as in Logic, in History as
-in the Philosophy of Practice. If language is the first spiritual
-manifestation, and if the æsthetic form is language itself, taken in
-all its true scientific extension, it is hopeless to try to understand
-clearly the later and more complicated phases of the life of the
-spirit, when their first and simplest moment is ill known, mutilated
-and disfigured. From the explanation of the æsthetic activity is also
-to be expected the correction of several concepts and the solution
-of certain philosophic problems which generally seem to be almost
-desperate. Such is precisely the spirit animating the present work. And
-if the present attempt and the historical illustrations which accompany
-it may be of use in winning friends to these studies, by levelling
-obstacles and indicating paths to be followed; if this happen,
-especially here in Italy, whose æsthetic traditions (as has been
-demonstrated in its place) are very noble, the author will consider
-that he has gained his end, and one of his keenest desires will have
-been satisfied.
-
-NAPLES, _December_ 1901.
-
-In addition to a careful literary revision, (in which, as well as in
-the revision of the notes, I have received valuable help from my friend
-Fausto Nicolini) I have in this third edition made certain alterations
-of theory, especially in Chapters X. and XI. of Part I., suggested by
-further reflexion and self-criticism.
-
-But I have refrained from introducing corrections or additions of such
-a kind as to alter the original plan of the book, which was, or was
-meant to be, a complete but brief æsthetic theory set in the framework
-of a general sketch of a Philosophy of the Spirit.
-
-The reader who desires a complete statement of the general or
-collateral doctrines or a more particular exposition of the other parts
-of philosophy (_e.g._ the lyrical nature of art) is now referred to the
-volumes on _Logic_ and the _Philosophy of Practice,_ which together
-with the present work compose the _Philosophy of the Spirit_ which in
-the author's opinion exhausts the entire field of Philosophy. The three
-volumes were not conceived and written simultaneously; if they had
-been, some details would have been differently arranged. When I wrote
-the first I had no idea of giving it, as I have now done, two such
-companions; and I therefore designed it to be, as I say, complete in
-itself. In the second place, the present state of the study of Æsthetic
-made it desirable to append to the theoretical exposition a somewhat
-full history of the science, whereas for the other parts of Philosophy
-I was able to restrict myself to brief historical notes merely designed
-to show how, from my point of view, such a history would best be
-composed. Lastly, there are many things which now, after a systematic
-exposition of the various philosophical sciences, I see in closer
-connexions and in a clearer, or at least a different, light; a certain
-hesitation and even some doctrinal errors visible here and there in the
-_Æsthetic,_ especially where subjects foreign to Æsthetic itself are
-being treated, would now no longer be justified. For all these reasons
-the three volumes, in spite of their substantial unity of spirit and of
-aim, have each its own physiognomy, and show marks of the different
-periods of life at which they were written, so as to group themselves,
-and to demand interpretation, as a progressive series according to
-their dates of publication.
-
-With what may be called the minor problems of Æsthetic, and the
-objections which have been or might be brought against my theory, I
-have dealt and am continuing to deal in special essays, of which I
-shall shortly publish a first collection which will form a kind of
-explanatory and polemical appendix to the present volume.
-
-_November_ 1907.
-
-In revising this book once more for a fourth edition, I take the
-opportunity of announcing that the supplementary volume of essays
-promised above was published in 1910 under the title _Problems of
-Æsthetic and Contributions to the History of Æsthetic in Italy._
-
-B. C.
-
-_May_ 1911.
-
-
-
-
-THEORY OF ÆSTHETIC
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-INTUITION AND EXPRESSION
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuitive knowledge._]
-
-Knowledge has two forms: it is either _intuitive_ knowledge or
-_logical_ knowledge; knowledge obtained through the _imagination_
-or knowledge obtained through the _intellect_; knowledge of the
-_individual_ or knowledge of the _universal_; of _individual things_ or
-of the _relations_ between them: it is, in fact, productive either of
-_images_ or of _concepts._
-
-In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. It is
-said that we cannot give definitions of certain truths; that they are
-not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively.
-The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who possesses no
-lively intuition of actual conditions; the educational theorist insists
-upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in the pupil
-before everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makes it
-a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judge
-it by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live rather by
-intuition than by reason.
-
-But this ample acknowledgment granted to intuitive knowledge
-in ordinary life, does not correspond to an equal and adequate
-acknowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists a
-very ancient science of intellectual knowledge, admitted by all without
-discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is
-timidly and with difficulty asserted by but a few. Logical knowledge
-has appropriated the lion's share; and if she does not slay and devour
-her companion outright, yet yields to her but grudgingly the humble
-place of maid-servant or doorkeeper.--What can intuitive knowledge be
-without the light of intellectual knowledge? It is a servant without
-a master; and though a master find a servant useful, the master is a
-necessity to the servant, since he enables him to gain his livelihood.
-Intuition is blind; intellect lends her eyes.
-
-[Sidenote: _Its independence with respect to intellectual knowledge._]
-
-Now, the first point to be firmly fixed in the mind is that intuitive
-knowledge has no need of a master, nor to lean upon any one; she does
-not need to borrow the eyes of others, for she has excellent eyes
-of her own. Doubtless it is possible to find concepts mingled with
-intuitions. But in many other intuitions there is no trace of such
-a mixture, which proves that it is not necessary. The impression of
-a moonlight scene by a painter; the outline of a country drawn by a
-cartographer; a musical motive, tender or energetic; the words of
-a sighing lyric, or those with which we ask, command and lament in
-ordinary life, may well all be intuitive facts without a shadow of
-intellectual relation. But, think what one may of these instances,
-and admitting further the contention that the greater part of the
-intuitions of civilized man are impregnated with concepts, there yet
-remains to be observed something more important and more conclusive.
-Those concepts which are found mingled and fused with the intuitions
-are no longer concepts, in so far as they are really mingled and
-fused, for they have lost all independence and autonomy. They have
-been concepts, but have now become simple elements of intuition.
-The philosophical maxims placed in the mouth of a personage of
-tragedy or of comedy, perform there the function, not of concepts,
-but of characteristics of such personage; in the same way as the
-red in a painted face does not there represent the red colour of
-the physicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait.
-The whole is that which determines the quality of the parts. A work
-of art may be full of philosophical concepts; it may contain them
-in greater abundance and they may there be even more profound than
-in a philosophical dissertation, which in its turn may be rich to
-overflowing with descriptions and intuitions. But notwithstanding all
-these concepts the total effect of the work of art is an intuition;
-and notwithstanding all those intuitions, the total effect of the
-philosophical dissertation is a concept. The _Promessi Sposi_ contains
-copious ethical observations and distinctions, but does not for that
-reason lose as a whole its character of simple story or intuition. In
-like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions to be found in the
-works of a philosopher like Schopenhauer do not deprive those works
-of their character of intellectual treatises. The difference between
-a scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellectual
-fact and an intuitive fact, lies in the difference of the total effect
-aimed at by their respective authors. This it is that determines and
-rules over the several parts of each not these parts separated and
-considered abstractly in themselves.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and perception._]
-
-But to admit the independence of intuition as regards concept does
-not suffice to give a true and precise idea of intuition. Another
-error arises among those who recognize this, or who at any rate do not
-explicitly make intuition dependent upon the intellect, to obscure
-and confuse the real nature of intuition. By intuition is frequently
-understood _perception,_ or the knowledge of actual reality, the
-apprehension of something as _real._
-
-Certainly perception is intuition: the perceptions of the room in
-which I am writing, of the ink-bottle and paper that are before me,
-of the pen I am using, of the objects that I touch and make use of as
-instruments of my person, which, if it write, therefore exists;--these
-are all intuitions. But the image that is now passing through my brain
-of a me writing in another room, in another town, with different paper,
-pen and ink, is also an intuition. This means that the distinction
-between reality and non-reality is extraneous, secondary, to the true
-nature of intuition. If we imagine a human mind having intuitions
-for the first time, it would seem that it could have intuitions of
-actual reality only, that is to say, that it could have perceptions
-of nothing but the real. But since knowledge of reality is based upon
-the distinction between real images and unreal images, and since this
-distinction does not at the first moment exist, these intuitions
-would in truth not be intuitions either of the real or of the unreal,
-not perceptions, but pure intuitions. Where all is real, nothing is
-real. The child, with its difficulty of distinguishing true from
-false, history from fable, which are all one to childhood, can furnish
-us with a sort of very vague and only remotely approximate idea of
-this ingenuous state. Intuition is the undifferentiated unity of the
-perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible. In our
-intuitions we do not oppose ourselves as empirical beings to external
-reality, but we simply objectify our impressions, whatever they be.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and the concepts of space and time._]
-
-Those, therefore, who look upon intuition as sensation formed and
-arranged simply according to the categories of space and time, would
-seem to approximate more nearly to the truth. Space and time (they
-say) are the forms of intuition; to have an intuition is to place
-it in space and in temporal sequence. Intuitive activity would then
-consist in this double and concurrent function of spatiality and
-temporality. But for these two categories must be repeated what was
-said of intellectual distinctions, when found mingled with intuitions.
-We have intuitions without space and without time: the colour of a
-sky, the colour of a feeling, a cry of pain and an effort of will,
-objectified in consciousness: these are intuitions which we possess,
-and with their making space and time have nothing to do. In some
-intuitions, spatiality may be found without temporality, in others,
-_vice versa_; and even where both are found, they are perceived by
-later reflexion: they can be fused with the intuition in like manner
-with all its other elements: that is, they are in it _materialiter_
-and not _formaliter,_ as ingredients and not as arrangement. Who,
-without an act of reflexion which for a moment breaks in upon his
-contemplation, can think of space while looking at a drawing or a
-view? Who is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story
-or a piece of music without breaking into it with a similar act of
-reflexion? What intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and
-time, but _character, individual physiognomy._ The view here maintained
-is confirmed in several quarters of modern philosophy. Space and time,
-far from being simple and primitive functions, are nowadays conceived
-as intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, even
-in some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time the
-quality of formative principles, categories and functions, one observes
-an effort to unite them and to regard them in a different manner from
-that in which these categories are generally conceived. Some limit
-intuition to the sole category of spatiality, maintaining that even
-time can only be intuited in terms of space. Others abandon the three
-dimensions of space as not philosophically necessary, and conceive the
-function of spatiality as void of all particular spatial determination.
-But what could such a spatial function be, a simple arrangement that
-should arrange even time? It represents, surely, all that criticism
-and refutation have left standing--the bare demand for the affirmation
-of some intuitive activity in general. And is not this activity
-truly determined, when one single function is attributed to it, not
-spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing? Or rather, when it
-is conceived as itself a category or function which gives us knowledge
-of things in their concreteness and individuality?
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and sensation._]
-
-Having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion of
-intellectualism and from every later and external addition, we must
-now explain it and determine its limits from another side and defend
-it from a different kind of invasion and confusion. On the hither side
-of the lower limit is sensation, formless matter, which the spirit can
-never apprehend in itself as simple matter. This it can only possess
-with form and in form, but postulates the notion of it as a mere limit.
-Matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity; it is what the
-spirit of man suffers, but does not produce. Without it no human
-knowledge or activity is possible; but mere matter produces animality,
-whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritual dominion,
-which is humanity. How often we strive to understand clearly what is
-passing within us! We do catch a glimpse of something, but this does
-not appear to the mind as objectified and formed. It is in such moments
-as these that we best perceive the profound difference between matter
-and form. These are not two acts of ours, opposed to one another; but
-the one is outside us and assaults and sweeps us off our feet, while
-the other inside us tends to absorb and identify itself with that
-which is outside. Matter, clothed and conquered by form, produces
-concrete form. It is the matter, the content, which differentiates one
-of our intuitions from another: the form is constant: it is spiritual
-activity, while matter is changeable. Without matter spiritual
-activity would not forsake its abstractness to become concrete and
-real activity, this or that spiritual content, this or that definite
-intuition.
-
-It is a curious fact, characteristic of our times, that this very form,
-this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is
-so often ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of
-man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of what is called
-nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity,
-save when we imagine, with Æsop, that "_arbores loquuntur non tantum
-ferae._" Some affirm that they have never observed in themselves this
-"miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only
-one of quantity, between sweating and thinking, feeling cold and the
-energy of the will. Others, certainly with greater reason, would
-unify activity and mechanism in a more general concept, though they
-are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain for the moment
-from examining if such a final unification be possible, and in what
-sense, but admitting that the attempt may be made, it is clear that
-to unify two concepts in a third implies to begin with the admission
-of a difference between the two first. Here it is this difference that
-concerns us and we set it in relief.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and association._]
-
-Intuition has sometimes been confused with simple sensation. But since
-this confusion ends by being offensive to common sense, it has more
-frequently been attenuated or concealed with a phraseology apparently
-designed at once to confuse and to distinguish them. Thus, it has
-been asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple
-sensation as _association_ of sensations. Here a double meaning is
-concealed in the word "association." Association is understood, either
-as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that
-case the claim to unite in memory elements which are not intuited,
-distinguished, possessed in some way by the spirit and produced by
-consciousness, seems inconceivable: or it is understood as association
-of unconscious elements, in which case we remain in the world of
-sensation and of nature. But if with certain associationists we speak
-of an association which is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but
-a _productive_ association (formative, constructive, distinguishing);
-then our contention is admitted and only its name is denied to it.
-For productive association is no longer association in the sense
-of the sensationalists, but _synthesis,_ that is to say, spiritual
-activity. Synthesis may be called association; but with the concept of
-productivity is already posited the distinction between passivity and
-activity, between sensation and intuition.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and representation._]
-
-Other psychologists are disposed to distinguish from sensation
-something which is sensation no longer, but is not yet intellectual
-concept: the _representation_ or _image._ What is the difference
-between their representation or image and our intuitive knowledge?
-Everything and nothing: for "representation" is a very equivocal word.
-If by representation be understood something cut off and standing
-out from the psychic basis of the sensations, then representation is
-intuition. If, on the other hand, it be conceived as complex sensation
-we are back once more in crude sensation, which does not vary in
-quality according to its richness or poverty, or according to whether
-the organism in which it appears is rudimentary or highly developed
-and full of traces of past sensations. Nor is the ambiguity remedied
-by defining representation as a psychic product of secondary degree
-in relation to sensation, defined as occupying the first place. What
-does secondary degree mean here? Does it mean a qualitative, formal
-difference? If so, representation is an elaboration of sensation
-and therefore intuition. Or does it mean greater complexity and
-complication, a quantitative, material difference? In that case
-intuition is once more confused with simple sensation.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and expression._]
-
-And yet there is a sure method of distinguishing true intuition, true
-representation, from that which is inferior to it: the spiritual fact
-from the mechanical, passive, natural fact. Every true intuition or
-representation is also _expression._ That which does not objectify
-itself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensation
-and mere natural fact. The spirit only intuites in making, forming,
-expressing. He who separates intuition from expression never succeeds
-in reuniting them.
-
-Intuitive activity _possesses intuitions to the extent that it
-expresses them._ Should this proposition sound paradoxical, that is
-partly because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given to
-the word "expression." It is generally restricted to what are called
-verbal expressions alone. But there exist also non-verbal expressions,
-such as those of line, colour and sound, and to all of these must
-be extended our affirmation, which embraces therefore every sort of
-manifestation of the man, as orator, musician, painter, or anything
-else. But be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or in whatever other
-form it appear, to no intuition can expression in one of its forms be
-wanting; it is, in fact, an inseparable part of intuition. How can we
-really possess an intuition of a geometrical figure, unless we possess
-so accurate an image of it as to be able to trace it immediately upon
-paper or on the blackboard?
-
-How can we really have an intuition of the contour of a region, for
-example of the island of Sicily, if we are not able to draw it as
-it is in all its meanderings? Every one can experience the internal
-illumination which follows upon his success in formulating to
-himself his impressions and feelings, but only so far as he is able
-to formulate them. Feelings or impressions, then, pass by means of
-words from the obscure region of the soul into the clarity of the
-contemplative spirit. It is impossible to distinguish intuition from
-expression in this cognitive process. The one appears with the other at
-the same instant, because they are not two, but one.
-
-[Sidenote: _Illusion as to their difference._]
-
-The principal reason which makes our view appear paradoxical as we
-maintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more
-complete intuition of reality than we really do. One often hears people
-say that they have many great thoughts in their minds, but that they
-are not able to express them. But if they really had them, they would
-have coined them into just so many beautiful, sounding words, and thus
-have expressed them. If these thoughts seem to vanish or to become few
-and meagre in the act of expressing them, the reason is that they did
-not exist or really were few and meagre. People think that all of us
-ordinary men imagine and intuite countries, figures and scenes like
-painters, and bodies like sculptors; save that painters and sculptors
-know how to paint and carve such images, while we bear them unexpressed
-in our souls. They believe that any one could have imagined a Madonna
-of Raphæl; but that Raphæl was Raphæl owing to his technical ability
-in putting the Madonna upon canvas. Nothing can be more false than
-this view. The world which as a rule we intuite is a small thing. It
-consists of little expressions, which gradually become greater and
-wider with the increasing spiritual concentration of certain moments.
-They are the words we say to ourselves, our silent judgments: "Here
-is a man, here is a horse, this is heavy, this is sharp, this pleases
-me," etc. It is a medley of light and colour, with no greater pictorial
-value than would be expressed by a haphazard splash of colours, from
-among which one could barely make out a few special, distinctive
-traits. This and nothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life;
-this is the basis of our ordinary action. It is the index of a book.
-The labels tied to things (it has been said) take the place of the
-things themselves. This index and these labels (themselves expressions)
-suffice for small needs and small actions. From time to time we pass
-from the index to the book, from the label to the thing, or from the
-slight to the greater intuitions, and from these to the greatest and
-most lofty. This passage is sometimes far from easy. It has been
-observed by those who have best studied the psychology of artists that
-when, after having given a rapid glance at any one, they attempt to
-obtain a real intuition of him, in order, for example, to paint his
-portrait, then this ordinary vision, that seemed so precise, so lively,
-reveals itself as little better than nothing. What remains is found to
-be at the most some superficial trait, which would not even suffice for
-a caricature. The person to be painted stands before the artist like a
-world to discover. Michæl Angelo said, "One paints, not with the hands,
-but with the brain." Leonardo shocked the prior of the Convent of the
-Graces by standing for days together gazing at the "Last Supper,"
-without touching it with the brush. He remarked of this attitude: "The
-minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they are
-doing the least external work." The painter is a painter, because he
-sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse of, but do not see. We
-think we see a smile, but in reality we have only a vague impression
-of it, we do not perceive all the characteristic traits of which it
-is the sum, as the painter discovers them after he has worked upon
-them and is thus able to fix them on the canvas. We do not intuitively
-possess more even of our intimate friend, who is with us every day
-and at all hours, than at most certain traits of physiognomy which
-enable us to distinguish him from others. The illusion is less easy as
-regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to every
-one to say that the composer had added or attached notes to a motive
-which was already in the mind of him who is not the composer; as if
-Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not his own intuition and his intuition
-the Ninth Symphony. Now, just as one who is deluded as to the amount
-of his material wealth is confuted by arithmetic, which states its
-exact amount, so he who nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his
-own thoughts and images is brought back to reality, when he is obliged
-to cross the _Pons Asinorum_ of expression. Let us say to the former,
-count; to the latter, speak; or, here is a pencil, draw, express
-yourself.
-
-Each of us, as a matter of fact, has in him a little of the poet, of
-the sculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer:
-but how little, as compared with those who bear those names, just
-because they possess the most universal dispositions and energies
-of human nature in so lofty a degree! How little too does a painter
-possess of the intuitions of a poet! And how little does one painter
-possess those of another painter! Nevertheless, that little is all
-our actual patrimony of intuitions or representations. Beyond these
-are only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions, or
-whatever else one may term what still falls short of the spirit and is
-not assimilated by man; something postulated for the convenience of
-exposition, while actually non-existent, since to exist also is a fact
-of the spirit.
-
-[Sidenote: _Identity of intuition and expression._]
-
-We may thus add this to the various verbal descriptions of intuition,
-noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge.
-Independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function;
-indifferent to later empirical discriminations, to reality and to
-unreality, to formations and apperceptions of space and time, which are
-also later: intuition or representation is distinguished as _form_ from
-what is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or from
-psychic matter; and this form, this taking possession, is expression.
-To intuite is to express; and nothing else (nothing more, but nothing
-less) than _to express._
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-INTUITION AND ART
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Corollaries and explanations._]
-
-Before proceeding further, it may be well to draw certain consequences
-from what has been established and to add some explanations.
-
-[Sidenote: _Identity of art and intuitive knowledge._]
-
-We have frankly identified intuitive or expressive knowledge with the
-æsthetic or artistic fact, taking works of art as examples of intuitive
-knowledge and attributing to them the characteristics of intuition, and
-_vice versa._ But our identification is combated by a view held even by
-many philosophers, who consider art to be an intuition of an altogether
-special sort. "Let us admit" (they say) "that art is intuition; but
-intuition is not always art: artistic intuition is a distinct species
-differing from intuition in general by something _more_."
-
-[Sidenote: _No specific difference._]
-
-But no one has ever been able to indicate of what this something more
-consists. It has sometimes been thought that art is not a simple
-intuition, but an intuition of an intuition, in the same way as the
-concept of science has been defined, not as the ordinary concept,
-but as the concept of a concept. Thus man would attain to art by
-objectifying, not his sensations, as happens with ordinary intuition,
-but intuition itself. But this process of raising to a second power
-does not exist; and the comparison of it with the ordinary and
-scientific concept does not prove what is intended, for the good
-reason that it is not true that the scientific concept is the concept
-of a concept. If this comparison proves anything, it proves just the
-opposite. The ordinary concept, if it be really a concept and not a
-simple representation, is a perfect concept, however poor and limited.
-Science substitutes concepts for representations; for those concepts
-that are poor and limited it substitutes others, larger and more
-comprehensive; it is ever discovering new relations. But its method
-does not differ from that by which is formed the smallest universal
-in the brain of the humblest of men. What is generally called _par
-excellence_ art, collects intuitions that are wider and more complex
-than those which we generally experience, but these intuitions are
-always of sensations and impressions.
-
-Art is expression of impressions, not expression of expression.
-
-[Sidenote: _No difference of intensity._]
-
-For the same reason, it cannot be asserted that the intuition, which is
-generally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as intensive
-intuition. This would be the case if it were to operate differently on
-the same matter. But since the artistic function is extended to wider
-fields, yet does not differ in method from ordinary intuition, the
-difference between them is not intensive but extensive. The intuition
-of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very
-nearly, as any declaration of love that issues at every moment from the
-lips of thousands of ordinary men, may be intensively perfect in its
-poor simplicity, although it be extensively so much more limited than
-the complex intuition of a love-song by Leopardi.
-
-[Sidenote: _The difference is extensive and empirical._]
-
-The whole difference, then, is quantitative, and as such is indifferent
-to philosophy, _scientia qualitatum._ Certain men have a greater
-aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express certain
-complex states of the soul. These men are known in ordinary language
-as artists. Some very complicated and difficult expressions are not
-often achieved, and these are called works of art. The limits of
-the expression-intuitions that are called art, as opposed to those
-that are vulgarly called non-art, are empirical and impossible to
-define. If an epigram be art, why not a simple word? If a story, why
-not the news-jottings of the journalist? If a landscape, why not a
-topographical sketch? The teacher of philosophy in Molière's comedy was
-right: "whenever we speak, we create prose." But there will always be
-scholars like Monsieur Jourdain, astonished at having spoken prose for
-forty years without knowing it, who will have difficulty in persuading
-themselves that when they call their servant John to bring their
-slippers, they have spoken nothing less than--prose.
-
-We must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principal
-reasons which have prevented Æsthetic, the science of art, from
-revealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature,
-has been its separation from the general spiritual life, the having
-made of it a sort of special function or aristocratic club. No one
-is astonished when he learns from physiology that every cell is an
-organism and every organism a cell or synthesis of cells. No one is
-astonished at finding in a lofty mountain the same chemical elements
-that compose a small stone fragment. There is not one physiology of
-small animals and one of large animals; nor is there a special chemical
-theory of stones as distinct from mountains. In the same way, there is
-not a science of lesser intuition as distinct from a science of greater
-intuition, nor one of ordinary intuition as distinct from artistic
-intuition. There is but one Æsthetic, the science of intuitive or
-expressive knowledge, which is the æsthetic or artistic fact. And this
-Æsthetic is the true analogue of Logic, which includes, as facts of the
-same nature, the formation of the smallest and most ordinary concept
-and the most complicated scientific and philosophical system.
-
-[Sidenote: _Artistic genius._]
-
-Nor can we admit that the word _genius_ or artistic genius, as
-distinct from the non-genius of the ordinary man, possesses more than
-a quantitative signification. Great artists are said to reveal us to
-ourselves. But how could this be possible, unless there were identity
-of nature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference
-were only one of quantity? It were better to change _poeta nascitur_
-into _homo nascitur poeta_: some men are born great poets, some small.
-The cult of the genius with all its attendant superstitions has arisen
-from this quantitative difference having been taken as a difference of
-quality. It has been forgotten that genius is not something that has
-fallen from heaven, but humanity itself. The man of genius who poses or
-is represented as remote from humanity finds his punishment in becoming
-or appearing somewhat ridiculous. Examples of this are the _genius_ of
-the romantic period and the _superman_ of our time.
-
-But it is well to note here, that those who claim unconsciousness as
-the chief quality of an artistic genius, hurl him from an eminence
-far above humanity to a position far below it. Intuitive or artistic
-genius, like every form of human activity, is always conscious;
-otherwise it would be blind mechanism. The only thing that can be
-wanting to artistic genius is the _reflective_ consciousness, the
-superadded consciousness of the historian or critic, which is not
-essential to it.
-
-[Sidenote: _Content and form in Æsthetic._]
-
-The relation between matter and form, or between _content_ and
-_form,_ as is generally said, is one of the most disputed questions
-in Æsthetic. Does the æsthetic fact consist of content alone, or of
-form alone, or of both together? This question has taken on various
-meanings, which we shall mention, each in its place. But when these
-words are taken as signifying what we have above defined, and matter is
-understood as emotionality not æsthetically elaborated, or impressions,
-and form as intellectual activity and expression, then our view cannot
-be in doubt. We must, that is to say, reject both the thesis that makes
-the æsthetic fact to consist of the content alone (that is, the simple
-impressions), and the thesis which makes it to consist of a junction
-between form and content, that is, of impressions plus expressions.
-In the æsthetic fact, expressive activity is not added to the fact of
-the impressions, but these latter are formed and elaborated by it. The
-impressions reappear as it were in expression, like water put into a
-filter, which reappears the same and yet different on the other side.
-The æsthetic fact, therefore, is form, and nothing but form.
-
-From this was inferred not that the content is something superfluous
-(it is, on the contrary, the necessary point of departure for the
-expressive fact); but that _there is no passage_ from the qualities of
-the content to those of the form. It has sometimes been thought that
-the content, in order to be æsthetic, that is to say, transformable
-into form, should possess some determined or determinable qualities.
-But were that so, then form and content, expression and impression,
-would be the same thing. It is true that the content is that which
-is convertible into form, but it has no determinable qualities until
-this transformation takes place. We know nothing about it. It does not
-become æsthetic content before, but only after it has been actually
-transformed. The æsthetic content has also been defined as the
-_interesting._ That is not an untrue statement; it is merely void of
-meaning. Interesting to what? To the expressive activity? Certainly
-the expressive activity would not have raised the content to the
-dignity of form, had it not been interested in it. Being interested is
-precisely the raising of the content to the dignity of form. But the
-word "interesting" has also been employed in another and a illegitimate
-sense, which we shall explain further on.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the imitation of nature and of the artistic
-illusion._]
-
-The proposition that art is _imitation of nature_ has also several
-meanings. Sometimes truths have been expressed or at least shadowed
-forth in these words, sometimes errors have been promulgated. More
-frequently, no definite thought has been expressed at all. One of
-the scientifically legitimate meanings occurs when "imitation" is
-understood as representation or intuition of nature, a form of
-knowledge. And when the phrase is used with this intention, and in
-order to emphasize the spiritual character of the process, another
-proposition becomes legitimate also: namely, that art is the
-_idealization_ or _idealizing_ imitation of nature. But if by imitation
-of nature be understood that art gives mechanical reproductions,
-more or less perfect duplicates of natural objects, in the presence
-of which is renewed the same tumult of impressions as that caused
-by natural objects, then the proposition is evidently false. The
-coloured waxen effigies that imitate the life, before which we stand
-astonished in the museums where such things are shown, do not give
-æsthetic intuitions. Illusion and hallucination have nothing to do
-with the calm domain of artistic intuition. But on the other hand if
-an artist paint the interior of a wax-work museum, or if an actor
-give a burlesque portrait of a man-statue on the stage, we have work
-of the spirit and artistic intuition. Finally, if photography have in
-it anything artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the
-intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and grouping
-which he has striven to attain. And if photography be not quite an art,
-that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or
-less unconquered and ineradicable. Do we ever, indeed, feel complete
-satisfaction before even the best of photographs? Would not an artist
-vary and touch up much or little, remove or add something to all of
-them?
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of art conceived as a fact of feeling, not a
-theoretical fact. Æsthetic appearance, and feeling._]
-
-The statements repeated so often, that art is not knowledge, that
-it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong to the world of
-theory, but to the world of feeling, and so forth, arise from the
-failure to realize exactly the theoretic character of simple intuition.
-This simple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge,
-as it is distinct from perception of the real; and the statements
-quoted above arise from the belief that only intellectual cognition is
-knowledge. We have seen that intuition is knowledge, free from concepts
-and more simple than the so-called perception of the real. Therefore
-art is knowledge, form; it does not belong to the world of feeling or
-to psychic matter. The reason why so many æstheticians have so often
-insisted that art is _appearance_ (_Schein_), is precisely that they
-have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the more complex fact
-of perception, by maintaining its pure intuitiveness. And if for the
-same reason it has been claimed that art is _feeling_ the reason is
-the same. For if the concept as content of art, and historical reality
-as such, be excluded from the sphere of art, there remains no other
-content than reality apprehended in all its ingenuousness and immediacy
-in the vital impulse, in its _feeling,_ that is to say again, pure
-intuition.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of æsthetic senses._]
-
-The theory of the _æsthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure to
-establish, or from having lost to view, the character of expression as
-distinct from impression, of form as distinct from matter.
-
-This theory can be reduced to the error just indicated of wishing to
-find a passage from the qualities of the content to those of the form.
-To ask, in fact, what the æsthetic senses are, implies asking what
-sensible impressions are able to enter into æsthetic expressions, and
-which must of necessity do so. To this we must at once reply, that
-all impressions can enter into æsthetic expressions or formations,
-but that none are bound to do so of necessity. Dante raised to the
-dignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire"
-(visual impressions), but also tactual or thermic impressions, such as
-the "dense air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch the more" the
-throat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visual
-impressions is a curious illusion. The bloom on a cheek, the warmth of
-a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the edge of a
-sharp knife, are not these, too, impressions obtainable from a picture?
-Are they visual? What would a picture mean to an imaginary man, lacking
-all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the organ
-of sight alone? The picture we are looking at and believe we see only
-with our eyes would seem to his eyes to be little more than an artist's
-paint-smeared palette.
-
-Some who hold firmly to the æsthetic character of certain groups of
-impressions (for example, the visual and auditive), and exclude others,
-are nevertheless ready to admit that if visual and auditive impressions
-enter _directly_ into the æsthetic fact, those of the other senses
-also enter into it, but only as _associated._ But this distinction is
-altogether arbitrary. Æsthetic expression is synthesis, in which it
-is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are
-placed by it on a level, in so far as they are æstheticized. A man who
-absorbs the subject of a picture or poem does not have it before him as
-a series of impressions, some of which have prerogatives and precedence
-over the others. He knows nothing as to what has happened prior to
-having absorbed it, just as, on the other hand, distinctions made after
-reflexion have nothing whatever to do with art as such.
-
-The theory of the æsthetic senses has also been presented in another
-way; as an attempt to establish what physiological organs are necessary
-for the æsthetic fact. The physiological organ or apparatus is nothing
-but a group of cells, constituted and disposed in a particular manner;
-that is to say, it is a merely physical and natural fact or concept.
-But expression does not know physiological facts. Expression has its
-point of departure in the impressions, and the physiological path
-by which these have found their way to the mind is to it altogether
-indifferent. One way or another comes to the same thing: it suffices
-that they should be impressions.
-
-It is true that the want of given organs, that is, of certain groups of
-cells, prevents the formation of certain impressions (when these are
-not otherwise obtained through a kind of organic compensation). The
-man born blind cannot intuite and express light. But the impressions
-are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by the stimuli which
-operate upon the organ. One who has never had the impression of the sea
-will never be able to express it, in the same way as one who has never
-had the impression of the life of high society or of the political
-arena will never express either. This, however, does not prove the
-dependence of the expressive function on the stimulus or on the
-organ. It merely repeats what we know already: expression presupposes
-impression, and particular expressions particular impressions. For the
-rest, every impression excludes other impressions during the moment in
-which it dominates; and so does every expression.
-
-[Sidenote: _Unity and indivisibility of the work of art._]
-
-Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the
-_indivisibility_ of the work of art. Every expression is a single
-expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic
-whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation
-that the work of art should have _unity,_ or, what amounts to the same
-thing, _unity in variety._ Expression is a synthesis of the various, or
-multiple, in the one.
-
-The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, a poem into scenes,
-episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and
-objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem opposed to this
-affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividing the
-organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the living
-being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms in which
-division gives rise to other living beings, but in such a case we must
-conclude, maintaining the analogy between the organism and the work of
-art, that in the latter case too there are numerous germs of life each
-ready to grow, in a moment, into a single complete expression.
-
-It may be said that expression sometimes arises from other expressions.
-There are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. One must surely
-admit some difference between the _eureka,_ with which Archimedes
-expressed all his joy at his discovery, and the expressive act (indeed
-all the five acts) of a regular tragedy.--Not in the least: expression
-always arises directly from impressions. He who conceives a tragedy
-puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of impressions:
-expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused
-together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as we can
-cast into a melting furnace formless pieces of bronze and choicest
-statuettes. Those choicest statuettes must be melted just like the
-pieces of bronze, before there can be a new statue. The old expressions
-must descend again to the level of impressions, in order to be
-synthesized in a new single expression.
-
-[Sidenote: _Art as liberator._]
-
-By elaborating his impressions, man _frees_ himself from them. By
-objectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself their
-superior. The liberating and purifying function of art is another
-aspect and another formula of its character as activity. Activity is
-the deliverer, just because it drives away passivity.
-
-This also explains why it is usual to attribute to artists both the
-maximum of sensibility or _passion_, and the maximum of insensibility
-or Olympian _serenity._ The two characters are compatible, for they do
-not refer to the same object. The sensibility or passion relates to
-the rich material which the artist absorbs into his psychic organism;
-the insensibility or serenity to the form with which he subdues and
-dominates the tumult of the sensations and passions.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-ART AND PHILOSOPHY
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Inseparability of intellectual from intuitive knowledge._]
-
-The two forms of knowledge, æsthetic and intellectual or conceptual,
-are indeed different, but this does not altogether amount to separation
-and disjunction, as of two forces each pulling in its own direction.
-If we have shown that the æsthetic form is altogether independent of
-the intellectual and suffices to itself without external support, we
-have not said that the intellectual can stand without the æsthetic. To
-describe the independence as _reciprocal_ would not be true.
-
-What is knowledge by concepts? It is knowledge of the relations of
-things, and things are intuitions. Concepts are not possible without
-intuitions, just as intuition is itself impossible without the matter
-of impressions. Intuitions are: this river, this lake, this brook,
-this rain, this glass of water; the concept is: water, not this or
-that appearance and particular example of water, but water in general,
-in whatever time or place it be realized; the material of infinite
-intuitions, but of one single constant concept.
-
-But the concept, the universal, if it be no longer intuition in one
-respect, is intuition in another respect, and cannot fail of being
-intuition. The man who thinks has impressions and emotions, in so far
-as he thinks. His impression and emotion will be not love or hate,
-not the passion of the man who is not a philosopher, not hate or love
-for certain objects and individuals, but _the effort of his thought
-itself,_ with the pain and the joy, the love and the hate joined to it.
-This effort cannot but assume an intuitive form, in becoming objective
-to the spirit. To speak is not to think logically; but to _think
-logically_ is also to _speak._
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the negations of this thesis._]
-
-That thought cannot exist without speech, is a truth generally
-admitted. The negations of this thesis are all founded on equivocations
-and errors.
-
-The first of the equivocations is that of those who observe that one
-can likewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers,
-ideographic signs, without any word, even pronounced silently and
-almost insensibly within one; that there are languages in which the
-word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless the written sign
-also be examined, and so on. But when we said "speak," we intended
-to employ a synecdoche, by which was to be understood "expression"
-in general, for we have already remarked that expression is not only
-so-called verbal expression. It may or may not be true that certain
-concepts may be thought without phonetic manifestations. But the very
-examples adduced to show this also prove that those concepts never
-exist without expressions.
-
-Others point out that animals, or certain animals, think and reason
-without speaking. Now as to how, whether, and what animals think,
-whether they be rudimentary men, like savages who refuse to be
-civilized, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists
-maintained, are questions that do not concern us here. When the
-philosopher talks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature
-and the like, he does not base himself on such conjectures as to
-dogs or cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called
-animal and brutal in man: of the animal side or basis of what we feel
-in ourselves. If individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants,
-possess something of the activity of man, so much the better, or so
-much the worse, for them. This means that in respect to them also we
-must talk, not of "nature" as a whole, but of its animal basis, as
-being perhaps larger and stronger in them than the animal basis of
-man. And if we suppose that animals think and form concepts, what kind
-of conjecture would justify the assertion that they do so without
-corresponding expressions? Analogy with man, knowledge of the spirit,
-human psychology, the instrument of all our conjectures as to animal
-psychology, would constrain us on the contrary to suppose that if they
-think in any way, they also somehow speak.
-
-Another objection is derived from human psychology, and indeed literary
-psychology, to the effect that the concept can exist without the word,
-for it is certainly true that we all know books _well thought and
-ill written_: that is to say, a thought which remains _beyond_ the
-expression, or _notwithstanding_ faulty expression. But when we talk of
-books well thought and ill written, we cannot mean anything but that in
-such books are parts, pages, periods or propositions well thought and
-well written, and other parts (perhaps the least important) ill thought
-and ill written, not really thought and so not really expressed. Where
-Vico's _Scienza nuova_ is really ill written, it is also ill thought.
-If we pass from the consideration of big books to a short sentence, the
-error or inaccuracy of such a contention will leap to the eyes. How
-could a single sentence be clearly thought and confusedly written?
-
-All that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts
-(concepts) in an intuitive form, which is an abbreviated or rather
-peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient to
-communicate it easily to any other given person or persons. Hence it
-is incorrect to say that we have the thought without the expression;
-whereas we should rather say that we have, indeed, the expression, but
-in such a form that it is not easy to communicate it to others. This,
-however, is a very variable, relative fact. There are always those who
-catch our thought on the wing, prefer it in this abbreviated form,
-and would be wearied by the greater development of it required by
-others. In other words, the thought considered abstractly and logically
-will be the same; but æsthetically we are dealing with two different
-intuition-expressions, into which different psychological elements
-enter. The same argument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret
-correctly, the altogether empirical distinctior between an _internal_
-and an _external_ language.
-
-[Sidenote: _Art and science._]
-
-The most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and of
-intuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, Art and
-Science. Art and Science, then, are different and yet linked together;
-they meet on one side, which is the æsthetic side. Every scientific
-work is also a work of art. The æsthetic side may remain little noticed
-when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort to understand the
-thought of the man of science and to examine its truth. But it is no
-longer unnoticed when we pass from the activity of understanding to
-that of contemplation and see that thought either develop itself before
-us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous or insufficient
-words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken,
-embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes called great
-writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less
-fragmentary writers even if their fragments have the scientific value
-of harmonious, coherent, and perfect works.
-
-We pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. The
-fragments, the flashes, console us for the whole, because it is far
-easier to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary
-work of genius, to liberate the flame latent in the spark, than to
-achieve the discovery of genius. But how can we pardon mediocre
-expression in pure artists? "_Mediocribus esse poetis non di, non
-homines, non concessere columnae_" The poet or painter who lacks
-form, lacks everything, because he lacks _himself._ Poetical material
-permeates the souls of all: the expression alone, that is to say,
-the form, makes the poet. And here appears the truth of the view
-which denies all content to art, just the intellectual concept being
-understood as content. In this sense, when we take "content" as equal
-to "concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist of
-content, but also that _it has no content._
-
-[Sidenote: _Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry._]
-
-The distinction between _poetry and prose_ also cannot be justified,
-save as that between art and science. It was seen in antiquity that
-such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such as
-rhythm and metre, or on rhymed or unrhymed form; that it was, on the
-contrary, altogether internal. Poetry is the language of feeling, prose
-of the intellect; but since the intellect is also feeling, in its
-concreteness and reality, all prose has its poetical side.
-
-[Sidenote: _The relation of first and second degree._]
-
-The relation between intuitive knowledge or expression and intellectual
-knowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannot
-be otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of _double degree._
-The first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the first
-can stand without the second, but the second cannot stand without the
-first. There is poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry.
-Expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. Poetry
-is "the mother tongue of the human race"; the first men "were by nature
-sublime poets." We assert this in another way, when we observe that
-the passage from soul to spirit, from animal to human activity, is
-effected by means of language. And this should be said of intuition
-or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to
-define language or expression as an _intermediate_ link between nature
-and humanity, as though it were a mixture of both. Where humanity
-appears, the other has already disappeared; the man who expresses
-himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does
-emerge: he does not stand half within and half without, as the use of
-the phrase "intermediate link" would imply.
-
-[Sidenote: _Non-existence of other forms of knowledge._]
-
-The cognitive spirit has no form other than these two. Expression and
-concept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man is
-spent in passing from one to the other and back again.
-
-[Sidenote: _Historicity. Its identity with and difference from art._]
-
-_Historicity_ is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form.
-Historicity is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but
-intuition or æsthetic fact. History does not seek for laws nor form
-concepts; it employs neither induction nor deduction; it is directed
-_ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum_; it does not construct universals
-and abstractions, but posits intuitions. The this and here, the
-_individuum omnimode determinatum,_ is its domain, as it is the domain
-of art. History, therefore, is included in the universal concept of art.
-
-As against this doctrine, in view of the impossibility of conceiving
-a third mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward which
-would lead to the affiliation of history to intellectual or scientific
-knowledge. The greater portion of these objections is animated by the
-prejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptual
-science something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. This
-really arises from a false idea of art, conceived not as an essential
-theoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity.
-Without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned
-is finally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been
-and still is widely repeated. Its purpose is to show the logical and
-scientific nature of history. The sophism consists in admitting that
-historical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not the
-representation, it is added, but rather the concept of the individual.
-From this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific
-form of knowledge. History, in fact, is supposed to work out the
-concept of a personage such as Charlemagne or Napoleon; of an epoch,
-like the Renaissance or the Reformation; of an event, such as the
-French Revolution and the Unification of Italy. This it is held to do
-in the same way as Geometry works out the concepts of spatial forms, or
-Æsthetic that of expression. But all this is untrue. History cannot do
-otherwise than _represent_ Napoleon and Charlemagne, the Renaissance
-and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy
-as individual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the
-sense in which logicians use the word "represent" when they say that
-one cannot have a concept of the individual, but only a representation.
-The so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or
-general concept, full of characteristics, supremely full, if you like,
-but however full it be, incapable of attaining to that individuality to
-which historical knowledge, as æsthetic knowledge, alone attains.
-
-To show how the content of history comes to be distinguished from
-that of art in the narrow sense, we must recall what has already
-been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first
-perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. Only
-at a later stage does the spirit form the concepts of external and
-internal, of what has happened and what is desired, of object and
-subject, and the like: only at this later stage, that is, does it
-distinguish historical from non-historical intuition, the _real_ from
-the _unreal,_ real imagination from pure imagination. Even internal
-facts, what is desired and imagined, castles in the air, and countries
-of Cockaigne, have their reality, and the soul, too, has its history.
-His illusions form part of the biography of every individual as real
-facts. But the history of an individual soul is history, because
-the distinction between the real and the unreal is always active
-in it, even when the illusions themselves are the real. But these
-distinctive concepts do not appear in history like the concepts of
-science, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and melted
-in the æsthetic intuitions, although in history they stand out in a
-manner altogether special to themselves. History does not construct
-the concepts of the real and unreal, but makes use of them. History,
-in fact, is not the theory of history. Mere conceptual analysis is
-of no use in ascertaining whether an event in our lives was real or
-imaginary. We must mentally reproduce the intuitions in the most
-complete form, as they were at the moment of production. Historicity
-is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination as any one
-intuition is distinguished from any other: in memory.
-
-[Sidenote: _Historical criticism._]
-
-Where this is not possible, where the delicate and fleeting shades
-between the real and unreal intuitions are so slight as to mingle
-the one with the other, we must either renounce for the time being at
-least the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or
-we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability. The
-principle of verisimilitude and of probability in fact dominates all
-historical criticism. Examination of sources and authorities is devoted
-to establishing the most credible evidence. And what is the most
-credible evidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those
-who best remember and (be it understood) have not wished to falsify,
-nor had interest in falsifying the truth of things?
-
-[Sidenote: _Historical scepticism._]
-
-From this it follows that intellectualistic scepticism finds it easy
-to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history
-differs from that of science. It is the certainty of memory and
-of authority, not that of analysis and demonstration. To speak of
-historical induction or demonstration is to make a metaphorical use of
-these expressions, which bear a quite different meaning in history to
-that which they bear in science. The conviction of the historian is the
-undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses,
-listened attentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him.
-Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a
-negligible minority compared with the occasions when he grasps the
-truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists in
-believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but what the
-individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlarge
-and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places
-is dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is,
-and taken as a whole it is rich in truth. Only in a spirit of paradox
-can one doubt that there ever was a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or a
-Cæsar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on
-the 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were fixed to the door of
-the church at Wittemberg, or that the Bastile was taken by the people
-of Paris on the 14th of July 1789.
-
-"What proof hast thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically.
-Humanity replies: "I remember it."
-
-[Sidenote: _Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural
-sciences, and their limits._]
-
-The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of historical fact,
-is the world called real, natural, including in this definition both
-the reality called physical and that called spiritual and human. All
-this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be shown as it
-realistically is; imaginary or artistic intuition in the narrow sense,
-if presented in the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the
-imaginable.
-
-Science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, not
-individuality but universality, cannot be anything but science of the
-spirit, that is, of what reality has of universal: Philosophy. If
-natural _sciences_ be spoken of, apart from philosophy, we must observe
-that these are not perfect sciences: they are aggregates of cognitions,
-arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. The so-called natural sciences
-indeed themselves recognize that they are surrounded by limitations,
-and these limitations are nothing but historical and intuitive data.
-They calculate, measure, establish equalities and uniformities,
-create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their own way how
-one fact arises out of other facts; but while doing this they are
-constantly running into facts known intuitively and historically.
-Even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses,
-since threedimensional or Euclidean space is but one of the possible
-spaces, selected for purposes of study because more convenient. What
-is true in the natural sciences is either philosophy or historical
-fact. What of properly naturalistic they contain, is abstraction and
-caprice. When the natural sciences wish to become perfect sciences,
-they must leave their circle and enter philosophy. They do this when
-they posit concepts which are anything but naturalistic, such as those
-of the unextended atom, of ether or vibration, of vital force, of
-non-intuitional space, and the like. These are true and proper attempts
-at philosophy, when they are not mere words void of meaning. The
-concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most useful; but one
-cannot obtain from them that _system_ which belongs only to the spirit.
-
-These historical and intuitive data which cannot be eliminated from the
-natural sciences furthermore explain not only how, with the advance
-of knowledge, what was once believed to be true sinks gradually to
-the level of mythological belief and fantastic illusion, but also how
-among natural scientists some are to be found who call everything in
-their sciences upon which reasoning is founded _mythical facts, verbal
-expedients,_ or _conventions._ Natural scientists and mathematicians
-who approach the study of the energies of the spirit without
-preparation, are apt to carry thither such mental habits and to speak
-in philosophy of such and such conventions as "decreed by man." They
-make conventions of truth and morality, and a supreme convention of
-the Spirit itself! But if there are to be conventions, something must
-exist which is no convention, but is itself the author of conventions.
-This is the spiritual activity of man. The limitation of the natural
-sciences postulates the illimitability of philosophy.
-
-[Sidenote: _The phenomenon and the noumenon._]
-
-These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental
-forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--Art, and
-Science or Philosophy. With these are to be included History, which
-is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the
-concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions,
-while remaining concrete and individual. All other forms (natural
-sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous
-elements of practical origin. Intuition gives us the world, the
-phenomenon; the concept gives us the noumenon, the Spirit.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN ÆSTHETIC
-
-
-These relations between intuitive or æsthetic knowledge and the other
-fundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitely
-established, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a series
-of theories which have been, or are, presented as theories of Æsthetic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of probability and of naturalism._]
-
-From the confusion between the demands of art in general and the
-particular demands of history has resulted the theory (which has lost
-ground to-day, but was once dominant) of the _probable_ as the object
-of art. As is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the
-meaning of those who employed and employ the concept of probability
-has no doubt often been much more reasonable than their definition
-of the word. By probability used really to be meant the artistic
-_coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, its completeness
-and effectiveness, its actual presence. If "probable" be translated
-"coherent," a very just meaning will often be found in the discussions,
-examples, and judgements of the critics who employ this word. An
-improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really
-badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without
-artistic motive. It has been said with reason that even fairies and
-sprites must have probability, that is to say, be really sprites and
-fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. Sometimes the word "possible"
-has been used instead of "probable." As we have already remarked in
-passing, this word possible is synonymous with the imaginable or
-intuitible. Everything truly, that is to say coherently, imagined, is
-possible. But also, by a good many critics and theorists, the probable
-was taken to mean the historically credible, or that historical truth
-which is not demonstrable but conjecturable, not true but probable.
-This was the character which these theorists sought to impose upon art.
-Who does not remember how great a part was played in literary history
-by criticism based on probability, for example, censure of _Jerusalem
-Delivered,_ based upon the history of the Crusades, or of the Homeric
-poems, upon the probable customs of emperors and kings? Sometimes too
-the æsthetic reproduction of historical reality has been imposed upon
-art. This is another of the erroneous forms taken by the theory of the
-_imitation of nature._ Verism and naturalism also have afforded the
-spectacle of a confusion of the æsthetic fact with the processes of the
-natural sciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or
-romance.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of ideas in art, of theses in art and of the
-typical._]
-
-Confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophic
-sciences have been far more frequent. Thus it has often been held to
-be the task of art to expound concepts, to unite an intelligible with
-a sensible, to represent _ideas_ or _universals_; putting art in the
-place of science, that is, confusing the artistic function in general
-with the particular case in which it becomes æsthetico-logical.
-
-The theory of art as supporting _theses,_ of art considered as an
-individual representation exemplifying scientific laws, can be proved
-false in like manner. The example, as example, stands for the thing
-exemplified, and is thus an exposition of the universal, that is to
-say, a form of science, more or less popular or vulgarizing.
-
-The same may be said of the æsthetic theory of the _typical,_ when
-by type is understood, as it frequently is, the abstraction or the
-concept, and it is affirmed that art should make the _species_ shine
-in the _individual._ If individual be here understood by typical, we
-have here too a merely verbal variation. To typify would signify, in
-this case, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent
-the individual. Don Quixote is a type; but of what is he a type, save
-of all Don Quixotes? A type, so to speak, of himself. Certainly he
-is not a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense of
-reality, or of the love of glory. An infinite number of personages
-can be thought of under these concepts, who are not Don Quixotes. In
-other words, we find our own impressions fully determined and realized
-in the expression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). We
-call that expression typical, which we might call simply æsthetic. Thus
-poetical or artistic universals have sometimes been spoken of, only to
-show that the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the symbol and of the allegory._]
-
-Continuing to correct these errors, or to clear up misunderstandings,
-we shall also remark that the _symbol_ has sometimes been given as the
-essence of art. Now, if the symbol be conceived as inseparable from the
-artistic intuition, it is a synonym for the intuition itself, which
-always has an ideal character. There is no double bottom to art, but
-one only; in art all is symbolical, because all is ideal. But if the
-symbol be conceived as separable--if the symbol can be on one side,
-and on the other the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the
-intellectualist error: the so-called symbol is the exposition of an
-abstract concept, an _allegory_; it is science, or art aping science.
-But we must also be just toward the allegorical. Sometimes it is
-altogether harmless. Given the _Gerusalemme liberata,_ the allegory
-was imagined afterwards; given the _A done_ of Marino, the poet of
-the lascivious afterwards insinuated that it was written to show how
-"immoderate indulgence ends in pain"; given a statue of a beautiful
-woman, the sculptor can attach a label to the statue saying that
-it represents _Clemency_ or _Goodness._ This allegory that arrives
-attached to a finished work _post festum_ does not change the work of
-art. What then is it? It is an expression externally _added_ to another
-expression. A little page of prose is added to the _Gerusalemme,_
-expressing another thought of the poet; a verse or a strophe is added
-to the _Adone,_ expressing what the poet would like to make a part
-of his public believe; to the statue nothing but the single word:
-_Clemency_ or _Goodness._
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of artistic and literary kinds._]
-
-But the greatest triumph of the intellectualist error lies in the
-theory of artistic and literary kinds, which still has vogue in
-literary treatises and disturbs the critics and the historians of art.
-Let us observe its genesis.
-
-The human mind can pass from the æsthetic to the logical, just because
-the former is a first step in respect to the latter. It can destroy
-expression, that is, the thought of the individual, by thinking of the
-universal. It can gather up expressive facts into logical relations.
-We have already shown that this operation becomes in its turn concrete
-in an expression, but this does not mean that the first expressions
-have not been destroyed. They have yielded their place to the new
-æsthetico-logical expressions. When we are on the second step, we have
-left the first.
-
-One who enters a picture-gallery, or who reads a series of poems,
-having looked and read, may go further: he may seek out the nature and
-the relations of the things there expressed. Thus those pictures and
-compositions, each of which is an individual inexpressible in logical
-terms, are gradually resolved into universals and abstractions, such
-as _costumes, landscapes, portraits, domestic life, battles, animals,
-flowers, fruit, seascapes, lakes, deserts; tragic, comic, pathetic,
-cruel, lyrical, epic, dramatic, chivalrous, idyllic facts,_ and the
-like. They are often also resolved into merely quantitative categories,
-such as _miniature, picture, statuette, group, madrigal, ballad,
-sonnet, sonnet-sequence, poetry, poem, story, romance,_ and the like.
-
-When we think the concept _domestic life,_ or _chivalry,_ or _idyll,_
-or _cruelty,_ or one of the quantitative concepts mentioned above, the
-individual expressive fact from which we started has been abandoned.
-From æsthetes that we were, we have changed into logicians; from
-contemplators of expression, into reasoners. Certainly no objection
-can be made to such a process. In what other way could science arise,
-which, if it have æsthetic expressions presupposed in it, must yet go
-beyond them in order to fulfil its function? The logical or scientific
-form, as such, excludes the æsthetic form. He who begins to think
-scientifically has already ceased to contemplate æsthetically; although
-his thought assumes of necessity in its turn an æsthetic form, as has
-already been said, and as it would be superfluous to repeat.
-
-Error begins when we try to deduce the expression from the concept, and
-to find in what takes its place the laws of the thing whose place is
-taken; when the difference between the second and the first step has
-not been observed, and when, in consequence, we declare that we are
-standing on the first step, when we are really standing on the second.
-This error is known as the _theory of artistic and literary kinds._
-
-"What is the _æsthetic_ form of domestic life, of chivalry, of
-the idyll, of cruelty, and so forth? How should these contents be
-_represented_?" Such is the absurd problem implied in the theory of
-artistic and literary classes, when it has been shorn of excrescences
-and reduced to a simple formula. It is in this that consists all
-search after laws or rules of classes. Domestic life, chivalry, idyll,
-cruelty and the like, are not impressions, but concepts. They are not
-contents, but logical-æsthetic forms. You cannot express the form,
-for it is already itself expression. For what are the words cruelty,
-idyll, chivalry, domestic life, and so on, but the expression of those
-concepts?
-
-Even the most refined of such distinctions, which possess the most
-philosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as when works of art
-are divided into subjective and objective kinds, into lyric and epic,
-into works of feeling and decorative works. In æsthetic analysis it is
-impossible to separate subjective from objective, lyric from epic, the
-image of feeling from that of things.
-
-[Sidenote: _Errors derived from this theory in judgements on art._]
-
-From the theory of artistic and literary kinds derive those erroneous
-modes of judgement and of criticism, thanks to which, instead of asking
-before a work of art if it be expressive and what it expresses, whether
-it speak or stammer or is altogether silent, they ask if it obey the
-_laws_ of epic or of tragedy, of historical painting or of landscape.
-While making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned
-obedience, artists have, however, really always disregarded these _laws
-of the kinds._ Every true work of art has violated some established
-kind and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus been obliged to
-broaden the kinds, until finally even the broadened kind has proved too
-narrow, owing to the appearance of new works of art, naturally followed
-by new scandals, new upsettings and--new broadenings.
-
-To the same theory are due the prejudices, owing to which at one time
-(is it really passed?) people used to lament that Italy had no tragedy
-(until one arose who bestowed such a wreath, which alone of adornments
-was wanting to her glorious locks), nor France the epic poem (until the
-_Henriade,_ which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). Eulogies
-accorded to the inventors of new kinds are connected with these
-prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century the invention
-of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and the honour of
-it was disputed, as though it were the discovery of America. But the
-works adorned with this name (the _Secchia rapita_ and the _Scherno
-degli Dei_) were still-born, because their authors (a slight drawback)
-had nothing new or original to say. Mediocrities racked their brains to
-invent new kinds artificially. The _piscatorial_ eclogue was added to
-the _pastoral,_ and finally the _military_ eclogue. The _Aminta_ was
-dipped and became the _Alceo._ Finally, there have been historians of
-art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of kinds, that
-they claimed to write the history, not of individual and real literary
-and artistic works, but of those empty phantoms, their kinds. They have
-claimed to portray, not the evolution of the _artistic spirit,_ but the
-_evolution of kinds._
-
-The philosophical condemnation of artistic and literary kinds is found
-in the formulation and demonstration of what artistic activity has
-always done and good taste always recognized. What are we to do if good
-taste and the real fact, when reduced to formulas, sometimes assume
-the air of paradoxes?
-
-[Sidenote: _Empirical sense of the divisions of kinds._]
-
-It is not scientifically incorrect to talk of tragedies, comedies,
-dramas, romances, pictures of everyday life, battle-pieces, landscapes,
-seascapes, poems, versicles, lyrics, and the like, if it be only with
-a view to be understood, and to draw attention to certain groups
-of works, in general and approximately, to which, for one reason
-or another, it is desired to draw attention. To employ _words_ and
-_phrases_ is not to establish _laws_ and _definitions._ The mistake
-only arises when the weight of a scientific definition is given to a
-word, when we ingenuously let ourselves be caught in the meshes of
-that phraseology. Pray permit me a comparison. The books in a library
-must be arranged in one way or another. This used generally to be done
-by a rough classification of subjects (among which the categories of
-miscellaneous and eccentric were not wanting); they are now generally
-arranged by sizes or by publishers. Who can deny the necessity and
-the utility of such arrangements? But what should we say if some one
-began seriously to seek out the literary laws of miscellanies and of
-eccentricities, of the Aldines or Bodonis, of shelf A or shelf B,
-that is to say, of those altogether arbitrary groupings whose sole
-object was their practical utility. Yet should any one attempt such
-an undertaking, he would be doing neither more nor less than those do
-who seek out the _æsthetic laws_ which must in their belief control
-literary and artistic kinds.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN THE THEORY OF HISTORY AND IN LOGIC
-
-
-The better to confirm these criticisms, it will be useful to cast a
-rapid glance over analogous and opposite errors, due to ignorance as
-to the true nature of art and its relation to history and to science.
-These errors have injured alike the theory of history and that of
-science, Historic (or Historiology) and Logic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the philosophy of history._]
-
-Historical intellectualism has opened the way to the many attempts,
-made especially during the last two centuries and continued to-day, to
-discover _a philosophy of history,_ an _ideal history,_ a _sociology,_
-a _historical psychology,_ or whatever else a science may be called,
-whose object is to extract from history concepts and universal laws.
-What must these laws, these universals be? Historical laws and
-historical concepts? In that case, an elementary acquaintance with
-the theory of knowledge suffices to make clear the absurdity of the
-attempt. When such expressions as a _historical law,_ a _historical
-concept_ are not simply metaphors colloquially employed, they are truly
-contradictory terms: the adjective is as unsuitable to the substantive
-as in the expressions "qualitative quantity" or "pluralistic monism."
-History implies concreteness and individuality, law and concept
-mean abstractness and universality. But if the attempt to extract
-_historical_ laws and concepts from history be abandoned, and it be
-merely desired to draw from it laws and concepts, the attempt is
-certainly not frivolous; but the science thus obtained will be, not
-a philosophy of history, but rather, according to circumstances,
-either philosophy in its various forms of Ethics, Logic, etc., or
-empirical science with its infinite divisions and subdivisions. The
-search is in fact either for those philosophical concepts which, as
-already remarked, are the basis of every historical construction and
-differentiate perception from intuition, historical intuition from pure
-intuition, history from art; or already formed historical intuitions
-are collected and arranged in types and classes, which is exactly the
-method of the natural sciences. Great thinkers have sometimes donned
-the ill-fitting cloak of the philosophy of history, and notwithstanding
-the covering, they have attained philosophical truths of the greatest
-magnitude. The cloak discarded, the truth has remained. Modern
-sociologists are rather to be blamed, not so much for the illusion
-in which they are involved when they talk of an impossible science
-of sociology, as for the infecundity which almost always accompanies
-their illusion. It matters little that Æsthetic should be called
-"sociological Æsthetic," or Logic, "sociological Logic." The grave evil
-is that such Æsthetic is an old-fashioned expression of sensationalism,
-such Logic verbal and incoherent. The philosophical movement to which
-we have referred has however borne two good fruits in relation to
-history. First of all, a keener desire has arisen for a theory of
-history, that is, a theory of the nature and the limits of history, a
-theory which, in conformity with the analysis made above, cannot obtain
-satisfaction save in a general science of intuition, in an Æsthetic, in
-which the theory of history would form a special chapter, distinguished
-by the insertion of universal functions. Furthermore, concrete truths
-relating to historical events have often been expressed beneath the
-false and presumptuous cloak of a philosophy of history; rules and
-warnings have been formulated, empirical no doubt, yet by no means
-useless to students and critics. It does not seem possible to deny this
-utility even to the most recent of philosophies of history, known as
-historical materialism, which has thrown a very vivid light upon many
-sides of social life formerly neglected or ill understood.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic intrusions into Logic._]
-
-The principle of authority, of the _ipse dixit_, is an intrusion
-by historicity into the domains of science and philosophy which
-has dominated the schools and substitutes for introspection
-and philosophical analysis this or that evidence, document, or
-authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense.
-But Logic, the science of thought and of intellectual knowledge, has
-suffered the most grave and destructive of all disturbances and errors
-through an imperfect understanding of the æsthetic fact. How could it
-be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself
-æsthetic activity? An inexact Æsthetic must of necessity drag after it
-an inexact Logic.
-
-Whoever opens a logical treatise, from the _Organon_ of Aristotle
-to the modern works on the subject, must agree that all contain a
-haphazard mixture of verbal facts and facts of thought, of grammatical
-forms and of conceptual forms, of Æsthetic and of Logic. Not that
-attempts have been wanting to escape from verbal expression and to
-seize thought in its true nature. Aristotelian logic itself did not
-become mere syllogistic and verbalism without some hesitation and
-indecision. The problem proper to logic was often touched upon in
-their disputes by the nominalists, realists and conceptualists of the
-Middle Ages. With Galileo and with Bacon, the natural sciences gave an
-honourable place to induction. Vico combated formalist and mathematical
-logic in favour of inventive methods. Kant called attention to the _a
-priori_ synthesis. Absolute idealism despised the Aristotelian Logic.
-The followers of Herbart, though still loyal to Aristotle, emphasized
-those judgements which they called narrative and which have a character
-altogether differing from that of other logical judgements. Finally,
-the linguists insisted upon the irrationality of the word, in relation
-to the concept. But a conscious, sure and radical movement of reform
-can find no basis or point of departure, save in the science of
-Æsthetic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Logic in its essence._]
-
-In a Logic suitably reformed on this basis, this truth must first and
-foremost be proclaimed, and all its consequences deduced: the logical
-fact, _the only logical fact,_ is _the concept,_ the universal, the
-spirit that forms, and in so far as it forms, the universal. And if
-by induction be understood, as sometimes it has been, the formation
-of universals, and by deduction their verbal development, then it is
-clear that true Logic can be nothing but inductive Logic. But since by
-the word "deduction" has been more frequently understood the special
-processes of mathematics, and the word "induction" those of the natural
-sciences, it will be best to avoid both words and say that true Logic
-is Logic of the concept. The Logic of the concept, while employing
-a method which is both induction and deduction, will employ neither
-exclusively, that is, it will employ the speculative method which is
-intrinsic to it.
-
-The concept, the universal, considered abstractly in itself, is
-_inexpressible._ No word is proper to it. So true is this, that the
-logical concept remains always the same, notwithstanding the variation
-of verbal forms. In respect to the concept, expression is a simple
-_sign_ or _indication._ There must be an expression, it cannot be
-absent; but what it is to be, this or that, is determined by the
-historical and psychological conditions of the individual who is
-speaking. The quality of the expression is not deducible from the
-nature of the concept. There does not exist a true (logical) sense of
-words. The true sense of words is that which is conferred upon them on
-each occasion by the person forming a concept.
-
-[Sidenote: _Distinction between logical and non-logical judgements._]
-
-This being so, the only truly logical (that is, æsthetico-logical)
-propositions, the only rigorously logical judgements, must be those
-whose proper and sole content is the determination of a concept. These
-propositions or judgements are _definitions._ Science itself is nothing
-but a collection of definitions, unified in a supreme definition; a
-system of concepts, or highest concept.
-
-It is therefore necessary (at least as a preliminary) to exclude
-from Logic all those propositions which do not affirm universals.
-Narrative judgements, not less than those termed non-enunciative by
-Aristotle, such as the expression of desires, are not properly logical
-judgements. They are either purely æsthetic propositions or historical
-propositions. "Peter is passing; it is raining to-day; I am sleepy; I
-want to read": these and an infinity of propositions of the same kind
-are nothing but either a mere enclosing in words the impression of
-the fact that Peter is passing, of the falling rain, of my organism
-inclining to sleep, and of my will directed to reading, or an
-existential affirmation concerning those facts. They are expressions of
-the real or of the unreal, historical-imaginative or pure-imaginative;
-they are certainly not definitions of universals.
-
-[Sidenote: _Syllogistic._]
-
-This exclusion cannot meet with great difficulties. It is already
-almost an accomplished fact, and the only thing required is to render
-it explicit, decisive and coherent. But what is to be done with
-all that part of human thought called _syllogistic,_ consisting of
-judgements and reasonings based upon concepts? What is syllogistic?
-Is it to be looked down upon with contempt, as something useless, as
-has so often been done by the humanists in their reaction against
-scholasticism, by absolute idealism, by the enthusiastic admiration of
-our times for the methods of observation and experiment of the natural
-sciences?--Syllogistic, reasonings _forma,_ is not the discovery of
-truth; it is the art of expounding, debating, disputing with oneself
-and others. Proceeding from concepts already formed, from facts already
-observed, and appealing to the persistence of the true or of thought
-(such is the meaning of the laws of identity and contradiction), it
-infers consequences from those data, that is, it re-states what has
-already been discovered. Therefore, if it be an _idem per idem_ from
-the point of view of invention, it is most efficacious in teaching and
-in exposition. To reduce affirmations to a syllogistic form is a way of
-controlling one's own thought and of criticizing the thought of others.
-It is easy to laugh at syllogizers, but, if syllogistic has been born
-and persists, it must have good reasons of its own. Satire on it can
-concern only its abuses, such as the attempt to prove syllogistically
-questions of fact, observation and intuition, or the neglect of
-profound meditation and unprejudiced investigation of problems, in
-favour of syllogistic externality. And if so-called _mathematical
-Logic_ can sometimes aid us in our attempt to remember with ease,
-rapidly to control the results of our own thought, let us welcome this
-form of syllogistic also, anticipated by Leibnitz among others and
-again attempted by some in our own days.
-
-But precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposition and debate,
-its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophical Logic, thus
-usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which is
-the central and dominating doctrine, to which everything logical in
-syllogistic is reducible, without leaving a residuum (relations of
-concepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification and so on). Nor
-must it ever be forgotten that concept and (logical) judgement and
-syllogism are not in the same line. The first alone is the logical
-fact, the second and third are the forms in which the first manifests
-itself. These, in so far as they are forms, can only be examined
-æsthetically (grammatically), and in so far as they possess logical
-content, only by ignoring the forms themselves and passing to the
-doctrine of the concept.
-
-[Sidenote: _Logical falsehood and æsthetic truth._]
-
-This confirms the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that
-he who reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical
-analysis is the basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology,
-for to reason well is in fact to express oneself well, because the
-expression is the intuitive possession of one's own logical thought.
-The principle of contradiction itself is at bottom nothing but
-the æsthetic principle of coherence. It may be maintained that it
-is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also
-possible to reason well though starting from erroneous concepts; that
-some, though lacking the acuteness that makes a great discoverer,
-are nevertheless exceedingly lucid writers; because to write well
-depends upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if
-it be erroneous; not of its scientific, but of its æsthetic truth,
-which indeed is the same thing as writing well. A philosopher like
-Schopenhauer can imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic
-ideas. This doctrine is scientifically false, yet he may develop this
-false knowledge in excellent prose, æsthetically most true. But we
-have already replied to these objections, when observing that at that
-precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought
-concept, he is at the same time a bad speaker and a bad writer,
-although he may afterwards recover himself in the many other parts
-of his thought which contain true propositions not connected with
-the preceding error, and therefore lucid expressions following upon
-confused expressions.
-
-[Sidenote: _Reformed logic._]
-
-All researches as to the forms of judgements and of syllogisms, their
-conversions and their various relations, which still encumber treatises
-on Logic, are therefore destined to diminish, to be transformed, to be
-converted into something else. The doctrine of the concept and of the
-organism of concepts, of definition, of system, of philosophy and the
-various sciences, and the like, will occupy the field and alone will
-constitute true and proper Logic.
-
-Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between
-Æsthetic and Logic and conceived Æsthetic as a _Logic of sensible
-knowledge_ were peculiarly addicted to applying logical categories to
-the new knowledge, talking of _æsthetic concepts, æsthetic judgements,
-æsthetic syllogisms,_ and so on. We who are less superstitious as
-regards the permanence of the traditional Logic of the schools,
-and better informed as to the nature of Æsthetic, do not recommend
-the application of Logic to Æsthetic, but the liberation of Logic
-from æsthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms or
-categories of Logic, due to the adoption of altogether arbitrary and
-ill-considered distinctions.
-
-Logic thus reformed will still be _formal_ Logic; it will study the
-true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding individual
-and particular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it would
-be better to call it _verbal_ or _formalistic._ Formal Logic will drive
-out formalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary
-to have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic,
-which is no longer a science of thought, but thought itself in action;
-not only a Logic, but the whole of Philosophy, in which Logic is also
-included. The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as
-that of imagination (Æsthetic) is that of expression. The well-being
-of both sciences lies in exactly carrying out in every particular the
-distinction between the two domains.
-
-_Note to the Fourth Italian Edition._--The observations contained in
-this chapter on Logic, which are not all of them clear or accurate,
-should be clarified and corrected by means of the further treatment
-of the theme in the second volume of the _Philosophy of the Spirit,_
-dedicated to Logic, where the distinction between logical and
-historical propositions is again examined and their synthetic unity
-demonstrated.
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-THE THEORETIC ACTIVITY AND THE PRACTICAL ACTIVITY
-
-
-The intuitive and intellectual forms contain between them, as we have
-said, the whole theoretic domain of the spirit. But it is not possible
-to know them thoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous
-æsthetic theories, without first establishing clearly the relations of
-the theoretic spirit with the _practical_ spirit.
-
-[Sidenote: _The will._]
-
-The practical form or activity is the _will._ We do not here employ
-this word in the sense of some philosophical systems, where the will
-is the foundation of the universe, the ground of things and the true
-reality. Nor do we employ it in the wide sense of other systems,
-which understand by will the energy of the spirit, spirit or activity
-in general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will.
-Neither such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For
-us, the will is, as generally understood, that activity of the spirit
-which differs from the merely theoretical contemplation of things,
-and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. Action is really
-action, in so far as it is voluntary. It is not necessary to remark
-that in the will to do, we include, in the scientific sense, also what
-is usually called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the will of
-a Prometheus, which also is action.
-
-[Sidenote: _The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge._]
-
-Man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practical
-form he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, with
-the other he creates it. But the first form is the basis of the second;
-and the relation of _double degree,_ which we have already found
-existing between æsthetic and logical activity, is repeated between
-these two on a larger scale. A knowing independent of the will is
-thinkable, at least in a certain sense; will independent of knowing is
-unthinkable. Blind will is not will; true will has eyes.
-
-How can we will, without having before us historical intuitions
-(perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, which
-enlightens us as to the nature of those objects? How can we really
-will, if we do not know the world which surrounds us or how to change
-things by acting upon them?
-
-[Sidenote: _Objections and explanations._]
-
-It has been objected that men of action, practical men _par
-excellence,_ are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize:
-their energy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into
-will. And conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are
-often very mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore
-neglected and thrust aside in the tumult of life. It is easy to
-see that these distinctions are merely empirical and quantitative.
-Certainly, the practical man has no need of a philosophical system in
-order to act, but in the spheres where he does act, he starts from
-intuitions and concepts which are perfectly clear to him. Otherwise the
-most ordinary actions could not be willed. It would not be possible
-to will to feed oneself, for instance, without knowledge of the food,
-and of the link of cause and effect between certain movements and
-certain satisfactions. Rising gradually to the more complex forms
-of action, for example to the political, how could we will anything
-politically good or bad without knowing the real conditions of society,
-and consequently the means and expedients to be adopted? When the
-practical man feels himself in the dark about one or more of these
-points, or when he is seized with doubt, action either does not begin
-or stops. It is then that the theoretical moment, which in the rapid
-succession of human actions is hardly noticed and rapidly forgotten,
-becomes important and occupies consciousness for a longer time. And
-if this moment be prolonged, then the practical man may become a
-Hamlet, divided between desire for action and his deficient theoretical
-clarity as regards the situation and the means to be employed. And if
-he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery, and leave willing
-and acting, to a greater or less extent, to others, there is formed in
-him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man of science, or of
-the philosopher, who in practice are sometimes incompetent or downright
-immoral. These observations are all obvious. Their exactitude cannot be
-denied. Let us, however, repeat that they are founded on quantitative
-distinctions and do not disprove but confirm the fact that an action,
-however slight it be, cannot really be an action, that is, an action
-that is willed, unless it be preceded by the cognitive activity.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of practical judgements or judgements of value._]
-
-Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action
-an altogether special class of judgements, which they call _practical_
-judgements or _judgements of value._ They say that in order to resolve
-on performing an action there must have been a judgement to the
-effect: "this action is useful, this action is good." And at first
-sight this seems to have the testimony of consciousness on its side.
-But closer observation and analysis of greater subtlety reveal that
-such judgements follow instead of preceding the affirmation of the
-will, and are nothing but the expression of the volition already
-exercised. A good or useful action is an action willed. It will always
-be impossible to distil a single drop of usefulness or goodness from
-the objective study of things. We do not desire things because we know
-them to be good or useful; but we know them to be good and useful,
-because we desire them. Here too, the rapidity with which the facts
-of consciousness follow one another has given rise to an illusion.
-Practical action is preceded by knowledge, but not by practical
-knowledge, or rather, knowledge of the practical: to obtain this, we
-must first have practical action. The third moment, therefore, of
-practical judgements, or judgements of value, is altogether imaginary.
-It does not come between the two moments or degrees of theory and
-practice. For the rest, normative sciences in general, which regulate
-or command, discover and indicate values to the practical activity,
-do not exist; indeed none exist for any sort of activity, since every
-science presupposes that activity to be already realized and developed,
-which it afterwards takes as its object.
-
-[Sidenote: _Exclusion of the practical from the æsthetic._]
-
-These distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous every
-theory which annexes the æsthetic activity to the practical, or
-introduces the laws of the second into the first. That science is
-theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. Those who make
-this statement, and look upon the æsthetic fact as a practical fact,
-do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but
-because they have their eye on something which is really practical. But
-the practical which they aim is not Æsthetic, nor within Æsthetic; it
-is _outside and beside it_; and although often found united, they are
-not united necessarily or by the bond of identity of nature.
-
-The æsthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaboration
-of impressions. When we have achieved the word within us, conceived
-definitely and vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive,
-expression is born and is complete; there is no need for anything else.
-If after this we should open our mouths-_will_ to open them to speak,
-or our throats to sing, that is to say, utter by word of mouth and
-audible melody what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or
-if we should stretch out_--will_ to stretch out our hands to touch the
-notes of the piano, or to take up the brush and chisel, thus making
-on a large scale movements which we have already made in little and
-rapidly, in a material in which we leave more or less durable traces;
-this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws from
-the former, with which we are not concerned for the moment, although
-we recognize henceforth that this second movement is a production
-of things, a _practical_ fact, or fact of _will_. It is usual to
-distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology
-seems to us infelicitous, for the work of art (the æsthetic work) is
-always _internal_; and what is called _external_ is no longer a work of
-art. Others distinguish between _æsthetic_ fact and _artistic_ fact,
-meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which may follow
-and generally does follow the first. But in this case, it is simply a
-question of a linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, though perhaps
-not advisable.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the end of art and of the choice
-of content._]
-
-For the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous,
-when it is understood of art as art. And since to fix an end is to
-choose, the theory that the content of art must be _selected_ is
-another form of the same error. A selection among impressions and
-sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise how
-could a selection be made among the continuous and indistinct? To
-choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that
-must be before us, expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede
-theory; expression is free inspiration.
-
-The true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows
-not how; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will
-it or not will it. If he were to wish to act in opposition to his
-inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born Anacreon, he should
-wish to sing of Atreus and of Alcides, his lyre would warn him of
-his mistake, sounding only of Venus and of Love, notwithstanding his
-efforts to the contrary.
-
-[Sidenote: _Practical innocence of art._]
-
-The theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morally
-charged with epithets of praise or blame. When critics of art remark
-that a theme is _badly selected,_ in cases where that observation has
-a just foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of
-the theme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist
-has treated it, the failure of the expression due to the contradictions
-which it contains. And when the same critics object to the theme or
-content of works which they proclaim to be artistically perfect as
-being unworthy of art and blameworthy; if these expressions really are
-perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise the critics to
-leave the artists in peace, for they can only derive inspiration from
-what has moved their soul. They should rather direct their attention
-towards effecting changes in surrounding nature and society, that
-such impressions and states of soul should not recur. If ugliness
-were to vanish from the world, if universal virtue and felicity were
-established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse
-or pessimistic feelings, but calm, innocent and joyous feelings,
-Arcadians of a real Arcady. But so long as ugliness and turpitude
-exist in nature and impose themselves upon the artist, to prevent
-the expression of these things also is impossible; and when it has
-arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit._ We speak thus entirely from the
-æsthetic point of view, and of pure criticism of art.
-
-We are not concerned to estimate the damage which the criticism of
-"choice" does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it
-produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the
-conflict to which it gives rise between artistic impulse and critical
-demands. It is true that sometimes it seems also to do some good, by
-aiding artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions
-and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task
-which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historical moment in
-which they live, and by their individual temperament. In these cases,
-criticism of "choice," while believing that it generates, merely
-recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed.
-It believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the
-midwife.
-
-[Sidenote: _The independence of art._]
-
-The impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the
-_independence of art,_ and is also the only legitimate meaning of the
-expression: _art for art's sake._ Art is independent both of science
-and of the useful and the moral. There should be no fear lest frivolous
-or cold art should thus be justified, since what is truly frivolous
-or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; or in
-other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of the
-æsthetic treatment, from failure to grasp a content, not from the
-material qualities of the content itself.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the saying: the style is the man_]
-
-The saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completely
-criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic
-and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the æsthetic
-activity. Man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is will,
-which contains the cognitive moment in itself. Hence the saying is
-either altogether void, as when it is taken to mean that the style is
-the man _qua_ style--is the man, that is, but only so far as he is
-expressive activity; or it is erroneous, as when the attempt is made
-to deduce what a man has done and willed from what he has seen and
-expressed, thereby asserting that there is a logical connexion between
-knowing and willing. Many legends in the biographies of artists have
-sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible
-that a man who gives expression to generous feelings should not be a
-noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist whose
-plays are full of stabbing, should not himself have done a little
-stabbing in real life. Artists protest vainly: "_Lasciva est nobis
-pagina, vita proba._" They are merely taxed in addition with lying
-and hypocrisy. How far more prudent you were, poor women of Verona,
-when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to hell
-upon his blackened countenance! Yours was at any rate a historical
-conjecture.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the concept of sincerity in art._]
-
-Finally, _sincerity_ imposed as a duty upon the artist (a law of ethics
-also said to be a law of æsthetic) rests upon another double meaning.
-For by sincerity may be meant, in the first place, the moral duty not
-to deceive one's neighbour; and in that case it is foreign to the
-artist. For indeed he deceives no one, since he gives form to what
-is already in his soul. He would only deceive if he were to betray
-his duty as an artist by failing to execute his task in its essential
-nature. If lies and deceit are in his soul, then the form which he
-gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it
-is æsthetic. If the artist be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant,
-he purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. If by sincerity
-be meant, in the second place, fulness and truth of expression, it is
-clear that this second sense has no relation to the ethical concept.
-The law, called both ethical and æsthetic, reveals itself here as
-nothing but a word used both by Ethics and Æsthetic.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The two forms of the practical activity._]
-
-The double degree of the theoretical activity, æsthetic and logical,
-has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yet
-been placed in due relief. The practical activity is also divided into
-a first and second degree, the second implying the first. The first
-practical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; the
-second the _moral_ activity.
-
-Economy is, as it were, the Æsthetic of practical life; Morality its
-Logic.
-
-[Sidenote: _The economically useful._]
-
-If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if the correct
-place in the system of the spirit has not been given to the economic
-activity, if it has been left to wander about in the prolegomena to
-treatises on political economy, often vague and but little developed,
-this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or
-economic has been confused, sometimes with the concept of the
-_technical,_ sometimes with that of the _egoistical._
-
-[Sidenote: _Distinction between the useful and the technical._]
-
-_Technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit.
-Technique is knowledge; or rather, it is knowledge itself in general
-which takes this name when it serves as basis, as we have seen it does,
-for practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is supposed
-not to be easily followed by practical action, is called "pure": the
-same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called "applied";
-if it is supposed that it can be easily followed by a particular
-action, it is called "applicable" or "technical." This word, then,
-indicates a _situation_ in which knowledge is, or may easily be, not a
-special form of knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether
-impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were,
-intrinsically, pure or applied. All knowledge, however abstract and
-philosophical it may be believed to be, may be a guide to practical
-acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morality may be
-reflected and always in some way is reflected in practical life. One
-can only speak roughly and unscientifically of certain truths as pure
-and of others as applied.
-
-The same knowledge that is called technical may also be called
-_useful._ But the word "_useful_" in conformity with the criticism of
-judgements of value made above, is to be understood as used here in
-a verbal or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful for
-putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense.
-Water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the
-knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen.
-There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the
-useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration and that
-knowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical
-activity which precedes; the only useful thing is the _action_ of the
-man who extinguishes the fire.
-
-[Sidenote: _Distinction of the useful from the egoistic._]
-
-Some economists identify utility, that is to say, merely economic
-action or will, with the _egoistic,_ that is to say, with what is
-profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard
-to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is
-the immoral. In this case Economics would be a very strange science,
-standing not beside but opposite Ethics, like the devil facing God, or
-at least like the _advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization.
-Such a conception is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality
-is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied
-in Logic, science of the true, and a science of unsuccessful expression
-in Æsthetic, science of successful expression. If, then, Economics were
-the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethics,
-or Ethics itself; because every moral determination implies, at the
-same time, a negation of its contrary.
-
-Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically
-is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally
-scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he
-does not wish to act at hazard and consequently in a manner quite the
-reverse of moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of
-the altruist to behave like an egoist?
-
-[Sidenote: _Economic will and moral will._]
-
-If we are not mistaken, the difficulty is solved in a manner perfectly
-analogous to that in which is solved the problem of the relations
-between expression and concept, Æsthetic and Logic.
-
-To will economically is to _will an end;_ to will morally is to _will
-the rational end._ But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will
-and act usefully (economically). How could he will the _rational_ end,
-unless he also willed it _as his particular end_?
-
-[Sidenote: _Pure economicity._]
-
-The converse is not true; as it is not true in æsthetic science that
-the expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact.
-It is possible to will economically without willing morally; and it
-is possible to conduct oneself with perfect economic coherence, while
-pursuing an end which is objectively irrational (immoral), or, rather,
-an end which would be held to be so at a higher grade of consciousness.
-
-Examples of the economic, without the moral character, are
-Machiavelli's hero Cæsar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can
-help admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only
-economic, and is developed in opposition to what we hold moral? Who
-can help admiring the Ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who pursues and
-realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal even on his death-bed, making
-the petty and timid little thieves who are present at his burlesque
-confession exclaim: "What manner of man is this, whose perversity
-neither age, nor infirmity, nor the fear of death which he sees at
-hand, nor the fear of God before whose judgement-seat he must stand in
-a little while, have been able to remove, nor to make him wish to die
-otherwise than as he has lived?"
-
-[Sidenote: _The economic side of morality._]
-
-The moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a Cæsar
-Borgia, of an Iago, or of a Ser Ciappelletto, the good will of the
-saint or of the hero. Or, rather, good will would not be will, and
-consequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the side
-which makes it _good,_ also that which makes it _will._ So a logical
-thought which does not succeed in expressing itself is not thought, but
-at the most a confused presentiment of a thought beyond yet to come.
-
-It is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also
-anti-economical, or to make of morality an element of coherence in
-the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us
-from conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during
-certain periods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man
-altogether without moral conscience. In a man thus organized, what
-for us is immorality is not so for him, because it is not felt as
-such. The consciousness of the contradiction between what is desired
-as a rational end and what is pursued egoistically cannot arise
-in him. This contradiction is anti-economicity. Immoral conduct
-becomes also anti-economical only in the man who possesses moral
-conscience. The moral remorse which is the indication of this, is
-also economical remorse; that is to say, sorrow at not having known
-how to will completely and to attain that moral ideal which was
-willed at first, instead of allowing himself to be led astray by the
-passions. _Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor._ The _video_
-and the _probo_ are here an initial _volo_ immediately contradicted
-and overthrown. In the man without moral sense, we must admit a
-remorse that is _merely economic_; like that of a thief or of an
-assassin who, when on the point of robbing or of assassinating should
-abstain from doing so, not owing to a conversion of his being, but
-to nervousness and bewilderment, or even to a momentary awakening of
-moral consciousness. When he has come back to himself, such a thief
-or assassin will regret and be ashamed of his incoherence; his remorse
-will not be due to having done wrong, but to _not_ having done wrong;
-it is therefore economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by
-hypothesis. But since a lively moral consciousness is generally found
-among the majority of men and its total absence is a rare and perhaps
-non-existent monstrosity, it may be admitted that morality, in general,
-coincides with economicity in the conduct of life.
-
-[Sidenote: _The merely economic and the error of the morally
-indifferent._]
-
-There need be no fear lest the parallelism that we support should
-introduce afresh into science the category of the _morally
-indifferent,_ of that which is in truth action and volition, but is
-neither moral nor immoral; the category in short of the _licit_ and
-of the _permissible,_ which has always been the cause or reflexion of
-ethical corruption, as was the case with Jesuitical morality, which it
-dominated. It remains quite certain that indifferent moral actions do
-not exist, because moral activity pervades and must pervade every least
-volitional movement of man. But far from upsetting the established
-parallelism, this confirms it. Are there by any chance intuitions which
-science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse, resolving them
-into universal concepts, or changing them into historical affirmations?
-We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows no external
-limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called natural
-sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one the æsthetic
-intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although neither
-of them can appear in the concrete, save the one in the intuitive, the
-other in the economic form.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethics and of
-Economics._]
-
-This combined identity and difference of the useful and the moral, of
-the economic and the ethical, explains the success at the present time
-and formerly of the utilitarian theory of Ethics. Indeed it is easy to
-discover and to illustrate a utilitarian side in every moral action; as
-it is easy to reveal the æsthetic side in every logical proposition.
-The criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot begin by denying this
-truth and seeking out absurd and non-existent examples of _useless_
-moral actions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as
-the concrete form of morality, which consists in this, that it is
-_inside_ this form. Utilitarians do not see this inside. This is not
-the place for the fuller development that such ideas deserve. Ethics
-and Economics cannot however fail to be gainers (as we have said of
-Logic and Æsthetic) by a more exact determination of the relations that
-exist between them. Economic science is now rising to the activistical
-concept of the useful, as it attempts to surpass the mathematical
-phase in which it is still entangled; a phase which was in its turn
-a progress when it superseded historicism, or the confusion of the
-theoretical with the historical, and destroyed a number of capricious
-distinctions and false economic theories. With this conception, it will
-be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical
-theories of so-called pure economics, and on the other, by the
-introduction of successive complications and additions, to effect a
-transition from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic
-method and thus to embrace the particular theories expounded in the
-so-called political or national economy of the schools.
-
-[Sidenote: _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._]
-
-As æsthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and the
-philosophic concept the noumenon or spirit; so the economic activity
-wills the phenomenon or nature, and the moral activity the noumenon or
-spirit. _The spirit which wills itself,_ its true self, the universal
-which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which
-perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety.
-This will for the true self is _absolute freedom._
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS
-
-
-In this summary sketch that we have given of the entire philosophy of
-the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is thus conceived
-as consisting of four moments or degrees, disposed in such a way that
-the theoretical activity is to the practical as the first theoretical
-degree is to the second theoretical, and the first practical degree to
-the second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively
-by their concreteness. The concept cannot exist without expression, the
-useful without both and morality without the three preceding degrees.
-If the æsthetic fact is in a certain sense alone independent while
-the others are more or less dependent, then the logical is the least
-dependent and the moral will the most. Moral intention acts on given
-theoretic bases, with which it cannot dispense, unless we are willing
-to accept that absurd procedure known to the Jesuits as _direction of
-intention,_ in which people pretend to themselves not to know what they
-know only too well.
-
-[Sidenote: _The forms of genius._]
-
-[Sidenote: _The system of the spirit._]
-
-If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of
-_genius._ Men endowed with genius in art, in science, and in moral
-will or heroes, have always been recognized. But the genius of pure
-economicity has met with repugnance. It is not altogether without
-reason that a category of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has
-been created. The practical, merely economic genius, which is not
-directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled
-with alarm. To dispute as to whether the word "genius" should be
-applied only to creators of æsthetic expression or also to men of
-scientific research and of action would be a mere question of words. To
-observe, on the other hand, that "genius," of whatever kind it be, is
-always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be
-to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius.
-
-[Sidenote: _Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law;
-sociability._]
-
-A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy to
-show how all the other forms either do not possess the character of
-activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or
-are complex and derivative facts, in which the various activities are
-mingled, and are filled with particular and contingent contents.
-
-The _juridical_ fact, for example, considered as what is called
-objective law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical
-activities. Law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters
-little here) in which is fixed an economic relation willed by an
-individual or by a community, and this economic side at once unites it
-with and distinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example.
-Sociology (among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is
-sometimes conceived as the study of an original element, which is
-called _sociability._ Now what is it that distinguishes sociability,
-or the relations which are developed in a meeting of men, and not in a
-meeting of sub-human beings, if it be not just the various spiritual
-activities which exist among the former and which are supposed not to
-exist, or to exist only in a rudimentary degree, among the latter?
-Sociability, then, far from being an original, simple, irreducible
-conception, is very complex and complicated. A proof of this would
-be the impossibility, generally recognized, of enunciating a single
-law which could be described as purely sociological. Those that are
-improperly so called are shown to be either empirical historical
-observations, or spiritual laws, that is to say judgements into which
-the conceptions of the spiritual activities are translated, when
-they are not simply empty and indeterminate generalities, like the
-so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too, nothing more is understood
-by "sociability" than "social rule," and so law; thus confounding
-sociology with the science or theory of law itself. Law, sociability,
-and similar concepts, are to be dealt with in a mode analogous to that
-employed by us in the consideration and analysis of historicity and
-technique.
-
-[Sidenote: _Religion._]
-
-It may seem that _religious_ activity should be judged otherwise.
-But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ from its
-other forms and sub-forms. For it is in turn either the expression of
-practical aspirations and ideals (religious ideals), or historical
-narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma).
-
-It can therefore be maintained with equal truth either that religion
-is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, or that it is always
-present there. Their religion was the whole intellectual patrimony of
-primitive peoples: our intellectual patrimony is our religion. The
-content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and
-become better and more refined in the future also; but its form is
-always the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion by
-those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity
-of man, with his art, with his criticism and with his philosophy. It
-is impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge,
-such as religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved
-it. Catholicism, which is always consistent, will not tolerate a
-Science, a History, an Ethics, in contradiction to its views and
-doctrines. The rationalists are less coherent: they are disposed to
-allow a little space in their souls for a religion in contradiction
-with their whole theoretic world.
-
-The religious affectations and weaknesses prevalent among the
-rationalists of our time have their origin in the superstitious worship
-so recklessly lavished upon the natural sciences. We know ourselves
-and their chief representatives admit that these sciences are all
-surrounded by _limits._ Science having been wrongly identified with
-the so-called natural sciences, it could be foreseen that the remainder
-would be sought in religion; that remainder with which the human
-spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebted to materialism, to
-positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and often disingenuous
-recrudescence of religious exaltation, which belongs to the hospital,
-when it does not belong to the politician.
-
-[Sidenote: _Metaphysic._]
-
-Philosophy removes from religion all reason for existing, because it
-substitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it
-looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a
-psychic condition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain
-of knowledge with the natural sciences, with history and with art.
-To the first it leaves enumeration, measurement and classification;
-to the second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to
-the third, the individually possible. There is nothing left to allot
-to religion. For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the
-spirit, cannot be philosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has
-been seen, _philosophy of history,_ nor _philosophy of nature_; and
-therefore there cannot be a philosophical science of what is not form
-and universal, but material and particular. This amounts to affirming
-the impossibility of _Metaphysic._
-
-The methodology or logic of history has supplanted the philosophy
-of history; an epistemology of the concepts employed in the natural
-sciences succeeded the Philosophy of Nature. What philosophy can
-study of history is its mode of construction (intuition, perception,
-document, probability, etc.); of the natural sciences the forms of the
-concepts which constitute them (space, time, motion, number, types,
-classes, etc.). Philosophy as metaphysic in the sense above described
-would, on the other hand, claim to compete with history and with the
-natural sciences, which alone are legitimate and effective in their
-field. Such a challenge could do nothing but reveal the incompetence
-of those who made it. In this sense we are _anti-metaphysicans,_
-while declaring ourselves to be _ultra-metaphysicians,_ when the
-word is used to claim and to affirm the office of philosophy as
-self-consciousness of the spirit, distinguished from the merely
-empirical and classificatory office of the natural sciences.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect._]
-
-Metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of a specific
-spiritual activity producing it, in order to maintain itself side
-by side with the sciences of the spirit. This activity, called in
-antiquity _mental or superior imagination,_ and more often in modern
-times _intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition,_ was held to
-unite the characters of imagination and intellect in an altogether
-special form. It was supposed to provide the means of passing by
-deduction or dialectic from the infinite to the finite, from form to
-matter, from the concept to the intuition, from science to history,
-acting by a method which was held to penetrate both the universal and
-the particular, the abstract and the concrete, intuition and intellect.
-A faculty marvellous indeed and most valuable to possess; but we, who
-do not possess it, have no means of establishing its existence.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mystical Æsthetic._]
-
-Intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered to be the true
-æsthetic activity. At others a no less marvellous æsthetic activity
-has been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogether
-different from simple intuition. The glories of this faculty have been
-celebrated, and the production of art attributed to it, or at least
-of certain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. Art,
-religion and philosophy have seemed in turn to be one only, or three
-distinct faculties of the spirit, sometimes one, sometimes another of
-them being supreme in the dignity shared by all.
-
-It is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed or
-capable of being assumed by this conception of Æsthetic, which we will
-call _mystical._ We are here in the kingdom, not of the science of
-imagination, but of imagination itself, which creates its world out
-of varying elements drawn from impressions and feelings. Suffice it
-to mention that this mysterious faculty has been conceived, sometimes
-as practical, sometimes as a mean between the theoretic and the
-practical, at others again as a theoretic form side by side with
-philosophy and religion.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mortality and immortality of art._]
-
-The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last
-conception, as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute
-spirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been
-looked upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then has been
-proclaimed the mortality, even the death, actual or at least imminent,
-of art. This question has no meaning for us, because, seeing that the
-function of art is a necessary degree of the spirit, to ask if art can
-be eliminated is the same as to ask if sensation or intelligence can be
-eliminated. But Metaphysic, in the above sense, transplanting itself
-into an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in its particulars,
-any more than we can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or
-the navigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only exist when
-we refuse to join in the game; that is to say, when we reject the very
-possibility of Metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated.
-
-There is therefore no intellectual intuition in philosophy, as there
-is no surrogate or equivalent of it in art, or any other mode by which
-this imaginary function may be called and represented. There does not
-exist (if we may repeat ourselves) a fifth degree, a fifth or supreme
-faculty, theoretic or practical-theoretic, imaginative-intellectual, or
-intellectual-imaginative, or however otherwise it may be attempted to
-conceive such a faculty.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR DEGREES AND CRITICISM OF
-RHETORIC
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The characters of art._]
-
-It is customary to give long catalogues of the _characters_ of art.
-Having reached this point of the treatise, after having studied
-art as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special
-theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discover that those
-varied and numerous determinations of characters, where they refer
-to anything real, do nothing but represent what we have already met
-with as genera, species and individuality of the æsthetic form. To the
-generic are reducible, as we have already observed, the characters, or
-rather, the verbal variants of _unity,_ and of _unity_ in _variety,_
-of _simplicity,_ or _originality,_ and so on; to the specific,
-the characters of _truth,_ of _sincerity,_ and the like; to the
-individual, the characters of _life,_ of _vivacity,_ of _animation,_ of
-_concreteness,_ of _individuality,_ of _characteristicality_. The words
-may change again, but they will not contribute anything scientifically
-new. The analysis of expression as such is completely effected in the
-results expounded above.
-
-[Sidenote: _Non-existence of modes of expression._]
-
-It might, on the other hand, be asked at this point if there be _modes_
-or _degrees_ of expression; if, having distinguished two degrees of
-activity of the spirit, each of which is subdivided into two other
-degrees, one of these, the intuitive-expressive, is not in its turn
-subdivided into two or more intuitive modes, into a first, second or
-third degree of expression. But this further division is impossible;
-a classification of intuition-expressions is certainly permissible,
-but is not philosophical: individual expressive facts are so many
-individuals, not one of which is interchangeable with another, save
-in its common quality of expression. To employ the language of the
-schools: expression is a species which cannot function in its turn
-as a genus. Impressions or contents vary; every content differs from
-every other content, because nothing repeats itself in life; and
-the irreducible variety of the forms of expression corresponds to
-the continual variation of the contents, the æsthetic synthesis of
-impressions.
-
-[Sidenote: _Impossibility of translations._]
-
-A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations,_ in so
-far as they pretend to effect the re-moulding of one expression into
-another, like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a
-vase of another shape. We can elaborate logically what we have already
-elaborated in æsthetic form only; but we cannot reduce what has already
-possessed its æsthetic form to another form also æsthetic. Indeed,
-every translation either diminishes and spoils, or it creates a new
-expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mingling
-it with the personal impressions of the so-called translator. In the
-former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original,
-the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not
-properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two
-expressions, but with two different contents. "Faithful ugliness or
-faithless beauty" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with
-which every translator is faced. Un-æsthetic translations, such as
-those that are word for word, or paraphrastic, are to be looked upon as
-simple commentaries upon the original.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the rhetorical categories._]
-
-The illegitimate division of expressions into various grades is known
-in literature by the name of doctrine of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical
-categories._ But similar attempts at distinctions in other artistic
-groups are not wanting: suffice it to recall the _realistic_ and
-_symbolic_ forms, so often mentioned in relation to painting and
-sculpture.
-
-_Realistic_ and _symbolic, objective_ and _subjective, classical_
-and _romantic, simple_ and _ornate, proper_ and _metaphorical,_ the
-fourteen forms of metaphor, the figures of _word_ and _sentence,
-pleonasm, ellipse, inversion, repetition, synonyms_ and _homonyms,_
-these and all other determinations of modes or degrees of expression
-reveal their philosophical nullity when the attempt is made to develop
-them in precise definitions, because they either grasp the void or
-fall into the absurd. A typical example of this is the very common
-definition of metaphor as of _another word used in place of the proper
-word._ Now why give oneself this trouble? Why substitute the improper
-for the proper word? Why take the worse and longer road when you know
-the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is commonly said, because the
-proper word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the so-called
-improper word or metaphor? But if this be so the metaphor is exactly
-the proper word in that case, and the so-called "proper" word, if
-it were used, would be _inexpressive_ and therefore most improper.
-Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the
-other categories, as, for example, the general one of the _ornate._
-Here for instance it may be asked how an ornament can be joined to
-expression. Externally? In that case it is always separated from the
-expression. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist the
-expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not an
-ornament, but a constituent element of the expression, indivisible and
-indistinguishable in its unity.
-
-It is needless to say how much harm has been done by rhetorical
-distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although
-there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles
-have, at the same time, been carefully preserved (perhaps in order to
-show proof of philosophic consistency). In literature the rhetorical
-categories have contributed, if not to make dominant, at least to
-justify theoretically, that particular kind of _bad writing_ which is
-called _fine writing_ or writing according to rhetoric.
-
-[Sidenote: _Use of these categories as synonyms of the æsthetic fact._]
-
-The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools,
-where we all of us learned them (only we never found an opportunity
-of using them in strictly æsthetic discussions, or at most of doing
-so jocosely and with a comic intention), were it not that they can
-sometimes be employed in one of the following significations: as
-_verbal variants_ of the æsthetic concept; as indications of the
-_anti-æsthetic,_ or, finally (and this is their most important use), no
-longer in the service of art and æsthetic, but of _science_ and _logic._
-
-[Sidenote: _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._]
-
-_First._ Expressions considered directly or positively are
-not divisible into classes, but some are successful, others
-half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and imperfect,
-successful and unsuccessful expressions. The words recorded, and others
-of the same sort, may therefore sometimes indicate the successful
-expression, and the various forms of the failures. But they do this in
-the most inconstant and capricious manner, so much so that the same
-word serves sometimes to proclaim the perfect, sometimes to condemn the
-imperfect.
-
-For example, some will say of two pictures--one without inspiration, in
-which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the
-other inspired, but without close relation to existing objects--that
-the first is _realistic,_ the second _symbolic._ Others, on the
-contrary, utter the word _realistic_ before a picture strongly felt
-representing a scene of ordinary life, while they apply that of
-_symbolic_ to another picture that is but a cold allegory. It is
-evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic and realistic
-inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic
-and symbolic with inartistic. What wonder, then, that some hotly
-maintain the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is
-inartistic; others, that the realistic is artistic and the symbolic
-inartistic? We cannot but grant that both are right, since each uses
-the same words in such a different sense.
-
-The great disputes about _classicism_ and _romanticism_ were frequently
-based upon such equivocations. Sometimes the former was understood
-as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and
-imperfect; at others "classic" meant cold and artificial, "romantic"
-pure, warm, powerful, truly expressive. Thus it was always possible
-reasonably to take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of
-the romantic against the classic.
-
-The same thing happens as regards the word _style._ Sometimes it is
-said that every writer must have style. Here style is synonymous with
-form of expression. At others the form of a code of laws or of a
-mathematical work is said to be without style. Here the error is again
-committed of admitting diverse modes of expression, an ornate and a
-naked form, because, if style is form, the code and the mathematical
-treatise must also be asserted, strictly speaking, to have each its
-style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming some one for
-"having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is clear
-that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and
-pretentious expression, a form of the inartistic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Their use to indicate various æsthetic imperfections._]
-
-_Second._ The second not altogether meaningless use of these words
-and distinctions is to be found when we hear in the examination of a
-literal composition such remarks as these: here is a pleonasm, here an
-ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an ambiguity. The
-meaning is: Here is an error consisting of using a larger number of
-words than necessary (pleonasm); here, on the other hand, the error
-arises from too few having been used (ellipse), here from the use of
-an unsuitable word (metaphor), here of two words which seem to say
-two different things, but really say the same thing (synonym); here,
-on the contrary, of one word which seems to express the same thing,
-whereas it says two different things (ambiguity). This depreciatory
-and pathological use of the terms is, however, less common than the
-preceding.
-
-[Sidenote: _Their use in a sense transcending æsthetic, in the
-service of science._]
-
-_Thirdly_ and finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no
-æsthetic signification similar or analogous to those passed in review,
-and yet one feels that it is not void of meaning and designates
-something that deserves to be noted, this means that it is used in
-the service of logic and of science. Granted that a concept used by
-a writer in a scientific sense is designated by a definite term, it
-is natural that other terms found in use by that writer on which he
-incidentally employs himself to signify the same thought, become _in
-respect to_ the vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors,
-synecdoches, synonyms, elliptical forms and the like. We ourselves in
-the course of this treatise have several times made use of, and intend
-again to make use of such language, in order to make clear the sense of
-the words we employ, or may find employed. But this proceeding, which
-is of value in discussions pertaining to the criticism of science and
-philosophy, has none whatever in literary and artistic criticism. There
-are words and metaphors proper to science: the same concept may be
-psychologically formed in various circumstances and therefore differ in
-its intuitional expression. When the scientific terminology of a given
-writer has been established and one of these modes fixed as correct,
-then all other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the
-æsthetic fact there are none but proper words: the same intuition can
-be expressed in one way only, precisely because it is intuition and not
-concept.
-
-[Sidenote: _Rhetoric in the schools._]
-
-Some, while admitting the æsthetic non-existence of the rhetorical
-categories, yet make a reservation as to their utility and the service
-they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. We
-confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate
-the mind to logical distinction, or aid the teaching of a science
-which they disturb and obscure. Perhaps what is meant is that such
-distinctions, as empirical classes, can aid memory and learning, as was
-admitted above for literary and artistic kinds. To this there is no
-objection. There is certainly another purpose for which the rhetorical
-categories should continue to appear in schools: to be criticized
-there. The errors of the past must not be forgotten and no more said,
-and truths cannot be kept alive save by making them combat errors.
-Unless an account of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied
-by a criticism of them, there is a risk of their springing up again,
-and it may be said that they are already springing up among certain
-philologists as the latest _psychological_ discoveries.
-
-[Sidenote: _The resemblances of expressions._]
-
-It might seem that we thus wished to deny all bond of resemblance
-between different expressions and works of art. Resemblances
-exist, and by means of them, works of art can be arranged in this
-or that group. But they are likenesses such as are observed among
-individuals, and can never be rendered with abstract determinations.
-That is to say, it would be incorrect to apply identification,
-subordination, co-ordination and the other relations of concepts to
-these resemblances, which consist wholly of what is called a _family
-likeness,_ derived from the historical conditions in which the various
-works have appeared and from relationship of soul among the artists.
-
-[Sidenote: _The relative possibility of translations._]
-
-It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of
-translations; not as reproductions of the same original expressions
-(which it would be vain to attempt), but as productions of _similar_
-expressions more or less nearly resembling the originals. The
-translation called good is an approximation which has original value as
-a work of art and can stand by itself.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Various significations of the word feeling._]
-
-Passing to the study of more complex concepts, where the æsthetic
-activity is to be considered in conjunction with other orders of facts,
-and showing the mode of their union or complication, we find ourselves
-first face to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with those
-feelings that are called _æsthetic._
-
-The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings in philosophic
-terminology. We have already had occasion to meet with it once, among
-those used to designate the spirit in its passivity, the matter or
-content of art, and so as synonym of _impressions._ Once again (and
-then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as
-designating the _non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the
-æsthetic fact, that is to say, pure intuition, a form of truth which
-defines no concept and affirms no fact.
-
-[Sidenote: _Feeling as activity._]
-
-But here it is not regarded in either of these two meanings, nor in
-the others which have also been conferred upon it to designate other
-_cognitive_ forms of the spirit, but only in that where feeling is
-understood as a special activity, of non-cognitive nature, having its
-two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain._
-
-This activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have
-therefore attempted either to deny it as activity, or to attribute it
-to _nature,_ excluding it from the spirit. But both these solutions
-bristle with difficulties of such a kind as to prove them finally
-unacceptable to any one who examines them with care. For what could
-a non-spiritual activity ever be, an _activity of nature,_ when we
-have no other knowledge of activity save as spirituality, nor of
-spirituality save as activity? Nature is in this case, by definition,
-the merely passive, inert, mechanical, material. On the other hand,
-the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically
-disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in
-it and manifest activity in its concreteness, or, so to say, quivering.
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Identification of feeling with economic activity._]
-
-This critical conclusion should place us especially in the greatest
-embarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given
-above we have left no room for the new activity of which we are now
-obliged to recognize the existence. But the activity of feeling, if
-it is activity, is not new. It has already had its place assigned to
-it in the system that we have sketched, where, however, it has been
-given another name, _economic_ activity. What is called the activity of
-feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical
-activity which we have distinguished from the ethical activity and made
-to consist of the appetition and volition for some individual end,
-apart from any moral determination.
-
-If feeling has been sometimes considered to be an organic or natural
-activity, this has happened just because it does not coincide either
-with logical, æsthetic or ethical activity. Looked at from the
-standpoint of those three (which were the only ones admitted), it
-has seemed to lie _outside_ the true and real spirit, spirit in its
-aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature, or of the
-soul in so far as it is nature. From this too results the truth of
-another thesis, often maintained, that the æsthetic activity, like the
-ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling. This thesis is
-inexpugnable, when feeling has already been understood implicitly and
-unconsciously as economic volition.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of hedonism._]
-
-The view refuted in this thesis is known as _hedonism._ This consists
-in reducing all the various forms of the spirit to one, which thus also
-loses its own distinctive character and becomes something obscure
-and mysterious, like "the night in which all cows are black." Having
-brought about this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do
-not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and
-pain. They find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art
-and that of easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and
-that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs.
-
-[Sidenote: _Feeling as a concomitant of every form of activity._]
-
-But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be
-substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not
-said that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them of
-necessity, because they are all in close relation both with one another
-and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for
-concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains,
-known as feeling. But we must not confound a concomitant with the
-principal fact, and substitute the one for the other. The discovery of
-a truth, or the fulfilment of a moral duty, produces in us a joy which
-makes vibrate our whole being, which, by attaining the aim of those
-forms of spiritual activity, attains at the same time that to which
-it was _practically_ tending, as its end. Nevertheless, _economic_
-or _hedonistic_ satisfaction, _ethical_ satisfaction, _æsthetic_
-satisfaction, _intellectual_ satisfaction, though thus united, remain
-always distinct.
-
-A question often asked is thus answered at the same time, one which
-has correctly seemed to be a matter of life or death for æsthetic
-science, namely, whether feeling and pleasure precede or follow, are
-cause or effect of the æsthetic fact. We must widen this question to
-include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and answer
-it by maintaining that one cannot talk of cause and effect and of a
-chronological before and after in the unity of the spirit.
-
-And once the relation above expounded is established, all necessity for
-inquiry as to the nature of æsthetic, moral, intellectual and even what
-was sometimes called economic feelings, must disappear. In this last
-case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one,
-and inquiry as to economic feeling must be the same as that relating to
-economic activity. But in the other cases also, we must attend, not to
-the substantive, but to the adjective: the æsthetic, moral and logical
-character will explain the colouring of the feelings as æsthetic, moral
-and intellectual, whereas feeling, studied alone, will never explain
-those refractions and colorations.
-
-[Sidenote: _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._]
-
-A further consequence is, that we no longer need retain the well-known
-distinctions between values or feelings _of value,_ and feelings
-that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; _disinterested_
-and _interested_ feelings, _objective_ feelings and feelings not
-_objective_ but simply _subjective_ feelings of _approbation_ and of
-_mere pleasure_ (cf. the distinction of _Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_
-in German). Those distinctions were used to save the three spiritual
-forms, which were recognized as the triad of the _True,_ the _Good_
-and the _Beautiful,_ from confusion with the fourth form, still
-unknown, and therefore insidious in its indeterminateness and mother
-of scandals. For us this triad has completed its task, because we are
-capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by receiving
-also the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings among the
-respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were
-conceived (by ourselves and others), between value and feelings, as
-between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but
-differences between value and value.
-
-[Sidenote: _Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union._]
-
-As has already been said, feeling or the economic activity presents
-itself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure
-and pain, which we can now translate into useful and disuseful (or
-hurtful). This bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of
-the activistic character of feeling, and one which is to be found in
-all forms of activity. If each of these is _value,_ each has opposed
-to it _antivalue_ or _disvalue._ Absence of value is not sufficient to
-cause dis value, but activity and passivity must be struggling between
-themselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence
-the contradiction and disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed,
-impeded, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely:
-disvalue is its contrary.
-
-We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms,
-without entering into the problem of the relation between value and
-disvalue, that is, the problem of contraries (that is to say, whether
-they are to be thought of dualistically, as two beings or two orders
-of beings, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one
-another; or as a unity, which is also contrariety). This definition
-of the two terms will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to make
-clear the nature of æsthetic activity, and at this particular point one
-of the most obscure and disputed concepts of Æsthetic: the concept of
-the _Beautiful._
-
-[Sidenote: _The Beautiful as the value of expression, or expression
-without qualification._]
-
-Æsthetic, intellectual, economic and ethical values and disvalues
-are variously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good,
-useful, expedient, just, right_ and so on--thus designating the free
-development of spiritual activity, action, scientific research,
-artistic production, when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad,
-useless, inexpedient, unjust,_ wrong designating embarrassed activity,
-the product that is a failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations
-are being continually shifted from one order of facts to another.
-_Beautiful,_ for instance, is said not only of a successful expression,
-but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully achieved,
-and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectual beauty,_ of a
-_beautiful action,_ of a _moral beauty._ The attempt to keep up with
-these infinitely varying usages leads into a trackless labyrinth of
-verbalism in which many philosophers and students of art have lost
-their way. For this reason we have thought it best studiously to avoid
-the use of the word "beautiful" to indicate successful expression in
-its positive value. But after all the explanations that we have given,
-all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and since on the
-other hand we cannot fail to recognize that the prevailing tendency,
-both in current speech and in philosophy, is to limit the meaning of
-the word "beautiful" precisely to the æsthetic value, it seems now both
-permissible and advisable to define beauty as _successful expression,_
-or rather, as _expression_ and nothing more, because expression when it
-is not successful is not expression.
-
-[Sidenote: _The ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it._]
-
-Consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. The paradox is true,
-for works of art that are failures, that the beautiful presents itself
-as _unity,_ the ugly as _multiplicity._ Hence we hear of _merits_ in
-relation to works of art that are more or less failures, that is to
-say, of _those parts of them that are beautiful,_ which is not the case
-with perfect works. It is in fact impossible to enumerate the merits or
-to point out what parts of the latter are beautiful, because being a
-complete fusion they have but one value. Life circulates in the whole
-organism: it is not withdrawn into the several parts.
-
-[Sidenote: _Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor
-ugly._]
-
-Unsuccessful works may have merit in various degrees, even the
-greatest. The beautiful does not possess degrees, for there is no
-conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more
-expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, on the
-other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost
-beautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were _complete,_
-that is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very
-reason cease to be ugly, because it would be without the contradiction
-in which is the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become
-non-value; activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not
-at war, save when activity is really present to oppose it.
-
-And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the
-ugly is based on the conflicts and contradictions in which æsthetic
-activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes
-attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from
-the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest instances
-of expression. Hence the illusion that there are expressions neither
-beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without sensible effort
-and appear easy and natural being considered such.
-
-[Sidenote: _True æsthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental
-feelings._]
-
-The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to
-these henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that
-there exist perfect æsthetic expressions before which no pleasure is
-felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest
-pleasure, we must recommend him to concentrate his attention in the
-æsthetic fact, upon that which is truly æsthetic pleasure. Æsthetic
-pleasure is sometimes reinforced or rather complicated by pleasures
-arising from extraneous facts, which are only accidentally found united
-with it. The poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely
-æsthetic pleasure at the moment when he sees (or intuites) his work
-for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and
-his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On
-the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by one who goes to the
-theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of
-rest and amusement, or that of laughingly snatching a nail from his
-coffin, accompanies the moment of true æsthetic pleasure in the art
-of the dramatist and actors. The same may be said of the artist who
-looks upon his labour with pleasure when it is finished, experiencing,
-in addition to the æsthetic pleasure, that very different one which
-arises from the thought of self-complacency satisfied, or even of the
-economic gain which will come to him from his work. Instances could be
-multiplied.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of apparent feelings._]
-
-A category of _apparent_ æsthetic feelings has been formed in modern
-Æsthetic, not arising from the form, that is to say, from the works of
-art as such, but from their content. It has been remarked that artistic
-representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite shades
-of variety. We tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh,
-we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance,
-with the figures in a picture and with the melody of music. But these
-feelings are not such as would be aroused by the real fact outside
-art; or rather, they are the same in quality, but are quantitatively
-an attenuation of real things. Æsthetic and _apparent_ pleasure and
-pain show themselves to be light, shallow, mobile. We have no need to
-treat here of these _apparent feelings,_ for the good reason that we
-have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have hitherto treated
-of nothing but them. What are these apparent or manifested feelings,
-but feelings objectified, intuited, expressed? And it is natural that
-they do not trouble and afflict us as passionately as those of real
-life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those
-true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula
-of _apparent feelings_ is therefore for us nothing but a tautology,
-through which we can run the pen without scruple.
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-
-CRITICISM OF ÆSTHETIC HEDONISM
-
-
-As we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theory
-based upon the pleasure and pain intrinsic to the economic activity and
-accompanying every other form of activity, which, confounding container
-and content, fails to recognize any process but the hedonistic; so we
-are opposed to æsthetic hedonism in particular, which looks at any rate
-upon the æsthetic, if not also upon all other activities, as a simple
-fact of feeling, and confounds the pleasurable expression, which is the
-beautiful, with the simply pleasurable and all its other species.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher
-senses._]
-
-The æsthetic-hedonistic point of view has been presented in several
-forms. One of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that which
-pleases sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called _higher
-senses._ When analysis of æsthetic facts first began, it was, indeed,
-difficult to avoid the false belief that a picture and a piece of
-music are impressions of sight or hearing and correctly to interpret
-the obvious remark that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor
-the deaf man the music. To show, as we have shown, that the æsthetic
-fact does not depend upon the nature of the impressions, but that all
-sensible impressions can be raised to æsthetic expression and that
-none need of necessity be so raised, is an idea which presents itself
-only when all other doctrinal constructions of this problem have been
-tried. Any one who holds that the æsthetic fact is something pleasing
-to the eyes or to the hearing, has no line of defence against him who
-consistently proceeds to identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in
-general, and includes in Æsthetic cooking, or (as some positivists have
-called it) the viscerally beautiful.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of play._]
-
-The theory of _play_ is another form of æsthetic hedonism. The concept
-of play has sometimes helped towards the realization of the activistic
-character of the expressive fact: man (it has been said) is not really
-man, save when he begins to play (that is to say, when he frees himself
-from natural and mechanical causality and works spiritually); and his
-first game is art. But since the word "play" also means that pleasure
-which arises from the expenditure of the exuberant energy of the
-organism (which is a practical fact), the consequence of this theory
-has been that every game has been called an æsthetic fact, or that the
-æsthetic function has been called a game, because like science and
-everything else, it may form part of a game. Morality alone cannot
-ever be caused by the will to play (for it will never consent to such
-an origin), but on the contrary itself dominates and regulates the act
-itself of playing.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theories of sexuality and of triumph._]
-
-Finally, some have tried to deduce the pleasure of art from the echo
-of that of the sexual organs. And some of the most recent æstheticians
-confidently find the genesis of the æsthetic fact in the pleasure of
-_conquering_ and in that of _triumphing,_ or, as others add, in the
-wish of the male to conquer the female. This theory is seasoned with
-much anecdotal erudition, heaven knows of what degree of credibility,
-as to the customs of savage peoples. But there was really no need for
-such assistance, since in ordinary life one often meets poets who adorn
-themselves with their poetry, like cocks raising their crests, or
-turkeys spreading out their tails. But any one who does this, in so far
-as he does it, is not a poet but a poor fool, in fact, a poor fool of
-a cock or turkey, and the desire for the victorious conquest of women
-has nothing to do with the fact of art. It would be just as correct to
-look upon poetry as _economic,_ because there once were court poets
-and salaried poets, and there are poets now who find in the sale of
-their verses an aid to life if not a complete living. This deduction
-and definition has not failed to attract some zealous neophytes in
-historical materialism.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the Æsthetic of the sympathetic. Meaning in it
-of content and form._]
-
-Another less vulgar current of thought considers Æsthetic as the
-science of the _sympathetic,_ as that with which we sympathize,
-which attracts, rejoices, arouses pleasure and admiration. But the
-sympathetic is nothing but the image or representation of what pleases.
-And as such it is a complex fact, resulting from a constant element,
-the æsthetic element of representation, and a variable element, the
-pleasing in its infinite forms, arising from all the various classes of
-values.
-
-In ordinary language, there is sometimes a feeling of repugnance at
-calling an expression "beautiful," unless it is an expression of the
-sympathetic. Hence the continual conflicts between the point of view
-of the æsthetician or art critic and that of the ordinary person,
-who cannot succeed in persuading himself that the image of pain and
-baseness can be beautiful or at least that it has as much right to be
-beautiful as the pleasing and the good.
-
-The conflict could be put an end to by distinguishing two different
-sciences, one of expression and the other of the sympathetic, if the
-latter could be the object of a special science; that is to say, if
-it were not, as has been shown, a complex and equivocal concept. If
-predominance be given to the expressive fact, it enters Æsthetic as
-science of expression; if to the pleasurable content, we fall back
-to the study of facts essentially hedonistic (utilitarian), however
-complicated they may appear. The particular origin of the doctrine
-which conceives the relation between form and content as the sum of two
-values is also to be sought in the doctrine of the sympathetic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic hedonism and moralism._]
-
-In all the doctrines just now discussed, art is considered as a merely
-hedonistic thing. But æsthetic hedonism cannot be maintained, save by
-uniting it with a general philosophical hedonism, which does not admit
-any other form of value. Hardly has this hedonistic conception of art
-been received by philosophers who admit one or more spiritual values,
-truth or morality, when the following question must necessarily be
-asked: What must be done with art? To what use should it be put? Should
-a free course be allowed to the pleasures it procures? And if so, to
-what extent? The question of the _end of art,_ which in the Æsthetic of
-expression is inconceivable, has a clear significance in the Æsthetic
-of the Sympathetic and demands a solution.
-
-[Sidenote: _The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of
-art._]
-
-Now it is evident that such solution can have but two forms, one
-altogether negative, the other of a restrictive nature. The first,
-which we shall call _rigoristic_ or _ascetic,_ appears several times,
-although not frequently, in the history of ideas. It looks upon art
-as an inebriation of the senses and therefore as not only useless but
-harmful. According to this theory, then, we must exert all our strength
-to liberate the human soul from its disturbing influence. The other
-solution, which we shall call _pedagogic_ or _moralistic-utilitarian,_
-admits art, but only in so far as it co-operates with the end of
-morality; in so far as it assists with innocent pleasure the work
-of him who points the way to the true and the good; in so far as it
-anoints the edge of the cup of wisdom and morality with sweet honey.
-
-It is well to observe that it would be an error to divide this second
-view into intellectualistic and moralistic-utilitarian, according as to
-whether be assigned to art the end of leading to the true or to what
-is practically good. The educational task which is imposed upon it,
-precisely because it is an end which is sought after and advised, is no
-longer merely a theoretical fact, but a theoretical fact already become
-the ground for practical action; it is not, therefore, intellectualism,
-but pedagogism and practicism. Nor would it be more exact to subdivide
-the pedagogic view into pure utilitarian and moralistic-utilitarian;
-because those who admit only the satisfaction of the individual
-(the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute
-hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ulterior justification for
-art.
-
-But to enunciate these theories at the point to which we have attained
-is to confute them. We prefer to restrict ourselves to observing that
-in the pedagogic theory of art is to be found another of the reasons
-why the claim has erroneously been made that the content of art should
-be _chosen_ with a view to certain practical effects.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of pure beauty._]
-
-The thesis that art consists of _pure beauty_ has often been brought
-forward against hedonistic and pedagogic Æsthetic, and eagerly taken
-up by artists: "Heaven places all our joy in _pure beauty,_ and the
-Verse is everything." If by this be understood that art is not to be
-confounded with sensual pleasure (utilitarian practicism), nor with
-the exercise of morality, then our Æsthetic also must be permitted to
-adorn itself with the title of _Æsthetic of pure beauty._ But if (as is
-often the case) something mystical and transcendent be meant by this,
-something unknown to our poor human world, or something spiritual and
-beatific, but not expressive, we must reply that while applauding the
-conception of a beauty _free from all that is not the spiritual form of
-expression,_ we are unable to conceive a beauty superior to this and
-still less that it should be _purified of expression,_ or severed from
-itself.
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-
-THE ÆSTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-ÆSTHETIC CONCEPTS
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Pseudo-æsthetic concepts, and the æsthetic of the
-sympathetic._]
-
-The doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded in
-this by the capricious metaphysical and mystical Æsthetic, and by that
-blind traditionalism which assumes an intimate connection between
-things fortuitously treated together by the same authors in the same
-books), has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of Æsthetic a
-series of concepts a rapid mention of which suffices to justify our
-resolute expulsion of them from our own treatise.
-
-Their catalogue is long, not to say interminable: _tragic, comic,
-sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic,
-humorous, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble,
-decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac,
-cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting,
-dreadful, nauseating;_ the fist can be increased at will.
-
-Since that doctrine took the sympathetic as its special object, it was
-naturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of the sympathetic,
-any of the mixtures or gradations by means of which, starting from
-the sympathetic in its loftiest and most intense manifestation, its
-contrary, the antipathetic and repugnant, is finally reached. And
-since the sympathetic content was held to be the _beautiful_ and
-the antipathetic the _ugly,_ the varieties (tragic, comic, sublime,
-pathetic, etc.) constituted for that conception of Æsthetic the shades
-and gradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the ugly in art and of the
-overcoming of it._]
-
-Having enumerated and defined as well as it could, the chief of these
-varieties, the Æsthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem
-of the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art._ This problem is
-without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the
-anti-æsthetic or inexpressive, which can never form _part_ of the
-æsthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its _antithesis._ But in the
-doctrine which we are here criticizing the positing and discussion
-of that problem meant neither more nor less than the necessity of
-reconciling in some way the false and defective idea of art from which
-it started--art reduced to the representation of the pleasurable--with
-real art, which occupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial
-attempt to settle what examples of the _ugly_ (antipathetic) could be
-admitted in artistic representation, and for what reasons, and in what
-ways.
-
-The answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be
-_overcome_; an unconquerable ugliness, such as the _disgusting_ or the
-_nauseating,_ being altogether excluded. Further, that the duty of
-the ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening
-the effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of
-contrasts, from which the pleasurable may issue more efficacious and
-joy-giving. It is, indeed, a common observation that pleasure is more
-vividly felt when preceded by abstinence and suffering. Thus the ugly
-in art was looked upon as adapted for the service of the beautiful, a
-stimulant and condiment of æsthetic pleasure.
-
-That special refinement of hedonistic theory which used to be pompously
-called the doctrine of the _overcoming of the ugly_ falls with the
-Æsthetic of the sympathetic, and with it the enumeration and definition
-of the concepts mentioned above, which show themselves to be completely
-foreign to Æsthetic. For Æsthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or
-the antipathetic or their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of
-representation.
-
-[Sidenote: _Pseudo-æsthetic concepts belong to Psychology._]
-
-Nevertheless, the important place which, as we have said, those
-concepts have hitherto occupied in æsthetic treatises makes it
-advisable to supply a rather more complete explanation as to their
-nature. What shall be their lot? Excluded from Æsthetic, in what other
-part of Philosophy will they be received?
-
-In truth, nowhere; for all those concepts are without philosophical
-value. They are nothing but a series of classes, which can be fashioned
-in the most various ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is
-sought to reduce the infinite complications and shadings of the values
-and disvalues of life. Of these classes, some have an especially
-positive significance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic,
-the solemn, the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others
-a significance chiefly negative, like the ugly, the painful, the
-horrible, the dreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the insipid, the
-extravagant; finally in others a mixed significance prevails, such as
-the comic, the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic.
-The complications are infinite, because the individuations are
-infinite; hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in
-the arbitrary and approximate manner proper to the natural sciences,
-satisfied with making the best classification they can of that reality
-which they can neither exhaust by enumeration, nor understand and
-conquer speculatively. And since _Psychology_ is the naturalistic
-science which undertakes to construct types and schemes of the
-spiritual life of man (a science whose merely empirical and descriptive
-character becomes more evident day by day), these concepts do not
-belong to Æsthetic, nor to Philosophy in general, but must simply be
-handed over to Psychology.
-
-[Sidenote: _Impossibility of rigorous definitions of them._]
-
-The case of those concepts is that of all other psychological
-constructions: no rigorous definitions of them are possible; and
-consequently they cannot be deduced from one another nor be connected
-in a system, though this has often been attempted, with great waste
-of time and without obtaining thereby any useful results. Nor can it
-be claimed as possible to obtain empirical definitions, universally
-acceptable as precise and true in the place of those philosophical
-definitions recognized as impossible. For no single definition of a
-single fact can be given, but there are innumerable definitions of it,
-according to the cases and the purposes for which they are made; and
-it is clear that if there were only one which had the value of truth
-it would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical
-definition. And as a matter of fact whenever one of the terms to which
-we have referred has been employed (or indeed any other belonging to
-the same class), a new definition of it has been given at the same
-time, expressed or understood. Each one of those definitions differed
-somehow from the others, in some particular, however minute, and in its
-implied reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became a
-special object of attention and was raised to the position of a general
-type. Thus it is that not one of such definitions satisfies either the
-hearer or the constructor of it. For a moment later he finds himself
-before a new instance to which he recognizes that his definition is
-more or less insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of retouching. So
-we must leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or the
-comic, the tragic or the humorous, on every occasion as they please and
-as may suit the end they have in view. And if an empirical definition
-of universal validity be demanded, we can but submit this one:--The
-sublime (or comic, tragic, humorous, etc.) is _everything_ that is or
-shall be so _called_ by those who have employed or shall employ these
-_words._
-
-[Sidenote: _Examples: definitions of the sublime, the comic, the
-humorous._]
-
-What is the sublime? The unexpected affirmation of an overwhelming
-moral force: that is one definition. But the other definition is
-equally good, which recognizes the sublime also where the force which
-affirms itself is certainly overwhelming, but immoral and destructive.
-Both remain vague and lack precision, until applied to a concrete
-case, to an example which makes clear what is meant by "overwhelming,"
-and what by unexpected. They are quantitative concepts, but falsely
-quantitative, since there is no way of measuring them; they are at
-bottom metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical tautologies. The
-humorous will be laughter amid tears, bitter laughter, the sudden
-spring from the comic to the tragic and from the tragic to the comic,
-the romantic comic, the opposite of the sublime, war declared against
-every attempt at insincerity, compassion ashamed to weep, a laugh,
-not at the fact, but at the ideal itself; and what you will beside,
-according as it is wished to get a view of the physiognomy of this or
-that poet, of this or that poem, which, in its uniqueness, is its own
-definition, and though momentary and circumscribed, is alone adequate.
-The comic has been defined as the displeasure arising from the
-perception of a deformity immediately followed by a greater pleasure
-arising from the relaxation of our psychical forces, strained in
-expectation of a perception looked upon as important. While listening
-to a narrative, which might, for example, be a description of the
-magnificently heroic purpose of some individual, we anticipate in
-imagination the occurrence of a magnificent and heroic action, and we
-prepare for its reception by concentrating our psychic forces. All of
-a sudden, however, instead of the magnificent and heroic action, which
-the preliminaries and the tone of the narrative had led us to expect,
-there is an unexpected change to a small, mean, foolish action, which
-does not satisfy to our expectation. We have been deceived, and the
-recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant of displeasure. But
-this instant is as it were conquered by that which immediately follows:
-we are able to relax our strained attention, to free ourselves from
-the provision of accumulated psychic energy henceforth superfluous, to
-feel ourselves light and well. This is the pleasure of the comic, with
-its physiological equivalent of laughter. If the unpleasant fact that
-has appeared should painfully affect our interests, there would not
-be pleasure, laughter would be at once suffocated, the psychic energy
-would be strained and overstrained by other more weighty perceptions.
-If on the other hand such more weighty perceptions do not appear, if
-the whole loss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight,
-then the feeling of our psychic wealth that ensues affords ample
-compensation for this very slight disappointment. Such, expressed in
-a few words, is one of the most accurate modern definitions of the
-comic. It boasts of containing in itself, justified or corrected and
-verified, the manifold attempts to define the comic, from Hellenic
-antiquity to our own day, from Plato's definition in the _Philebus,_
-and from Aristotle's, which is more explicit, and looks upon the comic
-as an _ugliness without pain,_ to that of Hobbes, who replaced it in
-the feeling of _individual superiority_; of Kant, who saw in it the
-_relaxation of a tension_; or from the other proposals of those for
-whom it was _the conflict between great and small, between the finite
-and the infinite_ and so on. But on close observation, the analysis
-and definition above given, although in appearance most elaborate
-and precise, yet enunciates characteristics which are applicable,
-not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; such as the
-succession of painful and pleasing moments and the satisfaction
-arising from the consciousness of strength and of its free expansion.
-The differentiation is here given by quantitative determinations
-whose limits cannot be laid down. They therefore remain vague words,
-possessing some degree of meaning from their reference to this or that
-particular comic fact, and from the psychic disposition of qualities of
-the speaker. If such definitions be taken too seriously, there happens
-to them what Jean Paul Richter said of all the definitions of the
-comic: namely, that their sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to
-produce in reality the fact which they vainly try to fix logically. And
-who will ever logically determine the dividing line between the comic
-and the non-comic, between laughter and smiles, between smiling and
-gravity, or cut the ever varying continuum into which life melts into
-clearly divided parts?
-
-[Sidenote: _Relation between these concepts and æsthetic concepts._]
-
-The facts, classified as far as possible in these psychological
-concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond the general
-one, that all of them, in so far as they constitute the material of
-life, can become the object of artistic representation; and the other,
-an accidental relation, that æsthetic facts also may sometimes enter
-the processes described, such as the impression of the sublime aroused
-by the work of a Titanic artist, such as Dante or Shakespeare, and of
-the comic produced by the attempts of a dauber or scribbler.
-
-But here too the process is external to the æsthetic fact, to which
-is linked only the feeling of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the
-beautiful and of the ugly. Dante's Farinata is æsthetically beautiful
-and nothing but beautiful: if the force of will of that personage seem
-also sublime, or the expression that Dante gives him seem, by reason of
-his great genius, sublime in comparison with that of a less energetic
-poet, these are things altogether outside æsthetic consideration. We
-repeat again that this last pays attention always and only to the
-adequateness of the expression, that is to say, to beauty.
-
-
-
-
-XIII
-
-
-THE "PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL" IN NATURE AND IN ART
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic activity and physical concepts._]
-
-Æsthetic activity, distinct from the practical activity, is always
-accompanied by it in its manifestations. Hence its utilitarian or
-hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain which are, as it were, the
-practical echo of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of
-the ugly. But this practical side of the æsthetic activity has in its
-turn a _physical_ or _psycho-physical_ accompaniment, which consists of
-sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, and so on.
-
-Does it _really_ possess this side, or does it only seem to possess it,
-through the construction which we put on it in physical science, and
-the useful and arbitrary methods which we have already several times
-set in relief as proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our
-reply cannot be doubtful, that is, it must affirm to the second of the
-two hypotheses.
-
-However, it will be better to leave this point in suspense, since it
-is not at present necessary to press this line of inquiry further. The
-mere mention suffices to secure our speaking (for reasons of simplicity
-and adhesion to ordinary language) of the physical element as something
-objective and existing, against leading to hasty conclusions as to the
-concepts of spirit and nature and their relation.
-
-[Sidenote: _Expression in the æsthetic sense, and expression in the
-naturalistic sense._]
-
-It is important, on the other hand, to make clear that as the existence
-of the hedonistic side in every spiritual activity has given rise
-to the confusion between the æsthetic activity and the useful or
-pleasurable, so the existence of, or rather the possibility of
-constructing, this physical side, has caused the confusion between
-_æsthetic_ expression and expression _in a naturalistic sense_; that
-is to say, between a spiritual fact and a mechanical and passive fact
-(not to say, between a concrete reality and an abstraction or fiction).
-In common speech, sometimes it is the words of the poet that are
-called _expressions,_ the notes of the musician, or the figures of the
-painter; sometimes the blush which generally accompanies the feeling of
-shame, the pallor often due to fear, the grinding of the teeth proper
-to violent anger, the shining of the eyes and certain movements of the
-muscles of the mouth, which manifest cheerfulness. We also say that a
-certain degree of heat is the _expression_ of fever, that the falling
-of the barometer is the _expression_ of rain, and even that the height
-of the exchange _expresses_ the depreciation of the paper currency of a
-State, or social discontent the approach of a revolution. One can well
-imagine what sort of scientific results would be attained by allowing
-oneself to be governed by verbal usage and classing together facts so
-widely different. But there is, in fact, an abyss between a man who
-is the prey of anger with all its natural manifestations and another
-man who expresses it æsthetically; between the appearance, the cries
-and contortions of some one grieving at the loss of a dear one and the
-words or song with which the same individual portrays his suffering
-at another time; between the grimace of emotion and the gesture of
-the actor. Darwin's book on the expression of the emotions in man and
-animals does not belong to Æsthetic; because there is nothing in common
-between the science of spiritual expression and a _Semiotic,_ whether
-it be medical, meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic.
-
-Expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks _expression in the
-spiritual sense,_ that is to say, the very character of activity and
-of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into the poles of
-beauty and of ugliness. It is nothing but a relation between cause
-and effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process
-of æsthetic production can be symbolized in four stages, which are:
-_a,_ impressions; _b,_ expression or spiritual æsthetic synthesis;
-_c,_ hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (æsthetic
-pleasure); _d,_ translation of the æsthetic fact into physical
-phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours,
-etc.). Any one can see that the capital point, the only one that
-is properly speaking æsthetic and truly real, is in _b,_ which is
-lacking to the merely naturalistic manifestation or construction also
-metaphorically called expression.
-
-The expressive process is exhausted when these four stages have been
-passed through. It begins again with new impressions, a new æsthetic
-synthesis, and the accompaniments that belong to it.
-
-[Sidenote: _Representations and memory._]
-
-Expressions or representations follow one another, the one drives out
-the other. Certainly, this passing away, this being driven out, is
-not a perishing, it is not total elimination: nothing that is born
-dies with that complete death which would be identical with never
-having been born. If all things pass away, nothing can die. Even the
-representations that we have forgotten persist somehow in our spirit,
-for without this we could not explain acquired habits and capacities.
-Indeed the strength of life lies in this apparent forgetting: one
-forgets what has been absorbed and what life has superseded.
-
-But other representations are also powerful elements in the present
-processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent upon us not to forget
-them, or to be capable of recalling them when they are wanted. The
-will is always vigilant in this work of preservation, which aims at
-preserving (we may say) the greater, the more fundamental part of all
-our riches. But its vigilance does not always suffice. Memory, as we
-say, abandons or betrays us in different ways. For this very reason,
-the human spirit devises expedients which succour the weakness of
-memory and are its _aids._
-
-[Sidenote: _The production of aids to memory._]
-
-How these aids are possible we have been informed from what has been
-said. Expressions or representations are _also_ practical facts, which
-are also called physical in so far as physics classifies and reduces
-them to types. Now it is clear that if we can succeed in making those
-practical or physical facts somehow permanent, it will always be
-possible (all other conditions remaining equal) on perceiving them to
-reproduce in ourselves the already produced expression or intuition.
-
-If that be called the object or physical stimulus in which the
-practical concomitant acts, or (to use physical terms) in which the
-movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent, and
-if that object or stimulus be designated by the letter _e_; the
-process of reproduction will take place in the following order: _e,_
-the physical stimulus; _d-b,_ perception of physical facts (sounds,
-tones, mimetic, combinations of lines and colours, etc.), which is
-together the æsthetic synthesis, already produced; _c_, the hedonistic
-accompaniment, which is also reproduced.
-
-And what else are those combinations of words called poetry, prose,
-poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical
-stimulants of reproduction_ (the stage _e_); what else are those
-combinations of sound called operas, symphonies, sonatas; or
-those combinations of lines and colours called pictures, statues,
-architecture? The spiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of
-the physical facts above mentioned, makes possible the preservation and
-the reproduction of the intuitions produced by man. The physiological
-organism and with it the memory become weakened; the monuments of art
-are destroyed, and lo, all that æsthetic wealth, the fruit of the
-labours of many generations, diminishes and rapidly disappears.
-
-[Sidenote: _Physical beauty._]
-
-Monuments of art, the stimulants of æsthetic reproduction, are called
-_beautiful things_ or _physical beauty._ This combination of words
-constitutes a verbal paradox, for the beautiful is not a physical
-fact; it does not belong to things, but to the activity of man, to
-spiritual energy. But it is now clear through what transferences and
-associations, physical things and facts which are simply aids to the
-reproduction of the beautiful are finally called elliptically beautiful
-things and physical beauty. And now that we have explained this
-elliptical usage, we shall ourselves employ it without hesitation.
-
-[Sidenote: _Content and form: another meaning._]
-
-The intervention of "physical beauty" serves to explain another meaning
-of the words "_content_" and "_form,_" as used by æstheticians. Some
-call "content" the internal fact or expression (for us, on the other
-hand, form), and "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm, the sounds
-(for us the antithesis of form); thus looking upon the physical fact
-as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. It also
-serves to explain another aspect of what is called æsthetic "ugliness."
-Somebody who has nothing definite to express may try to conceal his
-internal emptiness in a flood of words, in sounding verse, in deafening
-polyphony, in painting that dazzles the eye, or by heaping together
-great architectural masses which arrest and astonish us without
-conveying anything whatever. Ugliness, then, is the capricious, the
-charlatanesque; and, in reality, if practical caprice did not intervene
-in the theoretic function, there might be absence of beauty, but never
-the real presence of something deserving the adjective "ugly."
-
-[Sidenote: _Natural and artificial beauty._]
-
-Physical beauty is usually divided into _natural_ and _artificial_
-beauty. Thus we reach one of the facts which have given the greatest
-trouble to thinkers: _natural beauty._ These words often designate
-facts of merely practical pleasure. Any one who calls a landscape
-beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where the body moves
-briskly and the warm sun envelops and caresses the limbs, does not
-speak of anything æsthetic. But it is nevertheless indubitable that
-on other occasions the adjective "beautiful," applied to objects and
-scenes existing in nature, has a completely æsthetic signification.
-
-It has been observed that in order to enjoy natural objects
-æsthetically, we must abstract from their external and historical
-reality, and separate their simple semblance or appearance from
-existence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between
-our legs, so as to cancel our wonted relations with it, the landscape
-appears to us to be an ideal spectacle; that nature is beautiful
-only for him who contemplates her _with the eye of the artist_; that
-zoologists and botanists do not recognize _beautiful_ animals and
-flowers; that natural beauty is _discovered_ (and examples of discovery
-are the points of view, pointed out by men of taste and imagination,
-to which more or less æsthetic travellers and excursionists afterwards
-have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a kind of collective _suggestion)_;
-that, without the _aid of the imagination,_ no part of nature is
-beautiful, and that with such aid the same natural object or fact
-is, according to the disposition of the soul, now expressive, now
-insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now of another,
-sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that
-a _natural beauty_ which an artist would not _to some extent correct,
-does not exist._
-
-All these observations are just, and fully confirm the fact that
-natural beauty is simply a _stimulus_ to æsthetic reproduction,
-which presupposes previous production. Without the previous æsthetic
-intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot awaken any at all. As
-regards natural beauty, man is like the mythical Narcissus at the
-fountain. Leopardi said that natural beauty is "rare, scattered, and
-fugitive": it is imperfect, equivocal, variable. Each refers the
-natural fact to the expression in his mind. One artist is thrown into
-transports by a smiling landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by
-the pretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance
-of an old rascal. Perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and
-the ugly face of the old rascal are _repulsive_; the second, that the
-smiling landscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid._ They
-may dispute for ever; but they will never agree, save when they are
-supplied with a sufficient dose of æsthetic knowledge to enable them to
-recognize that both are right. _Artificial_ beauty, created by man,
-supplies an aid that is far more ductile and efficacious.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mixed beauty._]
-
-In addition to these two classes, æstheticians also sometimes talk in
-their treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. A mixture of what? Precisely of
-natural and artificial. Whoever fixes and externalizes, operates with
-natural data which he does not create but combines and transforms.
-In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and
-artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty,
-as of a special category. But it sometimes happens that combinations
-already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others;
-as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and include in our
-design groups of trees or ponds already in place. On other occasions
-externalization is limited by the impossibility of producing certain
-effects artificially. Thus we can mix colouring matters, but we cannot
-create a powerful voice or a face and figure appropriate to this or
-that character in a play. We must therefore seek them among already
-existing things, and make use of them when found. When, therefore, we
-employ a great number of combinations already existing in nature, such
-as we should not be able to produce artificially if they did not exist,
-the resulting fact is called _mixed_ beauty.
-
-[Sidenote: _Writings._]
-
-We must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments of
-reproduction called _writings,_ such as alphabets, musical notes,
-hieroglyphics, and all pseudolanguages, from the language of flowers
-and flags to the language of patches (so much in vogue in the society
-of the eighteenth century). Writings are not physical facts which
-arouse directly impressions answering to æsthetic expressions; they
-are simple _indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such
-physical facts. A series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the
-movements which we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to
-emit certain definite sounds. If, through practice, we become able
-to hear the words without opening our mouths and (what is much more
-difficult) to hear the sounds by running the eye along the stave, all
-this does not alter in any way the nature of the writings, which are
-altogether different from direct physical beauty. No one calls the
-book which contains the _Divine Comedy,_ or the score which contains
-_Don Giovanni,_ beautiful in the same sense in which the block of
-marble which contains Michæl Angelo's _Moses,_ or the piece of coloured
-wood which contains the _Transfiguration,_ is metaphorically called
-beautiful. Both serve the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former
-by a far longer and more indirect route than the latter.
-
-[Sidenote: _Free and non-free beauty._]
-
-Another division of the beautiful, still found in treatises, is that
-into _free and not free._ By not-free beauties have been understood
-those objects which have to serve a double purpose, extra-æsthetic
-and æsthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since it seems that the
-first purpose sets limits and barriers in the way of the second, the
-resulting beautiful object has been considered as not-free beauty.
-
-Architectural works are especially cited; and just for this reason,
-architecture has often been excluded from the number of what are called
-the fine arts. A temple must above all things be for the use of a
-cult; a house must contain all the rooms needed for the convenience
-of life, and they must be arranged with a view to this convenience; a
-fortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks of
-given armies and the blows of given instruments of war. It is therefore
-concluded that the architect's field is restricted: he may _embellish_
-to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but he is bound by
-the _object_ of those edifices, and he can only manifest that part of
-his vision of beauty which does not impair their extra-æsthetic but
-fundamental objects.
-
-Other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry.
-Plates, glasses, knives, guns and combs can be made beautiful; but it
-is held that their beauty must not be pushed so far as to prevent our
-eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife,
-firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. The same is
-said of the art of typography: a book should be beautiful, but not to
-the extent of being difficult or impossible to read.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of non-free beauty._]
-
-In respect of all this we must observe in the first place that the
-extrinsic purpose is not necessarily, precisely because it is such,
-a limit or impediment to the other purpose of being a stimulus to
-æsthetic reproduction. It is therefore quite false to maintain that
-architecture, for example, is by its nature imperfect and not free,
-since it must also obey other practical purposes; in fact, the mere
-presence of fine works of architecture is enough to dispel any such
-illusion.
-
-In the second place, not only are the two purposes not necessarily
-contradictory, but we must add that the artist always has the means
-of preventing this contradiction from arising. How? by simply making
-the _destination_ of the object which serves a practical end enter
-as material into his æsthetic intuition and externalization. He will
-not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the
-instrument of æsthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted
-to its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and
-barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are
-embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express their end. A
-garment is only beautiful because it is exactly suitable to a given
-person in given conditions. The sword bound to the side of the warrior
-Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "so adorned that it
-may seem a useless ornament, not the free instrument of war," or it
-was beautiful, if you will, but to the eyes and imagination of the
-sorceress, who liked to see her lover equipped in that effeminate way.
-The æsthetic activity can always agree with the practical, because
-expression is truth.
-
-It cannot however be denied that æsthetic contemplation sometimes
-hinders practical usage. For instance, it is a quite common experience
-to find certain new objects seem so well adapted to their purpose,
-and therefore so beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in
-maltreating them by passing from their contemplation to their use. It
-was for this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia showed
-such repugnance to sending his magnificent grenadiers, so well adapted
-to war, into the mud and fire of battle, while his less æsthetic son,
-Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent service.
-
-[Sidenote: _Stimulants of production._]
-
-It might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful
-as a simple aid to the reproduction of the internally beautiful, or
-expressions, that the artist creates his expressions by painting or
-by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and that therefore the
-physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimes precedes the
-æsthetically beautiful. This would be a somewhat superficial mode of
-understanding the procedure of the artist, who never in reality makes
-a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with his
-imagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke,
-not in order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist),
-but as a kind of experiment and in order to have a point of departure
-for further meditation and internal concentration. The physical
-point of departure is not the physically beautiful instrument of
-reproduction, but a means that may be called _pedagogic,_ like retiring
-into solitude, or the many other expedients frequently very strange,
-adopted by artists and scientists, who vary in these according to their
-various idiosyncrasies. The old æsthetician Baumgarten advised poets
-seeking inspiration to ride on horseback, to drink wine in moderation,
-and (provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women.
-
-
-
-
-XIV
-
-
-ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSICS AND ÆSTHETIC
-
-
-We must mention a series of fallacious scientific doctrines which have
-arisen from the failure to understand the purely external relation
-between the æsthetic fact or artistic vision and the physical fact
-or instrument which aids in its reproduction, together with brief
-criticisms of them deduced from what has already been said.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic associationism._]
-
-That form of associationism which identifies the æsthetic fact with the
-_association_ of two images finds support in such lack of apprehension.
-By what path has it been possible to arrive at such an error, so
-repugnant to our æsthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of
-perfect unity, never of duality? Precisely because the physical and
-æsthetic facts have been considered separately, as two distinct images,
-which enter the spirit, the one drawn in by the other, first one and
-then the other. A picture has been divided into the image of the
-_picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, into
-the image of the _words_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the words.
-But this dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not
-enter the spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image
-(the only image, which is the æsthetic fact), in so far as it blindly
-stimulates the psychic organism and produces the impression which
-answers to the æsthetic expression already produced.
-
-The efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the field
-of Æsthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some way
-the unity which has been destroyed by their principle of association,
-are highly instructive. Some maintain that the image recalled is
-unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on the
-contrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ of
-the æsthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. But the dilemma is
-inexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity
-and give up association. No third way out of the difficulty exists.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic physics._]
-
-From the failure to analyse so-called natural beauty thoroughly and to
-recognize that it is simply an incident of æsthetic reproduction, and
-from having looked upon it, on the contrary, as given in nature, is
-derived all that portion of treatises upon Æsthetic entitled _Beauty
-of Nature_ or _Æsthetic Physics_; sometimes even subdivided, save
-the mark, into æsthetic Mineralogy, Botany and Zoology. We do not
-wish to deny that such treatises contain many just observations, and
-are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as they represent
-beautifully the imaginings and fancies or impressions of their authors.
-But we must affirm it to be scientifically false to ask oneself if
-the dog be beautiful and the ornithorhynchus ugly, the lily beautiful
-and the artichoke ugly. Indeed, the error is here double. On the one
-hand, æsthetic Physics falls back into the equivocation of the theory
-of artistic and literary kinds, of attempting to attach æsthetic
-determinations to the abstractions of our intellect; on the other, it
-fails to recognize, as we said, the true formation of so-called natural
-beauty, a formation which excludes even the possibility of the question
-as to whether some given individual animal, flower or man be beautiful
-or ugly. What is not produced by the æsthetic spirit, or cannot be
-referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. The æsthetic process
-arises from the ideal connexions in which natural objects are placed.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the beauty of the human body._]
-
-The double error can be exemplified by the question as to the _Beauty
-of the human body,_ upon which whole volumes have been written. Here
-we must before everything turn those who discuss this subject from the
-abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "What do you mean by the
-human body, that of the male, the female, or the hermaphrodite?" Let
-us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct
-inquiries, as to male and female beauty (there really are writers
-who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more beautiful);
-and let us continue: "Masculine or feminine beauty; but of what race
-of men--the white, the yellow or the black, or any others that may
-exist, according to the division you prefer?" Let us assume that they
-limit themselves to the white race, and drive home the argument: "To
-what sub-species of the white race?" And when we have restricted them
-gradually to one corner of the white world, going, let us say, from
-the Italian to the Tuscan, the Siennese, the Porta Camollia quarter,
-we will proceed: "Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in
-what condition and stage--that of the newborn babe, of the child, of
-the boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and of
-him who is at rest or of him who is at work, or of him who is occupied
-like Paul Potter's bull, or the Ganymede of Rembrandt?"
-
-Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual
-_omnimode determinatum,_ or rather at "this man here," pointed out with
-the finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling
-what we have said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now
-ugly, according to the point of view and to what is passing in the soul
-of the artist. If even the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, and if
-there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy
-firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of northern seas; is it
-really possible that such relativity does not exist for the human body,
-source of the most varied suggestions?
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the beauty of geometrical figures._]
-
-The question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected with
-æsthetic Physics. But if by geometrical figures be understood the
-concepts of geometry (the concepts of the triangle, the square, the
-cone), these are neither beautiful nor ugly, just because they are
-concepts. If, on the other hand, by such figures be understood bodies
-which possess definite geometrical forms, they will be beautiful
-or ugly, like every natural fact, according to the ideal connexions
-in which they are placed. Some hold that those geometrical figures
-are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion
-of firmness and of power. We do not deny that this may be so. But
-it must not be denied on the other hand that those also may possess
-beauty which give the impression of instability and weakness, where
-they represent just the insecure and the feeble; and that in these
-last cases the firmness of the straight fine and the lightness of the
-cone or of the equilateral triangle would seem to be on the contrary
-elements of ugliness.
-
-Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty
-of geometry, like others analogous as to the historically beautiful
-and human beauty, seem less absurd in the Æsthetic of the sympathetic,
-which really means by the words "æsthetic beauty" the representation
-of the pleasing. But the claim to determine scientifically what are
-sympathetic contents and what are irremediably antipathetic is none the
-less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after laying
-down those premises. One can only answer such questions by repeating
-with an infinitely long postscript the _Sunt quos_ of the first ode of
-the first book of Horace, and the _Havvi chi_ of Leopardi's letter to
-Carlo Pepoli. To each man his beautiful (= sympathetic), as to each man
-his fair one. Philography is not science.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of another aspect of the imitation of nature._]
-
-The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in
-producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are
-called his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers and so on. Let us run over
-the sketches, studies and notes of artists: Leonardo noted down in his
-pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper: "Giovannina, weird
-face, is at St. Catherine's, at the Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione
-is at the Pietà, he has a fine head; Christ, Giovan Conte, of Cardinal
-Mortaro's suite." And so on. From this comes the illusion that the
-artist _imitates nature,_ when it would perhaps be more exact to say
-that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. The illusion that
-_art imitates nature_ has sometimes found ground and support in this
-illusion, as also in its variant, more easily maintained, which makes
-of art the _idealizer of nature._ This last theory presents the process
-out of its true order, which indeed is not merely upset but actually
-inverted; for the artist does not proceed from external reality, in
-order to modify it by approximating it to the ideal; he goes from
-the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, his
-ideal, and from this passes to the natural fact, which he employs as
-instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the elementary forms of the
-beautiful._]
-
-Another consequence of the confusion between the æsthetic fact and the
-physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful._
-If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact on
-the contrary, in which it externalizes itself, can easily be divided
-and subdivided: for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours,
-groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into
-strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters,
-paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words and so on. The parts
-thus obtained are not æsthetic facts, but smaller physical facts,
-arbitrarily divided. If this path were followed and the confusion
-persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true elementary
-forms of the beautiful are _atoms._
-
-The æsthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must
-have _bulk,_ could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the
-imperceptibility of the too small, or the inapprehensibility of the
-too large. But a greatness determined by perceptibility, not by
-measurement, implies a concept widely different from the mathematical.
-Indeed, what is called imperceptible and inapprehensible does not
-produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept:
-the demand for bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the actual
-presence of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the
-beautiful.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the search for the objective conditions of the
-beautiful._]
-
-Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective
-conditions of the beautiful,_ it has been asked: To what physical facts
-does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of
-tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are
-as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange
-in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The persistent
-fruitlessness of the attempt should have given rise before long to some
-suspicion of its vanity. In our times, especially, necessity for an
-_inductive_ Æsthetic has been often proclaimed, of an Æsthetic starting
-_from below,_ proceeding like natural science and not jumping to its
-conclusions. Inductive? But Æsthetic has always been both inductive and
-deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction
-cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize
-a true science. But the word "induction" was not pronounced here by
-chance. The intention was to imply that the æsthetic fact is really
-nothing but a physical fact, to be studied by the methods proper to the
-physical and natural sciences.
-
-With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Æsthetic
-or Æsthetic _from below_ (what pride in this modesty!) begin its
-labours. It conscientiously began by making a collection of _beautiful
-things,_ for example, a great number of envelopes of various shapes and
-sizes, and asked which of these give the impression of beauty and which
-of ugliness. As was to be expected, the inductive æstheticians speedily
-found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared
-ugly in one aspect appeared beautiful in another. A coarse yellow
-envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing
-a love-letter, is just what is wanted for a writ served by process on
-stamped paper, which in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any
-rate an irony, enclosed in a square envelope of English paper. Such
-considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince
-inductive æstheticians that the beautiful has no physical existence,
-and cause them to desist from their vain and ridiculous quest. But no:
-they had recourse to an expedient, as to which we should hardly like to
-say how far it belongs to the strict method of natural science. They
-sent their envelopes round and opened a _referendum,_ trying to settle
-in what beauty or ugliness consists by the votes of the majority.
-
-[Sidenote: _The Astrology of Æsthetic._]
-
-We will not waste time over this subject, lest we should seem to be
-turning ourselves into tellers of comic tales rather than expositors of
-æsthetic science and of its problems. It is a matter of fact that the
-inductive æstheticians have not yet discovered _one single law._
-
-He who despairs of doctors is apt to abandon himself to charlatans.
-This has befallen those who have believed in the naturalistic laws of
-the beautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that
-of the proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that
-is to say, of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the
-less is to the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_be : ac
-= ac : ab_). Such canons easily become their superstitions, and they
-attribute to them the success of their works. Thus Michæl Angelo left
-as a precept to his disciple Marco del Pino da Siena that "he should
-always make a pyramidal serpentine figure multiplied by one two and
-three," a precept which did not enable Marco da Siena to emerge from
-that mediocrity which we can yet observe in many of his paintings that
-exist here in Naples. Others took Michæl Angelo's words as authority
-for the precept that serpentine undulating lines were the true _lines
-of beauty._ Whole volumes have been composed on these laws of beauty,
-on the golden section and on the undulating and serpentine lines. These
-should in our opinion be looked upon as the _astrology of Æsthetic._
-
-
-
-
-XV
-
-
-THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The practical activity of externalization._]
-
-The fact of the production of physical beauty implies, as has already
-been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowing certain
-visions, intuitions or representations to be lost. Such a will must be
-able to act with the utmost rapidity and as it were instinctively, and
-may also need long and laborious deliberations. In any case, thus and
-thus only does the practical activity enter into relations with the
-æsthetic, that is to say, no longer as its simple accompaniment, but as
-a really distinct moment of it. We cannot will or not will our æsthetic
-vision: we can however will or not will to externalize it, or rather,
-to preserve and communicate to others, or not, the externalization
-produced.
-
-[Sidenote: _The technique of externalization._]
-
-This volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex of
-various kinds of knowledge. These are known as _technique,_ like all
-knowledge which precedes a practical activity. Thus we talk of an
-_artistic technique_ in the same metaphorical and elliptic manner that
-we talk of the physically beautiful, that is to say (in more precise
-language), _knowledge at the service of the practical activity directed
-to producing stimuli to æsthetic reproduction._ In place of employing
-so lengthy a phrase, we shall here avail ourselves of ordinary
-terminology, whose meaning we now understand.
-
-The possibility of this technical knowledge, at the service of artistic
-reproduction, is what has led minds astray to imagine the existence
-of an æsthetic technique of internal expression, which is tantamount
-to saying, a doctrine of the _means of internal expression,_ a thing
-that is altogether inconceivable. And we know well the reason of its
-inconceivability; expression, considered in itself, is a primary
-theoretic activity, and as such precedes practice and intellectual
-knowledge which illumines practice and is independent alike of both.
-It aids for its part to illumine practice, but is not illuminated by
-it. Expression does not possess _means,_ because it has not an _end_;
-it has intuitions of things, but it does not will and is therefore
-unanalysable into the abstract components of volition, means and end.
-Sometimes a certain writer is said to have invented a new technique
-of fiction or of drama, or a painter is said to have discovered a new
-technique of distributing light. The word is used here at hazard;
-because the so-called _new technique_ is really _that romance itself,
-or that new picture_ itself and nothing else. The distribution of
-light belongs to the vision of the picture itself; as the technique
-of a dramatist is his dramatic conception itself. On other occasions,
-the word "technique" is used to designate certain merits or defects
-in a work that is a failure; and it is euphemistically said that the
-conception is bad but the technique good, or that the conception is
-good but the technique bad.
-
-On the other hand, when we talk of the different ways of painting
-in oils, or of etching, or of sculpturing in alabaster, then the
-word "technique" is in its place; but in such a case the adjective
-"artistic" is used metaphorically. And if a dramatic technique in the
-æsthetic sense be impossible, a theatrical technique of processes of
-externalization of certain particular æsthetic works is not impossible.
-When, for instance, women were introduced on the stage in Italy in the
-second half of the sixteenth century, in place of men dressed as women,
-this was a true and real discovery in theatrical technique; such too
-was the perfecting in the following century of machines for the rapid
-changing of scenery by the impresarios of Venice.
-
-The collection of technical knowledge at the service of artists
-desirous of externalizing their expressions, can be divided into
-groups, which may be entitled _theories of the arts._ Thus arises
-a theory of Architecture, comprising mechanical laws, information
-relating to the weight or resistance of the materials of construction
-or of fortification, manuals relating to the method of mixing lime or
-stucco; a theory of Sculpture, containing advice as to the instruments
-to be used for sculpturing the various sorts of stone, for obtaining
-a successful mixture of bronze, for working with the chisel, for
-the accurate casting of the clay or plaster model, for keeping clay
-damp; a theory of Painting, on the various techniques of tempera,
-of oil-painting, of water-colour, of pastel, on the proportions of
-the human body, on the laws of perspective; a theory of Oratory,
-with precepts as to the method of producing, of exercising and of
-strengthening the voice, of attitude in impersonation and gesture; a
-theory of Music, on the combinations and fusions of tones and sounds;
-and so on. Such collections of precepts abound in all literatures.
-And since it is impossible to say what is useful and what useless to
-know, books of this sort become very often a sort of encyclopædias or
-_catalogues of desiderata._ Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture,
-claims for the architect a knowledge of letters, of drawing, of
-geometry, of arithmetic, of optic, of history, of natural and moral
-philosophy, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of astrology, of music, and
-so on. Everything is worth knowing: learn the art and have done with it.
-
-[Sidenote: _Technical theories of the different arts._]
-
-It should be evident that such empirical collections are not reducible
-to science. They are composed of notions, taken from various sciences
-and disciplines, and their philosophical and scientific principles
-are to be found in the latter. To propose to construct a scientific
-theory of the different arts would be to wish to reduce to the single
-and homogeneous what is by nature multiple and heterogeneous; to wish
-to destroy the existence as a collection of what was put together
-precisely to form a collection. Were we to try to give scientific
-form to the manuals of the architect, the painter, or the musician,
-it is clear that nothing would remain in our hands but the general
-principles of Mechanics, Optics, or Acoustics. And if we were to
-extract and isolate what may be scattered among them of properly
-artistic observations, to make of them a scientific system, then the
-sphere of the individual art would be abandoned and that of Æsthetic
-entered, for Æsthetic is always general Æsthetic, or rather it cannot
-be divided into general and special. This last case (that is, the
-attempt to furnish a technique which ends in composing an Æsthetic)
-arises when men possessing strong scientific instincts and a natural
-tendency to philosophy set themselves to work to produce such theories
-and technical manuals.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic theories of particular arts_.]
-
-But the confusion between Physics and Æsthetic has attained to its
-highest degree, when æsthetic theories of particular arts are imagined,
-to answer such questions as: What are the _limits_ of each art? What
-can be represented with colours, and what with sounds? What with simple
-monochromatic lines and what with touches of various colours? What with
-tones, and what with metres and rhythms? What are the limits between
-the figurative and the auditive arts, between painting and sculpture,
-poetry and music?
-
-This, translated into scientific language, is tantamount to asking:
-What is the connexion between Acoustics and æsthetic expression? What
-between the latter and Optics?--and the like. Now, if _there is no
-passage_ from the physical fact to the æsthetic, how could there be
-from the æsthetic to particular groups of physical facts, such as the
-phenomena of Optics or of Acoustics?
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the classification of the arts._]
-
-The so-called _arts_ have no æsthetic limits, because, in order to
-have them, they would need to have also æsthetic existence in their
-particularity; and we have demonstrated the altogether empirical
-genesis of those partitions. Consequently, any attempt at an æsthetic
-classification of the arts is absurd. If they be without limits,
-they are not exactly determinable, and consequently cannot be
-philosophically classified. All the books dealing with classifications
-and systems of the arts could be burned without any loss whatever. (We
-say this with the utmost respect to the writers who have expended
-their labours upon them.)
-
-The impossibility of such systematizations finds something like a proof
-in the strange attempts made to carry it out. The first and most common
-partition is that into arts of _hearing, sight,_ and _imagination_;
-as if eyes, ears, and imagination were on the same level and could be
-deduced from the same logical variable as _fundamentum divisionis._
-Others have proposed the division into arts of _space_ and arts of
-_time,_ arts of _rest_; and _movement_; as if the concepts of space,
-time, rest and motion could determine special æsthetic forms and
-possess anything in common with art as such. Finally, others have
-amused themselves by dividing them into _classic_ and _romantic,_
-or into _oriental, classic,_ and _romantic,_ thereby conferring the
-value of scientific concepts upon simple historical denominations, or
-falling into those rhetorical partitions of expressive forms, already
-criticized above; or into arts _that can only be seen from one side,_
-like painting, and arts _that can be seen from all sides,_ like
-sculpture--and similar extravagances, which hold good neither in heaven
-nor on earth.
-
-The theory of the limits of the arts was perhaps at the time when
-it was put forward a beneficial critical reaction against those who
-believed in the possibility of remodelling one expression into another,
-as the _Iliad_ or _Paradise Lost_ into a series of paintings, and
-indeed held a poem to be of greater or lesser value according as it
-could or could not be translated into pictures by a painter. But if the
-rebellion were reasonable and resulted in victory, this does not mean
-that the arguments employed and the systems constructed for the purpose
-were sound.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the union of the arts._]
-
-Another theory which is a corollary to that of the arts and their
-limits, falls with them; that of the _union of the arts._ Given
-particular arts, distinct and limited, it was asked: Which is the most
-_powerful_? Do we not obtain _more powerful_ effects by _uniting_
-several? We know nothing of this: we know only that in each particular
-case certain given artistic intuitions have need of definite physical
-means for their reproduction and other artistic intuitions of other
-means. We can obtain the effect of certain plays by simply reading
-them; others need declamation and scenic display: there are some
-artistic intuitions which need for their full externalization words,
-song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors;
-while others are quite complete in a slight outline made with the
-pen, or a few strokes of the pencil. But it is false to suppose that
-declamation and scenic effects and all the other things together that
-we have mentioned are _more powerful_ than a simple reading or a simple
-outline of pen or pencil; because each of those facts or groups of
-facts has, so to say, a different purpose, and the power of the means
-cannot be compared when the purposes are different.
-
-[Sidenote: _Relation of the activity of externalization to utility and
-morality._]
-
-Finally, it is only from the point of view of a clear and rigorous
-distinction between the true and proper æsthetic activity and the
-practical activity of externalization that we can solve the complicated
-and confused questions as to the relations between _art and utility_
-and _art and morality._
-
-We have demonstrated above that art as art is independent both of
-utility and of morality, as also of all practical value. Without this
-independence, it would not be possible to speak of an intrinsic value
-of art, nor indeed to conceive an æsthetic science, which demands the
-autonomy of the æsthetic fact as its necessary condition.
-
-But it would be erroneous to maintain that this independence of the
-vision or intuition or _internal expression_ of the artist should
-be simply extended to the practical activity of externalization and
-communication which may or may not follow the æsthetic fact. If by art
-be understood the externalization of art, then utility and morality
-have a perfect right to enter into it; that is to say, the right to be
-master in one's own house.
-
-Indeed we do not externalize and fix all the many expressions and
-intuitions which we form in our spirit; we do not declare our every
-thought in a loud voice, or write it down, or print, or draw, or
-paint, or expose it to the public. We _select_ from the crowd of
-intuitions which are formed or at least sketched within us; and the
-selection is ruled by the criteria of the economic disposition of life
-and of its moral direction. Therefore, when we have fixed an intuition,
-we have still to decide whether or no we should communicate it to
-others, and to whom, and when, and how; all which deliberations come
-equally under the utilitarian and ethical criterion.
-
-Thus we find the concepts of _selection,_ of the _interesting,_ of
-_morality,_ of an _educational end,_ of _popularity,_ etc., to some
-extent justified, although these can in no way be justified when
-imposed upon art as art, and we have ourselves rejected them in pure
-Æsthetic. Error always contains an element of truth. He who formulated
-those erroneous æsthetic propositions in reality had his eye on
-practical facts, which attach themselves externally to the æsthetic
-fact and belong to economic and moral fife.
-
-It is well to advocate yet greater freedom in making known the means
-of æsthetic reproduction; we are of the same opinion, and leave
-projects for legislation and for legal action against immoral art,
-to hypocrites, to the ingenuous and to wasters of time. But the
-proclamation of this freedom, and the fixing of its limits, how
-wide soever they be, is always the task of morality. And it would
-in any case be out of place to invoke that highest principle, that
-_fundamentum æsthetices,_ which is the independence of art, to deduce
-from it the guiltlessness of the artist who calculates like an
-immoral speculator upon the unhealthy tastes of his readers in the
-externalization of his imaginings, or the freedom of hawkers to sell
-obscene statuettes in the public squares. This last case is the affair
-of the police, as the first must be brought before the tribunal of
-the moral consciousness. The æsthetic judgement on the work of art
-has nothing to do with the morality of the artist as a practical man,
-or with the provisions to be taken that the things of art may not be
-diverted to evil ends alien to her nature, which is pure theoretic
-contemplation.
-
-
-
-
-XVI
-
-
-TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic judgement. Its identity with æsthetic
-reproduction._]
-
-When the entire æsthetic and externalizing process has been completed,
-when a beautiful expression has been produced and it has been fixed
-in a definite physical material, what is meant by _judging ill To
-reproduce it in oneself,_ answer the critics of art, almost with one
-voice. Very good. Let us try thoroughly to understand this fact, and
-with that object in view, let us represent it schematically.
-
-The individual A is seeking the expression of an impression which
-he feels or anticipates, but has not yet expressed. See him trying
-various words and phrases which may give the sought-for expression,
-that expression which must exist, but which he does not possess. He
-tries the combination _m,_ but rejects it as unsuitable, inexpressive,
-incomplete, ugly: he tries the combination _n,_ with a like result.
-_He does not see at all, or does not see clearly._ The expression
-still eludes him. After other vain attempts, during which he sometimes
-approaches, sometimes retreats from the mark at which he aims, all of a
-sudden (almost as though formed spontaneously of itself) he forms the
-sought-for expression, and _lux facta est._ He enjoys for an instant
-æsthetic pleasure or the pleasure of the beautiful. The ugly, with
-its correlative displeasure, was the æsthetic activity which had not
-succeeded in conquering the obstacle; the beautiful is the expressive
-activity which now displays itself triumphant.
-
-We have taken this example from the domain of speech, as being nearer
-and more accessible, and because we all talk, though we do not all draw
-or paint. Now if another individual, whom we shall call B, is to judge
-that expression and decide whether it be beautiful or ugly, he _must of
-necessity place himself at A's point of view,_ and go through the whole
-process again, with the help of the physical sign supplied to him by A.
-If A has seen clearly, then B (who has placed himself at A's point of
-view) will also see clearly and will see this expression as beautiful.
-If A has not seen clearly, then B also will not see clearly, and will
-find the expression more or less ugly, _just as A did._
-
-[Sidenote: _Impossibility of divergences._]
-
-It may be observed that we have not taken into consideration two other
-cases: that of A having a clear and B an obscure vision; and that of A
-having an obscure and B a clear vision. Strictly speaking, these two
-cases are _impossible._
-
-Expressive activity, just because it is activity, is not caprice, but
-spiritual necessity; it cannot solve a definite æsthetic problem save
-in one way, which is the right way. It will be objected to this plain
-statement that works which seem beautiful to the artists are afterwards
-found to be ugly by the critics; while other works with which the
-artists were discontented and held to be imperfect or failures are, on
-the contrary, held to be beautiful and perfect by the critics. But in
-this case, one of the two is wrong: either the critics or the artists,
-sometimes the artists, at other times the critics. Indeed, the producer
-of an expression does not always fully realize what is happening in
-his soul. Haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices,
-make people say, and others sometimes almost believe, that works of
-ours are beautiful, which, if we really looked into ourselves, we
-should see to be ugly, as they are in reality. Thus poor Don Quixote,
-when he had reattached to his helmet as well as he could the vizor of
-cardboard--the vizor that had showed itself to possess but the feeblest
-force of resistance at the first encounter,--took good care not to test
-it again with a well-delivered sword-thrust, but simply declared and
-maintained it to be (says the author) _por celada finisima de encaxe._
-And in other cases, the same reasons, or opposite but analogous
-ones, trouble the consciousness of the artist, and cause him to value
-badly what he has successfully produced, or to strive to undo! and do
-again for the worse what he has done well in artistic spontaneity.
-An instance of this is Tasso and his passage from the _Gerusalemme
-liberata_ to the _Gerusalemme conquistata._ In the same way, haste,
-laziness, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, personal sympathies
-or animosities, and other motives of a similar sort, sometimes cause
-the critics to proclaim ugly what is beautiful, and beautiful what is
-ugly. Were they to eliminate such disturbing elements, they would feel
-the work of art as it really is, and would not leave it to posterity,
-that more diligent and more dispassionate judge, to award the palm, or
-to do that justice which they have refused.
-
-[Sidenote: _Identity of taste and genius._]
-
-It is clear from the preceding theorem that the activity of judgement
-which criticizes and recognizes the beautiful is identical with
-what produces it. The only difference lies in the diversity of
-circumstances, since in the one case it is a question of æsthetic
-production, in the other of reproduction. The activity which judges is
-called _taste_; the productive activity is called _genius_: genius and
-taste are therefore substantially _identical._
-
-The common remark that the critic should possess something of the
-genius of the artist and that the artist should possess taste, gives
-a glimpse of this identity; or the remark that there exists an active
-(productive) and a passive (reproductive) taste. But it is also
-negated in other equally common remarks, as when people speak of taste
-without genius, or of genius without taste. These last observations
-are meaningless, unless they allude to quantitative or psychological
-differences, those being called geniuses without taste who produce
-works of art, inspired in their chief parts and neglected or defective
-in their secondary parts, and men of taste without genius, those
-who, while they succeed in obtaining certain isolated or secondary
-merits, do not possess sufficient power for a great artistic
-synthesis. Analogous explanations can easily be given of other similar
-expressions. But to posit a substantial difference between genius and
-taste, between artistic production and reproduction, would render both
-communication and judgement alike inconceivable. How could we judge
-what remained external to us? How could that which is produced by a
-given activity be judged by a _different_ activity? The critic may
-be a small genius, the artist a great one; the former may have the
-strength of ten, the latter of a hundred; the former, in order to reach
-a certain height, will have need of the assistance of the other; but
-the nature of both must remain the same. To judge Dante, we must raise
-ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we
-are not Dante, nor Dante we; but in that moment of contemplation and
-judgement, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that moment
-we and he are one thing. In this identity alone resides the possibility
-that our little souls can echo great souls, and grow great with them in
-the universality of the spirit.
-
-[Sidenote: _Analogy with other activities._]
-
-Let us remark in passing that what has been said of the æsthetic
-judgement holds good equally for every other activity and for every
-other judgement; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism
-is effected in a like manner. To limit ourselves to this last, only if
-we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he found
-himself who took a given resolution, can we form a judgement as to
-whether his decision were moral or immoral. An action would otherwise
-remain incomprehensible and therefore impossible to judge. A homicide
-may be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent
-as regards the defence of society, which condemns both to the same
-punishment, it is not indifferent to one who wishes to distinguish and
-judge from the moral point of view, and we therefore cannot dispense
-with reconstructing the individual psychology of the homicide, in order
-to determine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its legal,
-but also in its moral aspect. In Ethics, a moral taste or tact is
-sometimes mentioned, answering to what is generally called the moral
-consciousness, that is to say, to the activity of the good will itself.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic absolutism (intellectualism) and
-relativism._]
-
-The explanation above given of æsthetic judgement or reproduction both
-agrees with and condemns the absolutists and relativists, those who
-affirm and those who deny the absoluteness of taste.
-
-In affirming that the beautiful can be judged, the absolutists are
-right; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is not
-tenable, because they conceive of the beautiful, that is, æsthetic
-value, as something placed outside the æsthetic activity, as a concept
-or a model which an artist realizes in his work, and of which the
-critic avails himself afterwards in judging the work itself. These
-concepts and models have no existence in art, for when proclaiming
-that every art can be judged only in itself and that it has its model
-in itself, they implicitly denied the existence of objective models of
-beauty, whether these are intellectual concepts, or ideas suspended in
-a metaphysical heaven.
-
-In proclaiming this, their-adversaries, the relativists, are perfectly
-right, and effect an advance upon them. However, the initial
-rationality of their thesis in its turn becomes converted into a false
-theory. Repeating the ancient adage that there is no accounting for
-tastes, they believe that æsthetic expression is of the same nature as
-the pleasant and the unpleasant, which every one feels in his own way,
-and about which there is no dispute. But we know that the pleasant and
-the unpleasant are utilitarian, practical facts. Thus the relativists
-deny the specific character of the æsthetic fact, and again confound
-expression with impression, the theoretic with the practical.
-
-The true solution lies in rejecting alike relativism or psychologism
-and false absolutism; and in recognizing that the criterion of taste is
-absolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect,
-which expresses itself in ratiocination. The criterion of taste is
-absolute, with the intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. Thus any
-act of expressive activity, which is so really, is to be recognized
-as beautiful, and any fact as ugly in which expressive activity and
-passivity are found engaged with one another in an unfinished struggle.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of relative relativism._]
-
-Between absolutists and relativists is a third class, which may be
-called that of the relative relativists. These affirm the existence of
-absolute values in other fields, such as Logic and Ethic, but deny it
-in the field of Æsthetic. To dispute about science or morals seems to
-them to be rational and justifiable, because science depends upon the
-universal, common to all men, and morality upon duty, which is also
-a law of human nature; but how dispute about art, which depends upon
-imagination? Not only, however, is the imaginative activity universal
-and no less inherent in human nature than the logical concept and
-practical duty; but there is a preliminary objection to the thesis in
-question. If the absoluteness of the imagination be denied, we must
-also deny intellectual or conceptual truth and implicitly morality.
-Does not morality presuppose logical distinctions? How could these be
-known, otherwise than in expressions and words, that is to say, in
-imaginative form? If the absoluteness of the imagination were removed,
-the life of the spirit would tremble to its foundations. One individual
-would no longer understand another, nor indeed his own self of a moment
-before, which is already another individual considered a moment after.
-
-[Sidenote: _Objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and of
-psychic disposition._]
-
-Nevertheless, variety of judgements is an indubitable fact. Men
-disagree as to logical, ethical, and economical valuations; and they
-disagree equally or even more as to the æsthetic. If certain reasons
-recorded by us above, such as haste, prejudices, passions, etc., may
-lessen the importance of this disagreement, they do not on that account
-annul it. When speaking of the stimuli of reproduction we have added a
-caution, for we said that reproduction takes place, _if all the other
-conditions remain equal._ Do they remain equal? Does the hypothesis
-correspond to reality?
-
-It would appear not. In order to reproduce an impression several times
-by means of a suitable physical stimulus it is necessary that this
-stimulus be not changed, and that the organism remain in the same
-psychical conditions as those in which was experienced the impression
-that it is desired to reproduce. Now it is a fact that the physical
-stimulus is continually changing, and in like manner the psychological
-conditions.
-
-Oil-paintings grow dark, frescoes fade, statues lose noses, hands
-and legs, architecture becomes totally or partially a ruin, the
-tradition of the execution of a piece of music is lost, the text of a
-poem is corrupted by bad copyists or bad printing. These are obvious
-instances of I the changes which daily occur in objects or physical
-stimuli. As regards psychological conditions, we will not dwell upon
-the cases of deafness or blindness, that is to say, upon the loss of
-entire orders of psychical impressions; these cases are secondary and
-of less importance compared with the fundamental, daily, inevitable
-and perpetual changes of the society around us and of the internal
-conditions of our individual life. The phonetic manifestations or
-words and verses of Dante's _Commedia_ must produce a very different
-impression on an Italian citizen engaged in the politics of the
-third Rome, from that experienced by a well-informed and intimate
-contemporary of the poet. The Madonna of Cimabue is still in the Church
-of Santa Maria Novella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as
-to the Florentines of the thirteenth century? Even though she were not
-also darkened by time, must we not suppose that the impression which
-she now produces is altogether different from that of former times? And
-even in the case of the same individual poet, will a poem composed by
-him in youth make the same impression upon him when he re-reads it in
-his old age, with psychic conditions altogether changed?
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the distinction of signs into natural and
-conventional._]
-
-It is true that certain æstheticians have attempted a distinction
-between stimuli and stimuli, between _natural_ and _conventional_
-signs. The former are held to have a constant effect upon all; the
-latter only upon a limited circle. In their belief, signs employed
-in painting are natural, those used in poetry conventional. But the
-difference between them is at the most only one of degree. It has
-often been said that painting is a language understood by all, while
-with poetry it is otherwise. Here, for example, Leonardo found one
-of the prerogatives of his art, "which hath not need of interpreters
-of different tongues as have letters," and it pleases man and beast.
-He relates the anecdote of that portrait of the father of a family
-"which the little grandchildren were wont to caress while they were
-still in swaddling-clothes, and the dogs and cats of the house in like
-manner." But other anecdotes, such as those of the savages who took the
-portrait of a soldier for a boat, or considered the portrait of a man
-on horseback to be furnished with only one leg, are apt to shake one's
-faith in the understanding of painting by sucklings, dogs and cats.
-Fortunately, no arduous researches are necessary to convince oneself
-that pictures, poetry and all works of art only produce effects upon
-souls prepared to receive them. Natural signs do not exist; because
-all are equally conventional, or, to speak with greater exactness,
-_historically conditioned._
-
-[Sidenote: _The surmounting of variety._]
-
-Granting this, how are we to succeed in causing the expression to be
-reproduced by means of the physical object? How obtain the same effect,
-when the conditions are no longer the same? Would it not, rather, seem
-necessary to conclude that expressions cannot be reproduced, despite
-the physical instruments made for the purpose, and that what is called
-reproduction consists in ever new expressions? Such would indeed be the
-conclusion if the varieties of physical and psychical conditions were
-intrinsically insurmountable. But since the insuperability has none
-of the characteristics of necessity we must on the contrary conclude
-that reproduction always occurs when we can replace ourselves in the
-conditions in which the stimulus (physical beauty) was produced.
-
-Not only can we replace ourselves in these conditions as an abstract
-possibility, but as a matter of fact we do so continually. Individual
-life, which is communion with ourselves (with our past), and social
-life, which is communion with our like, would not otherwise be
-possible.
-
-[Sidenote: _Restorations and historical interpretation._]
-
-As regards the physical object, palæographers and philologists,
-who _restore_ to texts their original physiognomy, _restorers_ of
-pictures and of statues and other industrious toilers strive precisely
-to preserve or to restore to the physical object all its primitive
-energy. These efforts are certainly not always successful, or are
-not completely successful, for it is never or hardly ever possible
-to obtain a restoration complete in its smallest details. But the
-insurmountable is here only present accidentally and must not lead us
-to overlook the successes which actually are achieved.
-
-_Historical interpretation_ labours for its part to reintegrate in
-us the psychological conditions which have changed in the course of
-history. It revives the dead, completes the fragmentary, and enables us
-to see a work of art (a physical object) as its author saw it in the
-moment of production.
-
-A condition of this historical labour is tradition, with the help of
-which it is possible to collect the scattered rays and concentrate them
-in one focus. With the help of memory we surround the physical stimulus
-with all the facts among which it arose; and thus we enable it to act
-upon us as it acted upon him who produced it.
-
-Where the tradition is broken, interpretation is arrested; in this
-case, the products of the past remain silent for us. Thus the
-expressions contained in the Etruscan or Mexican inscriptions are
-unattainable; thus we still hear discussions among ethnographers as
-to whether certain products of the art of savages are pictures or
-writings; thus archæologists and prehistorians are not always able
-to establish with certainty whether the figures found on the pottery
-of a certain region, and on other instruments employed, are of a
-religious or profane nature. But the arrest of interpretation, as that
-of restoration, is never a definitely insurmountable barrier; and the
-daily discoveries of new historical sources and of new methods of
-better exploiting the old, which we may hope to see ever improving,
-link up again broken traditions.
-
-We do not wish to deny that erroneous historical interpretation
-sometimes produces what may be called _palimpsests,_ new expressions
-imposed upon the ancient, artistic fancies instead of historical
-reproductions. The so-called "fascination of the past" depends in part
-upon these expressions of ours, which we weave upon the historical.
-Thus has been discovered in Greek plastic art the calm and serene
-intuition of life of those peoples, who nevertheless felt the universal
-sorrow so poignantly; thus "the terror of the year 1000" has recently
-been discerned on the faces of the Byzantine saints, a terror which is
-a misunderstanding, or an artificial legend invented later by men of
-learning. But _historical criticism_ tends precisely to circumscribe
-fancies and to establish exactly the point of view from which we must
-look.
-
-By means of the above process we live in communication with other men
-of the present and of the past; and we must not conclude because we
-sometimes, and indeed often, meet with an unknown or an ill-known,
-that therefore, when we believe we are engaged in a dialogue, we are
-always speaking a monologue; or that we are unable even to repeat the
-monologue which we formerly held with ourselves.
-
-
-
-
-XVII
-
-
-THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND ART
-
-
-This brief exposition of the method by which is obtained the
-reintegration of the original conditions in which the work of art
-was produced, and consequently reproduction and judgement are made
-possible, shows how important is the function fulfilled by historical
-research in relation to artistic and literary works which is what is
-usually called _historical criticism_ or method in literature and art.
-
-[Sidenote: _Historical criticism in literature and art. Its
-importance._]
-
-Without tradition and historical criticism the enjoyment of all or
-nearly all the works of art produced by humanity would be irrevocably
-lost: we should be little more than animals, immersed in the present
-alone, or in the most recent past. It is fatuous to despise and laugh
-at one who reconstitutes an authentic text, explains the sense of
-forgotten words and customs, investigates the conditions in which an
-artist lived, and accomplishes all those labours which revive the
-qualities and the original colouring of works of art.
-
-Sometimes a depreciatory or negative judgement is passed upon
-historical research because of the presumed or proved inability of such
-researches, in many cases, to give us a true understanding of works
-of art. But it must be observed, in the first place, that historical
-research does not only fulfil the task of helping to reproduce and
-judge artistic works: the biography of a writer or of an artist, for
-example, and the study of the customs of a period, have an interest of
-their own, that is to say, extraneous to the history of art, but not to
-other forms of historiography. If allusion be made to those researches
-which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor to fulfil any
-purpose, it must be replied that the historical student must often
-reconcile himself to the useful but inglorious function of a collector
-of facts. These facts remain for the time being formless, incoherent
-and meaningless, but they are preserves or mines for the historian of
-the future and for whosoever may afterwards want them for any purpose.
-In the same way in a library, books which nobody asks for are placed
-on the shelves and catalogued, because they may be asked for at some
-time or other. Certainly, just as an intelligent librarian gives the
-preference to the acquisition and cataloguing of those books which he
-foresees may be of more or better service, so intelligent students
-possess an instinct as to what is or may more probably be of use among
-the material of facts which they are examining; while others less
-well endowed, less intelligent or more hasty in producing, accumulate
-useless rubbish, refuse and sweepings, and lose themselves in details
-and petty discussions. But this appertains to the economy of research,
-and does not concern us. It concerns at most the master who selects the
-subjects, the publisher who pays for the printing, and the critic who
-is called upon to praise or to blame the research workers.
-
-On the other hand, it is clear that historical research directed to
-illuminate a work of art does not alone suffice to bring it to birth
-in our spirit and place us in a position to judge it, but presupposes
-taste, that is to say, an alert and cultivated imagination. The
-greatest historical erudition may accompany a gross or otherwise
-defective taste, a slow imagination, or, as they say, a cold hard heart
-closed to art. Which is the lesser evil, great erudition with defective
-taste, or natural taste and much ignorance? The question has often been
-asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny that it has any meaning,
-because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, or what exactly
-that means. The merely learned man never succeeds in entering into
-direct communion with great spirits; he keeps wandering for ever about
-the outer courts, the staircases and antechambers of their palaces; but
-the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieces to him inaccessible,
-or instead of understanding works of art as they really are, invents
-others with his fancy. Now, the labour of the former may at least serve
-to enlighten others; but the genius of the latter remains altogether
-sterile in relation to knowledge. How then can we in a certain respect
-fail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive though
-gifted man, who is not really gifted, if he resign himself and in so
-far as he resigns himself, to his inconclusiveness?
-
-[Sidenote: _Literary and artistic history. Its distinction from
-historical criticism and from the æsthetic judgement._]
-
-We must accurately distinguish _the history of art and literature_
-from those historical labours where works of art are used, but for
-extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious and political
-history, etc.), and also from historical erudition directed to the
-preparation of the æsthetic synthesis of reproduction.
-
-The difference of the first two is obvious. The history of art and
-literature has the works of art themselves as its principal subject;
-those other labours invoke and interrogate works of art, but only
-as witnesses from whom to discover the truth of facts which are not
-æsthetic. The second difference to which we have referred may seem less
-profound. It is, however, very great. Erudition directed to illuminate
-the understanding of works of art aims simply at calling into existence
-a certain internal fact, an æsthetic reproduction. Artistic and
-literary history, on the other hand, does not appear until after such
-reproduction has been obtained. It implies, therefore, a further stage
-of labour.
-
-Like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts
-as have really taken place, in this case artistic and literary facts.
-A man who, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition,
-reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply
-a man of taste, or at the most express his own feeling with an
-exclamation of praise or condemnation. This does not suffice for
-the making of a historian of literature and art. Something else is
-needed, namely, that a new mental operation succeed in him the simple
-reproduction. This new operation is in its turn an expression: the
-expression of the reproduction; the historical description, exposition
-or representation. There is this difference, then, between the man of
-taste and the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the
-work of art; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it
-historically, or applies those categories by which, as we know, history
-is differentiated from pure art. Artistic and literary history is
-therefore _a historical work of art founded upon one or more works of
-art._
-
-The name "artistic" or "literary" critic is used in various senses:
-sometimes it is applied to the scholar who devotes his services to
-literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of art of
-the past in their reality; more often to both. By critic is sometimes
-understood in a more restricted sense he who judges and describes
-contemporary literary works, and by historian, he who treats of those
-less recent. These are linguistic uses and empirical distinctions,
-which may be neglected; because the true difference lies between
-_the scholar, the man of taste_ and _the historian of art._ These
-words designate three successive stages of work, each one independent
-relatively to the one that follows, but not to that which precedes. As
-we have seen, a man may be a mere scholar, and possess little capacity
-for understanding works of art; he may even both be learned and possess
-taste, yet be unable to portray them by writing a page of artistic and
-literary history. But the true and complete historian, while containing
-in himself both the scholar and the man of taste as necessary
-pre-requisites, must add to their qualities the gift of historical
-comprehension and representation.
-
-[Sidenote: _The method of artistic and literary history._]
-
-The theory of artistic and literary historical method presents problems
-and difficulties, some common to the theory of historical method in
-general, others peculiar to it, because derived from the concept of art
-itself.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism of the problem of the origin of art._]
-
-History is commonly divided into human history, natural history, and
-the mixture of both. Without! examining here the question of the
-solidity of this distinction, it is clear that artistic and literary
-history belongs in any case to the first, since it concerns a spiritual
-activity, that is to say, an activity proper to man. And since this
-activity is its subject, the absurdity of propounding the historical
-problem of the _origin_ of _art_ becomes at once evident. We should
-note that by this formula many different things have in turn been
-included on many different occasions. _Origin_ has often meant _nature_
-or _character_ of the artistic fact, in which case an attempt was
-made to deal with a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very
-problem in fact which our treatise has attempted to solve. At other
-times, by origin has been understood the _ideal genesis,_ the search
-for the reason of art, the deduction of the artistic fact from a first
-principle containing in itself both spirit and nature. This is also
-a philosophical problem, complementary to the preceding, coinciding
-indeed with it, although it has sometimes been strangely interpreted
-and solved by means of an arbitrary and semi-imaginary metaphysic.
-But when the object was to discover further exactly in what way the
-artistic function was _historically formed,_ the result has been the
-absurdity which we have mentioned. If expression be the first form of
-consciousness, how can we look for the historical origin of what is not
-a product of nature and is presupposed by human history? How can we
-assign a historical genesis to a thing which is a category by means of
-which all historical processes and facts are understood? The absurdity
-has arisen from the comparison with human institutions, which have been
-formed in the course of history, and have disappeared or may disappear
-in its course. Between the æsthetic fact and a human institution
-(such as monogamic marriage or the fief) there exists a difference
-comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in chemistry.
-It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise
-they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they cease to be
-simple and become compound.
-
-The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only
-justified when it is proposed to investigate, not the formation of
-the artistic category, but where and when art has appeared for the
-first time (appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what
-point or in what region of the globe and at what point or epoch of its
-history; when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its earliest
-or primitive history is the object of research. This problem forms
-one with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth.
-Data for its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains
-the abstract possibility of a solution, and certainly tentative and
-hypothetical solutions abound.
-
-[Sidenote: _The criterion of progress and history._]
-
-Every representation of human history has the concept of _progress_ as
-foundation. But by progress must not be understood the imaginary _law
-of progress_ which is supposed to lead the generations of man with
-irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a providential
-plan which we can divine and then understand logically. A supposed law
-of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that accidentality,
-that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish concrete fact
-from abstraction. And for the same reason, progress has nothing to do
-with the so-called law of _evolution,_ which, if it mean that reality
-evolves (and it is only reality in so far as it evolves or becomes),
-cannot be called a law, and if it be given as a law, becomes identical
-with the law of progress in the sense just described. The progress
-of which we speak here is nothing but _the very concept of human
-activity,_ which, working upon the material supplied to it by nature,
-conquers its obstacles and bends it to its own ends.
-
-Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity
-applied to a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian
-of humanity. No one but a mere collector of unrelated facts, a mere
-antiquary or inconsequent annalist, can put together the smallest
-narrative of human doings unless he have a determined point of
-view, that is to say, a personal conviction of his own regarding the
-facts whose history he has undertaken to relate. No one can start
-from the confused and discordant mass of crude facts and arrive at
-the historical work of art save by means of this apperception, which
-makes it possible to carve a definite representation in that rough and
-formless mass. The historian of a practical action should know what is
-economy and what is morality; the historian of mathematics, what is
-mathematics; the historian of botany, what is botany; the historian
-of philosophy, what is philosophy. If he does not really know these
-things, he must at least have the illusion of knowing them; otherwise
-he will not even be able to delude himself into believing that he is
-writing history.
-
-We cannot here expand the demonstration of the necessity and
-inevitability of this subjective criterion in every narrative of human
-affairs (which is compatible with the utmost objectivity, impartiality
-and scrupulousness in dealing with data of fact and indeed forms a
-constitutive element in these virtues), in every narrative of human
-doings and happenings. It suffices to read any book of history to
-discover at once the point of view of the author, if he be a historian
-worthy of the name and know his own business. There are liberal and
-reactionary, rationalist and catholic historians, who deal with
-political or social history; for the history of philosophy there
-are metaphysical, empirical, sceptical, idealist and spiritualist
-historians. Purely historical historians do not and cannot exist.
-Were Thucydides and Polybius, Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and
-Guicciardini, Giannone and Voltaire, wholly without moral and political
-views; and, in our time, was Guizot or Thiers, Macaulay or Balbo,
-Ranke or Mommsen? And in the history of philosophy, from Hegel, who
-was the first to raise it to a great height, to Ritter, Zeller,
-Cousin, Lewes and our Spaventa, was there one who did not possess his
-conception of progress and his criterion of judgement? Is there one
-single work of any value on the history of Æsthetic which has not
-been written from this or that point of view, with this or that bias
-(Hegelian or Herbartian), from a sensationalist or from an eclectic
-or some other point of view? If the historian is to escape from the
-inevitable necessity of taking a side, he must become a political or
-scientific eunuch; and history is not an occupation for eunuchs. Such
-would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes of not useless
-erudition, _elumbis atque fracta,_ which are called, not without
-reason, monkish.
-
-If, then, a concept of progress, a point of view, a criterion, be
-inevitable, the best to be done is not to try and escape from it,
-but to obtain the best possible. Every one tends to this end when he
-forms his own convictions, seriously and laboriously. Historians who
-profess to wish to interrogate the facts without adding anything of
-their own to them are not to be trusted. This is at best the result
-of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always add
-something of their own, if they be truly historians, even without
-knowing it, or they will only believe that they have avoided doing
-so because they have conveyed it only by hints, which is the most
-insinuating, penetrative and effective of methods.
-
-[Sidenote: _Non-existence of a single line of progress in artistic and
-literary history._]
-
-Artistic and literary history cannot dispense with the criterion of
-progress any more easily than other history. We cannot show what a
-given work of art is, save by proceeding from a conception of art, in
-order to fix the artistic problem which the author of such work of art
-had to solve, and by determining whether or no he has solved it, or by
-how much and in what way he has failed to do so. But it is important
-to note that the criterion of progress assumes a different form in
-artistic and literary history to that which it assumes (or is believed
-to assume) in the history of science.
-
-It is customary to represent the whole history of knowledge by one
-single line of progress and regress. Science is the universal, and
-its problems are arranged in one single vast system or comprehensive
-problem. All thinkers labour upon the same problem as to the nature of
-reality and of knowledge: contemplative Indians and Greek philosophers,
-Christians and Mohammedans, bare heads and turbaned heads, wigged heads
-and college-capped heads (as Heine said); and future generations will
-weary themselves with it, as ours has done. It would take too long to
-inquire here if this be true or not of science. But it is certainly
-not true of art; art is intuition, and intuition is individuality, and
-individuality does not repeat itself. To conceive of the history of the
-artistic production of the human race as developed along a single line
-of progress and regress would therefore be altogether erroneous.
-
-At the most, and working to some extent with generalizations and
-abstractions, it may be asserted that the history of æsthetic
-productions shows progressive cycles, but each cycle with its own
-problem and each progressive only in respect to that problem. When many
-are at work in a general way upon the same subject, without succeeding
-in giving to it the suitable form, yet drawing always more near to
-it, there is said to be progress, and when appears the man who gives
-it definite form, the cycle is said to be complete, and progress is
-ended. A typical example of this would here be the progress in the
-elaboration of the mode of using the subject-matter of chivalry, during
-the Italian Renaissance, from Pulci to Ariosto (using this as an
-example and excusing excessive simplification). Nothing but repetition
-and imitation, diminution or exaggeration, a spoiling of what had
-already been done, in short decadence could be the result of employing
-that same material after Ariosto. The epigoni of Ariosto prove this.
-Progress begins with the beginning of a new cycle. Cervantes, with
-his more open and conscious irony, is an instance of this. In what
-did the general decadence of Italian literature at the end of the
-sixteenth century consist? Simply in having nothing more to say and in
-repeating and exaggerating motives already discovered. If the Italians
-of this period had even been able to express their own decadence, they
-would not have been altogether failures, but would have anticipated
-the literary movement of the Risorgimento. Where the matter is not
-the same, a progressive cycle does not exist. Shakespeare does not
-represent an advance on Dante, nor Goethe upon Shakespeare. Dante,
-however, represents an advance on the visionaries of the Middle Ages,
-Shakespeare on the Elizabethan dramatists, Goethe, with _Werther_ and
-the first part of _Faust,_ on the writers of the _Sturm und Drang_
-period. This mode of presenting the history of poetry and art contains,
-however, as we have remarked, something of the abstract, of the merely
-practical, and is without strict philosophical value. Not only is the
-art of savages not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples,
-if it be correlative to the impressions of the savage; but every
-individual, indeed every moment of the spiritual life of an individual,
-has its artistic world; none of these worlds can be compared with any
-other in respect of artistic value.
-
-[Sidenote: _Errors committed against this law._]
-
-Many have sinned and continue to sin against this special form of the
-criterion of progress in artistic and literary history. Some, for
-instance, talk of the infancy of Italian art in Giotto, and of its
-maturity in Raphæl or in Titian; as though Giotto were not complete
-and absolutely perfect, granted the material of feeling with which his
-mind was furnished. He was certainly incapable of drawing a figure
-like Raphæl, or of colouring it like Titian; but was Raphæl or Titian
-capable of creating the _Marriage of Saint Francis with Poverty_ or
-the _Death of Saint Francis_? The spirit of Giotto had not felt the
-attraction of the body beautiful, which the Renaissance studied and
-raised to a place of honour; the spirits of Raphæl and of Titian were
-no longer interested in certain movements of ardour and of tenderness
-with which the man of the fourteenth century was in love. How, then,
-can a comparison be made, where there is no comparative term?
-
-The celebrated divisions of the history of art into an oriental period,
-representing a lack of equilibrium between idea and form, the latter
-dominating, a classical representing an equilibrium between idea and
-form, a romantic representing a new lack of equilibrium between idea
-and form, the former dominating, suffer from the same defect. The same
-is true of the division into oriental art, representing imperfection
-of form; classical, perfection of form; romantic or modern, perfection
-of content and of form. Thus classic and romantic have also received,
-among their many other meanings, that of progressive or regressive
-periods, in respect to the realization of some alleged artistic ideal
-of all humanity.
-
-[Sidenote: _Other meanings of the word "progress" in respect to
-Æsthetic._]
-
-There is no such thing, then, as an _æsthetic_ progress of humanity.
-However, by æsthetic progress is sometimes meant, not what the two
-words coupled together really signify, but the ever-increasing
-accumulation of our historical knowledge, which makes us able to
-sympathize with all the artistic products of all peoples and of all
-times, or, as they say, makes our taste more catholic. The difference
-appears very great if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escaping
-from itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike Greek
-and Roman art, now better understood, Byzantine, mediæval, Arabic and
-Renaissance art, the art of the Cinquecento, baroque art, and the art
-of the eighteenth century. Egyptian, Babylonian, Etruscan, and even
-prehistoric art are more profoundly studied every day. Certainly,
-the difference between the savage and civilized man does not lie in
-the human faculties. The savage has speech, intellect, religion and
-morality in common with civilized man, and is a complete man. The only
-difference lies in this, that civilized man penetrates and dominates
-a larger portion of the universe with his theoretic and practical
-activity. We cannot claim to be more spiritually alert than, for
-example, the contemporaries of Pericles; but no one can deny that we
-are richer than they--rich with their riches and with those of how many
-other peoples and generations besides our own?
-
-By æsthetic progress is also meant, in another sense, which is also
-improper, the greater abundance of artistic intuitions and the smaller
-number of imperfect or inferior works which one epoch produces in
-respect to another. Thus it may be said that there was æsthetic
-progress, an artistic awakening in Italy, at the end of the thirteenth
-or of the fifteenth century.
-
-Finally, æsthetic progress is talked of in a third sense, with an eye
-to the refinement and complications of soul-states exhibited in the
-works of art of the most civilized peoples, as compared with those of
-less civilized peoples, barbarians and savages. But in this case the
-progress is of the comprehensive psycho-social conditions, not of the
-artistic activity, to which the material is indifferent.
-
-These are the most important points to note concerning the method of
-artistic and literary history.
-
-
-
-
-XVIII
-
-
-CONCLUSION:
-
-
-IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND ÆSTHETIC
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Summary of the study._]
-
-
-A glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed
-the entire programme of our treatise. We have studied the nature of
-intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the æsthetic or artistic
-fact (I. and II.), and described the other form of knowledge, the
-intellectual, and the successive complications of these forms (III.);
-it thus became possible for us to criticize all erroneous æsthetic
-theories arising from the confusion between the various forms and from
-the illicit transference of the characteristics of one form to another
-(IV.), noting at the same time the opposite errors to be found in the
-theory of intellectual knowledge and of historiography (V.). Passing
-on to examine the relations between the æsthetic activity and the
-other activities of the spirit, no longer theoretic but practical, we
-indicated the true character of the practical activity and the place
-which it occupies in respect to the theoretic activity: hence the
-criticism of the intrusion into æsthetic theory of practical concepts
-(VI.); we have distinguished the two forms of the practical activity,
-as economic and ethical (VII.), reaching the conclusion that there are
-no other forms of the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed;
-hence (VIII.) the criticism of every mystical or imaginative Æsthetic.
-And since there are no other spiritual forms co-ordinate with these,
-so there are no original subdivisions of the four established, and
-in particular of Æsthetic. From this arises the impossibility of
-classes of expressions and the criticism of Rhetoric, that is, of
-ornate expression distinct from simple expression, and of other similar
-distinctions and subdistinctions (IX.) But by the law of the unity of
-the spirit, the æsthetic fact is also a practical fact, and as such,
-occasions pleasure and pain. This led us to study f the feelings of
-value in general, and those of æsthetic value or of the beautiful in
-particular (X.), to criticize æsthetic hedonism in all its various
-manifestations and complications (XI.), and to expel from the system
-of Æsthetic the long series of psychological concepts which had been
-introduced into it (XII.). Proceeding from æsthetic production to the
-facts of reproduction, we began by investigating the external fixing
-of the æsthetic expression, for the purpose of reproduction. This
-is called the physically beautiful, whether natural or artificial
-(XIII.). We derived from this distinction the criticism of the errors
-which arise from confounding the physical with the æsthetic side of
-facts (XIV.). We determined the meaning of artistic technique, or that
-technique which is at the service of reproduction, thus criticizing
-the divisions, limits and classifications of the individual arts,
-and establishing the relations of art, economy and morality (XV.).
-Since the existence of physical objects does not suffice to stimulate
-æsthetic reproduction to the full, and since, in order to obtain it,
-we must recall the conditions in which the stimulus first operated,
-we have also studied the function of historical erudition, directed
-toward re-establishing the communication between the imagination and
-the works of the past, and to serve as the basis of the æsthetic
-judgement (XVI.). We have concluded our treatise by showing how the
-reproduction thus obtained is afterwards elaborated by the categories
-of thought, that is to say, by an examination of the method of literary
-and artistic history (XVII.).
-
-The æsthetic fact has in short been considered both in itself and in
-its relations with the other spiritual activities, with the feelings
-of pleasure and pain, with what are called physical facts, with
-memory and with historical treatment. It has passed before us as
-_subject_ until it became _object,_ that is to say, from the moment
-of _its birth_ until it becomes gradually changed for the spirit into
-_subject-matter of history._
-
-Our treatise may appear to be somewhat meagre when externally compared
-with the great volumes usually dedicated to Æsthetic. But it will not
-seem so when we perceive that those volumes are nine-tenths full of
-matter that is not pertinent, such as definitions, psychological or
-metaphysical, of pseudo-æsthetic concepts (the sublime, the comic,
-the tragic, the humorous, etc.), or of the exposition of the supposed
-Zoology, Botany and Mineralogy of Æsthetic, and of universal history
-æsthetically judged; that the whole history of concrete art and
-literature has also been dragged into those Æsthetics and generally
-mangled, and that they contain judgements upon Homer and Dante, Ariosto
-and Shakespeare, Beethoven and Rossini, Michæl Angelo and Raphæl. When
-all this has been deducted from them, we flatter ourselves that our
-treatise will no longer be held to be too meagre, but, on the contrary,
-far richer than ordinary treatises, which either omit altogether, or
-hardly touch at all, the greater part of the difficult problems proper
-to Æsthetic which we have felt it to be our duty to study.
-
-[Sidenote: _Identity of linguistic and Æsthetic._]
-
-But although Æsthetic as science of expression has been studied by us
-in its every aspect, it remains to justify the sub-title which we have
-added to the title of our book, _General Linguistic,_ to state and make
-clear the thesis that the science of art and that of language, Æsthetic
-and Linguistic, conceived as true sciences, are not two distinct
-things, but one thing only. Not that there is a special Linguistic;
-but the much-sought-for science of language, general Linguistic, _in
-so far as what it contains is reducible to philosophy,_ is nothing
-but Æsthetic. Whoever studies general Linguistic, that is to say,
-philosophical Linguistic, studies æsthetic problems, and _vice versa.
-Philosophy of language and philosophy of art are the same thing._
-
-Were Linguistic really a _different_ science from Æsthetic it would
-not have for its object expression, which is the essentially æsthetic
-fact; that is to say, we must deny that language is expression. But an
-emission of sounds which expresses nothing is not language. Language
-is sound articulated, circumscribed and organized for the purposes of
-expression. If, on the other hand, linguistic were a _special_ science
-in respect to Æsthetic, it would necessarily have for its object a
-_special class_ of expressions. But the non-existence of classes of
-expression is a point which we have already demonstrated.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of
-language._]
-
-The problems which Linguistic tries to solve, and the errors in which
-Linguistic has been and is involved, are the same that respectively
-occupy and complicate Æsthetic. If it be not always easy, it is on
-the other hand always possible to reduce the philosophic questions of
-Linguistic to their æsthetic formula.
-
-The disputes themselves as to the nature of the one find their parallel
-in those as to the nature of the other. Thus it has been disputed
-whether Linguistic be a historical or a scientific discipline, and,
-the scientific having been distinguished from the historical, it
-has been asked whether it belong to the order of the natural or of
-the psychological sciences, understanding by these latter empirical
-Psychology as well as the Sciences of the spirit. The same has happened
-with Æsthetic, which some have looked upon as a natural science
-(confusing the æsthetic and the physical sense of the word expression).
-Others have looked upon it as a psychological science (confusing
-expression in its universality with the empirical classification of
-expressions). Others again, denying the very possibility of a science
-of such a subject, change it into a simple collection of historical
-facts; not one of these attaining to the consciousness of Æsthetic as a
-science of activity or of value, a science of the spirit.
-
-Linguistic expression, or speech, has often seemed to be a fact of
-_interjection,_ which belongs to the so-called physical expressions
-of the feelings, common alike to men and animals. But it was soon
-perceived that an abyss yawns between the "Ah!" which is a physical
-reflex of pain and a word; as also between that "Ah!" of pain and
-the "Ah!" employed as a word. The theory of the interjection being
-abandoned (jocosely termed the "Ah! Ah!" theory by German linguists),
-the theory of _association_ or _convention_ appeared. This is liable to
-the same objection which destroyed æsthetic associationism in general:
-speech is unity, not multiplicity of images, and multiplicity does
-not explain, but indeed presupposes the expression to be explained. A
-variant of linguistic associationism is the imitative, that is to say,
-the theory of _onomatopœia,_ which the same philologists deride under
-the name of the "bow-wow" theory, from the imitation of the dog's bark,
-which, according to the onomatopœists, must have given its name to
-the dog.
-
-The most usual theory of our times as regards language (apart from mere
-crass naturalism) consists of a sort of eclecticism or mixture of the
-various theories to which we have referred. It is assumed that language
-is in part the product of interjections and in part of onomatopœia and
-convention. This doctrine is altogether worthy of the philosophical
-decadence of the second half of the nineteenth century.
-
-[Sidenote: _Origin of language and its development._]
-
-We must here note an error into which have fallen those very
-philologists who have best discerned the activistic nature of language,
-when they maintain that although language was _originally a spiritual
-creation,_ yet that it afterwards increased by _association._ But the
-distinction does not hold, for origin in this case cannot mean anything
-but nature or character; and if language be spiritual creation, it must
-always be creation; if it be association, it must have been so from the
-beginning. The error has arisen from having failed to grasp the general
-principle of Æsthetic, known to us: that expressions already produced
-must descend to the rank of impressions before they can give rise to
-new impressions. When we utter new words we generally transform the
-old ones, varying or enlarging their meaning; but this process is not
-associative, it is _creative,_ although the creation has for material
-the impressions, not of the hypothetical primitive man, but of man who
-has lived long ages in society, and who has, so to say, stored so many
-things in his psychic organism, and among them so much language.
-
-[Sidenote: _Relation between Grammar and Logic._]
-
-The question of the distinction between the æsthetic and the
-intellectual fact appears in Linguistic as that of the relations
-between Grammar and Logic. This problem has been solved in two
-partially true ways: the _inseparability_ and the _separability_ of
-Logic and Grammar. But the complete solution is this: if the logical
-form be inseparable from the grammatical (æsthetic), the grammatical is
-separable from the logical.
-
-[Sidenote: _Grammatical kinds or parts of speech._]
-
-If we look at a picture which for instance portrays a man walking on a
-country road we may say: "This picture represents a fact of _movement,_
-which, if conceived as voluntary, is called _action_; and since every
-movement implies a _material object,_ and every action a _being_ that
-acts, this picture also represents a _material object_ or _being._
-But this movement takes place in a definite place, which is a piece
-of a definite heavenly body (the Earth), and precisely of a piece of
-it which is called _terra-firma,_ and more precisely of a part of it
-that is wooded and covered with grass, which is called _country,_
-cut naturally or artificially into a form called _road._ Now, there
-is only one example of that star, which is called Earth: the earth
-is an _individual._ But _terra-firma, country, road_ are genera or
-_universals,_ because there are other terra-firmas, other countries,
-other roads." And it would be possible to continue for a while with
-similar considerations. By substituting a phrase for the picture that
-we have imagined, for example one to this effect: "Peter is walking on
-a country road," and by making the same remarks, we obtain the concepts
-of _verb_ (motion or action), of _noun_ (material object or agent), of
-_proper noun,_ of _common noun;_ and so on.
-
-What have we done in both cases? Neither more nor less than submit to
-logical elaboration what first presented itself only æsthetically;
-that is to say, we have destroyed the æsthetic for the logical. But
-since in general Æsthetic error begins when we wish to return from the
-logical to the æsthetic and ask what is the _expression_ of motion,
-action, matter, being, of the general, of the individual, etc.; so in
-the case of language, error begins when motion or action are called
-_verb,_ being or matter, _noun_ or _substantive,_ and when linguistic
-categories, or _parts of speech,_ are made of all these, noun and verb
-and so on. The theory of the parts of speech is really identical with
-that of artistic and literary kinds, already criticized in our Æsthetic.
-
-It is false to say that the verb or noun is expressed in definite
-words, truly distinguishable from others. Expression is an indivisible
-whole. Noun and verb do not exist in it, but are abstractions made by
-us, destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is the _sentence._
-This last is to be understood, not in the way common to grammars, but
-as an organism expressive of a complete meaning, which includes alike
-the simplest exclamation and a great poem. This sounds paradoxical, but
-is nevertheless the simplest truth.
-
-And since in Æsthetic the artistic productions of certain peoples
-have been looked upon as imperfect, owing to the error above
-mentioned, because the supposed kinds have seemed not yet to have
-been discriminated, or to be in part wanting; so in Linguistic, the
-theory of the parts of speech has caused the analogous error of judging
-languages as _formed_ and _unformed,_ according to whether there appear
-in them or no some of those supposed parts of speech; for example, the
-verb.
-
-[Sidenote: _The individuality of speech and the classification of
-languages._]
-
-Linguistic also discovered the irreducible individuality of the
-æsthetic fact, when it affirmed that the word is what is really
-spoken, and that two truly identical words do not exist. Thus were
-synonyms and homonyms destroyed, and thus was shown the impossibility
-of really translating one word into another, from so-called dialect
-into so-called language, or from the so-called mother-tongue into the
-so-called foreign tongue.
-
-But the attempt to classify languages ill agrees with this just view.
-Languages have no reality beyond the propositions and complexes of
-propositions really written and pronounced by given peoples at definite
-periods; that is to say, they have no existence outside the works of
-art (whether little or great, oral or written, soon forgotten or long
-remembered, does not matter) in which they exist concretely. And what
-is the art of a given people but the whole of its artistic products?
-What is the character of an art (for example of Greek art or Provençal
-literature) but the whole physiognomy of those products? And how can
-such a question be answered, save by narrating in its particulars the
-history of the literature, that is to say, of the language in its
-actuality?
-
-It may be thought that this argument, although possessing validity
-as against many of the usual classifications of languages, yet
-is without any as regards that queen of classifications, the
-historico-genealogical, that glory of comparative philology. And this
-it certainly is; but why? Precisely because that historico-genealogical
-method is not a mere classification. He who writes history does not
-classify, and the philologists themselves have hastened to say that
-languages which can be arranged in historical series (those whose
-series have hitherto been traced) are not distinct and separate species
-but a single whole of facts in the various phases of its development.
-
-[Sidenote: _Impossibility of a normative grammar._]
-
-Language has sometimes been regarded as a voluntary or arbitrary act.
-But at others the impossibility of creating language artificially, by
-an act of will, has been clearly seen. "_Tu, Caesar, civitatem dare
-potes homini, verbo non potes_" was once said to a Roman Emperor. And
-the æsthetic (and therefore theoretic as opposed to practical) nature
-of expression supplies the method of discovering the scientific error
-which lies in the conception of a (normative) _Grammar_, establishing
-the rules of correct speech. Good sense has always rebelled against
-this error. An example of such rebellion is the "So much the worse for
-grammar" attributed to Monsieur de Voltaire. But the impossibility
-of a normative grammar is also recognized by those who teach it,
-when they confess that to write well cannot be learned by rules, that
-there are no rules without exceptions, and that the study of Grammar
-should be conducted practically, by reading and examples, which should
-form the literary taste. The scientific reason of this impossibility
-lies in the principle that we have demonstrated: that a technique of
-the theoretical amounts to a contradiction in terms. And what could
-a (normative) grammar be, but precisely a technique of linguistic
-expression, that is to say of a theoretic fact?
-
-[Sidenote: _Didactic organisms._]
-
-The case in which Grammar is understood merely as an empirical
-discipline, that is to say, as a collection of schemes useful for
-learning languages, without any claim whatever to philosophic truth, is
-quite different. Even the abstractions of the parts of speech are in
-this case both admissible and useful. And we must tolerate as merely
-didascalic many books entitled "Treatises of Linguistic," where we
-generally find a little of everything, from the description of the
-vocal apparatus and of the artificial machines (phonographs) which can
-imitate it, to summaries of the most important I results obtained by
-Indo-European, Semitic, Coptic, Chinese, or other philologies; from
-philosophical generalizations as to the origin or nature of language,
-to advice on format, calligraphy and the arrangement of notes relating
-to philological work. But this mass of notions, here administered in
-a fragmentary and incomplete manner about language in its essence,
-about language as expression, resolves itself into notions of Æsthetic.
-Nothing exists outside _Æsthetic,_ which gives knowledge of the
-nature of language, and _empirical Grammar,_ which is a pedagogic
-expedient, save the _History of languages_ in their living reality,
-that is to say, the history of concrete literary productions, which is
-substantially identical with the _History of literature._
-
-[Sidenote: _Elementary linguistic facts or roots._]
-
-The same error of taking the physical for the æsthetic, from which the
-search for the _elementary forms_ of the beautiful originates, is made
-by those who go in search of _elementary linguistic facts,_ decorating
-with that name the divisions of the longer series of physical sounds
-into shorter series. Syllables, vowels and consonants, and the series
-of syllables called words, all these elements of speech, which give
-no definite sense when taken alone, must be called not _facts of
-language,_ but mere sounds, or rather sounds abstracted and classified
-physically.
-
-Another error of the same sort is that of _roots,_ to which the most
-distinguished philologists now accord but small value. Having confused
-physical with linguistic or expressive facts, and considering that the
-simple precedes the complex in the order of ideas, they necessarily
-ended by thinking that the smallest physical facts indicated the
-simplest linguistic facts. Hence the imaginary necessity that the most
-ancient primitive languages had a monosyllabic character, and that
-historical research must always lead to the discovery of monosyllabic
-roots. But (to follow up the imaginary hypothesis) the first expression
-that the first man conceived may have had not a phonetic but a mimetic
-physical reflex; may have been externalized not in a sound but in
-a gesture. And assuming that it was externalized in a sound, there
-is no reason to suppose that sound to have been monosyllabic rather
-than polysyllabic. Philologists readily blame their own ignorance and
-impotence, when they do not always succeed in reducing polysyllabism to
-monosyllabism, and rely upon the future to accomplish the reduction.
-But their faith is without foundation, and their blame of themselves is
-an act of humility arising from an erroneous presumption.
-
-For the rest, the limits of syllables, as those of words, are
-altogether arbitrary, and distinguished somehow or other by empirical
-use. Primitive speech, or the speech of uneducated man, is a
-_continuum,_ unaccompanied by any consciousness of divisions of the
-discourse into words or syllables, imaginary beings created by schools.
-No true law of Linguistic can be founded on such divisions. Proof of
-this is to be found in the confession of linguists, that there are
-no truly phonetic laws of the hiatus, of cacophony, of diæresis or
-synæresis, but merely laws of taste and convenience; that is to say,
-_æsthetic_ laws. And what are laws of _words_ which are not at the same
-time laws of _style_?
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic judgement and the model language._]
-
-Finally, the search for a _model language,_ or for a method of reducing
-linguistic usage to _unity,_ arises from the superstition of a
-rationalistic measure of the beautiful, from that concept which we have
-called false æsthetic absoluteness. In Italy we call this the question
-of the _unity of the language._
-
-Language is perpetual creation. What has been linguistically expressed
-is not repeated, save by reproduction of what has already been
-produced. The ever-new impressions give rise to continuous changes
-of sound and meaning, that is, to ever-new expressions. To seek the
-model language, then, is to seek the immobility of motion. Everyone
-speaks and should speak according to the echoes which things arouse
-in his soul, that is, according to his impressions. It is not without
-reason that the most convinced supporter of any one of the solutions of
-the problem of the unity of language (whether by adopting a standard
-Italian approximating to Latin, or to fourteenth-century usage, or
-to the Florentine dialect) feels repugnance in applying his theory,
-when he is speaking to communicate his thoughts and to make himself
-understood. The reason is that he feels that in substituting the Latin,
-fourteenth-century Italian, or Florentine word for that of different
-origin, but which answers to his natural impressions, he would be
-falsifying the genuine form of truth. He would become a vain listener
-to himself instead of a speaker, a pedant in place of a serious man, an
-actor instead of a sincere person. To write according to a theory is
-not really to write: at the most, it is making _literature._
-
-The question of the unity of language is always reappearing, because,
-stated as it is, it is insoluble, being based upon a false conception
-of what language is. Language is not an arsenal of arms already made,
-and it is not a _vocabulary,_ a collection of abstractions, or a
-cemetery of corpses more or less well embalmed.
-
-Our dismissal of the question of the model language, or of the unity of
-the language, may seem somewhat abrupt, and yet we would not wish to
-appear otherwise than respectful towards the long line of literary men
-who have debated this question in Italy for centuries. But those ardent
-debates were fundamentally concerned with debates of æstheticity, not
-of æsthetic science, of literature rather than of literary theory, of
-effective speaking and writing, not of linguistic science. Their error
-consisted in transforming the manifestation of a need into a scientific
-thesis, the desirability, for example, of easier mutual understanding
-among a people divided by dialects into the philosophic demand for
-a single, ideal language. Such a search was as absurd as that other
-search for a _universal language,_ a language possessing the immobility
-of the concept and of abstraction. The social need for a better
-understanding of one another cannot be satisfied save by the spread of
-education becoming general, by the increase of communications, and by
-the interchange of thought among men.
-
-[Sidenote: _Conclusion._]
-
-These scattered observations must suffice to show that all the
-scientific problems of Linguistic are the same as those of Æsthetic,
-and that the truths and errors of the one are the truths and errors
-of the other. If Linguistic and Æsthetic appear to be two different
-sciences, this arises from the fact that people think of the former
-as grammar, or as a mixture between philosophy and grammar, that
-is, an arbitrary mnemonic schematism or a pedagogic medley, and not
-of a rational science and a pure philosophy of speaking. Grammar,
-or something not unconnected with grammar, also introduces into the
-mind the prejudice that the reality of language lies in isolated and
-combinable words, not in living discourse, in the expressive organisms,
-rationally indivisible.
-
-Those linguists or philologists, philosophically endowed, who have
-penetrated deepest into the problems of language, find themselves (to
-employ a trite but effective simile) like workmen piercing a tunnel:
-at a certain point they must hear the voices of their companions, the
-philosophers of Æsthetic, who have been at work on the other side. At
-a certain stage of scientific elaboration, Linguistic, in so far as it
-is philosophy, must merge itself in Æsthetic: and this indeed it does
-without leaving a residue.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-HISTORY OF ÆSTHETIC
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN GRÆCO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Point of view of this history of Æsthetic._]
-
-The question whether Æsthetic is to be considered as an ancient or a
-modern science has on several occasions been a matter of controversy;
-whether, that is to say, it arose for the first time in the eighteenth
-century, or had previously arisen in the Græco-Roman world. This is
-a question, not only of facts, but of criteria, as is easily to be
-understood: whether one answers it in this way or that depends upon
-one's idea of that science, an idea afterwards adopted as a standard or
-criterion.[1]
-
-Our view is that Æsthetic is the _science of the expressive_
-(representative or imaginative) _activity._ In our opinion, therefore,
-it does not appear until a precise concept is formulated of
-imagination, representation or expression, or in whatever other manner
-we prefer to name that attitude of the spirit, which is theoretical but
-not intellectual, a producer of knowledge, but of the individual, not
-of the universal. Outside this point of view, we for our part are not
-able to discover anything but deviations and errors.
-
-These deviations can lead in various directions. Following the
-distinctions and terminology of an eminent Italian philosopher[2] in
-an analogous case, we shall be inclined to say that they arise either
-from _excess_ or from _defect._ The deviation from defect would be
-that which denies the existence of a special æsthetic and imaginative
-activity, or, which amounts to the same thing, denies its autonomy,
-and thus mutilates the reality of the spirit. Deviation by excess is
-that which substitutes for it or imposes upon it another activity,
-altogether undiscoverable in the experience of the interior life, a
-mysterious activity which does not really exist. Both these deviations,
-as can be deduced from the theoretical part of this work, take
-various forms. The first, that due to defect, may be: (_a_) _purely
-hedonistic,_ in so far as it considers and accepts art as a simple fact
-of sensuous pleasure; (_b_) _rigoristic-hedonistic,_ in so far as,
-looking upon it in the same way, it declares it to be irreconcilable
-with the highest life of man; (_c_) _hedonistic-moralistic_ or
-_pedagogic,_ in so far as it consents to a compromise, and while still
-considering art to be a fact of sense, declares that it need not be
-harmful, indeed that it may render some service to morality, provided
-always that it is submissive and obedient.[3] The forms of the second
-deviation (which we shall call "mystical") are not determinable _a
-priori,_ for they belong to feeling and imagination in their infinite
-variety and shades of meaning.[4]
-
-[Sidenote: _Mistaken tendencies, and attempts towards an Æsthetic, in
-Græco-Roman antiquity._]
-
-The Græco-Roman world presents all these fundamental forms of
-deviation: pure hedonism, moralism or pedagogism, mysticism, and
-together with them the most solemn and celebrated rigoristic negation
-of art which has ever been made. It also exhibits attempts at the
-theory of expression or pure imagination; but nothing more than
-approaches and attempts. Hence, since we must now take sides in the
-controversy as to whether Æsthetic is an ancient or modern science,
-we cannot but place ourselves upon the side of those who affirm its
-modernity.
-
-A rapid glance at the theories of antiquity will suffice to justify
-what we have said. We say rapid, because to enter into minute
-particulars, collecting all the scattered observations of ancient
-writers upon art, would be to do again what has been done many times
-and sometimes very well. Further, those ideas, propositions and
-theories have passed into the common patrimony of knowledge, together
-with what else remains of the classical world. It is therefore more
-advisable here than in any other part of this history merely to
-indicate the general lines of development.
-
-[Sidenote: Origin of the æsthetic problem in Greece.]
-
-Art, the artistic faculty, only became a philosophical problem in
-Greece after the sophistical movement and as a consequence of the
-Socratic dialectic. The historians of literature generally point to
-the origins of Greek Æsthetic in the first appearance of criticism
-and reflection upon poetical works, painting and sculpture; in the
-judgements pronounced on the occasion of poetical competitions, in
-the observations that were made as to the methods of the different
-artists, in the analogies between painting and poetry as expressed in
-the sayings attributed to Simonides and Sophocles; or, finally, in the
-appearance of that word which served to group together the various
-arts and to indicate in a certain way their relationship--the word
-mimesis or mimetic (μίμησις)--which oscillates between the meaning of
-"imitation" and that of "representation." Others make the origin of
-Æsthetic go back to the polemics which were conducted by the first
-naturalistic and moralistic philosophers against the tales, fantasies
-and morals of poets, and to the interpretations of the hidden meaning
-(υπόνοια), or, as the moderns call it, allegory, employed to defend the
-good name of Homer and of the other poets; finally, to the _ancient
-quarrel_ between philosophy and poetry, as Plato was afterwards to call
-it.[5] But, to tell the truth, none of these reflections, observations
-and arguments implied a true and proper philosophical discussion of
-the nature of art. Nor was the sophistical movement favourable to its
-appearance. For although attention was at that time certainly given to
-internal psychical facts, yet these were conceived as mere phenomena
-of opinion and feeling, of pleasure and pain, of illusion, whim or
-caprice. And where there is no true and no false, no good and no evil,
-there can be no question of beautiful and ugly, nor of a difference
-between the true and the beautiful or between the beautiful and the
-good. The most one has in that case is the general problem of the
-irrational and the rational, but not that of the nature of art, which
-assumes the difference between rational and irrational, material
-and spiritual, mere fact and value, to have been already stated and
-grasped. If, then, the sophistical period was the necessary antecedent
-to the discoveries of Socrates, the æsthetic problem could only arise
-after Socrates. And it did indeed arise with Plato, author of the
-first, or indeed of the only really great negation of art of which
-there remains documentary proof in the history of ideas.
-
-[Sidenote: _Plato's rigoristic negation._]
-
-Is art, mimesis, a rational or an irrational fact? Does it belong to
-the noble region of the soul, where philosophy and virtue are found,
-or does it dwell in that base lower sphere, with sensuality and crude
-passionality? This is the question asked by Plato,[6] who thus states
-the problem of Æsthetic for the first time. The sophist Gorgias was
-able to note, with his sceptical acuteness, that tragic representation
-is a deception, which (strangely enough) turns out to the honour
-both of him who deceives and of him who is deceived, in which it is
-shameful not to know how to deceive oneself and not to let oneself be
-deceived.[7] With that remark he could rest content. That was for him
-a fact like another. But Plato, the philosopher, was bound to solve
-the problem: if it were a deception, then down with tragedy and the
-rest of mimetic productions: down with them among the other things to
-be despised, among the animal qualities of man. But if it were not
-deception, what was it? What place did art occupy among the lofty
-activities of philosophy and of good action?
-
-The answer that he gave is well known. Mimetic does not realize the
-ideas, that is to say the truth of things, but reproduces natural or
-artificial things, which are pale shadows of them; it is a diminution
-of a diminution, a third-hand work. Art, then, does not belong to the
-lofty and rational region of the soul (του λογιστικοϋ ἐν ψυχή) but to
-the sensual; it is not a strengthening but a corruption of the mind
-(λώβη τής διάνοιας); it can serve only sensual pleasure, which troubles
-and obscures. For this reason, mimetic, poetry and poets, must be
-excluded from the perfect Republic.
-
-Plato is the most consistent example of those who do not succeed in
-discovering any other form of knowledge but the intellectual. It was
-correctly observed by him that imitation stops at natural things,
-at the image (το φάντασμα), and does not reach the concept, logical
-truth (άλήθεια), of which poets and painters are altogether ignorant.
-But his error consisted in believing that there is no other form of
-truth below the intellectual; that there is nothing but sensuality and
-passionality outside or prior to the intellect, that which discovers
-the ideas. Certainly, the fine æsthetic sense of Plato did not echo
-that depreciatory judgement of art; he himself declared that he would
-have been very glad to have been shown how to justify art and to place
-it among the forms of the spirit. But since none was able to give him
-this assistance, and since art with its _appearance_ that yet lacks
-_reality_ was repugnant to his ethical consciousness, and reason
-compelled him (ό λόγος ήρει) to banish it and place it with its peers,
-he resolutely obeyed his conscience and his reason.[8]
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic hedonism and moralism._]
-
-Others were not troubled with these scruples, and although art was
-always looked upon as a mere thing of pleasure among the later
-hedonistic schools of various sorts, among rhetoricians and worldly
-people the duty of combating or of abolishing it was not felt.
-Nevertheless, this opposite extreme was also not calculated to meet
-with the endorsement of public opinion, for the latter, if tender
-towards art, is no less tender towards rationality and morality. For
-this reason both rationalists and moralists, compelled to recognize
-the force of such a condemnation as Plato's, sought for a compromise,
-a half measure. Away with the sensual and with art: certainly. But
-can we expel the sensual and the pleasurable without more ado? Can
-fragile human nature nourish itself exclusively with the strong food of
-philosophy and morality? Can we obtain observance of the true and of
-the good from the young and from the people, without allowing them at
-the same time some amusement? And has not man himself always something
-of the child, has he not always something of the people in him, is
-he not to be treated with the same precautions? Is there not a risk
-that the over-bent bow will break?--These considerations prepared the
-way for the justification of art, for they showed that if it were not
-rational in itself, it could on the other hand serve a rational end.
-Hence the search for the _external end_ of art, which takes the place
-of the search for the essence or _internal end_. When art had been
-lowered to the level of a simple pleasurable illusion, an inebriation
-of the senses, it was necessary to subordinate the practical action
-of producing such an illusion and inebriation, like any other action,
-to the moral end. Art, being deprived of any dignity of its own,
-was obliged to assume a reflected or secondhand dignity. Thus the
-moralistic and pedagogic theory was constructed upon a hedonistic
-basis. The artist, who, for the pure hedonist, was comparable to
-a _hetaira,_ became for the moralist a _pedagogue._ Hetaira and
-pedagogue, these are the symbols of the two conceptions of art that
-were disseminated in antiquity, and the second was grafted upon the
-first.
-
-Even before Plato's peremptory negation had directed thought to this
-way of issue, the literary criticism of Aristophanes was already full
-of the pedagogic idea: "What schoolmasters are to children, poets
-are to young men" (τοΐς ήβώσιν δὲ ποιηταί), he says in a celebrated
-verse[9] But we can find traces of it in Plato himself (in the
-dialogues in which he seems to withdraw from the too rigid conclusions
-of the _Republic)_ and in Aristotle, both in the _Politics,_ where he
-determines the use of music in education, and perhaps in the _Poetics,_
-where he speaks obscurely of a tragical _catharsis_; although as
-regards this latter, it is not to be altogether denied that he may
-have had a sort of glimpse of the modern idea of the liberating power
-of art.[10] Later on, the pedagogic theory takes a form that was much
-affected by the Stoics. Strabo develops and defends this at great
-length, in the introduction to his geographical work, where he combats
-Eratosthenes, who has made poetry consist in mere pleasure without any
-notion of teaching. Strabo, on the contrary, maintained the opinion of
-the ancients, that it was "a first philosophy (φιλοσοφίαν τινα πρωτήν),
-which educated young men for life, and created customs, affections and
-actions, by means of pleasure." Therefore, he said, poetry has always
-been a part of education; one cannot be a good poet unless one is a
-good man (άνδρα άγαθόν). Legislators and founders of cities were the
-first to employ fables to admonish and to terrify: then this duty,
-which must be performed for women and children and even for adults,
-passed to the poets. We caress and dominate the multitude with fiction
-and with falsehood.[11] "The poets tell many lies" (πολλά ψεύδονται
-άοιδοί) is a hemistich recorded by Plutarch, who describes minutely in
-one of his lesser works how the poets should be read to youths.[12]
-For him too poetry is a preparation for philosophy; it is a disguised
-philosophy, and therefore delights us in the same way as do fish and
-meat at feasts, so prepared as not to seem to be fish and meat; it is
-philosophy softened with fables, like the vine that grows close to the
-mandragora, and produces a wine that is the giver of sweet slumbers.
-It is not possible to pass from dense darkness to sunlight; one should
-first accustom the eyes to moderate light. Philosophers, in order to
-exhort and instruct, take their examples from true things; poets aim
-at a like result, when they create fictions and fables.[13] Lucretius,
-in Roman literature, gives us the well-known comparison of the boys for
-whom the doctors "_prius or as pocula circum Contingunt mellis dulci
-flavoque liquore,_" in order to administer the bitter wormwood.[14]
-Horace, in certain verses of the Epistle to the Pisones which have
-become proverbial (perhaps his source for them was the Greek of
-Neoptolemus of Paros?), offers both views (that of art as courtesan and
-of art as pedagogue) in his "_Aut prodesse volunt aut deledare poetae
-... omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci._"[15]
-
-Thus looked at, the office of the poet was confounded with that of the
-orator, for he too was a practical man aiming at practical effects;
-hence there arose discussions as to whether Virgil was to be considered
-as a poet or as an orator ("_Virgilius poeta an orator?_"). To both was
-assigned the triple end of _delectare, movere, docere_; in any case
-this tripartition was very empirical, for we clearly perceive that
-the _delectare_ is here a means-and the _docere_ a simple part of the
-_movere_: to move in the direction of the good, and therefore, among
-other goods, towards that of instruction. In like manner, it was said
-of the orator and poet (recording the meretricious basis of their task,
-and with a metaphor significant in its _naïveté_) that they were bound
-to avail themselves of the _allurements_ (_lenocinium_) of form.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mystical æsthetic in antiquity._]
-
-The mystical view, which considers art as a special mode of
-self-beatification, of entering into relation with the Absolute, with
-the Summum Bonum, with the ultimate root of things, appeared only
-in late antiquity, almost at the entrance to the Middle Ages. Its
-representative is the founder of the neo-Platonic school, Plotinus.
-
-It is strange that Plato should be usually selected as the founder
-and head of this æsthetic tendency, and that for this very reason to
-him should be attributed the honour of being the father of Æsthetic.
-But how could he, who had expounded with such great limpidity and
-clearness the reasons for which he was not able to accord to art a
-high place among the activities of the spirit, be credited with having
-accorded to it one of the highest places, equal, if not superior, to
-philosophy itself? This misunderstanding has evidently arisen out of
-the enthusiastic effusions about the Beautiful that we read in the
-_Gorgias,_ the _Philebus,_ the _Phædrus,_ the _Symposium,_ and other
-Platonic dialogues. It is well to dissipate it by declaring that the
-_Beauty_ of which Plato discourses has nothing to do with art or with
-_artistic beauty._
-
-[Sidenote: _Investigations as to the Beautiful._]
-
-The search for the meaning and scientific content of the word
-"beautiful" could not but early attract the attention of the subtle
-and elegant Greek dialecticians. Indeed, we find Socrates engaged
-in discussing this question in one of the discourses that have been
-preserved for us by Xenophon; and we find him disposed to stop for
-the moment at the conclusion that the beautiful is _that which is
-convenient and which answers to the end desired,_ or at the other
-conclusion that it is _that which one loves_[16] Plato too examines
-this sort of problem and proposes various sorts of solutions or
-attempts at solutions of it. He sometimes speaks of a beauty that
-dwells not only in bodies, but also in laws, in actions, in the
-sciences; sometimes he seems to conjoin and almost to identify it
-with the true, the good and the divine; now he returns to the view of
-Socrates and confuses it with the useful; now he distinguishes between
-a beautiful in itself (καλά καθ' αυτά) and a relatively beautiful (πρός
-τι καλά); or he makes true beauty consist in pure pleasure (ήδονη
-καθαρά), free from all shadow of pain; or he places it in measure and
-proportion (μετριότης καί ξνμμετρία); or talks of colours and sounds
-as possessing a beauty in themselves.[17] It was impossible to find
-an independent dominion for the beautiful, if the artistic or mimetic
-activity were deserted. This explains his wandering among so many
-different conceptions, among which it is just possible to say that the
-identification of the Beautiful with the Good prevails. Nothing better
-describes this uncertainty than the dialogue of the _Hippias maior_
-(which, if it be not Plato's, is Platonic). He here wishes to find
-out not what things are beautiful things, but what the beautiful is;
-that is to say, what it is that makes beautiful, not only a beautiful
-virgin, but also a beautiful mare, a beautiful lyre, a beautiful pot
-with two graceful ears of clay. Hippias and Socrates himself propose
-in turn the most various solutions; but the latter ends by confuting
-them all. "That which makes things beautiful is the gold that is added
-to them by way of ornament." No: gold only embellishes where it is
-_fitting_ (πρέπων): for instance, a pot should have a wooden rather
-than a golden handle. "That is beautiful which cannot seem ugly to any
-one." But it is not a question of _seeming_: the question is to define
-what the beautiful is, whether it seems so or not. It is the _fitting_
-which makes things seem to be beautiful. But in that case, the fitting
-(which makes them _appear,_ not _be)_ is one thing, and the beautiful
-another. "The beautiful is what leads to the end, that is to say, the
-_useful_ (χρήσιμον)." But if that were so, then evil would also be
-beautiful, because the useful leads also to the evil. "The beautiful
-is the _helpful,_ that which leads to the good (ωφέλιμον)." But in
-this case, the good would not be beautiful nor the beautiful good; for
-the cause is not the effect, and the effect is not the cause. "The
-beautiful is that which delights the sight and hearing." But this fails
-to persuade for three reasons: firstly, because beautiful studies and
-laws are beautiful, which have nothing to do with the eye or with the
-ear; secondly, because we cannot discover a reason for limiting the
-beautiful to those senses, while excluding the pleasure of eating and
-smelling, and the extremely vivid pleasures of sex; thirdly, because,
-if the foundation of the beautiful were _visibility,_ it would not be
-_audibility,_ and if it were audibility it would not be visibility;
-hence that which constitutes the beautiful cannot dwell in either
-of the two qualities. And the question which has been repeated so
-insistently in the course of the dialogue: _what is the beautiful?_ (τί
-εστι το καλόν;) remains unanswered.[18]
-
-Later writers also conducted inquiries into the beautiful, and we
-possess the titles of several treatises upon the theme, which have
-been lost. Aristotle shows himself changeable and uncertain upon the
-point. In the scanty references which he makes to it, he at one time
-confounds the beautiful with the good, defining it as that which is
-both good and pleasing;[19] at another he notes that the good consists
-of action (εν πράξει) and the beautiful also in things that are
-immoveable (εν τοΐς άκινήτοις), drawing from this the argument that
-mathematics should be studied in order to determine its characters,
-order, symmetry and limit;[20] sometimes he places it in bigness and
-in order (εν μεγεθει καί τάξει);[21] at others he was led to look upon
-it as something apparently indefinable.[22] Antiquity also established
-canons of beautiful things, such as that attributed to Polycletus on
-the proportions of the human body. And Cicero said of the beauty of
-bodies that they were "_quaedam apta figura membrorum cum coloris quadam
-suavitate._"[23] All these affirmations, even when they are not mere
-empirical observations, or verbal glosses and substitutions, meet with
-unsurmountable obstacles.
-
-[Sidenote: _Distinction between the theory of Art and the theory of the
-Beautiful._]
-
-In any case, not only is the conception of the beautiful, taken as
-a whole, identified with art in none of them; but sometimes art and
-beauty, mimesis and pleasing or displeasing material of mimesis, are
-clearly distinguished. Aristotle notes in his _Poetics_ that it pleases
-us to see the most faithful images of things that are repugnant to
-us in reality, such, for instance, as the most contemptible forms of
-animals, or corpses (τάς εικόνας τάς μάλιστα ήκριβωμενας χαίρομεν
-θεωρουντες).[24] Plutarch demonstrates at length that works of art
-please us not as beautiful but as _resembling_ (ούχ ως καλόν, άλλ,'
-ως ομοιον); he affirms that if the artist beautified things that are
-ugly in nature he would be offending against fitness and resemblance
-(το πρεπον και το eίκός); and he proclaims the principle that _the
-beautiful is one thing and beautiful imitation another_ (oύ yaρ εστι
-ταυτό, το καλον και καλως τι μιμεισθαι). Paintings of horrible events
-are pleasing, such as _Medea slaying her sons_ by Timomachus, _Orestes
-the matricide_ by Theon, and the _Pretended madness of Ulysses_ by
-Parrhasius; and if the grunting of a pig, the grating of a machine,
-the noise of the winds and the tumult of the sea are unpleasing, they
-pleased on the contrary in the case of Parmenon, who imitated the pig
-perfectly, and in Theodorus, who was not less expert in rendering the
-grating of machines.[25] If the ancients had really wanted to place
-the beautiful and art in relation, a secondary and partial connexion
-of the two conceptions was to hand in the shape of the category of the
-_relatively_ as distinguished from the _absolutely_ beautiful. But
-where the word _καλόν_ or _pulchrum_ is applied to artistic productions
-in the writings of literary critics, it does not seem to be more than a
-linguistic usage, as we find, for instance, in the case of Plutarch's
-_beautiful_ imitation, or also in the terminology of the rhetoricians,
-who sometimes called elegance and adornment of discourse _beauty_ of
-elocution (το τής φράσεως κάλλος).
-
-[Sidenote: _Fusion of the two by Plotinus._]
-
-It is only with Plotinus that the two divided territories are united
-and _the beautiful and art are fused into a single concept,_ not by
-means of a beneficial absorption of the _equivocal_ Platonic conception
-of beauty into the _unequivocal_ conception of art, but by absorption
-of the clear into the confused, of _imitative art_ in the so-called
-_beautiful._ And thus we reach an altogether new view: the beautiful
-and art are now both alike melted into a mystical passion and elevation
-of the spirit.
-
-Beauty, observes Plotinus, resides chiefly in things visible; but it
-is also to be found in things audible, such as verbal and musical
-compositions, and it is not lacking in things supersensible, such as
-works, offices, actions, habits, sciences and virtues. What is it
-that makes beautiful sensible and supersensible things alike? Not, he
-answers, the symmetry of their parts among themselves, and with the
-whole (συμμετρία των μερών προς αλληλα και προς το ολον) and their
-colour (ενχροια), according to one of the definitions most in vogue,
-which we have quoted above in the words of Cicero; because there are
-proportions in things ugly, and there are things that are simply
-beautiful without any relation of proportion: beauty, then, is one
-thing and symmetry another.[26] The beautiful is what we welcome as
-akin to our own nature; the ugly is what repels us as our opposite,
-and the affinity of beautiful things with our souls that perceive them
-has its origin in the Idea, which produces both. That is beautiful
-which is _formed_; the ugly is what is _unformed,_ that is to say,
-something which is capable of receiving form, but does not receive it
-or is not entirely dominated by it. A beautiful body is such, because
-of its communion (κοινωνία) with the Divine; beauty is the Divine, the
-Idea, shining through; and matter is beautiful, not in itself, but only
-when it is illuminated by the Idea. Light and fire, which are nearest
-to this state, shed beauty upon visible things, as the most spiritual
-among bodies. But the soul must purify itself, in order to perceive the
-beautiful, and make the power of the Idea that lies in it efficacious.
-Moderation, strength, prudence, and every other virtue, what else are
-they, according to the oracle, but _purification_? Thus there opens
-another eye in the soul, beside that of sensible beauty, which permits
-it to contemplate divine Beauty coincident with the Good, which is the
-supreme condition of beatitude.[27] Art enters into such contemplation,
-because beauty, in things made by man, comes from the mind. Compare two
-blocks of stone, the one placed beside the other: one rough and crude,
-the other reduced to the statue of a god or of a man, for example of
-a Grace or of a Muse, or of a human being of such a shape, as art has
-collected from many particular beauties. The beauty of a block of this
-shape does not consist in its being of stone, but in the form that
-art has been able to give to it (παρά του ειδους o ενηκεν η τέχνη);
-and when the form is fully impressed upon it, the thing of art is more
-beautiful than any other natural thing. Hence he who despised the arts
-(Plato), because they imitated nature, was wrong; whereas the truth
-is, in the first place, that nature itself imitates the idea, and then
-that the arts do not simply limit themselves to imitating what the eyes
-see, but go back to those reasons or ideas from which nature itself is
-derived (ώς ούχ απλώς το όρώμενον μεμούνται, αλλ' άνατρέχουσιν επι τούς
-λόγους έξ ων η φύσις). Art therefore does not belong to nature, but
-adds beauty where it is wanting in nature: Phidias did not represent
-Jove because he had seen him, but such as he would appear if he wished
-to reveal himself to mortal eyes.[28] The beauty of natural things
-is the archetype existing in the soul, the sole source of natural
-beauty.[29]
-
-[Sidenote: _The scientific tendency. Aristotle._]
-
-This affirmation of Plotinus and of neo-Platonism is the first
-true and proper affirmation of mystical Æsthetic, destined to such
-high fortunes in modern times, especially in the first half of the
-nineteenth century. But the attempts at a true Æsthetic, excluding
-certain luminous but incidental observations to be found even in
-Plato: for instance, that the poet should weave fables, not arguments
-(μύθους άλλ' ού λόγους),[30] go back to Aristotle and are altogether
-independent of his few and feeble speculations as to the beautiful.
-Aristotle by no means agreed with the Platonic condemnation; he felt
-(as indeed Plato himself had suspected) that such a result could not
-be altogether true, and that some aspect of the problem must have been
-neglected. When in his turn he attempted to find a solution, he found
-himself in more advantageous conditions than his great predecessor,
-since he had already overcome the obstacle that arose from the Platonic
-doctrine of ideas, a hypostasis of concepts and abstractions. The ideas
-were for him simply concepts, and reality presented itself in a far
-more lively manner, not as a diminution of ideas, but as a synthesis of
-matter and form, it was thus much more easy for him to recognize the
-rationality of mimesis in his general philosophical doctrine and to
-assign to it its right place; and indeed it seems generally clear to
-Aristotle that mimesis, being proper to man by nature, is contemplation
-or theoretic activity; although he sometimes seems to forget this (as
-when he confuses imitation with the case of boys, who acquire their
-first knowledge by following an example[31]), and although his system,
-which admits practical sciences and poietic activities (distinguished
-from the practical as leaving a material object behind them), disturbed
-the firm and constant consideration of artistic mimesis and poetry as
-a theoretical activity. But if it is a theoretical activity, by what
-characteristic is poetry distinguished both from _scientific_ knowledge
-and from _historical_ knowledge? This is the way Aristotle states the
-problem concerning the nature of art, and this is the true and only
-way of stating it. Even we moderns ask ourselves in what way art is
-distinguished from history and from science, and what this artistic
-form can be, which has the ideality of science and the concreteness
-and individuality of history. Poetry, answers Aristotle, differs from
-history, because, while the latter draws things that have happened
-(τα γενόμενα), poetry draws things that may possibly happen (οια αν
-γένοιτο), and differs from science, because, although it regards the
-universal and not the particular (τα καθ' εκαστον) like history,
-it does not regard it in the same way as science, but in a certain
-measure, which the philosopher indicates by the word _rather_ (μαλλον
-τα καθόλου). The point then is to establish the precise meaning of
-the _possible,_ the _rather_ and the _historical particular._ But no
-sooner does Aristotle attempt to determine the meaning of these words,
-than he falls into contradictions and fallacies. That _universal_ of
-poetry, which is the _possible,_ seems to identify itself for him with
-the probable or the necessary (τα _κατά το είκος η το άναγκαΐον_),
-and the particular of history is not explained at all, except by
-giving instances: "that which Alcibiades did and what happened to
-him."[32] Aristotle, in fact, after having made so good a beginning
-in the discovery of the purely imaginative, proper to poetry, remains
-half-way, perplexed and uncertain. Thus he sometimes makes the truth
-of imitation consist in a certain learning and syllogizing that takes
-place when we look at imitations, by which we recognize that "this is
-that," that a copy answers to the original;[33] or, worse, he loses the
-grains of truth that he has found and forgets that poetry has for its
-content the possible, admitting, not only that it may also depict the
-_impossible_ (το αδύνατον), and even the _absurd_ (το άτοπον), seeing
-that both are _credible_ and that they do not injure the end of art,
-but even that we must prefer impossible probabilities to incredible
-possibilities.[34] Art, since it has to do even with the impossible
-and absurd, will not therefore have in it anything of the rational,
-but in accordance with the Platonic theory it will be an imitation of
-the appearance in which empty sense indulges itself; that is to say, a
-thing of pleasure. Aristotle does not attain to this result, because
-he does not attain to any clear and precise result in this part of the
-subject, but it is one of the results that can be deduced from what he
-has said, or that, at any rate he is not able to exclude. This means
-that he did not fulfil his tacitly assumed task, and that although
-he re-examined the problem with marvellous acuteness after Plato, he
-failed truly to rid himself of the Platonic definition, by substituting
-a firmly-established one of his own.
-
-[Sidenote: _The concepts of imitation and of imagination after A
-ristotle. Philostratus._]
-
-But the field of investigation toward which Aristotle had turned was
-generally neglected in antiquity: the very _Poetics_ of Aristotle does
-not seem to have been widely known or influential. Ancient psychology
-knew fancy or imagination as a faculty midway between sense and
-intellect, but always as conservative and reproductive of sensuous
-impressions or conveying conceptions to the senses, never properly
-as a productive autonomous activity. That faculty was rarely and with
-little result placed in relation with the problem of art. Several
-historians of Æsthetic attach singular importance to certain passages
-in the _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_ by the elder Philostratus, in
-which they believe that they discover a correction of the theory of
-_mimesis_ and the first affirmation in history of the conception of
-_imaginative creation._ Phidias and Praxiteles (says the extract in
-question) did not need to go to heaven to see the gods, in order to
-be able to depict them in their works, as would have been necessary
-according to the theory of imitation. Imagination, without any need
-of models, made them able to do what they did: imagination, which is
-a wiser agent than simple imitation (φαντασία ... σοφωτόρα μιμήσεως
-δημιουργός), and gives form, like the other, not only to what has been
-seen, but also to what has never been seen, imagining it on the basis
-of existing things and in that way creating Jupiters and Minervas.[35]
-However, the imagination of which Philostratus speaks here is not
-something different from the Aristotelian mimesis, which, as has been
-noted, was concerned not only with real things but also and chiefly
-with possible things. And had not Socrates observed (in the dialogue
-with the painter Parrhasius, preserved for us by Xenophon) that
-painters work by collecting what they need to form their figures from
-several bodies (εκ πολλων συνάγοντες τα εξ εκάστου καλλιστα)?[36] And
-was not the anecdote of Zeuxis, who was supposed to have taken the
-best of five Crotonian maidens in order to paint his Helen, and other
-anecdotes of a like sort, sufficiently widespread in antiquity? And
-had not Cicero eloquently explained, some years before Philostratus,
-how Phidias, when he was carving Jupiter, did not copy anything real,
-but kept his looks fixed upon "_species pulcritudinis eximia quaedam,_"
-which he had in his soul and which directed his art and his hand?[37]
-Nor can it be said that Philostratus opened the way to Plotinus,
-for whom the superior or intellectual imagination (νοητή), or eye of
-supersensible beauty, when it is not a new designation for beautiful
-imitation, is mystical intuition.
-
-The vagueness of the concept of mimesis reached its apex in those
-writers who gave it as a general title to any sort of work that had
-nature for its object, employing the Aristotelian phrase to affirm
-that "_omnis ars naturae imitatio est,_"[38] or saying, like the
-painter Eupompus when he blamed his servile imitators, that "_natura
-est imitanda, non artifex._"[39] And those who wished to escape this
-vagueness did not know how to do so, save by conceiving the activity of
-imitation as the practical producer of duplicates of natural objects, a
-prejudice bora in the bosom of the pictorial and plastic arts, against
-which Philostratus perhaps intended to argue, in common with the other
-advocates of imagination.
-
-[Sidenote: _Speculations on language._]
-
-The speculations upon language had a close connexion with those upon
-the nature of art begun by the sophists, for whom it became a matter
-for wonder that sounds could signify colours or things inaudible; that
-is to say, _speech_ presented itself as a _problem._[40] It was then
-discussed whether language was by nature (φύσει or by convention νόμω).
-By nature was sometimes understood mental necessity, and by convention
-what we should call a merely natural fact, psychological mechanism or
-sensationalism. In that sense of the terms, language would have been
-better called φύσει than νόμω. But at other times the distinction led
-to the question whether language answers to objective or logical truth
-and to the real relations between things (όρθότης των ονομάτων); and
-in this case, those would seem to be nearer the truth who proclaimed
-it to be conventional or arbitrary in respect to logical truth: νόμω
-or θέσει, and not φύσει Two different questions were consequently
-being treated together, and both were confusedly and equivocally
-discussed. They find their monument in the obscure _Cratylus_ of
-Plato, which seems to fluctuate between different solutions. Nor did
-the later affirmation that the word is a sign (σημείον) of the thought
-solve anything, for it still remained to be shown in what way the sign
-was to be understood, whether φύσει or νόμω. Aristotle, who looked
-upon words as imitations (μιμηματα), in the same way as poetry,[41]
-made an observation of first-rate importance: in addition to the
-_enunciative_ propositions, which express the (logically) true or
-false, there are others which do not express either the (logically)
-true or false, as for example the expressions of aspirations and of
-desires (εύχή), which therefore belong, not to logical exposition, but
-to poetical and rhetorical exposition.[42] And in another place we
-find him affirming in opposition to Bryson (who had said that a base
-thing remained such with whatever word it were designated) that base
-things can be expressed both with words that place them beneath the
-eye in all their crudity, and with other words which surround them
-with a veil.[43] All this might have led to the separation of the
-linguistic faculty from the properly logical, and to its consideration
-in union with the poetical and artistic faculty; but here too the
-attempt stopped half-way. The Aristotelian logic assumed a verbal and
-formalistic character, which became more and more accentuated as time
-went on and formed an obstacle to the distinction between the two
-theoretical forms. Nevertheless, Epicurus asserted that the diversity
-of names designating the same thing with various peoples was due,
-not to convention and caprice, but to the fact that the impressions
-produced by things were different in each one of them.[44] And the
-Stoics, although they connected language with thought (διάνοια) and
-not with imagination, seem to have had a suspicion of the non-logical
-nature of language, for they interposed between thought and sound a
-_certain something_ which was indicated in Greek by the word λεκτόν,
-and by the words _effatum_ or _dicibile_ in Latin. But we are not sure
-what they really meant, and whether that vague concept were intended
-by them to distinguish the linguistic representation from the abstract
-concept (which would bring them into touch with the modern view), or
-the meaning of sound in general.[45]
-
-We cannot collect any other germ of truth from the ancient writers.
-A philosophical Grammar, like a philosophical Poetics, remained
-unattainable in antiquity.
-
-
-[1] See above, pp. 128-131. Quotations which give only the name
-of the author, or are otherwise abbreviated, refer to historical
-or critical works of which the complete title is given in the
-Bibliographical Appendix.
-
-[2] Rosmini, _Nuovo saggio sull' origine delle idee,_ sections iii. and
-iv., where theories of knowledge are classified.
-
-[3] See above, pp. 83-84.
-
-[4] See above, p. 65.
-
-[5] _Republic_, x. 607.
-
-[6] _Republic_, x. 607.
-
-[7] Plutarch, _De audiendis poetis_, ch. i.
-
-[8] _Republic_ x.
-
-[9] _Frogs,_ 1, 1055.
-
-[10] Plato, _Laws,_ bk. ii.; Aristotle, _Poet._ ch. 14; _Polit,_ bk.
-viii.
-
-[11] Strabo, _Geographica,_ i. ch. 2, §§ 3-9.
-
-[12] Texts collected in E. Müller, _Gesch. d. Th. d. K._ i. pp. 57-85.
-
-[13] Plutarch, _De aud. poetis,_ chs. 1-4, 14.
-
-[14] _De rerum natura,_ i. 935-947.
-
-[15] _Ad Pisones,_ 333-334.
-
-[16] _Memorab._ iii. ch. 8; iv. ch. 6.
-
-[18] _Hippias maior, passim._
-
-[19] _Rhet._ i. ch. 9.
-
-[20] _Metaphys._ xii. ch. 3.
-
-[21] _Poet._ ch. 7.
-
-[22] Diog. Lært. v. ch. i, § 20.
-
-[23] _Tuscul. quæst._ bk. iv. § 13.
-
-[24] _Poet._ ch. iv. 3.
-
-[25] _De aud. poetis_, ch. 3.
-
-[26] _Enneads,_ I. bk. vi. ch. i.
-
-[27] _Enneads, loc. cit._ chs. 2-9.
-
-[28] _Enneads,_ V. bk. viii. ch. i.
-
-[29] _Enneads, loc. cit._ chs. 2-3.
-
-[30] _Phædrus,_ ch. 4.
-
-[31] Poet. ch. 4, § 2.
-
-[32] Poet. ch. 9, §§ 1-4.
-
-[33] Poet. ch. 4, §§ 4-5.
-
-[34] Poet. chs. 24-25.
-
-[35] _Apoll. vita,_ vi. ch. io.
-
-[36] _Memorab._ iii. ch. io.
-
-[37] _Orator ad Brutum,_ ch. 2.
-
-[38] For example, Seneca, _Epist._ 65.
-
-[39] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ xxxiv. ch. 19.
-
-[40] Gorgias in _De Xenoph., Zen. et Gorg._ (in Aristot., ed. Didot),
-chs. 5-6.
-
-[41] _Rhet._ bk. iii. ch. 1.
-
-[42] _Rhet._ bk. iii. ch. 2.
-
-[43] _De interp._ ch. 4.
-
-[44] Diog. Lært. bk. x. § 75.
-
-[45] Steinthal, _Gesch. d. Sprachw.,_ 2nd ed., i. pp. 288, 293,
-296-297.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Middle Ages, Mysticism, Ideas on the beautiful._]
-
-
-Almost all the developments of ancient Æsthetic were continued by
-tradition or reappeared by spontaneous generation in the course of the
-Middle Ages. Neo-Platonic mysticism continued, entrusted to the care
-of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (_De cœlesti hierarchia,
-De ecclesiastica hierarchia, De divinis nominibus,_ etc.), to the
-translations of these works made by John Scotus Eriugena, and to the
-divulgations of the Spanish Jews (Avicebron). The Christian God took
-the place of the Summum Bonum or Idea: God, wisdom, goodness, supreme
-beauty, source of beautiful things in nature, which are a ladder to
-the contemplation of the Creator. But these speculations continued to
-recede further and further from the consideration of art, with which
-Plotinus had connected them; and the empty definitions of the beautiful
-by Cicero and other ancient writers were often repeated. Saint
-Augustine defined beauty in general as unity (_omnis pulchritudinis
-forma unitas est,_) and that of the body as _congruentia partium cum
-quadam colons suavitate,_ and the old distinction between something
-that is beautiful in itself and relative beauty reappeared in a book
-of his, which has been lost, entitled _De pulchro et apto;_ the very
-name shows that he reasserted the old distinction between the beautiful
-in itself and the relatively beautiful, _quoniam apte accommodaretur
-alicui._ Elsewhere he notes that an image is called beautiful _si
-perfecte implei illud cujus imago est, et coaequatur ei._[1]
-
-Thomas Aquinas varied but little from him in positing three requisites
-for beauty: integrity or perfection, due proportion, and clearness;
-following Aristotle, he distinguished the beautiful from the good,
-defining the first as that which pleases in the mere contemplation of
-it (_pulcrum ... id cujus ipsa apprehensio placet_); he referred to
-the beauty that even base things possess if well imitated, and applied
-the doctrine of imitation to the beauty of the Second Person of the
-Trinity (_in quantum est imago expressa Patris_).[2] If it were wished
-to discover references to the hedonistic conception of art, it would
-be possible to do this, with a little goodwill, in some of the sayings
-of jongleurs and troubadours. Æsthetic rigorism, the total negation
-of art for religion or for divine and human science, shows itself in
-Tertullian and among certain Fathers of the Church, at the entrance to
-the Middle Ages; at their conclusion, in a certain crude scholastic
-spirit, for example in Cecco d' Ascoli, who proclaimed against Dante:
-"I leave trifles behind me and return to the _true_; fables are always
-unpleasing to me," and later, in the reactionary Savonarola. But the
-narcotic theory of pedagogic or moralistic art prevailed over every
-other. It had contributed to send to sleep the æsthetic doubts and
-inquiries of the ancients, and was well suited to a period of relative
-decadence of culture. This was all the more the case, seeing that it
-accorded well with the moral and religious ideas of the Middle Ages,
-and afforded a justification not only for the new art of Christian
-inspiration, but also for the surviving works of classical and pagan
-art.
-
-[Sidenote: _The pedagogic theory of art in the Middle Ages._]
-
-The allegorical interpretation was again a means of salvation for these
-last. The _De continentia Virgiliana_ of Fulgentius (sixth century)
-is a curious monument to this fact. This work made Virgil compatible
-with the Middle Ages and opened his way to that great reputation which
-he was destined to attain, as the "gentle sage who knew all things."
-Even John of Salisbury says of the Roman poet, that "_sub imagine
-fabularum totius philosophiae exprimit veritatem._"[3] The process of
-interpretation became fixed in the doctrine of the _four meanings,_
-literal, allegorical, moral and anagogic, which Dante afterwards
-transferred to vernacular poetry. It would be easy to accumulate
-quotations from mediæval writers, repeating in all keys the theory
-that art inculcates the truths of morality and of faith and constrains
-hearts to Christian piety, beginning with those well-known verses of
-Theodulf: "_In quorum dictis_ (that is to say, in the utterances of the
-poets) _quamquam sint frivola multa, Plurima sub falso tegmine vera
-latent,_" and so on, until we reach the doctrines and opinions of our
-own great men, Dante and Boccaccio. For Dante, poetry "_nihil aliud est
-quam fictio rhethorica in musicaque posita._"[4] The poet should have
-a "reasoning" in his verses "under a cloak of figure or of rhetorical
-colour"; and it would be a shameful thing for him, if, "when asked,
-he were not able to divest his words of such a garment, in such a way
-as to show that they possessed a true meaning."[5] Readers sometimes
-stop at the external vesture alone, and this indeed suffices for
-those who, like the vulgar, do not succeed in penetrating the hidden
-meaning. Poetry will say to the vulgar, which does not understand "its
-argument," what a song of Dante's says at its conclusion, "At least
-behold how _beautiful_ I am": if you are not able to obtain instruction
-from me, at least enjoy me as a pleasing thing. Many, indeed, "their
-beauty more than their goodness will delight," in poems, unless they
-are assisted by commentaries in the nature of the _Convivio,_ "a light
-which will allow every shade of meaning to reach them."[6] Poetry was
-the "gay science," "_un fingimiento_" (as the Spanish poet the Marquis
-of Santillana wrote) "_de cosas utiles, cubiertas ó veladas con muy
-fermosa cobertura, compuestas, distinguidas é scandidas, por cierto
-cuento, pessoé medida._"[7]
-
-It would not then be correct to say that the Middle Ages simply
-identified art with theology and with philosophy. Indeed it sharply
-distinguished the one from the other, defining art and poetry, like
-Dante, with the words _fictio rhethorica_, "figure" and "rhetorical
-colour," "cloak," "beauty," or like Santillana with those of
-_fingimiento_ or _fermosa cobertura._ This pleasing falsity was
-justified from the practical point of view, very much in the same way
-as sexual union and love were justified and sanctified in matrimony.
-This did not exclude, indeed it implied, that the perfect state was
-certainly celibacy--that is to say, pure science, free from admixture
-of art.
-
-[Sidenote: _Hints of an Æsthetic in scholastic philosophy._]
-
-The only tendency that had no true and proper representatives was
-the sound scientific tendency. The _Poetics_ of Aristotle itself was
-hardly known or rather it was ill-known, from the Latin translation
-that a German of the name of Hermann made, not earlier than 1256, of
-the paraphrase or commentary of Averroes. Perhaps the best of the
-mediæval investigations into language is that supplied by Dante's _De
-vulgari eloquentia,_ where the word is, however, still looked upon as
-a sign ("_rationale signum et sensuale ... natura sensuale quidem,
-in quantum sonus est, rationale vero in quantum aliquid significare
-videtur ad piacitum_").[8] The study of the expressive, æsthetic,
-linguistic faculty would, however, have found an appropriate occasion
-and a point of departure in the secular debate between nominalism and
-realism, which could not avoid touching to some extent the relations
-between the word and the flesh, thought and language. Duns Scotus wrote
-a treatise _De modis significandi seu_ (the addition is due perhaps to
-the editors) _grammatica speculativa_.[9] Abelard had defined sensation
-as _confusa conceptio,_ and _imaginatio_ as a faculty that preserved
-sensations; the intellect renders discursive what is intuitive in the
-preceding stage, and we have finally the perfection of knowledge in
-the intuitive knowledge of the discursive. We find the same importance
-attached to intuitive knowledge, perception, of the individual or
-_species specialissima,_ in Duns Scotus, together with the progressive
-denominations of the different sorts of knowledge as _confusæ,
-indistinctæ_ and _distinctæ._ We shall see this terminology reappear,
-big with consequences, at the very commencement of modern Æsthetic.[10]
-
-[Sidenote: _Renaissance. Philography and philosophical and empirical
-inquiries concerning the beautiful._]
-
-It may be said that the literary and artistic doctrines and opinions
-of the Middle Ages have, with few exceptions, a value rather for the
-history of culture than for the general history of science. The like
-observation holds good of the Renaissance, for here, too, the circle of
-the ideas of antiquity was not overstepped. Culture increases; original
-sources are studied; the ancient writers are translated and commented
-upon; many treatises are written and henceforth printed upon poetry
-and the arts, grammars, rhetorics, dialogues, and dissertations upon
-the beautiful: the proportions have increased, the world has become
-bigger; but truly original ideas do not yet show themselves in the
-domain of æsthetic science. The mystical tradition is refreshed and
-strengthened by the renewed cult of Plato: Marsilio Ficino, Pico della
-Mirandola, Cattani, Leon Battista Alberti, in the fifteenth century,
-and Pietro Bembo, Mario Equicola, Castiglione, Nobili, Betussi, and
-very many others in the following century, wrote upon the Beautiful
-and upon Love. Among the most noteworthy productions of the sort, a
-crossing of the mediæval and classical currents, is the book of the
-_Dialogues of Love_ (1535), composed in Italian by the Spanish Jew
-Leo, and translated into all the cultured languages of the time.[11]
-The three parts into which it is divided treat of the nature and
-essence, of the universality, and of the origin of love; and it is
-demonstrated that every beautiful thing is good, but not every good
-thing is beautiful; that beauty is a grace which dilates the soul and
-moves it to love, and that knowledge of lesser beauties leads to that
-of higher spiritual beauties. The author gave the name of "Philography"
-to these and similar affirmations and effusions of which the book is
-composed. Equicola's[12] work is also interesting, because it contains
-historical accounts of those who wrote upon the subject before he did
-so himself. The same intuition was versified and sighed forth by the
-Petrarchists in their sonnets and ballads, while others, rebellious and
-mocking, derided it in comedies, verses in _terza rima_ and parodies of
-all sorts. Some mathematicians, reincarnations of Pythagoras, set to
-work to determine beauty by exact relations: for instance Leonardo's
-friend, Luca Paciolo, in the _De divina proportione_ (1509), in which
-he laid down the pretended æsthetic law of the golden section.[13] And
-side by side with these new Pythagoreans were those who revived the
-canon of Polycletus as to the beauty of the human body, especially
-of the female body, such as Firenzuola, Franco, Luigini, and Dolce.
-Michæl Angelo fixed an empirical canon for painting in general, when
-he stated that the means of giving movement and grace to figures[14]
-consisted in the observance of a certain arithmetical relation. Others,
-such as Fulvio Pellegrino Morato, investigated the symbolism or meaning
-of colours. The Platonists generally placed beauty in the soul, the
-Aristotelians rather in the physical qualities. The Averroist, Agostino
-Nifo, amid much chatter and many inconclusive remarks, demonstrated
-the existence of the beautiful in nature by describing the supremely
-beautiful body of Joan of Aragon, Princess of Tagliacozzo, to whom the
-book is dedicated.[15] Torquato Tasso, in the "Mintumo,"[16] imitated
-the uncertainties of the _Hippias_ of Plato, not without making a free
-use of the speculations of Plotinus. A chapter of the _Poetica_ of
-Campanella possesses greater importance, where he describes the good as
-_signum boni_ and the ugly as _signum mali,_ understanding by good the
-three prime forces of Power, Wisdom and Love. Although Campanella was
-still tied to the Platonic idea of the beautiful, the conception of a
-sign or symbol, here introduced by him, represents progress. By this
-means he succeeded in perceiving that material things or external facts
-are neither beautiful nor ugly in themselves. "Mandricard called the
-wounds in the bodies of his friends the Moors beautiful, for they were
-large and gave evidence of the great strength of Roland who dealt them;
-Saint Augustine called the gashes and the dislocations in the body of
-Saint Vincent beautiful, because they were evidence of his endurance,
-but they were on the other hand ugly in so far as they were signs of
-the cruelty of the tyrant Dacianus and of his executioners. It is
-beautiful to die fighting, said Virgil, for it is the sign of a strong
-soul. The pet dog of his mistress will seem beautiful to the lover, and
-doctors call even urine and fæces beautiful, when they indicate health.
-Everything is both beautiful and ugly" (_quapropter nihil est quod non
-sit pulcrum simul et turpe_).[17] In such observations as these we have
-not a mere state of mystical exaltation, but to some extent a movement
-in the direction of analysis.
-
-[Sidenote: _The pedagogic theory of art and the Poetics of Aristotle._]
-
-Nothing better serves to demonstrate that the Renaissance did not pass
-beyond the confines of ancient æsthetic thought than the fact that
-notwithstanding the renewed acquaintance with the thought of Aristotle,
-the pedagogic theory of art not only persisted and triumphed, but was
-transplanted bodily into the text of Aristotle, where its interpreters
-read it with a certainty that we have to make efforts to achieve.
-Certainly, a Robortelli (1548) or a Castelvetro (1570) stopped short
-at the simple, purely hedonistic solution, giving simple pleasure as
-the end of art: poetry, says Castelvetro, "was discovered solely
-for the purpose of delighting and of recreating ... the souls of the
-rude multitude and of the common people."[18] And here and there
-some were able to free themselves from both the pleasure theory and
-that of the didactic end; but the majority, such as Segni, Maggi,
-Vettori,[19] were for the _docere delectando._ Scaliger (1561) declared
-that mimesis or imitation was "_finis medius ad illum ultimum qui est
-docendi cum delectatione,_" and believing himself to be altogether in
-agreement with Aristotle as to this, he continued, "_docet affectus
-poeta per actiones, ut bonos amplectamur atque imitemur ad agendum,
-malos aspernemur ad abstinendum._"[20] Piccolomini (1575) observed
-that "It must not be thought that so many excellent poets and artists,
-ancient and modern, would have devoted such care and diligence to this
-most noble study, had they not known and believed that in so doing
-they were aiding human life," and if "they had not thought that we
-were to be instructed, directed, and well established by it."[21] The
-"truth preserved in soft verses, which attracts and persuades the most
-reluctant" (Tasso),[22] with the comparison from Lucretius attached,
-is the conception that even Campanella repeats. Poetry is for him
-"_Rhetorica quaedam figurata, quasi magica, quae exempla ministrat ad
-suadendum bonum et dissuadendum malum delectabiliter iis qui simplici
-verum et bonum audire nolunt, aut non possunt aut nesciunt._"[23] Thus
-returned the comparison of poetry with oratory; according to Segni
-they only differ because the first occupies a more lofty situation:
-"for since imitation representing itself in act by means of poetry, in
-mighty, chosen words, in metaphors, images, and indeed the whole of
-figured speech, which is to be found more in poetry than in the art
-of oratory, the metrical qualities that are also required in verse,
-the subjects of which it treats, which have something of the great and
-delightful, make it appear most beautiful and worthy of being held all
-the greater marvel."[24] "Three most noble arts" (wrote Tassoni in
-1620, and he repeated common opinion), "History, Poetics, and Oratory,
-come under the heading of Politics and depend upon it; the first of
-these has reference to the instruction of princes and gentlemen, the
-second of the people, the third of those who give counsel in public
-trials or defend private ones that come up for judgment."[25]
-
-According to these views, the tragical catharsis was regarded as
-designed in general to demonstrate the instability of fortune, or to
-terrify by example, or to proclaim the triumph of justice, or to render
-the spectators insensible to the strokes of fortune, owing to their
-familiarity with suffering. The pedagogic theory, thus renewed and
-sustained by the authority of the ancients, was popularized in France,
-Spain, England and Germany, together with all the Italian poetic
-doctrines of the Renaissance. The French writers of the period of Louis
-XIV. are altogether penetrated with it. "_Cette science agréable qui
-mêle la gravité des préceptes avec la douceur du langage_," is what La
-Ménardière calls poetry (1640), in the same way as Le Bossu (1675), for
-whom "_le premier but du poète est d'instruire_,"[26] as Homer taught,
-when he wrote two interesting didactic manuals relating to military and
-political events: the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey._
-
-[Sidenote: _The "Poetics of the Renaissance."_]
-
-This pedagogic theory has therefore been reasonably described by all
-the modern critics in concert, as if by antonomasia, as the _Poetics
-of the Renaissance._ It must, however, always be understood that it
-did not appear for the first time in the fifteenth or sixteenth
-century, but that it was prevalent and generally accepted at that
-time. It may even be remarked, as has already been acutely done,[27]
-that the Renaissance naturally did not distinguish the didactic kind
-of poetry from the other kinds, since for it every kind of poetry was
-didactic. But the Renaissance was not a real Renaissance, save when
-and where it continued the interrupted spiritual work of antiquity,
-and in this sense it would perhaps be more just to describe as its
-Poetics, or rather, as the important element in its Poetics, not the
-repetition of the pedagogic theory of antiquity and of the Middle Ages,
-but the resumption, which also took place, of the discussions upon
-the possible, the probable (_verisimile_, εικός) of Aristotle, on the
-reasons of Plato's condemnation and on the procedure of the artist who
-creates by imagining.
-
-[Sidenote: _Dispute concerning the universal and the probable in art._]
-
-It is in such discussions that is to be found the true contribution of
-that epoch, not to learning, but to the formation of the science of
-Æsthetic. The ground was prepared and enriched through the work of the
-interpreters and commentators of Aristotle and of the new writers on
-Poetics, especially the Italians, and it was also enriched with some
-seed that was destined to sprout and to become a vigorous plant in
-the future. The study of Plato also contributed not a little to call
-attention to the function of the idea, or of the universal, in poetry.
-What meaning was to be attached to the statement that poetry should aim
-at the universal and history at the particular? What was the meaning of
-the proposition that poetry should proceed according to _probability_?
-What could that _certain idea_ consist of, which Raphæl said that he
-followed in his painting?
-
-[Sidenote: _Fracastoro._]
-
-Girolamo Fracastoro was among the first to ask himself this question
-seriously, in the dialogue _Naugerius, sive De poetica_ (1555). He
-disdainfully rejected the thesis that the end of poetry is pleasure:
-far be from us, he exclaimed, so bad an opinion of the poets, who the
-ancients said were the inventors of all the good arts. Nor did the
-end of instruction seem to him to be acceptable, which is the task,
-not of poetry, but of other faculties, such as geography, history,
-agronomy, philosophy. The poet's task is to represent or to imitate,
-and he differs from the historian, not in the matter, but in the manner
-of representation. The others imitate the particular, the poet the
-universal: the others are like the painters of portraits, the poet
-produces things as he contemplates the universal and most beautiful
-idea of them: the others say only what they need to say for their
-purposes, the poet that he may say everything beautifully and fully.
-
-But the beauty of a poem must always be understood as relative to
-the class of subject of which it treats; it is the most beautiful
-in this class, not the supremely beautiful: one must be careful to
-guard against the equivocal or double meaning of this word "beauty"
-(_æquivocatio illius verbi_). A poet never utters what is false or
-expresses what does not exist, for his words inevitably harmonize in
-appearance or signification either with the opinions of men or with the
-universal. Nor can we accept the Platonic axiom that the poet has no
-knowledge of the things of which he treats; he does know them, but in
-his own poet's manner.[28]
-
-[Sidenote: _L. Castelvetro._]
-
-While Fracastoro strives to elaborate the important passage in
-Aristotle touching the universal of poetry, and though somewhat
-vague in his treatment, keeps fairly close to the mark; Castelvetro,
-on the contrary, judges the Aristotelian fragment with the freedom
-and superior knowledge of the true critic. He recognizes that the
-_Poetics_ is merely a notebook recording certain principles and
-methods of compiling the art, not the art fully compiled. He remarks,
-moreover, not without logical acumen, that Aristotle having adopted
-the criterion of probability or of that "which presents an appearance
-of historic truth," should have applied his theory in the first
-case to history, not to poetry; for history being a "narrative
-according to truth of memorable human actions," and poetry a narrative
-according to probability of events which might possibly occur, the
-second cannot receive "all its radiance" from the first. Nor does it
-escape him that Aristotle describes two different things by the one
-word "imitation": (_a_) "following the example of another," which is
-"acting in exactly the same way as another without knowing the reason
-of such action": and (_b_) the imitation "demanded by poetry," which
-"does things in a manner totally different from that in which they
-have been done hitherto and proposes a new example for imitation."
-Nevertheless Castelvetro cannot extricate himself from the confusion
-between the imaginary and the historical; for he himself says "the
-realm of the former is generally that of certainty," but "the field
-of certainty is often crossed with bars of uncertainty just as the
-field of uncertainty is often crossed with bars of certainty." Also
-what can be said of this curious interpretation of the Aristotelian
-theory of pleasure experienced in the imitation of ugly models, that
-such pleasure is based on the fact that since an imitation is always
-imperfect, it is incapable of exciting the disgust and fear which would
-arise from the contemplation of real ugliness? And what of his remark
-that the characteristics of painting and poetry are so diverse as to
-be in opposition one to the other; imitation of objects giving rise
-to great pleasure in the former art and as great displeasure in the
-latter? And so on in numberless cases of bold but scarcely felicitous
-subtleties.[29]
-
-[Sidenote: _Piccolomini and Pinciano._]
-
-In opposition to Robortelli, who asserted the identity of the probable
-and the false, Piccolomini held that the probable (_verisimile_) is
-inherently neither false nor true, only by accident becoming one or
-other.[30] Of the same mind is the Spaniard Alfonso Lopez Pinciano
-(1596), who says the scope of poetry "_no es la mentira, que seria
-coincider con la sophística, ni la historia que seria tomar la materia
-al histórico; y no siendo historia porque toca fabúlas ni mentira
-porque toca historia, tiene por objeto el verisimil, que todo lo
-abraza. De aqui resulta que es un arte superior á la metaphysica,
-porqué comprende mucho mas, y se extiende a lo que es y á lo que no
-es._"[31] What may lie behind this notion of probability is still
-indefinite and impenetrable.
-
-[Sidenote: _Fr. Patrizzi_ (_Patricius_).]
-
-Moved by a wish to place poetry on a foundation other than the
-probable, Francesco Patrizzi, the anti-Aristotelian, composed his
-_Poetica_ between 1555 and 1586 in refutation of all Aristotle's main
-doctrines. Patrizzi notes that the word "imitation" is given many
-meanings by the Greek philosopher, who uses it now to denote a single
-word, now to describe a tragedy; at times it stands for a figure of
-speech, at others for a fiction: whence he draws the logical conclusion
-(from which, however, he shrinks alarmed) "that all philosophic and
-other kinds of writing and speaking are poetry, since they are made
-of words which themselves are imitations." He observes further that,
-according to Aristotle, it is impossible to distinguish between poetry
-and history (since both are imitations), or to prove that verse is not
-essential to poetry, or that history, science and art are unsuitable
-material for it; since Aristotle in several passages says that poetry
-may comprise "fable, actual occurrences, belief of others, duty,
-the best, necessity, the possible, the probable, the credible, the
-incredible, the suitable" as well as "all things worldly." After these
-objections, some sound, others sophistical, Patrizzi comes to the
-conclusion that "there is no truth in the dogma that poetry is wholly
-imitation; and even if it be imitation at all, it belongs not to poets
-alone, nor is it mere imitation of any kind, but something else not
-mentioned by Aristotle nor pointed out by any one else, nor yet borne
-into the mind of man. The discovery may possibly be made in course of
-time, or some one may hit upon the truth and bring it to light"; but
-up to the present "such discovery has not been made."[32]
-
-Yet these confessions of ignorance, these endeavours, though vain, to
-escape from the Aristotelian circle of ideas, and the great literary
-controversies of the sixteenth century concerning the concept of poetic
-truth and the probable had their use in that they stimulated interest
-by directing attention to a mystery still unsolved. Thought had once
-more begun to move upon the æsthetic problem, and this time it was not
-destined to be broken off or to lose itself.
-
-
-[1] _Confess,_ iv. x. ch. 13; _De Trinitate,_ vi. ch. 10; _Epist._
-3, 18; _De civitate Dei,_ xxii. ch. 19 (in _Opera,_ ed. dei Maurini,
-Paris, 1679-1690, vols. i. ii. vii. viii.).
-
-[2] _Summa theol._ I. 1. xxxix. 8; I. 11. xxvii. I (ed. Migne, i. cols.
-794-795; ii. col. 219).
-
-[3] Comparetti, _Virg. nel medio evo,_ vol. i. _passim._
-
-[4] _De vulg. eloq._ (ed. Rajna), bk. ii. ch. 4.
-
-[5] _Vita nuova,_ ch. 25.
-
-[6] _Convivio,_ i. 1.
-
-[7] _Prohemio al Condestable de Portugal,_ 1445-1449 (in _Obras,_ ed.
-Amador de los Rios, 1852), § 3.
-
-[8] _De vulg. eloq._ bk. i. ch. 3.
-
-[9] Lately reprinted under the editorship of padre M. Fernandez Garcia,
-Ad claras Aquas (Quarracchi), 1902.
-
-[10] Windelband, _Gesch. d. Phil._ ii. pp. 251-270; De Wulf, _Philos,
-médiév.,_ Louvain, 1900, pp. 317-320.
-
-[11] _Dialogi di amore, composti per Leone, medico ...,_ Rome, 1535.
-
-[12] _Libro di natura e d' amore,_ Venice, 1525 (Ven. 1563).
-
-[13] _De divina proportione,_ Venice, 1509.
-
-[14] G. P. Lomazzo, _Trattato dell' arte della pittura, scultura ed
-architettura,_ Milan, 1585, i. I, pp. 22-23.
-
-[15] Aug. Niphi, _De pulcro el amore,_ Rome, 1529.
-
-[16] _Il Minturno o vero de la belleza_ (in _Dialoghi,_ ed. Guasti,
-vol. iii.).
-
-[17] _Ration. philos._ part iv.; _Poeticor._ (Paris, 1638), art. vii.
-
-[18] Fr. Robortelli, _In librum Arts, de arte poet, explicationes,_
-Florence, 1548; Lud. Castelvetro, _Poetica d' Aristotele vulgarizzata
-ed esposta,_ 1570 (Basle, 1576), part i. particella iv. pp. 29-30.
-
-[19] Bern. Segni, _Rettor. e poet. trad._ Florence, 1549; Vinc. Madii,
-_In Arist.... explanationes,_ 1550; Petri Victorii, _Commentarii,_
-etc., Florence, 1560.
-
-[20] _Poetica,_ 1561 (ed. 3, 1586), i. I; vii. 3.
-
-[21] _Annotationi net libro della Poetica,_ Venice, 1575, preface.
-
-[22] _Gerus. lib._ i. 3.
-
-[23] _Poetic,_ ch. I, art. 1.
-
-[24] _Poetica trad_. preface.
-
-[25] _Pensieri diversi_, bk. x. ch. 18.
-
-[26] La Ménardière, _Poétique_, Paris, 1640; Le Bossu, _Traité du poème
-épique_, Paris, 1675.
-
-[27] Borinski, _Poet. d. Renaiss._ p. 26.
-
-[28] Hyeron. Frascatorii _Opera,_ Venetian edition, Giunti, 1574, pp.
-112-120.
-
-[29] _Poet., ed. cit._ i. 1; ii. 1; iii. 7; v. I (pp. 64, 66, 71-72,
-208, 580).
-
-[30] _Annotationi,_ preface.
-
-[31] _Philosophia antiqua poetica,_ Madrid, 1596 (reprinted Valladolid
-1894).
-
-[32] Francesco Patrici, _Della poetica, la Deca disputata,_ "in
-which by history, by reason, by authority of the greatest worthies
-of antiquity, is shown the falsity of the most received opinions
-concerning Poetry down to our own day." Ferrara, 1586.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-FERMENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
-
-
-[Sidenote: _New words and new observations in the seventeenth century_]
-
-Interest in æsthetic investigation increased rapidly in the early years
-of the following century, owing either to the popularity acquired by
-certain new words or to the novel meanings given to words already
-familiar, which emphasized new aspects of artistic production and
-criticism, complicating the problem and rendering it thereby more
-puzzling and attractive. For example: wit, taste, imagination or fancy,
-feeling, and several others, which must be examined rather closely.
-
-Wit (_ingegno_) differed somewhat from intellect. Free use of the word
-arose, if we mistake not, from its convenience in Rhetoric as conceived
-by antiquity; that is to say, a suave and facile mode of knowledge, as
-opposed to the severity of Dialectic; an "Antistrophe to Dialectic,"
-which substituted for reasons of actual fact those of probability or
-fancy; enthymemes for syllogisms, examples for inductions; so much
-so that Zeno the Stoic figured Dialectic with her fist clenched and
-Rhetoric with her hand open. The empty style of the decadent Italian
-authors in the seventeenth century found its complete justification
-in this theory of rhetoric; their prose and verse, Marinesque and
-Achillinesque, professed to exhibit not the true but the striking,
-subtly conceited, curious or nice. The word wit, _ingegno,_ was now
-repeated much more frequently than in the preceding century; wit
-was hailed as presiding genius of Rhetoric; its "vivacities" were
-lauded to the skies; "_belli ingegni_" was a phrase seized upon by
-the French, who rendered it as "_esprit_" or "_beaux esprits_."[1]
-One of the most noteworthy commentators on these matters (although
-opposed to the literary excesses of the times), Matteo Pellegrini
-of Bologna (1650), defines wit as "that part of the soul which in
-a certain way practises, aims, and seeks to find and create the
-beautiful and the efficacious";[2] he considers the work of "wit" to
-be the "conceits" and "subtleties" noted by him in a previous pamphlet
-(1639).[3] Emmanuele Tesauro also descants at considerable length
-in his _Cannochiale Aristotelico_ (1654) upon wit and subtleties,
-not alone "verbal" and "lapidary" conceits, but also "symbolic" and
-"figurative" (statues, stories, devices, satires, hieroglyphs, mosaics,
-emblems, insignia, sceptres), and even "animated agents" (pantomimes,
-play-scenes, masques and dances): all things which may be grouped under
-"polite quibbling" or rhetoric as distinct from "dialectic."
-
-Amongst such treatises, product of their age, one written by the
-Spaniard Baltasar Gracian (1642) became celebrated throughout
-Europe.[4] Wit became in his hands the strictly inventive or artistic
-faculty, "genius"; _génie,_ "genius" were now used as synonyms of
-wit, _ingegno_ and _esprit._ In the following century Mario Pagano[5]
-wrote: "Wit may be taken as equivalent to the _génie_ of the French, a
-word now commonly used in Italy." To return to the seventeenth century,
-Bouhours, a Jesuit writer of dialogues on the _Manière de bien penser
-dans les ouvrages d'esprit_ (1687), says that "'heart' and 'wit' are
-greatly in fashion just now, nothing else is spoken of in polite
-conversation, and all discourse is at last brought round to _l'esprit
-et le cœur._"[6]
-
-[Sidenote: _Taste._]
-
-The word _taste_ or _good taste_ was equally widespread and
-fashionable, signifying the faculty of judgement brought to bear
-on the beautiful, distinct to some extent from intellectual power,
-and sometimes divided into active and passive, so that it was usual
-to speak of one kind of taste as "productive" or "fertile" (thus
-coinciding with "wit"), and of another as "sterile."
-
-[Sidenote: _Various meanings of the word taste._]
-
-From the rough notes which we possess as to the history of the concept
-of taste, several meanings of the word, not all of equal importance
-as indications of the development of ideas, detach themselves in a
-somewhat confused manner. "Taste," meaning "pleasure" or "delight," was
-an old-established word in Italy and Spain, as is shown in such phrases
-as "to have a taste for, to be to one's taste"; when Lope di Vega
-and other Spaniards speak continually of the drama of their country
-as seeking to please the popular taste ("_deleita el gusto_"; "_para
-darle gusto_") they mean only the "pleasure" of the populace. In Italy
-there was a very ancient use of the word in the metaphorical sense
-of "judgement," either literary, scientific, or artistic; numberless
-examples of this use occur in writers of the sixteenth century
-(Ariosto, Varchi, Michæl Angelo, Tasso). To take but one of these: the
-lines in _Orlando Furioso_ where it is said of the Emperor Augustus,
-"_L' aver avuto in poesia buon gusto La proscrizione iniqua gli
-perdona,_" "For having had good taste in poetry he shall be forgiven
-his iniquitous proscriptions"; or the remark of Ludovico Dolce that'
-some person "had such exquisite taste, he sang no verses save those of
-Catullus and Calvus."[7] The word "taste," in the sense of a special
-faculty or attitude of mind, appears to have been used for the first
-time in Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century by Gracian,[8]
-the moralist and political writer already quoted. It is evidently to
-him that the Italian author Trevisano alludes in a preface to a book by
-Muratori (1708) when he speaks of "Spaniards, above all others cunning
-in metaphor," who express themselves in "that eloquent and laconic
-phrase, good taste"; touching further on taste and genius he quotes,
-"that ingenious Spaniard," Gracian,[9] who gave the word the sense of
-"practical wit," enabling one to perceive the "true signification" of
-things; his "man of good taste" becomes in our language "a man of tact"
-in the affairs of life.[10]
-
-The transference of the word to the domain of æsthetic seems to have
-taken place in France during the last quarter of the century. "_Il y
-a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme de bonté ou de maturité
-dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime a le goût parfait;
-celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deçà ou au delà, a le goût
-défectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goût, et l'on dispute des
-goûts avec fondement,_" writes La Bruyère[11] (1688). As attributes
-or variants of taste it was usual to mention _delicacy_ and _variety_
-or _variability._ Bearing its fresh critical--literary content,
-but not freed from the encumbrance of its earlier practical and
-moral significance, the word spread from France into other European
-countries. Thomasius introduced it into Germany in 1687;[12] and in
-England it becomes "good taste." In Italy it appears as early as 1696
-as title of a large book written by Camillo Ettori, the Jesuit, _Il
-buon gusto ne' componimenti rettorici_.[13] The preface notes: "The
-expression 'good taste,' proper to those who rightly distinguish good
-from bad flavour in foods, is now in general use and claimed by every
-one as a title in connexion with literature and the humanities"; it
-reappears in 1708 at the beginning of Muratori's[14] book already
-quoted: Trevisano treats of it philosophically: Salvini discusses it
-in his note upon the _Perfetta Poesia_ of Muratori above mentioned,
-where the subject of good taste occupies several pages,[15] and finally
-it gives its name to the Academy of Good Taste founded at Palermo in
-1718.[16] Scholars of the day who took up the discussion of the theme,
-recollecting some passages scattered throughout the ancient classics,
-placed the new concept in relation with the "_tacitus quidam sensus
-sine ulla ratione et arte_" of Cicero; and with the "_indicium_" which
-"_nec magis arte traditur quam gustus aut odor_" of Quintilian.[17]
-More particularly Montfaucon de Villars (1671)[18] wrote a book on
-"Delicacy"; Ettori strove to find some definition more satisfactory
-than those current at the time (_e.g._ "it is the finest invention
-of wit, the flower of wit and extract of beauty's self," and similar
-conceits);[19] Orsi made it the subject of his _Considerazioni_ written
-in reply to Bouhours' book.
-
-[Sidenote: _Fancy or Imagination._]
-
-In Italy in the seventeenth century we find imagination or fancy
-placed on a pinnacle. What do you mean by talking of probability
-and historical truth (asks Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino in 1644), of
-false or true in connexion with poetry; which deals not with fiction,
-fact or historical probability but with primary apprehensions which
-assert neither truth nor falsehood? Following this line of argument,
-imagination takes the place of that probable, neither true nor false,
-advocated by some commentators of Aristotle; a theory strongly
-criticized by Pallavicino, here agreeing with Piccolomini, whom however
-he does not name, and in opposition to Castelvetro whom he explicitly
-mentions. He who goes to the play (continues Pallavicino) knows quite
-well that the scenes acted on the stage are not real; although he has
-no belief in them yet they please him greatly. For "if poetry desired
-to be mistaken for truth, the end she had in view would be a he, by
-the laws of nature and of God doomed inevitably to perish: for a lie
-is nothing but an untruth uttered in the hope that it may be mistaken
-for truth. How then should an art so tainted be allowed to flourish in
-the best-regulated republics? How should it be commended and used by
-the very writers of Holy Scripture?" _Ut pictura poësis_: poetry is
-like painting, which is a "diligent imitation" aiming at a close copy
-of the features, colours, acts, nay, even the hidden motives, of the
-objects it represents: and it "does not pretend that fiction is truth."
-The sole aim of poetic tales is "to adorn our understanding with
-imagery, that is to say, with sumptuous, novel, marvellous and splendid
-appearances. And this is known to diffuse so useful an influence on
-mankind that humanity insists on rewarding poets with praise more
-glorious than is bestowed on any other men; their books are protected
-from the ravages of time with greater solicitude than is shown to
-scientific treatises or productions of any other art; in the end the
-names of poets are crowned with adoring veneration. See how the world
-thirsts for beautiful first apprehensions, although these are neither
-laden with science nor are they vehicles of truth."[20]
-
-Sixty years later these ideas, although expressed by a Cardinal, seemed
-all too daring to Muratori, who could not bring himself to allow poets
-so much latitude, or to enfranchize them from their obligations to the
-probable. Nevertheless Muratori allows a large space to imagination,
-"an inferior apprehensive faculty" which, without caring whether
-things be false or true, confines itself to apprehending them, and
-"represents" the truth merely, leaving the task of "cognition" to the
-"superior apprehensive faculty" or intellect.[21] Even the stony heart
-of Gravina yields to the charm of imagination: he admits it occupies
-a considerable place in the realm of poetry and suffers his own arid
-prose to describe it as "a sorceress, but beneficent," "a delirium
-which cures madness."[22]
-
-Earlier than either of these, Ettori commended it to the good
-rhetorician, "who in order that he may awaken images" must "familiarize
-himself with whatever is subject to bodily feeling" and "encounter
-the genius of imagination, which is a sensuous faculty," to these
-ends using "species rather than genera (since the latter, being more
-universal than the former, are less sensible), individuals rather than
-species, effects than causes, the number of the greater rather than the
-number of the less."[23]
-
-As far back as 1578 the Spaniard Huarte had maintained that eloquence
-is the product of imagination rather than of intellect or reason.[24]
-In England Bacon (1605) ascribed science to intellect, history to
-memory and poetry to imagination or fancy:[25] Hobbes inquired into
-the procedure of poetry:[26] Addison (1712) devoted several numbers
-of his _Spectator_ to analysis of the "pleasures of imagination."[27]
-Somewhat later, the importance of imagination was felt in Germany,
-where it found advocates in Bodmer, Breitinger and other writers of the
-Swiss school, who owed much to the influence of the Italians (Muratori,
-Gravina, Calepio) and the English: acting in their turn as teachers of
-Klopstock and the new German critical school.[28]
-
-[Sidenote: _Feeling._]
-
-It was at this same period that opposition became clearly marked
-between those accustomed "_à juger par le sentiment_" and those used
-to "_raisonner par principes_."[29] The Frenchman, Du Bos, author of
-_Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture_ (1719), upholds the
-theory of feeling; according to him art is simply a self-abandonment
-"_aux impressions que les objets étrangers font sur nous,_" setting
-aside all reflective labour. He laughs at those philosophers who
-deny the force of imagination, and Malebranche's eloquent discourse
-founded on this denial draws from Du Bos the remark, "_c'est à notre
-imagination qu'il parle contre l'abus de l'imagination._" He refuses
-to see any intellectual nucleus in the productions of the arts, saying
-that art consists not in instruction but in style: nor is he too
-respectful towards the probable: he says he finds himself unable to
-set limits between it and the marvellous, and leaves to "born poets"
-the task of thus miraculously uniting opposites. For Du Bos there is
-no criterion of art save feeling, which he calls a "_sixième sens,_"
-against which dispute is vain since in such matters popular opinion
-invariably wins the day over the dogmatic pronouncements of artists
-and men of letters: all the ingenious conceits of the greatest
-metaphysicians, though unimpeachable in themselves, will not in the
-slightest degree diminish the lustre of poetry or despoil it of one
-single attraction. Attempts to discredit Ariosto and Tasso in the eyes
-of Italians were as vain as those made against the _Cid_ in France.
-Other people's arguments can never persuade us of the contrary of
-what we feel.[29] These notions were adopted by many French writers:
-for example Cartaut de la Villate[30] observes, "_Le grand talent
-d'un écrivain qui veut plaire, est de tourner ses réflexions en
-sentiments_;" and Trublet, "_C'est un principe sûr, que la poésie doit
-être une expression de sentiment._"[30] Nor were the English slow in
-emphasizing the concept of "emotion" in their theories of literature.
-
-[Sidenote: _Tendency to unite these terms._]
-
-In the writings of this period _imagination_ was often identified with
-_wit, wit_ with _taste, taste_ with _feeling,_ and _feeling_ with
-first apprehensions or _imagination_;[31] we have already noted that
-taste is sometimes critical and sometimes productive: this fusion,
-identification and subordination of terms apparently distinct shows how
-they gravitate round one single concept.
-
-[Sidenote: _Difficulties and contradictions in their definition._]
-
-A German critic, one of the very few who have sought to penetrate
-the darkness surrounding the origins of modern Æsthetic, considers
-the concept of taste (which we owe, he thinks, to Gracian) "the
-most important æsthetic doctrine which remained for modern times to
-discover."[32] But without going so far as to say that taste is the
-chief doctrine of the science, and the foundation of all the rest,
-instead of only a particular doctrine, and without recapitulating what
-we have already said of Gracian's relation to the theory of taste,
-it is well to repeat that taste, wit, imagination, feeling, and so
-on, instead of new concepts scientifically grasped, were simply new
-words corresponding to vague impressions: at most they were problems,
-not concepts: apprehensions of ground still to be conquered, not yet
-annexed and brought into subjection. It must not be forgotten that the
-very men who made use of these terms could scarcely grope after the
-ideas they suggested without falling back into the old traditions, the
-only ones on which they had an intellectual grasp. To them the new
-words were shades, not bodies: when they tried to embrace them their
-arms returned empty to their own breasts.
-
-[Sidenote: _Wit and intellect._]
-
-Certainly wit differs to a certain extent from intellect. Yet
-Pellegrini and Tesauro, with other writers of treatises, never fail to
-point out that intellectual truth lies at the root of wit. Trevisano
-defines it as "an internal virtue of the soul which invents methods
-for expressing and executing its own concepts: it is recognizable now
-in the arrangement of things we invent, now in the clear expression
-of them: sometimes in cunning reconciliations of matters seemingly
-opposed, sometimes in tracing analogies but faintly discernible." To
-sum up, one must not "allow the actions of wit to go unaccompanied
-by those of intellect," or even by those of practical morality.[33]
-More ingenuously Muratori says, "Wit is that virtue and active force
-with which the intellect is able to assemble, unite and discover the
-similarities, relations and reasons of things."[34] In this manner wit,
-after having been distinguished from intellect, eventually becomes a
-part or a manifestation of it. By a somewhat different path the same
-conclusion is reached by Alexander Pope when he counsels that wit be
-reined in like a mettlesome horse, and observes:
-
-    For wit and judgement often are at strife,
-    Though meant each other's aid like man and wife.[35]
-
-[Sidenote: _Taste and intellectual judgement._]
-
-Similar vicissitudes befell the word "taste," outcome of a metaphor
-(as was noted by Kant) whose effect was to stand in opposition
-to intellectualistic principles, as if to say that the judgement
-governing the choice of food destined solely for the delectation
-of the palate is of the same nature as that which decides opinions
-in matters of art.[36] Nevertheless, the very definition of this
-anti-intellectualistic concept contained a reference to intellect and
-reason; the implicit comparison with the palate was ultimately taken
-as signifying an anticipation of reflexion: as Voltaire wrote in the
-following century: "_De même que la sensation du palais anticipe
-la réflexion._"[37] Intellect and reason glimmer through all the
-definitions of taste belonging to this period. Mme. Dacier wrote in
-1684, "_Une harmonie, un accord de l'esprit et de la raison._"[38]
-"_Une raison éclairée qui, d'intelligence avec le cœur, fait
-toujours un juste choix parmi des choses opposées ou semblables,_"
-wrote the author of _Entretiens galants._[39] According to another
-writer quoted by Bonhours, "taste" is "a natural feeling implanted in
-the soul, independent of any science that can possibly be acquired"; it
-is practically "an instinct of right reason."[40] The same Bouhours,
-whilst deprecating this interpretation of one metaphor by another,
-says, "Taste is more nearly allied to judgement than wit."[41] The
-Italian Ettori thinks that it may generally be described as "judgement
-regulated by art,"[42] and Baruffaldi (1710) identifies it with
-"discernment" reduced from theory to practice.[43] De Crousaz (1715)
-observes: "_Le bon goût nous fait d'abord estimer par sentiment ce que
-la raison aurait approuvé, après qu'elle se serait donné le temps de
-l'examiner assez pour en juger par des justes idées._"[44] And somewhat
-prior to him Trevisano considered it "a sentiment always willing to
-conform to whatsoever reason accepts," and in conjunction with divine
-grace, a powerful help to man in revealing the true and good, no longer
-able to circulate freely among mankind owing to original sin. For
-König (1727) in Germany taste was "a power of the intellect, product
-of a healthy mind and acute judgement which makes one able to feel
-the true, good and beautiful"; and for Bodmer in 1736 (after lengthy
-correspondence on the subject with his Italian friend Calepio) "a
-practised reflexion, prompt and penetrating into the smallest details,
-by which intellect is able to distinguish the true from the false, the
-perfect from the imperfect." Calepio and Bodmer were opponents of pure
-feeling, and made a distinction between "taste" and "good taste."[45]
-Traversing the same intellectualistic path, Muratori speaks of "good
-taste" in "erudition" and others of "good taste in philosophy."
-
-[Sidenote: _The "je ne sais quoi."_]
-
-Perhaps those authors were wise who preferred to remain vague and to
-identify taste with an indefinable Something, a _je ne sais quoi_; a
-_nescio quid_: a new expression which expressed nothing new, but at
-least called attention to the problem. Bouhours (1671) discusses it at
-length: "_Les Italiens, qui font mystère de tout, emploient en toutes
-rencontres leur_ non so che: _on ne voit rien de plus commune dans
-leurs poètes,_" and quotes Tasso and others in confirmation.[45] A
-note upon it is found in Salvini: "This 'good taste' has but recently
-come to the front; it seems a vague term applicable to nothing
-particular, and is equivalent to the _non so che,_ to a happy or
-successful turn of wit."[46] Father Feijóo, who wrote on the _Razón
-del gusto_ and on _El no se qué_ (1733), says very wisely: "_En muchas
-producciones no solo de la naturaleza, sino del arte, y aun mas del
-arte que de la naturaleza, encuentran los hombres, fuera di aquellas
-perfecciones sujetes á su comprehension racional, otro genero de primor
-misterioso que, lisonjeando el gusto, atormenta el entendemento. Los
-sentidos le palpan, pero no le puede dissipar la razon, y así, al
-querer explicarle, no se encuentran voces ni conceptos que cuadren
-á su idea, y salimos del paso con decir que hay un non se qué, que
-agrada, que enamora que hechiza, sin que pueda encontrarse revelacion
-mas clara da este natural misterio._"[47] And President Montesquieu:
-"_Il y a quelquefois dans les personnes ou dans les choses un charme
-invisible, une grâce naturelle, qu'on n'a pu définir, et qu'on a été
-forcé d'appeler le je ne sais quoi. Il me semble que c'est un effet
-principalement fondé sur la surprise._"[48] Some writers rebelled
-against the subterfuge of the _je ne sais quoi,_ saying, rightly
-enough, that it was a confession of ignorance: but they knew not how to
-escape that ignorance without falling into confusion between taste and
-intellectual judgement.
-
-[Sidenote: _Imagination and sensationalism. The corrective of
-Imagination._]
-
-If the attempt to define "wit" and "taste" usually resulted in
-intellectualism, it was easy to transform imagination and feeling into
-sensationalistic doctrines. We have seen how earnestly Pallavicino
-insisted on the non-intellectuality of the fantasies and inventions
-of the imagination. "Nothing presents itself to the admirer of the
-beautiful (he writes) to enable him to verify his cognition and satisfy
-himself that the object recognized is or is not that for which he takes
-it; if either by vision or by strong apprehension he is led to think
-it actually present by an act of judgement, his taste for beauty as
-beauty does not arise from such act of judgement, but from the vision
-or lively apprehension which might remain in ourselves even when the
-deception of belief was corrected"; just as happens when we are drowsy
-and know ourselves to be but half awake, yet are unwilling to tear
-ourselves from sweet dreams. For Pallavicino imagination cannot err; he
-assimilates it wholly to the sensations, which are incapable of truth
-or falsity. And if imaginative knowledge pleases, it is not because
-it holds a special truth (imaginative truth), but because it creates
-objects which "though false are pleasing": the painter makes not
-likenesses but images which, all resemblance apart, are pleasing to the
-sight: the poet awakens apprehensions "sumptuous, novel, marvellous,
-splendid."[49] His opinion coincides, if we mistake not, with Marino's
-sensationalism: "The poet should aim only at the marvellous ... he who
-cannot amaze his hearers is not worth a straw":[50] he applauds the
-oft-repeated dictum of "Gabriel Chiabrera, that Pindar of Savona, that
-poetry should cause the eyebrows to arch themselves."[51] But in the
-_Treatise upon Style_ written later (1646) he repents of his youthful
-achievement and appears willing to return to the pedagogic theory:
-"And forasmuch as I theorized concerning poetry in the basest manner,
-treating it solely as a minister of that delight which the mind enjoys
-in the less noble operation of imagination or apprehension arising
-from imagination; and, therefore, in consequence I somewhat relaxed the
-strings which bind it to the probable: I now wish to demonstrate that
-poetry has other functions more exalted and fruitful, while remaining
-in strict servitude to the probable: which office is to guide our
-minds in the noble exercise of judgement; thus it becomes the nurse of
-philosophy which it nourishes with sweet milk."[52] The Jesuit Ettori,
-while inculcating the use of imagination and recommending orators to go
-to school with the "actors," points out that imagination should fulfil
-the simple office of "interpreter" between intellect and truth, never
-assuming dominion, otherwise the orator would be treating his audience
-or readers "not as men, to whom intellect is proper, but as beasts whom
-imagination satisfies."[53]
-
-The conception of imagination as purely sensuous shows strongly in
-Muratori, who is so convinced that the faculty, if left to itself,
-would deteriorate into a riot of dreams and intoxication, that he links
-it to intellect as to "an authoritative friend" who shall influence
-the choice and combination of images.[54] The problem of the nature of
-imagination had strong attraction for Muratori, and, while traducing
-and vilifying, he returns to it again in his _Della forza della
-fantasia umana_;[55] describing it as a material faculty essentially
-different from the mental or spiritual, and denying it the validity of
-knowledge. Although he had observed that the aim of poetry is distinct
-from that of science, in that the latter seeks to "know," and the
-former to "represent" truth,[56] he persisted in counting Poetry as an
-"art of delectation" subordinate to Moral Philosophy, of whom she was
-one of the three servants or ministers.[57] Very similarly Gravina held
-that along with novelty and delight in the marvellous, poetry should
-endow the mind of the vulgar with "truth and universal cognitions."[58]
-
-Outside Italy the same movement was going on. Bacon, although he
-assigned poetry to imagination, yet considered it as something
-intermediary between history and science, approximating epic to
-history and the most lofty style, the parabolic, to science: ("_poēsis
-parabolica inter reliquas eminet"._) Elsewhere he calls poetry
-_somnium_ or declares absolutely that "_scientias fere non parit,_" and
-that "_pro lusu potius ingenii quam pro scientia est habenda_": music,
-painting and sculpture are voluptuous arts.[59] Addison identified the
-pleasures of the imagination with those produced by visible objects or
-the ideas to which they give rise: such pleasures are not so strong as
-those of the senses nor so refined as those of the intellect: he groups
-together the pleasures experienced respectively in comparing imitations
-with the objects imitated, and in sharpening by this means the faculty
-of observation.[60]
-
-[Sidenote _Feeling and Sensationalism._]
-
-The sensationalism of Du Bos and other upholders of feeling appears
-very clearly. For Du Bos art is a pastime whose pleasantness consists
-in the fact that it occupies the mind without fatigue, and has
-affinities with the pleasure provoked by gladiatorial contests,
-bullfights and tourneys.[61]
-
-For these reasons, whilst noting the importance, in the prehistory
-of Æsthetic, of these new words and the new views they express; and
-while recognizing their value as a ferment in the discussion of the
-æsthetic problem, taken up by thinkers of the Renaissance at the point
-at which it had been left by the ancients; we yet cannot discern in
-their apparition the true origin of our science. By these words and the
-discussions they aroused, the æsthetic fact clamoured even louder and
-more insistently for its own philosophical justification; but this it
-was not yet to attain either by this means or by any other.
-
-
-[1] _E.g._ Molière, _Préc. ridic._ sc. i, 10.
-
-[2] _I fonti dell' ingegno ridotti ad arte,_ Bologna, 1650.
-
-[3] _Delle acutezze che altrimenti spiriti, vivezze e concetti
-volgarmenti si appellano,_ Genova-Bologna, 1639.
-
-[4] _Agudeza y arte de ingenio,_ Madrid, 1642; enlarged, Huesca, 1649.
-
-[5] _Saggio del gusto e delle belle arti,_ 1783, ch. I, _note._
-
-[6] Ital. trans. in Orsi, _Considerazioni,_ etc. (Modena, 1735), vol.
-i. dial. 1.
-
-[7] _Orl. Furioso_, xxxv. 26; L. Dolce, _Dial. del pittura_ (Venice,
-1557); _ad init_.
-
-[8] Borinski, _Poet. d. Renaiss._ p. 308 _seqq._; _B. Gracian_, pp.
-39-54.
-
-[9] _Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto_ (Venice, 1766), introd. pp. 72-84.
-
-[10] Gracian, _Obras_ (Antwerp, 1669); _El héroe, El discreto,_ with
-introd. by A. Farinelli, Madrid, 1900. Cf. Borinski, _Poet. d. Renais,
-l.c._
-
-[11] _Les Caractères, ou les mœurs du siècle,_ ch. I; _Des ouvrages de
-l'esprit._
-
-[12] In the programme: _Von der Nachahmung der Franzosen,_ Leipzig,
-1687.
-
-[13] _Opera ... nella quale con alcune certe considerazioni si mostra
-in che consista il vero buon gusto ne' suddetti componimenti,_ etc.,
-etc., Bologna, 1696.
-
-[14] _Delle riflessioni sopra il buon gusto nelle scienze e nell'
-arti,_ 1708 (Venice, 1766).
-
-[15] Muratori, _Della perfetta poesia italiana,_ Modena, 1706, bk. ii.
-ch. 5.
-
-[16] Mazzuchelli, _Scrittori d' Italia,_ vol. ii. part iv. p. 2389.
-
-[17] Cicero, _De oratore,_ iii. ch. 50; Quintilian, _Inst. Orator,_ vi.
-ch. 5.
-
-[18] _De la délicatesse,_ Paris, 1671.
-
-[19] _Il buon gusto,_ ch. 39, p. 367.
-
-[20] _Del bene_ (Naples, 1681), bk. i. part i. chs. 49-53. Cf. the same
-writer's _Arte della perfezion cristiana,_ Rome, 1665, bk. i. ch. 3.
-
-[21] _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. i. chs. 14, 21.
-
-[22] _Ragion poetica,_ in _Prose italiane,_ ed. De Stefano, Naples,
-1839, i. ch. 7. 2 _Il buon gusto,_ p. 10.
-
-[23] _Esame degl' ingegni degl' huomini per apprender le scienze_
-(Ital. trans. by C. Camilli, Venice, 1586), chs. 9-12.
-
-[24] _De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum,_ bk. ii. ch. 13.
-
-[25] _De homine_ (in _Opera phil.,_ ed. Molesworth, vol. iii.), ch. 2.
-
-[26] _Spectator,_ Nos. 411-421 (_Works,_ London, 1721, pp. 486-519).
-
-[27] _Die Discourse der Mahlern,_ 1721--1723; _Von dem Einflüss und
-Gebrauche der Einbildungskraft,_ etc., 1727; and other writings of
-Bodmer and Breitinger.
-
-[28] Pascal, _Pensées sur l'éloquence et le style,_ § 15.
-
-[29] _Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture,_ 1719 (ed. 7,
-Paris, 1770) _passim._; see especially sections 1, 23, 26, 28, 33, 34.
-
-[30] Cartaut de la Villate, _Essais historiques et philosophiques sur
-le goût,_ Aix, 1737; Trublet, _Essais sur divers sujets de littérature
-et de morale,_ Amsterdam, 1755.
-
-[31] Cf. Du Bos, _op. cit._ § 33.
-
-[32] Borinski, _B. Gracian_, p. 39.
-
-[33] Trevisano, _op. cit._ pp. 82, 84.
-
-[34] _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. ii. ch. I (_ed. cit._ i. p. 299).
-
-[35] A. Pope, _An Essay on Criticism,_ 1709 (in _Poetical Works,_
-London, 1827), lines 81, 82.
-
-[36] _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_ (ed. Kirchmann), § 33.
-
-[37] _Essai sur le goût_ (in appendix to A. Gérard, _Essai sur le
-goût,_ Paris, 1766).
-
-[38] _Ibid._
-
-[39] Quoted in Sulzer, _Allg. Th. d. s. K._ ii. p. 377.
-
-[40] _Manière de bien penser_ (Ital. trans. _cit._), dial. 4. 2 _Ibid._
-
-[41] _Op. cit._ chs. 2-4.
-
-[42] _Osservazioni critiche_ (in vol. ii. of Orsi's _Considerazioni)_,
-ch. 8, p. 23.
-
-[43] _Traité du beau_ (Amsterdam ed., 1724), i. p. 170.
-
-[44] J. Ulr. König, _Untersuchung von dem guten Geschmack in der Dicht-
-und Redekunst,_ Leipzig, 1727, and (Calepio-Bodmer) _Briefwechsel von
-der Natur des poetischen Geschmackes,_ Zürich, 1736; cf. for both
-Sulzer, ii. p. 380.
-
-[45] _Les Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène,_ 1671 (Paris ed., 1734),
-conversation v.; "_Le je ne sçai quoi_"; cf. Gracian, _Oraculo manual,_
-No. 127, and _El héroe,_ ch. 13.
-
-[46] In the notes to Muratori's _Perfetta poesia._
-
-[47] Feijóo, _Theatro critico,_ vol. vi. Nos. 11-12.
-
-[48] _Essai sur le goût dans les choses de la nature et de l'art._
-Posthumous fragment (in appendix to A. Gérard, _op. cit._).
-
-[49] _Del bene, cap. cit._
-
-[50] Marino, in one of the sonnets in the _Murtoleide_ (1608).
-
-[51] _Del bene,_ bk. i. part i. ch. 8.
-
-[52] _Trattato dello stile_ (Rome, 1666), ch. 30.
-
-[53] _Il buon gusto,_ pp. 12-13.
-
-[54] _Perf. poesia,_ i. ch. 18, pp. 232-233.
-
-[55] Venice, 1745.
-
-[56] _Perf. poesia,_ i. ch. 6.
-
-[57] _Op. cit._ i. ch. 4, p. 42.
-
-[58] _Ragion poetica,_ i. ch. 7.
-
-[59] _De dignitate,_ ii. ch. 13; iii. ch. I; iv. ch. 2; v. ch. 1.
-
-[60] _Spectator, loc. cit._ esp. pp. 487, 503.
-
-[61] _Op. cit._ § 2.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE CARTESIAN AND LEIBNITIAN SCHOOLS, AND THE
-"ÆSTHETIC" OF BAUMGARTEN
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Cartesianism and imagination._]
-
-The obscure world of wit, taste, imagination, feeling and the _je ne
-sais quoi_ was not selected for examination or even, so to speak,
-included in the picture of Cartesian philosophy. The French philosopher
-abhorred imagination, the outcome, according to him, of the agitation
-of the animal spirits: and though not utterly condemning poetry, he
-allowed it to exist only in so far as it was guided by intellect, that
-being the sole faculty able to save men from the caprices of the _folle
-du logis._ He tolerated it, but that was all; and went so far as not to
-deny it anything "_qu'un philosophe lui puisse permettre sans offenser
-sa conscience._"[1] It has been observed that the æsthetic parallel
-with Cartesian intellectualism is to be found in Boileau,[2] slave to
-rigid _raison_ ("_Mais nous que la raison à ses règles engage ..._")
-and enthusiastic partisan of allegory. We have already had occasion
-to draw attention to the diatribe of Malebranche against imagination.
-The mathematical spirit fostered in France by Descartes forbade all
-possibility of a serious consideration of poetry and art. The Italian
-Antonio Conti, living in that country and witness of the literary
-disputes raging around him, thus describes the French critics (La
-Motte, Fontenelle and their followers): "_Ils ont introduit dans les
-belles lettres l'esprit et la méthode de M. Descartes; et ils jugent
-de la poésie et de l'éloquence indépendamment des qualités sensibles.
-De là vient aussi qu'ils confondent le progrès de la philosophie avec
-celui des arts. Les modernes, dit l'Abbé Terrasson, sont plus grands
-géomètres que les anciens: donc ils sont plus grands orateurs et plus
-grands poètes._"[3] The fight against this mathematical spirit in the
-matters of art and feeling was still going on in France in the day of
-the encyclopædists; the din of the battle was heard in Italy, as is
-shown by the writings of Bettinelli and others. At the time when Du Bos
-published his daring book there was a counsellor in the parliament of
-Bordeaux, Jean-Jacques Bel by name, who composed a dissertation (1726)
-against the doctrine that feeling should be the judge of art.[4]
-
-[Sidenote: _Crousaz and André._]
-
-Cartesianism was incapable of an Æsthetic of imagination. The _Traité
-du beau_ by the eclectic Cartesian J. P. de Crousaz (1715), maintained
-the dependence of beauty not upon pleasure or feeling, matters about
-which there can be no difference of opinion, but upon that which can
-be _approved_ and therefore reduced to ideas. He enumerates five such
-ideas: variety, unity, regularity, order and proportion, observing,
-"_La variété tempérée par l'unité, la régularité, l'ordre et la
-proportion, ne sont pas assurément des chimères; elles ne sont pas
-du ressort de la fantaisie, ce n'est pas le caprice qui en décide_":
-for him, that is to say, they were real qualities of the beautiful
-founded in nature and truth. He discovered similar characteristics of
-the beautiful in the individual beauties of the sciences (geometry,
-algebra, astronomy, physics, history), of virtue, eloquence and
-religion, finding in each the qualities laid down above.[5] Another
-Cartesian, the Jesuit André (1742),[6] distinguished between an
-_essential_ beauty, independent of every institution, human and even
-divine; a _natural_ beauty, independent of the opinions of mankind;
-and, lastly, a beauty to a certain extent _arbitrary_ and of human
-invention: the first composed of regularity, order, proportion and
-symmetry (here André relied upon Plato and also as an afterthought
-brought in St. Augustine's definition): the second having its principal
-measure in the light which generates colours (as a good Cartesian,
-he took full advantage of Newton's discoveries): the third belonging
-to fashion and convention, but never at liberty to violate essential
-beauty. Each of these three forms of beauty was subdivided into
-_sensible_ beauty pertaining to bodies, and _intelligible_ beauty of
-soul.
-
-[Sidenote: _The English: Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and the
-Scottish School._]
-
-Like Descartes in France, Locke in England (1690) is an
-intellectualist, and recognizes no form of spiritual elaboration save
-reflexion on the senses. None the less he takes over from contemporary
-literature the distinction between wit and judgement; according to him
-the former combines ideas with pleasing variety, discovering their
-similarities and relations and thus grouping them into beautiful
-pictures which divert and strike the imagination: the latter (judgement
-or intellect) seeks dissimilarities, guided by the criterion of truth.
-"The mind, without looking any further, rests satisfied with the
-agreeableness of the picture, and the gaiety of the fancy; and it is
-a kind of an affront to go about to examine it by the severe rules of
-truth and good reason; whereby it appears that it consists in something
-that is not perfectly conformable to them."[7] England produced
-philosophers who developed an abstract and transcendent Æsthetic,
-but one more tinged with sensationalism than that of the French
-Cartesians. Shaftesbury (1709) raises taste to a sense or instinct for
-the beautiful; a sense of order and proportion identical with moral
-sense and, with its preconceptions or presentations, anticipating the
-recognition of reason. Bodies, spirits, God are the three degrees of
-beauty.[8] Lineal descendant of Shaftesbury was Francis Hutcheson
-(1723), who succeeded in popularizing the idea of an inward sense of
-beauty as something intermediate between sense and reason, and adapted
-to distinguish unity in variety, concord in the manifold, the true,
-the beautiful and the good in their substantial identity. Hutcheson
-maintains that from this sense springs the pleasure we take in art,
-in imitation and in the likeness between copy and original: the last
-a relative, as distinct from an absolute, beauty.[9] This view on the
-whole predominated in England during the eighteenth century and was
-adopted by Adam Smith as well as by Reid, head of the Scottish school.
-
-[Sidenote: _Leibniz. Petites perceptions and confused knowledge._]
-
-Much more thoroughly and with much greater philosophical vigour Leibniz
-opened the door to that crowd of psychic facts from which Cartesianism
-recoiled in horror. In his conception of the real, governed by the law
-of continuity (_natura non facit saltus_), presenting an uninterrupted
-scale of existence from the lowest beings to God, imagination, taste,
-wit and the like found ample room for shelter. The facts now called
-æsthetic were identified by Leibniz with Descartes' _confused_
-cognition, which might be _clear_ without being _distinct_: scholastic
-terms borrowed, it would appear, from Duns Scotus, whose works were
-reprinted and widely read in the seventeenth century.[10]
-
-In his _De cognitione, veritate et ideis_ (1684), after dividing
-_cognitio_ into _obscura vel clara,_ the _clara_ into _confusa vel
-distincta,_ and the _distincta_ into _adaequata vel inadaequata,_ Leibniz
-remarks that while painters and other artists are able to judge works
-of art very fairly they can give no reason for their decisions, and
-if questioned as to the reason of their condemnation of any work
-of art, they reply it lacks a _je ne sais quoi_: ("_at iudicii sui
-rationem reddere saepe non posse, et quaerenti dicere, se in re, quae
-displicet, desiderare nescio quid_").[11] They do possess, in fact,
-clear cognition, but confused and not distinct; what we should call
-to-day imaginative, not _ratiocinative,_ consciousness: and indeed the
-latter does not exist in the case of art. There are things impossible
-to define: "_on ne les fait connaître que par des exemples, et, au
-reste, il faut dire que c'est un je ne sais quoi, jusqu'à ce qu'on
-en déchiffre la contexture_."[12] But these _perceptions confuses
-ou sentiments_ have "_plus grande efficacité que l'on ne pense: ce
-sont elles qui forment ce je ne sais quoi, ces goûts, ces images
-des qualités des sens._"[13] Whence it appears plainly that in his
-discussion of these perceptions Leibniz reposes upon the æsthetic
-theories we discussed in the preceding chapter; indeed at one point[14]
-he mentions Bouhours' book.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intellectualism of Leibniz_]
-
-It might seem that by according _claritas_ and denying _distinctio_
-to æsthetic facts Leibniz recognized that their peculiar character is
-neither sensuous nor intellectual. He might seem to have distinguished
-them by their "_claritas_" from pleasure or sense-motions, and from
-intellect by their lack of "_distinctio._" But the "_lex continui_"
-and the Leibnitian intellectualism forbid this interpretation. In this
-case obscurity and clarity are quantitative degrees of one single
-consciousness, distinct or intellectual, towards which both converge
-and with which in the extreme case they unite.
-
-To admit that artists judge with confused perceptions, clear but not
-distinct, does not involve denying that these perceptions may be
-capable of being connected and verified by intellectual consciousness.
-The self-same object that is confusedly though clearly recognized by
-imagination is recognized clearly and distinctly by the intellect;
-which amounts to saying that a work of art may be perfected by being
-determined by thought. In the very terminology adopted by Leibniz, who
-represents sense and imagination as obscure and confused, there is a
-tinge of contempt, as well as the suggestion of a single form of all
-cognition. This will help us to understand Leibniz' definition of music
-as "_exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi._"
-Elsewhere he says: "_Le but principal de l'histoire, aussi bien que
-de la poésie, doit être d'enseigner la prudence et la vertu par des
-exemples, et puis de montrer le vice d'une manière qui en donne
-l'aversion et qui porte ou serve à l'éviter._"[15]
-
-The "_claritas_" attributed to æsthetic fact is not specifically
-different from, but rather a partial anticipation of, the
-"_distinctio_" of intellect. Undoubtedly this distinction of degree
-marks a great advance: but careful analysis shows that Leibniz does
-not differ fundamentally from those who, by inventing the new words
-and empirical distinctions examined above, called attention to the
-peculiarities of æsthetic facts.
-
-[Sidenote: _Speculation on language._]
-
-We find the same invincible intellectualism in the speculations on
-language greatly in vogue at the time. When critics of the Renaissance
-and sixteenth century tried to rise above merely empirical and
-practical grammar and strove to reduce grammatical science to a
-systematic form, they fell into logicism and described grammatical
-forms by such terms as pleonastic, improper, metaphorical or elliptic.
-Thus Julius Cæsar Scaliger (1540); thus, too, the most learned of
-all, Francisco Sanchez (Sanctius or Sanzio), called Brocense, who, in
-his _Minerva_ (1587), asserts that names are attached to things by
-reason, exclusive of interjections which are not parts of speech but
-merely sounds expressive of joy or sorrow; he denies the existence of
-heterogeneous and heteroclitic words, and works out a system of syntax
-by means of four figures of construction, proclaiming the principle
-"_doctrinam supplendi esse valde necessarium,_" that is to say, that
-grammatical diversities must be explained as ellipsis, abbreviation
-or omission with reference to the typical logical form.[16] Gaspare
-Scioppio follows him exactly, abusing the old grammar with his
-accustomed violence and crying up the "Sanctian" method, at that time
-still almost unknown, in his _Grammatica philosophica_ (1628).[17]
-Amongst critics of the seventeenth century, Jacopo Perizonio must not
-be forgotten; he wrote a commentary on Sanchez' book (1687). Amongst
-recognized philosophers who studied the philosophy of grammar and
-noted the merits and defects of various tongues, we find Bacon.[18] In
-1660 Claude Lancelot and Arnauld brought out the _Grammaire générale
-et raisonnée de Port-Royal,_ a work applying the intellectualism
-of Descartes rigorously to grammatical forms, and dominated by the
-doctrine of the artificial nature of language. Locke and Leibniz both
-speculated about language,[19] but neither succeeded in creating a
-fresh point of view, although the latter did much to provoke inquiry
-into the historical origin of languages. All his life Leibniz cherished
-the notion of a universal language and of an "_ars characteristica
-universalis_" as a combination likely to result in great scientific
-discoveries: prior to him, Wilkins had fostered the same hope, nor
-indeed, in spite of its utter absurdity, is it even yet wholly extinct.
-
-[Sidenote: _C. Wolff._]
-
-In order to correct the æsthetic ideas of Leibniz it was necessary
-to alter the very foundations of his system, the Cartesianism upon
-which it rested. This could not be undertaken by disciples of
-his own personal school, in whom we notice rather an increase of
-intellectualism. Giving scholastic form to the brilliant observations
-of the master, Johann Christian Wolff's system began with the theory
-of knowledge conceived as an "organon" or instrument, followed by
-systems of natural law, ethics and politics, together constituting
-the "organon" of practical activity: the remainder was theology
-and metaphysics, or pneumatology and physics (doctrine of the soul
-and doctrine of phenomenal nature). Although Wolff distinguishes a
-productive imagination, ruled by the principle of sufficient reason,
-from the merely associative and chaotic,[20] yet a science of
-imagination considered as a new theoretical value could find no niche
-in his schematism. Knowledge of a lower order, as such, belonged to
-Pneumatology and was incapable of possessing its own "organon": at most
-it could be brought under the organon already existing, which corrected
-and transcended it by means of logical knowledge in the same way in
-which Ethics treats the "_facilitas appetitiva inferior._" As in France
-the poetics of Boileau corresponded with the philosophy of Descartes,
-so in Germany the rationalistic poetics of Gottsched[21] reflect the
-Cartesian-Leibnitian theories of Wolff (1729).
-
-[Sidenote: _Demand for an organon of inferior knowledge._]
-
-It was no doubt dimly seen that even in the inferior faculties some
-distinction was operative between perfect and imperfect, value and
-non-value. A passage in a book (1725) by the Leibnitian Bülffinger
-has often been quoted where he says: "_Vellem existerent qui circa
-facultatem sentiendi, imaginandi, attendendi, abstrahendi et memoriam
-praestarent quod bonus ille Aristoteles, adeo hodie omnibus sordens,
-praestitit circa intellectum: hoc est ut in artis formant redigerent
-quicquid ad illas in suo usu dirigendas et iuvandas pertinet et
-conducid, quem ad modum Aristoteles in Organo logicam sive facultatem
-demonstrandi redegit in ordinem._"[22] But on reading the extract in
-its context one recognizes at once that the desired organon would have
-been merely a series of recipes for strengthening the memory, educating
-the attention, and so forth: a technique, in a word, not an æsthetic.
-Similar ideas had been spread in Italy by Trevisano (1708), who, by
-declaring that the senses might be educated through the mind, asserted
-the possibility of an _art of feeling_ which should "endow manners
-with prudence and judgement with good taste."[23] We notice, moreover,
-that in his day Bülffinger was counted a depreciator of poetry, so
-much so that a tract against him was written in order to show that
-"poetry does not diminish the faculty of clear conception."[24] Bodmer
-and Breitinger were ready "to deduce all the parts of eloquence with
-mathematical precision" (1727), and the latter sketched a Logic of
-the Imagination (1740) to which he would have assigned the study of
-similitudes and metaphors; even had he carried out his project, it
-is difficult to see how it could have differed materially, from a
-philosophic point of view, from the treatises on the subject written by
-the Italian rhetoricians of the seventeenth century.
-
-[Sidenote: _Alexander Baumgarten: his "Æsthetic."_]
-
-These discussions and experiments filled the boyhood and helped to
-form the intellect of young Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten of Berlin,
-a follower of the philosophy of Wolff and, at the same time, student
-and teacher of Latin rhetoric and poetry; these studies led him to
-reconsider the problem and search for some method by which the precepts
-of rhetoricians could be reduced to a rigorous philosophical system.
-On taking his doctor's degree in September 1735, when twenty-one years
-old, he published a thesis _Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad
-poēma pertinentibus_:[25] in which the word "Æsthetic" appears for the
-first time as name of a special science.[26] Baumgarten always remained
-much attached to his youthful discovery, and in 1742 when called to
-teach at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and again in 1749,
-he gave by request a course of lectures on Æsthetic (_quaedam consilia
-dirigendarum facultatum inferiorum novam per acroasin exposuit_).[27]
-In 1750 he printed a voluminous treatise wherein the word "Æsthetic"
-attained the honours of a title-page;[28] in 1758 he published a more
-slender second part: illness and finally death in 1762 prevented him
-from completing the work.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic as science of sensory consciousness._]
-
-What was Æsthetic to Baumgarten? Its objects are sensible facts
-(ασθητά), carefully distinguished by the ancients from mental objects
-(νοητά);[29] hence it becomes _scientia cognitionis sensitivae, theoria
-liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars
-analogi rationis_[30] Rhetoric and Poetry constitute two special
-and interdependent disciplines which are entrusted by Æsthetic with
-the distinction between the various styles in literature and other
-small differences,[31] for the laws she herself investigates are
-diffused throughout all the arts like guiding-stars for these various
-subsidiary arts (_quasi cynosura quaedam specialium_)[32] and must be
-extracted not from isolated cases only, or from incomplete induction
-empirically, but from the totality of facts (_falsa regula peior est
-quant nulla._)[33] Nor must Æsthetic be confounded with Psychology,
-which furnishes its presuppositions only; an independent science, it
-gives the norm of sensitive cognition (_sensitive quid cognoscendi_)
-and deals with "_perfectio cognitionis sensitivae, qua talis,_" which is
-beauty (_pulcritudo)_, just as the opposite, imperfection, is ugliness
-(_deformitas_)[34] From the beauty of sensitive cognition (_pulcritudo
-cognitionis_) we must exclude the beauty of objects and matter
-(_pulcritudo obiectorum et materiae_) with which it is often confused
-owing to habits of language, since it is easy to show that ugly things
-may be thought of in a beautiful manner and beautiful things in an
-ugly manner (_quacum ob receptam rei significationem saepe sed male
-confunditur; possunt turpia pulcre cogitare ut talia, et pulcriora
-turpiter_).[35] Poetical representations are confused or imaginative:
-distinctness, that is intellect, is not poetical. The greater the
-determination, the greater the poetry; individuals "_omnimode
-determinata_" are highly poetical; poetical also are images or
-phantasms as well as all that appertains to the senses.[36] That which
-judges sensible or imaginary presentations is taste, or "_indicium
-sensuum._" These, in brief, are the truths displayed by Baumgarten in
-his _Meditationes_ and, with many distinctions and examples, in his
-_Æsthetic._[37]
-
-[Sidenote: _Cricisism of judgements based on Baumgarten._]
-
-Nearly all German critics[38] are of opinion that from his own
-conception of Æsthetic as the science of sensitive cognition Baumgarten
-should have evolved a species of inductive Logic. But he can be cleared
-of this accusation: a better philosopher, perhaps, than his critics,
-he held that an inductive Logic must always be intellectual, since
-it leads to abstractions and the formation of concepts. The relation
-existing between "_cognitio confusa_" and the poetical and artistic
-facts which belong to the realm of taste had been shown before his
-day, by Leibniz: neither he nor Wolff nor any other of their school
-ever dreamed of transforming a treatment of the "_cognitio confusa_"
-or "_petites perceptions_" into an inductive Logic. On the other hand,
-as a kind of compensation, these critics attribute to Baumgarten
-a merit he cannot claim, at least to the extent implied by their
-praises. According to them, he effected a revolution by converting[39]
-Leibniz' differences of degree or quantitative distinctions into a
-specific difference, and turning confused knowledge into something no
-longer negative but positive[40] by attributing a "_perfectio_" to
-sensitive cognition _qua talis_; and by thus destroying the unity of
-the Leibnitian monad and breaking up the law of continuity, founded
-the science of Æsthetic. Had he really accomplished such a giant
-stride, his claim to the title of "father of Æsthetic" would have
-been placed beyond question. But, in order to win this appellation,
-Baumgarten ought to have been successful in unravelling all those
-contradictions in which he was involved no less than Leibniz and all
-intellectualists. It is not enough to posit a "_perfectio_"; even
-Leibniz did that when he attributed _claritas_ to confused cognition,
-which, when devoid of clearness, remains obscure, that is to say,
-imperfect. It was imperative that this perfection "_qua talis_" should
-be upheld against the "_lex continui,_" and kept uncontaminated by any
-intellectualistic admixture. Otherwise he was bound to fall back into
-the pathless labyrinth of the "probable" which is and is not false,
-of the wit which is and is not intellect, of the taste which is and
-is not intellectual judgement, of the imagination and feeling which
-are and are not sensibility and material pleasure. And in that case,
-notwithstanding the new name: notwithstanding (as we freely admit) the
-greater insistence than that of Leibniz upon the sensible nature of
-poetry, Æsthetic, as a science, would not have been born.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intellectualism of Baumgarten._]
-
-Now Baumgarten overcame none of the obstacles above mentioned.
-Unprejudiced and continued study of his works forces one to this
-conclusion. Already in his _Meditationes_ he does not seem able to
-distinguish clearly between imagination and intellect, confused and
-distinct cognition. The law of continuity leads him to set up a scale
-of more and less: amongst cognitions, the obscure are less poetical
-than the confused; the distinct are not poetical, but even those
-of the higher kinds (that is the distinct and intellectual) are to
-a certain extent poetical in proportion as they are lower in their
-nature; compound concepts are more poetical than simple; those of
-larger comprehension are "_extensive clariores._"[41] In the _Æsthetic_
-Baumgarten expounds his thought more fully and thereby exposes its
-defects. If the introduction of the book leads one to believe that he
-sees æsthetic truth to consist in consciousness of the individual,
-the belief is shattered by the explanations which follow. As a good
-objectivist he asserts that truth in the metaphysical sense has its
-counterpart in the soul, namely, subjective truth, logical truth in a
-wide sense, or æsthetico-logical.[42] And the complete truth lies not
-in the genus or species, but in the individual. The genus is true,
-the species more true, the individual most true.[43] Formal logical
-truth is acquired "_cum iactura,_" by jettisoning much great material
-perfection: "_quid enim est abstractio, si iactura non est?_"[44]
-So much being granted, logical truth differs from æsthetic in this:
-metaphysical or objective truth is presented now to the intellect,
-when it is logical truth in a narrow sense; now to the analogy of
-reason and the lower cognitive faculties, when it is æsthetic;[45]
-a lesser truth in exchange for the greater which man is not always
-able to attain, thanks to the "_malum metaphysicum._"[46] Thus moral
-truths are comprehended in one fashion by a comic poet, in another
-by a moral philosopher; an eclipse is described in one way by an
-astronomer and in another by a shepherd speaking to his friends or
-his sweetheart.[47] Universals even are accessible, in part at least,
-to the inferior faculty.[48] Take the case of two philosophers, a
-dogmatic and a sceptic, arguing, with an æsthete listening to them. If
-the arguments of either party are so balanced that the hearer cannot
-determine which is true and which false, this appearance is to him
-æsthetic truth: if one adversary succeed in overbearing the other
-so that one argument is shown clearly to be wrong, the error just
-revealed is likewise æsthetic[49] falsity. Truths strictly æsthetic are
-(and this is the decisive point) those which appear neither entirely
-true nor entirely false: probable truths. "_Talia autem de quibus
-non complete quidem certi sumus, neque tamen falsitatem aliquam in
-iisdem appercipimus, sunt verisimilia. Est ergo veritas æsthetica,
-a potiori dicta verisimilitudo, ille veritatis gradus, qui, etiamsi
-non evectus sit ad completam certitudinem, tamen nihil contineat
-falsitatis observabilis._"[50] And especially the immediate sequel:
-"_Cujus habent spectator es auditor esve intra animum quum vident
-audiuntve, quasdam anticipationes, quod plerumque fit, quod fieri
-solet, quod in opinione positum est, quod habet ad haec in se quandam
-similitudinem, sive id falsum (logice et latissime), sive verum
-sit (logice et strictissime), quod non sit facile a nostris sensibus
-abhorrens: hoc illud_ est εἰκός _et verisimile quod, Aristotele et
-Cicerone assentiente, sectetur æstheticus._"[51] The probable embraces
-that which is true and certain to the intellect and the senses, that
-which is certain to the senses but not to the intellect, that which
-is probable logically and æsthetically, or logically improbable but
-æsthetically probable, or, finally, æsthetically improbable but on the
-whole probable or that whose improbability is not evident.[52] So we
-reach the admission of the impossible and absurd, the _αδύνατον_ and
-_ἄτοπον_ of Aristotle.
-
-If after reading these paragraphs, highly important as revealing the
-true thought of Baumgarten, we turn once more to the Introduction to
-his work, we notice at once his commonplace and erroneous conception of
-the poetic faculty. To a friend who suggested that there was no need
-for him to concern himself with confused or inferior consciousness both
-because "_confusio mater erroris_" and because "_facilitate inferior
-es, caro, debellandae potius sunt quam excitandae et confirmandae,_"
-Baumgarten replied that confusion is a condition wherein to find truth:
-that nature makes no sudden leap from obscurity to clarity: that
-noonday light is reached from night time through the dawn (_ex node per
-auroram meridies_): that in the case of the inferior faculties a guide,
-not a tyrant, is needed (_imperium in facilitates inferiores poscitur,
-non tyrannis_).[53] This is still the attitude of Leibniz, Trevisano
-and Bülffinger. Baumgarten is terrified lest he should be accused of
-treating subjects unworthy a philosopher. "_Quousque tandem_" (says he
-to himself), "dost thou, professor of theoretic and moral philosophy,
-dare to praise lies and mixtures of true and false as though they were
-noble works?"[54] And if there is one thing above all others from
-which he is anxious to guard himself it is sensualism, unbridled and
-non-moralized. The sensitive perfection of Cartesianism and Wolffianism
-was liable to be confused with simple pleasure, with the feeling of
-the perfection of our organism:[55] but Baumgarten falls into no such
-confusion. When in 1745 one Quistorp combated his æsthetic theory by
-saying that if poetry consisted in sensuous perfection it was a thing
-hurtful to men, Baumgarten answered disdainfully that he did not expect
-he should ever find time to reply to a critic of such calibre as to
-mistake his "_oratio perfecta sensitiva_" for an "_oratio perfecte_
-(that is _omnino) sensitiva._"[56]
-
-[Sidenote: _New names and old meanings._]
-
-Save in its title and its first definitions Baumgarten's _Æsthetic_ is
-covered with the mould of antiquity and commonplace. We have seen that
-he refers back to Aristotle and Cicero for the first principles of his
-science; in another instance he attaches his Æsthetic to the Rhetoric
-of antiquity, quoting the truth enunciated by Zeno the Stoic, "_esse
-duo cogitandi genera, alterum perpetuum et latius, quod Rhetorices sit,
-alterum concisum et contractius, quod Dialectices,_" and identifying
-the former with the æsthetic horizon, the latter with the logical.[57]
-In his _Meditationes_ he rests upon Scaliger and Vossius;[58] of
-modern writers beside the philosophers (Leibniz, Wolff, Bülffinger)
-he quotes Gottsched, Arnold,[59] Werenfels, Breitinger[60]; by means
-of these latter he is able to make acquaintance with discussions upon
-taste and imagination, even without direct acquaintance with Addison
-and Du Bos, as well as the Italians, whose writings had immense vogue
-in Germany in his day, and with whom his resemblances leap to the
-eye. Baumgarten always feels himself to be in perfect accord with his
-predecessors; never at variance with them. He never felt himself to
-be a revolutionary; and though some have been revolutionaries without
-knowing it, Baumgarten was not one of them. Baumgarten's works are but
-another presentation of the problem of Æsthetic still clamouring for
-solution in a voice so much the stronger as it uttered a commonplace:
-he proclaims a new science and presents it in conventional scholastic
-form; the babe about to be born receives the name of Æsthetic by
-premature baptism at his hands: and the name remains. But the new name
-is devoid of new matter; the philosophical armour covers no muscular
-body. Our good Baumgarten, full of ardour and conviction, and often
-curiously brisk and vivacious in his scholastic Latinism, is a most
-sympathetic and attractive figure in the history of Æsthetic: of the
-science in formation, that is to say, not of the science brought to
-completion: of Æsthetic _condenda_ not _condita._
-
-
-[1] Letters to Balzac and the Princess Elizabeth.
-
-[2] _Art poétique_ (1669-1674).
-
-[3] Letters to Marquis Maffei, about 1720, in _Prose e poesie,_ Venice,
-1756, ii. p. cxx.
-
-[4] Sulzer, _op. cit._ i. p. 50.
-
-[5] _Traité du beau_ (2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1724; Paris ed., 1810).
-
-[6] _Essai sur le beau,_ Paris, 1741.
-
-[7] _An Essay concerning Human Understanding_ (French trans. in
-_Œuvres,_ Paris, 1854), bk. ii. ch. 11, § 2.
-
-[8] _Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,_ 1709-1711.
-
-[9] _Enquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,_
-London, 1723.
-
-[10] See above, p. 179.
-
-[11] _Opera philosophica_ (ed. Erdmann), p. 78.
-
-[12] _Ibid,_ preface.
-
-[13] _Nouveaux Essais,_ ii. ch. 22.
-
-[14] _Op. cit._ ii. ch. 11.
-
-[15] _Essais de Théodicée,_ part. ii. § 148.
-
-[16] Francisci Sanctii, _Minerva seu de causis linguæ latinæ
-commentarius,_ 1587 (ed. with add. by Gaspare Scioppio, Padua, 1663);
-cf. bk. i. chs. 2, 9, and bk. iv.
-
-[17] Gasperis Sciopii, _Grammatica philosophica,_ Milan, 1628 (Venice,
-1728).
-
-[18] _De dignitate,_ etc., bk. vi. ch. i.
-
-[19] Locke, _Essay,_ etc., bk. lii.; Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais,_ bk.
-iii.
-
-[20] _Psychol. empirica_ (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1738), §§ 138-172.
-
-[21] Joh. Chr. Gottsched, _Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst,_
-Leipzig, 1729.
-
-[22] _Dilucidationes philosophicæ de Deo, anima humana et mundo,_ 1725
-(Tübingen, 1768), § 268.
-
-[23] Preface to _Rifless. sul gusto, ed. cit._ p. 75.
-
-[24] Borinski, _Poetik d. Renaiss._ p. 380 note.
-
-[25] Halæ Magdeburgicæ, 1735 (reprinted, ed. B. Croce, Naples, 1900).
-
-[26] _Med._ § 116.
-
-[27] _Æsthetica,_ i. pref.
-
-[28] _Æsthetica. Scripsit_ Alex. Gottlieb Baumgarten, _Prof.
-Philosoph., Traiecti eis Viadrum, Impens. Ioannis Christiani Kleyb,_
-1750; 2nd part, 1758.
-
-[29] _Med._ § 116.
-
-[30] _Æsth._ § i.
-
-[31] _Med.%_ 117.
-
-[32] _Æsth._ § 71.
-
-[33] _Ibid._ § 53.
-
-[34] _Med._ § 115.
-
-[35] _Æsth._ § 14.
-
-[36] _Ibid._ § 18.
-
-[37] _Med._ § 92.
-
-[38] Ritter, _Gesch. d. Philos._ (Fr. trans., _Hist, de la phil. mod._
-iii. p. 365); Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Æsth._ p. 168; J. Schmidt, _L. u.
-B._ p. 48.
-
-[39] Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 218; Meyer, _L. u. B._ pp. 35-38.
-
-[40] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 44.
-
-[41] _Med._ §§ 19, 20, 23.
-
-[42] _Æsth._ § 424.
-
-[43] _Op. cit._ § 441.
-
-[44] _Op. cit._ § 560.
-
-[45] _Æsth._ § 424.
-
-[46] _Op. cit._ § 557.
-
-[47] _Op. cit._ §§ 425, 429.
-
-[48] _Op. cit._ § 443.
-
-[49] _Op. cit._ § 448.
-
-[50] _Op. cit._ § 483.
-
-[51] _Op. cit._ § 484.
-
-[52] _Æsth._ §§ 485, 486.
-
-[53] _Op. cit._ §§ 7, 12.
-
-[54] _Op. cit._ § 478.
-
-[55] Cf. Wolff, Psych, empir. § 511, and the passage there quoted from
-Descartes; also §§ 542, 550.
-
-[56] Th. Joh. Quistorp, in _Neuen Bücher-Saal,_ 1745, fasc. 5; _Erweis
-dass die Poesie schon für sie selbst ihre Liebhaber leichtlich
-unglücklich machen könne_; and A. G. Baumgarten, _Metaphysica,_ 2nd
-ed., 1748, preface; cf. Danzel, _Gottsched,_ pp. 215, 221.
-
-[57] _Æsth._ § 122.
-
-[58] _Med._ § 9.
-
-[59] _Op. cit._ §§ 111, 113.
-
-[60] _Æsth._ § 11.
-
-
-
-
-V
-
-
-GIAMBATTISTA VICO
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Vico as inventor of æsthetic science._]
-
-The real revolutionary who by putting aside the concept of probability
-and conceiving imagination in a novel manner actually discovered the
-true nature of poetry and art and, so to speak, invented the science of
-Æsthetic, was the Italian Giambattista Vico.
-
-Ten years prior to the publication in Germany of Baumgarten's first
-treatise, there had appeared in Naples (1725) the first _Scienza
-nuova,_ which developed ideas on the nature of poetry outlined in
-a former work (1721), _De constantia iurisprudentis,_ outcome of
-"twenty-five years' continuous and harsh meditation."[1] In 1730 Vico
-republished it with fresh developments which gave rise to two special
-books (_Della sapienza poetica_ and _Della discoperta del vero Omero_)
-in the second _Scienza Nuova._ Nor did he ever tire of repeating his
-views and forcing them upon the attention of his hostile contemporaries
-at every opportunity, seizing such occasion even in prefaces and
-letters, poems on the occasion of weddings or funerals, and in such
-press notices as fell to his duty as public censor of literature.
-
-And what were these ideas? Neither more nor less, we may say, than
-the solution of the problem stated by Plato, attacked but not solved
-by Aristotle, and again vainly attacked during the Renaissance and
-afterwards: is poetry rational or irrational, spiritual or brutal?
-and, if spiritual, what is its special nature and what distinguishes
-it from history and science?
-
-As we know, Plato confined it within the baser part of the soul, the
-animal spirits. Vico re-elevates it and makes of it a period in the
-history of humanity: and since history for him means an ideal history
-whose periods consist not of contingent facts but of forms of the
-spirit, he makes it a moment in the ideal history of the spirit, a form
-of consciousness. Poetry precedes intellect, but follows sense; through
-confusing it with the latter, Plato failed to grasp the position it
-should really occupy and banished it from his Republic. "Men at first
-feel without being aware; next they become aware with a perturbed and
-agitated soul; finally they reflect with an undisturbed mind. This
-Aphorism is the Principle of poetical sentences which are formed by the
-sense of passions and affections; differing thereby from philosophical
-sentences which are formed by reflexion through ratiocination; whence
-the latter approach more nearly to truth the more they rise towards
-the universal, while the former have more of certainty the more they
-approach the individual."[2] An imaginative phase of consciousness, but
-one possessed of positive value.
-
-[Sidenote: _Poetry and Philosophy: imagination and intellect._]
-
-The imaginative phase is altogether independent and autonomous with
-respect to the intellectual, which is not only incapable of endowing
-it with any fresh perfection but can only destroy it. "The studies of
-Metaphysics and Poetry are in natural opposition one to the other;
-for the former purges the mind of childish prejudice and the latter
-immerses and drowns it in the same: the former offers resistance to
-the judgement of the senses, while the latter makes this its chief
-rule: the former debilitates, the latter strengthens, imagination: the
-former prides itself in not turning spirit into body, the latter does
-its utmost to give a body to spirit: hence the thoughts of the former
-must necessarily be abstract, while the concepts of the latter show
-best when most clothed with matter: to sum up, the former strives that
-the learned may know the truth of things stripped of all passion: the
-latter that the vulgar may act truly by means of intense excitement
-of the senses, without which stimulant they assuredly would not act
-at all. Hence from all time, in all languages known to man, never has
-there been a strong man equally great as metaphysician and poet: such a
-poet as Homer, father and prince of poetry."[3] Poets are the senses,
-philosophers the intellect, of mankind.[4] Imagination is "stronger in
-proportion as reason is weaker."[5]
-
-No doubt "reflexion" may be put in verse; but it does not become poetry
-thereby. "Abstract sentences belong to philosophers, since they contain
-universals; and reflexions concerning such passions are made by poets
-who are false and frigid."[6] Those poets "who sing of the beauty and
-virtue of ladies by reflexion ... are philosophers arguing in verses
-or in love-rhymes."[7] One set of ideas belongs to philosophers,
-another to poets: these latter are identical with those of painters,
-from which "they differ only in colours and words."[8] Great poets are
-born not in epochs of reflexion but in those of imagination, generally
-called barbarous: Homer, in the barbarism of antiquity: Dante in that
-of the Middle Ages, the "second barbarism of Italy."[9] Those who have
-chosen to read philosophic reason into the verse of the great father
-of Greek poetry have transferred the character of a later age into
-an earlier, since the era of poets precedes that of philosophers and
-countries in infancy were sublime poets. Poetic locutions arose before
-prose, "by the necessity of nature" not "by caprice of pleasure";
-fables or imaginative universals were conceived before reasoned, _i.e._
-philosophical universals.[10]
-
-With these observations Vico justified and at the same time corrected
-the opinion of Plato in the _Republic,_ denying to Homer wisdom, every
-kind of wisdom; the legislative of Lycurgus and Solon, the philosophic
-of Thales, Anacharsis and Pythagoras, the strategic of military
-commanders.[11] To Homer (he says) belongs wisdom, undoubtedly, but
-poetic wisdom only: the Homeric images and comparisons derived from
-wild beasts and the elements of savage nature are incomparable; but
-"such success does not spring from talent imbued with domesticity and
-civilized with any philosophy."[12]
-
-When anybody takes to writing poetry in an era of reflexion, it is
-because he is returning to childhood and "putting his mind in fetters";
-no longer reflecting with his intellect, he follows imagination
-and loses himself in the particular. If a true poet dallies with
-philosophical ideas, it is not "that he may assimilate them and dismiss
-imagination," but merely "that he may have them in front of him, to
-examine as though on a stage or public platform."[13] The New Comedy
-which made its appearance after Socrates is undeniably impregnated with
-philosophic ideas, with intellectual universals, with "intelligible
-kinds of human conduct"; but its authors were poets in so far only as
-they knew how to transform logic into imagination and their ideas into
-portraits.[14]
-
-[Sidenote: _Poetry and History._]
-
-The dividing line between art and science, imagination and intellect,
-is here very strongly drawn: the two distinct activities are repeatedly
-contrasted with a sharpness that leaves no room for confusion. The
-line of demarcation between poetry and history is hardly less firm.
-While not quoting Aristotle's passage, Vico implicitly shows why
-poetry seemed to Aristotle more philosophical than history, and at
-the same time he dispels the erroneous opinion that history concerns
-the particular and poetry the universal. Poetry joins hands with
-science not because it consists in the contemplation of concepts but
-because, like science, it is ideal. The most beautiful poetic story
-must be "wholly ideal": "by means of idea, the poet breathes reality
-into things otherwise unreal; masters of poetry claim that their art
-must be wholly compact of imagination, like a painter of the ideal,
-not imitative like a portrait-painter: whence, from their likeness to
-God the Creator, poets and painters alike are called divine."[15] And
-against those who blame poets for telling stories which, they say, are
-untrue, Vico protests: "The best stories are those approximating most
-nearly to ideal truth, the eternal truth of God: it is immeasurably
-more certain than the truth of historians who often bring into play
-caprice, necessity or fortune; but such a Captain as, for instance,
-Tasso's Godfrey is the type of a captain of all times, of all nations,
-and so are all personages of poetry, whatever difference there may be
-in sex, age, temperament, custom, nation, republic, grade, condition
-or fortune; they are nothing save the eternal properties of the human
-soul, rationally discussed by politicians, economists and moral
-philosophers, and painted as portraits by the poet."[16] Referring
-to an observation made by Castelvetro, and approving it in part, to
-the effect that if poetry is a presentiment of the possible it should
-be preceded by history, imitation of the real, yet finding himself
-confronted by the difficulty that, nevertheless, poets invariably
-precede historians, Vico solves the problem by identifying history
-with poetry: primitive history was poetry, its plot was narration of
-fact, and Homer was the first historian; or rather "he was a heroic
-character amongst Greek men, in so far as they poetically narrated
-their own history."[17] Poetry and history, therefore, are originally
-identical; or rather, undifferentiated. "But inasmuch as it is not
-possible to give false ideas, since falsity arises from an embroiled
-combination of ideas, so is it impossible to give a tradition, however
-fabulous, that has not had, at the beginning, a basis of truth."[18]
-Hence we gain an entirely new insight into mythology: it is no longer
-an arbitrary calculated invention, but a spontaneous vision of truth
-as it presented itself to the spirit of primitive man. Poetry gives an
-imaginative vision; science or philosophy intelligible truth; history
-the consciousness of certitude.
-
-[Sidenote: _Poetry and language._]
-
-Language and poetry are, in Vico's estimation, substantially the same.
-In refuting the "vulgar error of grammarians" who maintain the priority
-of the birth of prose over that of verse, he finds "within the origin
-of Poetry, so far as it has been herein discovered," the "origin of
-languages and the origin of letters."[19] This discovery was made by
-Vico after "toil as disagreeable and overwhelming as we should undergo
-had we to strip off our own nature and enter into that of the primæval
-men of Hobbes, Grotius, or Puffendorf; creatures possessing no language
-at all, by whom were created the languages of the ancient world."[20]
-But his painful labour was richly repaid by his refutation of the
-erroneous theory that languages sprang from convention or, as he said,
-"signified at will," whereas it is evident that "from their natural
-origin words must have had natural meanings; this is plainly seen
-in common Latin ... wherein almost all words have arisen by natural
-necessity, either from natural properties or from their sensible
-effects; and in general, metaphor forms the bulk of language in the
-case of every people."[21] This argument strikes a blow at another
-common error of the grammarians, "that the language of prose writers
-is correct, that of poets incorrect."[22] The poetic tropes grouped
-under the heading of metonymy seem to Vico to be "born of the nature
-of primitive peoples, not of capricious selection by men skilled in
-poetic art";[23] stories told "by means of similitudes, imagery and
-comparisons," result "from lack of the genera and species required to
-define things with propriety," and "are therefore, by reason of natural
-necessities, common to entire peoples."[24] The earliest languages
-must have consisted of "dumb gestures and objects which had natural
-connexions with the ideas to be expressed."[25] He observes very
-acutely that to these figurate languages belong not only hieroglyphics
-but the emblems, knightly bearings, devices and blazons which he calls
-"mediæval hieroglyphics."[26] In the barbarous Middle Ages "Italy was
-forced to fall back on the mute language ... of the earliest gentile
-nations in which men, before discovering articulate speech, were
-obliged like mutes to use actions or objects having natural connexions
-with the ideas, which at that time must have been exceedingly sensuous,
-of the things which they wished to signify; such expressions, clad in
-almost vocal words, must have had all the lively expressiveness of
-poetic diction." [27] Hence arise three kinds or phases of language:
-dumb show, the language of the gods; heraldic language, or that of the
-heroes; and spoken language. Vico also looked forward to a universal
-system of etymology, a "dictionary of mental words common to all
-nations."
-
-[Sidenote: _Inductive and formalistic_]
-
-A man with ideas of this sort about imagination, language and poetry
-could not say he was satisfied with formalistic and verbal Logic,
-whether Aristotelian or scholastic. The human mind (says Vico) "makes
-use of intellect when from things which it feels by sense it gathers
-something that does not fall under sense: this is the true meaning
-of the Latin _intelligere_."[28] In a rapid outline of the history
-of Logic, Vico wrote: "Aristotle came and taught the syllogism, a
-method more suited to expound universals in their particulars than to
-unite particulars by the discovery of universals: then came Zeno with
-his sorites, which corresponds with modern philosophic methods and
-refines, without sharpening, the wits; and no advantage whatever was
-reaped from either by mankind at large. With great reason, therefore,
-does Verulam, equally eminent as politician and philosopher, propound,
-commend and illustrate induction in his Organum: he is followed by the
-English with excellent results to experimental philosophy."[29] From
-this source is derived his criticism of mathematics, which have always,
-but especially in his day, been considered as the type of perfect
-science.
-
-[Sidenote: Vico opposed to all formal theories of poetry.]
-
-In all this, Vico is not only a thorough revolutionary, but is quite
-conscious of being so: he knows himself to be in opposition to all
-previous theories on the subject. He says that his new principles of
-poetry "are wholly opposed to, and not merely different from, all which
-have been imagined from the time of Plato and his disciple Aristotle
-to Patrizzi, Scaliger and Castelvetro among the moderns; poetry is now
-discovered to have been the first language used by all nations alike,
-even the Hebrew."[30] In another passage he says that by his theories
-"is overthrown all that has ever been said of the origin of poetry,
-beginning from Plato and Aristotle, right down to our own Patrizzi,
-Scaliger and Castelvetro; and it is found that poetry arising through
-defect of human ratiocination is as sublime as any which owes its
-being to the later rise of philosophy and the arts of composition and
-criticism; indeed, that these later sources never gave rise to any
-poetry that could equal, far less surpass it."[31] In the Autobiography
-he boasts of having discovered "other principles of poetry than those
-found by Greeks and Latins and all others from those times down to the
-present day; on these are founded other views on mythology."[32]
-
-These ancient principles of poetry "laid down first by Plato and
-confirmed by Aristotle" had been the anticipation or prejudice which
-had misled all writers on poetic reason (among whom he cites Jacopo
-Mazzoni). Statements "even of most serious philosophers such as
-Patrizzi and others" upon the origin of song and verse are so inept
-that he "blushes even to mention them."[33] It is curious to see him
-annotating the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, with a view to finding some
-plausible sense in it by applying the principles of the _Scienza
-nuova_.[34]
-
-It is probable that he was familiar with the writings of Muratori
-among contemporaries, for he quotes him by name, and of Gravina, who
-was a personal acquaintance; but if he read the _Perfetta Poesia_ and
-the _Forza della fantasia_ he could not have been satisfied by the
-treatment meted out to the faculty of imagination, so highly valued
-and respected by himself; and if Gravina influenced him at all it must
-have been by provoking him to contradiction. In this latter (if not
-directly in such French writers as Le Bossu) he may have met with the
-fallacy of regarding Homer as a repository of wisdom, a fallacy which
-he combated with vigour and pertinacity. In his estimation, among the
-gravest faults of the Cartesians was their inability to appreciate the
-world of imagination and poetry. Of his own times he complained they
-were "benumbed by analytical methods and by a philosophy which sought
-to deaden every faculty of soul which reached it through the body,
-especially that of imagination, now held to be mother of all human
-error": times "of a wisdom which freezes the generous soul of the best
-poetry," and prevents all understanding of it.[35]
-
-[Sidenote: _Judgments of grammarians and linguists who preceded him_]
-
-It is just the same with the theory of language. "The manner of birth
-and the nature of languages has been the cause of much painful toil
-and meditation: nor, from the _Cratylus_ of Plato, in which in our
-other works we have falsely delighted and believed" (he alludes to
-the doctrine followed by him in his own first book, _De antiquissima
-Italorum sapientia_), "down to Wolfgang Latius, Julius Cæsar Scaliger,
-Francisco Sanchez and others, can we find anything to satisfy our
-understanding; so much that in discussing matters of this kind Signor
-Giovanni Clerico says there is nothing in philology involved in such a
-maze of doubt and difficulty."[36] The chief grammarian-philosophers do
-not escape criticism. Grammar, says he, lays down rules for speaking
-correctly: Logic for speaking truly; "and since in the order of
-nature we must speak truly before learning to speak correctly, Giulio
-Cesare della Scala, followed by the best grammarians, employs all his
-magnificent energy to reason to the causes of the Latin language from
-the principles of logic. But his great design ended in failure for this
-reason, that he attached himself to the logical principles of a single
-philosopher, namely Aristotle, whose principles are too universal to
-explain the almost infinite particulars which naturally beset him who
-would reason concerning a language. Whence it happened that Francisco
-Sanchez, who followed him with admirable zeal, attempting in his
-_Minerva_ to explain the innumerable particles which are found in
-Latin by his famous principle of ellipsis, and trying thereby, though
-without success, to vindicate the logical principles of Aristotle, fell
-into the most cumbrous clumsinesses among an almost innumerable host
-of Latin phrases whereby he meant to make good the slight and subtle
-omissions employed by Latin in expressing its meaning."[37] The origin
-of parts of speech and syntax is wholly different from that assigned
-to them by folk who fancied that "the people who invented language
-must first have gone to school to Aristotle."[38] The same criticism
-undoubtedly must have extended to the logico-grammarians of Port-Royal,
-for Vico remarked that the Logic of Arnauld was built "on the same plan
-as that of Aristotle."[39]
-
-[Sidenote: _Influence of seventeenth century writers on Vico._]
-
-It may well be granted that Vico was more in sympathy with the
-seventeenth-century rhetoricians, in whom we have detected a
-premonition of æsthetic science. For Vico, as for them, wit (referring
-to imagination and memory) was "the father of all invention": judgement
-concerning poetry was for him a "judgement of the senses," a phrase
-equivalent to "taste" or "good taste," expressions never used by him
-in this connexion. There is no doubt he was familiar with the writers
-of treatises on wit and conceits, for, in a dry rhetorical manual
-written for the use of his school (in which one looks in vain for a
-shadow of his own personal ideas), he quotes Paolo Beni, Pellegrini,
-Pallavicino and the Marquis Orsi.[40] He highly esteems Pallavicini's
-treatise on _Style_ and has knowledge of the book _Del bene_ by the
-same author;[41] perhaps too his mind was not unaffected by the flash
-of genius which had enabled the Jesuit for one instant to perceive that
-poetry consists of "first apprehensions." He does not name Tesauro, but
-there is no doubt he knew him; indeed the _Scienza nuova_ includes a
-section, besides that on poetry, upon "blazons," "knightly bearings,"
-"military banners," "medals," and so forth, precisely similar in
-method to that of Tesauro when he treats of" figurate conceits" in
-his _Cannochiale aristotelico_.[42] For Tesauro such conceits are
-merely metaphorical ingenuities, like any other; for Vico they are
-wholly the work of imagination, for imagination expresses itself not
-in words only, but in the "mute language" of lines and colours. He
-knew something also of Leibniz; the great German and Newton were by
-him described as" the greatest wits of the time"[43]; but he seems to
-have remained in complete ignorance of the æsthetic attempts of the
-Leibnitian school in Germany. His "Logic of poetry" was a discovery
-independent of, and earlier than, Bülffinger's Organon of the inferior
-faculties, the _Gnoseologia inferior_ of Baumgarten, and the _Logik
-der Einbildungskraft_ of Breitinger. In truth, Vico belongs on one
-side to the vast Renaissance reaction against formalism and scholastic
-verbalism, which, beginning with the reaffirmation of experience and
-sensation (Telesio, Campanella, Galileo, Bacon), was bound to go on by
-reasserting the function of imagination in individual and social life:
-on the other side he is a precursor of Romanticism.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic in the "Scienza nuova."_]
-
-The importance of Vico's new poetic theory in his thought as a whole
-as well as in the organism of his _Scienza nuova_ has never been fully
-appreciated, and the Neapolitan philosopher is still commonly regarded
-as the inventor of the Philosophy of History. If by such a science is
-meant the attempt to deduce concrete history by ratiocination and to
-treat epochs and events as if they were concepts, the only result of
-Vico's efforts to solve the problem could have been failure; and the
-same is true of his many successors. The fact is that his philosophy of
-history, his ideal history, his _Scienza nuova d' intorno alia comune
-natura delle nazioni,_ does not concern the concrete empirical history
-which unfolds itself in time: it is not history, it is a science of the
-ideal, a Philosophy of the Spirit. That Vico made many discoveries in
-history proper which have been to a great extent confirmed by modern
-criticism (_e.g._ on the development of the Greek epic and the nature
-and genesis of feudal society in antiquity and in the Middle Ages)
-certainly deserves all emphasis; but this side of his work must be kept
-distinctly apart from the other, strictly philosophical, side. And
-if the philosophical part is a doctrine expounding the ideal moments
-of the spirit, or in his own words "the modifications of our human
-mind," of these moments or modifications Vico undertakes especially
-to define and fully describe not the logical, ethical and economic
-moments (though on these too he throws much fight), but precisely the
-imaginative or poetic. The larger portion of the second _Scienza nuova_
-hinges on the discovery of the creative imagination, including the "new
-principles of Poetry," the observations on the nature of language,
-mythology, writing, symbolic figures and so forth. All his "system
-of civilization, of the Republic, of laws, of poetry, of history, in
-a word, of humanity at large" is founded upon this discovery, which
-constitutes the novel point of view at which Vico places himself. The
-author himself observes that his second book, dedicated to Poetic
-Wisdom, "wherein is made a discovery totally opposed to Verulam's,"
-forms "nearly the whole body of the work"; but the first and third
-books also deal almost exclusively with works of the imagination. It
-might be maintained, therefore, that Vico's "New Science" was really
-just Æsthetic; or at least the Philosophy of the Spirit with special
-emphasis upon the Philosophy of the Æsthetic Spirit.
-
-[Sidenote: _Vico's mistakes._]
-
-
-Among so many luminous points, or rather in such a general blaze of
-light, there are yet dark nooks in his mind; corners that remain in
-shadow. By not maintaining a rigid distinction between concrete history
-and the philosophy of the spirit, Vico allowed himself to suggest
-historical periods which do not correspond with the real periods, but
-are rather allegories, the mythological expression of his philosophy
-of the spirit. From the same source arises the multiplicity of those
-periods (usually three in number) which Vico finds in the history of
-civilization in general, in poetry and language and practically every
-subject. "The first peoples, who were the children of the human race,
-founded first the world of the arts: next, after a long interval, the
-philosophers, who were therefore the aged among nations, founded the
-world of the sciences: with which humanity attained completion."[44]
-Historically, understood in an approximate sense, this scheme of
-evolution has some truth; but only an approximate truth. In consequence
-of the same confusion of history and philosophy he denied primitive
-peoples any kind of intellectual logic, and conceived not only their
-physics, cosmology, astronomy and geography as poetic in character, but
-their morals, their economy and their politics as well. But not only
-has there never been a period in concrete human history entirely poetic
-and ignorant of all abstraction or power of reasoning, but such a state
-cannot even be conceived. Morals, politics, physics, all presuppose
-intellectual work, however imperfect they may be. The ideal priority of
-poetry cannot be materialized into a historical period of civilization.
-
-Linked with this error is another into which Vico often falls when
-he asserts that "the chief aim of poetry" is to "teach the ignorant
-vulgar to act virtuously" and to "invent fables adapted with the
-popular understanding capable of producing strong emotion."[45]
-Having regard to the clear explanations he himself gave of the
-inessentiality of abstractions and intellectual artifice in poetry;
-when we remember that for him poetry makes her own rules for herself
-without consulting anybody, and that he clearly established the
-peculiar theoretical nature of the imagination, such a proposition
-cannot be taken as a return to the pedagogic and heteronomous theory
-of poetry which in substance he had left far behind: therefore,
-without doubt, it follows from his historical hypothesis of a wholly
-poetical epoch of civilization, in which education, science and
-morality were administered by poets. Another consequence is that
-"imaginative universals" are apparently sometimes understood by him as
-imperfect universals (empirical or representative concepts as they were
-subsequently called); although, on the other hand, individualization
-is so marked in them and their unphilosophical nature so accentuated
-that their interpretation as purely imaginative forms may be taken
-as normal. In conclusion, we remark that fundamental terms are not
-always used by Vico in the same sense: it is not always clear how
-far "sensation," "memory," "imagination," "wit" are synonymous
-or different. Sometimes "sensation" seems outside the spirit, at
-others one of its chief moments; poets are sometimes the organ of
-"imagination," sometimes the "sensation" of humanity; and imagination
-is described as "dilated memory." These are the aberrations of a
-thought so virgin and original that it was not easy to regulate.
-
-[Sidenote: _Progress still to be achieved._]
-
-To sever the Philosophy of the Spirit from History, the modifications
-of the human mind from the historic vicissitudes of peoples, and
-Æsthetic from Homeric civilization, and by continuing Vico's analyses
-to determine more clearly the truths he uttered, the distinctions he
-drew and the identities he divined; in short, to purge Æsthetic of the
-remains of ancient Rhetoric and Poetics as well as from some over-hasty
-schematisms imposed upon her by the author of her being: such is the
-field of labour, such the progress still to be achieved after the
-discovery of the autonomy of the æsthetic world due to the genius of
-Giambattista Vico.
-
-
-[1] _Scienza nuova prima,_ bk. iii. ch. 5 (_Opere di G. B. Vico,_
-edited by G. Ferrari, 2nd ed., Milan, 1852-1854).
-
-[2] _Scienza nuova seconda, Elementi,_ liii.
-
-[3] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 26.
-
-[4] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii. introd.
-
-[5] _Op. cit. Elem._ xxxvi.
-
-[6] _Op. cit._ bk. ii.; _Sentenze eroiche._
-
-[7] Letter to De Angelis of December 25, 1725.
-
-[8] Letter to De Angelis, _cit._
-
-[9] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. iii.; Letter to De Angelis, _cit._;
-_Giudizio su Dante._
-
-[10] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii.; _Logica poetica._
-
-[11] _Republica,_ x.
-
-[12] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. iii. _ad init._
-
-[13] Letter to De Angelis, _cit._
-
-[14] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. iii. _passim._
-
-[15] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 4.
-
-[16] Letter to Solla, January 12, 1729; cf. _Scienza nuova sec. Elem._
-xliii.
-
-[17] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. iii.
-
-[18] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 6.
-
-[19] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii., _Corollari d' intorno all' origine
-della locuzion poetica,_ etc.
-
-[20] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 22.
-
-[21] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii., _Corollari d' intorno all' origini
-delle lingue_, etc.
-
-[22] _Op. cit._ bk. ii., _Corollari d' intorno a' tropi,_ etc., § 4.
-
-[23] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 22.
-
-[24] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. iii., _Pruove filosofiche._
-
-[25] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii.-ch. 22.
-
-[26] _Op. cit._ bk. iii. chs. 27-33.
-
-[27] Letter to De Angelis, _cit._
-
-[28] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii. introd.
-
-[29] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii., _Ultimi corollari,_ § vi.
-
-[30] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 2.
-
-[31] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii., _Della metafisica poetica,_ etc.
-
-[32] _Vita scritta da sè medesimo,_ in _Opere, ed. cit._ iv. p. 365.
-
-[33] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 37.
-
-[34] _Note all' Arte poetica di Orazio,_ in _Opere, ed. cit._ vi. pp.
-52-79.
-
-[35] Letter to De Angelis, _cit._
-
-[36] _Scienza nuova pr._ bk. iii. ch. 22; cf. the review of Clerico (Le
-Clerc) in _Opere,_ iv. p. 382.
-
-[37] _Giudizio intorno alia gram. d' Antonio d' Aronne,_ in _Opere,_
-vi. pp. 149-150.
-
-[38] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii., _Corollari d' intorno all' origini
-delle lingue,_ etc.
-
-[39] _Vita, cit._ p. 343.
-
-[40] _Instituzioni oratorie e scritti inediti,_ Naples, 1865, pp. 90
-_seqq._: _De senteniiis, vulgo del ben parlare in concetti._
-
-[41] Letter to the Duke of Laurenzana, March 1, 1732; and cf. letter to
-Muzio Gæta.
-
-[42] Cf. p. 190.
-
-[43] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. i., _Del metodo._
-
-[44] _Scienza nuova sec., Ultimi corollari,_ § 5.
-
-[45] _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. iii. ch. 3; _Scienza nuova sec._ bk. ii.,
-_Della metafisica poetica_; and bk. iii. _ad init._
-
-
-
-
-VI
-
-
-MINOR ÆSTHETIC DOCTRINES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The influence of Vico._]
-
-This step in advance had no immediate effect. The pages in the _Scienza
-nuova_ devoted to æsthetic doctrine were actually the least read of any
-in that marvellous book. Not that Vico exercised no influence at all;
-we shall see that several Italian authors both of his own time and of
-the generation immediately following show traces of his æsthetic ideas;
-but these traces are all external and material and therefore sterile.
-Outside Italy the _Scienza nuova_ (already announced by a compatriot
-in 1726 in the _Acta_ of Leipzig with the graceful comment that _magis
-indulget ingenio quam veritati_ and the pleasing information that _ab
-ipsis Italis taedio magis quam applausu excipitur_)[1] was mentioned
-toward the end of the century, as is well known, by Herder, Goethe,
-and some few others.[2] In connection with poetry, especially with the
-Homeric question, Vico's book was quoted by Friedrich August Wolf, to
-whom it had been recommended by Cesarotti[3] after the publication of
-the _Prolegomena ad Homerum_ (1795), but without any suspicion of the
-importance of its general doctrine of poetry, of which the Homeric
-hypothesis was a mere application. Wolf (1807) imagined himself in the
-presence of a talented forerunner in an isolated problem, instead of
-a man of intellectual stature towering above any philologist, however
-great.
-
-[Sidenote: _Italian writers: Conti._]
-
-Neither by reliance on the works of Vico, who founded no real school,
-nor, it must be added, by any independent effort along new lines,
-did thought succeed in maintaining or improving upon the position
-already attained. A notable attempt to establish a philosophical
-theory of poetry and the arts was made by the Venetian A. Conti, who
-left numerous sketches for essays on imagination, the faculties of the
-soul, poetic imitation and similar subjects, designed for inclusion
-in a large treatise on the Beautiful and Art. Conti had started by
-professing ideas very like those of Du Bos, affirming that the poet
-must "put everything in images"; that taste is as indefinable as
-feeling, and that there are persons without taste just as there are
-blind and deaf persons; he also wrote polemical tracts against the
-Cartesians. Later he abandoned his sensationalistic or sentimentalist
-theories,[4] and, inquiring into the nature of poetry, declared
-himself ill-satisfied with Castelvetro, Patrizzi, and even Gravina.
-"Had Castelvetro," he observes, "who writes so subtly of Aristotle's
-_Poetics,_ given two or three chapters to a philosophical explanation
-of the idea of imitation, he would have solved many questions raised
-but not clearly answered by himself concerning poetic theories. In his
-_Poetica_ and in his controversy against Torquato Tasso, Patrizzi never
-succeeded in clearly defining the philosophical idea of imitation; he
-collected much useful information about the history of poetry, but
-wilfully lost the Platonic doctrine by allowing it to mingle with the
-historical detail instead of gathering it up without sophistry into a
-single point, when it would have appeared in a very different guise.
-The _Ragion poetica_ of Gravina shadows forth a sort of philosophical
-idea of imitation; but so wholly engrossed is he in deducing therefrom
-rules for lyrical, dramatical and epic poetry, and illustrating each
-with examples from the most celebrated poets, Greek, Latin and Italian,
-that he is too busy to question the sufficiency of the fertile idea he
-has propounded."[5] A close follower of contemporary European thought,
-Conti was familiar with Hutcheson, whose theories he vigorously
-repudiated, observing, "Why this multiplication of faculties?" The
-soul is one, and for scholastic convenience only has been divided into
-three faculties: sense, imagination, intellect; the first "concerns
-herself with objects present before her; imagination with those afar
-into which memory gradually merges: but the object of sense and
-imagination is always particular; it is only the mind, the intellect,
-the spirit, that by comparing particulars apprehends the universal."
-"Before introducing a new sense for the pleasure of beauty" Hutcheson
-should have "assigned limits to these three faculties of cognition and
-demonstrated that the pleasure occasioned by beauty does not arise from
-the three pleasures of these three faculties, or from intellectual
-pleasure alone, to which they all reduce, if the functions of the
-soul be carefully analysed." Thus it would appear that the mistake
-of the Scotchman[6] arose from his habit of separating pleasure from
-the cognitive faculties, placing the former apart in a special empty
-"sense of beauty."[7] On the other hand, when rewriting the history of
-the opinions of various critics upon the Aristotelian doctrine of the
-universal in poetry, Conti gave much weight to the dialogue _Naugerius
-seu De poëtica_ of Fracastoro;[8] for an instant he seems on the
-point of grasping the essence of the poetic universal and identifying
-it with the characteristic, which makes us call even horrible things
-wholly beautiful. "In all his journeys Balzac never saw a beautiful
-old woman: in the poetic or picturesque sense an old woman is highly
-beautiful, if depicted as having suffered all the dilapidations of
-age": immediately after, however, he identifies the characteristic with
-Wolff's concept of perfection: "It does not differ from being, nor does
-being differ from the truth which the schoolmen call transcendental
-and which is the object of all arts and all sciences; we call it the
-object of poetry when by means of imaginary presentations it ravishes
-the intellect and moves the wall, transporting both these faculties
-into the ideal and archetypal world of which, following S. Augustine,
-Father Malebranche discourses at length in his _Recherche de la
-vérité_."[9] In the same way Fracastoro's universal gives place to the
-universal of science: "Owing to the infinity of their determinations
-all we can know of particulars is their common properties, which
-is merely another manner of saying that we have no science save of
-universal. Thus it is precisely the same if we say the object of
-poetry is science or the universal; which is the doctrine of Navagero,
-following Aristotle."[10] The "imaginative universals of Signor Vico"
-(with whom he had interchanged some letters) opened no new views for
-him: he notes that Signor Vico "talks a great deal about them" and
-"holds that the most uncivilized men, having framed them not from any
-wish to please or serve others, but from the necessity of expressing
-their feelings as nature taught them, spoke in poetical language the
-elements of a theology, a physics, and an ethics wholly poetical."
-Conti excuses himself from immediate examination of "this critical
-question" and only opines that "it can be shown in many ways that
-these imaginative universals are the material or object of poetry,
-in so far as they contain within them sciences or things considered
-in themselves"[11]--a conclusion diametrically opposed to that which
-"Signor Vico" meant to express. Conti is next obliged to ask himself
-how it is possible that poetry's object should be not the true but the
-probable, when the universal of poetry is the same as that of science.
-He answers by coming down to the commonplace level of a Baumgarten:
-"When sciences receive a particular colouring, we pass from the true to
-the probable." Imitation means giving the impression of truth; that is
-done by selecting a few of its features only; and this is the procedure
-in which the probable just consists. If you wish to describe the
-rainbow poetically, a great part of the Newtonian optics must be thrown
-overboard; thus "many circumstances of mathematical demonstration" will
-be neglected in poetical descriptions, and the rest, which is utilized,
-will form the probable or that particular "which awakens the universal
-idea, slumbering in the minds of the learned." The great art of poetry
-consists "in selection of the image containing the greatest number of
-points of universal doctrine which, by being inserted in the example,
-may so colour the precept that I may find it without seeking it, or
-recognize it through its connexion with events described."[12] Hence
-poetry cannot be content with imitation; allegory too is needed: "in
-ancient poetry one thing is read and another is meant." Here follows
-the inevitable instance of the Homeric poems, in which Conti certainly
-finds elements which cannot be reduced to instruction and allegory and
-therefore to some extent deserve the Platonic condemnation.[13] He
-recognizes a species of imagination differing from passive sensibility,
-"which Father Malebranche calls active imagination, and Plato the art
-of imagery; it comprises all that is meant by wit, sagacity, judgement
-and good taste, which teach a poet to use or not to use at a given time
-or place the rules and licences of art, and to control the extravagance
-of his imagery."[14] On the question of literary taste he follows
-the opinion of Trevisano and decides that it consists in "setting in
-mutual harmony, that is to say restraining within limits, the soul's
-cognitive faculties, memory, imagination and intellect, allowing none
-to overwhelm another."[15]
-
-[Sidenote: _Quadrio and Zanotti._]
-
-By assiduous travail of thought and perpetual search for the best,
-Conti kept himself at the highest level of æsthetic speculation in
-contemporary Europe (Vico always excepted); at the same level as
-Baumgarten in Germany. We pass rapidly over other Italian writers
-such as Quadrio (1739), author of the first great encyclopædia of
-universal literature, in which he defines poetry as "the science of
-things human and divine, presented in pictures to the populace, and
-written in words connected by measure";[16] and Francesco Maria Zanotti
-(1768), who describes poetry as "the art of versification in order to
-give pleasure":[17] the first is worthy of a mediæval anthologist,
-the second of a no less mediæval composer of handbooks on rhythm and
-methods of composition. The only serious student of æsthetic was
-Melchior Cesarotti.
-
-[Sidenote: _Cesarotti_]
-
-Cesarotti called attention to popular and primitive poetry: he
-translated Ossian and illustrated the text with dissertations; he
-unearthed antique Spanish poems and even the folk-songs of Mexico and
-Lapland; he studied Hebrew poetry; he dedicated the greater part of
-his life to the Homeric poems, examining all the theories of critics
-past and present, encountering Vico in this connexion and discussing
-his views. Besides this, he debated the origin of poetry, the pleasure
-given by tragedy, taste, the beautiful, eloquence, style, in short
-every problem belonging to æsthetics which had been raised up to his
-time.[18] One seems to catch an echo of Vico as one listens to his
-words on La Motte: "He had logic, but knew not that the logic of
-poetry differs somewhat from ordinary logic: he was a man of great
-talent, but he recognized talent only, and was incapable of feeling the
-immeasurable distance between judicious prose and poetry: the real
-Homer with his attractive faults will always be more beloved than his
-reformed Homer with his cold, affected virtue."[19] Cesarotti purposed
-(1762) bringing out a great theoretico-historical book in whose first
-part "we shall suppose the non-existence of poetry and poetic art and
-try to trace by what path a man of illuminated reason can have reached
-the idea of the possibility of such an art and how he can have attained
-perfection by these means: every one will be able to see poetry growing
-up under his eyes, so to speak, and attest the truth of theory by
-the testimony of his own personal feelings."[20] Although celebrated
-throughout Italy in his day as one who "with the most pure torch of
-philosophy has thrown beams of light into the darkest recesses of
-poetry and eloquence,"[21] it does not appear that the distinguished
-scholar, the pleasing and desultory philosopher, offered any profound
-or original solutions. In 1797 he defined poetry as "the art of
-representing and perfecting nature by means of picturesque, animated,
-imaginative and harmonious discourse."[22]
-
-[Sidenote: _Bettinelli and Pagano._]
-
-The fashion of the day in philosophy made men impatient of the ideas
-found in writers of treatises of former times. Arteaga praises
-Cesarotti for "that fine tact, that impartial criticism, that
-logical spirit derived not from the trickling streamlets of Sperone,
-Castelvetro, Casa and Bembo, but from the profound and inexhaustible
-springs of Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, d'Alembert, Sulzer, and
-writers of like temper."[23] Writing to Saverio Bettinelli, who was
-preparing a work on _Enthusiasm,_ Paradisi hoped it would prove "a
-metaphysical history of enthusiasm which shall outweigh all those
-Poetics which are only fit to be burned," and would "make waste paper
-of Castelvetro, the 'Mintumo,' and that stupid creature, Quadrio."[24]
-In spite of these aspirations Bettinelli's book (1769) contains little
-beyond vivacious and eloquent empirical observations concerning the
-psychology of poets, "poetic enthusiasm," to which he assigns six
-degrees, namely, elevation, vision, rapidity, novelty and surprise,
-passion and transfusion. Equally empirical was Mario Pagano in his two
-fragments, _Gusto e le belle arti_ and _Origine e natura della poesia_
-(1783-1785), in which he grotesquely combines some ideas from Vico with
-the current sensationalism. Theoretico-imaginative form and sensuous
-pleasure are presented by him as two historical periods of art. "In
-their cradle the fine arts are directed towards making a true imitation
-of nature rather than towards loveliness. Their first steps are towards
-expression rather than charm.... In the most ancient poetry, even in
-the ballads of barbarous ages, there lives a most compelling pathos:
-passions are expressed naturally, even the sound of the words is
-alive with the expression of the things described." But "the period
-of perfection is reached at the moment when exact imitation of nature
-is coupled with complete beauty, accord and harmony," when "the taste
-is refined and society reaches its most complete form of culture."
-Fine arts "precede by a short time the dawn of philosophy, that is
-to say, the time of the most intense perfection of society"; indeed,
-certain modes of art, such as tragedy, must necessarily come later
-than philosophy whose aid must be invoked to further "the purgation of
-manners."[25]
-
-[Sidenote: _German disciples of Baumgarten. G. F. Meier._]
-
-The compatriots and successors of Baumgarten, like those of Vico,
-did little by way of understanding or improving upon his work. An
-enthusiastic admirer and disciple of Baumgarten who had attended his
-lectures at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Georg Friedrich Meier, came forward
-in 1746 to defend the _Meditationes_ against the attacks of Quistorp to
-whom the master had deigned no reply;[26] already in 1748, prior to
-the publication of the _Æsthetic,_ he had published the first volume
-of his _Principles of all the Beautiful Sciences_,[27] followed in
-1749 and 1750 by the second and third volumes. This book, which is
-a complete exposition of Baumgarten's theory, is divided, according
-to the master's method, into three parts: invention of beautiful
-thoughts (heuristic), æsthetic method (methodic), and the beautiful
-signification of thoughts (semiotic); the first of these (occupying
-two and a half volumes) is subdivided into three sections: beauty
-of sense-apprehension (æsthetic richness, grandeur, verisimilitude,
-vivacity, certainty, sensitive life and wit), sensitive faculties
-(attention, abstraction, senses, imagination, subtlety, acumen,
-memory, poetic power, taste, foresight, conjecture, signification and
-the minor appetitive faculties), and the diverse kinds of beautiful
-thought (æsthetic concepts, judgements, and syllogisms). Elsewhere
-than in this book, which was reprinted many times (in 1757 an epitome
-was issued[28]), Meier discusses Æsthetic in several of his numerous
-works, especially in a little tract, _Considerations on the First
-Principles of all Fine Arts and Sciences_.[29] Who was more tenderly
-inclined than he towards the science so recently born and baptized? He
-was ardent in her defence against those who denied both her possibility
-and her utility, and against those who admitted these yet complained,
-not unreasonably, that she was substantially the same as that which in
-former days had been treated as Poetics and Rhetoric. He parried this
-accusation, of which he recognized the partial truth, by asserting
-that it was impossible for one writer to have perfect knowledge of all
-the arts: another of his excuses was to the effect that Æsthetic was
-a science too young to show the perfection reached by other sciences
-after the cultivation of centuries; in one place he says he has no
-intention of arguing "with those enemies of Æsthetic who will not or
-cannot see the true nature and aim of this science, but have built for
-themselves in its place a deformed and miserable image against which,
-when they fight, they fight against themselves." With philosophic
-resignation he concludes that the same fate is in store for Æsthetic as
-for every science: "At first when almost unknown they encounter enemies
-and detractors who ridicule them through ignorance and prejudice;
-but later they meet persons of intellect who, by working at them
-conjointly, carry them on to their proper perfection."[30]
-
-[Sidenote: _Confusions of Meier._]
-
-Students of the new science flocked to Halle University to hear Meier
-lecture on Æsthetic whose "chief author" or "inventor" (_Haupturheber,
-Erfinder_), as Meier never tired of repeating, was "Herr Professor
-Baumgarten"; at the same time warning them that his own _Anfangsgründe_
-were no mere transcription of Baumgarten's lectures.[31] Still, while
-recognizing the great gifts of Meier as publicity-agent, the facility,
-clarity and wealth of his eloquence, and his shrewdness in polemic,
-one cannot altogether deny the justice of the remark upon "Professor
-Baumgarten of Frankfort and his ape (_Affe)_ Professor Meier of
-Halle."[32] Every defect of Baumgarten's Æsthetic reappears accentuated
-in Meier; the limits of the inferior cognitive faculties, alleged as
-the domain of poetry and the arts, are laid down by him most strangely.
-It is curious to note how, for example, he interprets the difference
-between the confused (æsthetical) and the distinct (logical), and the
-proposition that beauty disappears when made the object of distinct
-thought. "The cheeks of a beautiful girl whereon bloom the roses of
-youth are lovely so long as they are looked at with the naked eye. But
-let them be examined with a magnifying glass. Where is their beauty?
-One can hardly believe that such a disgusting surface, scaly, all
-mounts and hollows, the pores full of dirt, with hairs sprouting here
-and there, can be the seat of that amorous attraction which subdues
-the heart."[33] That is described as "æsthetically false" whose truth
-the inferior faculty is unable to grasp: for example, the theory that
-bodies are composed of monads.[34] Once they have become intelligible
-to these faculties, general concepts possess great æsthetic richness,
-since they include infinite consequences and particular cases.[35]
-Æsthetic also comprehends those things which cannot be thought
-distinctly or, if so thought, might be capable of upsetting philosophic
-gravity: a kiss may be an excellent subject for a poet; but whatever
-would be thought of a philosopher who sought to demonstrate its
-necessity by the mathematical method?[36] Moreover, Meier includes the
-whole theory of observation and experiment in Æsthetic, to which this
-theory belongs, he says, by right of its connexion with the senses,[37]
-and also the whole theory of the appetitive faculties, because
-"æsthetic requires not only a fine wit but a noble heart as well."[38]
-He comes near truth sometimes, when, for example, he observes that
-the logical form presupposes the æsthetic and that our first concepts
-are sensitive, later becoming distinct by the help of logic;[39]
-and when he condemns allegory as "among the most decadent forms of
-beautiful thinking."[40] But, on the other hand, he thinks that logical
-distinctions and definitions, although not necessarily sought after
-by genius, are very useful in poetry; they are even indispensable as
-regulators of beautiful thinking and make up, as it were, the skeleton
-of the body poetic: great care, however, must be taken not to judge
-æsthetical general concepts, _notiones æstheticæ universales,_ with
-the rigorous exactitude demanded by philosophical. And since such
-concepts, taken singly, may be likened to unstrung jewels, they must be
-connected by the string of æsthetic judgement and syllogism, the theory
-of which is identical with that presented by Logic, setting aside that
-part which is of little or no use to genius, but belongs exclusively
-to the philosopher.[41] In his _Considerations_ of 1757 Meier, having
-combated the principle of imitation (which appeared to him at once too
-broad, since science and morals are also imitations of nature, and too
-narrow, since art does not imitate natural objects solely nor should
-it imitate them all, for the immoral must be excluded), reaffirmed the
-thesis that the æsthetic principle consists in the "greatest possible
-beauty of sense-perception."[42] He upheld this by condemning as
-erroneous the belief that this sense-perception is wholly sensuous
-and confused, without any gleam of distinctness or rationality. The
-perception of sweet, bitter, red, etc., is wholly sensuous; but there
-is another perception which is both sensuous and intellectual, confused
-and distinct, in which both faculties, the higher and the lower,
-collaborate. When intellectuality prevails in this consciousness,
-then we have science: when sensibility, then we have poetry. "From
-our explanation it will be gathered that the inferior cognitive
-faculties must collect all the material of a poem, and all its parts.
-Intellect and judgement, on the other hand, watch and ensure that these
-materials are placed side by side in such a way that in their connexion
-distinction and order may be observed."[43] Here a plunge into
-sensationalism, there a fugitive glimpse of truth: most often, and in
-conclusion, an adherence to the old mechanical, ornamental, pedagogic
-theory of poetry: this is the impression left on us by the æsthetic
-writings of Meier.
-
-[Sidenote: _M. Mendelssohn and other followers of Baumgarten. Vogue of
-Æsthetic._]
-
-Another disciple of Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, conceiving beauty
-as "indistinct image of a perfection," deduced that God can have
-no perception of beauty, as this is merely a phenomenon of human
-imperfection. According to him a primary form of pleasure is that
-of the senses, arising from "the bettered state of our bodily
-constitution"; a secondary form is the æsthetic fact of sensible
-beauty, that is to say, unity in variety; a third form is perfection,
-or harmony in variety.[44] He too repudiates Hutcheson's _deus ex
-machina,_ the sense of beauty. Sensible beauty, perfection such as
-can be apprehended by the senses, is independent of the fact that
-the object represented is beautiful or ugly, good or bad by nature;
-it suffices that it leaves us not indifferent: whence Mendelssohn
-agrees with Baumgarten's definition, "a poem is a discourse sensibly
-perfect."[45] Elias Schlegel (1742) conceived art as imitation, not
-so servile as to seem a copy, but having similarity rather than
-identity with nature: he considered the duty of poetry was first to
-please and only afterwards to instruct.[46] Treatises on Æsthetic,
-university lectures or slender volumes for use of the public, _Theories
-of the Fine Arts and Letters, Manuals, Sketches, Texts, Principles,
-Introductions, Lectures, Essays,_ and _Considerations on Taste_ poured
-down thick and fast on Germany during the second half of the eighteenth
-century. There are at least thirty full or complete treatises and many
-dozens of minor tracts or fragments. After the Protestant universities,
-the Catholic took up the new science, which was taught by Riedel at
-Vienna, Herwigh at Würzburg, Ladrone at Mainz, Jacobi at Freiburg,
-and by others at Ingolstadt after the expulsion of the Jesuits.[47] A
-pretty little volume on the _First Principles of the Fine Arts_[48] was
-written (1790) for Catholic schools by the notorious Franciscan friar
-Eulogius Schneider, who, after being unfrocked, terrorised Strasburg in
-the days of the Convention, and met his end under the guillotine. The
-frenzied output of these German _Æsthetics_ resembles that of _Poetics_
-in Italy in the sixteenth century, after the rise to popularity of
-Aristotle's treatise. Between 1771 and 1774 the Swiss Sulzer brought
-out his great æsthetic encyclopædia, _The General Theory of the Fine
-Arts,_ in alphabetical order, with historical notes upon each article,
-which were greatly enlarged in the second edition of 1792, edited by a
-retired Prussian captain, von Blankenburg.[49] In 1799, one J. Roller
-published a first _Sketch of the History of Æsthetic,_[50] in which he
-observes not unjustly, "Patriotic youth will be pleased to recognize
-that Germany has produced more literature on this subject than any
-other country."[51]
-
-[Sidenote: _Eberhard and Eschenburg._]
-
-Confining ourselves to bare mention of the works of Riedel (1767),
-Faber (1767), Schütz (1776-1778), Schubart (1777-1781), Westenrieder
-(1777), Szerdahel (1779), König (1784), Gang (1785), Meiners (1787),
-Schott (1789), Moritz (1788),[52] we will select from the crowd the
-_Theory of Fine Arts and Letters_ (1783) of Johann August Eberhard,
-successor to Meier in the Chair at Halle,[53] and the _Sketch of a
-Theory and Literature of Letters_ (1783) by Johann Joachim Eschenburg,
-one of the most popular books of the day for students.[54] Both
-these authors are followers of Baumgarten, with inclinations towards
-sensationalism; amongst other things Eberhard considered the beautiful
-as "that which pleases the most distinct senses," that is to say, of
-sight and hearing.
-
-[Sidenote: _J. G. Sulzer._]
-
-A word must be accorded to Sulzer, in whom we find the most curious
-alternation of new and old, the romantic influence of the new Swiss
-school and the utilitarianism and intellectualism of his day. He
-asserts that beauty exists wherever unity, variety and order are found:
-the work of an artist is strictly in the form, in lively expression
-(_lebhafte Darstellung_): the material is irrelevant to art, but
-the duty of every reasonable and sensible man is to make judicious
-selection. The beauty which is used to clothe the good as well as the
-bad is not the ineffable, celestial Beauty, offspring of the alliance
-between the beautiful, the good and the perfect, which awakens more
-than mere pleasure, a veritable joy which ravishes and beatifies our
-soul. Such is the human face when, by filling the eye of the beholder
-with the pleasure of form arising from the variety, proportion and
-order of the features, it proceeds to arouse the imagination and
-intellect by its suggestion of interior perfection; of the same
-nature is the statue of a great man carved by Phidias, or a patriotic
-oration by Cicero. If truth lie outside art and belong to philosophy,
-the most noble use to which art may be put is to make us feel the
-important truths which lend her strength and energy, not to mention
-that truth itself enters into art in the shape of truthful imitation
-or representation. Sulzer also repeats (and he is not the last) that
-orators, historians and poets are intermediaries between speculative
-philosophy and the people.[55]
-
-[Sidenote: _K. H. Heydenreich._]
-
-Karl Heinrich Heydenreich returns to a sounder tradition when he
-defines art (1790) as "a representation of a determinate state of
-sensibility," and observes that man, as a cognitive being, is impelled
-to enlarge the sphere of his cognitions and impart his discoveries to
-his fellows, while as a sensitive being he is impelled to represent
-and communicate his sensations; whence arise science and art. But
-Heydenreich does not clearly grasp the cognitive character of art; for
-in his opinion sensations become objects of artistic representation
-either because they are pleasing or, when not pleasing, because they
-are useful to further the moral aims of man as a social being; the
-objects of sensibility which enter into art must be possessed of
-intrinsic excellence and value and bear reference not to a single
-individual but to the individual as a rational being: hence the
-objectivity and necessity of taste. Like Baumgarten and Meier, he
-divides Æsthetic into three parts: a doctrine of _inventio,_ another of
-_methodica,_ a third of the _ars significandi_.[56]
-
-[Sidenote: J. G. Herder.]
-
-Another disciple of Baumgarten is J. G. Herder, who had an unbounded
-admiration for the old Berlin master, whom he calls "the Aristotle
-of his day," and defends him warmly against those who think fit to
-describe him as a "stupid and obtuse syllogizer" (1769). On the
-other hand he had slight esteem for subsequent Æsthetic, for example
-Meier's work, which he stigmatized accurately enough as "in part a
-re-mastication of Logic, in part a patchwork of metaphorical terms,
-comparisons and examples." "O Æsthetic!" he cries with emphasis,
-"O Æsthetic! the most fertile, the most beautiful and by far the
-most novel of all abstract sciences, in what cavern of the Muses is
-sleeping the youth of my philosophic nation destined to bring thee
-to perfection?"[57] He denied Baumgarten's claim to have established
-an _Ars pulchre cogitandi_ instead of limiting himself to a simple
-_Scientia de pulchro et pulchris philosophice cogitans,_ and ridiculed
-the scruple which held Æsthetic to be unworthy of the dignity of
-Philosophy.[58] To compensate for this, however, he accepted the
-fundamental definition cf poetry as _oratio sensitiva perfecta_:
-gem of definitions (says he), the best that has ever been invented,
-that penetrates to the heart of the matter, touches the true poetic
-principles and opens the most extended view over the entire philosophy
-of the beautiful, "coupling poetry with her sisters, the fine
-arts."[59] Like Cesarotti the Italian, but with much less vivacity and
-brilliance, Herder the German had studied primitive poetry, Ossian and
-the songs of ancient peoples, Shakespeare (1773), popular love-songs
-(1778), the spirit of Hebrew poetry (1782), and oriental poetry; these
-studies powerfully impressed upon his mind the sensitive nature of
-poetry. His friend Hamann (1762) had written these memorable words,
-which read like an extract from one of Vico's aphorisms: "Poetry is
-the mother-tongue of mankind: in the same way that the garden is older
-than the ploughed field, painting than writing, song than declamation,
-barter than trade. The repose of our most ancient progenitors was a
-slumber deeper than ours; their motion a tumultuous dance. They spent
-seven days in the silence of thought or of stupor; and opened their
-mouths to pronounce winged words. Their speech was sensation and
-passion, and they understood nothing but images. Of images is composed
-all the treasure of human knowledge and felicity."[60] Although
-Herder, who knew and admired Vico,[61] does not mention him by name
-when treating of language and poetry, one might suppose him to be
-influenced by the great Neapolitan at least in the final consolidation
-of his theories; but, on the contrary, the authors whom he chiefly
-quotes in this connexion are Du Bos, Goguet and Condillac, and observes
-"the first beginnings of human speech in tone, gesture, expression of
-sensations and thoughts by means of images and signs, can only have
-been a kind of crude poetry, and so it is among every savage nation
-in the world." Not a speech with punctuation and a sense of syllable,
-like ours, learning as we do to read and write, but an unsyllabled
-melody which gave birth to the primitive epic. "Natural man depicts
-what he sees and as he sees it, alive, powerful, monstrous; in order
-or disorder, as he sees and hears, so he reproduces. Not alone did
-barbarous tongues thus arrange their images, but Greek and Latin do
-the same. As the senses offered material, so the poets utilized it;
-especially in Homer we see how closely nature is followed in images
-which glow and fade perpetually and inimitably. He describes things
-and events line by line, scene by scene; and, in the same way, he
-paints men in their very bodies, actually as they speak and move."
-Later we distinguish epic from what we call history; because the former
-"not only describes what has happened but describes the event in its
-entirety, showing how it occurred in the only possible way, having
-regard to surrounding circumstance of body and spirit": this is the
-reason of the more philosophical character of poetry. As for pleasure,
-no doubt we do find poetry pleasant; but the idea that the poet's
-motive is merely to excite pleasure cannot be condemned too strongly.
-"Homer's gods were as essential and indispensable to the poet's world
-as the forces of motion are to the world of matter. Without the
-deliberations and activities of Olympus, none of the necessary events
-which happen on this earth could take place. Homer's magic island in
-the western sea belongs to the map of his hero's wanderings by the same
-necessity which placed it on the map of the world: it was necessary
-to the plan of his poem. It is the same with the severe Dante and his
-circles of Hell and Heaven." Art is formative: she disciplines, orders
-and governs the imagination and every faculty of man: not only did she
-generate history, "but, earlier yet, she created gods and heroes and
-purified the uncouth imaginations and fables of peoples with their
-Titans, monsters and Gorgons, reducing to limit and law the riotous
-imagination of ignorant men which knows no bounds or rule."[62]
-
-Notwithstanding these intuitions, so like those of Vico early in the
-same century, Herder as a philosopher is inferior to his Italian
-predecessor, and in point of fact does not rise superior to Baumgarten.
-By application of Leibniz' law of continuity, he too arrived at the
-opinion that the pleasing, the true, the beautiful and the good are
-degrees of one single activity. For instance, sensible pleasure" is
-a participation in the true and the good, so far as the senses may
-comprehend them; the feeling of pleasure and pain is no other than the
-feeling of the true and the good, that is to say, the consciousness
-that the aim of our organism, the conservation of our well-being and
-the avoidance of our hurt, has been attained."[63] Fine arts and
-letters are all instructive (_bildend_): hence the terms _humaniora,_
-the Greek _καλόν,_ the Latin _pulchrum,_ the _gentle_ arts of days
-of chivalry, _les belles lettres et les beaux arts_ of the French. A
-group of them (gymnastic, dance, etc.) educates the body; a second
-group (painting, plastic, music) educates the nobler senses of man,
-the eye, the ear, the hand and tongue; a third (poetry) touches the
-intellect, the imagination and the reason: a fourth group governs human
-tendencies and inclinations.[64] Herder disapproved of the facile
-theorists of art who began straight away with a definition of beauty,
-a complex and involved concept. He held that the theory of fine arts
-should be subdivided into three theories, each to be built up from
-the foundations, the theory of sight, of hearing and of touch, that
-is to say of painting, music and sculpture, _i.e._ into æsthetical
-Optics, æsthetical Acoustics and æsthetical Physiology. "Fairly well
-elaborated in the psychological and subjective aspects, Æsthetic
-is sadly undeveloped in all that belongs to the object and to the
-sensation of beauty, without which there can never be a fertile theory
-of the Beautiful capable of influencing all the arts."[65] Taste is not
-"a fundamental faculty of the soul but a habitual application of our
-judgement (intellectual judgement) to objects of beauty"; an acquired
-facility of the intellect (of which Herder outlines the genesis).[66]
-The poet is poet not only in his imagination but in his intellect.
-In 1782 he writes: "The barbarous name Æsthetic of recent invention
-indicates nothing beyond a section of Logic: that which we call taste
-is neither more nor less than a quick and rapid judgement which does
-not exclude truth and profundity, but rather presupposes and promotes
-them. All didactic poetry is nothing more than philosophy rendered
-sensible: the fable as exposition of a general doctrine is truth in
-act, in activity.... When expounded and applied to human affairs,
-Philosophy is not only a fine art in herself (_schöne Wissenschaft,_)
-but the mother of Beauty: it is only through her that Rhetoric and
-Poetry can ever be educational, useful, or in the truest sense
-pleasant."[67]
-
-[Sidenote: _Philosophy of language._]
-
-Herder and Hamann deserve our gratitude for having brought a current of
-fresh air into the study of the philosophy of language. The lead given
-by the Port-Royal authors had been followed since the beginning of
-the century by many writers of logical or general grammars. According
-to the French Encyclopædia, "_La grammaire générale est la science
-raisonnée des principes immuables et généraux de la parole prononcée
-ou écrite dans toutes les langues_,"[68] and d'Alembert spoke of
-grammarians of invention and grammarians of memory, assigning to the
-former the duty of studying the metaphysics of grammar.[69] General
-grammars had been written by Du Marsais, De Beauzée, and Condillac
-in France; Harris in England; and many others.[70] But what was the
-relation between general grammar and particular grammars? If logic be
-one, how comes it that languages are many? Is the variety of tongues
-but a deviation on their part from one single model? And, if there be
-no such deviation or error, what is the explanation of the fact? What
-is language, and how was it born? If language be external to thought,
-how can thought exist if not in language? "_Si les hommes_," says
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "_ont eu besoin de la parole pour apprendre
-à penser, ils ont eu bien plus besoin encore de savoir penser pour
-trouver l'art de la parole_"; appalled at the difficulty, he declares
-his conviction "_de l'impossibilité presque démontrée que les langues
-aient pu naître et s'établir par des moyens purement humains._"[71]
-Such questions became fashionable; books on the origin and formation
-of language were written by de Brosses (1765) and Court de Gébelin
-(1776) in France, by Monboddo (1774) in England, Süssmilch (1766) and
-Tiedemann in Germany, and Cesarotti (1785) in Italy, and by others
-who had some slight acquaintance with Vico, but profited little by
-it.[72] None of the above-named writers was able to free himself of
-the notion that speech was either natural and mechanical, or else a
-symbol attached to thought: whereas in fact it was impossible to solve
-the difficulties under which they were labouring except by dropping
-the notion of a sign or symbol and attaining the conception of the
-active and expressive imagination, verbal imagination, language as
-the expression not of intellect but of intuition. An approach towards
-this explanation was made by Herder in a brilliant and imaginative
-thesis in 1770 upon this subject of the origin of language, chosen
-for discussion by the Berlin Academy. In it he says that language is
-the reflexion or consciousness (_Besonnenheit_) of man. "Man shows
-reflexion when he puts forth freely such force of mind as enables him
-to make selection from amongst the crowd of sensations by which he is
-assailed: from the ocean of the senses, so to speak, to select a single
-wave and consciously to watch it. He shows reflexion when, amidst the
-thronging chaos of images which pass before him as in a dream, he can
-in a waking moment collect himself and fasten his attention upon a
-single image, examine it calmly and clearly, and separate it from its
-neighbours. Once again, man shows reflexion when he is able not merely
-to grasp vividly and clearly all the properties of an image, but also
-to recognize one or more of its distinctive properties." The language
-of man "does not depend on the organization of the mouth, for even he
-who is dumb from birth has, if he reflects, a language; it is not a
-cry of the senses, since it resides in a reflective creature, not in a
-breathing machine; it is not an affair of imitation, since imitation
-of nature is a means, and we are here trying to explain the end: much
-less is it an arbitrary convention; a savage in the depths of the
-forest would have had to create a language for himself even though he
-never used it. Language is an understanding of the soul with herself,
-necessary just in so far as man is man."[73] Here language begins to
-show itself no longer as purely mechanical or as something derived
-from arbitrary choice and invention, but as a creative activity and a
-primary affirmation of the activity of the human mind. Herder's essay
-may not state such a view unequivocally, but it points forward to such
-a conclusion in a striking way for which its author has not received
-the credit he deserves. Hamann, in reviewing his friend's theories,
-agreed with him in denying the origin of language by invention or
-arbitrary choice; while dwelling also on the liberty of man, he
-regarded language as something which man could only have learned by
-means of a mystical _communicatio idiomatum_ from God.[74] That, too,
-was one way of recognizing that the mystery of language is not to be
-solved except by placing it in the forefront of the problem of the
-spirit.
-
-
-[1] Vico, _Opere, ed. cit._ iv. p. 305.
-
-[2] Herder, _Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität,_ 1793-1797, Letter
-59; Goethe, _Italien. Reise,_ Mar. 5, 1787.
-
-[3] Letters from Wolf to Cesarotti, June 5, 1802; in Cesarotti,
-_Opere,_ vol. xxxviii. pp. 108-112; cf. _ibid._ pp. 43-44, and vol.
-xxxvii. pp. 281, 284, 324; cf. on the question of the relations between
-Wolf and Vico, Croce, _Bibliografia vichiana,_ pp. 51, 56-58, and
-_Supplem._ pp. 12-14.
-
-[4] Letter in French to Mme. Ferrant (1719), and to the Marquis Maffei
-in _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. (1756), pp. lxxxv.-civ., cviii.-cix.
-
-[5] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. i., 1739, pref.
-
-[6] Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was an Irishman. Croce's mistake is
-probably due to the fact that he studied and taught at Glasgow, or that
-his family was ultimately of Scottish origin.--TR.
-
-[7] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. clxxi.-clxxvii.
-
-[8] See above, pp. 184-185.
-
-[9] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. 242-246.
-
-[10] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 249.
-
-[11] _Op. cit._ ii. pp. 252-253.
-
-[12] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. 233-234.
-
-[13] _Op. cit._ i. pref.
-
-[14] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 127.
-
-[15] _Op. cit._ i. p. xliii.
-
-[16] Fr. Sav. Quadrio, _Della storia e della ragione d' ogni poesia,_
-Bologna, 1739, vol. i. part i. dist. i. ch. 1.
-
-[17] Fr. M. Zanotti, _Dell' arte poetica, ragionamenti cinque,_
-Bologna, 1768.
-
-[18] On Ossian, _Opere,_ vols, ii.-v.; on Homer, vols, vi.-x.; _Saggio
-copra il diletto della tragedia,_ vol. xxix. pp. 117-167; _Saggio sul
-bello,_ vol. xxx. pp. 13-70; on _Filosofia del gusto,_ vol. i.; on
-_Eloquenza,_ lecture, vol. xxxi.
-
-[19] _Opere,_ vol. xl. p. 49.
-
-[20] _Ibid._ p. 55.
-
-[21] Letter from Corniani to Cesarotti, November 21, 1790, in _Opere,_
-vol. xxxvii. p. 146.
-
-[22] _Saggio sopra le istituzioni scolastiche, private e pubbliche,_ in
-_Opere,_ vol. xxix. pp. 1-116.
-
-[23] Letter of March 30, 1764, in _Opere,_ vol. xxxv. p. 202.
-
-[24] Saverio Bettinelli, _Dell' entusiasmo nelle belle arti, 1769,_ in
-_Opere,_ iii. pp. xi.-xiii.
-
-[25] Fr. M. Pagano, _De' saggi politici,_ Naples, 1783-1785, vol. i.
-Appendix to § 1, "Sull' origine e natura della poesia"; vol. ii. § 6,
-"Del gusto e delle belle arti."
-
-[26] See above, p. 217.
-
-[27] _Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften,_ Halle, 1748-1750.
-
-[28] _Auszug aus den Anfangsgründe,_ etc., _ibid._ 1758.
-
-[29] _Betrachtungen über den ersten Grundsätzen aller schönen Künste u.
-Wissenschaften, ibid._ 1757.
-
-[30] Preface to 2nd ed. (1768) of vol. ii. of _Anfangsgründe,_ and
-_Betrachtungen, cit.,_ esp. §§ 1, 2, 34.
-
-[31] Preface to vol. i., and cf. § 5.
-
-[32] In a letter to Gottsched, 1747, in Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 215.
-
-[33] _Anfangsgründe,_ § 23.
-
-[34] _Op. cit._ § 92.
-
-[35] _Op. cit._ § 49.
-
-[36] _Op. cit._ § 55.
-
-[37] _Op. cit._ §§ 355-370.
-
-[38] _Op. cit._ §§ 529-540.
-
-[39] _Op. cit._ § 5.
-
-[40] _Op. cit._ § 413.
-
-[41] Anfangsgründe, §§ 541-670.
-
-[42] Betrachtungen, § 20.
-
-[43] Op. cit. § 21.
-
-[44] _Briefe über die Empfindungen,_ 1755 (in _Opere filosofiche,_
-Ital. trans., Parma, 1800, vol. ii.). Letters 2, 5, 11.
-
-[45] _Betrachtungen üb. d. Quellen d. sch. Wiss. u. K.,_ 1757, later
-entitled _Über die Hauptgrundsätze,_ etc., 1761, in _Opere, ed. cit._
-ii. pp. 10, 12-15, 21-30.
-
-[46] J. E. Schlegel, _Von der Nachahmung,_ 1742; cf. Braitmaier,
-_Gesch. d. poet. Th._ i. p. 249 _sqq._
-
-[47] Koller, _Entwurf,_ p. 103.
-
-[48] _Die ersten Grundsätze der schönen Kunst überhaupt, und der
-schönen Schreibart insbesondere,_ Bonn, 1790; cf. Sulzer, i. p. 55, and
-Koller, pp. 55-56.
-
-[49] See Bibliographical Appendix.
-
-[50] _Entwurf zur Geschichte u. Literatur d. Ästhetik,_ etc.,
-Regensburg. 1799; see Bibl. App.
-
-[51] Koller, _op. cit._ p. 7.
-
-[52] Notices and extracts in Sulzer and Koller, _opp. citt._
-
-[53] Joh. Aug. Eberhard, _Theorie der schönen Künste u.
-Wissenschaften,_ Halle, 1783; reprinted 1789, 1790.
-
-[54] Joh. Joach. Eschenburg, _Entwurf einer Theorie u. Literatur d. s.
-W.,_ Berlin, 1783; reprinted 1789.
-
-[55] Allgem. Th. d. sch. Künste, on words Schön, Schönheit, Wahrheit,
-Werke des Geschmacks, etc.
-
-[56] Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, _System der Ästhetik,_ vol. i.,
-Leipzig, 1790, esp. pp. 149-154. 367-385. 385-392.
-
-[57] _Kritische Wälder oder Betrachtungen über die Wissenschaft und
-Kunst des Schönen,_ Fourth Forest, 1769, in _Sämmtliche Werke,_ ed. B.
-Suphan, Berlin, 1878, vol. iv. pp. 19, 21, 27.
-
-[58] _Kritische Wälder, loc. cit._ pp. 22-27.
-
-[59] Fragment, _Von Baumgarten Denkart_; and cf. _op. cit._ pp. 132-133.
-
-[60] _Æsthetica in mice,_ in _Kreuzzüge des Philologen,_ Königsberg,
-quoted in Herder, _Werke,_ xii. 145.
-
-[61] See above, p. 235.
-
-[62] _Kaligone,_ 1800, in _Werke, ed. cit.,_ xii. pp. 145-150.
-
-[63] _Kaligone,_ pp. 34-55.
-
-[64] _Ibid._ pp. 308-317.
-
-[65] _Kritische Wälder, loc. cit._ iv. pp. 47-127.
-
-[66] _Op. cit._ pp. 27-36.
-
-[67] _Sophron,_ 1782, § 4.
-
-[68] _Encyclopédie, ad verb._
-
-[69] _Éloge de Du Marsais,_ 1756 (introd. to _Œuvres de Du Marsais,_
-Paris, 1797, vol. i.).
-
-[70] Du Marsais, _Méthode raisonnée,_ 1722; _Traité des tropes,_
-1730; _Traité de grammaire générale_ (in _Encyclopédie_); De Beauzée,
-_Grammaire générale pour servir de fondement à l'étude de toutes les
-langues,_ 1767; Condillac, _Grammaire française,_ 1755; J. Harris,
-_Hermes, or a Philosophical Enquiry concerning Language and Universal
-Grammar,_ 1751.
-
-[71] _Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes,_ 1754.
-
-[72] De Brosses, _Traité de la formation mécanique des langues,_ 1765;
-Court de Gébelin, _Histoire naturelle de la parole,_ 1776; Monboddo,
-_Origin and Progress of Language,_ 1774; Süssmilch, _Beweis dass der
-Ursprung der menschlichen Sprache göttlich sei,_ 1766; Tiedemann,
-_Ursprung der Sprache;_ Cesarotti, _Saggio sulla filosofia delle
-lingue,_ 1785 (in _Opere,_ vol. i.); D. Colao Agata, _Piano, ovvero
-ricerche filosofiche sulle lingue,_ 1774; Soave, _Ricerche intorno all'
-istituzione naturale d'una società e d'una lingua,_ 1774.
-
-[73] _Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache,_ in a small book _Zwei
-Preisschriften,_ etc. (2nd ed., Berlin, 1789), esp. pp. 60-65.
-
-[74] Steinthal, _Ursprung der Sprache,_ 4th ed., pp. 39-58.
-
-
-
-
-VII
-
-
-OTHER ÆSTHETIC DOCTRINES OF THE SAME PERIOD
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Other writers of the eighteenth century: Batteux._]
-
-A great medley of heterogeneous ideas is noticeable among other writers
-on Æsthetic during the same period. In 1746 appeared a little volume
-by Abbé Batteux bearing the attractive title of _The Fine Arts reduced
-to a Single Principle,_ in which the author attempted a unification
-of all the different rules laid down by the writers of treatises. All
-such rules (says Batteux) are branches emerging from one trunk; he who
-possesses the simple principle will be able to deduce the rules one by
-one without entangling himself in their mass, which can but involve him
-in endless coils. The author had passed in review the _Ars Poetica_ of
-Horace and that of Boileau, and the works of Rollin, Dacier, le Bossu
-and d'Aubignac; but had found real help only in Aristotle's principle
-of imitation, which he thought could be easily and strikingly applied
-to poetry, painting, music and the art of gesture. But suddenly the
-Aristotelian principle of imitation yields place to a wholly new
-rendering, namely the "imitation of natural _beauty._" The business
-of art is to "select the most beautiful parts of nature in order to
-frame them into an exquisite whole which shall be more beautiful than
-nature's self, without ceasing to be natural." Now, what may this
-greater perfection, this beautiful nature, be? On one occasion Batteux
-identifies it with truth: but "with the truth which may be; with
-beauty-truth, which is represented as though it really existed with all
-the perfections it could possibly receive," recalling one example from
-the ancients in the Helen of Zeuxis, and one from the moderns in the
-_Misanthrope_ of Molière. In another place he explains that beautiful
-nature, _"tum ipsius (obiecti) naturæ, tum nostræ convenit," i.e._ that
-it has the closest connexion with our own perfection, our advantage
-and our interest, and is, at the same time, perfect in itself. The
-aim of imitation is "to please, to move, to soften, in one word, to
-delight"; so beautiful nature must be interesting and furnished with
-unity, variety, symmetry and proportion. Embarrassed by the question
-of artistic imitation of things naturally ugly or objectionable,
-Batteux falls back on saying, as Castelvetro had said before him, that
-displeasing objects please when imitated, since imitation, being always
-imperfect, in comparison with the reality, cannot excite the horror and
-disgust aroused by the latter. From pleasure he deduces the other aim
-of utility: if the aim of poetry be to give pleasure, and "pleasure
-by moving the passions, then in order to give a perfect and enduring
-pleasure it ought to rouse such passions only as it is well to excite,
-not those inimical to goodness."[1]
-
-[Sidenote: _The English: W. Hogarth._]
-
-It is difficult to string together a more insubstantial mass of
-contradictions. But Batteux is rivalled and outdone by the English
-philosophers or rather scribblers on Æsthetic or rather on things in
-general which sometimes accidentally include æsthetic facts. Happening
-to find in Lomazzo some words attributed to Michæl Angelo on the beauty
-of shapes, Hogarth the artist took into his head the idea that the
-figurative arts can be regulated by a special principle which can be
-expressed in a particular fine.[2] Filled with this discovery, in 1745
-he designed a frontispiece for a volume of his engravings; it depicted
-a painter's palette scored across with an undulating line and the words
-_The Line of Beauty._ Public curiosity was immediately aroused by this
-hieroglyphic, to be satisfied a little later by the publication of
-his book _The Analysis of Beauty_ (1753).[3] In this he combated the
-mistake of judging pictures either by the subject or the excellence of
-the imitation instead of by their form, which is the true essential
-of art and is composed "of symmetry, variety, uniformity, simplicity,
-intricacy and quantity; all things which co-operate in the production
-of beauty, correcting and restraining each other as required."[4]
-But immediately afterwards Hogarth proclaims that there must also be
-correspondence and agreement with the thing copied; for "regularity,
-uniformity and symmetry give pleasure in so far only as they serve
-to give the illusion of faithful correspondence."[5] Further on, the
-reader learns that "amongst the immense variety of undulating lines
-which may be conceived, there is but one which truly merits the name of
-the Line of Beauty, and this is a precisely serpentine line which may
-be called the Line of Grace."[6] Again, we are told that intricacy of
-lines is beautiful because "the active mind likes to be engaged," and
-the eye delights in being "guided in a sort of hunt."[7] A straight
-line has no beauty, and the pig, the bear, the spider and the toad are
-ugly because devoid of undulating lines.[8] The ancients showed much
-judgement in the management and grouping of lines, "varying from the
-precise line of grace only on those occasions when the character or
-action demanded."[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _E. Burke._]
-
-With similar indecision Edmund Burke wavers between the principle
-of imitation and other heterogeneous or imaginary principles in his
-book, _An Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
-Beautiful_ (1756). He observes, "Natural properties contained in an
-object give pleasure or displeasure to the imagination: beyond this,
-however, imagination may delight in the likeness of a copy to its
-original"; he asserts that from "these two reasons" arises the whole
-pleasure of imagination.[10]
-
-Without dwelling further on the second, he proceeds to a lengthy
-discussion of the natural qualities which should be found in an object
-of sensible beauty: "Firstly, comparative smallness; secondly, smooth
-surface; thirdly, variety in disposition of the parts; fourthly, that
-it have no angularity, all lines fusing one in another; fifthly, a
-structure of great delicacy betraying no signs of violence; sixthly,
-vivid colouring without glare or harshness; seventhly, if it have any
-glaring colour, let it be different from the background." These are the
-properties of beauty working in harmony with nature and least liable to
-suffer from caprice and differences of taste.[11]
-
-[Sidenote: _H. Home._]
-
-These books of Hogarth and Burke are generally described as classical;
-if so, they belong to the type of classic that fails to convince. To
-a somewhat higher type belongs the _Elements of Criticism_ (1761)
-of Henry Home, Lord Kaimes, who seeks "the true principles of the
-fine arts" with the object of converting criticism into "a rational
-science," and to this end chooses "the upward path of facts and
-experiments." Home confines himself to feelings derived from objects
-of sight and hearing, which, in so far as unaccompanied by desires,
-are more truly described as simple feelings (emotions, not passions).
-These occupy a middle position between mere sense-impressions and
-intellectual or moral ideas, and are therefore akin to both; and it is
-from these that the pleasures of beauty are derived. Beauty is divided
-into beauty of relation and intrinsic beauty.[12] Of the latter, Home's
-only account is that regularity, simplicity, uniformity, proportion,
-order and other pleasing qualities have been "so disposed by the Author
-of nature in order to increase our happiness here on earth which, as
-is clearly shown in numberless instances, is not foreign to his care."
-This notion is confirmed when he reflects that "our taste for such
-details is not accidental, but uniform and universal, being a very
-part of our nature"; adding that "regularity, uniformity, order and
-simplicity help to facilitate perception and make it possible for us
-to form clearer conception of objects than it would be possible to
-gain by the most earnest attention were such qualities not present."
-Proportions are often combined with a view to utility, "as we see that
-the best proportioned amongst animals are also the strongest; but there
-are also many examples in which this conjunction does not hold good";
-wherefore the wisest plan "is to rest content with the final cause just
-mentioned: that of the increase of our happiness intended by the Author
-of nature."[13] In his _Essay on Taste_ (1758) and on _Genius_ (1774)
-Alexander Gérard employs by turns, according to the various forms of
-art, the principles of association, of direct pleasure, of expression,
-and even of moral sense: the same kind of explanation reappears in
-another _Essay on Taste_ by Alison (1792).
-
-[Sidenote: _Eclecticism and sensationalism. E. Platner._]
-
-It is impossible to classify works of such calibre, almost wholly
-lacking as they are in scientific method; on each page their writers
-pass from physiological sensationalism to moralism; from the imitation
-of nature to mysticism and transcendent finalism without the slightest
-sense of incongruity. It would be absurd to take them seriously; in
-comparison it is almost refreshing to come across a frank hedonist
-in the German, Ernst Plainer, who interpreted Hogarth's inquiry into
-lines after a fashion of his own and was unable to see anything in
-æsthetic facts except a reverberation of sexual pleasure. Where can we
-find a beauty, he asks, that is not derived from the female figure,
-the centre of all beauty? Undulating lines are beautiful because
-found in a woman's body; beautiful are all movements distinctively
-feminine; beautiful the tones of music melting one into another;
-beautiful the poem where one thought embraces another with tenderness
-and facility.[14] Condillac's sensationalism had already shown
-itself wholly incapable of understanding æsthetic productivity; the
-associationism especially promoted by the work of Hume fared no better.
-
-[Sidenote: _Fr. Hemsterhuis._]
-
-The Dutchman Hemsterhuis considered beauty as a phenomenon born of
-the meeting between sensibility, which gives multiplicity, and the
-internal sense, which tends to unity; hence the beautiful is "that
-which exhibits the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time." Man,
-to whom it is not permitted to attain ultimate unity, finds in beauty
-an approximate unity which gives him a pleasure somewhat analogous
-with the joy of love. This theory of Hemsterhuis, in which elements of
-mysticism and sensationalism mingle with glimpses of truth, developed
-later into the sentimentalism of Jacobi, for whom the totality of Truth
-and Goodness and even the Supersensible itself are sensibly present to
-the soul in the form of beauty.[15]
-
-[Sidenote: _Neo-Platonism and mysticism. Winckelmann._]
-
-Platonism or, more accurately, neo-Platonism was revived by the creator
-of the history of figurative art, Winckelmann (1764). Contemplation
-of the masterpieces of antique plastic art, and the impression of
-superhuman loftiness and divine indifference which they create all
-the more irresistibly because we cannot reawaken the life they once
-possessed or understand their real significance, led Winckelmann, and
-others with him, to the conception of a Beauty which, descending from
-the seventh heaven of the divine Idea, embodied itself in works of this
-description. Baumgarten's follower Mendelssohn had denied the enjoyment
-of beauty to God: the neo-Platonist Winckelmann gave it back to him and
-lodged it in his bosom.
-
-[Sidenote: _Beauty and lack of significance._]
-
-"Wise men who have meditated upon the causes of universal Beauty,
-seeking her amongst created things and trying to gain the contemplation
-of Supreme Beauty, have placed it in the perfect harmony of creatures
-with their ends and of their parts with one another. But as this is
-equivalent to perfection, which man is incapable of attaining, our
-concept of universal beauty remains indeterminate, and arises by means
-of particular cognitions which, when accurately collected and fitted
-together, give us the highest idea we can attain of human beauty,
-which we elevate in proportion as we raise it above matter. But,
-again, since the Creator deals out perfection to all his creatures
-in the proportion that befits them, and since every concept rests
-on some cause which must be sought outside the concept itself, the
-cause of Beauty which is to be found in every created thing cannot
-be sought in anything outside these created things. For this reason,
-and because our cognitions are comparative concepts, whereas Beauty
-cannot be compared with anything higher, it is difficult to attain a
-distinct and universal cognition of Beauty."[16] The only way out of
-this difficulty and others like it is the recognition that "supreme
-beauty resides in God": "the concept of human beauty becomes the more
-perfect in proportion as it can be thought more in conformity and
-agreement with supreme Being, which is distinguished from matter by
-its own unity and indivisibility. This conception of Beauty is as a
-spirit which, freed by fire from the prison of matter, strives to
-conjure up a creature in the likeness of the first reasonable creature
-formed by the divine intelligence. The forms of such an image are
-simple and continuous and within this unity they are varied and for
-that very reason harmonious."[17] 2 To these characteristics is added
-"lack of significance" (_Unbezeichnung_), since supreme beauty cannot
-be described with points or fines different from those which alone
-can constitute that beauty; its form "is not peculiar to this or that
-determinate person, neither does it express any state of feeling or
-sensation of passion, things which disturb unity and overcloud beauty."
-Winckelmann concludes: "We look upon Beauty as a purest water drawn
-from the centre of the spring; the less taste it has the higher it is
-esteemed because free from all impurities."[18]
-
-To perceive pure beauty, a special faculty is required, which certainly
-is not sense, but may perhaps be intellect or even, as Winckelmann
-says, "a fine internal sense" free from all intentions or passions
-of instinct, inclination or pleasure. Having asserted beauty to be
-something supersensible, it is not surprising that Winckelmann should
-wish, if not wholly to exclude colour, at least to reduce it to a
-minimum, and treat it not as a constitutive element in beauty but as
-secondary and ancillary.[19] True beauty is given in form: by which he
-means line and surface, forgetting that these are only apprehended by
-the senses, and could not be seen without being in some way coloured.
-
-[Sidenote: _Winckelmann's contradictions and compromises._]
-
-When error refuses to retire, hermit-like, to the narrow cell of a
-brief aphorism, it finds itself condemned to self-contradiction in
-order to live at all in the world of concrete facts and problems.
-Although composed with a view to stating a theory, the work of
-Winckelmann always led him among concrete historical facts clamouring
-to be brought into relation with his formally stated idea of supreme
-beauty. In his admission of line-drawing and his further admission, on
-a lower plane, of colour, we have two compromises already; to which
-a third is added in his principle of Expression. "Since human nature
-has no state intermediate between pain and pleasure" and as living
-creature without such feelings is inconceivable, "the human figure must
-be represented in a condition of action and passion, which artists
-call expression." Hence Winckelmann, after dealing with Beauty, goes
-on to treat of Expression.[20] He then found himself obliged to effect
-a fourth compromise between the single constant supreme beauty and
-individual beauties; for while he preferred the male to the female body
-as a completer embodiment of perfect beauty, he could not shut his eyes
-to the obvious fact that we know and admire beautiful women's bodies
-and even beautiful animals' bodies.
-
-[Sidenote: _A. R. Mengs._]
-
-Friend and, in a sense, collaborator of Winckelmann was Raphæl Mengs
-the artist, no less eager than his archæological fellow-countryman to
-understand the nature of that beauty which the one studied as a critic
-while the other produced it as a painter. Remarking, writes Mengs,
-that of the two chief duties of a painter, the imitation of appearances
-and the selection of the most beautiful objects, much has been written
-on the former, while the latter "has scarcely been touched by the
-modems, who would have been ignorant of the art of drawing were it
-not for the statues of ancient Greece";[21] pondering this, "I read,
-asked and looked at everything likely to throw light on the subject,
-but never was I satisfied; either they spoke of beautiful things or
-of qualities which are the attributes of beauty, or they pretended to
-explain, as the saying is, the obscure by the more obscure, or even
-confused the beautiful with the pleasing: so that finally I determined
-to search for the nature of beauty on my own account."[22] One of his
-works on this subject was published during his lifetime by the advice
-and assistance of Winckelmann (1761); many others appeared posthumously
-(1780), all were reprinted several times and translated into several
-languages. In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he says, "I have been sailing
-a long time on a vast sea seeking the understanding of beauty, and
-still I am far from any shore and in great doubt how to shape my
-course: gazing around, my sight is confounded by the immensity of the
-subject."[23] In truth it seems as though Mengs never arrived at a
-formula satisfactory to himself, although he conformed more or less to
-Winckelmann's doctrine that "beauty consists in material perfection
-according to our ideas; and since God alone is perfect, beauty is
-divine"; it is the "visible idea of perfection" and stands in the same
-relation to it as does a visible to a mathematical point. Our ideas
-proceed from the purposes which the Creator has willed to fulfil in
-various things; hence the multiplicity of beauties. In general, Mengs
-finds the types of things in natural species: _e.g._ "a stone, of
-which we have the idea that it should be uniform in colour"; which"
-is called ugly if it happen to be spotted"; or a child "would be
-ugly if he were like a man of mature age, just as a man is ugly when
-shaped like a woman, and a woman when she is like a man." He adds
-surprisingly, "As among stones there is but one perfect species, the
-diamond; among metals, gold; and among animated creatures, man only; so
-there is difference and distinction in every order, and very rarely is
-there perfection."[24] In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he considers beauty
-as "a middle disposition, including perfection on the one hand and
-the pleasing on the other"; in reality it is a third thing, differing
-from perfection and the pleasing, and deserving a special name for
-itself.[25] The art of painting arises from four sources: beauty,
-significant or expressive character, the pleasing united to harmony,
-and colouring. Mengs finds the first amongst the ancients, the second
-in Raphæl, the third in Correggio and the fourth in Titian.[26] From
-this empirical studio-gossip he rouses himself to exclaim, "The force
-of beauty so transports me that I will tell thee, reader, what I
-feel. All nature is beautiful, and so is virtue; beautiful are forms
-and proportions; beautiful are appearances and beautiful the causes
-thereof; more beautiful is reason, most beautiful of all is the great
-first cause."[27]
-
-[Sidenote: _G. E. Lessing._]
-
-An attenuated, that is to say, a less metaphysical, echo of
-Winckelmann's theory is found in Lessing (1766), who infused a new
-spirit into the literature and social life of the Germany of his time.
-According to Lessing the aim of art is "delight"; and since delight is
-a "superfluous thing" it seems reasonable that the legislator should
-not allow to art that liberty which is indispensable to science in
-her search for truth, the soul's necessity. For the Greeks painting
-was what by its nature it ought to be, "the imitation of beautiful
-bodies." "Its (Hellenic) cultivator represented nothing but the
-beautiful: common beauty of a low grade served him as an accidental
-subject, an exercise, a diversion. The attractiveness of his work
-must depend simply and solely on the perfection of his subject: he
-was far too true an artist to wish his audience to content itself
-with the barren pleasure arising from mere resemblance or from the
-inspection of skilful workmanship: nothing in his art was dearer to
-him, nothing seemed more noble, than the end at which it aimed."[28]
-Pictorial representation must exclude everything unpleasing or ugly;
-"painting as imitation may express ugliness: painting as a fine art
-will refuse to do so: all visible objects belong to art taken under
-the former title: the latter may claim only such objects as awaken
-pleasing sensations." If, on the contrary, ugliness may be represented
-by the poet, the reason is this: poetic description "conveys a less
-displeasing sense of bodily malformation which, in the end, almost
-loses its character as such; unable to use it for itself, the poet
-uses it as a means to provoke certain mixed feelings (the ridiculous,
-the terrible), in which we are content to remain, in the absence of
-any purely pleasant feelings."[29] In his _Dramaturgie_ (1767) Lessing
-takes his stand upon the Aristotelian _Poetics_: it is well known that
-not only did he approve of rules in general but he believed those
-laid down by Aristotle to be as incontrovertible as the theorems of
-Euclid. His polemic against French writers and critics is waged in the
-name of probability, not to be confounded with historical accuracy.
-He understood the universal as a sort of average of what appears in
-individuals, and catharsis as a conversion of passions into virtuous
-dispositions, asserting it as beyond doubt that the aim of all
-poetry is to inspire a love for virtue.[30] He follows the example
-of Winckelmann in introducing the concept of ideal beauty into the
-doctrine of figurative art: "expression of corporeal beauty is the aim
-of painting: therefore supreme beauty of body is the supreme aim of
-art. But this supreme beauty of body is found in man only, and for
-him it exists only through the ideal. This ideal may be found among
-the brute creation in inferior degree; but is entirely absent from
-vegetable or inanimate nature." Landscape and flower painters are not
-really artists because "they imitate beauties possessed of no ideal:
-whereby they work by eye and hand alone, genius having little or no
-part in their compositions." Nevertheless, Lessing prefers a landscape
-painter to "the painter of historic pieces who, instead of making
-beauty his aim, merely depicts a crowd in order to show his cunning in
-simple expression, not in expression subordinate to beauty."[31] The
-ideal of bodily beauty then consists "chiefly in the ideal of form,
-but also in that of texture of the flesh, and in that of permanent
-expression. Mere colouring and transitory expression have no ideal
-since nature herself has placed no indelible seal upon them."[32] At
-the bottom of his heart Lessing dislikes colour; and when he finds
-the pen-sketches of painters showing "a life, a freedom, a brilliancy
-never to be found in their painted pictures," he asks himself "whether
-the most marvellous colouring can compensate so heavy a loss," and
-whether it is not to be wished "that painting in oils had never been
-invented"?[33]
-
-[Sidenote: _Theorists of ideal beauty._]
-
-Ideal beauty, that curious alliance between God and the subtle outline
-traced with pen or graver, that cold academical mysticism, came into
-fashion. In Italy (the home of Winckelmann and Mengs, who published
-many of their works in Italian) it was much discussed by artists,
-antiquaries and connoisseurs. The architect Francesco Milizia professed
-himself a follower of "the principles of Sulzer and Mengs";[34]
-the Spaniard d'Azara, living in Italy, edited and annotated Mengs,
-adding his own definition of beauty: "The union of the perfect and
-the pleasing made visible";[35] another Spaniard, Arteaga, one of
-the many Jesuit refugees in Italy, wrote a treatise on _Ideal Beauty_
-(1789);[36] the Englishman Daniel Webb on coming to Rome and making
-the acquaintance of Mengs seized upon the ideas he heard him express
-on beauty, collected them and actually published them in a book
-anticipating Mengs' own.[37]
-
-[Sidenote: _G. Spalletti and the characteristic._]
-
-The first voice of dissent from this doctrine of ideal beauty was
-raised in 1764 by a small circle of Italians who asserted the
-characteristic to be the principle of art. As such appears to
-be the necessary interpretation of the little _Essay on Beauty_
-written by Guiseppe Spalletti in the form of a letter to Mengs,
-with whom Spalletti had discussed the subject "in the solitudes of
-Grottaferrata," and who had urged him to put all his thoughts in
-writing.[38] Its polemical character, though not openly asserted, is
-discernible in every page. "Truth in general, conscientiously rendered
-by the artist, is the object of Beauty in general. When the soul finds
-those characteristics which wholly converge upon the matter which the
-work of art claims to represent, it judges that work beautiful. The
-same is true of the works of nature: if the soul perceives a man of
-fine proportions having the face of a lovely woman, which causes it to
-doubt whether the object before it be man or woman, it esteems that man
-ugly rather than the reverse, through deficiency of the characteristic
-of truth; if this can be said of natural Beauty, how much more can
-it be said of the Beauty of art." The pleasure given by Beauty is
-intellectual, that is to say, it is the pleasure of apprehending
-truth: when confronted by ugly things represented characteristically,
-man "delights in having increased his cognitions": Beauty, "with its
-property of supplying to the soul likeness, order, proportion, harmony
-and variety, provides it with an immense field for the construction
-of innumerable syllogisms, and by reasoning in this manner it will
-take pleasure in itself, in the object which arouses such pleasure, and
-in the feeling of its own perfection." Finally, the beautiful may be
-defined as "the inherent modification of the object under observation
-which presents it in the inevitably characteristic manner in which it
-is bound to appear."[39] In contrast to the fallacious profundity of
-Winckelmann and Mengs we welcome the sound good sense of this obscure
-Spalletti, upholder of the Aristotelian position against the revived
-neo-Platonism of the æstheticians.
-
-[Sidenote: _Beauty and the characteristic: Hirt, Meyer, Goethe._]
-
-Many years went by before a similar rebellion arose in Germany; at
-length in 1797 the art-historian Ludwig Hirt, basing his case on
-ancient works of art which depicted all things, even things utterly
-vulgar and ugly, ventured to deny the view that ideal beauty is the
-principle of art, and that expression has only a secondary place, above
-which it must not rise for fear of disturbing ideal beauty. For the
-ideal he substituted the characteristic, as a principle to be applied
-equally to gods, heroes or animals. Character is "that individuality by
-which form, movement, signs, physiognomy and expression, local colour,
-fight, shade and chiaroscuro are distinguished and represented in the
-manner demanded by the object."[40] Another historian of art, Heinrich
-Meyer, who started from the position of Winckelmann and went on by
-adopting a series of compromises, finally asserting an ideal of trees
-and landscape side by side with the ideal of man and various other
-animals, tried to find an intermediate position between this doctrine
-and Hirt's, in the course of controversy with the latter. And Wolfgang
-von Goethe, forgetful of his youthful days when he chanted the praises
-of Gothic architecture, returning home from an Italian tour impregnated
-with Greece and Rome in 1798, also sought a middle term between Beauty
-and Expression; dwelling on the thought of certain characteristic
-contents which should supply the artist with forms of beauty to be by
-him remodelled and developed into complete beauty. The characteristic
-was thus the mere point of departure, and beauty was simply the result
-of the artist's elaboration: "we must start from the characteristic"
-(says he) "in order to attain the beautiful."[41]
-
-
-[1] _Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe,_ Paris, 1746; see esp.
-part i. ch. 3; part ii. chs. 4, 5; part iii. ch. 3.
-
-[2] See above, p. 110.
-
-[3] _Analysis of Beauty,_ London, 1753 (Ital. trans., Leghorn, 1761).
-
-[4] _Op. cit._ p. 47.
-
-[5] _Op. cit._ p. 57.
-
-[6] _Op. cit._ p. 93.
-
-[7] _Op. cit._ pp. 61, 65.
-
-[8] _Analisi della bellezza,_ p. 91.
-
-[9] _Op. cit._ p. 176.
-
-[10] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
-Beautiful,_ 1756 (Ital. trans., Milan, 1804); cf. the preliminary
-discourse on "Taste."
-
-[11] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
-Beautiful,_ part iii. § 18.
-
-[12] _Elements of Criticism,_ 1761, vol. i. introd. and chs. 1-3.
-
-[13] _Elements of Criticism,_ i. ch. 3, pp. 201-202.
-
-[14] _Neue Anthropologie,_ Leipzig, 1790, § 814, and the lectures on
-Æsthetic published posthumously in 1836; cf. Zimmermann, _op. cit._ p.
-204.
-
-[15] Zimmermann, _op. cit._ pp. 302-309; v. Stein, _Entstehung d. n.
-Ästh._ p. 113.
-
-[16] _Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums,_ 1764 (in _Werke,_ Stuttgart,
-1847, vol. i.), bk. iv. ch. 2, § 51, p. 131.
-
-[17] _Op. cit._ § 22, pp. 131-132.
-
-[18] _Op. cit._ § 23, p. 132.
-
-[19] _Geschichte,_ § 19, pp. 130-131.
-
-[20] _Op. cit._ bk. iv. ch. ii. § 24.
-
-[21] _Geschichte,_ bk. v. chs. ii. and vi.
-
-[22] Letter of January 2, 1778, _Opere,_ Rome, 1787 (reprinted Milan,
-1836), ii. pp. 315-316.
-
-[23] _Opere,_ i. p. 206.
-
-[24] _Riflessioni sulla bellezza e sul gusto della pittura,_ in
-_Opere,_ i. pp. 95, 100, 102-103.
-
-[25] _Opere,_ i. p. 197.
-
-[26] _Ibid._ p. 161.
-
-[27] _Ibid._ p. 206.
-
-[28] Laokoon, § 2.
-
-[29] Op. cit. §§ 23, 24.
-
-[30] Hamburg. Dramaturgie (ed. Göring, vols. xi. and xii.), passim,
-esp. Nos. 11, 18, 24, 78, 89.
-
-[31] _Laokoon,_ appendix, § 31.
-
-[32] _Op. cit._ §§ 22, 23.
-
-[33] _Op. cit. ad fin._ p. 268.
-
-[34] _Dell' arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i
-principi di Sulzer e di Mengs,_ Venice, 1871.
-
-[35] D'Azara, in Mengs, _Opere,_ i. p. 168.
-
-[36] _Investigaciones filosóficas sobre la belleza ideal, considerada
-como objeto de todas las artes de imitación,_ Madrid, 1789.
-
-[37] _Ricerche su le bellezze della pittura_ (Ital. trans., Parma,
-1804); cf. D'Azara, _Vita del Mengs,_ in _Opere,_ i. p. 27.
-
-[38] _Saggio sopra la bellezza,_ dated "Grottaferrata, July 14, 1764,"
-and published at Rome, 1765, anonymously.
-
-[39] _Saggio,_ esp. §§ 3, 12, 15, 17, 19, 34.
-
-[40] _Über das Kunstschöne,_ in the review _Die Horen,_ 1797; cf.
-Hegel, _Vorles. ii. Ästh._ i. p. 24; and Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Ästh._
-pp. 356-357.
-
-[41] Goethe, _Der Sammler und die Seinigen_ (in _Werke,_ ed. Goedecke,
-vol. xxx.)
-
-
-
-
-VIII
-
-
-IMMANUEL KANT
-
-
-[Sidenote: _I. Kant._]
-
-Of all these writers, Winckelmann and Mengs, Home and Hogarth, Lessing
-and Goethe, none was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: not
-even those who like Meier laid claim to the title, nor those who had
-some gifts for philosophy like Herder or Hamann. After Vico, the next
-European mind of real speculative genius is Immanuel Kant, who now
-comes before us in his turn.
-
-[Sidenote: _Kant and Vico._]
-
-That Kant took up the problem of philosophy where Vico laid it down
-(not, of course, in a directly historical, but in an ideal, sense) has
-already been noted by others.[1] How far he made an advance upon his
-predecessor and how far he failed to reach the same level it is not
-here our business to inquire; we must confine ourselves strictly to the
-consideration of Æsthetic questions.
-
-Summarizing the results of such a consideration, we may say at once
-that though Kant holds an immensely important place in the development
-of German thought; though the book containing his examination of
-æsthetic facts is among his most influential works; and though in
-histories of Æsthetic written from the German point of view, which
-ignore practically the whole development of European thought from the
-sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Kant can pose as the man who
-discovered the problem of Æsthetic or solved it or brought it within
-sight of solution; yet in an unprejudiced and complete history whose
-aim is to take broad views and to consider not the popularity of a
-book or the historical importance of a nation but the intrinsic value
-of ideas, the judgement passed on Kant must be very different. Like
-Vico in the serious tenacity with which he reflected upon æsthetic
-facts, more fortunate than he in having a much larger stock of material
-gathered from preceding discussion and argument, Kant was at once
-unlike and less successful than Vico in that he was unable to attain a
-doctrine substantially true, and unable also to give his thoughts the
-necessary system and unity.
-
-[Sidenote: _Identity of the concept of art in Kant and Baumgarten._]
-
-In fact, what was Kant's idea of art? Strange as our reply may
-seem to those who recollect the explicit and insistent war waged
-by him against the school of Wolff, and the concept of beauty as a
-perfection confusedly perceived, we must assert that Kant's idea of
-art was fundamentally the same as that of Baumgarten and the Wolffian
-school.[2] In that school his mind had been trained; he always had a
-great respect for Baumgarten whom in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ he
-calls "that excellent analyst"; he chose the text of Baumgarten for
-two of his University lectures on Metaphysics, and that of Meier for
-his lecture on Logic (_Vernunftlehre_). Kant, like them, therefore
-considered Logic and Æsthetic (or theory of art) as conjoined sciences.
-They were thus described by him in his _Scheme of Lectures_ in 1765,
-when he proposed, while expounding the critique of reason, to "throw a
-glance at that of taste, that is to say, at Æsthetic, since the rules
-of one apply to the other and each throws light upon the other."
-
-[Sidenote: _Kant's "Lectures."_]
-
-In his University lectures he distinguished æsthetic truth from logical
-truth in the style of Meier; even citing the example of the beautiful
-rosy face of a girl which, when seen distinctly, _i.e._ through a
-microscope, ceases to be beautiful.[3] It is æsthetically true (said
-he) that a man once dead cannot come to life again, although this
-is in opposition to logic and moral truth: it is æsthetically true
-that the sun plunges into the sea, but it is false logically and
-objectively. To what degree it is necessary to combine logical truth
-with æsthetic the learned have never yet been able to decide; not even
-the greatest æstheticians. In order to become accessible, logical
-concepts must assume æsthetic forms; a garb to be abandoned only in
-the rational sciences which seek profundity. Æsthetic certainty is
-subjective: it is content with authority, _i.e._ the citation of the
-opinions of great men. On account of our weakness, for we are strongly
-attached to the sensible, æsthetic perfection often helps us to render
-our thoughts distinct. In this, examples and images co-operate;
-æsthetic perfection is the vehicle for logical perfection; taste is
-the analogue of intellect. There are logical truths which are not
-æsthetic truths: and on the other hand we must exclude from abstract
-philosophy exclamations and other sentimental commotions proper to the
-other truth. Poetry is a harmonious play of thoughts and sensations.
-Poetry and eloquence differ in this: in the former, thoughts adapt
-themselves to sensations; in the latter the contrary is the case.
-In these lectures Kant sometimes taught that poetry is anterior to
-eloquence because sensations come before thoughts; and he observed
-(perhaps under Herder's influence) that the poetry of Eastern peoples,
-lacking concepts, is wanting in unity and taste although rich in
-imaginative detail. Poetry formed out of the pure play of sensibility
-is doubtless a possibility, _e.g._ love-poems: but true poetry disdains
-such productions, concerned as they are with sensations which every one
-knows ought to be expelled from our breasts. True poetry must strive
-to present virtue and intellectual truth in sensible form, as has been
-done by Pope in his _Essay on Man,_ in which he attempts to vivify
-poetry by means of reason. On other occasions Kant definitely says that
-logical perfection is the basis of every other, æsthetic perfection
-being merely an adornment of the logical; something of the latter may
-be omitted in order to appeal to the audience, but it must never be
-disguised or falsified.[4]
-
-This is Baumgartenism pure and simple; unless we are prepared to look
-on these Lectures as representing a pre-critical period of thought,
-or an exoteric doctrine superseded eventually by Kant's own original
-esoteric ideas in his _Critique of the Judgment_ (1790). Not to open
-such a controversy, let us put these Lectures on one side (although
-they often throw no little light on the signification of Kantian
-phrases and formulæ), and refuse to raise the question what pages
-of the _Critique of the Judgment_ are derived from Baumgarten and
-Meier; he who reads the works of these disciples of Wolff and passes
-immediately to the _Critique of Judgment_ often has the impression that
-the atmosphere surrounding him is unchanged. But if the _Critique of
-Judgment_ itself be examined without prejudice it will be seen that
-Kant always adhered to Baumgarten's conception of art as the sensible
-and imaginative vesture of an intellectual concept.
-
-[Sidenote: _Art in the "Critique of Judgment."_]
-
-According to Kant, art is not pure beauty wholly detached from the
-concept, it is adherent beauty, which presupposes and attaches
-itself to a concept.[5] This is the work of genius, the faculty of
-representing æsthetic ideas. An æsthetic idea is "a representation of
-the imagination which accompanies a given concept: a representation
-conjoined with such truthful representation of particulars as to be
-unable to find for it any expression that may mark a determinate
-concept, thereby endowing the given concept with something of the
-ineffable; a feeling which stimulates the cognitive faculties and
-reinforcing the tongue, which is simply the letter, with the spirit."
-Genius, then, has two constitutive elements, imagination and intellect;
-it consists in "that happy disposition, which no science can teach or
-diligence attain, to find ideas for a given concept and, also, to
-select the expression by which the subjective commotion it excites
-as accompaniment to a concept may be communicated to others." No
-concept is adequate to the æsthetic idea, as no representation of the
-imagination can ever possibly be adequate to the concept. Examples
-of æsthetic attributes are found in the eagle of Jupiter with the
-thunderbolt in its claws, and the peacock of the proud Queen of
-Heaven: "they do not, like logical attributes, represent that which
-is contained in our concepts of the sublimity or majesty of creation,
-but something else which gives occasion to the imagination to run
-riot over a multitude of kindred representations which make us think
-more than we can express in a given concept by means of words, and
-give us an æsthetic idea, which serves to this rational idea instead
-of a logical representation, precisely with the aim of quickening our
-feelings by throwing open to them a view over a vast field of kindred
-representations." There are a _modus logicos_ and a _modus æstheticus_
-of expressing our thoughts: the first consists in following determinate
-principles: the other in the mere feeling of the unity of the
-representation.[6] To imagination, to intellect and to spirit (_Geist_)
-we must add taste, the link between imagination and intellect.[7] Art
-may therefore represent natural ugliness: artistic beauty "is not a
-beautiful _thing_ but a beautiful representation of a thing": although
-the representation of ugliness has limits varying with the individual
-arts (a reminiscence of Lessing and Winckelmann), and an absolute limit
-at the disgusting and nauseating, which kill representation itself.[8]
-In natural things, too, there is adherent beauty which cannot be judged
-by the æsthetic judgement alone but demands a concept. Nature thus
-appears as a work of art, though superhuman art: "the teleological
-judgement is the basis and condition of the æsthetic." When we say
-"this is a beautiful woman," we merely mean that "nature beautifully
-represents in the form of this woman her purpose in the construction
-of the female body": it is necessary therefore, besides noting simple
-form, to aim at a concept, "so that the object may be apprehended
-through an æsthetic judgement logically conditioned."[9] By this
-means is formed the ideal of beauty in the human face, the expression
-of moral life.[10] Kant admits that there may also be artistic
-productions without a concept, comparable with the free beauties of
-nature, flowers and some birds (parrot, humming-bird, bird of paradise,
-etc.): ornamental drawings, cornice-mouldings, musical fantasies
-without words, represent nothing, no object reducible to a determined
-concept, and must be reckoned among free beauties.[11] But does not
-this necessitate their exclusion from true and proper art, from the
-operation of genius in which fancy and intellect must both, according
-to Kant, have a place?
-
-[Sidenote: _Imagination in Kant's system._]
-
-This is Baumgartenism transposed into a higher key, more concentrated,
-more elaborated, more suggestive, until from moment to moment it seems
-about to burst into a wholly different conception of art. But it is
-still Baumgartenism, from whose intellectualistic bonds it never
-escapes. Nor was escape possible. A profound concept of imagination was
-entirely lacking to Kant's system and his philosophy of the spirit.
-Glancing over the table of faculties of the spirit which precedes
-his _Critique of Judgment,_ we see that Kant co-ordinates with it
-the cognitive faculty, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the
-appetitive faculty; to the first corresponds intellect, to the second,
-judgement (teleological and æsthetic), to the third, reason;[12] he
-finds no place for imagination amongst powers of the spirit but places
-it among the facts of sensation. He knows a reproductive imagination
-and an associative, but he knows nothing of a genuinely productive
-imagination, imagination in the proper sense.[13] We have seen that, in
-his doctrine, genius is the co-operation of several faculties.
-
-[Sidenote: _The forms of intuition and the Transcendental Æsthetic._]
-
-Yet sometimes Kant had an inkling that intellectual activity is
-preceded by something which is not mere sensational material, but
-is an independent non-intellectual theoretical form. He obtained a
-glimpse of this latter form not when he was reflecting on art in the
-strict sense but when he was examining the process of knowledge: he
-does not treat of it in his _Critique of Judgment,_ but in the first
-section of his _Critique of Pure Reason,_ in the first part of the
-_Transcendental Doctrine of Elements._ He says here that sensations
-only enter the spirit when the latter itself gives them form; a form
-not identical with that which intellect gives to sensations, but
-much simpler, namely pure intuition, the totality of the _a priori_
-principles of sensibility. There must therefore be "a science which
-forms the first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements,
-distinct from that which contains the principles of pure thought and is
-named transcendental Logic." Now, what name does Kant confer upon this
-science whose existence he has deduced? None other than Transcendental
-Æsthetic (_die transcendentale Ästhetik_). In a note he even insists
-that this is the right name for the new science of which he treats, and
-censures the Germans for their habit of applying it to the Critique of
-Taste, which, as he thought at that time, could never become a science.
-Thus, he concludes, we approach more closely to the usage of the
-ancients, among whom the distinction between _αἰσθητὰ καὶ νοητά_[14]
-was well known.
-
-Nevertheless, after having so rightly postulated the necessity
-for a science of the forms of sensation or pure intuition, purely
-intuitive knowledge, Kant went on, simply because he had no exact idea
-of the nature of the æsthetic faculty and of art, to fall into an
-intellectualistic error by reducing the form of sensibility or pure
-intuition into the two categories or functions of space and time,
-and by asserting that the spirit emerges from the chaos of sensation
-by organizing its sensations in space and time.[15] But space and
-time as such are very far from being primitive categories; they are
-relatively late and complex formations.[16] As examples of the matter
-of sensation Kant quoted hardness, impenetrability, colour and so
-forth. But the mind only recognizes colour and hardness in so far as it
-has already given form to its sensations; considered as brute matter,
-sensations fall outside the cognitive spirit, they are a limit; colour,
-hardness, impenetrability and so on, when recognized, are already
-intuitions, spiritual elaborations, the æsthetic activity in its
-rudimentary manifestation. The characterizing or qualifying imagination
-which is æsthetic activity ought to have occupied in the _Critique of
-Pure Reason_ the pages devoted to the discussion of space and time,
-and would thus have constituted a real Transcendental Æsthetic, a real
-prologue to the transcendental Logic. In this manner Kant would have
-achieved the truth aimed at by Leibniz and Baumgarten and would have
-joined hands with Vico.
-
-[Sidenote: _Theory of Beauty distinguished by Kant from that of Art._]
-
-His repeatedly announced opposition to the school of Wolff concerns not
-the concept of art but that of Beauty; two concepts for Kant entirely
-distinct. First of all, he did not admit that sensation could be
-called "confused knowledge," a confused form, that is, of intellectual
-cognition; rightly judging this to be a false account of sensibility,
-since a concept, however confused, is always a concept or a rough
-sketch of a concept, never an intuition.[17] But he further denied that
-pure beauty contained a concept, and therefore denied that it was a
-perfection sensibly apprehended. These reflexions have no doubt some
-connexion with those concerning the nature of art in the _Critique of
-Judgment;_ but the connexion is far from close, still less are they
-actually fused into a single whole. That Kant was minutely familiar
-with eighteenth-century writers who had discussed beauty and taste is
-shown by his Lectures, wherein they are all quoted and used.[18] Of
-these the greater part, especially the English, were sensationalists,
-others intellectualists; some few, as we have noted, were inclined
-towards mysticism. Kant began by tending towards sensationalism
-in æsthetic problems, then became the adversary of sensationalists
-and intellectualists alike. This development can be traced in his
-_Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime,_ as well as in his
-Lectures; its final expression is reached in the _Critique of Judgment._
-
-Of the four moments, as he calls them, _i.e._ the four determinations,
-he accords to Beauty, the two negative are directed, one against the
-sensationalists, the other against the intellectualists. "That is
-beautiful which pleases _without interest_": "That is beautiful which
-pleases _without concepts_."[19] Here he asserts the existence of a
-spiritual region, distinct on one side from the pleasurable, the useful
-and the good, and on the other from truth. But this region, as we know
-very well, is not that of art, which Kant attaches to the concept: it
-is the region of a special activity of feeling which he calls judgement
-or, more exactly, æsthetic judgement.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mystical features in Kant's theory of Beauty._]
-
-The other two moments give some kind of a definition of this region:
-"That is beautiful which has the form of finality without the
-representation of an end": "That is beautiful which is the object of
-universal pleasure."[20] What is this mysterious sphere? What this
-disinterested pleasure we experience in pure colours and tones, in
-flowers, and even in adherent beauty when we make abstraction from the
-concept to which it adheres?
-
-Our answer is: there is no such sphere; it does not exist; the
-examples given are instances either of pleasure in general or of
-facts of artistic expression. Kant, who so emphatically criticizes
-the sensationalists and the intellectualists, does not show the same
-severity towards the neo-Platonic line of thought whose revival we
-remarked in the eighteenth century. Winckelmann in particular exercised
-strong influence over his mind. In one course of his Lectures we find
-him making a curious distinction between form and matter: in music
-melody is matter and harmony form: in a flower the scent is material
-and the shape (_Gestalt)_ is form (_Form_).[21] This reappears
-slightly modified in the _Critique of Judgment._ "In painting,
-statuary and all the figurative arts in architecture and gardening,
-so far as they are fine arts, the drawing is the essential; in which
-the foundation of taste lies not in what gratifies (_vergnügt_) in
-sensation, but in that which pleases (_gefällt_) by its form. The
-colours which illuminate the drawing belong to sensuous stimulus
-(_Reiz_) and may bring the object more vividly before the senses, but
-do not render it worthy of contemplation as a thing of beauty; they
-are, moreover, often limited by the exigencies of the beautiful form,
-and even where their sensuous stimulus is legitimate, they are ennobled
-only by the beautiful form."[22] Continuing in pursuit of this phantasm
-of beauty which is not the beauty of art nor yet the pleasing, and is
-equally detached from expressiveness and pleasure, Kant loses himself
-in insoluble contradictions. Little inclined to submit himself to the
-charm of imagination, abhorring "poetic philosophers" like Herder,[23]
-he makes statements and refuses to commit himself to them, affirms
-and immediately criticizes his affirmations, and wraps up Beauty in
-a mystery which, at bottom, was nothing more than his own individual
-incertitude and inability to see clearly the existence of an activity
-of feeling which, in the spirit of his sane philosophy, represented a
-logical contradiction. "Necessary and universal pleasure" and "finality
-without the idea of an end" are the organized expression in words of
-this contradiction.
-
-By way of clearing up the contradiction he arrives at the following
-thought: "The judgement of taste is founded on a concept (the concept
-of a general foundation of the subjective teleology of nature through
-judgement); but it is a concept by which it is impossible to know or
-demonstrate anything of the object, because the object in itself is
-indeterminable and unsuited to cognition; on the other hand, it has
-validity for every one (for every one, I say, in so far as it is an
-individual judgement, immediately accompanying intuition), since its
-determining reason reposes, perhaps, in the concept of that which may
-be regarded as the supersensible substrate of mankind." Beauty, then,
-is a symbol of morality. "The subjective principle alone, that is the
-indeterminate idea of the supersensible in us, can be considered the
-only key able to unlock this faculty springing from a source we cannot
-fathom: excepting by its aid, no comprehension of it can possibly
-be reached."[24] These cautious words, and all others here used by
-Kant to conceal his thoughts, do not hide his tendency to mysticism.
-A mysticism without conviction or enthusiasm, almost in spite of
-himself, but very evident nevertheless. His inadequate grasp of the
-æsthetic activity led him to see double, even triple, and caused the
-unnecessary multiplication of his explanatory principles. Although he
-was always ignorant of the genuine nature of the æsthetic activity, he
-was indebted to it for suggesting to him the pure categories of space
-and time as the Transcendental Æsthetic; it caused him to develop the
-theory of imaginative embellishment of intellectual concepts by the
-work of genius; finally it forced him to acknowledge a mysterious
-faculty of feeling, midway between theoretical and practical activity,
-cognitive and yet not cognitive, moral and indifferent to morality,
-pleasing yet wholly detached from the pleasure of the senses. Great
-use of this power was made by Kant's immediate successors in Germany
-who were delighted to find their daring speculations supported by that
-severe critic of experience, the philosopher of Königsberg.
-
-
-[1] B. Spaventa, _Prolus. ed introd. alle lezioni di filosofia,_
-Naples, 1862 pp. 83-102; _Scritti filosofici,_ ed. Gentile, pp.
-139-145, 303-307.
-
-[2] _Kritik d. rein. Vernunft_ (ed. Kirchmann), i. 1, § 1, note.
-
-[3] See above, p. 244.
-
-[4] Extract from Kant's lectures of 1764 and later, in O. Schlapp,
-_Kant's Lehre vom Genie, passim,_ esp. pp. 17, 58, 59, 79, 93, 96,
-131-134, 136-137, 222, 225, 231-232, etc.
-
-[5] _Kritik d. Urtheilskraft_ (ed. Kirchmann), § 16.
-
-[6] _Kritik d. Urth._ § 49.
-
-[7] _Op. cit._ § 50.
-
-[8] _Op. cit._ § 48.
-
-[9] _Krit. d. Urth._ § 48.
-
-[10] _Op. cit._ § 17.
-
-[11] _Op. cit._ § 16.
-
-[12] For the historical genesis of this tripartition, cf. remarks in
-Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp. 150-153.
-
-[13] See also _Anthropol._ (ed. Kirchmann), §§ 26-31; cf. Schlapp, _op.
-cit._ p. 296.
-
-[14] _Kritik d. rein. Vernunft,_ i. I, § 1 and note.
-
-[15] _Op. cit._ §§ 1-8.
-
-[16] See above, pp. 4-5.
-
-[17] _Krit. d. r. Vern._ § 8, and introd. to § ii.; cf. _Krit. d.
-Urth._ § 15.
-
-[18] See catalogue in Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp. 403-404, and _passim._
-
-[19] _Krit. d. Urth._ §§ 1-9.
-
-[20] _Op. cit._ §§ 10-22.
-
-[21] Schlapp, _op. cit._ p. 78.
-
-[22] _Krit. d. Urth._ § 14.
-
-[23] For Kant's judgement of Herder, see Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp.
-320-327, note.
-
-[24] _Kritik d. Orth._ §§ 57-59.
-
-
-
-
-IX
-
-
-THE ÆSTHETIC OF IDEALISM: SCHILLER, SCHELLING, SOLGER, HEGEL
-
-
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The "Critique of Judgment" and metaphysical idealism._]
-
-It is well known that Schelling held the _Critique of Judgment_ to be
-the most important of the three Kantian _Critiques,_ and that Hegel
-together with the great majority of the followers of metaphysical
-idealism had a special affection for the book. According to them the
-third _Critique_ was the attempt to bridge the gulf, to resolve the
-antitheses between liberty and necessity, teleology and mechanism,
-spirit and nature: it was the correction Kant was preparing for
-himself, the concrete vision which dispelled the last traces of his
-abstract subjectivism.
-
-[Sidenote: _F. Schiller._]
-
-The same admiration and an opinion even more favourable were extended
-by them to Friedrich Schiller, the first to elaborate that part
-of Kant's philosophy and to study the third sphere which united
-sensibility to reason. "It was the artistic sense dwelling in his
-also profoundly philosophical mind," says Hegel, "which, against the
-abstract infinity of Kant's thought, against his living for duty,
-against his conception of nature and reality, and of sense and feeling
-as utterly hostile to intellect, asserted the necessity and enunciated
-the principle of totality and reconciliation, even before it had been
-recognized by professed philosophers: to Schiller must be allowed the
-great merit of having been the first to oppose the subjectivity of
-Kant, and of having dared try to go beyond it."[1]
-
-[Sidenote: _Relations between Schiller and Kant._]
-
-Discussion has raged around the true relation between Schiller and
-Kant, and it has lately been maintained that his Æsthetic was not, as
-would seem to be the case, derived from Kant, but from the pandynamism
-which, starting from Leibniz, had propagated itself in Germany through
-Creuzens, Ploucket and Reimarus down to Herder, who had conceived
-a wholly animated nature.[2] There can be no doubt that Schiller
-shared Herder's conception, as may be seen from the theosophical tone
-of the fragment of correspondence between Julius and Raphæl and in
-other writings. It cannot be denied, however, that whatever personal
-feelings Kant may have had towards Herder, or Herder towards his
-former teacher (against whose _Critique of Judgment_ he published his
-_Kaligone,_ as he had replied to the _Critique of Pure Reason_ with his
-_Metacritica_), when Kant in a somewhat dubious manner made the first
-step towards a reconciliation, the breach was at all events partially
-healed. The dispute is therefore of small importance: we shall find it
-more useful to observe that Schiller introduced an important correction
-of Kant's views when he obliterated every trace of the double theory
-of art and the beautiful, giving no weight to the distinction drawn
-between pure and adherent beauty, and finally abandoning the mechanical
-conception of art as consisting in beauty joined to the intellectual
-concept. It was certainly his own experience of active artistic work
-that led him to this simplification.
-
-[Sidenote: _The æsthetic sphere as the sphere of Play._]
-
-Schiller defined the æsthetic sphere as the sphere of play (_Spiel_);
-the unfortunate term, suggested to him partly by some phrases of Kant,
-partly, perhaps, by an article on card-games by one Weisshuhn which he
-published in his review _The Hours_ (_Die Horen_),[3] has given rise
-to the belief that he anticipated certain modern doctrines of artistic
-activity as the overflow of exuberant spirits, analogous with the play
-of children and animals. Schiller did not fail to warn his readers
-against such a mistaken interpretation (to which, however, he lent
-himself) when he begged them not to think of "games in real life,
-which are usually concerned with wholly material things," nor yet of
-the idle dreaming of the imagination left to itself.[4] The activity
-of the play of which he treated held the mean between the material
-activity of the senses, of nature, of animal instinct or passion as
-it is called, and the formal activity of intellect and morality. The
-man who plays, _i.e._ contemplates nature æsthetically and produces
-art, sees all natural objects as animated; in such a phantasmagoria
-mere natural necessity gives place to the free determination of the
-faculties; spirit appears as spontaneously reconciled with nature,
-form with matter. Beauty is life, the living form (_lebende Gestalt)_;
-not life in the physiological sense, since beauty does not extend
-throughout all physiological life, nor is it restricted to that alone:
-marble when worked by an artist may have a living form; and a man,
-although possessed of life and form, need not be a living form.[5]
-Wherefore art must conquer nature with form: "in an artistic work of
-true beauty the content ought to be nil, the form everything: by form
-man is influenced in his entirety; by content in his separate faculties
-only. The true secret of great artists is that they cancel matter
-through form (_den Stoff durch die Form vertilgt)_; the more imposing,
-overwhelming or seductive the matter is in itself, the greater its
-obstinacy in striving to emphasize its own particular effect, the more
-the spectator inclines to lose himself immediately in the matter, so
-much the more triumphant is the art which brings it into subjection
-and enforces its own sovereign power. The mind of hearer or spectator
-should remain perfectly free and calm; from the magic circle of art
-it should issue as pure and perfect as when it left the hands of the
-Creator. The most frivolous object should be treated in such a manner
-as to enable us to pass at once to the most serious matters; and the
-most serious in such a way that we may pass from them to the lightest
-game." There is a fine art of passion; a passionate fine art would be
-a contradiction in terms.[6] "So long as man in his early physical
-state passively absorbs the world of senses and simply feels it, he is
-one with it; and precisely because he merely is a world there is for
-him as yet no world at all. Only when in his æsthetic state he places
-the world outside himself and contemplates it, does he detach his
-personality from the rest; then a world appears to him, since he is no
-longer one with the world."[7]
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic education._]
-
-Schiller ascribed high educational value to art thus conceived as at
-once sensible and rational, material and formal. Not that it teaches
-moral precepts or excites to good actions; if it acted thus, or when
-it acted thus, it would at once cease, as we have seen, to be art.
-Determination in whatsoever direction, to the good or the bad, to
-pleasure or to duty, destroys the character of the æsthetic sphere,
-which is rather indeterminism. By means of art man frees himself from
-the yoke of the senses; but before putting himself spontaneously under
-that of reason and duty, he takes as it were a little breathing-space
-by staying in a region of indifference and serene contemplation. "While
-having no claim to promote exclusively any special human faculty, the
-æsthetic condition is favourable to each and all without favouritism;
-and the reason why it favours none in particular is that it is the
-foundation of the possibility of all alike. Every other exercise gives
-some inclination to the soul, and therefore presupposes a special
-limit; æsthetic activity alone is unlimited." This indifference, which
-if not yet pure form is not pure matter, confers its educational value
-on art; it opens a way to morality, not by preaching and persuading,
-that is to say, determining, but by making determination possible.
-Such is the fundamental concept of his celebrated _Letters on the
-Æsthetic Education of Man_ (1795), in which Schiller took his cue from
-the conditions of his times and from the necessity of finding a middle
-way between supine acquiescence in tyranny and savage rebellion as
-exemplified by the revolution then raging in France.
-
-[Sidenote: _Vagueness and lack of precision in Schiller's Æsthetic._]
-
-The defects of Schiller's æsthetic doctrine are its lack of precision
-and its generality. Who has given a better description of certain
-aspects of art, the catharsis produced by artistic activity, the
-serenity and calm resulting from the domination over natural
-impressions? Equally just is his remark that art, although wholly
-independent of morality, is in some way connected with it. But what
-precisely this connexion may be, or what the exact nature of æsthetic
-activity, Schiller does not succeed in explaining. Conceiving the
-moral and intellectual as the only formal activities (_Formtrieb)_ and
-denying as a convinced anti-sensationalist in opposition to Burke and
-philosophers of his type that art can belong to the passionate and
-sensuous nature (_Stofftrieb_), he cut himself off from the means of
-recognizing the general category to which artistic activity belongs.
-His own concept of the formal is too narrow: too narrow, also, his
-concept of the cognitive activity, in which he is able to see the
-logical or intellectual form, but not that of the imagination. What
-for him was this art he describes as an activity neither formal nor
-material, neither cognitive nor moral? Was it for him, as for Kant,
-an activity of feeling, a play of several faculties at once? It would
-seem so, since Schiller distinguishes four points of view or relations
-of man with things: the physical, in which these affect our senses:
-the logical, in which they excite knowledge: the moral, in which they
-appear to us as an object of rational volition: and the æsthetic
-"in which they refer to our powers in entirety without becoming the
-determinate object of any one faculty." For example, a man is pleased
-æsthetically when his feeling depends in no way on the pleasure of
-the senses and when he is not conscious of thinking about any law or
-end.[8] We look in vain for any more conclusive reply.
-
-It must not be overlooked that Schiller delivered a course of lectures
-on Æsthetic in Jena University in 1792, and that his writings on the
-subject intended for reviews were couched in a popular style: no
-less popular, in his own opinion, was the style of the book quoted
-above, which grew out of a series of letters actually sent to his
-patron the Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg. But the great work to be
-entitled _Rallias,_ which he intended writing upon Æsthetic, was never
-completed; the only fragments which have reached us are contained in
-the correspondence with Körner (1793-1794). From the discussions between
-the two friends we gather that Körner was not satisfied with Schiller's
-formula and desired something objective, something more precise, a
-positive characteristic of the beautiful: and one day Schiller told him
-that he had definitely discovered such a characteristic. But what it
-was that he had discovered we do not know; no mention of it occurs in
-any further document, and we are left in doubt as to whether we have
-lost an integral part of his thought or merely the momentary illusion
-of a discovery.
-
-[Sidenote: _Schiller's caution and the rashness of the Romanticists._]
-
-The uncertainty and vagueness of Schiller's theory seem almost a merit
-in contrast with that which followed. He had constituted himself
-guardian of the teaching of Kant and refused to abandon the realm of
-criticism; faithful disciple of his master, he conceived the third
-sphere not as real but as an ideal, a concept not constitutive but
-regulative, an imperative. "From transcendental motives, reason here
-demands that communion be established between formal and material
-activity; that is to say, there must be an activity of play, since the
-concept of humanity can be complete only by the union of reality with
-form, the accidental with the necessary, passivity with liberty. This
-demand must be made because reason, in conformity with her essence,
-aims at perfection and at sweeping away all obstacles; and every
-exclusive operation of one or other activity leaves humanity incomplete
-and confined within limits."[9] Schiller's thought, as it appears in
-his correspondence with Körner, has been well represented as follows:"
-The union of sensibility with liberty in the Beautiful, which does
-not actually take place but is supposed to do so, suggests to man
-an intuition of the union of these elements within himself: a union
-which does not take place actually but ought to do so."[10] The times
-which followed had no such nice scruples. Kant had given new vigour
-to the production of works on æsthetic, and, as in the days following
-Baumgarten, every new year saw a number of new treatises. It was the
-fashion. "Nothing swarms like æstheticians" (wrote Jean Paul Richter
-in 1804 when preparing his own book on the subject for publication):
-"it is rare for a youth who has paid his fees for a course of lectures
-on Æsthetic not to produce a book on some point of the science in the
-hope that the public may refund him his expenses by buying his book:
-some there are indeed who pay their professor's fees out of their
-author's royalties."[11] It was hoped, not unreasonably, that the
-exploration of the obscure region of æsthetic might throw some light
-on metaphysics, and the procedure of artists seemed to offer a good
-example to philosophers seeking to create a world for themselves:
-so philosophy modelled itself upon art and, as though to render the
-transition easier, the concept of art was brought as close as possible
-to that of philosophy. Romanticism, gaining vogue daily, was a renewal
-or continuation of that "age of genius" in which the youth of Goethe
-and Schiller had been passed; and as the period of _Sturm und Drang_
-had zealously worshipped the genius who breaks all rules and oversteps
-all limitations, so did Romanticism hail the domination of a faculty
-called Fancy, or more frequently Imagination, to which were attributed
-the most diverse characteristics and the most miraculous effects.
-
-[Sidenote: _Ideas on Art: J. P. Richter._]
-
-The Romantic theorists, artists themselves for the most part, abounded
-in truthful and subtle observations concerning artistic procedure. Jean
-Paul Richter makes many excellent remarks about productive imagination,
-which he distinguishes clearly from the reproductive and asserts to be
-shared by all men as soon as they are able to say "This is beautiful";
-for "how could a genius be acclaimed or even tolerated for a single
-month, not to mention thousands of centuries, by the common herd, if
-he had not a strong connecting-link of relationship with the herd?" He
-also describes how imagination is variously divided among individuals:
-as simple talent, as passive or feminine genius, and in the highest
-degree as the active or masculine genius, formed by reflexion and
-instinct, in which "all faculties flourish simultaneously and fancy
-is no isolated flower, but the goddess Flora herself who, in order
-to produce new combinations, crosses with each other those blossoms
-whose conjunction is fertile, and is, so to speak, a faculty full of
-faculties."[12] This latter sentence betrays a tendency on Richter's
-part to exaggerate the functions of imagination and to construct upon
-it a kind of mythology.
-
-[Sidenote: _Romantic Æsthetic and idealistic Æsthetic._]
-
-Contemporary systems of philosophy are partly impregnated with, and
-partly the source of, such mythologies: the Romantic conception of
-art may be said to have found its most complete expression in German
-idealism, where this attained its most coherent and systematic form.
-
-[Sidenote: _J. G. Fichte._]
-
-It did not attain this form with Fichte, the first great pupil of Kant;
-for though Fichte regarded imagination as the activity which creates
-the universe, effects the synthesis of the ego and the non-ego, posits
-the object and therefore precedes consciousness, he does not connect it
-with art.[13] In his æsthetic notions Fichte is influenced by Schiller,
-with the addition of a moralism imposed upon him by the general
-character of his system; hence the ethical sphere, midway between the
-cognitive and the æsthetic, becomes from his point of view a mere
-appurtenance of morality, as being the representation of, and hence
-reverence for, the moral ideal.[14] His subjective idealism eventually
-produced an æsthetic doctrine through the work of Friedrich Schlegel
-and Ludwig Tieck; the doctrine of Irony as the basis of art.
-
-[Sidenote: _Irony: Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis._]
-
-The ego which created the universe can also destroy it; the universe is
-an empty appearance at which the only true reality, the ego, can smile,
-holding itself aloof, like an artist or a creative god, from creatures
-of its own which it does not take seriously.[15] Friedrich Schlegel
-described art as a perpetual parody of itself and a "transcendental
-farce." Tieck defined irony as "a power which allows the poet to
-dominate the matter which he handles." Another Romantic Fichtian,
-Novalis, dreamed of a magical idealism, an art of creation by the
-instantaneous act of the ego and of realizing our dreams.
-
-[Sidenote: _F. Schelling._]
-
-But it is only to the _System of Transcendental Idealism_ (1800) of
-Schelling, to his _Bruno_ (1802), to his celebrated course of lectures
-on the _Philosophy of Art_ given at Jena in 1802-1803 (repeated at
-Würzburg, and distributed subsequently in manuscript notes all over
-Germany), to the no less celebrated lecture on the _Relation between
-the Figurative Arts and Nature_ (1807), as well as to other works
-of this eloquent and enthusiastic philosopher that we owe the first
-great philosophical affirmation of Romanticism, and of a renewed and
-conscious neo-Platonism in Æsthetic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Beauty and character._]
-
-Like all the other idealistic philosophers, Schelling held firmly to
-the fusion of the theories of art and the beautiful already effected
-by Schiller. From this point of view it is interesting to note his
-explanation of the condemnation of art by Plato: this condemnation,
-says Schelling, was directed against the art of his time, the natural
-and realistic art of antiquity in general, with its character of
-finitude: Plato could not have uttered such a condemnation (as we
-moderns are unable to utter it) if he had known Christian art, whose
-characteristic is infinity.[16] The pure abstract beauty of Winckelmann
-is not enough; no less inadequate, false and negative is that concept
-of the characteristic which would try to make art something dead, hard
-and ugly by imposing upon it the limitations of the individual. Art is
-beauty and characteristic in one; characteristic beauty, character from
-which beauty is evolved, according to Goethe's saying; it is therefore
-not the individual but the living concept of the individual. When the
-artist's eye recognizes the creative idea of the individual and draws
-it forth, he transforms the individual into a world in itself, into a
-species (_Gattung_), an eternal idea (_Urbild_), and fears no more the
-limitation or hardness which is the condition of life: characteristic
-beauty is that plenitude of form which kills form; it does not inflame
-passion, it regulates it, like the banks of a river which are filled
-but not overflowed by the waters.[17] In all of this we feel the
-influence of Schiller, with something added which Schiller could never
-have expressed.
-
-[Sidenote: _Art and Philosophy._]
-
-Indeed, whilst gratefully acknowledging the excellent contributions to
-the theory of art made by the writers who succeeded Kant, Schelling
-laments that in none of them can he find exact scientific method
-(_Wissenschaftlichkeit_),[18] The true point of departure in his
-theory is in the philosophy of nature, _i.e._ in that criticism of
-the teleological judgement which Kant places directly after that of
-the æsthetic judgement in his third _Critique._ Teleology is the
-union of theoretical and practical philosophy; but the system would
-be incomplete but for the possibility of demonstrating in the subject
-itself, in the ego, the identity of the two worlds, theoretical and
-practical; an activity which has, and at the same time has not,
-consciousness; unconscious as nature, conscious as spirit. This
-activity is precisely the æsthetic activity: "the general organ of
-philosophy, keystone of the whole edifice."[19] There are but two ways
-open to one who is desirous of escaping from common realities: poetry,
-which transports into the ideal world; and philosophy which annihilates
-the real world.[20] Strictly speaking, "there is but one sole absolute
-work of art; it may exist in various exemplars, but in itself it is
-one, although it may not yet possess existence in its original form."
-True art is not the impression of one moment, but the representation
-of infinite life;[21] it is transcendental intuition become objective,
-and is therefore not only the organ but the document of philosophy.
-A time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, from which
-she has detached herself; and from the new philosophy a new mythology
-will arise.[22] The Absolute is thus the object of art as well as of
-philosophy (as Schelling insists elsewhere in greater detail): the
-first represents it in idea (_Urbild_), the second in its reflexion
-(_Gegenbild)_: "philosophy portrays ideas, not realities: so is it with
-art: those same ideas of which real things, as philosophy demonstrates,
-are imperfect copies, themselves appear in the objective arts as
-ideas, _i.e._ in all their perfection, and represent the intellectual
-world in the world of reflexion."[23] Music is the "very ideal rhythm
-of Nature and the Universe, which by means of this art makes itself
-felt in the derivative world"; perfect creations of statuary are "the
-very ideas of organic nature represented objectively"; the Homeric
-epic, "the very identity constituting the foundation of history in the
-Absolute."[24] But while philosophy gives an immediate representation
-of the Divine, of absolute Identity, art can but give the immediate
-representation of Indifference; and "since the degree of perfection
-or reality in a thing becomes higher in proportion as it approaches
-nearer to the absolute Idea and the fulness of infinite affirmation
-and in proportion as it comprehends within itself other powers, it is
-clear that art, above everything else, is in closest relation with
-philosophy, from which it is distinguished merely by the character
-of its specification: in everything else it may be considered as the
-highest power in the ideal world."[25] To the three powers of the real
-and ideal world correspond in a rising scale the three ideas of Truth,
-Goodness and Beauty. Beauty is neither the mere universal (truth),
-nor mere reality (action), but the perfect interpenetration of both:
-"beauty exists when the particular (the real) is so adequate to its
-concept that the latter, as infinite, enters the finite and presents
-itself to our contemplation in concrete form. With the appearance of
-the concept, the real becomes truly similar and equal to the idea,
-wherein the universal and the particular find their absolute identity.
-Without ceasing to be rational, the rational becomes at the same time
-apparent and sensible."[26] But as above the three powers is poised
-God, their point of union, so Philosophy stands supreme over the three
-ideas; concerning itself not with truth or morality or even beauty
-alone, but with that which belongs to all the three in common, deduced
-from one common source. If philosophy assumes the character of science
-and truth, while yet remaining superior to truth, this is made possible
-by the fact that science and truth are its formal determination;
-"philosophy is science in the sense that truth, goodness and beauty,
-_i.e._ science, virtue and art, interpenetrate each other; therefore
-it is also not science but is that which is common to science, virtue
-and art." This interpenetration distinguishes philosophy from all other
-sciences; for instance, if mathematics can dispense with morality and
-beauty, philosophy cannot do so.[27]
-
-[Sidenote: _Ideas and the gods. Art and mythology._]
-
-In Beauty are contained truth and goodness, necessity and liberty. When
-beauty appears to be in conflict with truth, the truth in question
-is a finite truth with which beauty ought not to agree, because, as
-we have seen, the art of naturalism and of the merely characteristic
-is a false art.[28] The individual forms of art, being in themselves
-representatives of the infinite and the universe, are called Ideas.[29]
-Considered from the point of view of reality, Ideas are gods; their
-essence, their "in-itself," is in fact equivalent to God; every idea
-is an idea so far as it is God in a particular form; every idea,
-therefore, is equal to God, but to a particular god. Characteristic of
-all the gods is pure limitation and indivisible absoluteness: Minerva
-is the idea of wisdom united with strength, but she is lacking in
-womanly tenderness; Juno is power without wisdom and without the sweet
-attraction of love, for which she is forced to borrow the cestus of
-Venus; Venus again has not the weighty wisdom of Minerva. What would
-become of these ideas if deprived of their limitations? They would
-cease to be objects of Imagination.[30] Imagination is a faculty which
-has no connexion with pure intellect or with reason (_Vernunft_) and is
-distinct from fancy (_Einbildungskraft_) which collects and arranges
-the products of art, whereas imagination intuits them, forms them out
-of itself, represents them. Imagination is to fancy as intellectual
-intuition is to reason: it is therefore the intellectual intuition of
-art.[31] "Reason" no longer suffices in a philosophy such as this:
-intellectual intuition, which for Kant was a limiting concept, is now
-asserted as really existing: intellect sinks to a subordinate place:
-even the genuine imagination which operates in art is overshadowed
-by this new-fangled Imagination, twin with intellectual Intuition,
-who sometimes changes places with this sister of hers. Mythology
-is proclaimed a necessary condition of all art: mythology which is
-not allegory, for in the latter the particular signifies only the
-universal, while the former is already itself the universal; which
-explains how easy it is to allegorize, and how fascinating are such
-poems as those of Homer which lend themselves to such interpretations.
-Christian, as well as Hellenic, art has its mythology: Christ; the
-persons of the Trinity; the Virgin mother of God.[32] The fine between
-mythology and art is as shadowy as that between art and philosophy.
-
-[Sidenote: _K. W. Solger._]
-
-The year 1815 saw the publication of Solger's principal work, _Erwin,_
-a long philosophical dialogue on the beautiful; subsequently in
-1819 he gave a course of lectures on Æsthetic which were published
-posthumously. He was one of those who found but a glimpse of truth
-in Kant and held the post-Kantians in very slight estimation,
-particularly Fichte; in Schelling, who begins from the original unity
-of the subjective and the objective, he detects for the first time a
-speculative principle not adequately developed, since Schelling had
-never triumphed dialectically over the difficulties of intellectual
-intuition.[33]
-
-[Sidenote: _Fancy and Imagination._]
-
-Solger was one of those who conceived of Imagination as totally
-distinct from Fancy: fancy (says he) belongs to common cognition
-and is none other than "the human consciousness, in so far as it
-continues, in temporal succession, infinitely reasserting an original
-intuition"; it presupposes the distinctions between common cognition,
-abstraction and judgement, concept and representation, amongst which
-"it acts as mediator by giving to the general concept the form of
-individual representation; and to the latter the form of a general
-concept; in this manner it has its being among the antitheses of the
-ordinary understanding." Imagination is totally different; proceeding
-"from the original unity of the antitheses in the Idea, it acts so
-that the elements in opposition, separated as they are from the idea,
-find themselves united in the reality; by its means we are capable
-of apprehending objects higher than those of common cognition and of
-recognizing in them the idea itself as real: also, in art, it is the
-faculty of transforming the idea into reality." It presents itself
-in three modes or degrees: as Imagination of the Imagination, which
-conceives the whole as idea, and activity as nothing more than the
-development of the idea in reality; as Sensibility of the Imagination,
-in so far as it expresses the life of the idea in the real and reduces
-the one to the other; lastly (and here we have the highest grade of
-artistic activity, corresponding with Dialectic in philosophy) as
-Intellect of the Imagination or artistic Dialectic, conceiving idea and
-reality in such a way that one passes over into the other, that is to
-say, into reality. Other divisions and subdivisions are made on which
-it is not necessary to dwell. Imagination is said to produce the Irony
-essential to true art: this is the Irony of Tieck and Novalis, of whom
-Solger is in a sense a follower.[34]
-
-[Sidenote: _Art, practice and religion._]
-
-Solger joins Schelling in placing beauty in the region of the Idea,
-inaccessible to common consciousness. It is distinct from the idea
-of Truth, because instead of dissolving the appearances of common
-consciousness after the manner of truth, art accomplishes the
-miracle of making appearance dissolve itself while still remaining
-appearance; artistic thought, therefore, is practical, not theoretical.
-Furthermore, it is distinct from the idea of Goodness, with which
-at first sight it would seem to be closely related, because in the
-case of Goodness the union of ideal with real, of the simple with the
-multiple, of the infinite with the finite, is not real and complete,
-but remains ideal, a mere ought-to-be. It is related more closely
-to Religion, which thinks the Idea as the abyss of life where our
-individual conscience must lose itself in order to become "essential"
-(_wesentlich_), while in beauty and art the Idea manifests itself by
-gathering into itself the world of distinctions between universal
-and particular and placing itself in their place. Artistic activity
-is more than theoretical, it is of a practical nature, but realized
-and perfected; art, therefore, belongs not to theoretical philosophy
-(as Kant thought, according to Solger), but to practical. Necessarily
-attached on one side to infinity, it cannot have common nature as its
-object; for example, art is absent from a portrait, and the ancients
-showed their discrimination in selecting gods and heroes for objects
-in sculpture since every deity--even in limited and particular
-form--always signifies a determinate modification of the Idea.[35]
-
-[Sidenote:_ G. W. F. Hegel_.]
-
-The same concept of art appears in the philosophy of Hegel, whatever
-may be the minor differences which he felt to separate himself from his
-predecessors. Little concerned as we are with the shades and varieties
-of mystical Æsthetic exhibited by each of these thinkers, we are
-chiefly concerned to lay bare the substantial underlying identity,
-the mysticism of arbitrarism which gives them their historic place in
-Æsthetic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Art in the sphere of absolute spirit._]
-
-Opening the _Phenomenology_ and the _Philosophy of Spirit,_ one need
-not expect to find any discussion of art in the analysis of the forms
-of the theoretical Spirit, among definitions of sensibility and
-intuition, language and symbolism, and various grades of imagination
-and thought. Hegel places Art in the sphere of absolute Spirit,
-together with Religion and Philosophy,[36] and in this he regards
-Kant, Schiller, Schelling and Solger as his precursors, for like them
-he strongly denies that art has the function of representing the
-abstract concept, but not that it represents the concrete concept
-or Idea. Hegel's whole philosophy consists in the affirmation of a
-concrete concept, unknown to ordinary or scientific thought. "Indeed,"
-says he, "no concept has in our day been more mishandled than the
-concept in itself and for itself; for by concept is generally meant
-the abstract determinateness or one-sidedness of representation and
-intellectualistic thought, with which it is naturally impossible to
-think either the entirety of truth or concrete beauty."[37] To the
-realm of the concrete concept belongs art, as one of the three forms
-wherein the freedom of the spirit is achieved; it is the first form,
-namely that of immediate, sensible, objective knowledge (the second is
-religion, a representative consciousness _plus_ worship, an element
-extraneous to mere art: the third is philosophy, free thought of the
-absolute spirit).[38]
-
-[Sidenote: _Beauty as sensible appearance of the Idea._]
-
-Beauty and truth are at the same time one yet distinct. "Truth is
-Idea as Idea, according to its being-in-itself and its universal
-principle, and so far as it is thought as such. There is no sensible
-or material existence in Truth; thought contemplates therein nothing
-but universal idea. But the Idea must also realize itself externally
-and attain an actual and determinate existence. Truth also as such
-has existence; but when in its determinate external existence it is
-immediately for consciousness, and the concept remains immediately one
-with the external appearance, the Idea is not only true but beautiful.
-In this way Beauty may be defined as the sensible appearance of the
-Idea."[39] The Idea is the content of art: its sensible and imaginative
-configuration; its form: two elements which must interpenetrate and
-form a whole, hence the necessity that a content destined to become
-a work of art should show itself capable of such transformation;
-otherwise we have but an imperfect union of poetic form with prosaic
-and incongruous content.[40] An ideal content must gleam through the
-sensible form; the form is spiritualized by this ideal light;[41]
-artistic imagination does not work in the same way as the passive
-or receptive fancy, it does not stop at the appearances of sensible
-reality but searches for the internal truth and rationality of the
-real. "The rationality of the object selected by him should not be
-alone in awakening the consciousness of the artist: he should have
-well meditated upon the essential and the true in all their extension
-and profundity, for without reflexion a man cannot become conscious
-of that which is within himself, and all great works of art show
-that their material has been thought again and again from every
-side. No successful work of art can issue from light and careless
-imagination."[42] It is a delusion to fancy that poet and painter need
-nothing beyond intuitions: "a true poet must reflect and meditate
-before and during the execution of his poem."[43] But it is always
-understood that the thought of the poet does not take the form of
-abstraction.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic in metaphysical idealism and Baumgartenism._]
-
-Some critics[44] affirm that the æsthetic movement from Schelling to
-Hegel is a revived Baumgartenism on the ground that this movement
-regarded art as a mediator of philosophical concepts; they mention
-the fact that a follower of Schelling, one Ast, was moved by the trend
-of his system to substitute didactic poetry for drama as the highest
-form of art.[45] Putting aside some isolated and accidental deviations,
-there is no truth in this affirmation: these philosophers are hostile
-to intellectualistic and moralistic views, frequently entering upon
-definite and explicit polemic against them. Schelling wrote: "Æsthetic
-production is in its origin an absolutely free production.... This
-independence on any extraneous purpose constitutes the sanctity and
-purity of art, enabling it to repel all connexion with mere pleasure, a
-connexion which is a mark of barbarism, or with utility, which cannot
-be demanded of art save at times when the loftiest form of the human
-spirit is found in utilitarian discoveries. The same reasons forbid an
-alliance with morality and hold even science at arm's length, although
-nearest by reason of her disinterestedness; having her aim, however,
-outside herself, she must restrict herself definitely to serve as means
-to something higher than herself: the arts."[46] Hegel says, "Art
-contains no universal as such." "If the aim of instruction is treated
-as an aim, so that the nature of the content represented appears for
-itself directly, as an abstract proposition, prosaic reflexion, or
-general theory, and is not merely contained indirectly and implicitly
-in the concrete artistic form, the result of such a separation is to
-reduce the sensible and imaginative form, the true constituent of a
-work of art, to an idle ornament, a covering (_Hülle)_ presented simply
-as a covering, an appearance maintained as mere appearance. The very
-nature of the work of art is thus completely altered, for a work of art
-must not present to intuition a content in its universality, but this
-universal individualized and converted into a sensible individual."[47]
-It is a bad sign, he adds, when an artist sets himself about his work
-from a motive of abstract ideas instead of that of the fulness of
-life (_Überfülle des Lebens_).[48] The aim of art lies in itself, in
-presentation of truth in a sensible form; any other aim is altogether
-extraneous.[49] It would not be hard to prove, certainly, that by
-separating art from pure representation and imagination and making it
-in some sense the vehicle of the concept, the universal, the infinite,
-these philosophers were facing in the direction of the road opened by
-Baumgarten. But to prove this would mean accepting as a presupposition
-the dilemma that if art be not pure imagination, it must be sensuous
-and subordinate to reason; and it is just this presupposition and
-dilemma that the metaphysical idealists denied. The road they tried to
-follow was to conceive a faculty which should be neither imagination
-nor intellect but should partake of both; an intellectual intuition or
-intuitive intellect, a mental imagination after the fashion of Plotinus.
-
-[Sidenote: _Mortality and decay of art in Hegel's system._]
-
-In a greater degree than any of his predecessors Hegel emphasized the
-cognitive character of art. But this very merit brought him into a
-difficulty more easily avoided by the rest. Art being placed in the
-sphere of absolute Spirit, in company with Religion and Philosophy,
-how will she be able to hold her own in such powerful and aggressive
-company, especially in that of Philosophy, which in the Hegelian
-system stands at the summit of all spiritual evolution? If Art and
-Religion fulfilled functions other than the knowledge of the Absolute,
-they would be inferior levels of the Spirit, but yet necessary and
-indispensable. But if they have in view the same end as Philosophy
-and are allowed to compete with it, what value can they retain? None
-whatever; or, at the very most, they may have that sort of value which
-attaches to transitory historical phases in the life of humanity. The
-principles of Hegel's system are at bottom rationalistic and hostile to
-religion, and hostile no less to art. A strange and painful consequence
-for a man like Hegel, endowed with a warmly æsthetic spirit and a
-fervid lover of the arts; almost a repetition of the hard fate endured
-by Plato. But as the Greek philosopher, in obedience to the presumed
-command of religion, did not hesitate to condemn the mimetic art and
-the Homeric poetry he loved, so the German refused to evade the logical
-exigencies of his system and proclaimed the mortality, nay, the very
-death, of art. "We have assigned," he says, "a very high place to
-art: but it must be recollected that neither in content nor in form
-can art be considered the most perfect means of bringing before the
-consciousness of the mind its true interests. Precisely by reason of
-its form, art is limited to a particular content. Only a definite
-circle or grade of truth can be made visible in a work of art; that
-is to say, such truth as may be transfused into the sensible and
-adequately presented in that form, as were the Greek gods. But there
-is a deeper conception of truth, by which it is not so intimately
-allied to the sensible as to permit of its being received or expressed
-suitably in material fashion. To this class belongs the Christian
-conception of truth; and, furthermore, the spirit of our modern world,
-more especially that of our religion and our mental evolution, seems to
-have passed the point at which art is the best road to the apprehension
-of the Absolute. The peculiar character of artistic production no
-longer satisfies our highest aspirations.... Thought and reflexion
-have superseded fine art." Many reasons have been adduced in order to
-account for the moribund condition of modern art; in especial, the
-prevalence of material and political interests; the true reason, says
-Hegel, consists of the inferiority in grade of art in comparison with
-pure thought. "Art in its highest form is and for us must remain a
-thing of the past"; and just because the thing has vanished, one can
-reason about it philosophically.[50] The Æsthetic of Hegel is thus a
-funeral oration: he passes in review the successive forms of art, shows
-the progressive steps of internal consumption and lays the whole in
-its grave, leaving Philosophy to write its epitaph.
-
-Romanticism and metaphysical idealism had elevated art to such a
-fantastic height among the clouds that at last they were obliged to
-admit that it was so far away as to be absolutely useless.
-
-
-[1] _Vorles. über die Ästhetik_ (2nd ed., Berlin, 1842), vol. i. p. 78.
-
-[2] Sommer, _Gesch. d. Psych. u. Ästh._ pp. 365-432.
-
-[3] Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ p. 242.
-
-[4] _Briefe ü. d. Ästh. Erzieh._ (in Werke, ed. Goedecke), Letters 15,
-27.
-
-[5] _Op. cit._ Letter 15.
-
-[6] _Briefe_, Letter 22.
-
-[7] _Op. cit._ Letter 25.
-
-[8] _Briefe_, Letter 20.
-
-[9] _Briefe,_ Letter 15.
-
-[10] Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ p. 241.
-
-[11] _Vorschule der Ästh.,_ 1804 (French trans., _Poétique ou
-introduction à l'Esth.,_ Paris, 1862), preface.
-
-[12] _Vorschule d. Ästh._ chs. 2, 3.
-
-[13] _Grundl. der Wissenschaftslehre,_ in _Werke_ (Berlin, 1845), vol.
-i. pp. 214-217.
-
-[14] Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ pp. 25-30; Zimmermann, _G. d. A._ pp. 522-572.
-
-[15] Hegel, _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ introd. vol. i. pp. 82-88.
-
-[16] _Vorles. üb. d. Methode d. akadem. Stud._ (1803), lecture 14; in
-_Werke_ (Stuttgart, 1856-1861), vol. v, pp. 346-347.
-
-[17] _Üb. d. Verhältniss d. bild. Künste, z. d. Natur_ in _Werke,_ vol.
-vii. pp. 299-310.
-
-[18] _Philos, d. Kunst,_ posthumous, introd. in _Werke,_ v. p. 362.
-
-[19] _System d. transcend. Idealismus,_ in _Werke,_ § i. vol. iii.
-introd. § 3, p. 349.
-
-[20] _Op. cit._ § 4, p. 351.
-
-[21] _System d. transcend. Idealismus,_ in _Werke,_ part vi. § 3, p.
-627.
-
-[22] _Op. cit._ § 3, pp. 627-629.
-
-[23] _Phil. d. Kunst,_ pp. 368-369.
-
-[24] _Op. cit._ p. 369.
-
-[25] _Op. cit._ General Part, p. 381.
-
-[26] _Phil. d. Kunst,_ p. 382.
-
-[27] _Op. cit._ p. 383.
-
-[28] _Op. cit._ p. 385.
-
-[29] _Op. cit._ pp. 389-390.
-
-[30] _Phil. d. Kunst,_ pp. 390-393.
-
-[31] _Op. cit._ p. 395.
-
-[32] _Op. cit._ pp. 405-451.
-
-[33] _Vorles. üb. Ästhetik_, Heyse, Leipzig, 1829, pp. 35-43.
-
-[34] Vorles. üb. Ästh. pp. 186-200.
-
-[35] Op. cit. pp. 48-85.
-
-[36] _Encykl. d. phil. Wiss._ §§ 557-563.
-
-[37] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ (_ed. cit._) i. p. 118.
-
-[38] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 129-133.
-
-[39] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ i. p. 141.
-
-[40] _Op. cit._ i. p. 89.
-
-[41] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 50-51.
-
-[42] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 354-355.
-
-[43] _Encykl._ § 450.
-
-[44] Danzel, _Ästh. d. hegel. Sch._ p. 62; Zimmermann, _G. d. A._ pp.
-693-697; J. Schmidt, _L. u. B._ pp. 103-105; Spitzer, _Krit. St._ p. 48.
-
-[45] Fr. Ast, _System der Kunstlehre,_ Leipzig, 1805; cf. Spitzer, _op.
-cit._ p. 48.
-
-[46] _System d. transcend. Idealismus_ (1800), part vi. § 2; in
-_Werke,_ § I, vol. iii. pp. 622-623.
-
-[47] _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ i. pp. 66-67.
-
-[48] _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ i. p. 353.
-
-[49] _Op. cit._ i. p. 72.
-
-[50] _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ i. pp. 13-16.
-
-
-
-
-X
-
-
-SCHOPENHAUER AND HERBART
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic mysticism in the opponents of Idealism._]
-
-Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly how well this imaginative
-conception of art suited the spirit of the times (not only a particular
-fashion in philosophy, but the psychological conditions expressed
-by the Romantic movement) than the fact that the adversaries of
-the systems of Schelling, Solger and Hegel either agreed with this
-conception in general or, while believing themselves to be departing
-widely from it, actually returned to it involuntarily.
-
-[Sidenote: _A. Schopenhauer._]
-
-Everybody knows with what lack, shall we say, of _phlegma
-philosophicum_ Arthur Schopenhauer fought against Schelling, Hegel
-and all the "charlatans" and "professors" who had divided amongst
-themselves the heritage of Kant. But what was the artistic theory
-accepted and developed by Schopenhauer?
-
-[Sidenote: _Ideas as the object of art._]
-
-His theory, like Hegel's own, turns upon the distinction between
-the concept which is abstraction and the concept which is concrete,
-or Idea; although Schopenhauer's Ideas are by himself likened to
-Plato's, and in the particular form in which he presents them more
-nearly resemble those of Schelling than the Idea of Hegel. They have
-something in common with intellectual concepts, for like them they
-are unities representing a plurality of real things: but "the concept
-is abstract and discursive, entirely indeterminate in its sphere,
-rigorously precise within its own limits only; the intellect suffices
-to conceive and understand it, speech expresses it without need for
-other intermediary, and its own definition exhausts its whole nature;
-the idea, on the contrary (which may be defined clearly as the adequate
-representative of the concept) is absolutely intuitive, and although
-it represents an infinite number of individual things, it is not for
-that any the less determined in all its aspects. The individual, as
-individual, cannot know it; in order to conceive it he must strip
-himself of all will, of all individuality, and raise himself to the
-state of a pure knowing subject. The idea, therefore, is attained
-by genius only, or by one who finds himself in a genial disposition
-attained by that elevation of his cognitive powers inspired usually
-by genius." "The idea is unity become plurality by means of space
-and time, forms of one intuitive apperception; the concept, on the
-contrary, is unity extracted from plurality by means of abstraction,
-which is the procedure of our intellect: the concept may be described
-as _unitas post yewi_ the idea, _unitas ante rem._"[1] Schopenhauer is
-in the habit of calling ideas the genera of things; but on one occasion
-he remarks that ideas are of species, not genera; that genera are
-simply concepts, and that there are natural species, but only logical
-genera.[2] This psychological illusion as to the existence of ideas for
-types originates (as we find elsewhere in Schopenhauer) in the habit
-of converting the empirical classifications of the natural sciences
-into living realities. "Do you wish to see ideas?" he asks; "look at
-the clouds which scud across the sky; look at a brooklet leaping over
-rocks; look at the crystallization of hoar-frost on a window-pane
-with its designs of trees and flowers. The shapes of the clouds, the
-ripples of the gushing brook, the configurations of the crystals exist
-for us individual observers, in themselves they are indifferent. The
-clouds in themselves are elastic vapour; the brook is an incompressible
-fluid, mobile, transparent, amorphous, the ice obeys the laws of
-crystallization: and in these determinations their ideas consist."[3]
-All these are the immediate objectification of will in its various
-degrees; and it is these, not their pale copies in real things,
-that art delineates; whence Plato was right in one sense and wrong
-in another, and is justified and condemned by Schopenhauer exactly
-in the same way as by Plotinus of old, as well as by Schopenhauer's
-worst enemy, the modern Schelling.[4] In consequence, each art has
-a special category of ideas for its own dominion. Architecture, and
-in some cases hydraulics, facilitate the clear intuition of those
-ideas which constitute the lower degrees of objectification--weight,
-cohesion, resistance, hardness, the general properties of stone and
-some combinations of light; gardening and (most curious association)
-landscape painting represent the ideas of vegetable nature; sculpture
-and animal painting those of zoology; historical painting and the
-higher forms of sculpture that of the human body; poetry the very idea
-of man himself.[5] As for music, that (let him who can justify the
-logical discontinuity) is outside the hierarchy of the other arts.
-We have seen how Schelling considered it to be representative of the
-very rhythm of the universe;[6] differing but slightly from this,
-Schopenhauer affirms that music does not express ideas but, parallel
-with ideas, Will itself. The analogies between music and the world,
-between the fundamental bass and crude matter, between the scale and
-the series of species, between melody and conscious will, led him to
-the conclusion that music was not, as Leibniz thought, an arithmetic
-but a metaphysic: _exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se
-philosophari animi_.[7]
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic catharsis._]
-
-To Schopenhauer, no less than his idealistic predecessors, art
-beatifies; it is the flower of life; he who contemplates art is no
-longer an individual but a pure knowing subject, at liberty, free from
-desire, from pain, from time.[8]
-
-[Sidenote: _Signs of a better theory in Schopenhauer._]
-
-Schopenhauer's system no doubt contains here and there premonitions
-of a better and more profound treatment of art. Schopenhauer, who was
-capable on occasion of clear and keen analysis, constantly insists
-that the forms of space and time must not be applied to the idea
-or to artistic contemplation, which admits of the general form of
-representation only.[9] From this he might have inferred that art, so
-far from being a superior and extraordinary level of consciousness, is
-actually its most immediate level, namely that which in its primitive
-simplicity precedes even common perception with its reference of
-objects to a position in the spatial and temporal series. To free
-oneself from common perception and to live in imagination does not mean
-rising to a Platonic contemplation of the ideas, but descending once
-more into the region of immediate intuition, becoming children again,
-as Vico had seen. On the other hand Schopenhauer had begun to examine
-the categories of Kant with an unprejudiced eye; he was not satisfied
-with the two forms of intuition, and wished to add to them a third,
-causality.[10] In conclusion, we note that, like his predecessors, he
-makes a comparison between art and history, with this difference and
-advantage over the idealist authors of the philosophy of history, that
-for him history was irreducible to concepts; it was contemplation of
-the individual, and therefore not science. Had he persevered in his
-comparison between art and history, he would have arrived at a better
-solution than that at which he stopped; that is to say, that the matter
-of history is the particular in its particularity and contingency,
-while that of art is that which is, and is always identical.[11] But
-instead of pursuing these happy ideas Schopenhauer preferred to play
-variations on the themes fashionable in his day.
-
-[Sidenote: _J. F. Herbart._]
-
-Most astounding of all is the fact that a dry intellectualist,
-the avowed enemy of idealism, of dialectic and of speculative
-constructions, head of the school calling itself realistic or the
-school of exact philosophy, Johann Friedrich Herbart, when he
-turns his attention to Æsthetic, turns mystic too, though in a
-slightly different way. How weightily he speaks when expounding his
-philosophical method! Æsthetic must not bear the blame of the faults
-into which metaphysic has fallen; we must make it an independent study,
-and detach it from all hypothesis about the universe. Nor must it be
-confounded with psychology or asked to describe the emotions awakened
-by the content of works of art, such as the pathetic or the comic,
-sadness or joy; its duty is to determine the essential character of
-art and beauty. In the analysis of particular cases of beauty and
-in registering what they reveal lies the way of salvation. These
-proposals and promises have misled numbers of people as to the nature
-of Herbart's Æsthetic. But _ce sont là jeux de princes_; by paying
-attention we shall see what Herbart meant by analysis of particular
-case; and how he held himself aloof from metaphysics.
-
-[Sidenote: _Pure Beauty and relations of form._]
-
-Beauty, for him, consisted in relations: relations of tone, colour,
-line, thought and will; experience must decide which of these relations
-are beautiful, and æsthetic science consists solely in enumerating the
-fundamental concepts (_Musterbegriffe)_ in which are summarized the
-particular cases of beauty. But these relations, Herbart thought, were
-not like physiological facts; they could not be empirically observed,
-_e.g._ in a psycho-physical laboratory. To correct this error it is
-only necessary to observe that these relations include not only tones,
-lines and colours, but also thoughts and will, and that they extend to
-moral facts no less than to objects of external intuition. He declares
-explicitly "No true beauty is sensible, although it frequently happens
-that sense-impressions precede and follow the intuition of beauty."[12]
-There is a profound distinction between the beautiful and the pleasant;
-for the pleasant needs no representation, while the beautiful consists
-in representation of relations, followed immediately in consciousness
-by a judgment, an appendix (_Zusatz)_ which expresses unqualified
-approbation ("_es gefällt!_"). And while the pleasant and the
-unpleasant "in the progress of culture gradually become transient and
-unimportant, Beauty stands out more and more as something permanent and
-possessed of undeniable value."[13] The judgment of taste is universal,
-eternal, immutable: "the complete representation (_vollendete
-Vorstellung_) of the same relations is always followed by the same
-judgment; just as the same cause always produces the same effect.
-This happens at all times and in all circumstances, conditions and
-complications, which gives to the particularity of certain cases the
-appearance of a universal rule. Granted that the elements of a relation
-are universal concepts, it is plain that although in judging we think
-only of the content of these concepts, the judgment must have a sphere
-as large as that common to the two concepts."[14] Herbart considers
-æsthetic judgements as a general class comprising ethical judgements as
-a subdivision: "amongst other beauties is to be distinguished morality,
-as a thing not only of value in itself but as actually determining the
-unconditioned value of persons"; within morality in the narrowest sense
-is distinguished in turn justice.[15] The five ethica ideas guiding
-moral life (internal liberty, perfection, benevolence, equity and
-justice) are five æsthetic ideas or rather æsthetic concepts applied to
-relations of will.
-
-[Sidenote: _Art as sum of content and form._]
-
-Herbart looks on art as a complex fact, the combination of an
-extra-æsthetic element, content, which may have logical or
-psychological or any other kind of value, and a purely æsthetic
-element, form, which is an application of the fundamental æsthetic
-concepts. Man looks for that which is diverting, instructive, moving,
-majestic, ridiculous; and "all these are mingled with the beautiful
-in order to procure favour and interest for the work. The beautiful
-thus assumes various complexions, and becomes graceful, magnificent,
-tragic, or comic; it can become all these because the æsthetic
-judgement, in itself calmly serene, tolerates the company of the most
-diverse excitations of the soul which are no part of itself."[16] But
-all these things have nothing to do with beauty. In order to discover
-the objectively beautiful or ugly, one must make abstraction from
-every predicate concerning the content. "In order to recognize the
-objectively beautiful or ugly in poetry, one must show the difference
-between this and that thought, and the discussion will concern itself
-with thoughts; to recognize it in sculpture, one must show the
-difference between this and that outline, and the discussion will turn
-upon outlines; to recognize it in music, one should show the difference
-between this and that tone, and the discussion will turn upon tones.
-Now, such predicates as 'magnificent, charming, graceful' and so
-forth contain nothing whatever about tones, outlines or thoughts, and
-therefore tell us nothing about the objectively beautiful in poetry,
-sculpture, or music; indeed they rather lead us to believe in the
-existence of an objective beauty to which thought, outline, or tone are
-equally accidental, which may be approached by receiving impressions
-from poetry, sculpture, music and so forth, obliterating the object
-and giving oneself up to the pure emotion of mind."[17] Very different
-is the æsthetic judgement, the "cold judgement of the connoisseur"
-who considers exclusively form, _i.e._ objectively pleasant formal
-relations. This abstraction from the content in order to contemplate
-pure form is the catharsis produced by art. Content is transitory,
-relative, subject to moral law and liable to moral judgement: form is
-permanent, absolute, free.[18] Concrete art may be the sum of two or
-more values; but the æsthetic fact is form alone.
-
-[Sidenote: _Herbart and Kantian thought._]
-
-The reader who goes behind appearances and discounts diversities of
-terminology will not fail to observe the close similarity of the
-æsthetic doctrine of Herbart to that of Kant. In Herbart we again
-find the distinction between free and adherent beauty, and between
-form and the sensuous stimulus (_Reiz)_ attached to form: we find an
-affirmation of the existence of pure beauty, the object of necessary
-and universal, but not discursive, judgements; lastly, we find a
-certain connexion between beauty and morality, between Æsthetic and
-Ethics. In these matters Herbart is perhaps the most faithful follower
-and propagator of the thought of Kant, whose doctrine contains the germ
-of his own. In one passage he describes himself as "a Kantian, but of
-the year 1828"; and he is quite right, even in pointing out the exact
-difference in date. Amidst the errors and uncertainties of his æsthetic
-thought, Kant is rich in suggestion and scatters fertile seed; he
-belongs to a period when philosophy was still young and impressionable.
-Herbart, coming later, is dry and one-sided; he takes whatever is
-false in Kant's doctrine and hardens it into a system. If they had
-done little else, the Romanticists and idealists had at least united
-the theory of beauty to that of art, and destroyed the rhetorical
-and mechanical view; and they had brought into relief (frequently
-exaggerating, doubtless) various important characteristics of artistic
-activity. Herbart re-states the mechanical view, restores the duality,
-and presents a capricious, narrow, barren mysticism, devoid of all
-breath of artistic feeling.
-
-
-[1] _Welt als Wille u. Vorstellung,_ 1819 (in _Sämmtl. Werke,_ ed.
-Grisebach, vol. i.). bk. iii. § 49.
-
-[2] _Ergänzungen_ (ed. Grisebach, vol. ii.), ch. 29.
-
-[3] _Welt a. W. u. V._ iii. § 35.
-
-[4] See above, p. 291.
-
-[5] _Welt a. W. u. V._ iii. §§ 42-51.
-
-[6] See above, p. 293.
-
-[7] _Welt a. W. u. V._ § 53.
-
-[8] _Op. cit._ § 34.
-
-[9] _Welt a. W. u. V._ § 32.
-
-[10] _Kritik d. kantischen Philosophie,_ in append, to _op. cit._ pp.
-558-576.
-
-[11] _Ergänzungen,_ ch. 38.
-
-[12] _Einleitung in die Philosophie,_ 1813, in _Werke,_ ed.
-Hartenstein, vol. 1. p. 49.
-
-[13] _Einleitung in die Philosophie,_ pp. 125-128.
-
-[14] _Allgemeine praktische Philosophie,_ in _Werke,_ viii. p. 25.
-
-[15] _Einleitung,_ p. 128.
-
-[16] _Einleitung,_ p. 162.
-
-[17] _Op. cit._ pp. 129-130.
-
-[18] _Op. cit._ p. 163.
-
-
-
-
-XI
-
-
-FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic of content and Æsthetic of form: meaning of the
-contrast._]
-
-We have now reached a point when we are able to give ourselves an exact
-account of the signification and importance of the celebrated war
-waged for over a century in Germany between the Æsthetic of content
-(_Gehaltsästhetik)_ and the Æsthetic of form (_Formästhetik_); a war
-which gave birth to vast works on the history of Æsthetic undertaken
-from one or other point of view, and sprang from Herbart's opposition
-to the idealism of Schelling, Hegel, and their contemporaries and
-followers. "Form" and "Content" are among the most equivocal words
-in the whole philosophical vocabulary, particularly in Æsthetic;
-sometimes, indeed, what one calls form, others call content. The
-Herbartians were specially given to quoting in their own defence
-Schiller's dictum, that the secret of art consists in "cancelling
-content by form." But what is there in common between Schiller's
-concept of "form," which placed the æsthetic activity side by side
-with the moral and intellectual, and Herbart's "form," which does not
-penetrate or enliven, but clothes and adorns a content? Hegel, on
-the other hand, often gives the name "form" to what Schiller would
-call "matter" (_Stoff_), that is, the sensible matter which it is
-the business of spiritual energy to dominate. Hegel's "content" is
-the idea, the metaphysical truth, the constituent element of beauty:
-Herbart's "content" is the emotional and intellectual element which
-falls outside beauty. The Æsthetic of "form" in Italy is an æsthetic of
-expressive activity; the form is neither a clothing nor a metaphysical
-idea nor sensible matter, but a representative or imaginative faculty
-with the power of framing impressions; yet there have been attempts
-to confute this Italian æsthetic formalism with the same arguments
-that are used against German æsthetic formalism, a totally different
-thing in every respect. And so forth. Having given a plain account of
-the thoughts of the post-Kantian æstheticians, we shall be able to
-appreciate their opponents without seeking light from their obscure
-terminology or allowing ourselves to be misled by the banners they
-wave. The antithesis between the Æsthetic of content and that of
-form, the Æsthetic of idealism and that of realism, the Æsthetic of
-Schelling, Solger, Hegel and Schopenhauer and that of Herbart, will
-appear in its true light, as the lamily quarrel between two conceptions
-of art united by a common mysticism, although one is destined almost to
-meet with truth during its long journey, while the other wanders ever
-further away.
-
-The first half of the nineteenth century was for Germany a period of
-many fine-sounding philosophical formulæ: subjectivism, objectivism,
-subjective--objectivism; abstract, concrete, abstract-concrete;
-idealism, realism, idealism--realism; between pantheism and theism
-Krause inserted his pan-en-theism. In the midst of this uproar, in
-which the second-rate men shouted down the first-rate and made good
-their claim to their only true property, namely words, it is not
-surprising that a few modest clear thinkers, philosophers who preferred
-to think about realities, should have the worst of it and remain
-unheard and unnoticed, lost among the roaring crowd or labelled with a
-false ticket.
-
-[Sidenote: _Friedrich Schleiermacher._]
-
-This, at least, seems to have been the lot of Friedrich Schleiermacher,
-whose æsthetic doctrine is amongst the least known although it is
-perhaps the most noteworthy of the day.
-
-[Sidenote: _Wrong judgements concerning him._]
-
-Schleiermacher delivered his first lectures on Æsthetic at Berlin
-University in 1819, and from that date he began to study the subject
-seriously with a view to writing a book on it. He repeated his
-lectures on two occasions, in 1825 and 1832-1833; but his death,
-which occurred in the following year, prevented him from carrying
-out his plan, and all we know of his thoughts on Æsthetic comes from
-his lectures, as collected by his pupils and published in 1842.[1] A
-Herbartian historian of Æsthetic, Zimmermann, attacks the posthumous
-work of Schleiermacher with real ferocity; after twenty pages of
-invective and sarcasm he concludes by asking, how could his pupils
-so dishonour their great master by publishing such a mass of waste
-paper, "all play upon words, sophistical conceits and dialectical
-subtleties"?[2] Nor was the idealistic historian Hartmann much more
-benevolent when he describes the work as "a confused mess in which,
-among much that is merely trivial, many half-truths and exaggerations,
-one can detect a few acute observations"; and says that, in order
-to make bearable "such unctuous afternoon sermons delivered by a
-preacher in his dotage," it must be shortened by three-quarters; and
-that, "as regards fundamental principles," it is simply useless,
-offering no innovations upon concrete idealism as presented by Hegel
-and others; and that, in any case, it seems impossible "to attach it
-to any line of thought except the Hegelian, to which Schleiermacher's
-contribution is only of second-rate importance." He further observes
-that Schleiermacher was primarily a theologian, and in philosophy more
-or less an amateur.[3] Now it cannot be denied that Schleiermacher's
-doctrine has reached us in a hazy form, by no means free from
-uncertainties and contradictions; and, which is more important,
-it is here and there affected for the worse by the influence of
-contemporary metaphysics. But, side by side with these defects, what
-excellent method, really scientific and philosophical; what a number of
-cornerstones well and truly laid; what wealth of new truths, and of
-difficulties and problems not suspected or discussed before his day!
-
-[Sidenote: _Schleiermacher contrasted with his predecessors._]
-
-Schleiermacher considered Æsthetic as an essentially modern line
-of thought, and drew a sharp distinction between the _Poetics_ of
-Aristotle, which never shakes itself free from the empirical standpoint
-of the maker of rules, and what Baumgarten tried to do in the
-eighteenth century. He praised Kant for having been the first truly
-to include Æsthetic among the philosophical sciences, and recognized
-that in Hegel artistic activity had attained the highest elevation by
-being brought into connexion and almost into equality with religion
-and philosophy. But he was not satisfied either with the followers of
-Baumgarten when they degenerated into the absurd attempt to construct
-a science or theory of sensuous pleasure, or with the Kantian point of
-view which made its principal aim the consideration of taste; or with
-the philosophy of Fichte, in which art became a means of education; or
-with the more widely received opinion which placed at the centre of
-Æsthetic the vague and equivocal concept of Beauty. Schiller pleased
-him by having called attention to the moment of artistic spontaneity or
-productiveness, and he praised Schelling for having laid stress on the
-importance of the figurative arts, which lend themselves less easily
-than poetry to facile and illusory moralistic interpretations.[4]
-Having with the utmost clearness excluded from Æsthetic the study of
-practical rules as empirical, and therefore irreducible to a science,
-he assigned to Æsthetic the task of determining the proper position of
-artistic activity in the scheme of ethics.[5]
-
-[Sidenote: _Place assigned to Æsthetic in his Ethics._]
-
-To avoid falling into error over this terminology, we must call to
-mind that the philosophy of Schleiermacher followed the ancient
-traditions in its tripartite division into Dialectic, Ethics and
-Physics. Dialectic corresponds with ontology; Physics embraces all
-the sciences of natural facts; Ethics includes the study of all free
-activities of mankind (language, thought, art, religion and morality).
-Ethics represented to him not only the science of morality but what
-others name Psychology or, better still, the Science or Philosophy of
-the Spirit. This explanation once given, Schleiermacher's point of
-departure seems to be the only one just and permissible, and we shall
-not be surprised when he talks of will, of voluntary acts and so on,
-where others would have simply spoken of activity or spiritual energy;
-he even endows such expressions with a broader meaning than that
-conferred upon them by practical philosophy.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic activity as immanent and individual._]
-
-A double distinction may be made amongst human activities. In the
-first place, there are activities which we presume to be constituted
-in the same manner in all men (such as the logical activity) and are
-called activities of identity; and others whose diversity is presumed,
-which are called activities of difference or individual activities.
-Secondly, there are activities which exhaust themselves in the
-internal life, and others which actualize themselves in the external
-world: immanent activities and practical activities. To which of the
-two classes in each of the two orders does artistic activity belong?
-There can be no doubt of its different modes of development, if not
-actually in each individual person, at least in different peoples and
-nations; therefore it belongs properly to activities of difference or
-individual activities.[6] As for the other distinction, it is true
-that art does realize itself in the external world, but this fact is
-something superadded ("_ein später Hinzukommendes_") "which stands to
-the internal fact as the communication of thought by means of speech
-or writing stands to thought itself": art's true work is the internal
-image ("_das innere Bild ist das eigentliche Kunstwerk_"). Exceptions
-to this might be adduced, such as mimicry; but they would be apparent
-only. Between a really angry man and the actor who plays the part of
-an angry man on the stage there is this difference: in the second case
-anger appears as controlled and therefore beautiful; that is, the
-internal image is in the actor's soul interposed between the fact of
-passion and its physical manifestation.[7] Artistic activity "belongs
-to those human activities in which we presuppose the individual in its
-differentiation; it belongs equally to those activities developing
-essentially within themselves and not completing themselves in any
-external world. Art, therefore, is an immanent activity in which we
-presuppose differentiation." Internal, not practical: individual, not
-universal or logical.
-
-[Sidenote: _Artistic truth and intellectual truth._]
-
-But if art be one form of thought, there must be one form of thought
-in which identity is presupposed, and another in which difference is
-presupposed. We do not look for truth in poetry; or, rather, we do look
-for truth, but for one that is totally different from that objective
-truth to which there must correspond some being, either universal or
-individual (scientific and historical truth). "When a character in a
-poem is said to be devoid of truth, a slur is cast on the given poem;
-but if the character is said to be a pure invention, corresponding with
-no reality, that is quite a different matter." The truth of a poetic
-character consists in the coherence with which a single person's divers
-modes of thinking and acting are represented: even in portraits it is
-not an exact correspondence with an objective reality that makes the
-thing a work of art. From art and poetry "springs no iota of knowledge"
-(_das Geringste vom Wissen_); "it expresses but the truth of the single
-consciousness." There are then "productions of thought and of sensible
-intuitions, opposed to the other productions because they do not
-presuppose identity, and they express the singular as such."[8]
-
-[Sidenote: _Difference of artistic consciousness from feeling and
-religion._]
-
-The domain of art is immediate self-consciousness (_unmittelbare
-Selbstbewusstsein_), which must be carefully distinguished from the
-thought or concept of the ego or of the determinate ego. This latter is
-the consciousness of identity in the diversity of moments; immediate
-self-consciousness is "diversity itself, of which one must be aware,
-since life in its entirety is but the development of consciousness." In
-this domain art has often been confused with two facts which accompany
-it: sensuous consciousness (the feeling of pleasure and pain), and
-religion. A double confusion, of which the sensationalists fall into
-the first half and Hegel into the second; Schleiermacher clears it up
-by proving that art is free productivity, whereas sensuous pleasure and
-religious feeling, however different in other ways, are both determined
-by an objective fact (_äussere Sein_).[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _Dreams and art: inspiration and deliberation._]
-
-The better to understand this free productivity, we must further
-circumscribe the domain of immediate consciousness. In this we can
-find nothing more helpful than comparing it with the images produced
-by dreams. The artist has his own dreams: he dreams with open eyes,
-and from among the thick-thronging images of this dream-state those
-having sufficient energy alone become works of art, the rest remaining
-a mere background from which the others stand out. All the essential
-elements of art are found in the dream-state, which is the production
-of free thoughts and sensuous intuitions consisting of mere images.
-Certainly something is lacking in dreams, and they differ from art not
-only in their absence of technique, which has already been excluded as
-irrelevant to art, but in another way, viz. that a dream is a chaotic
-fact, without stability, order, connexion or measure. But when some
-sort of order is introduced into the chaos the difference at once
-disappears, and the likeness to art merges in identity. This internal
-activity which introduces order and measure, fixes and determines the
-image, is that which distinguishes art from a dream or transforms a
-dream into art. It often involves struggle, labour, the obligation to
-stem the involuntary flood of internal images; in a word, it means
-reflexion or deliberation. But the dream and the cessation of dreaming
-are equally indispensable elements of art. There must be production of
-thoughts and images and, together with such production, there must
-be measure, determination and unity, "otherwise each image would be
-confused with its neighbour and have no definiteness." The instant of
-inspiration (_Begeisterung_) is as essential as that of deliberation
-(_Besonnenheit)_.[10]
-
-[Sidenote: _Art and the typical._]
-
-But in order to arrive at artistic truth it is also I necessary (here
-Schleiermacher's thought becomes less clear and accurate) that the
-singular be accompanied by consciousness of the species; consciousness
-of the self as individual man is impossible without consciousness of
-mankind; nor is a single object true unless referred to its universal.
-In a pictured landscape "every tree must possess natural truth, that
-is to say, it must be contemplated as a specimen of a given kind;
-similarly, the whole complex of natural and individual life must have
-effective truth of nature and constitute a single harmony. Just because
-in art we do not strive after the production of individual figures
-in themselves and for themselves, but their internal truth as well,
-we commonly assign to them a high place as being a free realization
-of that in which all cognition has its value, that is to say, in the
-principle that all forms of being are inherent in the human spirit.
-If this principle fails, truth is no longer possible; scepticism only
-remains." The productions of art are the ideal or typical figures
-which real nature would create were it not impeded by external
-influences.[11] "The artist creates a figure on the basis of a general
-scheme, rejecting whatever may hinder or impede the play of the living
-forces of reality; such a production, founded on a general scheme, is
-what we call the Ideal."[12]
-
-In spite of all these determinations, Schleiermacher did not apparently
-intend to limit the artist's scope. He remarks, "When an artist
-represents something really given, whether portrait, landscape or
-single human figure, he renounces the freedom of productivity and
-adheres to the real."[13] There is a twofold tendency at work in the
-artist: towards perfection of type, and towards representation of
-natural reality. An artist must not fall into the abstractness of
-the type or into the unmeaningness of empirical reality.[14] If in
-flower-painting it is necessary to bring out the specific type, a much
-more complete individualisation is demanded when representing man,
-owing to the lofty position which he occupies.[15] Representation
-of the ideal in the real does not exclude "an infinite variety,
-such as is found in actual reality." "For instance, the human face
-wavers between the ideal and caricature, in its moral conformation
-no less than in its physical. Every human face contains elements of
-disfigurement (_Verbildung,_) but it has also something by which it
-is a determinate modification of human nature; this does not appear
-openly, but a practised eye can seize it and ideally complete the face
-in question."[16] Schleiermacher is keenly aware of the difficulties
-and perplexities of' such problems as the question whether there exists
-one or many ideals of the human face.[17] He observes that the two
-views which strive for mastery in the field of poetry may be extended
-to art as a whole. Some assert that poetry and art should represent the
-perfect, the ideal, that which would have been produced by nature, had
-she not been prevented by mechanical forces; others reject the ideal as
-incapable of realisation and prefer that the artist should depict man
-as he really is, with those perturbing elements which in reality belong
-to him no less than his ideal qualities. Each view is a half-truth:
-it is the duty of art to represent the ideal as well as the real, the
-subjective as well as the objective.[18] The comic element, that is the
-unideal and the faulty ideal, is included in the circle of art.[19]
-
-[Sidenote: _Independence of art._]
-
-In respect to morality, art is free just as philosophical speculation
-is free: its essence excludes practical and moral effects. This leads
-to the proposition that "there is no difference between various
-works of art, except in so far as they can be compared in respect
-of artistic perfection" (_Vollkommenheit in der Kunst._) "Given an
-artistic object perfect of its kind, it has an absolute value which
-cannot be increased or diminished by anything else. If motions of
-the will could truly be described as consequences of works of art, a
-different standard of values would apply to works of art: and since
-the objects which an artist may depict are not all equally adapted to
-influence volition, a scale of values would exist which did not depend
-on artistic perfection." Nor must we confound the judgement passed
-upon the varied and complex personality of the artist himself with the
-strictly æsthetic judgement passed upon his work. "In this respect
-the biggest, most complicated canvas is on a level with the smallest
-arabesque, the longest poem with the shortest: the value of a work of
-art depends on the perfect manner in which the external corresponds to
-the internal."[20]
-
-Schleiermacher rejects the doctrine of Schiller because in his opinion
-it makes art a sort of game or pastime in contrast to the serious
-affairs of life: a view, he says, for business men to whom their
-business is the only serious thing. Artistic activity is universally
-human, a man devoid of it is inconceivable; although, of course, there
-are in this respect great differences betwixt man and man, running from
-the mere desire to enjoy art to real taste, and from this again to
-productive genius.[21]
-
-[Sidenote: _Art and language._]
-
-The artist makes use of instruments which, by their nature, are framed
-not for the individual but for the universal; of this kind is language.
-But it is the business of poetry to extract the individual from
-language which is universal without giving to its productions the form
-of the antithesis between individual and universal which is proper to
-science. Of the two elements of language, the musical and the logical,
-the poet claims the first for his own ends and constrains the other
-to awaken individual images. In comparison with pure science as in
-comparison with the individual image, there is something irrational
-about language: but the tendencies of speculation and of poetry are
-always contrary, even in their use of language; the former tends to
-make language approximate to mathematical formulæ; the latter to
-imagery (_Bild_)[22]
-
-[Sidenote: _Schleiermacher's defects._]
-
-Leaving out many details which will be touched on in their
-proper places, the foregoing is a fair summary of the heads of
-Schleiermacher's æsthetic thought. Adding up the accounts of the
-whole statement of views, on the side of error and oversight we
-find: first, ideas or types are not wholly excluded, in spite
-of all Schleiermacher's care and anxiety to safeguard artistic
-individualisation and to make the ideas and types superfluous.
-Secondly, there is still, undefeated and unexpelled, a certain residue
-of abstract formalism, visible at various points of his theories.[23]
-Thirdly, the definition of art as an activity of mere difference may be
-diluted but is not destroyed by making art a difference of complexes
-of individuals, a national difference. A closer reflexion on the
-history of art, a recognition of the possibility of appreciating the
-art of various nations and various times, a more patient investigation
-into the moment of artistic reproduction, even an examination of the
-relation between science and art, would have led Schleiermacher to
-treat this difference as empirical and surmountable, still holding
-firmly to the distinctive character (individual as opposed to
-universal) he assigned to art in comparison with science. Fourthly, he
-did not recognize the identity of æsthetic activity with linguistic,
-and failed to make it the basis of all other theoretic activity. It
-would seem, moreover, that Schleiermacher had no clear ideas concerning
-that artistic element which enters into the constitution of historic
-narrative and is indispensable as the concrete form of science; or
-concerning language, taken not as a complex of abstract means of
-expression but as expressive activity.
-
-[Sidenote: _Schleiermacher's services to Æsthetic._]
-
-These defects and uncertainties may perhaps be attributable in part
-to the fact that his thoughts on æsthetic have reached us in an
-inchoate form, very far from a mature development. But if on the other
-hand we wish to cast up the sum of his very striking merits, it will
-suffice to run over the list of accusations heaped upon him by the two
-historians before mentioned, Zimmermann and Hartmann. Schleiermacher
-has denuded Æsthetic of its imperative character; he recognizes in it a
-form of thought differing from logical thought; he gives this science
-a non-metaphysical and merely anthropological character; he denies
-the concept of beauty, substituting that of artistic perfection, and
-actually affirms the æsthetic equivalence of small and great works of
-art, so long as each is perfect in its own sphere; he considers the
-æsthetic fact as pure human productivity: and so on and so forth. All
-these criticisms are meant for blame and are really praise; for what
-is blame to the mind of a Zimmermann or a Hartmann, is to ours praise.
-In the metaphysical orgy of his day, in the perpetual building and
-pulling down of more or less arbitrary systems, Schleiermacher the
-theologian, with philosophic acumen, fixed his eye upon what was really
-characteristic of the æsthetic fact and succeeded in defining its
-properties and connexions; when he failed to see clearly and wandered
-from the track, he never abandoned analysis for fantastic caprice.
-By his discovery that the obscure region of immediate consciousness
-is also that of the æsthetic fact, he seems to bid his distracted
-contemporaries listen to the old adage: _Hic Rhodus, hic salta._
-
-
-[1] _Vorlesungen üb. Ästhetik_ published by Lommatsch, Berlin, 1842
-(_Werke,_ sect. iii. vol. vii.).
-
-[2] Zimmermann, _G. d. A._ pp. 608-634.
-
-[3] E. von Hartmann, _Deutsche Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 156-169.
-
-[4] _Vorles. üb. Ästhetik_ pp. 1-30.
-
-[5] _Op. cit._ pp. 35-51.
-
-[6] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 51-54.
-
-[7] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 55-61.
-
-[8] _Op. cit._ pp. 61-66; cf. _Dialektik,_ ed. Halpern, pp. 54-55, 67.
-
-[9] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 67-77.
-
-[10] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 79-91.
-
-[11] _Op. cit._ pp. 123, 143-150.
-
-[12] _Op. cit._ p. 505; cf. p. 607.
-
-[13] _Op. cit._ p. 505.
-
-[14] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 506-508.
-
-[15] _Op. cit._ pp. 156-157.
-
-[16] _Op. cit._ pp. 550-551.
-
-[17] _Op. cit._ p. 608.
-
-[18] _Op. cit._ pp. 684-686.
-
-[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 191-196; cf. pp. 364-365.
-
-[20] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 209-219; of. pp. 527-528.
-
-[21] _Op. cit._ pp. 98-111.
-
-[22] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 635-648.
-
-[23] Cf. _e.g._ p. 467 _seqq._
-
-
-
-
-XII
-
-
-THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE: HUMBOLDT AND STEINTHAL
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Progress of Linguistic._]
-
-About the time when Schleiermacher was meditating on the nature of the
-æsthetic fact, a movement of thought was gaining ground in Germany
-which, tending as it did to overthrow the old concept of language,
-might have proved a powerful aid to æsthetic science. But not only had
-the æsthetic specialists--if we may so call them--no notion of the
-existence of this movement, the new philosophers of language never
-brought their ideas into relation with the æsthetic problem, and
-their discoveries languished imprisoned within the narrow scope of
-Linguistic, condemned to sterility.
-
-[Sidenote: _Linguistic speculation at the beginning of the nineteenth
-century_.]
-
-Research into the relations between thought and speech, between the
-unity of logic and the multiplicity of languages, had been promoted,
-like many other things, by the _Critique of Pure Reason_: the earliest
-Kantians often tried to apply the Kantian categories of intuition
-(space and time) and of intellect to language. The first to make the
-attempt was Roth[1] in 1795; the same who wrote an essay twenty years
-later on _Pure Linguistic._ Many other noteworthy books on this subject
-appeared in quick succession: those of Vater, Bernhardi, Reinbeck and
-Koch were published one after another in the first ten years of the
-nineteenth century. In all these treatises the dominating subject is
-the difference between language and languages; between the universal
-language, corresponding with Logic, and concrete, historical languages
-disturbed by feeling and imagination or whatever other name was applied
-to the psychological element of differentiation. Vater distinguishes a
-general Linguistic (_all gemeine Sprachlehre_), constructed _a priori_
-by means of the analysis of the concepts contained in the judgement,
-from a comparative Linguistic (_vergleichende Sprachlehre_) which
-attempts by means of induction to reach probable laws through the
-study of a number of languages. Bemhardi considers language to be an
-"allegory of intellect" and distinguishes it as functioning either
-as the organ of poetry or that of science. Reinbeck speaks of an
-Æsthetic Grammar and a Logical. Koch, more energetic than the others,
-asserts positively that the character of language is "_non ad Logices
-sed ad Psychologiae rationem revocanda._"[2] Some few philosophers
-speculated on language and mythology: for example Schelling considered
-them to be the products of a pre-human consciousness (_vormenschliche
-Bewusstsein,_) presenting them, in a fantastic allegory, as diabolic
-suggestions which precipitate the ego from the infinite to the
-finite.[3]
-
-[Sidenote: _Wilhelm von Humboldt. Relics of intellectualism._]
-
-Even the famous philologist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, was unable to detach
-himself entirely from the prejudice of the substantial identity and
-the purely historical, accidental diversity between logical thought
-and language. His celebrated dissertation, _On the Diversity of
-Structure of Human Languages_ (1836),[4] is based on the notion of a
-perfect language split up and distributed amongst particular tongues
-according to the linguistic or intellectual capacity of various
-nations. "For," says he, "since disposition towards speech is general
-in mankind, and all men must necessarily carry within themselves the
-key to the comprehension of all languages, it follows that the form
-of all languages must be substantially equal and all must attain the
-same general end. Diversity can exist solely in the means, and within
-the bounds permitted by the attainment of the end." Yet this same
-diversity becomes a real divergence not only in sounds, but in the
-use of sound made by the linguistic sense in respect to the form of
-language, or rather, in respect to its own idea of the form of the
-determinate language. "Languages being merely formal, the operation
-of the linguistic sense by itself should produce mere uniformity;
-the linguistic sense must exact from every tongue the same right and
-legitimate construction that is found in one of them. In practice,
-however, the facts are quite otherwise, partly owing to the reaction of
-sounds, and partly by reason of the individual aspect assumed by the
-same internal meaning in phenomenal reality." Linguistic force "cannot
-maintain its equality everywhere or show the same intensity, vivacity
-or regularity; it cannot be supported by an exactly equal tendency
-towards the symbolic treatment of thought or by exactly equal pleasure
-in richness and harmony of sound." These, then, are the causes which
-produce in human languages that diversity which manifests itself in
-every branch of the civilization of nations. But reflexion on languages
-"ought to reveal to us a form which of all possible forms best fits the
-purpose of language" and approaches most closely to its ideal; and "the
-merits and defects of existing languages must be estimated by their
-nearness or remoteness from this form." Humboldt finds the nearest
-approximation to such an ideal in the Sanskrit tongues, which can
-therefore be used as a standard of comparison. Setting Chinese apart in
-a class by itself, he proceeds to the division of the possible forms of
-language into inflective, agglutinative and incorporative; types which
-are found combined in various proportions in every real language.[5] He
-also inaugurated the division of languages into inferior and superior,
-unformed and formed, according to the way in which verbs are treated.
-He was never able to rid himself of a second prejudice connected with
-the first, namely that language exists as something objective outside
-the talking man, unattached and independent, and waking up when needed
-for use.
-
-[Sidenote: _Language an activity. Internal form._]
-
-But Humboldt opposes Humboldt: amongst the old dross we detect the
-brilliant gleams of a wholly new concept of language. Certainly his
-work is for this very reason not always free from contradictions
-and from a kind of hesitation and awkwardness which appear
-characteristically in his literary style and make it at times laboured
-and obscure. The new man in Humboldt criticizes the old man when he
-says, "Languages must be considered not as dead products but as an act
-of production. ... Language in its reality is something continually
-changing and passing away. Even its preservation in writing is
-incomplete, a kind of mummification: it is always necessary to render
-the living speech sensible. Language is not a work, _ergon,_ but
-an activity, _energeia._ ... It is an eternally repeated effort of
-the spirit in order to make articulated tones capable of expressing
-thought." Language is the act of speaking. "True and proper language
-consists in the very act of producing it by means of connected
-utterance; that is the only thing that must be thought of as the
-starting-point or the truth in any inquiry which aims at penetrating
-into the living essence of language. Division into words and rules is a
-lifeless artifice of scientific analysis."[6] Language is not a thing
-arising out of the need of external communication; on the contrary, it
-springs from the wholly internal thirst for knowledge and the struggle
-to reach an intuition of things." From its earliest commencement it is
-entirely human, and extends without intention to all objects of sensory
-perception or internal elaboration.... Words gush spontaneously from
-the breast without constraint or intention: there is no nomad tribe in
-any desert without its songs. Taken as a zoological species, man is a
-singing animal which connects its thoughts with its utterances."[7]
-The new man leads Humboldt to discover a fact hidden from the authors
-of logico-universal grammars: namely the internal form of language
-(_innere Sprachform_), which is neither logical concept nor physical
-sound, but the subjective view of things formed by man, the product
-of imagination and feeling, the individualization of the concept.
-Conjunction of the internal form of language with physical sound is
-the work of an internal synthesis; "and here, more than anywhere else,
-language by its profound and mysterious operation recalls art. Sculptor
-and painter also unite the idea with matter, and their efforts are
-judged praiseworthy or not according as this union, this intimate
-interpenetration, is the work of true genius, or as the idea is
-something separate, painfully and laboriously imposed upon the matter
-by sheer force of brush or chisel."[8]
-
-[Sidenote: _Language and art in Humboldt._]
-
-But Humboldt was content to regard the procedure of artist and speaker
-as comparable by analogy, without proceeding to identify them. On the
-one hand, he was too one-sided in his view of language as a means
-for the development of thought (logical thought); on the other, his
-own æsthetic ideas, always vague and not always true, prevented his
-perception of the identity. Of his two principal writings on Æsthetic,
-that on _Beauty Masculine and Feminine_ (1795) seems to be wholly
-under the influence of Winckelmann, whose antithesis between beauty
-and expression is revived, and the opinion expressed that specific
-sexual characters diminish the beauty of the human body and that beauty
-asserts itself only by triumphing over differences of sex. His other
-work, which is inspired by Goethe's _Hermann und Dorothee,_ defines
-art as "representation of nature by means of fancy; the representation
-being beautiful, just because it is the work of fancy," a metamorphosis
-of nature carried to a higher sphere. The poet reflects the pictures
-of language, itself a complex of abstractions.[9] In his dissertation
-on Linguistic, Humboldt distinguishes poetry and prose, treating
-the two concepts philosophically, not by the empirical distinction
-between free and measured or periodic and metric language. "Poetry
-gives us reality in its sensible appearance, as it is felt internally
-and externally; but is indifferent to the character which makes it
-real, and even deliberately ignores that character. It presents the
-sensuous appearance to fancy and, by this means, leads towards the
-contemplation of an artistically ideal whole. Prose, on the contrary,
-looks in reality for the roots which attach it to existence, the cords
-which bind her to it: hence it fastens fact to fact and concept to
-concept according to the methods of the intellect, and strives towards
-the objective union of them all in an idea."[10] Poetry precedes
-prose: before producing prose, the spirit necessarily forms itself in
-poetry.[11] But, beside these views, some of which are profoundly true,
-Humboldt looks on poets as perfecters of language, and on poetry as
-belonging only to certain exceptional moments,[12] and makes us suspect
-that after all he never recognized clearly or maintained firmly that
-language is always poetry, and that prose (science) is a distinction
-not of æsthetic form but of content, that is, of logical form.
-
-[Sidenote: _H. Steinthal. The linguistic function independent of the
-logical._]
-
-Humboldt's contradictions about the concept of language lost him his
-principal follower, Steinthal. With the help of his master, Steinthal
-restated the position that language belongs not to Logic but to
-Psychology,[13] and in 1855 waged a gallant war against the Hegelian
-Becker, author of _The Organisms of Language,_ one of the last logical
-grammarians, who pledged himself to deduce the entire body of the
-Sanskrit languages from twelve cardinal concepts. Steinthal declares it
-is not true that one cannot think without words: the deaf-mute thinks
-in signs; the mathematician in formulæ. In some languages, as in
-Chinese, the visual element is as necessary to thought as the phonetic,
-if not more so.[14] In this he may have overshot the mark, and failed
-to establish the autonomy of expression with regard to logical thought;
-for his examples only confirm the fact that if we can think without
-words, we cannot think without expressions.[15] But he successfully
-demonstrates that concept and word, logical judgement and proposition,
-are incommensurable. The proposition is not the judgement but the
-representation (_Darstellung_) of a judgement; and all propositions do
-not represent logical judgements. It is possible to express several
-judgements in a single proposition. The logical divisions of judgements
-(the relations of concepts) find no counterpart in the grammatical
-divisions of propositions. "A logical form of the proposition is just
-as much a contradiction as the angle of a circle or the circumference
-of a triangle." He who talks, in so far as he talks, possesses not
-thoughts but language.[16]
-
-[Sidenote: _Identity of the problems of the origin and the nature of
-language._]
-
-Having thus freed language from all dependence on Logic, having
-repeatedly proclaimed the principle that language produces its forms
-independently of Logic and in the fullest autonomy,[17] and having
-purified Humboldt's theory from the taint of the logical grammar of
-Port Royal, Steinthal seeks the origin of language, recognizing, with
-his master, that the question of its origin is identical with that of
-nature of language, its psychological genesis or rather the position
-it occupies in evolution of the spirit. "In the matter of language
-there is no difference between its original creation (_Urschöpfung_)
-and the creation which is daily repeated."[18] Language belongs to the
-vast class of reflex movements; but to say that is to look at it from
-one side only and to omit its own essential peculiarity. Animals have
-reflex movements and sensations like man; but in animals the senses
-"are wide gates through which external nature rushes to the assault
-with such impetus as to overwhelm the mind and deprive it of all
-independence and freedom of movement." In man, however, language can
-arise because man is resistance to nature, conqueror of his own body,
-freedom incarnate: "language is liberation: even to-day we feel our
-mind lightened and freed from a weight when we speak." In the situation
-immediately preceding the production of speech man must be conceived as
-"accompanying all his sensations and all the intuitions received by his
-mind with the most lively contortions of body, attitudes of mimicry,
-gestures, and above all tones, articulate tones." What element of
-speech did he lack? One only, but a most important one: the conscious
-conjunction of reflex bodily movements with the excitations of his
-mind. If sensuous consciousness is already consciousness, it lacks the
-consciousness of being conscious; if it is already intuition, it is
-not intuition of intuition; what it lacks is in a word the internal
-form of speech. When that arises, there arises too its inseparable
-accompaniment, words. Man does not select sound: it is given him,
-and he takes it of necessity, instinctively, without intention or
-choice.[19]
-
-[Sidenote: _Steinthal's mistaken ideas on art: his failure to unite
-Linguistic and Æsthetic._]
-
-This is not the place for detailed examination of the whole of
-Steinthal's theory and the various phases, not always progressive,
-through which he travelled, especially after the beginning of
-his spiritual collaboration with Lazarus, with whom he studied
-ethnopsychology (_Völkerpsychologie_), of which they both took
-Linguistic to be a part.[20] But, while giving him full credit for
-bringing Humboldt's ideas into coherent order, and for clearly
-differentiating, as had never before been done, between linguistic
-activity and the activity of logical thought, it must be noted
-that Steintha! never recognized the identity of the internal form
-of language (which he also called the intuition of intuition, or
-apperception) with the æsthetic imagination. The Herbartian psychology
-to which he clung afforded him no clue to such a discovery. Herbart and
-his followers divorced psychology from logic as a normative science
-and never succeeded in discerning the true connection between feeling
-and spiritual formation, soul and spirit; they never understood that
-logical thought is one of these spiritual formations: an activity, not
-a code of external laws. The domain allotted by them to Æsthetic we
-already know; for them Æsthetic too was only another code of beautiful
-formal relations. Under the influence of these doctrines Steinthal
-was led to regard Art as the embellishment of thoughts, Linguistic as
-the science of speech, and Rhetoric or Æsthetic as a thing differing
-from Linguistic since it is science of fine or beautiful speaking.[21]
-In one of his innumerable tracts he says, "Poetics and Rhetoric both
-differ from Linguistic, since they are obliged to touch on many
-important topics before reaching language. These sciences therefore
-have but one section devoted to Linguistic, which is the concluding
-section of Syntax. Moreover Syntax has a character entirely different
-from Rhetoric and from Poetics; the former is occupied solely with
-correctness (_Richtigkeit)_ of language; the latter two sciences
-study beauty or grace of expression (_Schönheit oder Angemessenheit
-des Ausdrucks_): the principles of the first are merely grammatical,
-the others must consider matters outside language; for example, the
-disposition of the orator and so forth. To speak plainly, Syntax is
-to Stylistic as is the grammatical measure of the quantity of vowels
-to the theory of metre."[22] That speaking invariably means good or
-beautiful speaking, since speech that is neither good nor beautiful is
-not really speech,[23] and that the radical renewal of the concept of
-language inaugurated by Humboldt and himself must produce far-reaching
-effects on the cognate sciences of Poetics, Rhetoric and Æsthetic and,
-by transforming, unify them, never entered Steinthal's head. After
-all this labour and all this minute analysis, the identification of
-language and poetry, and of the science of language with the science of
-poetry, the identification of Linguistic with Æsthetic, still found its
-least faulty expression in the prophetic aphorisms of Giambattista Vico.
-
-
-[1] _Antihermes oder philosophische Untersuchung üb. d. reine Begriff
-d. menschl. Sprache und die allgemeine Sprachlehre,_ Frankfurt and
-Leipzig, 1795.
-
-[2] For these writers, see accounts and quotations in Loewe, _Hist,
-crit. gramm. univ., passim,_ and Pott, introd. to Humboldt, pp.
-clxxi.-ccxii.; cf. also Benfey, _Gesch. d. Sprachwiss.,_ introd.
-
-[3] In _Philos, der Mythologie_: cf. Steinthal, _Urspr._ pp. 81-89.
-
-[4] _Üb. d. Verschiedenheit d. menschl. Sprachbaues,_ posthumous work
-(2nd ed. by A. F. Pott, Berlin, 1880).
-
-[5] _Verschiedenheit_, etc. pp. 308-310.
-
-[6] _Verschiedenheit,_ etc., pp. 54-56.
-
-[7] _Verschiedenheit,_ etc., pp. 25, 73-74, 79.
-
-[8] _Op. cit._ pp. 105-118.
-
-[9] Zimmermann, _G. d. A._ pp. 533-544.
-
-[10] _Verschiedenheit,_ etc., pp. 326-328.
-
-[11] _Op. cit._ pp. 239-240.
-
-[12] _Op. cit._ pp. 205-206, 547, etc.
-
-[13] _Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie, ihre Principien u. ihr
-Verhältn. z. einand.,_ Berlin, 1855.
-
-[14] _Gramm., Log. u. Psych._ pp. 153-158.
-
-[15] See above, pp. 28-30.
-
-[16] _Gramm., Log. u. Psych,_ pp. 183, 195.
-
-[17] _Einleitung i. d. Psych, u. Sprachwissenschaft_ (2nd ed., Berlin,
-1881), p. 62.
-
-[18] _Gramm., Log. u. Psych,_ p. 231.
-
-[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 285, 292, 295-306.
-
-[20] Steinthal, _Ursprung d. Sprache_ (4th ed. Berlin, 1888), pp.
-120-124. M. Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele,_ 1855 (Berlin, 1876-1878),
-vol. ii. _Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsych. u. Sprachwiss._ from 1860
-onwards, edited by Steinthal and Lazarus together.
-
-[21] _Gramm., Log. u. Psych,_ pp. 139-140, 146.
-
-[22] _Einleit._ pp. 34-35.
-
-[23] See above, pp. 78-79.
-
-
-
-
-XIII
-
-
-MINOR GERMAN ÆSTHETICIANS
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Minor æstheticians in the metaphysical school._]
-
-
-When we turn from the pages of methodical and serious thinkers such as
-Schleiermacher, Humboldt and Steinthal, we are filled with distaste
-by the books written in enormous quantities during the first half of
-the nineteenth century by disciples of Schelling and Hegel. We are
-fatigued and almost disgusted as we pass from this illuminating and
-scientific study to something which oscillates between vapid fancies
-and charlatanism; between the vanity of empty formulæ and the attempt,
-not always free from dishonesty, to employ them in order to amaze and
-overwhelm the reader or student.
-
-[Sidenote: _Krause, Trahndorff, Weisse and others._]
-
-Why should we encumber a general History of Æsthetic (which ought,
-certainly, to take account of aberrations from the truth, but only in
-so far as they indicate the general trend of contemporary thought) with
-the theories of such men as Krause, Trahndorff, Weisse, Deutinger,
-Oersted, Zeising, Eckardt and the crowd of manipulators of manuals and
-systems? The only one who obtained a hearing outside his native Germany
-was Krause, who was imported into Spain; we are justified, therefore,
-in leaving them to the memory or forgetfulness of their compatriots.
-For Krause,[1] the humanitarian, the freethinker, the theosophist,
-everything is organism, everything is beauty; beauty is organism, and
-organism is beauty: Essence, that is to say God, is one, free and
-entire; one, free and entire is Beauty. There is but one artist, God;
-but one art, the divine. The beauty of finite things is the Divinity,
-or rather the likeness of Divinity manifested in the finite. Beauty
-brings into play reason, intellect and imagination in a mode conforming
-to their laws, and awakens disinterested pleasure and inclination in
-the soul. Trahndorff,[2] describing the various degrees by which the
-individual seeks to grasp the essence or form of the universe (the
-degrees of feeling, intuition, reflexion and presentiment), and noting
-the insufficiency of simple theoretical knowledge till supplemented
-by the Will, the Will which is power (_Können_), in its three degrees
-of Aspiration, Faith and Love, places the Beautiful in the highest
-grade, in Love: it would seem, therefore, that Beauty is Love which
-comprehends itself. Christian Weisse[3] attempted, like Trahndorff, to
-reconcile the God of Christianity with the Hegelian philosophy: in his
-estimation the æsthetic Idea is superior to the logical, and leads to
-religion, to God; the idea of beauty, existing outside the sensible
-universe, is the reality of the concept of beauty, and, as the idea of
-divinity is absolute Love, so must that of Beauty be found truly in
-Love. The same reconciliation was attempted by the Catholic theologian
-Deutinger;[4] beauty, for him, is born of power (_Können_), an activity
-parallel with those of the knowledge of truth and the doing of good
-but (differing in this from knowledge, which is receptive) realizing
-itself in an outward movement from within, mastering the world of
-matter and imprinting upon it the seal of personality. An internal
-ideal intuition, the Idea: an external shapable matter: the power of
-interpenetrating internal with external, invisible with visible, ideal
-with real: such is Beauty. Oersted[5] (the celebrated Danish naturalist
-whose works were translated into German and gained him a considerable
-reputation in Germany) defines beauty as the objective Idea in the
-moment of subjective contemplation: the Idea expressed in things in so
-far as it reveals itself to intuition. Zeising[6] turned his attention
-partly to exploration of the mysteries of the golden section, and
-partly to speculations on Beauty, which he considered as one of the
-three forms of the Idea; first, the Idea which expresses itself in
-object and subject; secondly, the Idea as intuition; and thirdly, the
-Absolute which appears in the world and is conceived intuitively by
-the spirit. Eckardt,[7] intent on creating a theistic Æsthetic which
-should avoid the one-sided transcendence of deism on the one hand and
-the one-sided immanence of pantheism on the other, maintained that its
-principles must be sought not in the feelings of the contemplator, not
-in works of art, not in the idea of the beautiful, not in the concept
-of art, but in the creative spirit of the artist, the original fount
-of beauty; and since a creative artist cannot be conceived except as
-derived from the highest creative genius which is God, Eckardt invokes
-aid from a psychology of God (_eine Psychologie des Weltkünstlers_).
-
-[Sidenote: _Fried. Theodor Vischer._]
-
-If quantity is as important as quality, we must devote some space to
-Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the bulkiest of all German æstheticians,
-indeed the German æsthetician _par excellence_: after publishing a book
-on _The Sublime and the Comic, a contribution to the Philosophy of
-the Beautiful_,[8] in 1837, he produced four huge tomes on _Æsthetic
-as Science of the Beautiful_ between 1846 and 1857,[9] where, in
-hundreds of paragraphs and long observations and sub-observations, is
-massed a stupendous amount of æsthetic material, of matter foreign to
-Æsthetic, and of subjects taken haphazard from the whole thinkable
-universe. Vischer's work is divided into three parts: a Metaphysic of
-the Beautiful, which investigates the concept of Beauty in itself, no
-matter where and how it is realized: a treatise on concrete Beauty,
-which inquires into the two one-sided modes of realization, Beauty
-of nature and Beauty of imagination, one lacking subjective, the
-other lacking objective, existence: lastly, a theory of the arts,
-which studies the synthesis in art of the two artistic moments, the
-physical and psychical, the objective and subjective. It is easy to
-sum up Vischer's concept of æsthetic activity; it is Hegel's concept,
-debased. For Vischer, Beauty belongs neither to the theoretical nor to
-the practical activity, but is placed in a serene sphere, superior to
-these antitheses; that is to say in the sphere of absolute Spirit, in
-company with Religion and Philosophy;[10] but, in contradistinction to
-Hegel, Vischer assigns the first place in this sphere to Religion, the
-second to Art, and the third to Philosophy. Much ingenuity was devoted
-in those days to moving these words about like pieces on a chess-board;
-it has been observed that of the six possible combinations of the
-three terms Art, Religion and Philosophy, four were actually adopted:
-by Schelling, _P.R.A._; by Hegel, _A.R.P._; by Weisse, _P.A.R._; and
-by Vischer, _R.A.P_.[11] But Vischer himself[12] states that Wirth,
-author of a _System of Ethics_,[13] opted for the fifth combination,
-_R.P.A.,_ which leaves us but the sixth, _A.P.R.,_ unclaimed, unless
-(as is not improbable) some unrecognized genius seized upon it and made
-it the text of his system. Beauty, therefore, as the second form of
-the absolute Spirit, is the realization of the Idea, not as abstract
-concept but as union of concept and reality; and the Idea determines
-itself as species (_Gattung_), and every idea of a species, even on the
-lowest degree, is beautiful as being an integral part in the totality
-of Ideas; although the higher the degree of the idea the greater is
-its beauty.[14] Highest of all degrees is that of human personality:
-"in this spiritual world the Idea attains its true significance; the
-name of idea is given to the great moral motive powers to which the
-concept of species may also be applied in the sense that they stand
-to their restricted spheres in the same relation in which the genus
-stands to its species and individuals." At the head of all is the Idea
-of morality: "the world of moral and autonomous ends is destined to
-furnish the most important, the most worthy content of the Beautiful";
-with the warning, however, that Beauty, in actualizing this world
-through intuition, excludes art having a moral tendency.[15] So Vischer
-proceeds now to degrade Hegel's Idea to the simple class-concept,
-now to couple it with the idea of the Good; now, in accord with the
-teaching of his master, to make it different from, yet superior to,
-intellect and morality.
-
-[Sidenote: _Other tendencies._]
-
-From the first, the Herbartian formalism was little studied and less
-followed: two writers, Griepenkerl in 1827 and Bobrik in 1834, made
-some attempt to develop and apply the cursory notes with which Herbart
-contented himself.[16] Schleiermacher's lectures, even before their
-appearance in book form, had served as basis for a series of elegant
-dissertations by Erich Ritter (1840)[17] (better known as a historian
-of philosophy); his work is of little value, for instead of dwelling
-on the important points of the master's doctrine Ritter brings into
-prominence secondary matters relating to sociability and the æsthetic
-fife. A penetrating critic of German Æsthetic from Baumgarten to the
-post-Kantian school was Wilhelm Theodor Danzel, who lived about this
-time and very properly rebelled against the claim to find "thought" in
-works of art: "Artistic thought:" he writes; "unhappy phrase, which
-helped to condemn an entire epoch to the Sisyphean labour of trying to
-reduce art to intellectual and rational thinking! The thought of a
-work of art is nothing save that which is contemplated in a definite
-way; it is not represented, as is commonly asserted, in a work of art,
-it is the work of art itself. Artistic thought can never be expressed
-by concepts and words."[18] By his early death Danzel ended the hopes
-he raised by his original views on the science and history of Æsthetic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Theory of the Beautiful in nature, and that of the
-Modifications of Beauty._]
-
-The post-Hegelian metaphysical Æsthetic is chiefly noteworthy for
-the fuller development of two theories or, to speak more accurately,
-of two very curious combinations of arbitrary assertion and fanciful
-caprice: the so-called theory of Natural Beauty, and the theory of
-Modifications of the Beautiful. Neither of the two had any intimate
-or necessary connexion with this philosophical movement, to which
-they are rather linked by historical or psychological causes; by the
-relationship between facts of pleasure and pain and the inclination
-towards mysticism; by the confusion arising from the really æsthetic
-(imaginative) quality of some representations wrongly described as
-observation of natural beauties; or by the scholastic and literary
-tradition of discussing these cases of pleasure and pain and
-extra-æsthetic natural beauties in books devoted to the discussion
-of art.[19] These metaphysicians were sometimes rather grotesque
-and remind one of the story told of Paisiello, that in the fury of
-composition he set even the stage directions of his libretto to music;
-bitten with the rage for construction and dialectic, they did not spare
-even the indexes of chaotic old books, but seized on them as suitable
-material for a dialectical exercise.
-
-[Sidenote: _Development of the first theory. Herder._]
-
-Beginning with the theory of Natural Beauty, observations on beautiful
-natural objects are found among the inquiries of the ancient
-philosophers on beauty, and especially among the mystical effusions
-of neo-Platonists and their followers in the Middle Ages and the
-Renaissance.[20] Less frequently such questions were introduced into
-treatises on Poetics: Tesauro (1654) is among the first who, in his
-_Cannochiale aristotelico,_ discusses not only the conceits of men, but
-also of God, the angels, nature and animals; and somewhat later (1707)
-Muratori speaks of "the beauty of matter," of which examples are "the
-gods, a flower, the sun, a rivulet."[21] Observations on that which
-is outside art and is merely natural, are made by Crousaz, by André,
-and especially by those authors of the eighteenth century who wrote
-on Beauty and Art in an empirical and gallant style.[22] It was the
-influence of these persons that led Kant, as we have seen, to sever the
-theory of beauty from that of art, specially connecting free beauty
-with objects of nature and those productions of man which reproduce
-natural beauties.[23] When the adversary of Kant's theory of Æsthetic,
-Herder (1800), in his sketch of an ethical system united spirit and
-nature, pleasure and value, feeling and intellect, he inevitably made
-much of natural beauty, and affirmed that everything in nature has its
-own beauty, the expression of its own greatest content, and that this
-accounts for the ascending scale of beautiful objects: beginning with.
-outlines, colours and tones, light and sound, and proceeding by way of
-flowers, water and sea, to birds, terrestrial animals, and man himself.
-For instance "a bird is the sum of the properties and perfections of
-its element, a representation of its potency, a creature of light, song
-and air"; amongst terrestrial animals, the ugliest are those resembling
-man, as the melancholy moping monkey; the most beautiful, those of
-perfect build, well proportioned, noble, free in action; those which
-express sweetness; those, in fine, which live in harmony and happiness,
-endowed with a perfection of their own, harmless to man.[24]
-
-[Sidenote: _Schelling, Solger, Hegel._]
-
-Schelling, on the contrary, utterly, denies the concept of beauty
-in nature, and considers that such beauty is purely accidental and
-that art alone supplies the norm by which it can be discovered and
-judged.[25] Solger also excludes natural beauty;[26] so does Hegel,
-who distinguishes himself not by denying it but by proceeding with
-the utmost inconsequence to deal at length with the beautiful in
-nature. It is in fact not clear whether he means that really no beauty
-exists in nature and that man introduces it in his vision of things,
-or whether natural beauty really exists though inferior in degree
-to the beauty of art. "The beauty of art," he says," stands higher
-than that of nature; it is beauty born and reborn by the work of the
-spirit, and spirit alone is truth and reality; hence beauty is truly
-beauty only when it participates in spirit and is produced therefrom.
-Taken in this sense, the beauty of nature appears as a mere reflexion
-of the beauty appertaining to spirit, as an imperfect and incomplete
-mode, which substantially is contained within the spirit itself." In
-confirmation, he adds that nobody has attempted a systematic exposition
-of natural beauties, whereas there actually is, from the point of view
-of the utility of natural objects, a _materia medica_[27] But the
-second chapter of the first part of his Æsthetic is devoted precisely
-to natural Beauty on the ground that, in order to grasp the idea of
-artistic beauty in its entirety, three stages must be traversed: beauty
-in general, natural beauty (whose defects show the necessity for art),
-and, lastly, the Idea; "the first existence of the Idea is nature,
-and its first beauty is natural beauty." This beauty, which is beauty
-for us and not for itself, has several phases, from that in which the
-concept is immersed in matter to the point of disappearing, such as
-physical facts and isolated mechanisms, to that higher phase in which
-physical facts are united in systems (_e.g._ the solar system); but
-the Idea first reaches a true and real existence in organic facts, in
-the living creature. And even the living creature is liable to the
-distinction between beautiful and ugly; for example, among animals,
-the sloth, trailing itself laboriously and incapable of animation or
-activity, displeases us by its apathetic somnolence; nor can beauty be
-found in amphibians or in many kinds of fish, or in crocodiles, or
-toads, as well as in many insects and especially in those equivocal
-creatures which express a transition from one i class to another, such
-as the ornithorhyncus, a mixture of bird and beast.[28] These samples
-may suffice to show the general trend of Hegel's doctrine of natural
-beauty; elsewhere he discusses the external beauty of abstract form,
-regularity, symmetry, harmony, etc., which are; precisely the concepts
-which the formalism of Herbart placed in the heaven of the Ideas of the
-Beautiful.
-
-[Sidenote: _Schleiermacher._]
-
-Schleiermacher, who praised Hegel for his attempt to exclude natural
-beauty from his Æsthetic, excluded it from his own not verbally but
-actually, by confining his attention to the artistic perfection of
-the internal image formed by the energy of the human spirit.[29] But
-the so-called Feeling for Nature which came in with Romanticism, and
-the _Cosmos_ and other descriptive works of Humboldt,[30] directed
-attention increasingly to the impressions awakened by natural facts.
-
-[Sidenote: _Alexander Humboldt._]
-
-This led to the compilation of those systematic lists of natural
-beauties whose impossibility had been proclaimed by Hegel, though he
-himself had furnished an example of them; amongst others, Bratranek
-published an _Æsthetic of the Vegetable World._[31]
-
-[Sidenote: _Vischer's "Æsthetic Physics."_]
-
-The best-known and most widely circulated treatment of the subject was
-contained in this very work of Vischer's; who following Hegel's example
-devoted a section of his _Æsthetic,_ as we have seen, to the objective
-existence of Beauty, _i.e._ to the Beauty of nature, and entitled it by
-the perhaps new and certainly characteristic name of Æsthetic Physics
-(_ästhetische Physik_). This Æsthetic Physics comprised the beauty of
-inorganic nature (light, heat, air, water, earth); organic nature, with
-its four vegetable types and its animals vertebrate and invertebrate;
-and beauty of human beings, divided into generic and historic. The
-generic was subdivided into sections on the beauty of general forms
-(age, sex, conditions, love, marriage, family); of special forms
-(races, peoples, culture, political life); and of individual forms
-(temperament and character). Historical beauty included that of
-ancient history (Oriental, Greek, Roman), of Mediæval or Germanic, and
-of modern times; because, according to Vischer, it was the duty of
-Æsthetic to cast a glance over universal history before summing up the
-different degrees of the beautiful according to the varying phases of
-the struggle for freedom against nature.[32]
-
-[Sidenote: _The Theory of the Modifications of Beauty. From antiquity
-to the eighteenth century._]
-
-As regards the Modifications of Beauty, it should be remembered that
-the ancient manuals of Poetics, and more frequently those of Rhetoric,
-contained more or less scientific definitions of psychological states
-and facts; Aristotle attempted in his _Poetics_ to determine the nature
-of a tragic action or personality, and sketched a definition of the
-comic; in his Rhetoric he writes at considerable length of wit;[33]
-sections of the _De oratore_ of Cicero and the _Institutions_ of
-Quintilian[34] are devoted to wit and the comic; the lofty style was
-the subject of a lost treatise of Cæcilius, which anticipated that
-attributed to Longinus, whose title was translated in modern times
-as _De sublimitate_ or _On the Sublime._ Following the example of
-the ancients, this kind of medley was perpetuated by writers of the
-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; whole treatises on the comic are
-incorporated in, for instance, the _Argutezza_ of Matteo Pellegrini
-(1639) and the _Cannochiale_ of Tesauro. La Bruyère treated of the
-sublime[35] and Boileau by his translation gave a fresh vogue to
-Longinus: the following century saw Burke inquiring into the origin
-of our ideas of the beautiful and the sublime, and deriving the
-former from the instinct for sociability, the latter from that of
-self-preservation; he also tried to define ugliness, grace, elegance
-and extraordinary beauty; Home, in his celebrated _Elements of
-Criticism,_ discussed grandeur, sublimity, the ridiculous, wit,
-dignity and grace: Mendelssohn discussed sublimity, dignity and
-grace in fine art, and described some of these facts as due to mixed
-feelings, in which he was followed by Lessing[36] and others: Sulzer
-welcomed all these various concepts into his æsthetic encyclopædia
-and collected round them an elaborate bibliography. A new and curious
-meaning of the word humour reached the continent from England at this
-time. Its original meaning was simply "temperament," and sometimes
-"spirit," or "wit" ("_belli umori_" in Italy; in the seventeenth
-century there was in Rome an Academy of _Umoristi_). Voltaire
-introduced it into France and wrote in 1761, "_Les Anglais ont un terme
-pour signifier cette plaisanterie, ce vrai comique, cette gaieté, cette
-urbanité, ces saillies, qui échappent à un homme sans qu'il s'en doute;
-et ils rendent cette idée par le mot_ humour ...";[37] in 1767 Lessing
-distinguishes humour from the German _Laune_ (caprice, whim),[38] a
-distinction maintained by Herder in 1769 in opposition to Riedel who
-had confused the terms.[39]
-
-[Sidenote: _Kant and the post-Kantians._]
-
-Accustomed to find all these subjects treated in the same book,
-philosophers at first theorized about them all without attempting to
-link them up together by introducing an artificial logical connexion.
-Kant, who had already in imitation of Burke written in 1764 a
-dissertation on the beautiful and the sublime, ingenuously remarked
-in the course of his lectures on Logic in 1771 that the beautiful and
-the æsthetic are not identical, because "the sublime also belongs to
-Æsthetic";[40] and in his _Critique of Judgment,_ while treating of
-the comic in a mere digression (a magnificent piece of psychological
-analysis)[41] places side by side with and as if on an equality with
-the "Analytic of Beauty," an "Analytic of the Sublime."[42] We may
-note in passing that, before the publication of the third Critique,
-Heydenreich arrived at the same doctrine of the sublime which is
-contained in Kant's book.[43] Did Kant ever think of uniting the
-beautiful and the sublime and deducing them from a single concept?
-Apparently not. By his declaration that the principle of beauty must
-be sought outside ourselves, and that of the sublime within us, he
-tacitly assumes that the two objects are wholly disparate. In 1805 Ast,
-a follower of Schelling, declared the necessity of overcoming what he
-called the Kantian dualism of the beautiful and the sublime:[44] others
-reproached Kant with having treated the comic by the psychological, not
-the metaphysical, method. Schiller wrote a series of dissertations on
-the tragic, the sentimental, the ingenuous, the sublime, the pathetic,
-the trivial, the low, the dignified and the graceful, and their
-varieties, the fascinating, the majestic, the grave, and the solemn.
-Another artist, Jean Paul Richter, discoursed at great length on wit
-and humour, described by him as the romantic comic, or the sublime
-reversed (_umgekehrte Erhabene)_.[45]
-
-Herbart, in virtue of his formalistic principle, asserts that all
-these concepts are irrelevant to Æsthetic; he attributes them to the
-work of art, not to pure beauty;[46] Schleiermacher comes to the same
-conclusion, but for much better reasons, as a result of his sane
-conception of art. Amongst other things he observes: "It is usual
-to describe the beautiful and the sublime as two kinds of artistic
-perfection; and so accustomed have we grown to the union of these
-two concepts that we must make an effort to convince ourselves how
-very far they are from being co-ordinate or from together exhausting
-the concept of artistic perfection"; he regrets that even the best
-æstheticians should give rhetorical descriptions of them instead of
-demonstrating them. "The thing," says he, "is not right and just" (_hat
-keine Richtigkeit_), and he proceeds to exclude the whole subject from
-his Æsthetic,[47] as he had done previously in the case of natural
-beauty. Other philosophers, however, clung persistently to their search
-for a connexion between these various concepts, and called in dialectic
-to help them. The habit of applying dialectic to empirical concepts
-affected everybody at that time; even the great enemy of dialectic,
-Herbart, showed the cloven hoof, when in order to explain the union of
-different æsthetic ideas in the beautiful he appealed to the formula
-"they lose regularity in order to regain it."[48] Schelling asserted
-that the sublime is the infinite in the finite, and the beautiful the
-finite in the infinite, adding that the absolutely sublime includes the
-beautiful, and the beautiful the sublime;[49] and Ast, whom we have
-mentioned already, spoke of a masculine, positive element, which is the
-sublime, and a feminine, negative element which is the graceful and
-pleasing: between which there is a contrast and a struggle.
-
-[Sidenote: _Culmination of the development._]
-
-These exercises in dialectical system-building developed and increased
-till about the middle of the nineteenth century they assumed two
-distinct forms whose history must here be shortly outlined.
-
-[Sidenote: _Double form of the theory. The overcoming of the ugly.
-Solger, Weisse and others._]
-
-The first form may be called the Overcoming of the Ugly. This theory
-conceives the comic, the sublime, the tragic, the humorous, and so
-forth, as so many engagements in the war between the Ugly and the
-Beautiful, wherein the latter was invariably victorious, and arose by
-means of this war to more and more lofty and complex manifestations.
-The second form of the theory may be described as the Passage from
-Abstract to Concrete; it held that Beauty cannot emerge from the
-abstract, cannot become this or that concrete beauty, except by
-particularizing itself in the comic, tragic, sublime, humorous, or
-some other modification. The first form was already well developed in
-Solgei, an adherent of the romantic theory of Irony: but historically
-it presupposes the æsthetic theory of the Ugly, first sketched by
-Friedrich Schlegel in 1797. We have already noted that Schlegel
-considered the characteristic or interesting, not the beautiful, to
-be the principle of modern art; hence the importance attached by him
-to the piquant, the striking (_frappant_), the daring, the cruel, the
-ugly.[50] Solger found here the basis for his dialectic; amongst other
-things he maintains that the finite, earthly element may be dissolved
-and absorbed in the divine, which constitutes the tragic: or else the
-divine element may be entirely corrupted by the earthly, producing the
-comic.[51] These methods of Solger were followed by Weisse (1830), and
-by Ruge (1837); for the former, ugliness is "the immediate existence of
-beauty" which is overcome in the sublime and the comic; for the latter,
-the effort to achieve the Idea, or the Idea searching for itself,
-generates the sublime; when the Idea loses instead of discovering
-itself, ugliness is produced; when the Idea rediscovers itself and
-rises out of ugliness to new life, the comic.[52] A whole treatise
-entitled _The Æsthetic of the Ugly_[53] was published by Rosenkranz in
-1853, presenting this concept as intermediate between the beautiful
-and the comic, and tracing it from its first origin to that "sort
-of perfection" it attains in the satanic. Passing from the common
-(_Gemeine)_ which is the petty, the weak, the low, and the sub-species
-of the low, viz. the usual, the casual, the arbitrary and the crude,
-Rosenkranz goes on to describe the repugnant, trisected into the
-awkward, the dead and empty, and the horrible: thus he proceeds from
-tripartition to tripartition, dividing the horrible into the absurd,
-the nauseating and the wicked: the wicked into criminal, spectral and
-diabolical: the diabolical into demoniac, magical and satanic. He
-opposes the childish notion that ugliness acts as a foil to beauty
-in art, and justifies its introduction by the necessity for art to
-represent the entire appearance of the Idea; on the other hand he
-admits that the ugly is not on the same level as the beautiful, for,
-if the beautiful can stand by itself alone, the other cannot do so and
-must always be reflected by and in the beautiful.[54]
-
-[Sidenote: _Passage from abstract to concrete: Vischer._]
-
-The second form prevailed with Vischer. The following extract will
-serve as an illustration of his manner: "The Idea arouses itself from
-the tranquil unity in which it was fused with the appearance and
-pushes onward, affirming, in face of its own finitude, its infinity";
-this rebellion and transcendence is the sublime. "But Beauty demands
-full satisfaction for this disruption of its harmony: the violated
-right of the image must be reasserted: this can be accomplished only
-by means of a fresh contradiction, that is to say by the negative
-position now taken up by the image towards the Idea by rejecting all
-interpenetration with it and by affirming its own separate existence
-as the whole"; this second moment is the comic, negation of a
-negation.[55] The same process is further enriched and complicated by
-Zeising, who compares the modifications of Beauty to the refraction of
-colours: the three primary modifications, the sublime, the attractive
-and the humorous, correspond with the primary colours violet, orange
-and green; the three secondary, pure beauty, comic and tragic, to
-the colours red, yellow and blue. Each of these six modifications
-(exactly like the degrees of the Ugly in Rosenkranz) branches out, like
-fireworks, into three rays: pure beauty into the decorous, noble and
-pleasing: the attractive into graceful, interesting and piquant: the
-comic into buffoonery, the diverting and burlesque: the humorous into
-the quaint, capricious and melancholy: the tragic into the moving,
-pathetic and demoniac: the sublime into the glorious, majestic and
-imposing.[56]
-
-[Sidenote: _The Legend of Sir Purebeauty._]
-
-All the works of this period on Æsthetic are filled in this way
-with the _gest, chanson_ or romaunt of the knight Sir Purebeauty
-(_Reinschon)_ and his extraordinary adventures, recounted in two
-conflicting versions. According to one story, Sir Purebeauty is
-constrained to abandon his beloved leisure by the Mephistophelean
-devices of the temptress Ugliness, who leads him into countless
-dangers from which he invariably emerges victorious; his victories and
-successes (his Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena) are called the Sublime,
-the Comic, the Humorous and so forth. The other story tells how the
-knight, bored by his life of loneliness, sallies forth purposely to
-seek adversaries and occasions for fighting; he is always vanquished,
-but even in his overthrow _ferum victorem capit,_ he transforms
-and irradiates the enemy. Beyond this artificial mythology, this
-legend composed without the least imagination or literary skill,
-this miserably dull tale, it is vain to look for anything whatever
-in the much elaborated theory of German æstheticians known as the
-Modifications of Beauty.
-
-
-[1] _Abriss der Ästhetik,_ post. 1837; _Vorlesung üb. Ästh._
-(1828-1829), post. 1882.
-
-[2] _Ästhetik,_ Berlin, 1827.
-
-[3] _Ästhetik,_ Leipzig, 1830; _System d. Ästh.,_ lectures, post.
-Leipzig, 1872.
-
-[4] _Kunstlehre,_ Ratisbon, 1845-1846 (_Grundlinien einer positiven
-Philosophie,_ vols. iv. v.).
-
-[5] _Der Geist in der Natur,_ 1850-1851; _Neue Beitrage z. d. Geist i.
-d. Natur,_ post. 1855.
-
-[6] _Ästhetische Forschungen,_ Frankfurt a. M. 1855.
-
-[7] _Die theistische Begründung d. Ästhetik im Gegensatz z. d.
-pantheistichen,_ Jena, 1857; same author, _Vorschule d. Ästh.,_
-Karlsruhe, 1864-1865.
-
-[8] _Üb. d. Erhabene u. Komische,_ Stuttgart, 1837.
-
-[9] _Ästhetik oder Wissenschaft d. Schönen,_ Reutlingen, Leipzig and
-Stuttgart, 1846-1857, 3 parts in 4 vols.
-
-[10] _Ästh._ introd. §§ 2-5.
-
-[11] Hartmann, _Dtsch. Ästh. s. Kant,_ p. 217, note.
-
-[12] _Ästh._ introd. § 5.
-
-[13] _System der spekulativen Ethik,_ Heilbronn, 1841-1842.
-
-[14] _Ästh._ §§ 15-17.
-
-[15] _Op. cit._ §§ 19-24.
-
-[16] Griepenkerl, _Lehrb. d. Ästh.,_ Brunswick, 1827. Bobrik, _Freie
-Verträge üb. Ästh.,_ Zürich, 1834.
-
-[17] _Üb. d. Principien d. Ästh.,_ Kiel, 1840.
-
-[18] _Ges. Aufs._ pp. 216-221.
-
-[19] See above, pp. 87-93.
-
-[20] See above, pp. 179-180.
-
-[21] _Cannochiale arist._ ch. 3: _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. I. chs. 6, 8.
-
-[22] See above, pp. 205-206, 258-261.
-
-[23] See above, pp. 275-277.
-
-[24] _Kaligone, op. cit._ pp. 55-90.
-
-[25] _System d. transcend. Ideal,_ part vi. § 2.
-
-[26] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ p. 4.
-
-[27] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ I. pp. 4-5.
-
-[28] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ I. pp. 148-180.
-
-[29] _Op. cit._ introd.
-
-[30] _Ansichten der Natur,_ 1088; _Kosmos,_ 1845-1858.
-
-[31] _Ästhetik. Pflanzenwelt,_ Leipzig, 1853.
-
-[32] _Ästh._ § 341.
-
-[33] _Poet._ 5. 13-14; _Rhet._ iii. 10, 18.
-
-[34] _De orat._ ii. 54-71; _Inst. orat._ vi. 3.
-
-[35] _Caractères,_ I.
-
-[36] _Hamb. Dramat._ Nos. 74-75.
-
-[37] Letter to abbé d'Olivet, August 20, 1761.
-
-[38] _Hamb. Dramat._ No. 93; in _Werke, ed. cit._ xii. pp. 170-171,
-note.
-
-[39] _Kritische Wälder,_ in _Werke, ed. cit._ iv. pp. 182-186.
-
-[40] Schlapp, _op. cit._ p. 55.
-
-[41] _Kr. d. Urth., Anmerkung,_ § 54.
-
-[42] _Op. cit._ bk. ii. §§ 23-29.
-
-[43] _System d. Ästh._ introd. p. xxxvi _n._
-
-[44] _System der Kunstlehre:_ cf. Hartmann, _op. cit._ p. 387.
-
-[45] _Vorschule d. Ästh._ chs. 6-9.
-
-[46] See above, pp. 309-310.
-
-[47] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ p. 240 _seqq._
-
-[48] Cf. Zimmermann, _G. d. Ästh._ p. 788.
-
-[49] _Philos, d. Kunst,_ §§ 65-66.
-
-[50] Cf. Hartmann, _Deutsch. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 363-364.
-
-[51] _Vorles üb. Ästh._ p. 85.
-
-[52] _Neue Vorschule d. Ästh._ Halle, 1837.
-
-[53] K. Rosenkranz, _Ästhetik des Hässlichen,_ Kœnigsberg, 1853.
-
-[54] _Ästh. d. Hässl._ pp. 36-40.
-
-[55] _Ästh._ §§ 83-84, 154-155.
-
-[56] _Ästh. Forsch._ p. 413.
-
-
-
-
-XIV
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC IN FRANCE, ENGLAND AND ITALY DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE
-NINETEENTH CENTURY
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic movement in France: Cousin, Jouffroy._]
-
-In the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of
-the nineteenth century German thought, notwithstanding the glaring
-errors which vitiated it, and were soon to bring about a violent and
-indeed exaggerated reaction, must on the whole be awarded the foremost
-place in the general history of European thought as well as in the
-individual study of Æsthetic, the contemporary philosophy of other
-countries standing on an inferior level of the second and third degree.
-France still lay under the dominion of the sensationalism of Condillac
-and, at the opening of the century, was quite incapable of grasping
-the spiritual activity of art. A faint gleam of Winckelmann's abstract
-spiritualism just appears in the theories of Quatremère de Quincy, who,
-in criticism of Émeric-David (in his turn a critic of ideal beauty and
-an adherent of the imitation of nature),[1] maintained that the arts
-of design have pure beauty, devoid of individual character, as their
-objective; they depict man and not; men.[2] Some sensationalists, such
-as Bonstetten, vainly endeavoured to trace the peculiar processes
-of imagination in life and in art.[3] Followers of the orthodox
-spiritualism of the French universities date the beginning of a new
-era, and the foundation of Æsthetic in France, to 1818, the year when
-Victor Cousin first delivered at the Sorbonne his lectures on the
-True, the Beautiful and the Good, which later formed his book with the
-same name, frequently reprinted.[4] These lectures of Cousin are but
-poor stuff, although some scraps of Kant are to be found in them here
-and there; he denies the identity of the beautiful with the pleasant
-or useful, and substitutes the affirmation of a threefold beauty,
-physical, intellectual and moral, the last being the true ideal beauty,
-having its foundations in God; he says that art expresses ideal Beauty,
-the infinite, God, that genius is the power of creation, and that taste
-is a mixture of fancy, sentiment and reason.[5] Academic phrases all
-of them; pompous and void and, for that very reason, well received. Of
-much greater value were the lectures on Æsthetic delivered by Théodore
-Jouffroy in 1822, before a small audience, and published posthumously
-in 1843.[6] Jouffroy allowed a beauty of expression, to be found alike
-in art and nature: a beauty of imitation, consisting in the perfect
-accuracy with which a model is reproduced: a beauty of idealisation,
-which reproduces the model, accentuating a particular quality in
-order to give it greater significance: and, finally, a beauty of the
-invisible or of content, reducible to force (physical, sensible,
-intellectual, moral), which, as force, awakens sympathy. Ugliness is
-the negation of this sympathetic beauty; its species or modifications
-are the sublime and the graceful. One sees that Jouffroy did not
-succeed in isolating the strictly æsthetic fact in his analysis and
-gave, instead of a scientific system, little beyond explanations of the
-use of words. He could not see or understand that expression, imitation
-and idealization are identical with each other and with artistic
-activity. Moreover he had many curious ideas, chiefly concerning
-expression. He said that if we were to see a drunkard with all the
-most disgusting symptoms of intoxication on a road where there was also
-an unhewn rock, we should be pleased by the drunken man, since he had
-expression, and not by the rock, since it had none. Beside Jouffroy,
-whose theories, crude and immature though they be, reveal an inquiring
-mind, it is hardly worth while to cite Lamennais,[7] who like Cousin
-regarded art as the manifestation of the infinite through the finite,
-of the absolute through the relative. French Romanticism in de Bonald,
-de Barante and Mme. de Staël had defined literature as "the expression
-of society," had honoured, under German influence, the characteristic
-and the grotesque,[8] and had proclaimed the independence of art by
-means of the formula "art for art's sake"; but these vague affirmations
-or aphorisms did not supersede, philosophically speaking, the old
-doctrine of the "imitation of nature."
-
-[Sidenote: _English Æsthetic._]
-
-In England associationistic psychology still flourished (and has
-continued to flourish uninterruptedly), unable to emancipate itself
-wholly from sensationalism or to understand imagination. Dugald
-Stewart[9] had recourse to the wretched expedient of establishing
-two forms of association: one of accidental associations, the other
-of associations innate in human nature and therefore common to all
-mankind. England did not escape German influence, as appears, for
-example, in Coleridge, to whom we owe a saner concept of poetry and
-the difference between it and science[10] (in collaboration with
-the poet Wordsworth), and in Carlyle, who placed intellect lower
-than imagination, "organ of the Divine." The most noteworthy English
-æsthetic essay of this period is the _Defence of Poetry_ by Shelley
-(1821),[11] containing profound, if not very systematic, views on the
-distinctions between reason and imagination, prose and poetry; on
-primitive language and the faculty of poetic objectification which
-enshrines and preserves "the record of the best and happiest moments of
-the happiest and best minds."
-
-[Sidenote: _Italian Æsthetic._]
-
-In Italy, where neither Parini nor Foscolo[12] had been able to shake
-off the fetters of the old doctrines (although the latter, in his later
-writings, was in several ways an innovator in literary criticism), many
-treatises and essays on Æsthetic were published during the earlier
-decades of the century, the greater part showing the influence of
-Condillac's sensationalism, which had a great vogue in Italy. Such
-authors as Delfico, Malaspina, Cicognara, Talia, Pasquali, Visconti
-and Bonacci belong more exclusively to the special, or rather, the
-anecdotal, history of Italian philosophy. Now and then, however,
-one comes across remarks that are not wholly contemptible, as in
-Melchiorre Delfico (1818) who, after wandering aimlessly hither and
-thither, fixes on the principle of expression, observing, "If it
-were possible to establish that expression is always an element in
-the beautiful, it would be a legitimate inference to regard it as
-the real characteristic of beauty, _i.e._ a condition without which
-the beautiful could not exist, and the pleasing modification which
-arouses the sentiment of beauty could not take place in us"; he tries
-to develop this principle by asserting that all other characters
-(order, harmony, proportion, symmetry, simplicity, unity and variety)
-have significance only by their subordination to the principle of
-expression.[13] In opposition to Malaspina's definition of beauty
-as "pleasure born of a representation"; and in opposition to the
-then fashionable threefold division of beauty into sensible, moral
-and intellectual, a critic of Malaspina observed that if beauty be
-representation, it is inconceivable that there should be intellectual
-beauty, which would be intelligible but not presentable.[14] Nor must
-Pasquale Balestrieri be forgotten; he was a student of medicine who
-in 1847 tried to construct an Æsthetic of an exact or mathematical
-kind, with neither better nor worse result than many famous authors in
-other countries. He noticed, while turning his algebraical expressions
-into numerals, that such general formulæ "fulfil their object with an
-infinite number of systems of different ciphers"; and that in art there
-is an element "not arbitrary, but unknown."[15] Works by German authors
-were frequently translated at this time, some of them, for example
-the writings of the two Schlegels, being reprinted several times; the
-_Æsthetic_ of Bouterweck, deriving from Kant and Schiller,[16] was read
-and discussed; Colecchi gave an excellent statement of the æsthetic
-doctrines of Kant;[17] and in 1831 a certain Lichtenthal adapted the
-_Æsthetic_ of Franz Ficker[18] to the use of Italian readers; later the
-same book was fully translated by another hand; some of Schelling's
-writings were translated, _e.g._ his discourses on the relation between
-figurative art and nature.
-
-[Sidenote: _Rosmini and Gioberti._]
-
-It must be admitted that in Italy Æsthetic received but inadequate
-treatment in the revival of philosophical speculation effected by
-the work of Galluppi, Rosmini and Gioberti. It is treated in a
-merely incidental and popular manner by the first named.[19] Rosmini
-devotes a section of his philosophical system to the deontological
-sciences, which "treat of the perfection of being, and the method of
-acquiring or producing such perfection or losing it"; among these
-sciences is that of "beauty in the universal" under the name of
-Callology, of which a special part is Æsthetic, the science of "beauty
-in the sensible," establishing the "archetypes of beings."[20] In
-his longest literary work, considered by him as his Æsthetic,[21]
-his essay on _The Idyl_,[22] Rosmini declares the aim of art to be
-neither imitation of nature nor direct intuition of the archetypes,
-but the reduction of natural things to their archetypes, which are
-arranged in a hierarchy of three ideals, natural, intellectual and
-moral. Gioberti[23] is clearly under the influence of German idealism,
-especially of Schelling's; for him the beautiful is "the individual
-union of an intelligible type with an imaginative element called into
-being by fancy"; the phantasm gives material, while the intelligible
-type (concept) gives form, in the Aristotelian sense,[24] and since the
-ideal element predominates over the sensible or fantastic, art is a
-propædeutic to the true and the good. Gioberti is of opinion that Hegel
-was wrong in detaching natural beauty from Æsthetic, for perfect beauty
-of nature is "the full correspondence of sensible reality with the Idea
-which informs and represents it," and as such "makes its appearance
-in the sensible universe during the second period of the primordial
-age described in detail by Moses in the six days of creation"; it is
-only through original sin that imperfection and ugliness arose in
-nature.[25] Art is nothing but a supplement to natural beauty, whose
-decadence it presupposes, and thus art is at once record and prophecy,
-referring to the first and last ages of the world. The Last Judgement
-will reintroduce perfect beauty: "organic restitution, by empowering
-the faculties to contemplate the intelligible in the sensible, and by
-refining their capabilities, will greatly intensify and purify æsthetic
-enjoyment. The contemplation of perfect beauty will be the beatitude of
-imagination, of which Christ gave an ineffable foretaste by appearing
-to his disciples visibly transfigured and shining with celestial
-radiance."[26] Gioberti agrees with Schelling's division of art into
-pagan and Christian, a "heterodox beauty" (Oriental and Græco-Italian
-art), imperfect when compared with "orthodox beauty"; and between the
-two, a "semi-orthodox" beauty,[27] transitional to Christian art; he
-also attempted a doctrine of modifications of the beautiful, wherein he
-held the sublime to be creator of the beautiful. Beauty is the relative
-intelligibility of created things apprehended by fancy: the sublime
-is the absolute intelligibility of time, space and infinite power as
-presented to itself by the faculty of imagination: "The ideal formula:
-the Being creates the Existing, translated into æsthetic language,
-gives the following formula: by means of the dynamical sublime Being
-creates the beautiful; and by means of the mathematical sublime
-contains it: this shows the ontological and psychological connexions of
-Æsthetic in First Science." Ugliness enters into the beautiful either
-as relief and counterpoise, or to open a way to the comic, or to depict
-the struggle between good and evil. The Christian ideal of artistic
-beauty is the figure of the God-Man, absolute union of the two forms
-of beauty, the sublime and the beautiful, a transfigured and divinely
-illuminated expression of man.[28] However carefully we sift the
-thoughts of Gioberti from their mythological Judaico-Christian husk, we
-find nothing of the least value to science.
-
-[Sidenote: _Italian Romantics. Dependence of Art._]
-
-On the other hand, if Italian literature of the day chose to revive
-and refurbish certain antiquated critical ideas, a much wider field
-was opened by social and political upheavals which tended to make
-use of literature as a practical instrument for spreading abroad the
-truths of history, science, religion and morality. In 1816 Giovanni
-Berchet wrote that "poetry ... is intended to improve the habits of
-man and satisfy the cravings of his imagination and heart, since the
-tendency towards poetry, like every other desire, awakens in us moral
-needs";[29] and Ermes Visconti in his _Conciliatore_ of 1818 says that
-æsthetic aims must be subordinated "to the improvement of mankind and
-public and private weal, the eminent aim of all studies." Manzoni,
-who subsequently took to philosophizing on art on the principles of
-Rosmini, declared in his letter on Romanticism (1823) that "poetry
-or literature in general should have utility as its objective, truth
-as its subject and interest as its means";[30] and though noticing
-the vagueness of the concept of truth in poetry, he inclined always
-(as is seen also in his discourse on the historical novel) to its
-identification with historical and scientific truth.[31] Pietro
-Maroncelli proposed as a substitute for the classic formula of art,
-"founded on imitation of the real and having pleasure as its object,"
-a formula of art as "founded on inspiration, having the beautiful as
-means and good as end"; this doctrine he baptized "cormentalism,"
-contrasting it with the doctrine of art for art's sake found in the
-writings of August Wilhelm Schlegel and Victor Hugo.[32] Tommaseo
-defined beauty as "the union of many truths in one concept" effected
-by the power of feeling.[33] Giuseppe Mazzini, too, always conceived
-literature as the mediator of the universal idea or intellectual
-concept.[34] Attempting to restore serious content to a literature
-grown weak and frivolous, the Italian Romantics found themselves forced
-on the theoretical side, by a natural reaction, into constant and
-perpetual opposition to every tendency of thought likely to affirm the
-independence of art.
-
-
-[1] Émeric-David, _Recherches sur l'art du statuaire chez les anciens,_
-Paris, 1805 (Ital. trans., Florence, 1857).
-
-[2] Quatremère de Quincy, _Essai sur l'imitation dans les beaux arts,_
-1823.
-
-[3] _Recherches sur la nature et les lois de l'imagination,_ 1807.
-
-[4] _Du vrai, du beau et du bien,_ 1818, many lines revised (23rd ed.
-Paris, 1881).
-
-[5] _Op. cit._ lectures 6-8.
-
-[6] _Cours d' esthétique,_ ed. Damiron, Paris, 1843.
-
-[7] _De l'art et du beau,_ 1843-1846.
-
-[8] Victor Hugo, Preface to _Cromwell,_ 1827.
-
-[9] Dugald Stewart, _Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind,_
-1837.
-
-[10] Gayley-Scott, _An Introd._ pp. 305-306.
-
-[11] P. B. Shelley, _A Defence of Poetry_ (in _Works,_ London, 1880,
-vol. vii.)
-
-[12] Parini, _Principi delle belle lettere applicati alle belle arti,_
-from 1773 onward; Foscolo, _Dell' origine e dell' uffizio della
-letteratura,_ 1809, and _Saggi di critica,_ composed in England.
-
-[13] M. Delfico, _Nuove ricerche sul bello,_ Naples, 1818, ch. 9.
-
-[14] Malaspina, _Delle leggi del bello,_ Milan, 1828, pp. 26, 233.
-
-[15] P. Balestrieri, _Fondamenti di estetica,_ Naples, 1847.
-
-[16] Friedrich Bouterweck, _Ästhetik,_ 1806, 1815 (3rd ed., Göttingen,
-1824-1825).
-
-[17] O. Colecchi, _Questions filosofiche,_ vol. iii., Naples, 1843.
-
-[18] P. Lichtenthal, _Estetica ossia dottrina del bello e delle arti
-belle,_ Milan, 1831.
-
-[19] _Elementi di filosofia_ (5th ed., Naples, 1846), vol. ii. pp.
-427-476.
-
-[20] _Sistema filosofico,_ by A. Rosmini-Serbati, Turin, 1886, § 210.
-
-[21] Cf. _Nuovo saggio sopra l' orig. delle idee,_ § v. part iv. ch. 5.
-
-[22] _Sull' idillio e sulla nuova letteratura italiana (opuscoli
-filosofici,_ vol. i.).
-
-[23] V. Gioberti, _Del buono e del bello_ (Florence ed., 1857).
-
-[24] _Del bello,_ ch. 1.
-
-[25] _Op. cit._ ch. 7.
-
-[26] _Op. cit._ ch. 7.
-
-[27] _Del bello,_ chs. 8-10.
-
-[28] _Op. cit._ ch. 4.
-
-[29] G. Berchet, _Opere,_ ed. Cusani, Milan, 1863, p. 227.
-
-[30] Words suppressed in ed. of 1870.
-
-[31] _Epistolario,_ ed. Sforza, i. pp. 285, 306, 308; _Discorso sul
-romanzo storico,_ 1845; _Dell' invenzione,_ dialogue.
-
-[32] _Addizioni alle Miei Prigioni,_ 1831 (in Pellico, _Prose,_
-Florence, 1858); see pp. about the _Conciliatore._
-
-[33] _Del bello e del sublime_, 1827; _Studî filosofici_ (Venice,
-1840), vol. ii. part v.
-
-[34] Cf. De Sanctis, _Lett. Hal. nel s. XIX,_ ed. Croce, Naples 1896,
-pp. 427-431.
-
-
-
-
-XV
-
-
-FRANCESCO DE SANCTIS
-
-
-[Sidenote: _F. de Sanctis: development of his thought._]
-
-On the other hand, the autonomy of art found a strong supporter in
-Italy in the critical work of Francesco de Sanctis, who held private
-classes in literature at Naples from 1838 to 1848, taught at Turin and
-Zürich from 1852 to 1860 and in 1870 became professor in the University
-of Naples. He expressed his doctrines in critical essays, in monographs
-on Italian writers and in his classic _History of Italian Literature._
-Receiving his first elements of old Italian culture in Puoti's
-school, his natural bent! towards speculation led him to investigate
-grammatical and rhetorical doctrines with the view of reducing them
-to a system; but he soon began to criticize and to grow out of this
-phase. He pronounced Fortunio, Alunno, Accarisio and Corso "empirics";
-he had a slightly better opinion of Bembo, Varchi, Castelvetro and
-Salviati, who introduced "method" into grammar, a process completed
-subsequently by Buonmattei, Corticelli and Bartoli; and he proclaimed
-Francisco Sanchez, author of the _Minerva,_ "the Descartes of
-grammarians." From these his admiration spread to the French writers of
-the eighteenth century and the philosophical grammars of; Du Marsais,
-Beauzée, Condillac and Gérard; following in their wake and pursuing the
-ideal of Leibniz, he conceived a "logical grammar"; in this effort,
-however, he soon began to recognize the impossibility of reducing the
-differences of languages to fixed logical principles., If he found
-the French theorists admirable in their ability to reconstitute the
-simple and primitive forms; from "I love" to "I am loving," something
-disquieted him; "Such decomposition of 'I love' into 'I am loving'"
-(said he) "deadens the word by depriving it of the movement proceeding
-from active will."[1] In the same way he read and criticized the
-writers of treatises on Rhetoric and Poetics from sixteenth-century
-men such as Castelvetro and Torquato Tasso (whom he dared to describe
-as an "indifferent critic," to the great scandal of Neapolitan men
-of letters) to Muratori and Gravina, "more acute than accurate"; and
-eighteenth-century Italians, Bettinelli, Algarotti and Cesarotti.
-Coldly rational rules found no favour with him: he urged the young to
-confront literary works boldly and freely absorb impressions, the only
-possible foundation for taste.[2]
-
-[Sidenote: _Influence of Hegelism._]
-
-Philosophical study had not been abandoned and had not even fallen
-into entire decadence in Southern Italy; in these days of renewed
-interest in philosophy the theories on Beauty from over the Alps and
-the new ideas of Gioberti and other Italians[3] aroused enthusiastic
-discussion. Vico was read again, and Bénard's French translation of
-Hegel's _Æsthetic_ appeared and was canvassed in Naples volume by
-volume (the first in 1840, the second in 1843, and the rest between
-1848 and 1852). In its desire for new intellectual food Italian youth
-set itself to learn German: De Sanctis himself had to translate the
-greater _Logic_ of Hegel and Rosenkranz's _History of Literature_
-in the dungeon of the Bourbon prison where he was incarcerated on
-account of his liberal opinions. The new critical tendency was named
-"philosophism" to distinguish it from the old grammatical criticism
-and from the vague, incoherent, exaggerated Romanticism. Philosophism
-attracted De Sanctis; to show how deeply he was imbued with the
-Hegelian spirit a tale was told that, having devoured the first volumes
-of Bénard's translation, he guessed the contents of the remaining
-volumes and, before they could appear, was expounding them publicly in
-his classroom.[4]
-
-His first writings show traces of metaphysical idealism and Hegelism;
-and they still linger here and there in the terminology of his later
-works. In a lecture prior to 1848 he placed the safety of criticism in
-the philosophic school which, in works of literature, fixed its eyes
-upon "that absolute part ... that uncertain idea which moves within the
-mind of great writers, till it appears abroad clothed in fine raiment
-only less beautiful than itself."[5] In a preface to Schiller's plays
-(1850) he wrote, "The Idea is not thought, nor is poetry reason in
-song, as a poet of our time is pleased to assert; the idea is at once
-necessity and freedom, reason and passion, and its perfect form in
-drama is action."[6] Elsewhere he calls attention to the death of faith
-and poetry, absorbed by the development of philosophy: a thesis, he
-remarked some years later, "imposed on our generation by Hegel with his
-omnipotent thought."[7] In 1856 he attempted a definition of humour as
-"an artistic form having for signification the destruction of limit,
-with consciousness of such destruction."[8] Not to dwell too long on
-other particulars, in the distinction to which De Sanctis always held
-firm throughout his critical work, that between Fancy and Imagination,
-the latter considered as the true and only faculty of poetry, arises
-undoubtedly from suggestions of Schelling and Hegel (_Einbildungskraft,
-Phantasie)_; from the same philosophers come the phrases "prosaic
-content," "prosaic world," sometimes used by him.
-
-[Sidenote: _Unconscious criticism of Hegelism._]
-
-For De Sanctis the Hegelian Æsthetic was but a lever wherewith to
-lift himself clear of the discussions and views of the old Italian
-schools. A fresh, clear spirit such as his could not escape the
-arbitrary shackles of grammarians and rhetoricians only to fall into
-those of metaphysicians, the torturers of art. He absorbed the vital
-part of Hegel's teaching and re-expressed the Hegelian theories in
-correct or somewhat attenuated interpretations; but he only maintained
-with hesitation, and in the end openly rebelled against, all that was
-artificial, formalistic and pedantic in Hegel.
-
-The following examples of such reductions and attenuations show how
-substantial and radical was the change he effected. "Faith has vanished
-and poetry is dead" (he wrote in 1856, echoing Hegel); "or it were
-better to say" (here is De Sanctis' own correction) "faith and poetry
-are immortal: what has disappeared is but one particular mode of their
-being. To-day faith springs from conviction and poetry is the spark
-struck from meditation; they are not dead, they are transformed."[9]
-Certainly he distinguished between imagination and fancy; but for
-him imagination was never the mystic faculty of transcendental
-apperception, the intellectual intuition of German metaphysicians,
-but simply the poet's faculty of synthesis and creation, contrasting
-with fancy as the faculty of collecting particulars and materials in
-a somewhat mechanical fashion.[10] When students of Vico and Hegel
-understood and expounded their master's theories as emphasizing the
-importance of concepts in art, De Sanctis replied, "The concept does
-not exist in art, nature or history: the poet works unconsciously and
-sees no concept but only form, in which he is involved and well-nigh
-lost. If the philosopher, by means of abstraction, can extract the
-concept thence and contemplate it in all its purity, he acts in a way
-entirely contrary to that of art, nature and history." He warned his
-hearers not to misunderstand Vico, who, when he extracts concepts and
-exemplary types from the Homeric poems, is not writing as an art critic
-but as a historian of civilization: Achilles is artistically Achilles,
-not strength or any other abstraction.[11] Thus his polemic is directed
-in the first instance against misunderstanding what he called the true
-Hegelian thought, which was in fact usually a correction made upon
-Hegel more or less consciously by himself. He was able to boast in
-his latter years that even at the time when all Naples went wild over
-Hegel, "at the time when Hegel was master of the field," he had always
-"made certain reservations and refused to accept his apriorism, his
-triad or his formulæ."[12]
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticisms of German Æsthetic._]
-
-De Sanctis also took up an independent attitude towards the other
-German æstheticians. The views of Wilhelm Schlegel, very advanced
-for the day in which they had been promulgated, seemed to him to
-have been already superseded. In 1856 he wrote that Schlegel strives
-to "transcend ordinary criticism, which leads a humdrum existence
-among phraseology, versification and elocution, but loses its way
-and never comes face to face with art: whereas Schlegel throws
-himself headlong into the probable, the decorous and the moral; into
-everything save art."[13] Thrown by the hazards of life into German
-territory, he found himself at the Zürich Polytechnic, and found among
-his colleagues (only imagine such a thing!) Theodor Vischer. What
-opinion can he have formed of the ponderous Hegelian scholastic who
-emerged dusty and panting from the systematic labours so well known to
-us, and smiled disdainfully at the poetry and music of the decadent
-Italian race? De Sanctis writes, "I went there with my opinions and
-my prejudices and ridiculed their ridicule. Richard Wagner seemed to
-me a corrupter of music, and nothing could be more inæsthetic than
-the Æsthetic of Vischer."[14] His desire to correct the distorted
-views of Vischer, Adolf Wagner, Valentin Schmidt and other German
-critics and philosophers led him to undertake in 1858-59 a course of
-lectures before an international audience at Zürich upon Ariosto
-and Petrarch, the two Italian poets worst maltreated by these judges
-because hardest to reduce to philosophical allegory. He sketched a
-typical German critic and contrasted him with a French one, each with
-his own characteristic defects. "The Frenchman does not indulge in
-theories; he goes straight to the subject: his argument palpitates with
-warmth of impression and sagacity of observation: he never leaves the
-concrete: he estimates the quality of the talent and the work, studying
-the man in order to understand the writer." He makes the mistake of
-substituting reflexion on the psychology of the author and history of
-his time for reflexion upon art. "Quite otherwise is your German: be a
-thing never so plain, he makes it his business to manipulate, distort
-and embroil: he accumulates a mass of darkness from whose centre rays
-of dazzling light now and again shoot forth: truth is there at bottom,
-in grievous pangs of parturition. Confronted with a work of art, he
-labours to fasten down and fix the quality which is most evanescent
-and impalpable. While nobody is more given to talk of life and the
-world of the living, nobody on earth takes more pains to decompose and
-disembody it in generalities: as consequence of this last process (last
-in appearance, that is to say; in reality preconceived and _a priori_),
-he is able to fit you the same boot on every foot and the same coat on
-every back." "The German school is dominated by metaphysic, the French
-by history."[15] About this time (1858) a Piedmontese review published
-his exhaustive critical survey of the philosophy of Schopenhauer,[16]
-which was then beginning to attract disciples among his friends
-and companions in exile in Switzerland; the criticism provoked the
-philosopher himself to confess that "this Italian" had "absorbed him
-_in succum et sanguinem._"[17] What value did De Sanctis attach to
-all Schopenhauer's subtleties concerning art? Having fully stated his
-doctrine of ideas, he contents himself with the merest reference to the
-third book "wherein is found an exaggerated theory of Æsthetic."[18]
-
-[Sidenote: _Final rebellion against metaphysical Æsthetic._]
-
-This moderate resistance and opposition to the partisans of the
-concept and to the romantic Italian mystics and moralists (he directed
-criticisms equally against Manzoni, Mazzini, Tommaseo and Cantù[19])
-turned to open rebellion in one of his critical writings on Petrarch
-(1868) in which this false tendency is characterized with biting
-sarcasm. "According to this school" (he says, meaning the school of
-Hegel and Gioberti), "according to this school the real and living is
-art only in so far as it surpasses its form and reveals its concept or
-the pure idea. The beautiful is the manifestation of the idea. Art is
-the ideal, a particular idea. Under the gaze of the artist the body
-becomes subtilized until it is nothing but the shadow of the soul, a
-beautiful veil. The world of poetry is peopled with phantasms; and
-the poet, eternal dreamer, with the eyes of one slightly intoxicated
-sees bodies float unsteadily around him and change their shapes. Nor
-do bodies merely become attenuated into forms and phantasms; these
-forms and phantasms themselves become free manifestations of every
-idea and every concept. The theory of the ideal has been driven to
-its last victorious limit, to the destruction of the very phantasms
-themselves, to concept as concept, form becoming a mere accessory."
-"Thus the vague, the undecided, the undulating, the vaporous, the
-celestial, the ærial, the veiled, the angelic, have now a high position
-among artistic forms: whilst criticism revels in the beautiful,
-the ideal, the infinite, genius, the concept, the idea, truth, the
-superintelligible, the supersensible, the being and the existent, and
-many more generalities cast into barbarous formulæ just like those
-of the scholastics from whose influence we had so much difficulty in
-escaping." All these things, instead of determining the character of
-art, do nothing; save illustrate the contrary of art: its feebleness
-and impotence, preventing it from slaying abstractions and laying hold
-of life. If beauty and the ideal have actually the meaning given them
-by these philosophers "the essence of art is neither the beautiful nor
-the ideal, but the living, the form; the ugly too belongs to art since
-ugliness lives also in nature; outside the domain of art lies nothing
-but the formless and the deformed. Thais in Malebolge is more living
-and poetical than Beatrice, who is pure allegory representing abstract
-combinations. The Beautiful? Tell me of anything as beautiful as Iago,
-a form uprisen from the profundity of real life; so rich, so concrete;
-in every part, in each finest gradation, one of the most beautiful
-creations in the world of poetry." If in the course of "wrangling
-about the idea or the concept or real, moral, or intellectual beauty,
-and confusing philosophical or moral truths with æsthetic" you choose
-to call "a great part of the poetic world ugly, granting it a permit
-merely that it may act as contrast, antagonist or foil to beauty,
-accepting Mephistopheles as a foil to Faust, or Iago as foil to
-Othello," you are imitating "those good folk who thought, _in illo
-tempore,_ that the stars shone in the firmament in order to give light
-to this earth."[20]
-
-[Sidenote: _De Sanctis own theory_]
-
-The æsthetic theory of De Sanctis himself arises entirely from the
-criticism of the highest manifestations of European æsthetic as known
-to him. Its nature is revealed by the contrast. "If you desire a statue
-in the vestibule of art," says he, "let it be that of Form; gaze upon
-this, question this, begin with this. Before form is attained, that
-exists which existed before the creation: chaos. Chaos is no doubt a
-respectable thing, with a most interesting history: science has not yet
-uttered its last word about this pre-world of fermenting elements. Art
-also has its pre-world: art also has its geology, born but yesterday
-and as yet scarcely stretched, a science _sui generis,_ which is
-neither Criticism nor Æsthetic. Æsthetic appears when form appears,
-in which this pre-world is sunk, fused, forgotten and lost. Form is
-itself as the individual is himself; and no theory is so destructive
-to art as the continual harping upon the beautiful as manifestation,
-clothing, light, or veil of truth or the idea. The æsthetic world
-is not appearance, it is substance; to it indeed belongs everything
-substantial and living: its criterion, its _raison d'être,_ lies
-nowhere save in this motto: I live."[21]
-
-[Sidenote: _The concept of form._]
-
-For De Sanctis, form did not mean form "in the pedantic sense attached
-to it until the end of the eighteenth century," that is to say, that
-which first strikes a superficial observer, the words, the period, the
-sense, the individual image;[22] or form in the Herbartian sense, the
-metaphysical hypostatization of the former. "Form is not _a Priori,_ it
-is not something existing of itself and distinct from the content as
-though it were a kind of ornament or vesture or appearance or adjunct
-of the content: it is generated by the content acting in the mind of
-the artist: such as the content is, such is the form."[23] Between
-form and content there is at the same time identity and diversity. In
-a work of art the content, which had been lying in a chaotic state in
-the mind of the artist, appears "not as it was originally, but as it
-has become; the whole of it, with its own value, its own importance,
-its own natural beauty enriched, not weakened, by the process."
-Therefore content is essential for the production of concrete form;
-but the abstract quality of the content does not determine that of
-artistic form." If the content, though beautiful and important, remain
-inoperative or lifeless or waste within the mind of the artist, if it
-have not sufficient generative power and reveal itself in the form as
-weak or false or vitiated, why trouble to sing its praises? In such
-cases the content may be important in itself, but as literature or
-art it is worthless. On the other hand the content may be immoral,
-absurd, false or frivolous: but if at certain times or in certain
-circumstances it has worked powerfully on in the brain of the artist,
-and taken form, such content is immortal. The gods of Homer are dead;
-the _Iliad_ remains. Italy may die and, with her, every memory of Guelf
-and Ghibelline; the _Divina Commedia_ will remain. The content is
-subject to all the hazards of history; it is born and it dies; the form
-is immortal."[24] He held firmly to the independence of art, without
-which there can be no Æsthetic; but he objected to the exaggeration of
-the formula of art for art's sake in that it tended to the separation
-of the artist from life, to the mutilation of the content and to the
-conversion of art into a proof of mere cleverness.[25]
-
-[Sidenote: _De Sanctis as art-critic._]
-
-For De Sanctis, the concept of form was identical with that of
-imagination, the faculty of expression or representation, artistic
-vision. So much must be said by any one anxious to express clearly
-the direction which his thought was taking. But De Sanctis himself
-never succeeded in defining his own theory with scientific exactitude;
-and his æsthetic ideas remained the mere sketch of a system never
-properly interrelated and deduced. The speculative tendency shared his
-attention with many other lively interests, the desire to understand
-the concrete, to enjoy art and rewrite its actual history, to plunge
-into practical and political life; so that by turns he was professor,
-conspirator, journalist and statesman. "My mind inclines to the
-concrete," he was wont to say. He philosophized just so much as was
-necessary to the acquisition of a point of view in problems of art,
-history and life; and, having procured light for his intellect, found
-his bearings, derived some satisfaction from the consciousness of his
-own activity, he plunged as quickly as possible into the particular and
-the determinate. To immense power of seizing the truth in the highest
-general principles was joined a no less intense abhorrence for the
-pale region of ideas in which the philosopher takes an almost ascetic
-delight. As critic and historian of literature he is unrivalled. Those
-who have compared him with Lessing, Macaulay, Sainte-Beuve or Taine are
-making rhetorical comparisons.
-
-Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand: "In your last letter you speak
-of criticism, and say you expect it soon to disappear. I think, on the
-contrary, that it is just appearing over the horizon. Criticism to-day
-is the exact opposite of what it was, but that is all. In the days of
-Laharpe the critic was a grammarian; to-day he is a historian like
-Sainte-Beuve and Taine. When will he be an artist, a mere artist, but a
-real artist? Do you know a critic who interests himself whole-heartedly
-in the work itself? They analyse with the greatest delicacy the
-historical surroundings of the work and the causes which produced
-it: but the underlying poetry and its causes? the composition? the
-style? the author's own point of view? Never. Such a critic must have
-great imagination and a great goodness of heart; I mean an ever-ready
-faculty of enthusiasm; and then, taste; but this last is so rare, even
-among the best, that it is never mentioned nowadays."[26] Flaubert's
-ideal has been worthily reached by one critic only (that is to say,
-amongst critics who have given themselves to the interpretation of
-great writers and entire periods of literature) and that one is De
-Sanctis.[27] No literature of any country possesses so perfect a mirror
-as that possessed by Italy in the _History_ and the other critical
-essays of Francesco de Sanctis.
-
-[Sidenote: _De Sanctis as philosopher._]
-
-But the philosopher of art, the æsthetician in De Sanctis is less
-great than the critic and historian of literature. The critic is
-primary, the philosopher a mere accessory. The æsthetic observations
-scattered in aphorisms up and down his essays and monographs take
-various colours from various occasions, and are expressed in uncertain
-and often metaphorical language; this has led to his being accused of
-contradictions and inexactitudes which had no existence in his inmost
-thought and whose very appearance vanishes as soon as one takes into
-account the particular cases with which he was dealing. But form,
-forms, content, the living, the beautiful, natural beauty, ugliness,
-fancy, feeling, imagination, the real, the ideal, and all the other
-terms which he used with varying signification, demand a science both
-on which to rest and from which to derive. Meditation on these words
-stirs up doubts and problems on every side and reveals everywhere gaps
-and discontinuities. Compared with the few philosophical æstheticians,
-De Sanctis seems wanting in analysis, in order and in system, and
-vague in his definitions. But these defects are outweighed by the
-contact he establishes between the reader and real concrete works of
-art, and by the feeling for truth which never leaves him. He has, too,
-the attraction possessed by those writers who lead one on to suspect
-and to divine new treasures in store beyond what they themselves
-reveal--living thought, which stimulates living men to pursue and
-prolong it.
-
-
-[1] _Frammenti di scuola,_ in _Nuovi saggi critici,_ pp. 321-333; _La
-giovinezza di Fr. de S._ (autobiography), pp. 62, 101, 163-166 (works
-cited are those of De S. in stereotyped Naples ed. by Morano, 12 vols.).
-
-[2] _La giovinezza di Fr. de S._ pp. 260-261, 315-316.
-
-[3] _Saggi critici,_ p. 534.
-
-[4] De Meis, _Comm, di Fr. de S._ (in vol. _In Memoria,_ Naples, 1884,
-p. 116).
-
-[5] _Scritti vori,_ ed. Croce, vol. ii. pp. 153-154.
-
-[6] _Saggi critici,_ p 18.
-
-[7] _Op. cit._ pp. 226-228; _Scritti varî,_ ii. pp. 185-187; cf. vol.
-ii. p. 70.
-
-[8] _Saggi critici,_ ed. Imbriani, p. 91.
-
-[9] _Saggi critici,_ p. 228; cf. _Scritti varî,_ vol. ii. p. 70.
-
-[10] _Storia della letteratura,_ i. pp. 66-67 _ Saggi critici,_ pp.
-98-99; _Scritti varî,_ vol. i. pp. 276-278, 384.
-
-[11] _La giovinezza di Fr. de S._ pp. 279, 313-314, 321-324.
-
-[12] _Scritti varî,_ vol. ii. p. 83; cf. p. 274.
-
-[13] _Op. cit._ vol. i. pp. 228-236.
-
-[14] _Saggio sul Petrarca,_ new ed. by B. Croce, p. 309 _seqq._
-
-[15] _Saggi critici,_ pp. 361-363, 413-414; cf. as touching Klein,
-_Scritti varî,_ vol. i. pp. 32-34.
-
-[16] _Op. cit., Schopenhauer e Leopardi,_ pp. 246, 299.
-
-[17] Schopenhauer, _Briefe,_ ed. Grisebach, pp. 405-406; cf. pp.
-381-383, 403-404, 438-439.
-
-[18] _Saggi critici,_ p. 269, note.
-
-[19] Cf. _Scritti varî,_ i. pp. 39-45, and _Letterat. ital. nel sec.
-XIX,_ lectures, ed. Croce, pp. 241-243, 427-432.
-
-[20] _Saggio sut Petrarca,_ introd. pp. 17-29.
-
-[21] _Saggio sul Petrarca,_ p. 29 _seqq._
-
-[22] _Scritti varî,_ vol. i. pp. 276-277, 317.
-
-[23] _Nuovi saggi critici,_ pp. 239-240, note.
-
-[24] _Nuovi saggi critici, loc. cit._
-
-[25] _Ibid._ and cf. _Saggio sul Petrarca,_ p. 182; also _Scritti
-varî,_ i. pp. 209-212, 226.
-
-[26] _Lettres à George Sand,_ Paris, 1884 (Letter of Feb. 2, 1869), p.
-81.
-
-[27] See above, p. 363, the judgement of De S. on French criticism.
-
-
-
-
-XVI
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC OF THE EPIGONI
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Revival of Herbartian Æsthetic._]
-
-When the cry "Away with metaphysic!" was raised in Germany, and a
-furious reaction began against the kind of Walpurgis-night to which
-the later Hegelians had reduced the life of science and history, the
-disciples of Herbart came to the front and seemed to ask, with an
-insinuating air: "What is all this? a rebellion against Idealism and
-Metaphysic? why, it is exactly what Herbart wished and undertook all by
-himself half a century ago! Here we stand, his legitimate descendants,
-and we offer you our services as allies. We shall not find it hard to
-agree. Our Metaphysic accords with the atomic theory, our Psychology
-with mechanism, and our Ethics and Æsthetic with hedonism." Herbart
-himself (had he not died in 1841) would most likely have spumed these
-disciples of his who pandered to popularity, cheapened metaphysics and
-gave naturalistic interpretations to his reals, his representations,
-his ideas, and all his highest conceptions.
-
-With the school thus coming into fashion, the Herbartian Æsthetic
-too tried to put on flesh and acquire a pleasing plumpness so as not
-to cut too miserable a figure beside the well-nourished _corpora_ of
-science launched upon the world by idealists. The feeding-up process
-was accomplished by Robert Zimmermann, professor of philosophy at
-Prague and later at Vienna, who, after years of laborious effort and
-an introductory sample in the shape of an ample history of Æsthetic
-(1858), at length produced his _General Æsthetic as Science of Form_
-in 1865.[1]
-
-[Sidenote: _Robert Zimmermann._]
-
-This formalistic Æsthetic, born under bad auspices, is a curious example
-of servile fidelity in externals combined with internal infidelity.
-Starting from unity, or rather from subordination of Ethics and
-Æsthetic to a general Æsthetic defined as "a science which treats of
-the modes by which any given content may acquire the right to arouse
-approval or disapproval" (thereby differing from Metaphysic, science
-of the real, and from Logic, science of right thinking), Zimmermann
-places such modes in form, that is to say, in the reciprocal relation
-of elements. A simple mathematical point in space, a simple impression
-of hearing or sight, a simple note, is in fact neither pleasing nor
-displeasing: music shows that the judgement of beauty or ugliness
-always depends on the relation between two notes at least. Now these
-relations, _i.e._ forms universally pleasing, cannot be empirically
-collected by induction; they must be developed by deduction. By
-the deductive method it can be demonstrated that the elements of
-an image, which in themselves are representations, may enter into
-relations either according to their force (quantity), or according to
-their nature (quality); whence we have two groups--æsthetic forms of
-quantity, and æsthetic forms of quality. According to the first, the
-strong (large) is pleasing in comparison with the weak (small), and
-these latter are displeasing when set beside the former; according
-to the other form, that pleases which is substantially identical in
-quality (the harmonious), and that displeases which is on the whole
-diverse (the discordant).
-
-But the substantial identity must not be pushed to the point of
-absolute identity, for in that case the harmony itself would cease to
-be. From harmonious form is deduced the pleasure of the characteristic
-or expression; for what is the characteristic but a relation of
-prevalent identity between the thing itself and its model? But while
-similarity prevailing in the distinction produces accord (_Einklang_),
-qualitative disharmony is as such disagreeable, and demands a
-resolution. (It is easy to detect the sleight of hand with which
-Zimmermann first slips the characteristic into the relations of pure
-form, thereby entirely altering Herbart's original thought; and how, by
-a second trick, he here introduces into pure beauty the variations and
-modifications of the beautiful, by the help of the despised Hegelian
-dialectic.) If such resolution is effected by the skilful substitution
-of something other than the unpleasant image, we shall certainly have
-removed the cause of offence and established quietude (not accord:
-_Eintracht, nicht Einklang_), but we shall have gained the mere form
-of correctness: it is better, then, to supersede this by means of the
-true image so as to reach the form of compensation (_Ausgleichung_);
-and, when the true image is also pleasing in itself, the final form
-of definitive compensation (_abschliessende Ausgleich,_) with which
-we exhaust the series of possible forms. And, in conclusion, what is
-Beauty? It is a conjunction of all these forms: a model (_Vorbild_)
-which has grandeur, plenitude, order, accord, correctness, definitive
-compensation; all this appears in a copy (_Nachbild_) in the form of
-the characteristic.
-
-Putting on one side the artificial connexion Zimmermann makes between
-the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the ironic, the humorous and
-the æsthetic forms, notice must be taken (so that we may recognize
-into which of the seven heavens he is wafting us) that these general
-æsthetic forms concern art equally with nature and morality, whose
-individual spheres are differentiated solely by the application of the
-general æsthetic forms to particular contents. These forms, applied to
-nature, give us natural beauty, the cosmos; applied to representation,
-beauty of wit (_Schöngeist_) or imagination; applied to feeling,
-the beautiful soul (_schöne Seele_) or taste; applied to the will,
-character or virtue. On one side, then, is natural beauty, on the other
-human beauty, in which (latter), on one hand, we have the beauty of
-representation, that is to say æsthetic fact in the strict sense (art);
-on the other, we have the beauty of will, or morality; and between the
-two, lastly, we have taste, common to Ethics and Æsthetic. Æsthetic in
-the narrow sense, as the theory of beautiful representation, determines
-the beauty of representations, divided into the three classes of
-the beauty of temporal and spatial connexion (figurative arts); the
-beauty of sensitive representation (music); and the beauty of thoughts
-(poetry). This tripartition of beauty into figurative, musical and
-poetical brings to a conclusion theoretical Æsthetic, the only section
-developed by Zimmermann.
-
-[Sidenote: _Vischer versus Zimmermann._]
-
-Zimmermann's work was a polemic against the principal representative
-of Hegelian Æsthetic, Vischer, who had little difficulty in defending
-his own position and counter-attacking that of his assailant. He
-held Zimmermann up to ridicule, for example, in connexion with his
-view of symbolism. Zimmermann defined a symbol as the object "round
-which beautiful forms adhere." A painter depicts a fox simply for the
-sake of painting a part of animal nature. Nothing of the sort: this
-is a symbol, because the painter "makes use of fines and colours to
-express things other than fines and colours." "You think I'm a fox,"
-says the animal in the picture, "but you make a great mistake: I'm a
-clothes-peg: I'm an appearance created by the painter with gradations
-of grey, white, yellow and red." Even easier was it to make game of
-Zimmermann's enthusiastic praises of the æsthetic quality of the sense
-of touch. It was a pity, the latter had written, that the pleasures of
-this sense were so difficult to attain; since "to touch the back of the
-Resting Hercules and the sinuous limbs of the Venus of Melos or the
-Barberini Faun would give to the hand a delight comparable only with
-that felt by the ear when listening to the majestic fugues of Bach or
-the suave melodies of Mozart." Vischer does not seem to be far wrong in
-declaring formalistic Æsthetic to be "a grotesque union of mysticism
-and mathematics."[2]
-
-[Sidenote: _Hermann Lotze._]
-
-The works of Zimmermann seem to have given satisfaction to nobody
-save himself. Even Lotze, by no means an adversary of Herbartianism,
-blames him severely in his _History of Æsthetic in Germany_ (1868) and
-other writings. Still, Lotze was unable to offer any better substitute
-for æsthetic formalism than of a variant of the old idealism. "Can
-any one persuade us," he wrote in criticism of the formalists,
-"that a spiritual discord expressed by a corresponding discord in
-external appearances may have a value equal to that of the harmonious
-expression of a harmonious content solely because, in both cases,
-the formal relation of accord is respected? Can any one persuade us
-that the human form is pleasing solely for its formal stereometric
-relations, irrespective of the spiritual life by which it is animated?
-In empirical reality the three domains of laws, facts and values
-invariably appear as divided; and although they are united in the
-Highest Good, in Goodness in itself, in the living Love of a Personal
-God, in the Ought which is the basis of Being, our reason is unable to
-attain or to know such union. Beauty alone can reveal it to us: it is
-in close connexion with the Good and the Holy and reproduces the rhythm
-of the divine ordinance and the moral government of the universe.
-Æsthetic fact is neither intuition nor concept; it is idea, which
-presents the essential of an object in the form of an end referred to
-the ultimate end. Art, like beauty, must include the world of values
-in the world of forms."[3] The war between the Æsthetic of content and
-that of form, having Zimmermann, Vischer and Lotze as protagonists,
-reached its culminating point between 1860 and 1870.
-
-[Sidenote: _Efforts to reconcile Æsthetic of form and Æsthetic of
-content._]
-
-Several people were in favour of a reconciliation. But the
-reconciliations they offered were not the right one, which was at
-least glimpsed by a certain young Johann Schmidt, who in his thesis
-for doctorate observed (1875) that, with all respect for Zimmermann
-and Lotze, it seemed to him they were both wrong in confusing the
-various meanings of the word "beauty," and discussed such an absurdity
-as a beauty or ugliness of natural objects, that is to say, of things
-external to the spirit; that Lotze, following Hegel, added the second
-absurdity of an intuitive concept or conceptual intuition: lastly,
-that neither of them grasped the fact that the æsthetic problem does
-not turn upon the beauty or ugliness of the abstract content or of
-form understood as a system of mathematical relations, but with the
-beauty or ugliness of representation. Form undoubtedly must exist, but
-"concrete form, full of content."[4] These utterances of Schmidt met
-with a hostile reception: it is easy (he was told in reply) to identify
-beauty with artistic perfection, but the whole crux of the matter lies
-in finding whether, beside this perfection, there exists another beauty
-dependent on a supreme cosmic or metaphysical principle: otherwise one
-is guilty of a naïve _petitio principii_.[5] It was thought better,
-therefore, to seek other modes of reconciliation, which consisted
-in cooking up an appetizing dish in which a little formalism and a
-little contentism were mixed to taste, the latter as a rule giving the
-predominant flavour.
-
-Some Herbartians were found in the ranks of the mediating or
-conciliatory party. Hardly had Zimmermann's rigid formalism appeared,
-when Nahlowsky jumped up to protest that it had never entered the
-master's head to exclude content from Æsthetic;[6] but even the ablest
-of the school, men such as Volkmann and Lazarus, chose a middle
-course.[7] In the opposite camp Carrière,[8] and even Vischer himself
-(in a criticism of his own old _Æsthetic_), began to concede a larger
-part to the consideration of form; thus for Vischer beauty became
-"life appearing harmoniously," which when it appears in space is called
-form, and must always possess form, _i.e._ limitation (_Begrenzung_ )
-in space and time, measure, regularity, symmetry, proportion, propriety
-(these characters constituting its quantitative moments) and harmony
-(qualitative moment), which includes variety and contrast and is
-therefore the most important characteristic.[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _K. Köstlin._]
-
-A conciliatory Æsthetic in which formalism prevailed was attempted
-by Karl Köstlin, a professor at Tübingen and formerly collaborator in
-the musical section of the works of Vischer. Köstlin[10] had been
-influenced by Schleiermacher, Hegel, Vischer and Herbart, but, truth
-to tell, does not seem to have perfectly understood the teaching
-of any one of his predecessors. According to him, the æsthetic
-object presented three requirements: richness and variety of imagery
-(_anregende Gestaltenfülle_), interesting content and beautiful form.
-Under the first we recognize, with no little difficulty, a distorted
-reflexion of Schleiermacher's "inspiration" (_Begeisterung_).
-Interesting content he defined as that which concerns man; that which
-he knows or does not know; that which he loves or hates (it is thus
-always relative to the individual and the conditions in which he
-exists); and he asserted that interest of content is joined to value
-of form, that is, he conceived content as a second value, the same
-of which we have heard Herbart speak. He also agreed with Herbart
-that form is absolute, and that its general character is determined
-as being easily perceptible by intuition (_anschaulich_), and by its
-power of giving satisfaction, pleasure and delight, in fact, as being
-beautiful. Its particular characteristics for Köstlin were, according
-to quantity, circumscription, simplicity (_Einheitlichkeit_), extensive
-and intensive size, and equilibrium (_Gleichmass_); according to
-quality, determination (_Bestimmtheit_), unity (_Einheit_), importance
-(_Bedeutung_) extensive and intensive, and harmony. But when Köstlin
-sets himself to the empirical verification of his categories, he falls
-into hopeless confusion. Greatness is pleasing, but so is smallness;
-unity is pleasing, but so is variety; regularity is pleasing, but so,
-confound it, is irregularity: uncertainties and contradictions at every
-step; he was aware of them and made no effort to conceal them; but they
-should have convinced him that the abstraction of "beautiful form,"
-whose qualities and quantities he had so laboriously collected, is a
-ghostly shape without body, since that alone gives æsthetic pleasure
-which fulfils an expressive function. But having illustrated the three
-demands of the æsthetic object, Köstlin wasted all his remaining breath
-in constructing a kingdom of intuitive imagination in the manner of
-Vischer, _i.e._ beauty of organic and inorganic nature; of civil life;
-of morality; of religion; of science; of games; of conversations; of
-feasts and banquets; and lastly of history, reviewing and passing
-æsthetic comment on its three periods, patriarchal, heroic and
-historical.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic of content. M. Schasler._]
-
-Schasler, who had written as vast a history on Æsthetic as Zimmermann's
-own, found a starting-point for a movement toward formalism in absolute
-idealism, or realism-idealism, as he called it. He began by defining
-Æsthetic as "the science of the beautiful and of art" (a single
-science ill defined as having two different objects), and proceeded
-to justify his unmethodical definition by saying that beauty does not
-exist in art alone, nor does art concern itself solely with beauty. The
-sphere of Æsthetic he defines as that of intuition (_Anschauung_) in
-which knowledge assumes a practical character and will a theoretical:
-the sphere of indivisible unity and absolute reconciliation of the
-theoretical and practical spirit, in which in a certain sense the
-highest human activities are developed. Beauty is the ideal, but the
-concrete ideal; this is why there is no ideal of a human body in
-abstraction from sex, no ideal of a mammal in general, but only of such
-and such species, as of horse or dog, and then only of determinate
-kind of horse or dog. Thus by descending from the more to the less
-abstract genus Schasler vainly attempted to reach the concrete, which
-inevitably escaped his grasp. In art we pass from the typical, which
-is natural beauty, to the characteristic, which is the typical of
-human feeling; hence we can frame the ideal of an old woman, a beggar
-or a ruffian. The characteristic of art is in closer relationship
-to the ugly than to the beautiful in nature. On this head (passing
-over the remainder, which is on familiar lines) it is well to notice
-that Schasler has a bias towards that version of the romaunt of Sir
-Purebeauty which ascribes the birth of the "modifications of Beauty" to
-the influence of the Ugly.[11] "Although," he writes, "the thought may
-disturb our minds, it must not be forgotten that were there no world
-of ugliness there could be no world of beauty; for it is only when
-the Ugly stirs up empty abstract Beauty, that it begins to combat the
-enemy and thus to produce concrete Beauty."[12] He even succeeded in
-converting Vischer himself, the chief supporter of the other version:
-"Formerly I had been accustomed to think in the old-fashioned Hegelian
-style," Vischer confesses, "that unrest, fermentation and strife dwelt
-in the essence of Beauty; that the Idea prevails and thrusts the
-image forth into the infinite; so arises the Sublime; that the image,
-offended in its finitude, makes war on the Idea; whence arises the
-Comic; this finished the struggle; Beauty returned to itself from the
-conflict of the two moments, and was created." But now, he continues,
-"I must acknowledge that Schasler is right, and so are his predecessors
-Weisse and Ruge: the Ugly has a hand in the matter; this is the
-principle of movement, the ferment of differentiation: without such
-leaven we never reach the special forms of Beauty, for each single one
-presupposes' the Ugly."[13]
-
-[Sidenote: _Ed. von Hartmann._]
-
-Closely allied to that of Schasler is the Æsthetic of Eduard von
-Hartmann (1890), preceded by a historical treatise on _German Æsthetic
-since Kant_[14] wherein with meticulous, critical and polemical study
-he upholds the definition of Beauty as "the appearance of the Idea"
-(_das Scheinen der Idee_). Inasmuch as he insisted on appearance
-(_Schein_) as the necessary characteristic of Beauty, Hartmann held
-himself justified in naming his Æsthetic the "Æsthetic of Concrete
-Idealism," and in ranging himself alongside Hegel, Trahndorff,
-Schleiermacher, Deutinger, Oersted, Vischer, Meising, Carrière
-and Schasler, against the abstract idealism of Schelling, Solger,
-Schopenhauer, Krause, Weisse and Lotze, all of whom, by placing
-beauty in the supersensible idea, overlooked the sensory element and
-reduced it to the rank of a mere accessory.[15] By his insistence on
-the idea as the other indispensable and determining element, Hartmann
-proclaimed himself as opposed to the Herbartian formalism. Beauty is
-truth; neither historical, scientific nor reflective, but metaphysical
-or idealistic, the very truth of Philosophy: "in proportion as Beauty
-is in opposition to every science and to realistic truth, so much
-nearer is it to Philosophy and metaphysical truth": "Beauty, with its
-own peculiar efficacy, remains the prophet of idealistic truth in an
-unbelieving age that abhors Metaphysic and recognizes no value in
-anything but realistic truth." Æsthetic truth, which leaps immediately
-from subjective appearance to ideal essence, is lacking in the control
-and method possessed by philosophical truth; in compensation, however,
-she possesses the fascinating power of conviction, the sole property of
-sensible intuition, and unattainable by gradual or reflected mediation.
-The higher Philosophy soars, the less does it need the gradual passage
-through the world of the senses and of science, and the slighter
-becomes the distance separating Philosophy and Art. The latter, for
-its part, will be well advised to start on its journey towards the
-ideal world as Bædeker's handbooks counsel the intending traveller,
-"with as little luggage as possible"; "not overloading herself with a
-weight which paralyses the wings and is made up of unnecessary and
-indifferent trifles,"[16] Logical character, the microcosmic idea,
-the unconscious are immanent in beauty; by means of the unconscious,
-intellectual intuition operates in it,[17] and, from its being rooted
-in the unconscious, it is a Mystery.[18]
-
-[Sidenote: _Hartmann and the theory of Modifications._]
-
-In his employment of the exciting or reactionary influence of the
-Ugly, Hartmann exceeded Schasler himself. Lowest among the degrees of
-Beauty, indeed forming the lower limit of æsthetic fact, lies sensuous
-pleasure, which is unconscious formal beauty; its first true degree
-is formal beauty of the first order, or the mathematically pleasing
-(unity, variety, symmetry, proportion, the golden section, etc.); its
-second degree is formal beauty of the second order, the dynamically
-pleasing; its third is formal beauty of the third order, the passive
-teleological, as in the case of utensils or machinery. Indeed it may
-here be noted that among machines and utensils, on a level with jars,
-plates and cups, Hartmann placed language: it is a dead thing, said
-he; receiving the appearances of life (_Scheinleben_)[19] only at the
-very instant of utterance. Language a "dead thing," an "utensil" for
-the philosopher of the Unconscious, in the land of Humboldt, with a
-Steinthal still living! There follow, as formal beauty of the fourth
-order, the active teleological or living, and as formal beauty of the
-fifth order, conformity to species (_das Gattungsmässige)_: lastly
-and above all, since the individual idea is superior to the specific,
-is beauty concrete beauty or the microcosmic individual, which is no
-longer formal, but beauty of content. As is to be expected, the passage
-from lower to Higher degrees is made by means of the Ugly: nobody has
-laboured like Hartmann to recount in detail the services rendered by
-Ugliness to Beauty. From ugliness, in the form of the destruction of
-the beauty of equality, arises symmetry: from ugliness in the case of
-the circle arises the ellipse; the beauty of a waterfall tumbling over
-rocks is caused by the mathematically ugly; destruction, that is to
-say, of a fall in a parabolic curve; beauty of spiritual expression is
-achieved through the introduction of an ugliness relative to fleshly
-perfection. Beauty of a higher degree is founded on ugliness at a
-lower degree. When the highest degree is reached, that of individual
-beauty beyond which there can be nothing, even then elemental ugliness
-continues its work of beneficent irritation. The later phases thus
-produced are well known to us as the famous Modifications of the
-Beautiful: in this section also, nobody is so copious or detailed as
-Hartmann. He certainly does admit, side by side with simple or pure
-beauty, certain modifications free from conflict, such as the sublime
-or graceful; but the more important modifications can arise only
-through conflict. There are four cases, because the resolution must
-be either immanent, logical, transcendent or combined: immanent in
-the idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, the cheerful, the moving, the
-elegiac; logical in the comic in all its varieties; transcendent in the
-tragic; combined in the humorous with the tragi-comic and its other
-varieties. When none of these resolutions is possible, there arises
-ugliness; when an ugliness of content is expressed by an ugliness of
-form, we have the maximum of ugliness, the real æsthetic devil.
-
-[Sidenote: _Metaphysical Æsthetic in France. C. Levêque._]
-
-Hartmann is the last considerable representative of the old æsthetic
-school in Germany; he inspires terror by the mass of his literary
-production, like many others of the school, who seem to accept it as
-a dogma that art cannot be dealt with except in several volumes a
-thousand pages long. Those who are not afraid of giants and are able
-to attack this sort of Æsthetic, will find it a fat good-humoured
-Magog full of vulgar prejudices, and so constituted that, despite his
-apparent strength, a little blow will kill him.
-
-In other countries metaphysical Æsthetic had few followers. In France
-the celebrated competition of the Academy of Moral and Political
-Sciences in 1857 crowned with their approval and presented to the
-world the _Science of Beauty_ by Levêque;[20] of which nobody now
-thinks or speaks, only remembering the author (who attitudinized
-as a disciple of Plato) by his eight characteristics of Beauty,
-derived by him from examination of a lily. The eight characteristics
-were as follows:--sufficient size of form, unity, variety, harmony,
-proportion, normal vivacity of colour, grace and propriety; ultimately
-reducible to two, size and order. As supplementary proof of the truth
-of his theory, Levêque applied it to three beautiful things: a child
-playing with its mother, a symphony of Beethoven and the life of a
-philosopher (Socrates). Really, it is somewhat difficult (says one of
-his fellow-spiritualists, venturing to comment on this doctrine though
-speaking with the utmost deference) to imagine what may be the normal
-vivacity of colour in the life of a philosopher.[21] Translations and
-explanatory articles by Charles Bénard[22] and books by various writers
-belonging to French Switzerland (Töpffer, Pictet, Cherbuliez) were not
-successful in popularizing the German systems of Æsthetic in France.
-
-[Sidenote: _In England. J. Ruskin._]
-
-England showed even less disposition to interest herself, although
-John Ruskin may have some claim to be considered a metaphysical
-æsthetician with a distinctive national stamp. But it is difficult
-to treat of Ruskin in a history of science, for his temperament was
-wholly opposed to the scientific. His disposition was that of the
-artist, impressionable, excitable, voluble, rich in feeling; a dogmatic
-tone and the appearance of theoretical form veil, in his exquisite
-and enthusiastic pages, a texture of dreams and fancies. The reader
-who recalls those pages will regard as irreverent any detailed and
-prosaic review of Ruskin's æsthetic thought, which must inevitably
-reveal its poverty and incoherence. Suffice it to say that, following
-a finalistic, mystical intuition of nature, he considered beauty as a
-revelation of divine intentions, the seal "God sets on his works, even
-upon the smallest." For him the faculty which perceives the beautiful
-is neither intellect nor sensibility, but a particular feeling which
-he names the theoretic faculty. Natural beauty, which reveals itself
-to a pure heart when contemplating any object untouched and unspoiled
-by the hand of man, asserts itself for this reason as immeasurably
-superior to any work of art. Ruskin was too hasty in analysis to
-understand the complicated psychological and æsthetic process which
-went on in his mind when he was moved to an artist's ecstasy by
-contemplating some humble natural object such as a bird's nest or a
-flowing rivulet.[23]
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic in Italy._]
-
-In Italy the Abate Tornasi wrote a half-Hegelian, half-Catholic
-Æsthetic, wherein the beautiful is identified with the second person of
-the Trinity, the Word made man;[24] by this means he hoped to raise a
-bank of opposition against the liberal criticism of De Sanctis, whom he
-considered, from the sublime height of his own philosophy, as "a subtle
-grammarian." Combined Giobertian and German, especially Hegelian,
-influence produced several works of secondary importance; De Meis
-developed at length the thesis of the death of Art in the historical
-world.[25] Somewhat later Gallo also treated Æsthetic from the Hegelian
-point of view,[26] and others repeated, nearly word for word, the
-doctrines of Schasler and Hartmann on the overcoming of the Ugly.[27]
-
-[Sidenote: _Antonio Tari and his lectures._]
-
-The only genuine Italian teacher of metaphysical Æsthetic according
-to the Germans was Antonio Tari, who lectured on this very subject
-in Naples University from 1861 to 1884. He had a meticulous and
-superstitiously minute knowledge of everything that issued from German
-printing-presses, and was the author of an _Ideal Æsthetic_ as well
-as essays on style, taste, serious work and play (_Spiel,_) music and
-architecture, wherein he tried to keep the mean between the idealism
-of Hegel and the formalism of Herbart:[28] his lectures on Æsthetic
-attracted huge throngs and were one of the regular sights in the noisy,
-crowded Neapolitan university. Tari divided his treatment under three
-heads, Æsthesinomy, Æsthesigraphy and Æsthesipraxis, corresponding to
-the Metaphysic of the beautiful, to the doctrine of beauty in nature,
-and to that of beauty in art; like the German idealists, he defined the
-æsthetic sphere as intermediate between the theoretical and practical:
-he says emphatically that "in the world of spirit the temperate zone
-is equidistant from the glacial, peopled by the Esquimaux of thought,
-and from the torrid, peopled by the giants of action." He pulled Beauty
-from her throne, substituting in her stead the Æsthetic, of which
-Beauty is but an initial moment, the simple "beginning of æsthetic
-life, eternal mortality, flower and fruit in one," whose successive
-moments are represented by the Sublime, the Comic, the Humorous, and
-the Dramatic.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthesigraphy._]
-
-But the most attractive part of Tari's lectures was that devoted
-to Æsthesigraphy, subdivided into Cosmography, Physiography and
-Psychography, in the course of which he frequently quoted Vischer with
-great devotion; "the great Vischer" as he called him, in imitation of
-whom he constructed his own "æsthetic physics," brightening it with
-much varied erudition and enlivening it with quaint comparisons. Is
-he speaking of beauty in inorganic nature--water, for example? He
-says in his fanciful manner, "When water ripples in the sunshine, in
-that act it has its smile; it has its frown in the breaking wave, its
-caprice in the fountain, its majestic fury in the foam." Is he speaking
-of geological configuration? "The vale, cradle perchance of the
-human race, is idyllic; the plain, monotonous but fat, is didactic."
-Of metals? "Gold is born great; iron, the apotheosis of human toil,
-achieves greatness; the former boasts of its cradle when it does not
-bring it to dishonour; the latter causes it to be forgotten." He looked
-on vegetable life as a dream, repeating Herder's fine saying that the
-plant is "the new-born babe that hangs sucking upon the breast of
-mother nature." He divided vegetables into three types: foliaceous,
-ramified and umbelliferous: "the foliaceous type," he says, "attains
-gigantic proportions in the tropics, where the queen of monocotyledons,
-the Palm-tree, represents despotism, the human scourge of those desert
-regions. Of that solitary pinnacle, all crown, the negro may well be
-identified as the reptile that crawls round its base." Amongst flowers,
-the carnation is "symbol of betrayal, by reason of the variegation of
-its colours and its deeply-dissected petals"; the celebrated comparison
-by Ariosto of a rose with a young girl is permissible only when the
-flower is still in bud, because "when it has unfolded its petals,
-disdaining the protection of thorns, displaying itself in all the pomp
-of its full colour, and boldly asking to be plucked by any hand, then
-it is woman, all woman, to call it by no harsher name, giving pleasure
-without feeling it, simulating love by its perfume and modesty by the
-crimson of its petals." He searches for and comments upon analogies
-between certain fruits and certain flowers; between the strawberry, for
-instance, and the violet; between the orange and the rose; he admired
-"the luxuriant spirals and the delicate architecture of a bunch of
-grapes": the mandarin-orange reminded him of the nobleman _qui s'est
-donné la peine de naître_; the fig, on the contrary, was the great
-country bumpkin, "rough, rude, but profitable." In the animal kingdom,
-the spider symbolized primitive isolation; the bee, monasticism; the
-ant, republicanism. He noted, with Michelet, that the spider is a
-living paralogism; it cannot feed itself without its web, and it cannot
-spin its web without feeding. Fish he condemns as un-æsthetic: "they
-are of stupid appearance with their wide--open eyes and incessant
-gaping, which makes them look voraciously gluttonous." Not so with
-amphibians, for which he entertains a sympathy: the frog and the
-crocodile, "alpha and omega of the family, start from the comical, or
-even the scurrilous, and attain the sublimity of the horrid." Birds
-are especially æsthetic by nature, "possessing the three most genial
-attributes of a living being: love, song, and flight"; moreover, they
-present contrasts and antitheses: "opposite to the eagle, queen of the
-skies, stands the swan, the mild king of the marshes; the libertine
-vainglorious cock has its contrast in the humble uxorious turtle-dove;
-the magnificent peacock is balanced by the rude and rustic turkey."
-Amongst mammals, nature compensates for defects of pure beauty by
-dramatic value; if they cannot throw their song into the air, they
-have the rudiments of speech; if they have no variegated, myriad-hued
-plumage, they have dark, heavily-marked colouring, instinct with life;
-if they cannot fly, they have many other modes of powerful progression;
-and, the higher they go, the more do they attain individuality in
-appearance and life. "The epic of animal life is comedy in the donkey,
-_iniquae mentis asellus_; idyl in the great wild beasts; downright
-tragedy in the Kaffir bull, that cloven-hoofed Codrus, who gives
-himself voluntarily to the lion in order to save the herd." As amongst
-birds, so amongst beasts attractive contrasts are to be made:--the lamb
-and the kid seem to typify Jesus and the devil; dog and cat, abnegation
-and egoism; hare and fox, the foolish simpleton and crafty villain.
-Many quaint and subtle observations does Tari let fall on human beauty
-and the relative beauty of the sexes, allowing the female to have
-charm, not beauty: "bodily beauty is poise, and woman's body is so
-ill-poised that she falls easily when running; made for child-bearing,
-she has knock-kneed legs, adapted to support the large pelvis; her
-shoulders have a curve compensating the convexity of the chest." He
-describes the various parts of the body: "curly hair expresses physical
-force; straight hair, moral"; "blue, napoleonic eyes have sometimes
-a depth like the sea; green eyes have a melancholy fascination; grey
-eyes are wanting in individuality; black eyes are the most intensely
-individual"; "a lovely mouth has been best described by Heine; two lips
-evenly matched; to lovers the mouth will rather seem a shell whose
-pearl is the kiss."[29]
-
-How could we better take a smiling leave of metaphysical Æsthetic in
-the German manner than by recording this quaint vernacular version
-of it made by Tari, that kindly little old man, "the last jovial
-high-priest of an arbitrary and confused Æsthetic"?[30]
-
-
-[1] _Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft,_ Vienna, 1865; see
-also Meyer's _Konversations-Lexikon_ (4th ed.), art. _Ästhetik,_ by
-Zimmermann.
-
-[2] _Kritische Gänge,_ vi., Stuttgart, 1873, pp. 6, 21, 32.
-
-[3] _Geschichte d. Ästh. i. Deutschl., passim,_ esp. pp. 27, 97,
-100, 125, 147, 232. 234, 265, 286, 293, 487; _Grundzüge der Ästh._
-(posth., Leipzig, 1884), §§ 8-13; and two juvenile works, _Üb. d.
-Begriff d. Schönheit,_ Göttingen, 1845, and _Üb. d. Bedingungen d.
-Kunstschönheit,_ Göttingen, 1847.
-
-[4] _Leibniz u. Baumgarten,_ Halle, 1875, pp. 76-102.
-
-[5] G. Neudecker, _Studien z. Gesch. d. dtschn. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp.
-54-55.
-
-[6] Polemic in _Zeitschr. f. exacte Philos._ (Herbartian organ) for
-1862-1863, ii. p. 309 _seqq.,_ ii. p. 384 _seqq,_ iv. pp. 26 _seqq.,_
-199 _seqq.,_ 300 _seqq._
-
-[7] Volkmann, _Lehrbuch der Psychologie,_ 3rd ed., Cöthen, 1884-1885.
-Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele,_ 1856-1858.
-
-[8] Moriz Carrière, _Ästhetik,_ 1889 (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1885).
-
-[9] _Kritische Gänge,_ v., Stuttgart, 1866, p. 59.
-
-[10] _Ästhetik,_ Tübingen, 1869.
-
-[11] See above, pp. 348-349.
-
-[12] _Ästhetik,_ Leipzig, 1886, i. pp. 1-16, 19-24, 70; ii. p. 52:
-cf. _Kritische Gesch. der Ästhetik,_ pp. 795, 963, 1041-1044, 1028,
-1036-1038.
-
-[13] _Kritische Gänge,_ v. pp. 112-115.
-
-[14] _Die dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ 1886 (Part i. of _Ästh._).
-
-[15] _Philosophie des Schönen_ (Part ii. of _Ästh._), Leipzig, 1890,
-pp. 463-464; cf. _Deutsche Ästh. s. K._ pp. 357-362.
-
-[16] _Phil. d. Sch._ pp. 434-437.
-
-[17] _Op. cit._ pp. 115-116.
-
-[18] _Op. cit._ pp. 197-198.
-
-[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 150-152.
-
-[20] Ch. Levêque, _La Science du beau,_ Paris, 1862.
-
-[21] E. Saisset, _L'Esthétique française_ (in app. to vol. _L'Âme et la
-vie,_ Paris, 1864), pp. 118-120.
-
-[22] In _Revue philosophique,_ vols. i. ii. x. xii. xvi.
-
-[23] J. Ruskin, _Modern Painters_ (4th ed., London, 1891); cf. De la
-Sizeranne, pp. 112-278.
-
-[24] Vito Fornari, _Arte del dire,_ Naples, 1866--1872; cf. vol. iv.
-
-[25] A. C. De Meis, _Dopo la laurea,_ Bologna, 1868-1869.
-
-[26] Nic. Gallo, _L' idealismo e la letteratura,_ Rome, 1880; _La
-scienza dell' arte,_ Turin, 1887.
-
-[27] _E.g._ F. Masci, _Psicologia del comico,_ Naples, 1888.
-
-[28] _Estetica ideale,_ Naples, 1863; _Saggi di critica_ (collected
-posthumously), Trani, 1886.
-
-[29] A. Tari, _Lezioni di estetica generale,_ collected by C.
-Scamaccia-Luvara, Naples, 1884; _Elementi di estetica,_ compiled by G.
-Tommasuolo, Naples, 1885.
-
-[30] V. Pica, _L'Arte dell' Estremo Oriente,_ Turin, 1894, p. 13.
-
-
-
-
-XVII
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC POSITIVISM AND NATURALISM
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Positivism and Evolutionism._]
-
-The ground lost by idealistic metaphysic was conquered in the latter
-half of the nineteenth century by positivistic and evolutionary
-metaphysic, a confused substitution of natural for philosophical
-sciences, and a hotch-potch of materialistic and idealistic, mechanical
-and theological theories, the whole crowned with scepticism and
-agnosticism. Characteristic of this trend of opinion was its contempt
-of history, especially the history of philosophy; which prevented its
-ever making that contact with the unbroken and age-long efforts of
-thinkers without which it is idle to hope for fertile work and true
-progress.
-
-[Sidenote_Æsthetic of H. Spencer._]
-
-Spencer (the greatest positivist of his day), whilst discussing
-Æsthetic, actually did not know that he was dealing with problems for
-all, or almost all, of which solutions had been already proposed and
-discussed. At the beginning of his essay on the _Philosophy of Style,_
-he remarks innocently: "I believe nobody has ever sketched a general
-theory of the art of writing" (in 1852!); and in his _Principles of
-Psychology_ (1855), touching the æsthetic feelings he remarks that
-he has some recollection of observations concerning the relation of
-art and play made "by some German author whose name I cannot recall"
-(Schiller!). Had his pages on Æsthetic been written in the seventeenth
-century, they would have won a low position amongst the early crude
-attempts at æsthetic speculation; in the nineteenth century, one knows
-not how to judge them. In his essay on _The Useful and the Beautiful_
-(1852-1854), he shows how the useful becomes beautiful when it ceases
-to be useful, illustrating this by a ruined castle useless for the
-purposes of modern life, but a suitable scene for picnic parties and
-a good subject for a picture to hang on a parlour wall; which leads
-him to identify the principle of evolution from the useful to the
-beautiful as contrast. In another essay on the _Beauty of the Human
-Face_ (1852) he explains this beauty as a sign and effect of moral
-goodness; in that on _Grace_ (1852) he considers the sentiment of the
-graceful as sympathy for power in conjunction with agility. In the
-_Origin of Architectural Styles_ (1852-1854) he discovers the beauty of
-architecture as consisting in uniformity and symmetry, an idea which
-is aroused in a man looking at the bodily equilibrium of the higher
-animals or, as in Gothic architecture, by analogy with the vegetable
-kingdom; in his essay on _Style,_ he places the cause of stylistic
-beauty in economy of effort; in his _Origin and Function of Music_
-(1857) he theorizes on music as the natural language of the passions,
-adapted to increase sympathy between men.[1] In his _Principles of
-Psychology,_ he maintains that the æsthetic feelings arise from the
-overflow of exuberant energy in the organism, and distinguishes
-various degrees of them, from simple sensation to that accompanied
-by representative elements, and so on until perception is reached,
-with more complex elements of representation, then emotion, and, last
-of all, that state of consciousness which transcends sensation and
-perception. The most perfect form of æsthetic feeling is attained
-by the coincidence of the three orders of pleasures, a coincidence
-produced by the full action of their respective faculties with the
-least possible subtraction due to the painful effect of excessive
-activity. But it is very rarely that we experience æsthetic excitement
-of this kind and strength; almost all works of art are imperfect
-because they contain a mixture of artistic with anti-artistic effects;
-now the technique is unsatisfactory, now the emotion is of a low
-order. These works of art which are universally admired, are found
-when measured by this criterion to deserve a lower place than that
-accorded them by popular taste. "Beginning with the Greek epic and
-the representations of analogous legends given by their sculptors,
-tending to excite egoistic or ego-altruistic sentiments, and passing
-through the literature of the Middle Ages, equally impregnated with
-inferior sentiments, then through the works of the old masters, whose
-ideas and sentiments seldom compensate for the displeasing effect they
-inflict on our senses overrefined in study of appearances; and coming
-at last to the vaunted works of modern art, excellent for technical
-execution in many cases but deplorable for the emotions they arouse
-and express, such as Gérôme's battle-pieces, alternately sensual and
-sanguinary;--they are all far off indeed from the qualities deemed
-desirable, from the artistic forms corresponding to the highest forms
-of æsthetic feeling."[2] These last critical denunciations, like the
-theories noticed above, are mere substitutions of one word for another;
-"facility" for "grace"; "economy" for "beauty," and so on. Indeed,
-when one tries to define the exact philosophical position of Spencer,
-one can only possibly say that he wavers between sensationalism and
-moralism, and is never for a moment conscious of art as art.
-
-[Sidenote: _Physiologists of Æsthetic. Grant Allen, Helmholtz, and
-others._]
-
-The same oscillation is noticeable in other English writers such as
-Sully and Bain, in whom, however, we find more familiarity with works
-of art.[3] In his numerous essays and in _Physiological Æsthetics_
-(1877), Grant Allen collected a great many records of physiological
-experiments, all of which may be of supreme value to physiology, for
-aught we know to the contrary, but most assuredly are worthless from
-the point of view of Æsthetic. He keeps to the distinction between
-necessary or vital activity and the superfluous or that of play, and
-defines æsthetic pleasure as "the subjective concomitant of the normal
-sum of activity, not connected directly with the vital functions, in
-the terminal peripheric organs of the cerebrospinal nervous system."[4]
-Physiological processes considered as causes of pleasure in art are
-presented under other aspects by later investigators, who assert that
-such pleasure arises not only "from the activity of the visual organs
-and the muscular systems associated with them, but also from the
-participation of some of the more important functions of the organism,
-as for instance breathing, circulation of the blood, equilibrium and
-internal muscular accommodation." Art, then, indubitably originated
-in "a prehistoric man who was habitually a deep-breather, having
-no call to rearrange his natural habits when scratching lines on
-bones or in mud and taking pains to draw them regularly spaced."[5]
-Physical-Æsthetic researches were pursued in Germany by Helmholtz,
-Brücke and Stumpf,[6] who generally confined themselves to the narrower
-field of optics and acoustics, giving descriptions of the physical
-processes of artistic technique and the conditions to which pleasurable
-visual and auditive impressions must conform, without claiming to merge
-Æsthetic in Physics, but even pointing out the divergences between
-them. Degenerate Herbartians hastened to disguise in physiological
-terms the metaphysical forms and relations of which their master had
-spoken, and to coquet with the hedonism of the naturalists.
-
-[Sidenote: _Method of the natural sciences in Æsthetic._]
-
-The superstitious cult of natural sciences was often accompanied (as is
-frequently the fate of superstition) by a sort of hypocrisy. Chemical,
-physical and physiological laboratories became Sybilline grottoes,
-resounding with the questions of credulous inquirers concerning the
-profoundest problems of the human spirit; and many of those who were
-really conducting their inquiries on inherently philosophic principles
-pretended or deluded themselves into believing that they followed the
-Method of Natural Science. A proof of this illusion or pretence is
-Hippolyte Taine's _Philosophy of Art_[7]
-
-[Sidenote: _H. Taine's Æsthetic._]
-
-"If by studying the art of various peoples and various epochs," says
-Taine, "we could define the nature and establish the conditions of
-the existence of each art, we should have arrived at a complete
-explanation of the fine arts and of art in general, _i.e._ at what
-is called an Æsthetic." A historical Æsthetic, not a dogmatic, which
-fixes characters and indicates laws "like Botany, and studies with
-equal attention orange and ivy, pine and birch; indeed it is a sort of
-botanical science applied to the works of man instead of to plants";
-an Æsthetic which shall follow "the general movement which tends
-daily more and more to join the moral to the natural sciences and by
-extending to the former the principles, the safeguards and the rules of
-the latter, enables both to attain the same security and maintain the
-same progress."[8] The naturalistic prelude is followed by definitions
-and doctrines indistinguishable from those offered by philosophers
-whose infallibility is not guaranteed by scientific methods, indeed,
-from those of the wildest of such philosophers. For, says Taine, art
-is imitation, an imitation so carried out as to render sensible the
-essential character of objects; the essential character being "a
-quality from which all other qualities, or many others, are derived and
-follow unalterably from it." The essential character of a lion, for
-example, is to be "a great carnivore"; this determines the formation of
-all its limbs; the essential character of Holland is to be "a country
-formed by alluvial soil." This is why art is not restricted to objects
-existing in reality, but is able, as in architecture or in music, to
-represent essential characters without natural objects to correspond.[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _Taine's metaphysic and moralism._]
-
-Now, in what do these essential characters, this carnivorosity and this
-alluviality differ, save perhaps in extravagance of example, from the
-"types" and "ideas" which intellectualiste or metaphysical Æsthetic
-had always considered as the proper content of art? Taine himself
-clears away every doubt in the matter by explicitly stating that "this
-character is what philosophers call the 'essence of things,' in virtue
-of which they affirm that the aim and end of art is to make manifest
-the essence of things"; he adds that, for his part, he "refuses to
-make use of the word 'essence' as being a technical term":[10] of the
-word itself, maybe; not of the concept for which it stands. There are
-two ways (says Taine, for all the world as though he were a Schelling)
-leading to the higher life of man, to contemplation: the way of
-science and the way of art: "the former investigates the causes and
-fundamental laws of reality, and expresses them in exact formulæ and
-abstract terms: the latter makes manifest these causes and laws, not in
-dry definitions inaccessible to the vulgar, and intelligible only to
-the select few, but in a sensible manner, appealing not merely to the
-reason but to the heart and senses of the most commonplace man; it has
-the power of being both elevated and popular, of manifesting what is
-most noble and elevated, and of manifesting it to every one."[11]
-
-For Taine, as for the Hegelian æstheticians, works of art are arranged
-in a scale of values; so that, having begun by condemning as absurd
-every judgement of taste (every one to his taste[12]), he ends by
-asserting that "personal taste has no value whatever," and that some
-common measure should be abstracted and set up as a standard of
-progress and retrogression, ornamentation and degeneracy; a standard
-by which to approve and disapprove, praise and blame.[13] The scale of
-values set up by him is twofold or threefold, in the first instance
-it turns on the degree of importance of the character, _i.e._ the
-greater or less generality in idea, and the degree of beneficent effect
-(_degré de bienfaisance_), _i.e._ the greater or less moral value of
-the representation (two grades which are aspects of one single quality,
-viz. power, considered first for its own sake and then in its connexion
-with others): in the second instance upon the degree of convergence of
-effects, _i.e._ the fulness of expression, the harmony between idea
-and form.[14] This intellectualistic, moralistic, rhetorical doctrine
-is interrupted now and then by the usual naturalistic protests: "We
-shall, according to our custom, study this question in the manner of
-the natural scientist; that is to say methodically, by analysis; hoping
-to raise not merely a song of praise, but a code of laws," etc.;[15] as
-though that sufficed to alter the substance of the method adopted and
-the doctrine expounded. Taine finally gave himself over to dialectical
-treatments and solutions, and asserted that in the primitive period
-of Italian art, in the pictures of Giotto, we have soul without body
-(thesis); under the Renaissance, in Verrocchio's pictures, body without
-soul (antithesis); in the sixteenth century, in Raphæl, there is
-harmony of expression and anatomy, soul and body (synthesis).[16]
-
-[Sidenote: _G. T. Feckner. Inductive Æsthetic._]
-
-The same protests and similar methods are to be found in the works of
-Gustav Theodor Fechner. In his _Introduction to Æsthetic_ (1876),
-Fechner claims to "abandon the attempt at conceptual determination
-of the objective essence of beauty," since he desires to compose not
-a metaphysical Æsthetic from above (_von oben_), but an inductive
-Æsthetic from below (_von unten)_ and to achieve clearness, not
-sublimity; metaphysical Æsthetic should bear the same relation to
-inductive, as the Philosophy of Nature to Physics.[17] Proceeding
-on inductive lines, he discovers a long series of æsthetic laws or
-principles: the æsthetic threshold; assistance or increment; unity in
-variety; absence of contradictions; clarity; association; contrast;
-consequence; conciliation; the correct mean; economic use; persistency;
-change; measure; and so on without end. This chaos of concepts he
-expounds with a chapter apiece, pleased and proud to show himself so
-highly scientific and so wholly inconclusive.
-
-[Sidenote: _Experiments._]
-
-Next he describes the experiments he can recommend to his readers.
-They are of this type. Take ten rectangular pieces of white cardboard
-of fairly equal area (say ten square inches), but with sides variously
-proportioned from a ratio of 1:1 to one of 2:5, including the ratio
-of the golden section, 21:34; mix all these together on a black table
-and collect persons of every kind and character, but all belonging
-to the educated classes, and applying the method of choice ask these
-people first to free their minds of all questions as to a particular
-use and then to pick out the pieces of cardboard which give them the
-highest sensation of pleasure and those which inspire them with the
-strongest feelings of disgust; the answers to be most carefully noted,
-keeping male and female subjects apart, and tabulated. Then see what
-follows. Fechner admits that the chosen cardboard-pickers often made
-reservations when questioned by himself, not knowing (very naturally)
-how to tell whether they liked a shape or disliked it without referring
-it to a definite use; sometimes they refused point-blank to make any
-selection at all; and they almost always seemed vague and perplexed in
-mind and generally, when submitted to a second test, answered in a way
-totally different from the first. Still, we all know that errors cancel
-out; and anyhow the tabulations showed that the highest sensations
-of delight were aroused not by the square, but by rectangular forms
-most nearly approaching the square, an enthusiastic rush being made
-for the proportion 21:34.[18] This method of selection received an
-extraordinarily felicitous definition; it was known as "an average of
-arbitrary judgements by an arbitrary number of persons arbitrarily
-selected."[19] Fechner also informs us (always in tabular form) of the
-result of a statistical inquiry of his own, by means of countless heaps
-of catalogues and gallery-guides, as to the dimensions and shapes of
-pictures in relation to the subjects they depict.[20]
-
-[Sidenote: _Trivial nature of his ideas on Beauty and Art._]
-
-
-Nevertheless, when he tries to tell us what beauty is, he falls back
-on using--whether well or ill--the old speculative method, which he
-prefaces with the remark that for him the concept of beauty is "merely
-an expedient in conformity with linguistic usage for indicating
-briefly the link which unites the prevailing conditions of immediate
-pleasure."[21] He distinguishes three meanings of the word "beauty":
-first, in a broad sense, the pleasing in general: secondly, in a
-narrow sense, a higher pleasure, but still sensuous: thirdly, in the
-narrowest sense, true beauty, which "not only pleases, but has the
-right of pleasing, possesses value in pleasing"; in it are united the
-concepts of beauty (the pleasing) and of goodness.[22] Beauty, in fact,
-is that which must please objectively and as such it corresponds with
-the good of action. "The Good," says Fechner, "is like a serious man,
-the capable organiser of his whole domestic life, sagaciously weighing
-the present and future, setting himself to extract the greatest benefit
-from both. Beauty is his florid spouse, careful of the present and
-mindful of her husband's wishes. The Pleasing is the baby, all senses
-and play: the Useful is the servant who puts his hands at his master's
-disposal and is given bread solely in accordance with his deserts.
-Truth, lastly, is the preacher and teacher to the household; preacher
-in matters of faith, teacher in those of learning: he gives an eye to
-the Good and a helping hand to the Useful, and holds up a looking-glass
-to Beauty."[23] When speaking of art, he sums up all essential laws or
-rules into the following: (1) art chooses a valuable or, at any rate,
-an interesting, idea for representation: (2) it expresses the idea in
-sensible material in the manner most suitable to its contents: (3) from
-amongst the various means at its disposal, it selects those which in
-themselves are more pleasing than the others: (4) the same procedure
-is observed in all particulars: (5) in the event of conflict between
-these rules, one is made to give way to another in such a way that the
-greatest possible pleasure and that of highest value is attained (_das
-grösstmögliche und werthvollste Gefallen_).[24] But why should Fechner,
-who had this eudemonistic theory of beauty and art (as he calls it) all
-ready made in advance,[25] take the trouble to enumerate principles
-and laws and conduct experiments and tabulate statistics wholly
-incapable of illustrating or proving it? One is tempted to believe
-that these pseudo-scientific operations were to him, and still are to
-his followers, a pastime or hobby neither more nor less important than
-playing Patience or collecting stamps.
-
-[Sidenote: _Ernst Grosse. Speculative Æsthetic and the science of art._]
-
-Another example of the superstitious cult of the natural sciences is to
-be found in Professor Ernst Grosse's _Origins of Art._[26] Contemner of
-all philosophical research into art, which he dismisses under the title
-of "Speculative Æsthetic," Grosse invokes a Science of art (_Kunst
-wissenschaft)_ whose mission is to dig out all the laws lying hidden
-in the mass of historical facts collected to date. It is his opinion
-that all ethnographic and prehistoric material should be united to
-historical matter proper, there being no possibility, according to him,
-of framing general laws when study is restricted to the art of cultured
-peoples "just as a theory of generation must necessarily be imperfect
-if founded exclusively on the form of that function predominant among
-mammals."[27] But immediately after his declaration of abhorrence for
-philosophy, and of faith in scientific methods, Grosse finds himself
-in the same difficulty as Taine and Fechner. Indeed, there is no
-escape; in order to examine the artistic productions of primitive and
-savage peoples, a start must be made from some sort of concept of
-art. All the scientific metaphors, all the verbal emollients employed
-by Grosse cannot hide the nature of the plan he is forced to adopt,
-or its striking resemblance to the despised speculative Æsthetic.
-"As a traveller who desires to explore an unknown land must provide
-himself with a general outline of the country and have some knowledge
-of the direction in which his path should lie, if he does not wish to
-lose his way entirely; so we, before beginning our enquiry, need a
-general preliminary orientation concerning the essence of the phenomena
-(_über das Wesen der Erscheinungen_) about to engage our attention."
-Most certainly "we may count upon having an exact and exhaustive
-answer, at earliest, when our enquiry is finished; and it is not yet
-begun. That characteristic which we seek to determine at the outset
-... may be most radically modified by the time we reach the end:"
-there is no question, fie on the suggestion! of imitating the old
-æstheticians: the only question is how "to give a definition which may
-serve as provisional scaffolding, to be broken away on completion of
-the edifice."[28] Words, words, words: the mite of general ideas and
-artistic laws to be found in his book has been quarried by Grosse not
-from study of the reports brought back by travellers in savage lands,
-but from speculation on the forms of the spirit; and (inevitably) his
-interpretation of the former is reached by the light thrown on it by
-the latter. In his final definition, Grosse concludes by considering
-art as an activity which in its development or as its result, possesses
-immediate feeling-value (_Gefühlswerth_), and is an end to itself;
-practical and æsthetic activity are in direct mutual opposition between
-which as a middle term lies the activity of play, which like the
-practical activity has its end outside itself, but, like the æsthetic,
-finds its enjoyment not in its external end, which is more or less
-insignificant, but in its own activity.[29] At the end of his book he
-remarks that the artistic activity of primitive peoples is hardly ever
-unaccompanied by the practical; and that art began by being social and
-became individual only in civilized times.[30]
-
-The Æsthetics of Taine and Grosse have also been described by the
-epithet sociological.
-
-[Sidenote: _Sociological Æsthetic._]
-
-But since no one knows what the science of Sociology is, we must deal
-with the sociological superstition as we dealt with the naturalistic;
-that is to say, by skipping the preface with its proposals that
-can never be carried out, and seeing what it is that the objective
-necessities of the case have forced the author to assert, and which of
-the possible alternative views he accepts, or between what selection of
-them his allegiance wavers. During this examination we shall ignore the
-fairly common case of an author who while pretending to construct an
-Æsthetic simply compiles a list of facts connected with the history of
-art or civilization.
-
-[Sidenote: _Proudhon._]
-
-
-Some social reformers of our day, like Proudhon, have revived the
-condemnations of Plato, or the mitigated moralism of antiquity and
-the Middle Ages. Proudhon denied the formula Art for Art's sake; he
-looked on art as a mere purveyor of sensuous pleasure, something which
-must be subordinated to legal and economical ends; poetry, sculpture,
-painting, music, romance, history, comedy, tragedy had for him no aim
-save exhortation to virtue and dissuasion from vice.[31]
-
-[Sidenote: _J. M. Guyau._]
-
-Development of social sympathy is the whole duty of art in the
-estimation of J. M. Guyau, who became famous as the founder of Social
-Æsthetic and was, according to certain French critics, inaugurator
-of the third epoch in the history of Æsthetic, the first being the
-æsthetic of the ideal (Plato), the second that of perception (Kant),
-and the third that of "Social Sympathy" (Guyau). In his _Problems
-of Contemporary Æsthetic_ (1884) Guyau combats the theory of play,
-and substitutes that of Life; in a posthumous publication _Art in
-Its Sociological Aspect_ (1889) he explains more clearly that the
-life of which he speaks is social life.[32] If the beautiful be the
-intellectually pleasing, certainly it cannot be identified with the
-useful which is only searching for what is pleasing; but the useful
-(says Guyau, in the belief that he is correcting both Kant and
-the evolutionists) does not always exclude the beautiful, of which
-indeed it often forms the lowest degree. The study of art is embraced
-partly,[33] not wholly, by Sociology: for art fulfils two ends, firstly
-and primarily that of provoking pleasant sensations (of colour, sound,
-etc.) and in this sense finds itself in the presence of practically
-incontestable scientific laws which connect Æsthetic with the physics
-(optics, acoustics, etc.), mathematics, physiology and psychophysics.
-Sculpture, in fact, rests especially on anatomy and physiology:
-painting on anatomy, physiology and optics: architecture on optics
-(golden section, etc.): music on physiology and acoustics: poetry on
-metrics, whose most general laws are acoustical and physiological. The
-second function of art is to produce the phenomena of "psychological
-induction," which bring to a head ideas and sentiments of most
-complex nature (sympathy with personages represented, interest, pity,
-indignation, etc.), in short all the social feelings, which constitute
-it "the expression of life." Whence are derived the two tendencies
-recognised in art; one inclining towards harmony, consonance, and
-everything delightful to ear and eye: the other towards the transfusion
-of life into the domain of art. Genius, true genius is destined to
-preserve the balance of the two tendencies: decadents and degenerates
-deprive art of its social sympathetic aim by setting æsthetic sympathy
-at war against human sympathy.[34] Translating all this into familiar
-terms, we may say that Guy au asserts one purely hedonistic art, above
-which he superimposes another art, also hedonistic, but serviceable to
-the cause of morality.
-
-[Sidenote: _M. Nordau._]
-
-The same polemic against decadents, degenerates and individualists
-is carried on by another writer, Max Nordau, who gives art the task
-of re-establishing the wholeness of life amongst the fragmentary
-specialisation characteristic of industrial society; he asserts that
-art for art's sake, art as the simple expression of internal states or
-the objectification of the artist's feelings, no doubt exists, but is
-merely "the art of Quaternary man, the art of the cave-dweller."[35]
-
-[Sidenote: _Naturalism. C. Lombroso._]
-
-Naturalistic is the best term with which to qualify the Æsthetic
-derived from that identification of genius with degeneracy which made
-the fortune of Lombroso and his school. This identification derives
-its chief strength from the following piece of reasoning. Great mental
-efforts, total absorption in one dominating thought, often bring about
-physiological disorders in the bodily organism and weakness or atrophy
-of various vital functions. But such derangements come under the
-head of the pathological concept of illness, degeneration, madness.
-Therefore genius is identical with illness, degeneration and madness.
-A syllogism from particular to general, in which case, according to
-traditional Logic, _non est consequentia._ But with sociologists such
-as Nordau, Lombroso and company, we almost overstep the line separating
-respectable error from that grosser form which we call a blunder.
-
-A mere confusion between scientific analysis and historical inquiry
-or description is visible in the works of certain sociologists and
-anthropologists. Thus one of them, Carl Bücher, in studying the life of
-primitive peoples, asserts that poetry, music and work were originally
-fused in one single act; that poetry and music were used to regulate
-the rhythms of labour.[36] This may be historically true or false,
-important or no: it has nothing whatever to do with æsthetic science.
-In the same way Andrew Lang maintains that the doctrine concerning the
-origin of art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty finds
-no confirmation from what we know of primitive art, which is decorative
-rather than expressive:[37] as though primitive art, which is a mere
-fact awaiting interpretation, could ever be converted into a criterion
-for the interpretation of art in general.
-
-[Sidenote: _Decline of Linguistic._]
-
-The same vague naturalism exercised a baneful influence on Linguistic,
-which of late years has been wholly lacking in such profound research
-as that inaugurated by Humboldt and followed up by Steinthal. But
-Steinthal never succeeded in founding a school. Max Müller, popular
-and inaccurate, maintained the indivisibility of speech and thought,
-confounding, or at least not distinguishing, æsthetic and logical
-thought; although at one time he had noted that the formation of
-names had a closer connexion with wit, in the sense of Locke, than
-with judgement. He maintained, moreover, that the science of language
-is not a historical but a natural science, because language is not
-the invention of man: the dilemma of "historical" and "natural" was
-canvassed and resolved over and over again with little result.[38]
-Another philologist, Whitney, attacked the "miraculous" theory of
-Müller and denied that thought is indivisible from speech: "The
-deaf-mute does not speak, but he can think," he observes; "thought is
-not function of the acoustic nerve." By this means Whitney relapsed
-into the ancient doctrine that speech is a symbol or means of
-expression, of human thought, subject to the will, the result of a
-synthesis of faculties and of a capacity for intelligent adaptation of
-means to end.[39]
-
-[Sidenote: _Signs of revival. H. Paul._]
-
-Philosophical spirit reappeared in Paul's _Principles of the History
-of Language_ (1880),[40] though the author's efforts to defend himself
-from the terrifying accusation of being a philosopher led him to hunt
-out a fresh title to replace the scandalous "Philosophy of Language."
-But if Paul is vague about the relation of Logic to Grammar, he must
-be given every credit for identifying, as Humboldt had already done,
-the question of the origin of language with that of its nature; and
-reasserting that language is created afresh whenever we speak. He
-must also be given credit for having conclusively criticized the
-Ethnopsychology (_Völkerpsychologie_) of Steinthal and Lazarus, showing
-that there is no such thing as collective psyche and that there can be
-no language other than of the individual.
-
-[Sidenote: _The linguistic of Wundt._]
-
-Wundt[41] on the other hand attached the study of language, mythology
-and customs to this non-existent science of Ethnopsychology; in his
-latest work, on this very subject of language,[42] he foolishly echoes
-Whitney's gibes and denounces as a "miracle theory" (_Wundertheorie_)
-that glorious doctrine inaugurated by Herder and Humboldt, whom he
-accuses of "mystical obscurity" (_mystiche Dunkel_): he observes that
-this view may have had some justification before the principle of
-evolution had reached its triumphant application to organic nature in
-general and to man in particular. He has not the faintest notion of
-the function of imagination, or of the true relation between thought
-and expression; he finds no substantial difference between expression
-in the naturalistic, and expression in the spiritual and linguistic
-sense; he considers language as a special highly developed form of the
-vital psychophysical manifestations and of the expressive movements
-of animals. Out of these facts language is developed by imperceptible
-gradations; so that, beyond the general concept of expressive movement
-(_Ausdrucksbewegung_) "there is no specific mark by which language can
-be distinguished in any but an arbitrary manner."[43] The philosophy
-of Wundt betrays its own weakness by showing its inability to master
-the problem of language and art. In his _Ethics_ æsthetic facts are
-presented as a complex of logical and ethical elements; the existence
-of æsthetic as a special normative science is denied, not for the good
-and sufficient reason that there are no such things as "normative
-sciences," but because this special science is said by him to be
-absorbed by the two sciences of Logic and Ethics,[44] which amounts to
-denying the existence of Æsthetic and the originality of art.
-
-
-[1] _Essays, Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 1858-1862._
-
-[2] _Principles of Psychology,_ 1855; 2nd ed. 1870, part viii. ch. 9,
-§§ 533-540.
-
-[3] J. Sully, _Outlines of Psychology,_ London, 1884; _Sensation
-and Intuition, Studies in Psychology and Æsthetics,_ London, 1874;
-cf. _Encycl. Britannica,_ ed. 9, art. "Æsthetics"; Alex. Bain, _The
-Emotions and the Will,_ London, 1859, ch. 14.
-
-[4] _Physiological Æsthetics,_ London, 1877; various arts, in _Mind,_
-vols. iii. iv. v. (o. s.).
-
-[5] Vernon Lee and C. Anstruther-Thomson, "Beauty and Ugliness," in
-_Contemp. Review,_ October-November, 1897: (abstract in Arréat, _Dix
-années de philosophie,_ pp. 80-85); same author's _Le Rôle de l'élément
-moteur dans la perception esthétique visuelle, Mémoire et questionnaire
-soumis au 4<sup>me</sup> Congrès de Psychologie,_ reprinted Imola, 1901.
-
-[6] H. Helmholtz, _Die Lehre von der Tonempfindungen als physiologische
-Grundlage für die Théorie der Musik,_ 1863, 4th ed., 1877;
-Brücke-Helmholtz, _Principes scientifiques des beaux arts,_ Fr. ed.,
-Paris, 1881; C. Stumpf, _Tonpsychologie,_ Leipzig, 1883.
-
-[7] _Philosophie de l'art,_ 1866-1869 (4th ed. Paris, 1885).
-
-[8] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 13-15.
-
-[9] _Philosophie de l'art,_ i. pp. 17-54.
-
-[10] _Op. cit._ i. p. 37.
-
-[11] _Op. cit._ i. p. 54.
-
-[12] _Op. cit._ i. p. 15.
-
-[13] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 277.
-
-[14] _Philos. de l'art,_ ii. pp. 257-400.
-
-[15] _Op. cit._ ii. pp. 257-258.
-
-[16] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 393.
-
-[17] _Vorschule der Ästhetik,_ 1876 (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1897-1898).
-
-[18] _Vorschule der Ästhetik,_ i. ch. 19.
-
-[19] Schasler, _Krit. Geschichte d. Ästh._ p. 1117.
-
-[20] _Vorschule der Ästh._ ii. pp 273-314.
-
-[21] _Op. cit._ pref. p. iv.
-
-[22] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 15-30.
-
-[23] _Op. cit._ i. p. 32.
-
-[24] _Vorschule der Ästh._ ii. pp. 12-13.
-
-[25] _Op. cit._ i. p. 38.
-
-[26] _Die Anfänge der Kunst,_ Freiburg i. B. 1894.
-
-[27] _Op. cit._ p. 19.
-
-[28] _Die Anfänge der Kunst,_ pp. 45-46.
-
-[29] _Op. cit._ pp. 46-48.
-
-[30] _Op. cit._ pp. 293-301.
-
-[31] _Du principe de l'art et de sa destination sociale,_ Paris, 1875.
-
-[32] M. Guyau, _L'Art au point de vue sociologique,_ 1889 (3rd ed.
-Paris, 1895); _Les Problèmes de l'esthétique contemporaine,_ Paris,
-1884; cf. Fouillée, pref. to the former work, pp. xli-xliii.
-
-[33] _L'Art au point de vue sociologique,_ pref. p. xlvii.
-
-[34] _Op. cit., passim,_ esp. ch. 4; cf. pp. 64, 85, 380.
-
-[35] Max Nordau, _Social Function of Art,_ 2nd ed., Turin, 1897.
-
-[36] Karl Bücher, _Arbeit u. Rhythmus,_ 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1899.
-
-[37] _Custom and Myth,_ p. 276; quoted by Knight, _The Philosophy of
-the Beautiful,_ vol. i. pp. 9-10.
-
-[38] _Lectures on the Science of Language,_ 1861 and 1864 (Fr. tr.,
-Paris, 1867).
-
-[39] William Dwight Whitney, _The Life and Growth of Language,_ London,
-1875 (It. tr., Milan, 1876).
-
-[40] Hermann Paul, _Principien der Sprachgeschichte,_ 1880 (2nd ed.,
-Halle, 1886).
-
-[41] Wilh. Wundt, _Über Wege u. Ziele d. Völkerpsychologie,_ Leipzig,
-1886.
-
-[42] _Die Sprache,_ Leipzig, 1900, 2 vols, (part i. of
-_Völkerpsychologie, eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgesetze von
-Sprache, Mythus und Sitte_).
-
-[43] _Die Sprache, passim;_ cf. i. p. 31 _seqq.,_ ii. pp. 599, 603-609.
-
-[44] _Ethik,_ ed. 2, Stuttgart, 1892, p. 6.
-
-
-
-
-XVIII
-
-
-ÆSTHETIC PSYCHOLOGISM AND OTHER RECENT TENDENCIES
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Neo-criticism and empiricism._]
-
-The neo-critical or neo-Kantian movement was powerless to make headway
-against hedonistic, psychological and moralistic views of the æsthetic
-fact, although it made every effort to save the concept of spirit from
-the invading rush of naturalism and materialism.[1] Kant bequeathed to
-neo-criticism his own failure to understand creative imagination, and
-the neo-Kantians do not seem to have had the faintest notion of any
-form of cognition other than the intellectual.
-
-[Sidenote: _Kirchmann._]
-
-Amongst German philosophers of any renown who clung to æsthetic
-sensationalism and psychologism was Kirchmann, promoter of a so-called
-realism, and author of _Æsthetic on a Realistic Basis_ (1868).[2]
-In his doctrine the æsthetic fact is an image (_Bild_) of a real;
-an animated (_seelenvolles_) image, purified and strengthened, that
-is, idealized, and divided into the image of pleasure, which is the
-beautiful, and that of pain, which is the ugly. Beauty admits of a
-threefold series of varieties or modifications, being determined
-according to the content as sublime, comic, tragic, etc.; according
-to the image, as beauty of nature or of art; and according to the
-idealization as idealistic or naturalistic, formal or spiritual,
-symbolical or classical. Not having grasped the nature of æsthetic
-objectification, Kirchmann takes the trouble to draw up a new
-psychological category of ideal or apparent feelings, arising from
-artistic images and being attenuations of the feelings of real life.[3]
-
-[Sidenote: _Metaphysic translated into Psychology. Vischer._]
-
-To the evolution or involution of the Herbartians into physiologists
-of æsthetic pleasure corresponds a similar evolution or involution of
-the idealists into adherents of psychologism. The first place must be
-given to the veteran Theodor Vischer, who in a criticism of his own
-work pronounced Æsthetic to be "the union of mimics and harmonics"
-(_vereinte Mimik und Harmonik_), and Beauty the "harmony of the
-universe," never actually realized because realized only at infinity,
-so that when we think to seize it in the Beautiful, we are under an
-illusion: a transcendent illusion, which is the very essence of the
-æsthetic fact.[4] His son Robert Yischer coined the word _Einfühlung_
-to express the life with which man endows natural objects by means of
-the æsthetic process.[5] Volkelt, when treating of the _Symbol_[6] and
-joining symbolism to pantheism, opposed associationism and favoured a
-natural teleology immanent in Beauty.
-
-[Sidenote: _Siebeck._]
-
-The Herbartian Siebeck (1875) abandoned the formalistic theory and
-tried to explain the fact of beauty by the concept of the appearance of
-personality.[7] He distinguishes between objects which please by their
-content alone (sensuous pleasures), those which please by form alone
-(moral facts), and those which please by the connexion of content with
-form (organic and æsthetic facts). In organic facts the form is not
-outside the content, but is the expression of the reciprocal action and
-conjunction of the constitutive elements: whereas in æsthetic facts
-the form is outside the content, and as it were its mere surface; not
-a means to the end, but an end in itself. Æsthetic intuition is a
-relation between the sensible and the spiritual, matter and spirit,
-and is thus form regarded as the appearance of personality. Æsthetic
-pleasure arises from the spirit's consciousness of discovering itself
-in the sensible. Siebeck borrows the theory of modifications of the
-beautiful from the metaphysical idealists, who held that only in such
-modifications can beauty be found in the concrete, just as humanity can
-only exist as a man of determinate race and nationality. The sublime is
-that species of beauty wherein the formal moment of circumscription is
-lost, and is therefore the unlimited, which is a kind of extensive or
-intensive infinity; the tragic arises when the harmony is not given but
-is the result of conflict and development; the comic is a relation of
-the small to the great; and so on. These traces of idealism, together
-with his firm hold on the Kantian and Herbartian absoluteness of the
-judgement of taste, make it impossible to regard Siebeck's Æsthetic as
-purely psychological and empirical and wholly devoid of philosophical
-elements.
-
-[Sidenote: _M. Diez._]
-
-It is the same with Diez, who, in his _Theory of Feeling as Foundation
-of Æsthetic_ (1892),[8] tries to explain the artistic activity as
-a return to the ideal of feeling (_Ideal des fühlenden Geistes_),
-parallel with science (ideal of thought), morality (ideal of will)
-and religion (ideal of personality). But whatever is this so-called
-feeling? is it the empirical feeling of the psychologists, irreducible
-to an ideal, or the mystic faculty of communication and conjunction
-with the Infinite and the Absolute? the absurd "pleasure-value" of
-Fechner, or the "judgement" of Kant? One is inclined to say that
-these writers, and others like them, still under the influence of
-metaphysical views, lack the courage of their opinions: they feel
-themselves to be in an atmosphere of hostility and speak under
-reservations or compromises. The psychologist Jodi asserts the
-existence of elementary æsthetic feelings, as discovered by Herbart,
-and defines them as "immediate excitations not resting upon associative
-or reproductive activity or on the fancy," although "in ultimate
-analysis they must be reduced to the same principles."[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _Psychological tendency. Teodor Lipps._]
-
-The purely psychological and associationistic tendency becomes clearly
-defined in Professor Teodor Lipps and his school. Lipps criticizes
-and rejects a whole series of æsthetic theories: (_a_) of play;
-(_b_) of pleasure; (_c_) of art as recognition of real life, even
-if displeasing; (_d_) of emotion and passional excitation; (_e_)
-syncretism, attributing to art beside the primary purpose of play and
-pleasure the further ends of recognition of life, in its reality,
-revelation of individuality, commotion, freedom from a weight, or free
-play of the imagination. His theory differs little at bottom from that
-of Jouffroy, for in his thesis he assumes artistic beauty to be the
-sympathetic. "The object of sympathy is our objectified ego, transposed
-into others and therefore discovered in them. We feel ourselves in
-others and we feel others in ourselves. In others, or by means of them,
-we feel ourselves happy, free, enlarged, elevated, or the contrary
-of all these. The æsthetic feeling of sympathy is not a mere mode of
-æsthetic enjoyment, it is that enjoyment itself. All æsthetic enjoyment
-is founded, in the last analysis, singly and wholly upon sympathy; even
-that caused by geometrical, architectonic, tectonic, ceramic, etc.,
-lines and forms." "Whenever in a work of art we find a personality (not
-a defect of the man, but something positively human) which harmonizes
-with and awakes an echo in the possibilities and tendencies of our
-own life and vital activities: whenever we find positive, objective
-humanity, pure and free from all real interests lying outside the work
-of art, as art only can reproduce it and æsthetic contemplation alone
-can demand; the harmony, the resonance, fills us with joy. The value
-of personality is ethical value: outside it there is no possibility
-or determination of ethical character. All artistic and in general
-æsthetic enjoyment is, therefore, the enjoyment of something which has
-ethical value (_eines ethische Werthvollen_); not as element of a
-complex, but as object of æsthetic intuition."[10]
-
-The æsthetic fact is thus deprived of all its own value and allowed
-merely a reflexion from the value of morality.
-
-Without lingering over Lipps's pupils (such as Stern and others[11])
-and writers of similar tendency (such as Biese, with his theory
-of anthropomorphism and universal metaphor;[12] or Konrad Lange,
-who propounds a thesis that art is conscious self-deception),[13]
-we will call attention to Professor Karl Groos (1892), who comes
-within measurable distance of the concept of æsthetic activity as
-a theoretic value.[14] Between the two poles of consciousness,
-sensibility and intellect, are several intermediate grades, amongst
-which lies intuition or fancy, whose product, the image or appearance
-(_Schein_), is midway between sensation and concept. The image is
-full like sensation, but regulated like the concept; it has neither
-the inexhaustible richness of the former, or the barren nudity of the
-latter. Of the nature of image or appearance is the æsthetic fact;
-which is distinguished from the simple, ordinary image not by its
-quality, but by its intensity alone: the æsthetic image is merely a
-simple image occupying the summit of consciousness. Representations
-pass through consciousness like a crowd of people hurrying over a
-bridge, each bent on his own business; but when a passer-by halts on
-the bridge and looks at the scene, then is it holiday, then arises the
-æsthetic fact. This is therefore not passivity but activity; according
-to the formula adopted by Groos it is internal imitation (_innere
-Nachahnung_).[15] It may be objected against the theory that every
-image, so far as it is an image at all, must occupy the summit of
-consciousness if only for an instant; and that the mere image is either
-the product of an activity just as is the æsthetic image, or it is not
-a real image at all. It may also be objected that the definition of the
-image as something sharing in the nature of sensation and concept may
-lead back to intellectual intuition and the other mysterious faculties
-of the metaphysical school, for which Groos professes abhorrence. His
-division of the æsthetic fact into form and content is even less happy.
-He recognizes four classes of content: associative (in the strict
-sense), symbolic, typical, individual:[16] and into his inquiries
-he introduces, quite unnecessarily, the concepts of infusion of
-personality and of play. In connexion with the latter he remarks that
-"internal imitation is the noblest game of man,"[17] and adds that "the
-concept of play applies fully to contemplation, but not to æsthetic
-production, save in the case of primitive peoples."[18]
-
-[Sidenote: _The modifications of the Beautiful in Groos and Lipps._]
-
-Groos does however free himself from the "modifications of Beauty,"
-because, æsthetic activity having been identified with internal
-imitation, it is clear that whatever is not internal imitation is
-excluded from that activity as something different. "All Beauty
-(beauty understood in the sense of 'sympathetic') belongs to the
-æsthetic activity, but not every æsthetic fact is beautiful." Beauty,
-then, is the representation of the sensuously pleasant; ugliness, the
-representation of the unpleasant; the sublime, that of a mighty thing
-(_Gewaltiges_) in a simple form; the comic, that of an inferiority
-which arouses in us a pleasing sense of our own superiority. And so
-forth.[19] With great good sense Groos holds up to derision the office
-assigned to the ugly by Schasler and Hartmann with their superficial
-dialectic. To say that an ellipse contains an element of ugliness
-in comparison with the circle because it is symmetrical about its
-two axes only and not about infinite diameters is like saying "wine
-has a relatively unpleasant taste because in it is lacking (_ist
-aufgehoben_) the pleasant taste of beer."[20] Lipps too, in his
-writings upon Æsthetic, recognizes that the comic (of which he gives an
-accurate psychological analysis)[21] has in itself no æsthetic value;
-but his moralistic views lead him to outline a theory of it not unlike
-that of the overcoming of the ugly; he explains it as a process leading
-to a higher æsthetic value (_i.e._ sympathy).[22]
-
-[Sidenote: _E. Viron and the double form of Æsthetic._]
-
-Work such as that of Groos and, occasionally, of Lipps is of some
-value towards the elimination of errors, as well as confining æsthetic
-research to the field of internal analysis. Merit of the same kind
-belongs to the work of a Frenchman, Véron,[23] who controverts the
-Absolute Beauty of academical Æsthetic and, after accusing Taine of
-confounding Art with Science and Æsthetic with Logic, remarks that if
-it be the duty of art to make manifest the essence of things, their
-one dominating quality, then "the greatest artists would be those who
-have best succeeded in exhibiting this essence ... and the greatest
-works would resemble each other more closely than any others and would
-clearly demonstrate their common identity, whereas the exact opposite
-happens."[24] But one looks in vain for scientific method in Véron; a
-precursor of Guyau,[25] he asserts that art is at bottom two different
-things; there are two arts: one decorative, whose end is beauty, that
-is to say the pleasure of eye and ear resulting from determinate
-dispositions of fines, forms, colours, sounds, rhythms, movements,
-fight and shade, without necessary interventions of ideas and feelings,
-and capable of being studied by Optics and Acoustics: the other,
-expressive, which gives "the agitated expression of human personality."
-He considers that decorative art prevails in the ancient world, and
-expressive art in the modern.[26]
-
-We cannot here examine in detail the æsthetic theories of artists
-and men of letters; the scientific and historicist prejudices, the
-theory of experiment and human document, which underlie the realism of
-Zola, or the moralism which underlies the problem-art of Ibsen and the
-Scandinavian school. Gustave Flaubert wrote of art profoundly, better
-perhaps than any other Frenchman has ever written, not in special
-treatises but throughout his letters, which were published after his
-death.[27]
-
-[Sidenote: _L. Tolstoy._]
-
-Under the influence of Véron and his hatred for the concept of beauty,
-Leo Tolstoy wrote his book on art,[28] which, according to the great
-Russian artist, communicates feelings in the same way in which words
-communicate thoughts. The meaning of this theory is made clear by the
-parallel he drew between Art and Science, and his conclusion that "the
-mission of art is to render sensible and capable of assimilation that
-which could not be assimilated under the form of argumentation";
-and that "true science examines truths considered as important for a
-certain society at a given epoch and fixes them in the consciousness
-of man, whereas art transports them from the domain of knowledge to
-that of feeling."[29] There is therefore no such thing as art for art's
-sake, any more than science for science' sake. Every human function
-should be directed to increase morality and to suppress violence.
-This amounts to saying that nearly all art, from the beginning of the
-world, is false. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Dante,
-Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Raphæl, Michæl Angelo, Bach, Beethoven are
-(according to Tolstoy) "artificial reputations created by critics."[30]
-
-[Sidenote: _F. Nietzsche._]
-
-Amongst artists rather than amongst philosophers must be reckoned
-Friedrich Nietzsche, whom we should wrong (as we said of Ruskin) by
-trying to expound his æsthetic doctrines in scientific language and
-then holding them up to the facile criticism which, so translated,
-they would draw upon themselves. In none of his books, not even in
-his first, _The Birth of Tragedy,_[31] in spite of the title, does he
-offer us a real theory of art; what appears to be theory is the mere
-expression of the author's feelings and tendencies. He shows a kind
-of anxiety concerning the value and aim of art and the problem of its
-inferiority or superiority to science and philosophy, a state of mind
-characteristic of the Romantic period of which Nietzsche was, in many
-respects, a belated but magnificent representative. To Romanticism, as
-well as to Schopenhauer, belong the elements of thought which issued in
-the distinction between Apollinesque art (that of serene contemplation,
-to which belong the epic and sculpture) and Dionysiac art (the art of
-agitation and tumult, such as music and the drama). The thought is
-vague and does not bear criticism; but it is supported by a flight of
-inspiration which lifts the mind to a spiritual region seldom if ever
-reached again in the second half of the nineteenth century.
-
-[Sidenote: _An æsthetician of music: E. Hanslick._]
-
-The most notable æsthetic students of that time were perhaps a group
-of persons engaged in constructing theories of particular arts.
-And since--as we have seen[32]--philosophical laws or theories of
-individual arts are inconceivable, it was inevitable that the ideas
-presented by such thinkers should be (as indeed they are) nothing more
-than general æsthetic conclusions. First may be mentioned the acute
-Bohemian critic Eduard Hanslick, who published his work _On Musical
-Beauty_ in 1854; it was often reprinted and was translated into various
-languages.[33] Hanslick waged war against Richard Wagner and in general
-against the pretension of finding concepts, feelings and other definite
-contents in music. "In the most insignificant musical works, where the
-most powerful microscope can discover nothing, we are now asked to
-recognize a _Night Before the Battle,_ a _Summer Night in Norway,_ a
-_Longing for the Sea,_ or some such absurdity, should the cover have
-the audacity to affirm that this is the subject of the piece."[34] With
-equal vivacity he protests against the sentimental hearers who, instead
-of enjoying the work of art, set themselves to extract pathological
-effects of passionate excitement and practical activity. If it be true
-that Greek music produced effects of this kind, "if it needed but a
-few Phrygian strains to animate troops with courage in the face of
-the enemy, or a melody in the Dorian mode to ensure the fidelity of
-a wife whose husband was far away, then the loss of Greek music is
-a melancholy thing for generals and husbands; but æstheticians and
-composers need not regret it."[35] "If every senseless _Requiem,_ every
-noisy funeral march, every wailing _Adagio_ had the power of depressing
-us, who could put up with existence under such conditions? But let a
-real musical work confront us, clear-eyed and glowing with beauty, and
-we feel ourselves enslaved by its invincible fascination even if its
-material is all the sorrows of the age."[36]
-
-[Sidenote: _Hanslick's concept of form._]
-
-Hanslick maintained that the sole aim of music is form, musical
-beauty. This affirmation won him the goodwill of the Herbartians, who
-hastened to welcome such a vigorous and unexpected ally; by way of
-returning the compliment, Hanslick felt obliged in later editions of
-his work to mention Herbart himself and his faithful disciple Robert
-Zimmermann who had given (so he said) "full development to the great
-æsthetic principle of Form."[37] The praises of the Herbartians and the
-courteous declarations of Hanslick both arose from a misunderstanding:
-for the words "beauty" and "form" have one meaning for the former and
-quite another for the latter. Hanslick never thought that symmetry,
-purely acoustical relations and pleasures of the ear constituted
-musical beauty;[38] mathematics, he held, are utterly useless to
-musical Æsthetic.[39] Musical beauty is spiritual and significative: it
-has thoughts, undoubtedly; but those thoughts are musical. "Sonorous
-forms are not empty, but perfectly filled; they cannot be compared
-with simple lines delimiting a space; they are the spirit assuming body
-and extracting from itself the stuff of its own incarnation. Rather
-than an arabesque, music is a picture; but a picture whose subject
-can neither be expressed in words nor enclosed in precise concept.
-There are in music both meaning and connexion, but these are of a
-specifically musical nature; music is a language we understand and
-speak, but which it is not possible to translate."[40] Hanslick asserts
-that though music does not portray the quality of feelings, it does
-portray their dynamic aspect or tone: if not the substantives, then
-the adjectives: it depicts not "murmuring tenderness" or "impetuous
-courage," but the "murmuring" and the "impetuous."[41] The backbone of
-the book is the denial that form and content can ever be separated in
-music. "In music there can be no content in opposition to the form,
-since there can be no form outside the content." "Take a motive, the
-first that comes into your head; what is its content, what its form?
-where does this begin, and that end? ... What do you wish to call
-content? The sounds? Very well: but they have already received a form.
-What will you call form? Also the sounds? but they are form already
-filled; form supplied with content."[42] Such observations denote
-acute penetration of the nature of art, though not scientifically
-formulated or framed into a system. Hanslick thought he was dealing
-with peculiarities of music,[43] instead of with the universal and
-constitutive character of every form of art, and this prevented him
-from taking larger views.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æstheticians of the figurative arts. C. Fiedler._]
-
-Another specialist æsthetician is Conrad Fiedler, author of many
-essays on the figurative arts, the most important being his _Origin
-of Artistic Activity_ (1887).[44] No one, perhaps, has better or
-more eloquently emphasized the activistic character of art, which
-he compares with language. "Art begins exactly where intuition
-(perception) ends. The artist is not differentiated from other people
-by any special perceptive attitude enabling him to perceive more or
-with greater intensity, or endowing his eye with any special power
-of selecting, collecting, transforming, ennobling or illuminating;
-but rather by his peculiar gift of being able to pass immediately
-from perception to intuitive expression; his relation with nature is
-not perceptive, but expressive." "A man standing passively at gaze
-may well imagine himself in possession of the visible world as an
-immense, rich, varied whole: the entire absence of fatigue with which
-he traverses the infinite mass of visual impressions, the rapidity
-with which representations dart across his consciousness, convince
-him that he stands in the midst of an immense visible world, although
-he may quite well be unable at any one instant to represent it to
-himself as a whole. But this world, so great, so rich, so immeasurable,
-disappears the moment art seeks to become its master. The very first
-effort to emerge from this twilight and arrive at clear vision
-restricts the circle of things to be seen. Artistic activity may be
-conceived as continuation of that concentration by which consciousness
-makes the first step towards clear vision, which it reaches only by
-self-limitation." Spiritual process and bodily process are here an
-indivisible whole, which is expression.
-
-[Sidenote: _Intuition and Expression._]
-
-"This activity, simply because it is spiritual, must consist of forms
-wholly determinate, tangible, sensibly demonstrative." Art is not in
-a state of subjection to science. Like the man of science, the artist
-desires to escape from the natural perceptive state and to make the
-world his own; but there are regions to which we can penetrate not
-by the forms of thought and science but only through art. Art is,
-strictly speaking, not imitation of nature; for what is nature save
-this confused mass of perceptions and representations, whose real
-poverty has been demonstrated already? In another sense, however, art
-may be called imitation of nature inasmuch as its aim is not to expound
-concepts or to arouse emotions, that is to create values of intellect
-and feeling. Art does create both these values, if you like to say so;
-but only in one quite peculiar quality, which consists in complete
-visibility (_Sichtbarkeit_). Here we have the same sane conception, the
-same lively comprehension of the true nature of art which we found in
-Hanslick, only expressed in a more rigorous and philosophical manner.
-With Fiedler is connected his friend Adolf Hildebrand, who brought into
-high relief the activistic, or architectonic as opposed to imitative,
-character of art, illustrating his theoretical discussions especially
-from sculpture, the art which he himself followed.[45]
-
-[Sidenote: _Narrow limits of these theories._]
-
-What we chiefly miss in Fiedler and others of the same tendency is the
-conception of the æsthetic fact not as something exceptional, produced
-by exceptionally gifted men, but as a ceaseless activity of man as
-such; for man possesses the world, so far as he does possess it, only
-in the form of representation-expressions, and only knows in so far as
-he creates.[46] Nor are these writers justified in treating language
-as parallel with art, or art with language; for comparisons are drawn
-between things at least partially different, whereas art and language
-are identical.
-
-[Sidenote: _H. Bergson._]
-
-The same criticism can be made in the case of the French philosopher
-Bergson, who in his book on _Laughter_[47] states a theory of art very
-similar to that of Fiedler and makes the same mistake of conceiving the
-artistic faculty as something distinct and exceptional in comparison
-with the language of everyday use. In ordinary life, says Bergson, the
-individuality of things escapes us; we see only as much of them as
-our practical needs demand. Language helps this simplification; since
-all names, proper names excepted, are names of kinds or classes. Now
-and then, however, nature, as if in a fit of absence of mind, creates
-souls of a more divisible and detached kind (artists), who discover
-and reveal the riches hidden under the colourless signs and labels
-of everyday life, and help others (non-artists) to catch a glimpse of
-what they themselves see, employing for this purpose colours, forms,
-rhythmic connexions of words, and those rhythms of life and breath even
-more intimate to man, the sounds and notes of music.
-
-[Sidenote: _Attempts to return to Baumgarten. C. Hermann._]
-
-A healthy return to Baumgarten, a revival and correction of the old
-philosopher's theories in the light of later discoveries, might
-perhaps have given Æsthetic some assistance, after the collapse of
-the old idealistic metaphysic, towards thinking the concept of art
-in its universality and discovering its identity with pure and true
-intuitive knowledge. But Conrad Hermann, who preached the return to
-Baumgarten[48] in 1876, did bad service to what might have been a good
-cause. According to him Æsthetic and Logic are normative sciences;
-but Logic does not contain, as does Æsthetic, "a definite category
-of external objects exclusively and specifically adequate to the
-faculty of thought"; and on the other hand "the products and results
-of scientific thought are not so external and sensibly intuitive as
-those of artistic invention." Logic and Æsthetic alike refer not to the
-empirical thinking and feeling of the soul, but to pure and absolute
-sensation and thought. Art constructs a representation standing midway
-between the individual and the universal. Beauty expresses specific
-perfection, the essential or, so to speak, the rightful (_seinsollend_)
-character of things. Form is "the external sensible limit, or mode of
-appearance of a thing, in opposition to the kernel of the thing itself
-and to its essential and substantial content." Content and form are
-both æsthetic, and the æsthetic interest concerns the entirety of the
-beautiful object. The artistic activity has no special organ such as
-thought possesses in speech. The æsthetician, like the lexicographer,
-has the task of compiling a dictionary of tones and colours and of
-the different meanings which may possibly be attached to them.[49]
-We can see that Hermann accepted side by side the most inconsistent
-propositions. He welcomes even the æsthetic law of the golden section,
-and applies it to tragedy; the longer segment of the Une is the tragic
-hero; the punishment which overtakes him (the entire line) exceeds his
-crime in the same proportion in which he oversteps the common measure
-(the shorter segment of the line).[50] It reads almost like a joke.
-
-Without direct reference to Baumgarten, a proposal that Æsthetic be
-reformed and treated as the "science of intuitive knowledge" was made
-in a miserable little work by one Willy Nef (1898),[51] who makes the
-dumb animals share his "intuitive knowledge," in which he distinguishes
-a formal side (intuition) and a material side or content (knowledge),
-and considers the everyday relations between men, their games and their
-art, as belonging to intuitive knowledge.
-
-[Sidenote: _Eclecticism. B. Bosanquet._]
-
-The English historian of Æsthetic, Bosanquet (1892) tried to find
-a reconciliation between content and form in unity of expression.
-"Beauty," says Bosanquet in the Introduction to his _History,_ "is
-that which has characteristic and individual expressiveness for
-sensuous perception or imagination, subject to the conditions of
-general or abstract expressiveness by the same means." In another
-passage he observes: "The difficulty of real Æsthetic is to show how
-the combination of decorative forms in characteristic representations,
-by intensifying the essential character immanent in them from the
-beginning, subordinates them to a central signification which stands
-to their complex combination as their abstract signification stands to
-each one of them taken singly."[52] But the problem, as propounded in a
-way suggested by the antithesis between the two schools (contentism and
-formalism) of German Æsthetic, is in our opinion insoluble.
-
-[Sidenote: _Æsthetic of expression: present state._]
-
-De Sanctis founded no school of æsthetic science in Italy. His thought
-was quickly misunderstood and mutilated by those who presumed to
-correct it, and, in fact, only returned to the outworn rhetorical
-conception of art as consisting of a little content and a little
-form. Only within the last ten years has there been a renewal of
-philosophical studies, arising out of discussions concerning the nature
-of history[53] and the relation in which it stands to art and science,
-and nourished by the controversy excited by the publication of De
-Sanctis' posthumous works.[54] The same problem of the relation between
-history and science, and their difference or antithesis, reappeared
-also in Germany, but without being put in its true connexion with the
-problem of Æsthetic.[55] These inquiries and discussions, and the
-revival of a Linguistic impregnated by philosophy in the work of Paul
-and some others, appear to us to offer much more favourable ground for
-the scientific development of Æsthetic than can be found on the summits
-of mysticism or the low plains of positivism and sensationalism.
-
-
-
-[1] A. F. Lange, _Geschichte des Materialismus, u. Kritik seiner
-Bedeutung i. d. Gegenwart,_ 1866.
-
-[2] J. F. v. Kirchmann, _Ästhetik auf realistischer Grundlage,_ Berlin,
-1868.
-
-[3] _Ästh. auf real. Grund._ vol. i. pp. 54-57; see above, pp. 80-81.
-
-[4] _Kritische Gänge,_ vol. v. pp. 25-26, 131.
-
-[5] R. Vischer, _Über das optische Formgefühl,_ Leipzig, 1873.
-
-[6] _Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Ästh.,_ Jena, 1876.
-
-[7] _Das Wesen d. ästh. Anschauung, Psychologische Untersuchungen z.
-Theorie d. Schönen u. d. Kunst,_ Berlin, 1875.
-
-[8] Max Diez, _Theorie des Gefühls z. Begründung d. Ästhetik,_
-Stuttgart, 1892.
-
-[9] Friedr. Jodi, _Lehrb. der Psychologie,_ Stuttgart, 1896, § 53, pp.
-404-414.
-
-[10] _Komik und Humor, eine psychol. ästhet. Untersuch.,_
-Hamburg-Leipzig, pp. 223-227.
-
-[11] Paul Stern, _Einfühling u. Association i. d. neueren Ästh.,_ 1898,
-in _Beiträge z. Ästh.,_ ed. Lipps and R. M. Werner (Hamburg-Leipzig).
-
-[12] Alfr. Biese, _Das Associationsprincip u. d. Anthropomorphismus i.
-d. Ästh.,_ 1890; _Die Philosophie des Metaphorischen,_ Hamburg-Leipzig,
-1893.
-
-[13] Konrad Lange, _Die bewusste Selbsttäuschung als Kern des
-künstlerischen Genusses,_ Leipzig, 1895.
-
-[14] Karl Groos, _Einleitung i. d. Ästhetik,_ Giessen, 1892.
-
-[15] _Op. cit._ pp. 6-46, 83-100.
-
-[16] _Einleitung i. d. Ästh._ pp. 100-147.
-
-[17] _Op. cit._ pp. 168-170.
-
-[18] _Op. cit._ pp. 175-176.
-
-[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 46-50, and all part iii.
-
-[20] _Einleitung i. d. Ästh._ p. 292, note.
-
-[21] See above, pp. 91-92.
-
-[22] _Komik und Humor,_ p. 199 _seqq._
-
-[23] Eug. Véron, _L'Esthétique,_ 2nd ed. Paris, 1883.
-
-[24] _Op. cit._ p. 89.
-
-[25] See above, pp. 399-400.
-
-[26] _Esthétique,_ pp. 38, 109, 123 _seqq._
-
-[27] _Correspondance,_ 1830-1880, 4 vols., new ed., Paris, 1902-1904.
-
-[28] _What is Art?_ Eng. tr.
-
-[29] _Op. cit._ pp. 171-172, 308.
-
-[30] _Op. cit._ pp. 201-202.
-
-[31] _Die Geburt der Tragödie oder Griechenthum und Pessimismus,_ 1872
-(Ital. trans., Bari, 1907).
-
-[32] See above, p. 114.
-
-[33] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ Leipzig, 1854; 7th ed. 1885 (French
-trans., _Du beau dans la musique,_ Paris, 1877).
-
-[34] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ p. 20.
-
-[35] _Op. cit._ p. 98.
-
-[36] _Op. cit._ p. 101.
-
-[37] _Op. cit._ p. 119, note.
-
-[38] _Op. cit._ p. 50.
-
-[39] _Op. cit._ p. 65.
-
-[40] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ pp. 50-51.
-
-[41] _Op. cit._ pp. 25-39.
-
-[42] _Op. cit._ p. 122.
-
-[43] _Op. cit._ pp. 52, 67, 113, etc.
-
-[44] Conrad Fiedler, _Der Ursprung der künstlerischen Thätigkeit,_
-Leipzig, 1887. Collected with others of same author in _Schriften tiber
-die Kunst,_ ed. H. Marbach, Leipzig, 1896.
-
-[45] _Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst,_ 2nd ed. 1898 (4th
-ed., Strassburg, 1903).
-
-[46] See above, pp. 12-18.
-
-[47] H. Bergson, _Le Rire, essai sur la signification du comique,_
-Paris, 1900, pp. 153-161 (Eng. tr., London).
-
-[48] Conrad Hermann, _Die Ästhetik in ihrer Geschichte und ah
-wissenschaftliches System,_ Leipzig, 1876.
-
-[49] _Die Ästhetik,_ etc., _passim._
-
-[50] _Die Ästhetik,_ § 56.
-
-[51] Willy Nef, _Die Ästhetik als Wissenschaft der anschaulichen
-Erkenntniss,_ Leipzig, 1898.
-
-[52] _A History of Æsthetics,_ pp. 4-6, 372, 391, 447, 458, 466.
-
-[53] B. Croce, _La storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell'
-arte,_ 1893 (2nd ed. entitled _Il concetto della storia nelle sue
-relazioni col concetto dell' arte,_ Rome, 1896); P. R. Trojano, _La
-storia come scienza sociale,_ vol. i., Naples, 1897; G. Gentile, _Il
-concetto della storia_ (in Crivellucci's _Studî storici,_ 1889); see
-also F. de Sarlo, _Il problema estetico,_ in _Saggi di filosofia,_
-vol. ii., Turin, 1897; and by same author, _I dati dell' esperienza
-psichica,_ Florence, 1903, concluding chapter.
-
-[54] _La letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX,_ edited by B. Croce,
-Naples, 1896; also _Scritti varî,_ ed. Croce, Naples, 1898, 2 vols.
-
-[55] H. Rickert, _Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen
-Begriffsbildung,_ Freiburg i. B., 1896-1902.
-
-
-
-
-XIX
-
-
-HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF SOME PARTICULAR DOCTRINES
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Result of the history of Æsthetic._]
-
-
-We have reached the end of our history. Having passed in review the
-travail and doubt through which the discovery of the æsthetic concept
-was achieved, the vicissitudes first of neglect, then of revival and
-rediscovery to which it was exposed, the various oscillations and
-failures in its exact determination, the resurrection, triumphant and
-overwhelming, of ancient errors supposed to be dead and buried; we
-may now conclude, without appearing to assert anything unproven, that
-of Æsthetic in the proper sense of the word we have seen very little,
-even including the last two centuries' active research. Exceptional
-intellects have hit the mark and have supported their views with
-energy, with logic, and with consciousness of what they were doing.
-It would no doubt be possible to extract many true affirmations
-leading to the same point of view from the works of non-philosophical
-writers, art-critics and artists, from commonly received opinions and
-proverbial sayings; such a collection would show that this handful
-of philosophers does not stand alone, but is surrounded by a throng
-of supporters and is in perfect agreement with the general mind and
-universal common sense. But if Schiller was right in saying that the
-rhythm of philosophy is to diverge from common opinion in order to
-return with redoubled vigour, it is evident that such divergence is
-necessary, and constitutes the growth of science, which is science
-itself. During this tedious process Æsthetic made mistakes which were
-at once deviations from the truth and attempts to reach it: such were
-the hedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity and of the
-sensationalists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenth
-century; the moralistic hedonism of Aristophanes, of the Stoics, of
-the Roman eclectics, of the mediæval and Renaissance writers; the
-ascetic and logical hedonism of Plato and the Fathers of the Church,
-of some mediæval and even some quite modern rigorists; and finally,
-the æsthetic mysticism which first appeared in Plotinus and reappeared
-again and again until its last and great triumph in the classical
-period of German philosophy. In the midst of these variously erroneous
-tendencies, ploughing the field of thought in every direction, a
-tenuous golden rivulet seems to flow, formed by the acute empiricism
-of Aristotle, the forceful penetration of Vico, the analytical work
-of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, De Sanctis and others who echoed them
-with weaker voice. This series of thinkers suffices to remind us that
-æsthetic science no longer remains to be discovered; but at the same
-time the fact that they are so few and so often despised, ignored or
-controverted, proves that it is in its infancy.
-
-[Sidenote: _History of science and history of the scientific criticism
-of particular errors._]
-
-The birth of a science is like that of a living being: its later
-development consists, like every life, in fighting the difficulties
-and errors, general and particular, which lurk in its path on every
-side. The forms of error are numerous in the extreme and mingle with
-each other and with the truth in complications equally numerous:
-root out one, another appears in its stead; the uprooted ones also
-reappear, though never in the same shape. Hence the necessity for
-perpetual scientific criticism and the impossibility of repose or
-finality in a science and of an end to further discussion. The errors
-which may be described as general, negations of the concept of art
-itself, have been touched on from time to time in the course of this
-History; whence it may be gathered a simple affirmation of the truth
-has not always been accompanied by any considerable recapture of enemy
-territory. As to what we have called particular errors, it is clear
-that when freed from confusing admixture of other forms and divested
-of fanciful expression, they reduce themselves to three heads, under
-which they have already been criticized in the first or theoretical
-part of this work. That is to say, errors may be directed (_a_) against
-the characteristic quality of the æsthetic fact; (_b_) against the
-specific; (_c_) against the generic: they may involve denial of the
-character of intuition, of theoretic contemplation, or of spiritual
-activity, which together constitute the æsthetic fact. Among the errors
-which fall into these three categories we are now to sketch in outline
-the history of those which have had, or have to-day, the greatest
-importance. Rather than a history it will be a historical essay,
-sufficient to show that, even in the criticism of individual errors,
-æsthetic science is in its infancy. If among these errors some appear
-to be decadent and nearly forgotten, they are not dead; they have not
-accomplished a legal demise at the hands of scientific criticism.
-Oblivion or instinctive rejection is not the same thing as scientific
-denial.
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-RHETORIC: OR THE THEORY OF ORNATE FORM
-
-
-[Sidenote: _Rhetoric in the ancient sense._]
-
-Proceeding according to rank in importance, we inevitably head the list
-of theories for examination with the theory of Rhetoric, or Ornate Form.
-
-It will not be superfluous to observe that the meaning given in
-modern times to the word Rhetoric, namely, the doctrine of ornate
-form, differs from that which it had for the ancients. Rhetoric in
-the modern sense is above all a theory of elocution, while elocution
-(λέξις, φράσις, ἑρμηνεία, elocutio) was but one portion, and not
-the principal one, of ancient Rhetoric. Taken as a whole, it consisted
-strictly of a manual or _vade-mecum_ for advocates and politicians;
-it concerned itself with the two or the three "styles" (judicial,
-deliberative, demonstrative), and gave advice or furnished models to
-those striving to produce certain effects by means of speech.
-No definition of the art is more accurate than that given by its
-inventors the earliest Sicilian rhetoricians, scholars of Empedocles
-(Corax, Tisias, Gorgias): Rhetoric is the creator of persuasion
-(πειθος δημιουργός). It devoted itself to showing the method of
-using language so as to create a certain belief, a certain state of
-mind, in the hearer; hence the phrase "making the weaker case stronger"
-(τὸ τὸν ἥττω λόgον κρείττω ποιεῖν); the "increase or diminution
-according to circumstances" (_eloquentia in augendo minuendoque
-consistit_); the advice of Gorgias to "turn a thing to a jest if the
-adversary takes it seriously, or to a serious matter if he takes it as
-a jest,"[1] and many similar well-known maxims.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticism from moral point of view._]
-
-He who acts in this manner is not only æsthetically accomplished,
-as saying beautifully that which he wishes to say; he is also and
-especially a practical man with a practical end in view. As a practical
-man, however, he cannot evade moral responsibility for his actions;
-this point was fastened upon by Plato's polemic against Rhetoric, that
-is to say against fluent political charlatans and unscrupulous lawyers
-and journalists. Plato was quite right to condemn Rhetoric (when
-dissociated from a good purpose) as blameworthy and discreditable,
-directed to arouse the passions, a diet ruinous to health, a paint
-disastrous to beauty. Even had Rhetoric allied herself to Ethics,
-becoming a true guide of the soul (ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ τῶν λόγον);
-had Plato's criticism been directed solely against her abusers
-(everything being liable to abuse save virtue itself, says Aristotle);
-had Rhetoric been purified, producing such an orator as Cicero desired,
-_non ex rhetorum officinis sed ex academiae spatiis_[2] and imposing on
-him, with Quintilian, the duty of being _vir bonus dicendi peritus_;[3]
-yet the unalterable fact remains that Rhetoric can never be considered
-a regular science, being formed of a congeries of widely dissimilar
-cognitions.
-
-[Sidenote: _Accumulation without system._]
-
-It included descriptions of passions and affections, comparisons of
-political and judicial institutions, theories of the abbreviated
-syllogism or enthymeme and of proof leading to a probable conclusion,
-pedagogic and popular exposition, literary elocution, declamation and
-mimicry, mnemonic, and so forth.
-
-[Sidenote: _Its fortunes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance._]
-
-The rich and heterogeneous content of this ancient Rhetoric (which
-reached its highest development in the hands of Hermagoras of Temnos
-in the second century B.C.) gradually diminished in volume with the
-decadence of the ancient world and the change in political conditions.
-This is not the place to dwell on its fortunes in the Middle Ages or
-its partial replacement by formularies and _Artes dictandi_ (and later
-by treatises upon the art of preaching), or to quote the reasons given
-by such writers as Patrizzi and Tassoni for its disappearance from the
-world of their day;[4] such history would be well worth writing, but
-would be out of place here. We will merely state that whilst conditions
-were at work on every side corroding this complex of cognitions, Louis
-Vives, Peter Ramus and Patrizzi himself were busy criticizing it from
-the point of view of systematic science.
-
-[Sidenote: _Criticisms by Vives, Ramus and Patrizzi._]
-
-Vives emphasized the confused methods of the ancient treatise-writers,
-who embraced _omnia,_ united eloquence with morality, and insisted that
-the orator must be _vir bonus._ He rejected four-fifths of ancient
-Rhetoric as extraneous: namely, memory, which is necessary in all arts;
-invention, which is the matter of each individual art; recitation,
-which is external; and disposition, which belongs to invention. He
-retained elocution only, not that which treats of _quid dicendum,_ but
-of _quem ad modum,_ extending it beyond the three styles or kinds to
-include history, apologue, epistles, novels and poetry.[5] Antiquity
-furnishes us with few and faint attempts at such extension; now and
-then a Rhetorician ventures to suggest that the γένος ίστορικόν and
-ἐπιστολικόν be included in Rhetoric, and even (in spite of opposition)
-"infinite" questions, that is to say merely theoretical questions
-with no practical application, which amounts to a scientific or
-philosophical genus;[6] others agreed with Cicero[7] that when one had
-mastered the most difficult of all arts, forensic eloquence, all else
-seemed child's-play (_ludus est homini non hebeti_ ...). Ramus and
-his pupil Omer Talon reproached Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian with
-having confused Dialectic and Rhetoric; and they assigned invention
-and disposition to the former, agreeing with Vives that "elocution"
-alone should be allowed to Rhetoric.[8] Patrizzi, on the other hand,
-refused the name of science to either, recognizing them as simple
-faculties, containing no individual matter (not even the three genera),
-and differentiating them only by attaching the term Dialectic to the
-dialogue form and proof of the necessary, and Rhetoric to connected
-discourse directed to persuasion in matters of opinion. Patrizzi
-observes that "conjoined speech" is used by historians, poets and
-philosophers, no less than by orators; and thus approaches the view of
-Vives.[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _Survival into modern times._]
-
-In spite of these opinions the body of rhetorical doctrine continued
-to flourish in the schools. Patrizzi was forgotten; if Ramus and Vives
-had some followers (such as Francisco Sanchez and Keckermann), they
-were generally held up to odium by the traditionalists. In the end,
-Rhetoric found a supporter in philosophy when Campanella made the
-following declaration in his _Rational Philosophy_: "_quodammodo Magiae
-portiuncula, quae affectus animi moderator et per ipsos voluntatem ciet
-ad quaecumque vult sequenda vel fugienda._"[10] Baumgarten owed to it
-his tripartition of Æsthetic into heuristic, methodology and semeiotic
-(invention, disposition and elocution), adopted later by Meier. Among
-Meier's numerous works is a little book entitled _Theoretic Doctrine
-of Emotional Disturbances in General_,[11] considered by him to be a
-psychological introduction to æsthetic doctrine. On the other hand,
-Immanuel Kant in his _Critique of Judgment_ observes that eloquence, in
-the sense of _ars oratoria_ or art of persuasion by means of beautiful
-appearance and dialectical form, must be distinguished from beautiful
-speaking (_Wohlredenheit)_; and that the art of oratory, playing upon
-the weakness of men to gain its own ends, "is worthy of no esteem"
-(_gar keiner Achtungwürdig)_[12] But in the schools it flourished in
-many celebrated compilations, including one by the French Jesuit Father
-Dominique de Colonne, which was in use until some few decades ago. Even
-to-day, in so-called Literary Institutions, we come across survivals of
-ancient Rhetoric, notably in chapters devoted to the art of oratory;
-and fresh manuals on judicial or sacred eloquence (Ortloff, Whately,
-etc.[13]) are actually appearing, though rarely, to-day. Still,
-Rhetoric in the ancient sense may be said to have disappeared from the
-system of the sciences; to-day no philosopher would dream of following
-Campanella in dedicating a special section of rational philosophy to
-Rhetoric.
-
-[Sidenote: _Modern signification of Rhetoric. Theory of literary form._]
-
-In compensation for this process, the theory of elocution and beautiful
-speech has been in modern times progressively emphasized and thrown
-into scientific form. But the idea of such a science is ancient, as we
-have seen; and equally ancient is the style of exposition, consisting
-in the doctrine of a double form and the concept of ornate form.
-
-[Sidenote: _Concept of ornament._]
-
-The concept of "ornament" must have occurred spontaneously to the mind
-as soon as attention was directed to the values of speech by listening
-to poets reciting[14] or to oratorical contests in public gatherings.
-It must very early have been thought that the difference between
-good speaking and bad, or between that which gave more pleasure and
-that which gave less, between grave or solemn, and commonplace or
-colloquial, consisted in something additional superimposed upon the
-canvas of ordinary speech like an embroidery by a skilful orator. These
-considerations led the Græco-Roman rhetoricians to adopt the practice,
-like the Indians, who arrived at the distinction independently, to
-distinguish the bare (ψιλή) or purely grammatical form from another
-form containing an addition which they called ornament, κόσμος: _ornatum
-est_ (Quintilian will serve, as typical of all the rest) quod perspicuo
-ac probabili plus est.[15]
-
-The notion of ornament as something added on from outside forms the
-basis of the theory which Aristotle, the philosopher of Rhetoric, gave
-of the queen of ornaments, Metaphor. According to him the high pleasure
-aroused by metaphor arises from the collocation of different terms
-and the discovery of relations between species and genera, producing
-"learning and knowledge by means of the genus" (μαθησιν καi γνῶσιν
-διὰ τοῦ γένους), and that easy learning which is the greatest of human
-pleasures,[16] which amounts to saying that metaphor adds to the
-concept under consideration a group of minor incidental cognitions, as
-a kind of diversion and relief and pleasant instruction for the mind.
-
-[Sidenote: _Classes of ornament._]
-
-Ornaments were divided and subdivided in a number of different ways.
-Aristotle (and previously Isocrates, rather differently) classified
-the ornaments which diversify bare or nude form, under the heads of
-dialect forms, substitutions and epithets, prolongations, truncations
-and abbreviations of words, and other departures from common usage,
-and, finally, rhythm and harmony. Substitutions were of four classes:
-species for genus; genus for species; species for species; and
-proportionate.[17] After Aristotle, elocution was especially studied
-by Theophrastus and Demetrius Phalereus; these rhetoricians and their
-followers further solidified the classification of ornament by
-distinguishing tropes from figures (σχήματα) and dividing figures
-into figures of speech (scheimata τῆς λέχεως) and of thought
-(τῆς διανοίας), figures of speech into grammatical and rhetorical,
-and figures of thought into pathetic and ethic. Substitutions were
-divided into fourteen principal forms, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy,
-antonomasia, onomatopeia, catachresis, metalepsis, epithet, allegory,
-enigma, irony, periphrase, hyperbaton and hyperbole; each divided
-into subspecies and contrasted with its relative vice. Figures of
-speech amounted to a score or so (repetition, anaphora, antistrophe,
-climax, asyndeton, assonance, etc.); figures of thought to about the
-same number (interrogation, prosopopœia, ætiopœia, hypotyposis,
-commotion, simulation, exclamation, apostrophe, aposiopesis, etc.).
-If these divisions have any value as aids to memory in relation to
-particular literary forms, considered rationally they are simply
-capricious, as is evidenced by the fact that many classes of the ornate
-appear now under the heading of tropes, now of figures; sometimes
-under figures of speech, then as those of thought, no reason for the
-alteration is given except the arbitrary caprice of an individual
-rhetorician which so decrees and disposes. And since one function
-which may be fulfilled by the rhetorical categories is to point
-out the divergence between two ways of expressing the same thing,
-one of which is arbitrarily selected as "proper,"[18] it is easy
-to see why the ancients defined metaphor as "_verbi vel sermonis a
-propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio,_" and figure as
-"_conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi et primum se offerenti
-ratione._"[19]
-
-[Sidenote: _The concept of the Fitting._]
-
-So far as we know, antiquity raised no revolt against the theory of
-ornament or of double form. We do sometimes hear Cicero, Quintilian,
-Seneca and others saying, _Ipsae res verba rapiunt, Pectus est quod
-disertos facit et vis mentis, Rem tene, verba sequentur, Curam
-verborum rerum volo esse sollicitudinem,_ or _Nulla est verborum nisi
-rei cohaerentium virtus._ But these maxims did not bear the weighty
-meanings which we moderns might attach to them; they were perhaps in
-contradiction with the theory of ornament, but as the contradiction was
-unheeded, it was ineffective: they were the protests of common sense,
-powerless to combat the fallacies of school doctrine. Moreover, the
-latter was fitted with a safety-valve, a sage contrivance to disguise
-its inherent absurdity. If the ornate consisted of a _plus,_ in what
-degree should it be used? if it gave pleasure, must we not conclude
-that the more it were used, the greater the pleasure derived? would its
-extravagant use be attended by extravagant pleasure? Herein was peril:
-instinctively the rhetoricians hastened to the defence, snatching
-up the first weapon that came to hand, namely, the fitting (πρέπον)
-Ornament must be used carefully; neither too much too little; _in medio
-virtus_; as much as is fitting (ἀλλά πρέπον). Aristotle recommends
-a style seasoned with "a certain dose" (δεῑ ἃρα κεκρᾶσθαί πως
-τούτοις.) for ornament should be a condiment, not a food (ἤδυσμα, οὐκ
-ἒδεσμα). [20] The fitting was a concept quite inconsistent with that of
-ornament; it was a rival, and enemy, destined to destroy it. Fitting to
-what? to expression of course; but that which is fitting to expression
-cannot be called an ornament, an external addition; it coincides with
-expression itself. But the rhetoricians contented themselves with
-maintaining peaceful relations between the ornate and the fitting,
-without troubling to mediate them through a third concept. The
-pseudo-Longinus alone in answer to an observation of his predecessor
-Cæcilius that more than two or three metaphors must not be used in
-the same place, remarked that a larger number ought to be used where
-passion (τὰ πάθη) rushes headlong like a torrent, carrying with it as
-necessaries (ὡς ἀναγκαῑον) a multitude of such substitutions.[21]
-
-[Sidenote: _The theory of ornament in the Middle Ages and Renaissance._]
-
-Preserved in the compilations of later antiquity (such as the works of
-Donatus and Priscian and the celebrated allegorical tract of Marcianus
-Capella), and in the compendia of Bede, Rhabanus Maurus and others,
-the theory of ornament passed to the Middle Ages. Throughout this
-period Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic continued to form the _trivium_ of
-the schools. The theory was to some extent favoured in mediæval times
-by the fact that writers and scholars made use of a dead language;
-this helped to reinforce the idea that beautiful form was not a
-spontaneous thing but consisted in an addition or embroidery. Under the
-Renaissance the theory continued to flourish and was revived by study
-of the best classical sources; to the works of Cicero were added the
-_Institutiones_ of Quintilian and the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, with the
-host of minor Latin and Greek rhetoricians, amongst whom was Hermogenes
-with his celebrated _Ideas,_ brought into fashion by Giulio Camillo.[22]
-
-Even those writers who dared to criticize the organism of ancient
-Rhetoric left the theory of ornament unassailed. Vives lamented
-over the "exaggerated subtlety of the Greeks" which had multiplied
-distinctions to infinity in this matter without diffusing light,[23]
-but he never took up a definite stand against the theory of ornament.
-Patrizzi was dissatisfied with the insufficient definition of
-ornament given by the ancients; but he asserted the existence of
-ornaments and metaphors as well as seven different modes of "conjoined
-speech,"--narrative, proof, amplification, diminution, ornament with
-its contrary, elevation and depression.[24] The school of Ramus
-continued to entrust Rhetoric with the "embellishment" of thought.
-Owing to the vast extension and intensification of life and literature
-in the sixteenth century, it would be easy to quote phrases, as we have
-done from ancient authors, asserting the strict dependence of speech
-upon the things it wishes to express, and lively attacks on pedants
-and pedantic forms and rules for beautiful speech. But what would be
-the use? The theory of ornament was always in the background, tacitly
-admitted as indisputable by all. Juan de Valdés, for instance, makes
-the following confession of stylistic faith: "_Escribo como hablo;
-solamente tengo cuidado de usar de vocablos que sinifiquen bien lo
-que quiero decir, y dígolo cuanto más llanamente me es posible,
-porqué, á mi parecer, en ninguna lengua está bien la afectación._"
-But Valdés also says that beautiful language consists "_en que digais
-lo que quereis con las menos palabras que pudiéredes, de tal manera
-que ... no se pueda quitar ninguna sin ofender á la sentencia, ó
-al encarescimiento, ó á la elegancia._"[25] Here it seems that
-amplification and elegance are conceived as extraneous to the meaning
-or content.--A gleam of truth is visible in Montaigne, who, confronted
-by the laboured categories into which rhetoricians divide ornament,
-observes: "_Oyez dire Métonymie, Métaphore, Allégorie et aultres tels
-noms de la Grammaire; semble il pas qu'on signifie quelque forme de
-langage rare et pellegrin? Ce sont tiltres qui touchent le babil de
-vostre chambrière._"[26] That is to say, they are anything but language
-remote from the _primum se offerens ratio._
-
-[Sidenote: Reductio ad absurdum in the seventeenth century.]
-
-The impossibility of upholding the theory of ornament was first noticed
-during the decadence of Italian literature in the seventeenth century,
-when literary production became but a play of empty forms, and the
-convenient, long violated in practice, was abandoned and forgotten even
-in theory, and came to be looked on as a limit arbitrarily imposed on
-the fundamental principle of ornamentation. The opponents of that style
-loaded with conceits which is known as "secentismo" from its prevalence
-in the seventeenth century (Matteo Pellegrini, Orsi and others) felt
-the viciousness of the literary production of their day; they were
-aware that decadence was due to the fact that literature was no longer
-the serious expression of a content; but they were embarrassed by the
-reasoning of the champions of bad taste, who were able to demonstrate
-that the whole business conformed in every particular with the literary
-theory of ornament, the common ground of both parties. In vain did the
-former appeal to the "convenient," the "moderate," the "avoidance of
-affectation," to ornament as "condiment, not food," and all the other
-weapons which had sufficed in times when healthy literary production
-and sound æsthetic taste had automatically corrected faulty theory:
-the other party replied, there was no reason to be sparing in use
-of ornament when it lay in masses ready to hand, or to avoid an
-ostentatious display of wit when one had an inexhaustible supply.[27]
-
-[Sidenote: _Polemic concerning the theory of ornament._]
-
-The same reaction against the abuse of ornament, against "Spanish and
-Italian conceits" (whose supporters had been Gracian in Spain and
-Tesauro in Italy), took place in France. "... _Laissez à l'Italie
-De tous ces faux brillants l'éclatante folie"; "Ce que l'on conçoit
-bien s'énonce clairement. Et les mots, pour le dire, arrivent
-aisément._"[28] Among the sharpest critics of conceits was the Jesuit
-Bouhours, already quoted, author of the _Manière de bien penser dans
-les œuvres d'esprit._ The rhetorical forms were the subject of warm
-controversy. Orsi, on national grounds the opponent of Bouhours (1703),
-asserted that all the ornamental devices of wit rested on a middle
-term and could be reduced to a rhetorical syllogism, and that wit
-consists of a truth which appears false or a falsehood which appears
-true.[29] If this controversy produced no great scientific result at
-the time, at least it prepared the mind for greater liberty; and, as
-we have remarked elsewhere,[30] it may have influenced Vico, who, in
-framing his new concept of poetical imagination, recognized that it
-necessitated a wholesale reconstruction of the theory of rhetoric
-and the conclusion that its figures and tropes are not "caprices of
-pleasure" but "necessities of the human mind."[31]
-
-[Sidenote: _Du Marsais and metaphor._]
-
-We find the theory of rhetorical ornament jealously kept intact by
-Baumgarten and Meier, while in France it was as vigorously assailed
-by César Chesneau du Marsais, who published in 1730 a treatise on
-_Tropes_ (the seventh part of his _General Grammar_)[32] wherein he
-develops, on the subject of metaphor, the observation already made by
-Montaigne: indeed he was perhaps inspired by Montaigne, although he
-does not mention his name. Du Marsais remarks that it is said that
-figures are modes of speech and turns of expression removed from the
-ordinary and common; which is an empty phrase, as good as saying "the
-figured differs from the non-figured and figures are figures and not
-non-figures." On the other hand it is wholly untrue that figures
-are removed from ordinary speech, for "nothing is more natural,
-ordinary and common than figures: more figures of speech are used
-in the town square on a market-day than in many days of academical
-discussion"; and no speech, however short, can be composed entirely of
-non-figurative expressions. And Du Marsais gives instances of quite
-obvious and spontaneous expressions in which Rhetoric cannot refuse
-to recognize the figures of apostrophe, congeries, interrogation,
-ellipsis, prosopopœia: "The apostles were persecuted and suffered
-their persecutions with patience. What can be more natural than
-the description given by St. Paul? _Maledicimur et benedicimus;
-persecutionem patimur et sustinemus; blasphemamur et obsecramus._
-Yet the apostle makes use of a fine figure of antithesis; cursing is
-the opposite to blessing; persecution to endurance; blasphemy to
-prayer." But further, the very language of the figure is figured,
-since it is a metaphor.--But after such acute observations, Du Marsais
-ends by himself becoming confused and defines figures as "manners of
-speech differing from others in a particular modification by which it
-is possible to reduce each one to a species apart, and give a more
-lively, noble or pleasing effect than can be gained by a manner of
-speech expressing the same content of thought without such particular
-modification."[33]
-
-[Sidenote: _Psychological interpretation._]
-
-But the psychological interpretation of figures of speech, the first
-stage towards their æsthetic criticism, was not allowed to drop here.
-In his _Elements of Criticism,_ Home says that he had long questioned
-whether that part of Rhetoric concerning figures might not be reduced
-to rational principles, and had finally discovered that figures consist
-in the passional element;[34] he set himself therefore to analyse
-prosopopœia, apostrophe and hyperbole in the light of the passional
-faculty. From Du Marsais and Home is derived everything of value in the
-_Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres_ of Hugh Blair, professor
-at Edinburgh University from 1759 onwards;[35] published in book form,
-these lectures had an immense vogue in all the schools of Europe
-including those of Italy, and replaced advantageously, by their "reason
-and good sense," works of a much cruder type. Blair defined figures
-in general as "language suggested by imagination or passion."[36]
-Similar ideas were promulgated in France by Marmontel in his _Elements
-of Literature_.[37] In Italy Cesarotti was contrasting the logical
-element or "cypher-terms" of language with the rhetorical element or
-"figure-terms," and rational eloquence with imaginative eloquence.[38]
-Beccaria, though a shrewd psychological analyst, held to the view of
-literary style as "accessory ideas or feelings added to the principal
-in any discourse"; that is, he failed to free himself from the
-distinction between the intellectual form intended for the expression
-of the principal ideas, and the literary form, modifying the first by
-the addition of accessory ideas.[39] In Germany an effort was made by
-Herder to interpret tropes and metaphors as Vico had done, that is to
-say as essential to primitive language and poetry.
-
-[Sidenote: _Romanticism and Rhetoric. Present day._]
-
-Romanticism was the ruin of the theory of ornament, and caused it
-practically to be thrown on the scrap-heap, but it cannot be said
-to have gone under for good or to have been superseded by a new and
-accurately stated theory. The chief philosophers of Æsthetic (not
-only Kant, who as we know remained in bondage to the mechanical and
-ornamental theory; not only Herder, whose knowledge of art seems to
-have been confined to a little music and a great deal of rhetoric;
-but such romantic philosophers as Schelling, Solger and Hegel) still
-retained the sections devoted to metaphor, trope and allegory for
-tradition's sake, without severe scrutiny. Italian Romanticism with
-Manzoni at its head destroyed the belief in beautiful and elegant
-words, and dealt a blow at Rhetoric: but was it killed by the stroke?
-Apparently not, judging by the concessions unconsciously made by the
-scholastic treatise-writer Ruggero Bonghi, whose _Critical Letters_
-assert the existence of two styles or forms, which at bottom are
-nothing else than the plain and the ornate.[40] German schools of
-philology have pretty generally accepted the stylistic theory of
-Gröber, who divides style into logical (objective) and affective
-(subjective):[41] an ancient error masked by terminology borrowed from
-the psychological philosophy in fashion at modern universities. In
-the same spirit a recent writer rechristens the rhetorical doctrine
-of tropes and figures by the title "Doctrine of the Forms of Æsthetic
-Apperception," and divides them into the four categories (the ancient
-wealth of categories reduced to a paltry four!) of personification,
-metaphor, antithesis, and symbol.[42] Biese has devoted an entire
-book to metaphor; but one searches it in vain for a serious æsthetic
-analysis of this category.[43]
-
-The best scientific criticism of the theory of ornament is found
-scattered throughout the writings of De Sanctis, who when lecturing on
-rhetoric preached what he called anti-rhetoric.[44] But even here the
-criticism is not conducted from a strictly systematic point of view. It
-seems to us that the true criticism should be deduced negatively from
-the very nature of æsthetic activity, which does not lend itself to
-partition; there is no such thing as activity type _a_ or type _b,_ nor
-can the same concept be expressed now in one way, now in another. Such
-is the only way of abolishing the double monster of bare form which
-is, no one knows how, deprived of imagination, and ornate form which
-contains, no one knows how, an addition on the side of imagination.[45]
-
-
-
-[1] For Gorgias' saying see Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 18.
-
-[2] Cicero, _Orat. ad Brut.,_ introd.
-
-[3] Quintilian, _Inst. orat._ xii. c. i.
-
-[4] Fran. Patrizzi, _Della rhetorica,_ ten dialogues, Venice, 1582,
-dial. 7; Tassoni, _Pensieri diversi,_ bk. x. ch. 15.
-
-[5] _De causis corruptarum artium,_ 1531, bk. iv.; _De ratione
-dicendi,_ 1533.
-
-[6] Cicero, _De or at:_ i. chs. 10-11; Quintil. _Inst. oral._ iii. ch.
-5.
-
-[7] _De orat._ ii. chs. 16-17.
-
-[8] P. Ramus, _Instil, dialecticæ,_ 1543; _Scholæ in artes liberales,_
-1555 etc.; Talæus, _Instit. orator.,_ 1545.
-
-[9] _Della rhetorica,_ dial. 10, and _passim._
-
-[10] _Ration. Philos.,_ part iii. _Rhetoricorum liber unus juxta
-propria dogmata_ (Paris, 1636), ch. 3.
-
-[11] _Theoretische Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen überhaupt,_ Halle,
-1744.
-
-[12] _Kritik d. Urtheils kraft,_ § 53 and _n._
-
-[13] H. F. Ortloff, _Die gerichtliche Redekunst,_ Neuwied, 1887; R.
-Whately, _Rhetoric,_ 1828 (for _Encyd. Brit._); Ital. trans., Pistoia,
-1889.
-
-[14] Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 1.
-
-[15] Quintil. _Inst. orat._ viii. ch. 3.
-
-[16] _Rhet._ iii. ch. 10.
-
-[17] _Poet._ chs. 19-22; cf. _Rhet._ iii. cc. 2, 10.
-
-[18] See above, pp. 68-69.
-
-[19] Quintilian, _Inst. orat._ viii. ch. 6; ix. ch. 1.
-
-[20] Aristotle, _Rhet._ iii. ch. 2; _Poet._ ch. 22.
-
-[21] _De sublimitate_ (in _Rhet. græci,_ ed. Spengel, vol. 1. § 32.)
-
-[22] Giulio Camillo Delminio, _Discorso sopra le Idee di Ermogene_ (in
-_Opere,_ Venice, 1560); and trans. of Hermogenes (Udine, 1594).
-
-[23] _De causis corruptarum artium, loc. cit._
-
-[24] _Della rhetorica,_ dial. 6.
-
-[25] _Diálogo de las lenguas_ (ed. Mayans y Siscar, _Origines de la
-lengua espanola,_ Madrid, 1873), pp. 115, 119.
-
-[26] _Essais,_ i. ch. 52 (ed. Garnier, i. 285); ci. _ibid._ chs. 10,
-25, 39; 10.
-
-[27] Croce, _I trattatisti italiani del concettismo,_ pp. 8-22.
-
-[28] Boileau, _Art poétique,_ i. 11. 43-44, 153-154.
-
-[29] G. G. Orsi, _Considerazioni sopra la maniera di ben pensare,_
-etc., 1703 (reprinted Modena, 1735, with all polemics relating thereto).
-
-[30] See above, pp. 230-231.
-
-[31] See above, pp. 225-226.
-
-[32] _Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un
-même mot dans une même langue._ Paris, 1730 (_Œuvres de Du Marsais,_
-Paris, 1797, vol. i.).
-
-[33] _Des tropes ou des différens sens dans lesquels on peut prendre un
-même mot dans une même langue,_ part i. art. 1; cf. art. 4.
-
-[34] _Elem. of Criticism,_ iii. ch. 20.
-
-[35] Hugh Blair, _Lectures on Rhetoric and belles lettres_ (London,
-1823).
-
-[36] _Lect. on Rhet. and belles lettres,_ lecture 14.
-
-[37] Marmontel, _Éléments de littéral,_ (in _Œuvres,_ Paris, 1819), iv.
-p. 559.
-
-[38] Cesarotti, _Saggio sulla filos. del linguaggio,_ part ii.
-
-[39] _Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile_ (Turin, 1853), ch. 1.
-
-[40] R. Bonghi, _Lettere critiche,_ 1856 (4th ed., Naples, 1884), pp.
-37 65-67, 90, 103.
-
-[41] Gustav Gröber, _Grundriss d. romanischen Philologie,_ vol. 1. pp.
-200-250, K. Vossler, _B. Cellinis Stil in seiner Vita, Versuch einer
-psychol. Stilbetrachtung,_ Halle a. S., 1899; cf. the self-criticism
-of Vossler, _Positivismus u. Idealismus in der Sprachwissenschaft,_
-Heidelberg, 1904 (It. trans., Bari, Laterza, 1908).
-
-[42] Ernst Elsteb, _Principien d. Literaturwissenschaft,_ Halle a. S.,
-1097. vol. i. pp. 359-413.
-
-[43] Biese, _Philos, des Metaphorischen,_ Hamburg-Leipzig, 1893.
-
-[44] _La Giovinezza di Fr. de S._ chs. 23, 25; _Scritti varî,_ ii. pp.
-272-274.
-
-[45] See above, pp. 67-73.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-HISTORY OF THE ARTISTIC AND LITERARY KINDS
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The kinds in antiquity. Aristotle._]
-
-
-The theory of artistic and literary kinds and of the laws or rules
-proper to each separate kind has almost always followed the fortunes of
-the rhetorical theory.
-
-Traces of the threefold division into epic, lyric and dramatic are
-found in Plato; and Aristophanes gives an example of criticism
-according to the canon of the kinds, particularly that of tragedy.[1]
-But the most conspicuous theoretical treatment of the kinds bequeathed
-us by antiquity is precisely the doctrine of Tragedy which forms a
-large part of the Aristotelian fragment known as the Poetics. Aristotle
-defines such a composition as an imitation of a serious and complete
-action, having size, in language adorned in accordance with the
-requirements of the different parts, its exposition to be by action and
-not by narration, and using pity or terror as means to free or purify
-us from these same passions;[2] he gives minute details as to the six
-parts of which it is composed, especially the plot and the tragic
-character. It has been often said, ever since the days of Vincenzo
-Maggio in the sixteenth century, that Aristotle treated of the nature
-of poetry, or particular forms of poetry, without claiming to give
-precepts. But Piccolomini answered that "all these things and other
-similar ones are shown or asserted with no other purpose but that we
-may see in what way their precepts and laws must be obeyed and carried
-out," just as, to make a hammer or saw, one begins by describing
-the parts of which they are composed.[3] The error of which we take
-Aristotle as representative lies in transmuting abstractions and
-empirical partitions into rational concepts: this was almost inevitable
-at the beginnings of æsthetic reflexion, and the Sanskrit theory of
-poetry employed the same method independently when, for example, it
-defines and legislates for ten principal and eighteen secondary styles
-of drama; forty-eight varieties of hero; and we know not how many kinds
-of heroines.[4]
-
-[Sidenote: _In the Middle Ages and Renaissance_.]
-
-After Aristotle, the theory of poetic kinds does not seem to have been
-completely or elaborately developed in antiquity. The Middle Ages may
-be said to have expressed the doctrine in treatises of the kind known
-as "rhythmic arts" or "methods of composition." When the Aristotelian
-fragment was first noticed, it is curious to see the way in which
-the paraphrase of Averroes distorted the theory of kinds. Averroes
-conceives tragedy as the art of praise, comedy as that of blame,
-which amounts to identifying the former with panegyric, the latter
-with satire; and he believes the _peripeteia_ to be the same thing as
-antithesis, or the artifice of beginning the description of a thing by
-describing its opposite.[5] This distortion demonstrates afresh the
-merely historical character of these kinds and their unintelligibility
-by the methods of pure logic to a thinker living in times and under
-customs different from those of the Hellenic world. The Renaissance
-seized upon Aristotle's text, partly expounded it, partly distorted it
-and partly thought it out afresh, and thus succeeded in establishing
-a long list of kinds and sub-kinds rigidly defined and subjected to
-inexorable laws. Controversy now began over the correct understanding
-of the unities of epic or dramatic poetry; over the moral quality and
-social standing proper to the characters in this kind of poem and in
-that; over the nature of the plot, and whether it includes passions and
-thoughts, and whether lyrics should or should not be received as true
-poetry; whether the material of tragedy should be historical; whether
-the dialogue of comedy may be in prose; whether a happy ending may
-be allowed in tragedy; whether the tragic character may be a perfect
-gentleman; what kind and number of episodes is admissible in the poem,
-and how they should be incorporated in the main plot; and so on.
-Great anguish was caused by the mysterious rule of catharsis found in
-black and white in Aristotle's text, and Segni naïvely predicted that
-tragic poetry would be revived in its perfect spectacular entirety
-for the sake of experiencing the effect spoken of by Aristotle, that
-"purgation" which causes "the birth of tranquillity in the soul and of
-freedom of all perturbation."[6]
-
-[Sidenote: _The doctrine of the three unities._]
-
-Amongst the many undertakings brought to a glorious end by the critics
-and treatise-writers of the sixteenth century, the best known is the
-establishment of the three unities of time, place and action. One
-cannot indeed see why they are called unities, for in strictness they
-could at most be spoken of as shortness of time, straitness of space
-and limitation of tragic subjects to a certain class of action. It is
-well known that Aristotle prescribed unity of action only, and reminded
-his hearers that theatrical custom alone imposed on the action a
-time-limit of one day. On this last point the critics of the sixteenth
-century accorded six, eight, or twelve hours according to individual
-taste or humour: some of them (amongst them Segni) allowed twenty-four
-hours, including the night as particularly propitious to assassinations
-and the other acts of violence which usually form the plot of
-tragedies; others extended the limit to thirty-six or forty-eight
-hours. The last, and most curious, unity, that of place, was slowly
-developed by Castelvetro, Riccoboni and Scaliger until the Frenchman
-Jean de la Taille joined it as a third to the existing two in 1572, and
-in 1598 Angelo Ingegneri finally formulated it more explicitly.
-
-[Sidenote: _Poetics of the kinds and rules. Scaliger._]
-
-The Italian treatises were widely read and regarded as authoritative
-all over Europe, and awakened the first effort towards a learned theory
-of poetry in France, Spain. England and Germany. A good representative
-of his class is Julius Cæsar Scaliger, who has been considered, with
-some exaggeration, as the true founder of French pseudo-classicism or
-neo-classicism; as one who (it has been said) "laid the first stone of
-the classical Bastille." But if he was neither the first nor the only
-one, he certainly helped greatly to reduce "to a system of doctrines
-the principal consequences of the sovranty of Reason in works of
-literature," with his minute distinctions and classifications of kinds,
-the insurmountable barriers he erected between them, and his distrust
-of free inspiration and imagination.[7] Scaliger numbers among his
-descendants (beside Daniel Heinsius) d'Aubignac, Rapin, Dacier and
-other tyrants of French literature and drama: Boileau turned the rules
-of neo-classicism into neat verses.
-
-[Sidenote: _Lessing._]
-
-It has been noticed that Lessing entered the same field; his opposition
-to the French rules (which was an opposition of rule to rule, in which
-he had been forestalled by Italian writers, for example by Calepio in
-1732) is anything but radical. Lessing maintained that Corneille and
-other authors had misinterpreted Aristotle, to whose laws even the
-Shakespearian drama could be shown to conform;[8] but on the other
-hand he strongly opposed the abolition of all rules and those who
-shouted "genius, genius," placing genius above the law and saying that
-genius makes the law. For the very reason that genius is law, replied
-Lessing, laws have their value and can be determined: negation of them
-would entail the confinement of genius to its first trial flights,
-making example or practice useless.[9]
-
-[Sidenote: _Compromises and extensions._]
-
-But the "kinds" and their "limits" could be maintained for centuries
-solely by means of infinitely subtle interpretations, analogical
-extensions and more or less concealed compromises. The Italian
-Renaissance critics, while working at their Poetics in the style of
-Aristotle, found themselves confronted with chivalric poetry, and had
-to make the best of it; this they did by assigning it to a kind of poem
-not foreseen by antiquity (Giraldi Cintio).[10] Here and there indeed
-a rigorist was heard protesting that romances were in no way different
-from heroic poetry, and were only "badly written heroics" (Salviati).
-And since it was impossible to deny a place in Italian literature to
-Dante's poem, Iacopo Mazzoni, in his _Defence of Dante,_ overhauled
-once more the categories of Poetics in order to find a niche for the
-sacred poem.[11] Farces made their appearance at this time, and Cecchi
-(1585) declares "Farce is a third novelty, occupying a place between
-tragedy and comedy ..."[12] The _Pastor fido_ of Guarini was published,
-neither tragedy nor comedy, but tragicomedy; and discovering no heading
-among the kinds deduced from moral or civil philosophy suitable for
-the intruder, Jason de Nores proceeded to rule it out of existence;
-Guarini made a valiant defence and claimed special protection for his
-beloved _Pastor_ under a third, or mixed, style, representative of real
-life.[13] Another rigorist, Fioretti (Udeno Nisieli) proclaimed the
-poem "a poetic monster, so huge and deformed that centaurs, hippogriffs
-and chimæras are comparatively graceful and charming ..., fit to bring
-a blush to the cheek of the muse, a disgrace to poetry, a mixture of
-ingredients in themselves discordant, inimical and incompatible";[14]
-but will this bluster drive the delicious _Pastor fido_ from the hands
-of lovers of poetry? The same thing occurred in the case of Marino's
-_Adone,_ described by Chapelain as "a poem of peace" for want of
-a better definition, though other supporters called it "a new form
-of epic poem";[15] and the same thing happened again in the case of
-the comedy of art and musical drama. Corneille, who had called down
-a furious tempest from Scudéry and the Academicians on the head of
-his _Cid,_ remarked in his discourse on Tragedy, though basing his
-position on that of Aristotle, that there was necessity for "_quelque
-modération, quelque favorable interprétation,... pour n'être pas
-obligés de condamner beaucoup de poèmes, que nous avons vu réussir sur
-nos théâtres." "Il est aisé de nous accommoder avec Aristote_..."[16]
-he says in another place: a piece of literary hypocrisy which startles
-by its verbal resemblance to "_les accommodements avec le Ciel_" of
-the Tartuffian ethics. The following century saw the accepted kinds
-augmented by "bourgeois tragedy" and pathetic comedy, nicknamed
-"lachrymose" by its enemies; de Chassiron[17] attacked, and Diderot,
-Gellert and Lessing[18] defended the new arrival. In this way the
-schematism of the kinds continued to suffer violence and to cut a very
-poor figure; nevertheless, in spite of adversity, it made every effort
-to retain power even at the sacrifice of dignity: just as an absolute
-king turns constitutional by force of circumstance, and chooses the
-lesser evil of squaring his divine right with the will of the nation.
-
-[Sidenote: _Rebellion against rules in general._]
-
-This retention of power would have been more difficult had any success
-attended the attempts at rebellion against all laws, against law in
-general, which broke out in varying degrees at the end of the sixteenth
-century. Pietro Aretino made mock of the most sacred precepts: in a
-prologue to one of his comedies he remarks derisively, "If you see more
-than five characters on the stage at once, do not laugh; for chains
-which would fasten water-mills to the river could not hold the fools of
-to-day."[19]
-
-[Sidenote: _G. Bruno. Guarini._]
-
-A philosopher, Giordano Bruno, entered the lists against the
-"regulators of poetry": rules, said he, are derived from poetry: "there
-are as many genera and species of true rules as there are genera and
-species of true poets"; such an individualization of kinds dealt them
-a deathblow. "How then" (asks the interlocutory opponent) "shall
-veritable poets be recognized?" "By their singing of verse" (answers
-Bruno); "of that which, being sung, either delights or instructs, or
-delights and instructs at the same time."[20] In much the same way
-Guarini defended his _Pastor fido_ in 1588, declaring "the world is the
-judge of poets; against its sentence there is no appeal."[21]
-
-[Sidenote: _Spanish critics._]
-
-Amongst European countries, Spain was perhaps the sturdiest in her
-resistance to the pedantic theories of the writers of treatises;
-Spain was the land of freedom in criticism from Vives to Feijóo, from
-the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century when decadence
-of the old Spanish spirit allowed Luzán, with others, to introduce
-neo-classical poetry of Italian and French origin.[22] That rules
-must change with the times and with actual conditions; that modern
-literature demands modern poetics; that work carried out contrary to
-established rule does not signify that it is contrary to all rule
-or unwilling to submit itself to a higher law; that nature should
-give, not receive, laws; that the laws of the three unities are
-as ridiculous as it would be to forbid a painter to paint a large
-landscape in a small picture; that the pleasure, taste, approbation of
-readers and spectators are the deciding element in the long run; that
-notwithstanding the laws of counterpoint, the ear is the true judge of
-music; these affirmations and many like them are frequent in Spanish
-criticism of the period. One critic, Francisco de la Barreda (1622),
-went so far as to compassionate the strong wits of Italy bound by fear
-and cowardice (_temerosos y acobardados_) to rules that hampered them
-on every side;[23] he may have been thinking of Tasso, a memorable case
-of such degradation. Lope de Vega wavered between neglect of rules in
-practice, and obsequious acceptance of them in theory, alleging in
-excuse for his conduct that he was forced to yield to the demands of
-the public who paid money to see his plays; he said, "when I write my
-comedies, I lock and double-lock the door against the precept-mongers,
-that they may not rise up and bear witness against me"; "Art (that is,
-Poetics) speaks truth which is contradicted by the vulgar ignorant";
-"may the rules forgive us when we are induced to violate them."[24] But
-a contemporary admirer of Lope's work writes of him that "_en muchas
-partes de sus escritos dice que el no guardar el arte antiguo lo hace
-por conformarse con el gusto de la plebe ... dicelo por su natural
-modestia, y porqué no atribuya la malicia ignorante à arrogancia lo que
-es politica perfeccion._"[25]
-
-[Sidenote: _G. B. Marino._]
-
-Giambattista Marino also protested "I assert that I have a more
-thorough knowledge of the rules than have all the pedants in the
-world; but the only true rule is to know how to break the rules at the
-right place and time, and to conform with the custom and taste of the
-day."[26] The drama of Spain, the comedy of art, and other literary
-novelties of the seventeenth century caused Minturno, Castelvetro and
-other rigid treatise-writers of the preceding century to be looked at
-with contemptuous pity as "antiquaries"; this may be seen in Andrea
-Perucci (1699), the theorist of improvised comedy.[27] Pallavicino
-criticized the writers on "the disciplines of beautiful speech" on
-the ground that they "generally base their precepts on observing by
-experience what things in writers give pleasure, rather than pointing
-out what would naturally conform to the particular affections and
-instincts implanted by the Creator in the souls of men."[28]
-
-[Sidenote: _G. V. Gravina._]
-
-A note of distrust towards the fixed kinds may be heard in the
-_Discorso sull' Endimione_ (1691), wherein Gravina severely blames
-the "ambitious and miserly precepts" of rhetoricians, and makes the
-penetrating comment: "No work can see the fight without finding itself
-confronted by a tribunal of critics specially convened to examine it,
-and questioned firstly as to its name and nature. Next begins the
-action which lawyers call prejudicial, and controversy arises as to
-its status, whether it is a poem, a romance, a tragedy, a comedy, or
-another of the prescribed kinds. And if the said work have ignored the
-slightest precept ... they decree forthwith its exile and perpetual
-banishment. And yet, however they recast and expand their aphorisms,
-they will never be able to include all the different kinds that can
-be freshly created by the varied and ceaseless motion of human wit.
-For this reason I cannot see why we should not free ourselves from
-this insolent curb on the soaring grandeur of our imaginations, and
-allow them to follow an open road amongst those immeasurable spaces
-they are fitted to explore." He remarks on the work of Guidi which
-forms the subject of his discourse, "I know not whether it be tragedy,
-comedy, tragicomedy, or anything else invented by rhetoricians. It is a
-representation of the loves of Endymion and Diana. If those terms have
-sufficient breadth of extension, they will comprehend this work; if
-they have not, let another be framed (a power which may be granted to
-any one in so unimportant a matter); if no such term can be invented,
-let us not, for want of a word, deprive ourselves of a thing so
-beautiful."[29] These remarks have quite a modern ring, but Gravina can
-hardly have thought out their implications very deeply, for later on he
-wrote a special treatise on the rules of the tragic kind.[30] Antonio
-Conti too declared at times his antagonism towards the rules, but he
-referred to the Aristotelian rules only.[31]
-
-[Sidenote: _Fr. Montani._]
-
-More courage was displayed by Count Francesco Montani of Pesaro in the
-polemic roused by Orsi's book against Bouhours; in 1705 he wrote: "I
-know that there are immutable and eternal rules, founded on such sound
-good sense and solid reason as will remain unshaken as long as mankind
-lives. But these rules, whose incorruptibility gives them authority to
-guide our spirits to the end of time, are rare enough to be counted
-with the nose, and it seems to me somewhat arbitrary to claim to
-test and regulate our new works by old laws now wholly abrogated and
-annulled."[32]
-
-[Sidenote: _Critics of the eighteenth century._]
-
-In France the rigorism of Boileau was followed by the rebellion of Du
-Bos, who unhesitatingly declared that "men will always prefer poetry
-which moves them to that composed according to rule,"[33] and the like
-heresies. In 1730, De la Motte made war against the unities of time
-and place, asserting as the most general, and even superior to that of
-action, the unity of interest.[34] Batteux tended to make free with
-the rules; and Voltaire, though he opposed De la Motte and declared
-the three unities to be the "three great laws of good sense," uttered
-some bold sentiments in his _Essay on Epic Poetry,_ and it was he who
-remarked that "_tous les genres sont bons hors le genre ennuyeux,_"
-and that the best kind is "_celui qui est le mieux traité._" Diderot
-was in certain respects a forerunner of Romanticism, and with him must
-be mentioned Friedrich Melchior Grimm, who was influenced by him. A
-breath of liberty was wafted into Italy by Metastasio, Bettinelli,
-Baretti and Cesarotti: in 1766 Buonafede notes in his _Epistola della
-libertà poetica_ that when erudite persons "define epic poetry, or
-comedy, or odes, they ought to frame as many definitions as there
-are compositions and authors."[35] In Germany the first to rise in
-rebellion against the rules (opposing Gottsched and his disciples)
-were the representatives of the Swiss school.[36] In England, after
-examining the definitions by which critics endeavoured to distinguish
-epic poetry from other compositions, Home wrote, "It affords no little
-diversion to watch so many profound critics hunting after that which
-does not exist. They presuppose--without shadow of proof--that there
-exists a precise criterion by which to distinguish epic poetry from
-all other kinds of composition. But literary compositions melt one
-into another like colours: and if in their stronger shades it is easy
-to recognize them, they are susceptible of such variety and of so many
-different forms that it is impossible to say where one ends and another
-begins."[37]
-
-[Sidenote: _Romanticism and the "strict kinds": Berchet, V. Hugo._]
-
-Literary thought between the late eighteenth and the first decades of
-the nineteenth century, that is to say from" the period of genius"
-to that of romanticism properly so called, rose in rebellion against
-separate individual rules and against all rules as such. But to
-describe the battles fought, and their more important episodes; to
-recount the names of captains victorious or discomfited, or to deplore
-the excesses committed by the conquerors, is no part of our present
-task. Upon the ruins of the strict kinds, the "_genres tranchés_"
-beloved by Napoleon[38] (a Romanticist in the art of war, but a
-Classicist in poetry), flourished the drama, the romance and every
-other mixed kind: upon the ruins of the three unities, flourished the
-unity of _ensemble._ Italy made her protest against rules of style in
-Berchet's famous _Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo_ (1816); and France
-made hers somewhat later in Victor Hugo's preface to _Cromwell_ (1827).
-Henceforth men discussed not the kinds, but Art. What is the unity of
-_ensemble_ but the demand of art itself, which is always an _ensemble,_
-a synthesis? What else is the principle, introduced by August Wilhelm
-Schlegel and adopted by Manzoni and other Italian romanticists, to the
-effect that form of component parts must be "organic not mechanical,
-resulting from the nature of the subject and its interior development
-... not from the impress of an external and extraneous stamp"?[39]
-
-[Sidenote: _Their persistence in philosophical theories._]
-
-But it would be quite wrong to suppose that this victory over the
-rhetoric of kinds was either the cause or the consequence of a final
-victory over its philosophical presuppositions. In pure theory, none
-of the critics above named wholly abandoned the kinds and the rules.
-Berchet admitted four elementary forms, that is four fundamental
-kinds, in poetry; lyrical, didactic, epic and dramatic, claiming for
-the poet only the right of "uniting and fusing together the elementary
-forms in a thousand fashions."[40] Manzoni's only real quarrel was
-with those rules "founded on special facts instead of on general
-principles; on the authority of rhetoricians instead of reason."[41]
-Even De Sanctis was satisfied with a concept somewhat vague, though
-true enough at bottom: "the most important rules are not those capable
-of being applied to every content, but those which draw their force _ex
-visceribus caussæ,_ from the very heart of the content itself."[42]
-Even more diverting than the spectacle which had delighted Home, is
-the sight of German philosophy according the honour of a dialectical
-deduction to the empirical classification of kinds. We shall give two
-examples, each representing one extreme end of the chain:
-
-[Sidenote: _Fr. Schelling._]
-
-Schelling at the beginning of the century (1803), and Hartmann at
-the end (1890). One section of Schelling's _Philosophy of Art_ is
-devoted to "the construction of individual poetic kinds"; in it he
-remarks that were he to follow the historical order, Epic would come
-first; whereas in the scientific order the Lyric occupies the first
-place: indeed, if poetry is the representation of the infinite in
-the finite, the Lyric, in which difference prevails (the finite, the
-subject), is its first moment, corresponding with the first power of
-the ideal series, reflexion, knowledge, consciousness, whereas Epic
-corresponds with the second power, action.[43] From Epic, which is _par
-excellence_ the objective kind (as being the identity of subjective and
-objective), derive the Elegy and the Idyl if subjectivity be placed in
-the object and objectivity in the poet: if objectivity be placed in
-the object and subjectivity in the poet, didactic poetry results.[44]
-To these differentiations of the Epic, Schelling adds the romantic or
-modern Epic, the poem of chivalry; the novel; and the experiments in
-an epic of ordinary life such as the _Luisa_ of Voss and the _Hermann
-and Dorothea_ of Goethe; and, co-ordinate with all the foregoing, the
-_Comedia_ of Dante, "an epic kind in itself" (_eine epische Gattung
-für sich_). Finally, from the union on a higher plane of Lyric with
-Epic, liberty with necessity, arises the third form, the Drama, the
-reconciliation of antitheses in a totality, "supreme incarnation of the
-essence and the in-itself of all art."[45]
-
-[Sidenote: _E. von Hartmann._]
-
-In Hartmann's _Philosophy of the Beautiful,_ poetry is divided into
-spoken poetry and read poetry. The former is subdivided into Epic,
-Lyric and Dramatic, with further subdivisions of Epic into plastic
-Epic, or strictly epic Epic, and pictorial or lyrical Epic; of Lyric
-into epical Lyric, lyrical Lyric and dramatic Lyric; of Dramatic into
-lyrical Drama, epic Drama and dramatic Drama. Read poetry (_Lese
-poesie_) is again subdivided into predominantly epical, lyrical or
-dramatic form with tertiary partitions of the affecting, the comic, the
-tragic and humorous; and into poems "to be read at a sitting" (like the
-short story) or to be taken up again and again (like the novel).[46]
-
-[Sidenote: _The kinds in the schools._]
-
-Without these highly philosophical trivialities the divisions of kinds
-still wander through the books called _Institutions of Literature,_
-written by philologists and men of letters, and the ordinary
-school-books of Italy, France and Germany; and psychologists and
-philosophers still persist in writing about the Æsthetic of the tragic,
-of the comic and of the humorous.[47] The objectivity of literary kinds
-is frankly maintained by Ferdinand Brunetière, who looks on literary
-history as "the evolution of kinds,"[48] and gives sharply defined form
-to a superstition which, seldom confessed so truthfully or applied so
-rigorously, survives to contaminate modern literary history.[49]
-
-
-[1] _Republic,_ iii. 394; see also E. Müller, _Gesch. i. Th. d. Kunst,_
-i. pp. 134-206; ii. pp. 238-239, note.
-
-[2] _Poet._ ch. 6
-
-[3] _Annotazioni,_ introd.
-
-[4] Cf. for Sanskrit poetry S. Levi, _Le Théâtre indien,_ pp. 11-152.
-
-[5] Cf. Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ I., i. pp. 126-154, 2nd ed.
-
-[6] Introd. to his tr. of the _Poetics._
-
-[7] Lintilhac, _Un Coup d'état,_ etc., p. 543.
-
-[8] _Hamburg. Dramat._ Nos. 81, 101-104.
-
-[9] _Op. cit._ Nos. 96, 101-104.
-
-[10] G. B. Giraldi Cintio, _De' romanzi, delle comedie e delle
-tragedie,_ 1554 (ed. Dælli, 1864).
-
-[11] Iacopo Mazzoni, _Difesa della commedia di Dante,_ Cesena, 1587.
-
-[12] G. M. Cecchi, prologue to _Romanesca,_ 1585.
-
-[13] Cf. besides the two _Veratti,_ the _Compendio della poesia
-tragicomica,_ Venice, 1601.
-
-[14] _Proginn. poet.,_ Florence, 1627, iii. p. 130.
-
-[15] Cf. A. Belloni, _Il seicento,_ Milan, 1898, pp. 162-164.
-
-[16] _Examens,_ and _Discours du poème dramatique, de la tragédie, des
-trois unités,_ etc.
-
-[17] _Réflexions sur le comique larmoyant,_ 1749 (trans. by Lessing,
-_Werke, vol. cit._).
-
-[18] Gellert, _De comædia commovente,_ 1751; Lessing, _Abhandlungen von
-den weinerlichen oder rührenden Lustspiele,_ 1754 (in _Werke,_ vol.
-vii.).
-
-[19] Prologue to the _Cortigiana,_ 1534.
-
-[20] _Degli eroici furori_ in _Opere italiane,_ ed. Gentile, ii. pp.
-310-311.
-
-[21] _Il Veratto_ (against Jason de Nores), Ferrara, 1588.
-
-[22] Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. pp. 174-175 (1st ed.), i.
-
-[23] Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. p. 468 (2nd ed.).
-
-[24] _Arte nuevo de hacer comedias_ (1609), ed. Morel Fatio, 11. 40-41,
-138-140, 157-158.
-
-[25] Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. p. 459.
-
-[26] Marino, letter to G. Preti, in _Lettere,_ Venice, 1627, p. 127.
-
-[27] _Dell' arte rappresentiva meditata e all' improvviso,_ Naples,
-1699; cf. pp. 47, 48, 65.
-
-[28] _Trattato dello stile e del dialogo,_ 1646, preface.
-
-[29] _Discorso su l' Endimione_ (in _Opere italiane, ed. cit._), ii.
-pp. 15-16.
-
-[30] _Della tragedia,_ 1715 (_ibid._ vol. i.).
-
-[31] _Prose e poesie, cit.,_ pref. and _passim._
-
-[32] In Orsi, _Considerazioni, ed. cit._ ii. pp. 8, 9.
-
-[33] _Réflexions, cit._ sect. 34.
-
-[34] _Discours sur la tragédie,_ 1730.
-
-[35] _Opuscoli_ of Agatopisto Cromaziano, Venice, 1797.
-
-[36] Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 206 _seqq._
-
-[37] _Elements of Criticism,_ iii. pp. 144-145, note.
-
-[38] See conversation of Napoleon with Goethe, in Lewes, _The Life and
-Works of Goethe,_ ii. p. 441. [
-F9] Manzoni, _Epistol._ i. pp. 355-356; cf. _Lettera sul romanticismo,
-ibid._ pp. 293-299.
-
-[40] _Lettera di Grisostomo, opere,_ ed. Cusani, p. 227.
-
-[41] _Lettera sul romanticismo, ibid._ p. 280.
-
-[42] _La giovinezza di F. de S._ chs. 26-28.
-
-[43] _Philos, d. Kunst,_ pp. 639-645.
-
-[44] _Op. cit._ pp. 657-659.
-
-[45] _Op. cit._ p. 687.
-
-[46] _Philosophie d. Schönen,_ ch. 2, § 2.
-
-[47] See, _e.g.,_ Volkelt, _Ästh. d. Tragischen,_ Munich, 1897; Lipps,
-_Der Streit über Tragödie,_ etc.
-
-[48] See his other works, _L'évolution des genres dans l'histoire de la
-littérature,_ Paris, 1890 _seqq.,_ and _Manuel de l'hist. de la littér.
-française, ibid.,_ 1898.
-
-[49] Croce, _Per la storia della critica e storiografia letter,_ pp.
-23-25.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-THE THEORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE ARTS
-
-
-To Lessing must be ascribed the merit and the sole glory of having
-discovered that every art has its special character and inviolable
-limits. But his merit lies not in his own theory, which, in itself,
-is scarcely tenable,[1] but in having, though by an error, aroused
-discussion of a highly important æsthetical point till then wholly
-overlooked. After some slight notice from Du Bos and Batteux, some
-preparation of the field by Diderot[2] and Mendelssohn,[3] and
-long disquisitions by Meier and other Wolffians upon natural and
-conventional symbols,[4] Lessing was the first to raise clearly the
-question of the value attaching to the distinction between the various
-arts. Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had enumerated
-the arts according to denominations of current phraseology, and had
-composed numbers of technical hand-books distinguishing major and
-minor arts; but in Aristoxenus or Vitruvius, Marchetto da Padova or
-Cennino Cennini, Leonardo da Vinci or Leon Battista Alberti, Palladio
-or Scamozzi, it would be vain to look for the problem proposed by
-Lessing, for the spirit of these technical treatise-writers is entirely
-different. Some rudiments of the question may be detected in the
-comparisons made, and the questions of precedence raised, between
-poetry and painting or painting and sculpture, to be found now and
-then in stray paragraphs of their books (Leonardo da Vinci pressed
-the claims of painting, Michæl Angelo those of sculpture): the theme
-eventually became a favourite one for academic discussion, and was not
-despised by Galileo himself.[5]
-
-[Sidenote: _The limits of the arts in Lessing. Arts of space and arts
-of time._]
-
-Lessing was induced to raise the question in the attempt to controvert
-the strange views of Spence concerning the close union between painting
-and poetry among the ancients, and of Count Caylus, who held that
-the excellence of a poem must be judged by the number of subjects
-it offers to the brush of the painter. He was further instigated by
-the comparisons between poetry and painting upon which were commonly
-founded the most ridiculous rules for tragedy: the maxim _Ut pictura
-poësis,_ whose original motive was to emphasize the representative or
-imaginative character of poetry, and the community of nature among the
-arts, had been converted by superficial interpretation into a defence
-of the most vicious intellectualistic and realistic prejudices. Lessing
-argued in this wise: "If painting in its imitations employs precisely
-a medium or symbol different from that of poetry (the former employing
-spatial forms and colours, the latter temporal articulated sounds),
-since the symbol must certainly be in close relation with that
-which is signified, coexistent symbols can only express coexistent
-objects or parts of objects, and consecutive symbols can only express
-consecutive objects or parts of objects. Objects mutually coexistent,
-or having mutually coexistent parts, are called bodies. Bodies, then,
-through their quality of visibility, are the true objects of painting.
-Objects successively consecutive amongst themselves, or whose parts
-are consecutive, are called in general actions. Actions, then, are
-the suitable objects of poetry." Painting, undoubtedly, may represent
-action, but only by means of bodies which indicate it; and poetry may
-represent bodies, but only by indicating them by means of actions.
-When a poet using language, _i.e._ arbitrary symbols, sets himself
-to describe bodies, he is no longer a poet but a prose-writer, since
-a true poet only describes bodies by the effect they produce on the
-soul.[6] Retouching and developing this distinction, Lessing described
-action or movement in a picture as an addition made by the imagination
-of the beholder; so true is this, says he, that animals perceive
-nothing save immobility in a picture. He further studied the various
-unions of arbitrary with natural symbols, such as that of poetry with
-music (in which the former is subordinate to the latter), of music
-with dancing, of poetry with dancing, and of music and poetry with
-dancing (union of arbitrary consecutive audible symbols with natural
-visible symbols): of the pantomime of antiquity (union of arbitrary
-consecutive visible symbols with natural consecutive visible symbols):
-of the language of the dumb (the only art that employs arbitrary
-consecutive visible symbols): and, lastly, of imperfect unions, such
-as that of painting with poetry. If not every use to which language is
-put is poetic, Lessing holds that not every use of natural coexistent
-signs is pictorial: painting, like language, has its prose. Prosaic
-painters are those who represent consecutive objects notwithstanding
-the character of coexistence in their signs, allegorical painters
-those who make arbitrary use of natural signs, and those who pretend
-to represent the invisible or the audible by means of the visible.
-Desirous of preserving the naturalness of symbolism, Lessing ended by
-condemning the custom of painting objects on a diminished scale, and
-concludes: "I think that the aim of an art should be that only to which
-it is specially adapted, not that which can be performed equally well
-by other arts. I find in Plutarch a comparison which illustrates this
-admirably: he who would split wood with a key and open the door with an
-axe not only spoils both utensils but deprives himself of the unity of
-each alike."[7]
-
-[Sidenote: _Limits and classifications of the arts in later
-philosophy._]
-
-The principle of limitations or of the specific character of individual
-arts, as laid down by Lessing, occupied the attention of philosophers
-in later days, who, without discussing the principle itself, employed
-it in classifying the arts and arranging them in series.
-
-[Sidenote: _Herder and Kant._]
-
-Herder here and there continued Lessing's examination in his fragment
-on _Plastic_ (1769);[8] Heydenreich wrote a treatise (1790) on the
-limits of the six arts (music, dance, figurative arts gardening,
-poetry and representative art), and criticized the _clavecin oculaire_
-of Father Castel, a contrivance for the combination of colours which
-should act in the same way as the series of musical notes in harmony
-and melody,[9] Kant appealed to the analogy of a speaking man, and
-classified the arts according to speech, gesture and tone as arts of
-speech, figurative arts, and arts producing a mere play of sensations
-(mimicry and colouring).[10]
-
-[Sidenote: _Schelling._]
-
-Schelling differentiated the artistic identity according as it
-consisted in the infusion of the infinite into the finite, or of the
-finite into the infinite (ideal art or real art): into poetry and art
-proper. Under the heading of real arts he included the figurative arts,
-music, painting, plastic (which comprehended architecture, bas-relief
-and sculpture): in the ideal series were the three corresponding forms
-of poetry, lyrical, epical and dramatic.[11]
-
-[Sidenote: _Solger._]
-
-With a similar method, Solger placed poetry, the universal art,
-side by side with art strictly so called, which is either symbolical
-(sculpture) or allegorical (painting), and, in either case, is a union
-of concepts and bodies: if you take corporality without concept, you
-have architecture; if concept without matter, music.[12] Hegel makes
-poetry the bond of union between the two extremes of figurative art and
-of music.[13]
-
-[Sidenote: _Schopenhauer._]
-
-We have already seen how Schopenhauer destroyed the accepted
-limitations of art and built them up again, following the order of
-the ideas which they represent.[14] Herbart clung to Lessing's two
-groups, simultaneous arts and successive arts, and defined the former
-as "permitting themselves to be inspected from every side," the latter
-as "rejecting complete investigation and remaining in semi-darkness":
-in the first group he placed architecture, plastic, church music and
-classical poetry; in the second ornamental gardening, painting, secular
-music and romantic poetry.[15]
-
-[Sidenote: _Herbart._]
-
-Herbart was implacable against those who look in one art for the
-perfections of another; who "look on music as a sort of painting,
-painting as poetry, poetry as an elevated plastic and plastic as
-a species of æsthetic philosophy,"[16] while admitting that a
-concrete work of art, such as a picture, may contain elements of the
-picturesque, the poetic and other kinds, held together by the skill of
-the artist.[17]
-
-[Sidenote: _Weisse. Zeising._]
-
-Weisse divided the arts into three triads, intended to recall the
-nine Muses.[18] Zeising invented-a cross-division into figurative
-arts (architecture, sculpture, painting), musical arts (instrumental
-music, song, poetry), and arts of mimicry (dance, musical mimicry,
-representative art), and into macrocosmic arts (architecture,
-instrumental music, dance), microcosmic arts (sculpture, song, musical
-mimicry) and historical arts (painting, poetry and representative
-art).[19]
-
-[Sidenote: _Vischer._]
-
-Vischer classified them according to the three forms of
-imagination (figurative, sensuous and poetic), into objective arts
-(architecture, plastic and painting), a subjective art (music) and an
-objective-subjective art[20] (poetry). Gerber proposed to recognize a
-special "art of language" (_Sprachkunst_), distinguishable alike from
-prose and poetry and consisting in the expression of simple movements
-of the soul. Such an art would correspond with plastic in the following
-scheme: arts of the eye--(_a)_ architecture, (_b_) plastic, (c)
-painting; arts of the ear--(_a)_ prose, (_b)_ the art of language, (c)
-poetry.[21]
-
-[Sidenote: _M. Schasler._]
-
-The two most recent systems of classification are furnished by Schasler
-and Hartmann, who have also submitted the schemes of their predecessors
-to searching criticism. Schasler[22] arranges the arts in two groups,
-adopting the criterion of simultaneity and succession: the arts of
-simultaneity are architecture, plastic and painting; of succession,
-music, mimicry and poetry. He says that by following the series in
-the order indicated, it will be seen that simultaneity, originally
-predominant, yields place to succession, which predominates in the
-second group and subordinates without wholly displacing the other.
-Parallel with this, another division is evolved, deduced from the
-relation between the ideal and material elements in each separate art,
-between movement and repose; which begins with architecture "materially
-the heaviest, spiritually the lightest of all the arts," and ends
-with poetry, in which the opposite relation is observed. Curious
-analogies are established by this method between the first and second
-group of arts: between architecture and music; between plastic and
-mimicry; between painting in its three forms of landscape, _genre_ and
-historical, and poetry in its three forms of lyric (declamatory), epic
-(rhapsodic) and drama (representative).
-
-[Sidenote: _E. v. Hartmann._]
-
-Hartmann[23] divides the arts into arts of perception and arts of
-imagination: the former tripartite into spatial or visual (plastic
-and painting), temporal or auditory (instrumental music, linguistic
-mimicry, expressive song) and temporal-spatial or mimic (pantomime,
-mimic dances, art of the actor, art of the opera-singer); the second
-contains but one single species, which is poetry. Architecture,
-decoration, gardening, cosmetic and prosewriting are excluded from this
-system of classification and lumped together as non-free arts.
-
-[Sidenote: _The supreme art. Richard Wagner._]
-
-Parallel with this search for a classification of the arts, the same
-philosophers were led into the quest of the supreme art. Some favoured
-poetry, others music or sculpture; others again claimed the supremacy
-for combined arts, especially for Opera, according to the theory of
-it already advanced in the eighteenth century[24] and maintained
-and developed in our day by Richard Wagner.[25] One of the latest
-philosophers to raise the question "whether single arts, or arts in
-combination, had the greater value," concluded that single arts as such
-possess their own perfection, yet the perfection of united arts is
-still greater, notwithstanding the compromises and mutual concessions
-enforced upon them by their union; that single arts, from another
-point of view, have the greater value; and lastly, that both single
-and combined arts are necessary to the realisation of the concept of
-art.[26]
-
-[Sidenote: _Lotze's attack on classifications._]
-
-The capriciousness, emptiness and childishness of such problems
-and their solutions must have excited feelings of impatience and
-disgust, but we rarely find a doubt thrown on their validity. One such
-dissentient is Lotze when he writes: "It is difficult to see the use
-of such attempts. Knowledge of the nature and laws of individual arts
-is but little increased by indication of the systematic place allotted
-to each." He further observed that in real life the arts are variously
-conjoined, forming themselves into no systematic series, while in
-the world of thought an immense variety of orders can be created; he
-therefore selected one of these possible orders, not because it was
-the sole legitimate one, but because it was convenient (_bequem_). His
-series begins with music, "the art of free beauty, determined only by
-the laws of its matter, not by conditions imposed by a given task of
-purpose or of imitation"; followed by architecture, "which no longer
-plays freely with forms, but subjects them to the service of an end";
-and then by sculpture, painting and poetry, excluding minor arts which
-cannot be co-ordinated with the others, since they are incapable of
-expressing with any approach to completeness the totality of the
-spiritual life.[27] A recent French critic, Basch, opens his treatise
-with the following excellent remarks: "Is it necessary to show there is
-no such thing as an absolute art, differentiating itself later by means
-of one knows not what immanent laws? What exists is the particular
-forms of art, or rather artists who have striven to translate, as best
-they can, according to the material means at their command, the song of
-the ideal in their souls." But later on he thinks it possible to effect
-a division of the arts by starting "from the artist, instead of the
-art in itself," by proceeding "according to the three great types of
-fancy, visual, motor and auditory"; and as for the debated point of the
-supreme art, he thinks it must be settled in favour of music.[28]
-
-Schasler is not altogether wrong in his spirited counterattack on
-Lotze's criticism; he protests against the principle of indifference
-and convenience, and remarks that "the classification of the arts
-must be regarded as the real touchstone, the real differential test
-of the scientific value of an æsthetic system; for on this point all
-theoretical questions are concentrated and crowd together to find a
-concrete solution."[29]
-
-[Sidenote: _Contradictions in Lotze._]
-
-The principle of convenience may be excellent as applied to the
-approximative grouping of botanical or zoological classifications, but
-it has no place in philosophy; and as Lotze, in common with Schasler
-and other æstheticians, conformed to Lessing's principle of the
-constancy, limits and peculiar nature of each art, and therefore held
-that the concepts of the individual arts were speculative and not
-empirical concepts, he could not evade the duty of fixing the mutual
-relations of these concepts, arranging them in series, subordinating
-and co-ordinating them, and arriving at each of them either deductively
-or dialectically. He ought, in order to get definitely rid of these
-barren attempts at classification and at discovering the supreme
-art, to have criticized and dissolved Lessing's principle itself: to
-keep the principle and deny the need for a classification, as Lotze
-did, was obviously inconsistent. But not a single æsthetician has
-ever re-examined or investigated the scientific foundation of the
-distinctions enunciated by Lessing in his fluent and elegant prose; no
-one has probed to the bottom the truth which was illumined by Aristotle
-in a single lightning-flash, when he refused to allow an extrinsic
-difference, that of metre, as the real distinction between prose and
-poetry:[30] no one, that is to say, save perhaps Schleiermacher, who at
-least called attention to the difficulties of the current doctrine.
-
-[Sidenote: _Doubts in Schleiermacher._]
-
-He proposed to start from the general concept of art and prove by
-deduction the necessity of all its forms; and after finding two sides
-to artistic activity, the objective consciousness (_gegenständliche)_
-and the immediate consciousness (_unmittelbare)_, and observing that
-art stands wholly neither in the one nor in the other and that the
-immediate consciousness or representation (_Vorstellung)_ gives rise to
-mimicry and music, while the objective consciousness or image (_Bild_)
-gives rise to the figurative arts, he then, proceeding to analyse a
-painting, found the two forms of consciousness to be in this case
-inseparable, and remarks: "Here we arrive at the precise opposite:
-searching for distinction, we find unity." Nor did the traditional
-division of the arts into simultaneous and successive seem to him
-very solid, for "when looked at attentively, it evaporates entirely";
-in architecture or gardening, contemplation is successive, while in
-the arts labelled as successive, such as poetry, the chief thing
-is coexistence and grouping: "from whichever side we look at it,
-the difference is but secondary and the antithesis between the two
-orders of art merely means that every contemplation, like every act of
-production, is always successive, but, in thinking out the relation of
-the two sides in a work of art, both seem indispensable: coexistence
-(_Zugleichsein_) and successive existence (_das Successivsein_)." In
-another passage he observes: "The reality of art as external appearance
-is conditioned by the mode, depending on our physical and corporeal
-organism, in which the internal is externalised: movements, forms,
-words.... That which is common to all arts is not the external, which
-is rather the element of diversification." When these observations
-are compared with the sharp distinction he himself drew between art
-and technique, it would be easy to deduce that he held the partitions
-of the arts and the concepts of the particular arts to be devoid
-of æsthetic value. But Schleiermacher does not draw this logical
-inference, he wavers and hesitates: he recognizes the inseparability
-of the subjective and objective, musical and figurative, elements in
-poetry, yet he struggles to discover the definitions and limits of
-the individual arts; sometimes he dreams of a union of the various
-arts from which a complete art would spring; and when composing the
-syllabus of his lectures on Æsthetic, he arranged the arts into arts
-of accompaniment (mimicry and music), figurative arts (architecture,
-gardening, painting, sculpture) and poetry.[31] Nebulous, vague,
-contradictory as this may be, Schleiermacher had the acumen to distrust
-the soundness of Lessing's theory and to inquire by what right
-particular arts are singled out from art in general.
-
-
-
-[1] See above, pp. 113-115.
-
-[2] D. Diderot, _Lettre sur les aveugles,_ 1749; _Lettre sur les sourds
-et muets,_ 1751; _Essai sur la peinture,_ 1765.
-
-[3] M. Mendelssohn, _Briefe über Empfind.,_ 1755; _Betrachtungen,
-cit.,_ 1757.
-
-[4] J. Chr. Wolff, _Psychol. empirica,_ §§ 272-312; Meier,
-_Anfangsgründe,_ §§ 513-528, 708-735; _Betrachtungen,_ § 126.
-
-[5] Letter to Lodovico Cardi da Cigoli, June 26, 1612.
-
-[6] _Laokoon,_ §§ 16-20.
-
-[8] _Laokoon,_ appendix, § 43.
-
-[9] _Plastik einige Wahrnehmungen über Form und Gestalt aus Pygmalions
-bildenden Träume,_ 1778 (Select Works of Herder in the collection
-_Deutsche Nationlitteratur,_ vol. 76, part iii. § 2).
-
-[10] _System der Ästhetik,_ pp. 154-236.
-
-[11] _Kritik d. Urtheilskr._ § 51. 5 _Phil. d. Kunst,_ pp. 370-371.
-
-[12] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 257-262.
-
-[13] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 222.
-
-[14] See above, pp. 305-306.
-
-[15] _Einleitung,_ § 115, pp. 170-171.
-
-[16] _Schriften z. prakt. Phil,_ in _Werke,_ viii. p. 2.
-
-[17] _Einleitung,_ § 110, pp. 164-165.
-
-[18] Cf. Hartmann, _Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 539-540.
-
-[19] _Ästh. Forsch._ pp. 547-549.
-
-[20] _Ästh._ §§ 404, 535, 537, 838, etc.
-
-[21] Gustav Gerber, _Die Sprache als Kunst,_ Bromberg, 1871-1874.
-
-[22] _Das System der Künste,_ 2nd ed., Leipzig-Berlin, 1881.
-
-[23] _Phil. d. Sch._ chs. 9, 10.
-
-[24] _E.g._ by Sulzer, _Allg. Theorie,_ on word _Oper._
-
-[25] Rich. Wagner, _Oper und Drama,_ 1851.
-
-[26] Gustav Engel, _Ästh. der Tonkunst,_ 1884, abstracted in Hartmann,
-_Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 579-580.
-
-[27] Lotze, _Geschichte d. Ästh._ pp. 458-460; cf. p. 445.
-
-[28] _Essai critique sur l'Esth. de Kant,_ pp. 89-496.
-
-[29] _Das System der Künste,_ p. 47.
-
-[30] _Poet._ ch. i.
-
-[31] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 11, 122-129, 137, 143, 151, 167, 172,
-284-286, 487-488, 508, 635.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-OTHER PARTICULAR DOCTRINES
-
-
-[Sidenote: _The æsthetic theory of Natural Beauty._]
-
-I. Schleiermacher also rejected the concept of Natural Beauty, giving
-Hegel greater praise than he deserved in the matter, because Hegel's
-denial of this concept was, as we have seen, more verbal than real.
-At all events, Schleiermacher's radical denial of the existence of a
-natural beauty external to and independent of the human mind marked
-a victory over a serious error, and appears to us imperfect and
-one-sided only so far as it seems to exclude those æsthetic facts of
-imagination which are attached to objects given in nature.[1] Important
-contributions towards the correction of this imperfect and one-sided
-element were supplied by the historical and psychological study of the
-"feeling for nature," promoted successfully by Alexander Humboldt in
-his dissertation to be found in the second volume of _Cosmos_,[2] and
-continued by Laprade, Biese, and others in our own time.[3] In his
-criticism of his own _Ästhetik,_ Vischer completes the passage from
-the metaphysical construction of beauty in nature to the psychological
-interpretation of it, and recognizes the necessity of suppressing
-the section devoted to Natural Beauty in his first æsthetic system,
-and incorporating it with the doctrine of imagination: he says that
-such treatments do not belong to æsthetic science, being a medley
-of zoology, sentiment, fantasy and humour, worthy of development in
-monographs in the style of the poet G. G. Fischer's on the life of
-birds, or Bratranek's on the æsthetic of the vegetable world.[4]
-Hartmann, as heir of the old metaphysics, reproaches Vischer for
-this exclusion, and maintains that, in addition to the beauty of
-imagination introduced by man into natural things (_hineingelegte
-Schönheit_), there exist a formal and a substantial beauty in nature,
-coinciding with realisation of the immanent ends or ideas of nature.[5]
-But the way chosen ultimately by Vischer is the only one by which
-Schleiermacher's thesis can be successfully developed so as to show
-the precise meaning which may be given to the assertion of (æsthetic)
-beauty in nature.
-
-[Sidenote: _The theory of æsthetic senses._]
-
-II. That æsthetic senses or superior senses exist and that beauty
-attaches to certain senses only, not to all, is a very old opinion. We
-have seen already[6] that Socrates, in the _Hippias maior,_ mentions
-the doctrine of beauty as "that which pleases hearing and sight" (τὸ
-καlὸν eστὶ τὸ δι' ἀκοῆs τε καὶ ὃψεως ήδύ): and he adds, it seems
-impossible to deny that we take pleasure in looking at handsome men
-and fine ornaments, pictures and statues with our eyes, and hearing
-beautiful songs or beautiful voices, music, speeches and conversations
-with our ears. Nevertheless Socrates himself in the same dialogue
-confutes this theory by perfectly valid arguments, amongst which is
-that, besides the difficulty arising from the fact that beautiful
-things may be found outside the range of the sensible impressions of
-eye and ear, there is no reason for creating a special class for the
-pleasure arising from impressions on these two senses, to the exclusion
-of others. He also states the more subtle and philosophical objection
-that that which is pleasing to the sight is not so to the hearing, and
-_vice versa_; whence it follows that the ground of beauty must not be
-sought in visibility or audibility, but in something differing from
-either and common to both.[7]
-
-The problem was never again, perhaps, attacked with such acumen and
-seriousness as in this ancient dialogue. In the eighteenth century
-Home remarked that beauty depended on sight, and that impressions
-received by the other senses might be agreeable but were not
-beautiful, and distinguished sight and hearing as superior to those
-of touch, taste and smell, the latter being merely bodily in nature
-and without the spiritual refinement of the other two. He held these
-to produce pleasures superior to organic pleasures though inferior to
-intellectual; decorous pleasures, that is to say; elevated, sweet,
-moderately exhilarating; as far removed from the turbulence of the
-passions as from the languor of indolence, and intended to refresh
-and soothe the spirit.[8] Following suggestions of Diderot, Rousseau
-and Berkeley, Herder drew attention to the importance of the sense of
-touch (_Gefühl_) in plastic art: of this "third sense, which perhaps
-deserves to be investigated first of all, and is unjustly relegated to
-a place amongst the grosser senses." Certainly "touch knows nothing of
-surface or colour," but "sight, for its part, knows nothing of forms
-and configurations." Thus "touch cannot be so gross a sense as it is
-reputed, if it is the very organ by which we sensate all other bodies,
-and rules over a vast kingdom of subtle and complex concepts. As the
-surface stands to the body, so does sight stand in respect of touch,
-and it is merely a colloquial abbreviation to speak of seeing bodies as
-surfaces and to suppose that we see with our eyes that which we have
-gradually learnt in infancy simply by the sense of touch." Every beauty
-of form or corporeity is a concept not visible, but palpable.[9] From
-the triad of æsthetic senses thus established by Herder (sight for
-painting; hearing for music; touch for sculpture), Hegel returned to
-the customary dyad, saying that "the sensory part of art has reference
-only to the two theoretic senses of sight and hearing"; that smell,
-taste and touch must be excluded from artistic pleasures, since they
-are connected with matter as such and the immediate sensible quality it
-may possess (smell with material volatilization; taste with material
-solution of objects; and touch with hot, cold, smooth and so forth);
-and that hence they can claim no concern with the objects of art,
-which are obliged to keep themselves in real independence, rejecting
-all relation with the merely sensory. That which pleases these senses
-is not the beautiful of art.[10]
-
-It was Schleiermacher once more who recognized the impossibility of
-disposing of the matter in this summary fashion. He refused to admit
-the distinction between confused senses and clear senses, and asserted
-that the superiority of sight and hearing over the other senses lay in
-the fact that the others "are not capable of any free activity, and
-indeed represent the maximum of passivity, whereas sight and hearing
-are capable of an activity proceeding from within, and are able to
-produce forms and notes without having received impressions from
-outside"; were eye and ear merely means of perception, there would
-be no visual or auditory arts, but they also operate as a function
-of voluntary movements which supply a content to the dominion of the
-senses. From another standpoint, however, Schleiermacher thinks that
-"the difference seems to be one rather of degree or quantity, and a
-minimum of independence must be recognized as existing in the other
-senses as well."[11] Vischer remains faithful to the traditional "two
-æsthetic senses," "free organs and no less spiritual than sensuous,"
-which "have no reference to the material composition of the object,"
-but allow this "to subsist as a whole and work upon them."[12] Köstlin
-was of opinion that the inferior senses offer "nothing intuitible
-separate from themselves, and are only modifications of ourselves, but
-taste, smell and touch are not devoid of all æsthetic importance, since
-they assist the superior senses; without touch an image could not be
-recognized by the eye as being hard, resistant or rough; without smell
-certain images could not be represented as sweet or scented."[13]
-
-We cannot go into a detailed account of all doctrines connected with
-sensationalistic principles,[14] for all the senses are naturally
-accepted as æsthetic by the sensationalists, who use "æsthetic"
-interchangeably with" hedonistic": it will suffice if we recall the
-"learned" Kralik, who was ridiculed by Tolstoy for his theory of the
-five arts of taste, smell, touch, hearing and sight.[15] The few
-quotations already given show the embarrassing difficulty caused
-by the use of the word "æsthetic" as a qualification of "sense,"
-compelling writers to invent absurd distinctions between various groups
-of senses, or to recognize all senses as being æsthetic, thus giving
-æsthetic value to every sensory impression, as such. No way out of
-this labyrinth can be found save by asserting the impossibility of
-effecting a union between such wholly disparate orders of ideas as the
-concept of the representative form of the spirit and that of particular
-physiological organs or a particular matter of sense-impressions.[16]
-
-[Sidenote: _The theory of kinds of style_.]
-
-III. A variety of the error of literary kinds is to be found in
-the theory of modes, forms or kinds of style (χαρακτῆρες τῆς
-φράσεως), considered by the ancients as consisting of three forms,
-the sublime, the medium and the tenuous, a tripartition due, it would
-seem, to Antisthenes,[17] modified later into _subtile, robustum_
-and _floridum,_ or amplified into a fourfold division, or designated
-by adjectives of historic origin as in the Attic, Asiatic or Rhodian
-styles. The Middle Ages preserved the tradition of a tripartite
-division, sometimes giving it a curious interpretation, to the effect
-that the sublime style treats of kings, princes and barons (_e.g._ the
-_Aeneid_); the mediocre, of middle-class people (_e.g. Georgies)_; the
-humble, of the lowest class (_e.g. Bucolics;_) and the three styles
-were for this reason also called tragic, elegiac and comic.[18] It
-is a well-known fact that kinds in style have never ceased to afford
-matter for discussion in rhetorical text-books down to modern times;
-for instance, we find Blair distinguishing styles by such epithets
-as the diffuse, the concise, the nervous, the daring, the soft, the
-elegant, the flowery, etc. In 1818 the Italian Melchiorre Delfico, in
-his book on _The Beautiful,_ energetically criticized the "endless
-division of styles," or the superstition "that there could be so many
-kinds of style"; saying that "style is either good or bad," and adding
-that it is not possible "it should exist as a preconceived idea in the
-artist's mind," but that "it should be the consequence of the principal
-idea, _i.e._ that conception which determines the invention and the
-composition."[19]
-
-[Sidenote: _The theory of grammatical forms or parts of speech._]
-
-IV. The same error reappears in the philosophy of language, as the
-theory of grammatical forms or parts of speech,[20] first created by
-the sophists (Protagoras is credited with having first distinguished
-the gender of nouns), adopted by the philosophers, notably by Aristotle
-and the Stoics (the former was acquainted with two or three parts of
-speech, the latter with four or five), developed and elaborated by the
-Alexandrian grammarians in the famous and endless controversy between
-the analogists and the anomalists. The analogists (Aristarchus) aimed
-at introducing logical order and regularity into linguistic facts,
-and described as deviations all such as seemed to them irreducible
-to logical form. These they called pleonasm, ellipsis, enallage,
-parallage, and metalepsis. The violence thus wrought by the analogists
-upon spoken and written language was such that (as Quintilian tells
-us) some one wittily (_non invenuste_) remarked that it appeared to
-be one thing to talk Latin and quite another to talk grammar (_aliud
-esse latine_, _aliud grammatice loqui_).[21] The anomalists must be
-credited with restoring to language its free imaginative movement: the
-Stoic Chrysippus composed a treatise to prove that one thing (one same
-concept) may be expressed by different sounds, and one and the same
-sound may express different concepts (_similes res dissimilibus verbis
-et similibus dissimiles esse vocabulis notatas._) Another anomalist
-was the celebrated grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus, who rejected
-the metalepsis, the schemes, and the other artifices by which the
-analogists tried to explain facts which did not fit their categories,
-and pointed out that the use of one word for another, or one part of
-speech for another, is not a grammatical figure, but a blunder, a thing
-hardly to be attributed to a poet such as Homer. The upshot of the
-dispute between anomalists and analogists was the science of Grammar
-(τεχνη γραμματική), as handed down by the ancients to the modern
-world, which is justly considered as a sort of compromise between the
-two opposed parties because, if the schemes of inflection (κανόνες)
-satisfy the demands of the analogists, their variety satisfies those
-of the anomalists; hence the original definition of Grammar as theory
-of analogy was changed subsequently to "theory of analogy and anomaly"
-(ὁμοίον τε καὶ ἀνoμoίου θεωρία). The concept of correct usage, with
-which Varro hoped to settle the controversy, fell into the trap (common
-to compromises), merely stating the contradiction in set terms, like
-the "convenient ornament" of Rhetoric or the kinds accorded a "certain
-licence" in the literature of precept. If language follows usage (that
-is to say, the imagination), it does not follow reason (or logic); if
-it follows reason, it does not follow usage. When the analogists upheld
-logic as supreme at least inside the individual kinds and sub-kinds,
-the anomalists hastened to show that even this was not the case. Varro
-himself was forced to confess that "this part of the subject really is
-very difficult" (_hic locus maxime lubricus est_).[22]
-
-In the Middle Ages grammar was cultivated to the point of superstition.
-Divine inspiration was found lurking in the eight parts of speech
-because "_octavus numerus frequenter in divinis scripturis sacratis
-invenitur,_" and in the three persons of verbal conjugation, created
-simply "_ut quod in Trinitatis fide credimus, in eloquiis inesse
-videatur._"[23] Grammarians of the Renaissance and later recommenced
-the study of linguistic problems and worked to death ellipsis,
-pleonasm, licence, anomaly and exception; only in comparatively recent
-times has Linguistic begun to question the very validity of the concept
-of parts of speech (Pott, Paul and others).[24] If they still survive,
-the reason may lie in the facts that empirical, practical grammar
-cannot do without them; that their venerable antiquity disguises their
-illegitimate and shady origin; and that energetic opposition has been
-worn down by the fatigue of an endless war.
-
-[Sidenote: _Theory of æsthetic criticism._]
-
-V. The relativity of taste is a sensationalistic theory which denies
-a spiritual value to art. But it is rarely maintained by writers in
-the ingenuous categorical garb of the old adage: _De gustibus non
-est disputandum_ (concerning which it would be useful to enquire
-when the saying was born, and what it fust meant: whether, too, the
-word _gustibus_ referred solely to impressions of the palate, and
-was only later extended to include æsthetic impressions); as though
-sensationalists, as if dimly conscious of the higher nature of art,
-have never been able to resign themselves to the complete relativity
-of taste. Their torments in the matter really move one to pity. "Is
-there," Batteux asks, "such a thing as good taste, and is it the only
-good taste? In what does it consist? Upon what depend? Does it depend
-upon the object itself or the genius at work upon it? Are there, or are
-there not, rules? Is wit alone, or heart alone, the organ of taste, or
-both together? How many questions have been raised on this familiar
-often-treated subject, how many obscure and involved answers have
-been given!"[25] This perplexity is shared by Home. Tastes, he says,
-must not be disputed; neither those of the palate nor those of other
-senses. A remark which seems highly reasonable from one point of view;
-but, from another, somewhat exaggerated. But yet how can one dispute
-it? how can one maintain that what actually pleases a man ought not
-to please him? The proposition then must be true. But now no man of
-taste will assent to it. We speak of good taste and bad taste; are all
-criticisms which turn upon this distinction to be considered absurd?
-have these everyday expressions no meaning? Home ends by asserting
-a common standard of taste, deduced from the necessity of a common
-life for mankind or, as he says, from a "final cause"; for without
-uniformity of taste, who would trouble to produce works of art, build
-elegant and costly edifices, or lay out beautiful gardens and so forth?
-He does not fail to draw attention to a second final cause; that of
-the advisability of attracting citizens to public shows and uniting
-those whom class-differences and diversity of occupation tend to keep
-apart. But how shall a standard of taste be established? This is a new
-perplexity, which one cannot think to be escaped by observing that, as
-in framing moral rules we seek the counsel of the most honourable of
-educated men, not of savages; so to determine the standard of taste
-we should have recourse to the few who are not worn out by degrading
-bodily labour, not corrupted in taste, and not rendered effeminate
-by pleasure, who have received the gift of good taste from nature,
-and have brought it to perfection by the education and practice of a
-lifetime: if, notwithstanding, controversies arise, then reference
-must be made to the principles of Criticism as set forth by Home
-himself in his own book.[26] Similar contradictions and vicious circles
-reappear in David Hume's _Essay on Taste,_ where Hume tries in vain
-to define the distinctive characteristics of the man of taste whose
-judgement must be law, and, while asserting the uniformity of the
-general principles of taste as founded in human nature, and warning
-the reader against giving undue weight to individual perversions and
-ignorances, at the same time asserts that divergences in taste may be
-irreconcilable, insuperable, and yet blameless.[27]
-
-But a criticism of æsthetic relativism cannot be based upon the
-opposite doctrine which, by its affirmation of absoluteness, resolves
-taste into concepts and logical inferences. The eighteenth century
-offers examples of this mistake in Muratori, one of the first to
-maintain the existence of a rule of taste and a universal beauty
-whose rules are furnished by Poetics;[28] in André, who said that
-"the beauty in a work of art is not that which pleases at the first
-glance of fancy through certain individual dispositions of the mental
-faculties or bodily organs, but that which has a right to please the
-reason and reflexion by its own inherent excellence or rightness and,
-if the expression be allowed, by its intrinsic agreeableness";[29]
-in Voltaire, who recognized a "universal taste" which was
-"intellectual";[30] and in very many others. This intellectualistic
-error, no less than the sensationalistic, was attacked by Kant; but
-even Kant, by making beauty consist in a symbolism of morality, failed
-to grasp the concept of an imaginative absoluteness of taste.[31]
-Succeeding generations of philosophers met the difficulty by passing it
-over in silence.
-
-Nevertheless, this criterion of an imaginative absoluteness, the idea
-that in order to judge works of art one must place oneself at the
-artist's point of view at the moment of production, and that to judge
-is to reproduce, gathered weight little by little from the beginning
-of the eighteenth century, when its first appearance is seen in the
-work of the Italian Francesco Montani already quoted (1705), and by
-the English poet Alexander Pope in his _Essay on Criticism._ ("A
-perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its
-author writ."[32]) A few years later Antonio Conti recognized part of
-the truth in the _règle du premier aspect_ advised by Terrasson as
-a test for judging poetry, while noting it to be more applicable to
-modern than to ancient works: "_quand on n'a pas l'esprit prévenu,
-et que d'ailleurs on l'a assez pénétrant, on peut voir tout d'un
-coup si un poète a bien imité son objet; car, comme on connaît
-l'original, c'est-à-dire les hommes et les mœurs de son siècle,
-on peut aisément lui confronter la copie, c'est-à-dire la poésie qui
-les imite._" In judging ancient writers something more is necessary:
-"_cette règle du premier aspect n'est presque d'aucun usage dans
-l'examen de l'ancienne poésie, dont on ne peut pas juger qu'après
-avoir longtemps réfléchi sur la religion des anciens, sur leurs lois,
-leur mœurs, sur leurs manières de combattre et d'haranguer, etc.
-Les beautés d'un poème, indépendantes de toutes ces circonstances
-individuelles, sont très rares, et les grands peintres les ont toujours
-évitées avec soin, car ils voulaient peindre la nature et non pas
-leurs idées;_"[33] the necessary criterion, therefore, is to be found
-in history. The end of the same century saw the concept of congenial
-reproduction sufficiently defined by Heydenreich: "A philosophical
-critic of art must himself be possessed of genius for art; reason
-exacts this qualification and grants no dispensation, just as she will
-refuse to appoint a blind man as judge of colours. The critic must
-not pretend to be able to feel the attraction of beauty by means of
-syllogisms (_Vernunftschlüsse_); beauty must manifest itself to feeling
-with irresistible self-evidence and, attracted by its fascination,
-reason must find no time to linger over the why and wherefore; the
-effect, with its delightful and unexpected possession and domination
-of the whole being, should suffocate at birth any inquiry into origins
-or causes. But this state of fanatical admiration cannot last long;
-reason must inevitably recover consciousness of itself and direct
-its attention upon the state in which it was during the enjoyment
-of beauty and upon its present memories of that state...."[34] This
-was the wholesomely impressionistic theory which prevailed among the
-Romanticists and was accepted even by De Sanctis.[35] Still there
-was even then no definite theory of criticism, which demanded as its
-condition of existence a precise concept of art and of the relations
-of the work of art with its historical antecedents.[36] The very
-possibility of æsthetic criticism was questioned in the second half
-of the nineteenth century, when taste was relegated to a place amongst
-the facts of individual caprice, and a so-called historical criticism
-was proclaimed the sole scientific criticism and expounded in works of
-irrelevant learning or buried beneath the preconceptions of positivists
-and materialists. Those who reacted against such extremalism and
-materialism generally made the mistake of supporting themselves by a
-kind of intellectualistic dogmatism[37] or an empty æstheticism.[38]
-
-[Sidenote: _Distinction between taste and genius._]
-
-VI. We have seen that in the seventeenth century, when the words
-"taste" and "genius" or "wit" were in fashion, the facts they
-designated were sometimes interchanged amongst themselves and came to
-be considered as one single fact, while sometimes each was conceived
-as distinct in itself, genius being the faculty of production, and
-taste the faculty of judgement, taste being further subdivided into
-the sterile and the fertile: a terminology adopted by Muratori[39] in
-Italy and Ulrich König[40] in Germany. Batteux said, "_le goût juge
-des productions du génie_"[41]; and Kant speaks of defective works
-having genius without taste or taste without genius, and of others in
-which taste alone suffices;[42] now we find him distinguishing the two
-concepts as the judging and producing faculties, now he speaks of them
-as a single faculty existing in various degrees. An inherent difference
-between taste and genius was accepted by later writers on Æsthetic and
-assumed its most rigid form in the hands of Herbart and his followers.
-
-[Sidenote: _Concept of artistic and literary history._]
-
-VII. The evolutionary theory of art made its appearance towards the
-end of the eighteenth century. This was the time when the distinction
-between classical and romantic art was first made; a classification
-later augmented by an introductory section on Oriental art, owing to
-the increase of knowledge concerning the pre-Hellenic world. Towards
-the end of his life Goethe told his friend Eckermann that the concepts
-of classical and romantic had been formed by himself and Schiller, for
-he himself had upheld the objective method in poetry, whilst Schiller,
-in order to champion the subjective form to which he inclined, had
-written the essay _On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry_, in which the word
-naïve (_naiv_) expresses the style later called classical and the
-word sentimental (_sentimentalisch)_ that later called romantic. "The
-Schlegels," continues Goethe, "seized upon these ideas and disseminated
-them, so that to-day everyone uses them and speaks of classical and
-romantic, things perfectly unknown fifty years ago"[43] (Goethe was
-speaking in 1831). Schiller's essay bears the imprint of Rousseau's
-influence and is dated 1795-6.[44] It contains such statements as this:
-"Poets are above all things the preservers of nature; and when they
-cannot be so entirely, and have tried upon themselves the destructive
-force of arbitrary and artificial forms or have fought against such
-forms, they stand up to bear witness on her behalf. Poets, therefore,
-either are nature or, having lost her, seek her. Hence arise two wholly
-distinct kinds of poetic composition, exhausting between them the whole
-field of poetry; all poets who are worthy of the name must belong,
-according to the times and conditions in which they flourish, either
-to the category of naïve or to that of sentimental poets." Schiller
-recognized three kinds of sentimental poetry: satirical, elegiac and
-idyllic; he defined a satirical poet as one "who takes as his object
-the desertion of nature and the contrast of the real with the ideal."
-The weak point of this division is the concept of two distinct kinds
-of poetry, the reduction of the infinite forms in which poetry appears
-to individuals, to two kinds. If one of these two kinds be taken the
-perfect and the other as the imperfect kind, the mistake is made of
-converting imperfection into a kind or species, the negative into a
-positive. Wilhelm von Humboldt pointed out to his friend that if
-form is the essence of art, there cannot be a kind of poetry, such
-as the sentimental or romantic is supposed to be, in which matter
-preponderates over form, for that would constitute a pseudo-art, not
-a separate kind of art.[45] Schiller attached no historical meaning
-to his classification, in fact he declared explicitly that in using
-the words "ancient" and "modern" as equivalent to "ingenuous" and
-"sentimental" he did not mean to deny that some "ancient" poets, in his
-sense of the word, could be found among contemporary writers; the two
-characters might even be united in the same poet or the same poetical
-work, as (to give Schiller's own example) in _Werther_[46] The first to
-assign a historical meaning to the division were Friedrich and Wilhelm
-von Schlegel; the former in an early work of 1795, the latter in his
-celebrated lectures on literary history given at Berlin in 1801-4. But
-the two senses, systematic and historical, were variously alternated
-and mixed by literary men and critics, and other distinctions were
-added; "classical" was sometimes used to describe poetry of a frigid
-and imitative style, while "romantic" poetry was the inspired; in some
-countries the word "romantic" came to mean a political reactionary, in
-Italy it stood for "liberal"; and so forth. In 1815, when Friedrich
-Schlegel spoke of ancient Persian romantic poems, or when in our times
-attention is called to the romanticism of the Greek, Latin or French
-classics, the historical signification is lost in the theoretical, the
-sense originally intended by Schiller.
-
-But the historical sense was prevalent in German idealism, which
-inclined towards the construction of a universal history, including
-that of literature and art, upon a scheme of ideal evolution. Schelling
-made a sharp division between pagan and Christian art; the second
-being held an advance upon the former which was the lowest step.[47]
-Hegel accepted this division and introduced a final regress by
-dividing the history of art into three periods: symbolic (Oriental)
-art, classical (Hellenic) and romantic (modern). Just as he conceived
-Roman art (with its introduction of satire and other kinds indicative
-of a failure to maintain harmony between form and content) as the
-dissolution of classical art, a thought suggested by Schiller, so
-he found in the subjective humour of Cervantes and Ariosto[48] the
-dissolution of romantic art; and he regarded this series as completing
-the possibilities of art, though some interpreters think that by a
-self-contradiction he admitted the possibility of a fourth period, an
-art of the modern or future world. Indeed amongst his disciples we
-find Weiss rejecting the Oriental period in order to save the triadic
-division, and placing as third the modern period, synthesis of the
-ancient and the mediæval:[49] Vischer too inclines to recognize a
-modern or progressive period.[50]
-
-These arbitrary constructions reappear in the works of positivist
-metaphysicians in the shape of an evolutionary or progressive history
-of art. Spencer dreamed of writing some sort of treatise on the
-subject, and in the published programme of his system (1860) we read
-that the third volume of his _Principles of Sociology_ was to contain
-amongst other things a chapter on æsthetic progress "with the gradual
-differentiation of fine arts from primitive institutions and from each
-other, with their increasing variety in development, their progress in
-reality of expression and superiority of end." No grief need be felt
-that the chapter was left unwritten when we remember the samples of it
-preserved in the _Principles of Psychology_ and already reviewed in
-these pages.[51]
-
-The strong historical sense of our own day is leading us further and
-further away from the evolutionary or abstractly progressive theories
-which falsify the free and original movement of art. Fiedler remarked
-not without justice that unity and progress cannot be introduced
-into a history of art, and that the works of artists must be judged
-discretely as so many fragments of the life of the universe.[52]
-In recent times a remarkable student of the history of figurative
-art, Venturi, has tried to bring evolutionism into fashion, and has
-illustrated it in a _History of the Madonna,_ in which the presentment
-of the Virgin is conceived as an organism which is born, grows, attains
-perfection, grows old and dies! Others have claimed for artistic
-history its true character, intolerant of outward curb and rule,
-drawing her ever-varied productions from the well-head of the infinite
-Spirit.[53]
-
-_Conclusion._
-
-These hurried notes may suffice to show in how narrow a circle has
-hitherto moved the scientific criticism of the errors we have called
-"particular." Æsthetic needs to be surrounded and nourished by a
-watchful and vigorous critical literature drawing its life from her and
-forming in turn her safeguard and strength.
-
-
-[1] See above, pp. 98-99.
-
-[2] _Das Naturgefühl nach Verschiedenheit der Zeiten und Volksstämme,_
-in _Cosmos,_ ii.
-
-[3] V. Laprade, _Le Sentiment de la nature avant le christianisme,_
-1866; also _chez les modernes,_ 1867; Alfred Biese, _Die Entwicklung
-des Naturgefühls den Griechen und Römern,_ Kiel, 1882-1884; _Die
-Entwicklung des Naturgefühls im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,_ 2nd
-ed., Leipzig, 1892.
-
-[4] _Kritische Gänge,_ v. pp. 5-23.
-
-[5] _Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 217-218; cf. _Philos, d. Schönen,_ bk.
-ii. ch. 7.
-
-[6] See above, pp. 164-165.
-
-[7] _Hippias maior, passim._
-
-[8] _Elements of Criticism,_ introd., and cf. ch. 3.
-
-[9] Herder, _Kritische Wälder_ (in _Werke, ed. cit._ iv.), pp. 47-53;
-cf. _Kaligone (ibid._ vol. xxii.), _passim;_ and fragment on _Plastic._
-
-[10] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ i. pp. 50-51.
-
-[11] _Op. cit._ p. 92 _seqq._
-
-[12] _Ästh._ i. p. 181.
-
-[13] _Ästh._ pp. 80-83.
-
-[14] _E.g._ Grant Allen, _Physiological Æsthetics_, chs. 4 and 5.
-
-[15] Tolstoy, _What is Art?_ pp. 19-22. Kralik is the author of
-_Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Ästhetik,_ Vienna, 1894.
-
-[16] See above, pp. 18-20.
-
-[17] Cf. Volkmann, _Rhet. d. G. u. Röm._ pp. 532-544.
-
-[18] Comparetti, _Virgilio net M. E._ i. p. 172.
-
-[19] _Nuove ricerche sul hello,_ ch. 10.
-
-[20] See above, pp. 145-146.
-
-[21] _Inst. Oral._ i. ch. 6.
-
-[22] For all this cf. the works of Lersch and of Steinthal, which
-contain the more important texts.
-
-[23] Comparetti, _Virgilio nel M. E.,_ i. pp. 169-170.
-
-[24] Pott, introd. to Humboldt, _cit._ Paul, _Principien d.
-Sprachgeschichte,_ ch. 20.
-
-[25] Batteux, _Les Beaux Arts,_ part ii. p. 54.
-
-[26] _Elem. of Criticism,_ iii. ch. 25.
-
-[27] _Essays, Moral, Political and Literary_ (London ed., 1862), ch.
-23: _On the Standard of Taste._
-
-[28] _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. v. ch. 5.
-
-[29] _Essai sur le beau,_ dise. 3.
-
-[30] _Essai sur le goût, cil._
-
-[31] See above, pp. 280-282.
-
-[32] _Essay on Criticism,_ 1711, part ii. 11. 233-234.
-
-[33] Letter to Maffei, in _Prose e poesie,_ ii. pp. cxx-cxxi.
-
-[34] _System d. Ästhetik,_ pref. pp. xxi-xxv.
-
-[35] Amongst other places _Saggi critici,_ pp. 355-358.
-
-[36] See above, pp. 123-127.
-
-[37] _E.g._ A. Ricardou, _La Critique littéraire,_ Paris, 1896.
-
-[38] _E.g._ A. Conti, _Sul fiume del tempo,_ Naples, 1907.
-
-[39] _Perf. poesia,_ bk. v. ch. 5.
-
-[40] _Untersuchung v. d. guten Geschmack,_ 1727.
-
-[41] _Les Beaux Arts,_ part ii. ch. 1.
-
-[42] _Krit. d. Urtheilskr._ § 48.
-
-[43] Eckermann, _Gespräche mit Goethe,_ under date March 21, 1831.
-
-[44] _Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung,_ 1795-1796 (in _Werke,_
-ed. Goedecke, vol. xii.).
-
-[45] Quoted in Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ pp. 21-22.
-
-[46] _Üb. naive u. sentim. Dicht., ed. cit.,_ p. 155, note.
-
-[47] See above, p. 291.
-
-[48] _Vorles. üb. Ästh.,_ vols. ii. and iii.
-
-[49] Cf. von Hartmann, _Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 99-101.
-
-[50] _Ästh._ part iii.
-
-[51] See above, pp. 388-390.
-
-[52] C. Fiedler, _Ursprung d. künstl. Thätigkeit,_ p. 136 _seqq._
-
-[53] Ad. Venturi, _La Madonna,_ Milan, 1899. Cf. B. Labanca, in
-_Rivista polit, e lett._ (Rome), Oct. 1899, and in _Rivisla di filos.
-e pedag._ (Bologna), 1900; and B. Croce, in _Nap. nobiliss., Rivista
-di lopografia e storia dell' arte,_ viii. pp. 161-163, ix. pp. 13-14
-(reprinted in _Probl. di estetica,_ pp. 265-272). On the theory of
-method in artistic and literary history cf. above, pp. 128-139.
-
-
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
-
-
-The first attempt at a history of Æsthetic is the work of J. Roller
-(see above, p. 248) mentioned by Zimmermann (_Gesch. d. Ästh._ pref.,
-p. v) as being so exceedingly rare that he had never been able to see
-a copy of the book. We ourselves have had the good fortune to find the
-book in the Royal Library of Munich in Bavaria, by the help of our
-friend Dr. Arturo Farinelli of Innsbruck University, and to obtain the
-loan of it. It bears the title _Entwurf_ | _zur_ | _Geschichte und
-Literatur_ | _der Æsthetik_ | _von Baumgarten auf die_ | _neueste
-Zeit._ | _Herausgegeben_ | _von_ | _J. Koller_. | _Regensburg_ | in
-der Montag und Weissischen Buchhandlung | 1799 (pp. viii-107, small
-8vo); in the preface the author declares his intention of supplying
-young men attending Lectures on the Criticism of Taste and the Theory
-of the Fine Arts in the German Universities with a "lucid summary of
-the origin and later progress of these studies," premising that he will
-treat of general theories only and that his judgements are frequently
-derived from reviews in literary periodicals. The introduction (§§
-1-7) treats of æsthetic theories from antiquity down to the beginning
-of the eighteenth century; Koller observes that "the names and form
-of a general Theory of Fine Art and Criticism of Taste were unknown
-to the ancients, whose imperfect ethical theory prevented their
-producing anything in this field." He dedicates § 5 to the Italians,
-"who have produced little in theory"; indeed the only Italian books
-mentioned are the _Entusiasmo_ of Bettinelli and the small work of
-Jagemann, _Saggio di buon gusto nelle belle arti ove si spiegano gli
-elementi dell' estetica,_ di Fr. Gaud. Jagemann, Regente agostiniano,
-In Firenze, MDCCLXXI, Presso Luigi Bastianelli e compagni; 60 pp.
-(concerning this, see B. Croce, _Problemi di estetica,_ pp. 387-390).
-The section on the History and Literature of Æsthetic begins with the
-oft-quoted passage from Bülffinger ("_Vellem existerent,_ etc.") and
-passes at once to Baumgarten: "the theoretical epoch owes its existence
-undeniably to Baumgarten; to him belongs the inalienable merit of
-having first conceived an Æsthetic founded on principles of reason and
-wholly developed, and of having tried to put it into practice by the
-means offered him by his own philosophy." Immediately after this, Meier
-is mentioned, followed by the titles, accompanied by brief extracts
-and remarks--a sort of _catalogue raisonné_--of many German books on
-Æsthetic from those of K. W. Müller (1759) to one by Ramier (1799),
-mixed with various French and English writings under the dates of their
-German translations. Special emphasis is laid on Kant (pp. 64-74), with
-the remark that, prior to the appearance of the _Critique of Judgment,_
-æstheticians were divided into sceptics, dogmatics and empiricists: the
-most powerful intellects of the nation inclined towards empiricism, so
-much so that had Kant himself "been asked by what literature he had
-been most strongly influenced in the development of his own thought,
-he would certainly have named the acute empirical writers of England,
-France and Germany"; but "by no pre-Kantian method had it been possible
-to establish an agreement (_eine Einhelligkeit_) between men upon
-matters of taste." The last pages call attention to the revival of
-interest in æsthetic studies, which nobody would now dare call a waste
-of time as in former days. "May Jacobi, Schiller and Mehmel soon enrich
-literature by publication of their theories!" (p. 104).
-
-The rarity of Koller's book has led us to notice it at some length.
-Apart from this the first general history of Æsthetic worthy the
-name is that written by Robert Zimmermann, _Geschichte der Ästhetik
-als philosophischer Wissenschaft,_ Vienna, 1858. It is divided into
-four books: "the first of these contains the history of philosophical
-concepts concerning the beautiful and art from the Greeks down to the
-constitution of Æsthetic as a philosophical science through the labours
-of Baumgarten"; the second runs from Baumgarten down to the reform of
-Æsthetic brought about by the _Critique of Judgment_; the third, from
-Kant to the Æsthetic of idealism; the fourth, from the beginnings of
-idealistic Æsthetic down to the author's own day (1798-1858). The work
-is on Herbartian lines, and is remarkable for solid research and lucid
-exposition, although the erroneous point of view and neglect of all
-æsthetic movement other than Græco-Roman or German are grave defects;
-besides, it is now sixty years out of date.
-
-Less solid and more compilatory in nature, whilst retaining all the
-defects of the foregoing, is the history by Max Schasler, _Kritische
-Geschichte der Ästhetik,_ Berlin, 1872, divided into three books
-treating of ancient Æsthetic and that of the eighteenth and nineteenth
-centuries. The author belongs to the Hegelian school and conceives his
-history as a propædeutic to theory, "in order, that is, to attain a
-supreme principle for the construction of a new system"; he schematizes
-the material of facts for each period into three grades of Æsthetic of
-sensation (_Empfindungsurtheil,_) of intellect (_Verstandsurtheil_) and
-of reason (_Vernunfturtheil._)
-
-English literature has Bernard Bosanquet's _History of Æsthetics,_
-London, 1892; a sober and well-arranged work, written from an eclectic
-point of view between the Æsthetic of content and the Æsthetic of
-form. The author, however, is wrong in believing he has passed over
-"no writer of the first rank"; he has passed over not only writers but
-some important movements of ideas, and in general he shows insufficient
-knowledge of the literature of the Latin races. Another general
-history of Æsthetic in English is the first volume of _The Philosophy
-of the Beautiful, being Outlines of the History of Æsthetics,_ by
-William Knight, London, Murray, 1895: it consists mainly of a rich
-collection of extracts and abridgements of ancient and modern books
-treating of Æsthetic. In this respect the most noteworthy chapters
-are those on Holland, Great Britain and America (10-13); the second
-volume, published in 1898, has in an appendix, pp. 251-281, notices
-upon Æsthetic in Russia and Denmark. Another recent publication is
-George Saintsbury's _A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in
-Europe from the Earliest Times to the Present Day_; vol. i., Edinburgh
-and London, 1900, concerning classical and mediæval criticism; vol.
-ii., 1902, criticism from the Renaissance to end of the eighteenth
-century: vol. iii., 1904, modern criticism. The writer of this History,
-equally skilled in literature and innocent of philosophy, has thought
-it possible to exclude æsthetic science in the strict sense, "the
-more transcendental Æsthetic, those ambitious theories of Beauty and
-artistic pleasure in general which seem so noble and fascinating until
-we discover them to be but cloud-appearances of Juno," and to limit his
-treatise to "lofty Rhetoric and Poetic, to the theory and practice of
-Criticism and literary taste" (book i. ch. I). Thus is produced a book
-instructive in many ways but wholly deficient in method and definite
-object. What is lofty Rhetoric and Poetic, the theory of Criticism and
-literary taste, if not Æsthetic pure and simple? how can the history of
-these be composed without due notice of metaphysical Æsthetic and other
-manifestations whose interaction and development are the fabric of
-history itself? Perhaps Saintsbury hoped to be able to write a History
-of Criticism as distinct from that of Æsthetic; if that be the case,
-he has been unsuccessful in writing either one or the other. Cf. _La
-Critica,_ ii. (1904), pp. 59-63.
-
-The generosity of the Hungarian Academy of Science has enabled us to
-handle the History of Æsthetic (_Az Æsthetika története_) of Bela
-Janosi, Budapesth, 1899-1901, in three volumes; the first volume treats
-the Æsthetic of Greece; the second, of Æsthetic from the Middle Ages to
-Baumgarten; the third, from Baumgarten to the present day. For us it is
-a book sealed with seven seals, save for reviews which have appeared in
-the _Deutsche Litteraturzeitung_ of Berlin, August 25, 1900, July 12,
-1902, and May 2, 1903.
-
-Amongst Latin countries, France has no special history of Æsthetic,
-for this title cannot be given to the portion of the second volume
-(pp. 311-570) of the work by Ch. Levêque, _La Science du beau_
-(Paris, 1862), under the heading _Examen des principaux systèmes
-d'esthétique anciens et modernes,_ where eight chapters are devoted
-to an exposition of the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and
-St. Augustine, Hutcheson, André and Baumgarten, Reid, Kant, Schelling
-and Hegel. Spain, on the other hand, possesses the work of Marcelino
-Menendez y Pelayo, _Historia de las idéas estéticas en España,_ 2nd
-ed., Madrid, 1890-1901 (5 vols., variously distributed amongst the
-1st ed., 1883-1891, and the 2nd), which is not restricted, as the
-title suggests, to Spain alone or to Æsthetic alone but, as the author
-observes in his preface (i. pp. xx-xxi), includes the metaphysical
-disquisitions on the beautiful, the speculations of mystics on the
-beauty of God and on love; the theories of art scattered through
-the pages of philosophers; the æsthetic considerations found in
-treatises upon individual arts (Poetics and Rhetoric, works on
-painting, architecture, etc.); and, finally, ideas enunciated by
-artists concerning their own particular arts. This work is of capital
-importance on everything to do with Spanish authors, and also in its
-general part contains good treatments of matters generally passed over
-by historians. Menendez y Pelayo inclines to metaphysical idealism,
-yet seems not disinclined to welcome elements from other systems, even
-empirical theories: in our opinion this vagueness has an unfortunate
-effect on the work as a whole. Some years ago Professor V. Spinazzola
-announced the forthcoming publication of a course of lectures given
-by Francesco de Sanctis in Naples in 1845 on _Storia della critica da
-Aristotele ad Hegel._ For the history of Æsthetic in Italy cf. Alfredo
-Rolla, _Storia delle idee estetiche in Italia,_ Turin, 1904; on which
-see Croce, _Problemi di estetica,_ pp. 401-415.
-
-We need take no notice of the historical remarks or chapters that
-generally stand at the beginning of treatises on Æsthetic; the most
-important occur in the volumes of Solger, Hegel and Schleiermacher. A
-general history of Æsthetic, from the rigorous point of view of the
-principle of Expression, has not been attempted before the present work.
-
-For the bibliography down to the end of the eighteenth century,
-Sulzer's _Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste,_ 2nd ed., with
-additions by von Blankenburg, Leipzig, 1792, in four volumes, is
-practically complete and is an inexhaustible mine of information.
-For the nineteenth century much material is collected by C. Mills
-Gayley and Fred Newton Scott in _An Introduction to the Methods and
-Materials of Literary Criticism. The Bases in Æsthetics and Poetics,_
-Boston, 1899. Besides Sulzer, we may mention æsthetic dictionaries
-by Gruber, _Wörterbuch z. Behuf d. Ästh. d. schönen Künste,_ Weimar,
-1810: Jeithles, _Ästhetisches Lexikon,_ vol. i. A-K, Vienna, 1835:
-Hebenstreit, _Encyklopädie d. Ästhetik,_ 2nd ed., Vienna, 1848.
-
-The following notes contain for the convenience of the student several
-books which the author has not been able to see.
-
-
-I. Concerning ancient Æsthetic no better or more comprehensive work can
-be found than the _Geschichte der Theorie der Kunst bei den Alten,_
-by Ed. Müller, Breslau, 1831-1837, 2 vols. For inquiries concerning
-the Beautiful special reference should be made to Julius Walter, _Die
-Geschichte der Ästhetik im Alterthum ihren begrifflichen Entwicklung
-nach,_ Leipzig, 1893. See also Em. Egger, _Essai sur l'histoire de la
-critique chez les Grecs,_ 2nd ed., Paris, 1886: Zimmermann, Bk. I.:
-Bosanquet, ch. ii.-v. and Saintsbury, vol. i.
-
-Of the innumerable special monographs: for Plato's Æsthetic see Arn.
-Ruge, _Die platonische Ästhetik,_ Halle, 1832: for Aristotle's, Döring,
-_Die Kunstlehre des Aristoteles,_ Jena, 1876: C. Bénard, _L'Esthétique
-d'Aristote et de ses successeurs,_ Paris, 1890: S. H. Butcher,
-_Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art,_ 3rd ed., London, 1902. For
-Plotinus, E. Vacherot, _Histoire critique de l'école d'Alexandrie,_
-Paris, 1846: E. Brenning, _Die Lehre vom Schönen bei Plotin im
-Zusammenhang seines Systems dargestellt,_ Göttingen, 1864. On the _Ars
-Poetica_ of Horace, A. Viola, _L' arte poetica di Orazio nella critica
-italiana e straniera,_ 2 vols. Naples, 1901-1907.
-
-For the history of ancient Psychology see H. Siebeck, _Geschichte der
-Psychologie,_ 1880; A. E. Chaignet, _Histoire de la psychologie des
-Grecs,_ Paris, 1887; L. Ambrosi, _La psicologia dell' immaginazione
-nella storia della filosofia,_ Rome, 1898. For the history of
-the philosophy of language see H. Steinthal, _Geschichte der
-Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Römern mit besonderer Rücksicht
-auf die Logik,_ 2nd ed. Berlin, 1890-1891, 2 vols.
-
-
-II. For the æsthetic ideas of St. Augustine and early Christian authors
-see Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ pp. 193-266. For Thomas Aquinas, L.
-Taparelli, _Delle ragioni del bello seconde la dottrina di san Tommaso
-d'Aquino_ (in _Civiltà cattolica_ for 1859-1860): P. Vallet, _L'Idée
-du beau dans la philosophie de St. Thomas d'Aquin,_ 1883: M. de Wulf,
-_Études historiques sur l'esthétique de St. Thomas,_ Louvain, 1896.
-
-For the literary doctrines of the Middle Ages see D. Comparetti,
-_Virgilio nel medio evo,_ 2nd ed. Florence, 1893, vol. i., and G.
-Saintsbury, _op. cit.,_ vol. i. pp. 369-486. For the early Renaissance
-see K. Vossler, _Poetische Theorien in d. italien. Frührenaissance,_
-Berlin, 1900. For the Poetics of the high Renaissance see J. E.
-Spingarn, _History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, with
-special reference to the influence of Italy,_ New York, 1899 (Italian
-trans. with corrections and additions, Bari, 1905). See also F. de
-Sanctis, _Storia della letteratura italiana,_ Naples, 1870, _passim._
-
-For the traditions of Platonic and neo-Platonic ideas in the Middle
-Ages and Renaissance, for best and fullest information see Menendez y
-Pelayo, _op. cit.,_ vol. i. part ii. and vol. ii. For Italian treatises
-on beauty and love see Michele Rosi, _Saggi sui trattati d' amore
-del cinquecento,_ Recanati, 1899, and F. Flamini, _Il cinquecento,_
-Milan, Vallardi, N.D., ch. iv. pp. 378-381. For Tasso see Alfredo
-Giannini, _Il "Minturno" di T. Tasso,_ Ariano, 1899: see also E. Proto
-in _Rass. crit. lett. ital._ vi. (Naples, 1901) pp. 127-145. For Leone
-Ebreo see Edm. Solmi, _Benedetto Spinoza e L. E., studio su una fonte
-italiana dimenticata dello spinozismo,_ Modena, 1903: cf. G. Gentile in
-_Critica,_ ii. pp. 313-319.
-
-On J. C. Scaliger see Eug. Lintilhac, _Un Coup d'État dans la
-république des lettres: Jules César Scaliger, fondateur du classicisme
-cent ans avant Boileau_ (in the _Nouv. Revue,_ 1890, vol. lxiv.
-pp. 333-346, 528-547). On Fracastoro, Giuseppe Rossi, _Girolamo_
-_Fracastoro in relazione all' aristotelismo e alla scienza nel
-Rinascimento,_ Pisa, 1893. On Castelvetro, Ant. Fusco, _La poetica di
-Ludovico Castelvetro,_ Naples, 1904. On Patrizzi, Oddone Zenatti, _Fr.
-Patrizzi, Orazio Ariosto, e Torquato Tasso,_ etc. (Verona, per le nozze
-Morpurgo-Franchetti, N.D.).
-
-
-III. For this period of ferment see H. von Stein, _Die Entstehung
-der neueren Ästhetik,_ Stuttgart, 1886: K. Borinski, _Die Poetik der
-Renaissance und die Anfänge der litterarischen Kritik in Deutschland,_
-Berlin, 1886 (esp. the last chapter): also same author's _Baltasar
-Gracian und die Hofliteratur in Deutschland,_ Halle a. S., 1894, B.
-Croce, _I trattatisti italiani del Concettismo e B. Gracian,_ Naples,
-1899 (in _Atti dell' Acc. Pont._ vol. xxix., reprinted in _Problemi di
-estetica,_ pp. 309-345), _Elizabethan Critical Essays,_ edited with
-an introduction by G. Gregory Smith, Oxford, 1904, 2 vols.: _Critical
-Essays of the Seventeenth Century,_ edited by J. E. Spingam, Oxford,
-1908, 2 vols.: Leone Donati, _J. J. Bodmer und die italienische
-Litteratur_ (in the vol. _J. J. Bodmer, Denkschrift z. C. C.
-Geburtstag,_ Zürich, 1900, pp. 241-312): see also _Probl. di estetica,_
-pp. 371-380.
-
-On Bacon see K. Fischer, _Franz Baco von Verulam,_ Leipzig, 1856 (2nd
-ed. 1875), cf. P. Jacquinet, _Fr. Baconis in re litteraria iudicia,_
-Paris, 1863. On Gravina, Em. Reich, _G. V. Gravina als Ästhetiker_ (in
-the Trans, of the Viennese Academy, vol. cxx. 1890): B. Croce, _Di
-alcuni giudizi sul Gravina considerate come estetico,_ Florence, 1901
-(in _Miscellanea d' Ancona,_ pp. 456-464), reprinted in _Probl. di
-est._ pp. 360-370. On Du Bos, Morel,_Étude sur l'abbé du Bos,_ Paris,
-1849: P. Petent, _J. B. Dubos,_ Tramelan, 1902. On Bouhours, Doncieux,
-_Un jésuite homme de lettres au XVIIe siècle,_ Paris, 1886. On the
-Bouhours-Orsi controversy, F. Fottano, _Una polemica nel settecento,_
-in _Ricerche letterarie,_ Leghorn, 1897, pp. 313-332: A. Boeri, _Una
-contesa letteraria franco-italiana nel secolo XVIII,_ Palermo, 1900
-(cf. _Giorn. stor. lett. ital._ xxxvi. pp. 255-256): B. Croce, _Varietà
-di storia dell' estetica,_ §§ 1-2, in _Rass. crit. lett. ital._ cit.,
-vi. 1901, pp. 115-126, reprinted in _Probl. di est._ pp. 346-359.
-
-
-IV. On Cartesianism in literature see É. Krantz, _L'Esthétique de
-Descartes étudiée dans les rapports de la doctrine cartésienne avec
-la littérature classique française au XVIIIe siècle,_ Paris, 1882;
-see also the chapter on André, pp. 311-341, and the introduction by
-V. Cousin to the _œuvres philosophiques du p. André,_ Paris, 1843:
-on Boileau, Borinski, _Poetik d. Renaissance,_ c. 6, pp. 314-329; J.
-Brunetière, _L'Esthétique de B._ in _Revue des Deux Mondes,_ June 1,
-1899.
-
-On the English intellectualist æstheticians see Zimmermann, _op. cit._
-pp. 273-301; also von Stein, _op. cit._ pp. 185-216. On Shaftesbury
-and Hutcheson see esp. Gid. Spicker, _Die Philosophie d. Grafen v.
-Shaftesbury,_ Freiburg i. B., 1872, part iv. on art and literature, pp.
-196-233: T. Fowler, S. _and Hutcheson,_ London, 1882: William Robert
-Scott, _Francis Hutcheson, his life, teaching and position in the
-history of philosophy_, Cambridge, 1900.
-
-On Leibniz, Baumgarten and contemporary German writers see Th. W.
-Danzel, _Gottsched und seine Zeit,_ 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1855: H. G.
-Meyer, _Leibnitz und Baumgarten als Begründer der deutschen Ästhetik,_
-Inaugural Dissertation, Halle, 1874: Joh. Schmidt, _L. und B.,_ Halle,
-1875: Ém. Grucker, _Histoire des doctrines littéraires et esthétiques
-en Allemagne_ (from Opitz to the Swiss writers), Paris, 1883: Fr.
-Braitmaier, _Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den
-Diskursen der Maler his auf Lessing,_ Frauenfeld, 1888-1889. In the
-last-named book the first part treats of the beginning of Poetics and
-criticism in Germany, considered in their relation to the doctrines
-of classical, French and English writers: the second part treats of
-an attempt to found an æsthetic philosophy and theory of poetry upon
-a basis of Leibnitian-Wolffian psychology: which includes a long
-discussion of Baumgarten and quotations from two dissertations, Raabe's
-_A. G. Baumgarten, æstheticæ in disciplinæ formam parens et auctor,_
-and Prieger's _Anregung u. metaphysische Grundlage d. Ästh. von A. G.
-Baumgarten,_ 1875 (cf. vol. ii. p. 2).
-
-
-V. On Vico as æsthetician see B. Zumbini, _Sopra alcuni principî
-di critica letteraria di G. B. V._ (reprinted in _Studî di letter.
-italiana,_ Florence, 1894, pp. 257-268): B. Croce, _G. B. V. primo
-scopritore della scienza estetica,_ Naples, 1901 (reprinted from
-_Flegrea._ April 1901), incorporated in the present volume as has been
-mentioned already: see also G. Gentile in _Rass. crit. della lett.
-ital.,_ cit., vi. pp. 254-265: E. Bertana, in _Giorn. stor. lett.
-ital._ xxxviii. pp. 449-451: A. Martinazzoli, _Intorno alle dottrine
-vichiane di ragion poetica,_ in _Riv. di filos. e sc. aff._ of Bologna,
-July 1902: also the reply of B. Croce, _ibid.,_ August 1902: Giovanni
-Rossi, _Il pensiero di G. B. V. intorno alla natura della lingua e all'
-ufficio dette lettere,_ Salerno, 1901. The important position occupied
-by Vico in respect to Æsthetic had been remarked earlier by C. Marini,
-_G. B. V. al cospetto del secolo XIX,_ Naples, 1852, c. 7, § 10. For
-the influence exercised by Vico, B. Croce, _Per la storia della critica
-e storiografia letteraria,_ Naples, 1903 (in _Atti d. Acc. Pont.,_ vol.
-xxxiii.), pp. 7-8, 26-28 (reprinted in _Probl. di est._ pp. 423-425),
-and G. A. Borgese, _Storia della critica romantica in Italia,_ Naples,
-1905, _passim._
-
-On Vico's thought in general, as well as on his Æsthetic, see B. Croce,
-_La filosofia di Giambattista Vico,_ Bari, 1911: English translation
-by R. G. Collingwood, 1913. The copious literature concerning Vico is
-given by B. Croce in _Bibliografia vichiana,_ Naples, 1904 (reprinted
-from _Atti dell' Acad. Pont._ vol. xxxiv.), and _Supplemento, ibid._
-1907, and _Secondo Supplemento,_ 1910 (_Atti_ cit., vols, xxxvii. and
-xli.).
-
-
-VI. On the literary doctrines of Conti see G. Brognoligo, _L' opera
-letteraria di A. Conti,_ in _Arch. veneto,_ 1894, vol. i. pp. 152-209:
-on Cesarotti, Vitt. Alemanni, _Un filosofo delle lettere,_ vol. i.
-Turin, 1894: on Pagano, B. Croce, _Varietà di storia dell' estetica,_ §
-3; _Di alcuni estetici italiani della seconda metà del secolo XVIII,_
-in _Rass. crit._ cit. vii. 1902, pp. 1-17 (reprinted in _Probl. di
-est._ pp. 381-450).
-
-On the German æstheticians, in addition to the various general
-histories already quoted, see R. Sommer, _Grundzüge einer Geschichte
-der deutschen Psychologie u. Ästhetik von Wolff-Baumgarten his
-Kant-Schiller,_ Würzburg, 1892. Greatly inferior is M. Dessoir,
-_Geschichte d. neueren deutschen Psychologie,_ 2nd ed., Berlin, 1897
-(the first half only is published, down to Kant exclusive).
-
-On Sulzer, Braitmaier, _op. cit._ ii. pp. 55-71: on Mendelssohn,
-_ibid._ pp. 72-279: for Elias Schlegel, _op. cit._ i. p. 249 _seqq._;
-on Mendelssohn see also Th. Wilh. Danzel, _Gesammelte Aufsätze,_
-Leipzig, Jahn, 1855, pp. 85-98: Kannegiesser, _Stellung Mendelssohns
-in d. Gesch. d. Ästh.,_ 1868. On Riedel, K. F. Wize, _F. J. Riedel u.
-seine Ästhetik,_ Diss., Berlin, 1907. On Herder, Ch. Joiet, _H. et la
-renaissance littéraire en Allemagne au XVIIIe siècle,_ Paris, 1875:
-R. Haym, _H. nach seinem Leben u. seinen Werken,_ 2 vols., Berlin,
-1880: G. Jacobi, _H.'s und Kant's Ästh.,_ Leipzig, 1907. For the ideas
-of Hamann and Herder concerning the origins of poetry see Croce in
-_Critica,_ ix. (1911), pp. 469-472. On the history of Linguistic, see
-Th. Benfey, _Geschichte d. Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland,_ Munich,
-1869, introd.: H. Steinthal, _Der Ursprung der Sprache im Zusammenhange
-mit d. letzen Fragen alles Wissens, eine Darstellung, Kritik und
-Fortentwicklung der vorzüglichsten Ansichten,_ 4th ed., Berlin, 1888.
-
-
-VII. On Batteux see E. v. Danckelmann, _Charles Batteux, sein Leben u.
-sein ästhetisches Lehrgebäude,_ Rostock, 1902. On Hogarth, Burke and
-Home, Zimmermann, _op. cit._ pp. 223-273; Bosanquet, _op. cit._ pp.
-202-210. On Home esp. J. Wohlgemüth, _H. Home's Ästhetik,_ Rostock,
-1894: W. Neumann, _Die Bedeutung Homes für d. Ästhetik, u. sein
-Einflüss auf d. deutschen Ästhetik,_ Halle, 1894. On Hemsterhuis, Ém.
-Grucker, _François H., sa vie et ses oeuvres,_ Paris, 1866.
-
-On Winckelmann, Goethe, _W. u. sein Jahrhundert,_ 1805 (in _Werke,_
-ed. Goedecke, vol. xxxi.): C. Justi, _W. u. seine Zeitgenossen,_ 2nd
-ed., Leipzig, 1898. A criticism of Winckelmann's theory, by H. Hettner,
-appeared in the _Revue Moderne,_ 1866. On Mengs, Zimmermann, _op. cit._
-pp. 338-355. On Lessing, Th. Wilh. Danzel, _G. E. Lessing, sein Leben
-und seine Werke,_ Leipzig, 1849-1853: Kuno Fischer, _L. als Reformater
-d. deutschen Litteratur,_ Stuttgart, 1881: Ém. Grucker, _Lessing,_
-Paris, 1891: Erich Schmidt, _Lessing,_ 2nd ed., Berlin, 1899: K.
-Borinski, _Lessing,_ Berlin, 1900.
-
-On Spalletti see B. Croce, _Var.,_ cit., § 3 (_Probl. d. est._
-pp. 392-398). On Meier, Hirth and Goethe, Danzel, _Goethe und die
-Weimarsche Kunstfreunde in ihrem Verhältniss z. Winckelmann,_ in
-_Gesamm. Aufs._ pp. 118-145. On Goethe's Æsthetic esp. see Wilh. Bode,
-_Goethes Ästhetik,_ Berlin, 1901.
-
-
-VIII. Critical expositions of Kant's Æsthetic are very numerous even
-in Italy: for example, O. Colecchi, _Questioni filosofiche,_ Naples,
-1843, vol. iii.; C. Cantoni, _E. Kant,_ Milan, 1884, vol. iii. In
-German, esp. H. Cohen, _Kants Begründung der Ästhetik,_ Berlin,
-1889; also an important chapter in Sommer, _op. cit._ pp. 337-352; a
-sufficient representative of a host of others is the elaborate work of
-Victor Basch, _Essai critique sur l'esthétique de Kant,_ Paris, 1896.
-See also, on an Italian trans. of the _Kr. d. Urth.,_ B. Croce in
-_Critica,_ v. (1907), pp. 160-164.
-
-For Kant's lectures and the historical antecedents of his _Critique of
-Judgment_ (besides the dissertations of H. Falkenheim, _Die Entstehung
-der kantischen Ästhetik,_ Heidelberg, 1890, and Rich. Grundmann, _Die
-Entwickel d. Ästh. Kants,_ Leipzig, 1893) see the exhaustive work of
-Otto Schlapp, _Kant's Lehre vom Genie und die Entstehung d. Kritik d.
-Urtheilskraft,_ Göttingen, 1901.
-
-
-IX. For the whole of this period, beside the general histories already
-quoted which treat of it in great detail, see Th. Wilh. Danzel, _Über
-den gegenwärtigen Zustand d. Philosophie d. Kunst u. ihre nächste
-Aufgabe_ (in the _Zeitschr. f. Phil,_ of Fichte, 1844-1845, and
-reprinted in _Gesammelte Aufsätze,_ pp. 1-84): this treats of Kant,
-Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and, more particularly, of Solger,
-pp. 51-84: Herm. Lotze, _Geschichte der Ästhetik in Deutschland,_
-Munich, 1868 (in the coll. "History of the Sciences in Germany,"
-published by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Munich in Bavaria):
-first book, history of general points of view from Baumgarten to the
-Herbartian school: second book, history of individual fundamental
-æsthetic concepts: third book, contributions to the history of the
-theory of the arts: Ed. v. Hartmann, _Die deutsche Ästhetik s. Kant_
-(first part, historico-critical), Berlin, 1886, divided into two books.
-The first book discusses the doctrine of the chief æstheticians and,
-after an introduction on the foundation of philosophical æsthetic by
-Kant, treats of the Æsthetic of the content, divided into that of
-abstract idealism (Schelling, Schopenhauer, Solger, Krause, Weisse,
-Lotze); of concrete idealism (Hegel, Trahndorff, Schleiermacher,
-Deutinger, Oersted, Vischer, Zeising, Carrière, Schasler); of the
-Æsthetic of feeling (Kirchmann, Wiener, Horwicz); the Æsthetic of form,
-subdivided into abstract formalism (Herbart, Zimmermann), and concrete
-formalism (Köstlin, Siebeck). The second book is concerned with the
-more important special problems.
-
-On the Æsthetic of Schiller specially see, amongst numerous monographs,
-Danzel, _Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner,_ in _Ges. Aufs._ pp.
-227-244: G. Zimmermann, _Versuch einer schillerschen Ästhetik,_
-Leipzig, 1889: F. Montargis, _L'Esthétique de Schiller,_ Paris, 1890:
-the chapter in Sommer, _op. cit._ pp. 365-432: V. Basch, _La Poétique
-de Schiller,_ Paris, 1901.
-
-On the Æsthetic of Romanticism, R. Haym, _Die romantische Schule:
-ein Beitrag z. Geschichte d. deutschen Geistes,_ Berlin, 1870 (cf.
-on Tieck, book i.; on Novalis, book iii.: for criticism of the two
-Schlegels, bk. ii. and bk. iii. ch. 5): N. M. Pichtos, _Die Ästhetik
-Aug. W. v. Schlegel in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung,_ Berlin,
-1893. On the Æsthetic of Fichte, G. Tempel, _Fichtes Stellung z.
-Kunst,_ Metz, 1901.
-
-On the Æsthetic of Hegel, Danzel, _Über d. Ästhetik der hegelschen
-Philosophie,_ Hamburg, 1844: R. Haym, _Hegel u. seine Zeit,_ Berlin,
-1857, pp. 433-443: J. S. Kedney, _Hegel's Æsthetics: a critical
-exposition,_ Chicago, 1885: Kuno Fischer, _Hegels Leben u. Werke,_
-Heidelberg, 1898-1901, chs. 38-42, pp. 811-947: J. Kohn, _Hegels
-Ästhetik_ in _Zeitschrift für Philosophie,_ 1902, vol. 120, fasc. ii.:
-see also B. Croce, _Cio che è vivo e cio che è morto della filosofia di
-Hegel,_ Bari, 1907, ch. 6; Engl. tr. by D. Ainslie, 1915.
-
-
-X. For the Æsthetic of Schopenhauer, Fr. Sommerlad, _Darstellung u.
-Kritik d. ästh. Grundanschauungen Schopenhauers,_ Diss., Giessen, 1895:
-Ed. v. Mayer, _Schopenhauers Ästhetik u. ihr Verhältniss z. d. ästh.
-Lehren Kants u. Schellings,_ Halle, 1897: Ett. Zoccoli, _L' estetica
-di A. Sch.: propedeutica all' estetica Wagneriana,_ Milan, 1901: G.
-Chialvo, _L' estetica di A. Sch., saggio esplicativo-critico,_ Rome,
-1905.
-
-For the Æsthetic of Herbart, beside Zimmermann, _op. cit._ pp. 754-804,
-see O. Hostinsky, _Herbarts Ästhetik in ihrer grundlegenden Theilen
-quellenmässig dargestellt u. erläutert,_ Hamburg-Leipzig, 1891.
-
-
-XI. Of the Æsthetic of Schleiermacher, the fullest treatment is given
-by Zimmermann, pp. 609-634, and von Hartmann, pp. 156-169.
-
-
-XII. For the history of the theory of Language, beside Benfey, _op.
-cit._ introd., see Max. Leop. Loewe, _Historiæ criticæ grammatices
-universalis seu philosophicæ lineamenta,_ Dresden, 1839: A. F. Pott,
-_W. v. Humboldt und die Sprachwissenschaft,_ introd. to the reprint of
-Humboldt's _Verschiedenheit d. menschl. Sprachbaues_ (2nd ed., Berlin,
-1880, vol. i.).
-
-On Humboldt see esp. Steinthal, _Der Ursprung der Sprache,_ pp. 59-81,
-and Pott's introd. cit., _Wilh. v. Humboldt u. die Sprachwissenschaft._
-
-
-XIII. For this period, treated with unnecessary fulness, see von
-Hartmann, _op. cit._ bk. i.: more concisely by Menendez y Pelayo, vol.
-iv. (1st ed.), part i. chs. 6-8.
-
-For the doctrine of the modifications of beauty see Zimmermann, _op.
-cit._ pp. 715-744: Schasler, _op. cit._ §§ 517-546: Bosanquet, _op.
-cit._ ch. 14, pp. 393-440: in greater detail, v. Hartmann, bk. ii. part
-i. pp. 363-461.
-
-For the history of the Sublime see also F. Unruh, _Der Begriff des
-Erhabenen seit Kant,_ Königsberg, 1898. For Humour see B. Croce, _Dei
-varî significanti della parola umorismo e del suo uso nella critica
-letteraria,_ in the _Journal of Comparative Literature_ of New York,
-1903, fasc. iii. (reprinted in _Probl. di est._ pp. 275-286) F.
-Baldensperger, _Les Définitions de l'humour,_ in _Études; d'hist.
-litt._ Paris, 1907. For the history of the concept of the Graceful, F.
-Torraca, _La grazia secondo il Castiglione e secondo lo Spencer_ (in
-Morandi, _Antol. della critica lett. ital._ 2nd ed., Città di Castello,
-1885, pp. 440-444): F. Braitmaier, _op. cit._ ii. pp. 166-167.
-
-
-XIV. For the history of Æsthetic in France during the nineteenth
-century there is nothing so good as Menendez y Pelayo, vol. iii.
-part ii. chs. 3-9; _ibid._ chs. 1-2 give full information concerning
-Æsthetic in England.
-
-For Æsthetic in Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century,
-Karl Werner, _Idealistische Theorien des Schönen in d. italienischen
-Philosophie des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,_ Vienna, 1884 (from Trans,
-of the Imperial and Royal Viennese Academy). On Rosmini see esp. P.
-Bellezza, _Antonio Rosmini e la grande questione letteraria del secolo
-XIX_ (in the collection _Per Antonio Rosmini nel primo centenario,_
-Milan, 1897, vol. i. pp. 364-385). On Gioberti, Ad. Faggi, _Vinc.
-Gioberti esteta e letterato,_ Palermo, 1901 (from the _Atti della R.
-Accad. di Palermo,_ s. iii. vol. vi.). On Delfico, G. Gentile, _Dal
-Gcnovesi al Galluppi,_ Naples, 1903, ch. ii. On Leopardi, E. Bertana
-in _Giorn. stor. lett. ital._ xli. pp. 193-283; R. Giani, _L'estetica
-nei pensieri di G. Leopardi,_ Turin, 1904 (cf. G. Gentile in _Critica,_
-ii. pp. 144-147). See also a book quoted by A. Rolla and B. Croce,
-_loc. cit.,_ containing a catalogue of Italian books on Æsthetic of the
-nineteenth century (_Probl. di est._ pp. 401-415).
-
-On the theories of the Italian Romanticists, F. De Sanctis, _La poetica
-del Manzoni,_ in _Scritti varî,_ ed. Croce, i. pp. 23-45; and the same
-author's _La letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX,_ ed. Croce, Naples,
-1897, on Tommaseo, pp. 233-243: on Cantù, pp. 244-273: on Berchet,
-pp. 479-493: on Mazzini, pp. 424-441. On Mazzini esp. F. Ricitari,
-_Concetto dell' arte e della critica letteraria nella mente di G.
-Mazzini,_ Catania, 1896. For all these see G. A. Borgese, _Storia della
-critica romantica in Italia,_ cit.
-
-
-XV. For the life of De Sanctis and the bibliography of his works see
-_Scritti varî,_ ed. Croce, ii. pp. 267-308, also the volume _In memoria
-di Fr. de S._ edited by M. Mandalari, Naples, 1884.
-
-On De Sanctis as literary critic, P. Villari, _Commemorazione_: A. C.
-de Meis, _Commem.,_ in the above-mentioned vol. _In memoria_: Marc
-Monnier in _Revue des Deux Mondes,_ April I, 1884: Pio Ferrieri,
-_Fr. de S. e la critica letteraria,_ Milan, 1888: B. Croce, _La
-critica letteraria,_ Rome, 1896, ch. 5; _Fr. de S. e i suoi critici
-recenti_ (in _Atti dell' Accad. Pontan._ vol. xxviii. reprinted in
-_Scritti varî,_ append, ii. 309-352), and prefs. to vols, already
-quoted, _La lett. ital. nel sec. XIX,_ and _Scritti varî; De Sanctis e
-Schopenhauer,_ in _Atti della Pontaniana,_ xxxii. 1902: Enr. Cocchia,
-_II pensiero critico di Fr. de S. nell' arte e nella politica,_
-Naples, 1899: G. A. Borgese, _op. cit._ last chapter and _passim._
-
-
-XVI. On the last phase of metaphysical Æsthetic, G. Neudecker, _Studien
-z. Geschichte d. deutschen Ästhetik s. Kant,_ Würzburg, 1878, which
-discusses and criticises more particularly Vischer (self-criticism),
-Zimmermann, Lotze, Köstlin, Siebeck, Fechner and Deutinger. On
-Zimmermann, von Hartmann, _op. cit._ pp. 267-304: Bonatelli, in _Nuova
-Antologia,_ October 1867. On Lotze, Fritz Kogel, _Lotzes Ästhetik,_
-Göttingen, 1886: A. Matragrin, _Essai sur l'esthétique de Lotze,_
-Paris, 1901. On Köstlin, von Hartmann, pp. 304-317. On Schasler, see
-the same, pp. 248-252, also Bosanquet, pp. 414-424. On Hartmann, Ad.
-Faggi, _Ed. H. e l' estetica tedesca,_ Florence, 1895. On Vischer see
-M. Diez, _Fried. Vischer u. d. ästh. Formalismus,_ Stuttgart, 1889.
-
-For French and English æstheticians, besides Menendez y Pelayo, _op.
-cit.,_ on Ruskin, see J. Milsand, _L'Esthétique anglaise, étude sur J.
-Ruskin,_ Paris, 1864: R. de la Sizeranne, _Ruskin et la religion de la
-beauté,_ 3rd ed., Paris, 1898; cf. part iii. On Fornari, V. Imbriani,
-_Vito Fornari estetico_ (reprinted in _Studî letterarî e bizzarri e
-satiriche,_ ed. Croce, Bari, 1907). On Tari see Nic. Gallo, _Antonio
-Tari, studio critico,_ Palermo, 1884: Croce, in _Critica,_ v. (1907),
-pp. 357-361; also in pref. to vol.: _A. Tari, saggi di estetica e
-metafisica,_ Bari, 1910.
-
-
-XVII. For positivist Æsthetic see Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iv.
-(1st ed.) vol. ii. pp. 120-136, 326-369: N. Gallo, _La scienza dell'
-arte,_ Turin, 1887, chs. 6-8, pp. 162-216.
-
-
-XVIII. On Kirchmann, von Hartmann, pp. 253-265. For various recent
-German æstheticians, Hugo Spitzer, _Kritische Studien z. Ästhet. der
-Gegenwart,_ Leipzig, 1897. On Nietzsche, Ettore G. Zoccoli, _Fred.
-Nietzsche,_ Modena, 1898, pp. 268-344: Jul. Zeitler, _Nietzsches
-Ästhetik,_ Leipzig, 1900. On Flaubert, A. Fusco, _La teoria dell' arte
-in G. F.,_ Naples, 1907: cf. _Critica,_ vi. (1908), pp. 125-134. For
-books on Æsthetic published during the last decade of the nineteenth
-century see Luc. Arréat, _Dix années de philosophie,_ 1891-1900, Paris,
-1901, pp. 74-116. A few remarks on contemporary Æsthetic are made by
-K. Groos in _Die Philosophie im Beginn. des XXen Jahrh.,_ ed. by W.
-Windelband, Heidelberg, 1904-1905. For latest books on Æsthetic see
-_Critica,_ ed. B. Croce (Naples), from 1903 onward, which publishes
-reviews of them. There is also a review, started in 1906, published
-at Stuttgart (ed. F. Enke), _Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine
-Kunstwissenschaft,_ edited by Max Dessoir.
-
-
-XIX. The history of particular problems is usually omitted, or, at
-best, erroneously treated in histories of Æsthetic: for example, see
-the difficulty experienced by Ed. Müller, _Gesch.,_ cit., ii. pref. pp.
-vi-vii, in connecting his treatment of the history of Rhetoric with
-that of Poetics. Some writers attach Rhetoric to the individual arts or
-to artistic technique; others treat the doctrines of the modification
-of beauty and of natural beauty (in the metaphysical sense) as special
-problems; others, again, discuss the kinds or classifications in art
-in an incidental manner, without seeking to incorporate them in the
-principal æsthetic problem.
-
-§ 1. On the history of Rhetoric in the ancient sense see Rich.
-Volkmann, _Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Römer in systematischer
-Übersicht dargestellt,_ 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1885, of capital importance:
-A. Ed. Chaignet, _La Rhétorique et son histoire,_ Paris, 1888; rich in
-material, but ill-arranged and with the preconception that Rhetoric
-is still a defensible body of science. For special treatment see
-Ch. Benoist, _Essai historique sur les premiers manuels d'invention
-oratoire, jusqu'à Aristote,_ Paris, 1846: Georg Thiele, _Hermagoras,
-ein Beitrag z. Geschichte d. Rhetorik,_ Strasburg, 1893. There is no
-history of rhetoric in modern times. For criticism of Vives and other
-Spaniards see Menendez y Pelayo, _op. cit._ iii. pp. 211-300 (2nd ed.).
-For Patrizzi see B. Croce, _F. Patrizzi e la critica della rettorica
-antica,_ in the vol. of _Studî_ in honour of A. Graf, Bergamo, 1903
-(_Probl. d. est._ pp. 297-308).
-
-For Rhetoric as theory of literary form in antiquity see Volkmann,
-_op. cit._ pp. 393-566: Chaignet, _op. cit._ pp. 413-539: also Egger,
-_passim,_ and Saintsbury, bks. i. ii. For purposes of comparison see
-Paul Reynaud, _La Rhétorique sanskrite exposée dans son développement
-historique et ses rapports avec la rhétorique classique,_ Paris, 1884.
-For the Middle Ages, Comparetti, _Virgilio nel medio evo,_ vol. i.,
-and Saintsbury, bk. iii. There is need for a work on modern Rhetoric
-in this sense also. For the form it assumed ultimately according to
-the theory of Gröber see B. Croce, _Di alcuni principî di sintassi e
-stilistica psicologiche del Gröber,_ in _Atti dell' Accad. Pontan._
-vol. xxix. 1899: K. Vossler, _Literaturblatt für germ. u. roman.
-Philologie,_ 1900, N.I.: B. Croce, _Le categorie rettoriche e il prof.
-Gröber,_ in _Flegrea,_ April 1900: K. Vossler, _Positivismo e idealismo
-nella scienza del linguaggio,_ Ital. trans. Bari, 1908, pp. 48-61 (cf.
-_Probl. d. est._ pp. 143-171). Very incomplete observations on the
-history of the concept of metaphor are made by A. Biese, _Philosophie
-d. Metaphorischen,_ Hamburg-Leipzig, 1893, pp. 1-16; but this book
-has the merit of calling attention to the importance of the views and
-influence of Vico.
-
-§ 2. For the history of the literary kinds in antiquity see the works
-above quoted by Müller, Egger, Saintsbury, and the vast literature on
-Aristotle's _Poetics._ For comparison with Sanskrit poetics, Sylvain
-Levi, _Le Théâtre indien,_ Paris, 1890, esp. pp. 11, 152. For mediæval
-poetry see esp. Gio. Mari, _I trattati medievali di ritmica latina,_
-Milan, 1899; and his recent edition of _Poetica magistri Iohannis
-anglici,_ 1901.
-
-For the history of the kinds under the Renaissance see principally
-Spingarn, _op. cit._ i. chs. 3-4; ii. ch. 2; iii. ch. 3. Also Menendez
-y Pelayo, Borinski, Saintsbury, _passim._
-
-Special works: on Pietro Aretino, De Sanctis, _Storia della letteratura
-italiana,_ ii. pp. 122-144: A. Graf, _Attraverso il cinquecento,_
-Turin, 1888, pp. 87-167: K. Vossler, _P. A.'s künstlerisches
-Bekenntniss,_ Heidelberg, 1901. On Guarini, V. Rossi, _G. B. Guarini
-e il Pastor Fido,_ Turin, 1886, pp. 238-250. On Scaliger, Lintilhac,
-_Un Coup d'État,_ cit. For the three unities, L. Morandi, _Baretti
-contro Voltaire,_ 2nd ed., Città di Castello, 1884: Breitinger, _Les
-Unités d'Aristote avant le Cid de Corneille,_ 2nd ed., Geneva-Basle,
-1895: J. Ebner, _Beitrag z. einer Geschichte d. dramatischen Einheiten
-in Italien,_ Munich, 1898. On the Spanish polemic concerning comedy
-see A. Morel Fatio on the defenders of comedy and of the _Arte
-nuevo,_ in the _Bulletin Hispanique_ of Bordeaux, vols. iii. and iv.:
-on the dramatic theories see Arnaud, _Les Théories dramatiques au
-XVIIe siècle, étude sur la vie et les œuvres de l'abbé D'Aubignac,_
-Paris, 1888: Paul Dupont, _Un Poète philosophe au commencement du_
-_XVIII<sup>e</sup> siècle, Houdar de la Motte,_ Paris, 1898: Alfredo
-Galletti, _Le teorie drammatiche e la tragedia in Italia nel secolo
-XVIII,_ part i. 1700-1750, Cremona, 1901. On the history of French
-Poetics, F. Brunetière, _L'Évolution des genres dans l'histoire de
-la littérature,_ Paris, 1890, vol. i. introd.: "_L'évolution de la
-critique depuis la Renaissance jusqu'à nos jours._" On that of English
-Poetics, Paul Hamelius, _Die Kritik in d. engl. Literatur des XVII en
-u. XVIII<sup>en</sup> Jahrh.,_ Leipzig, 1897: also the well-filled
-chapter in Gayley-Scott, _op. cit._ pp. 382-422, the sketch of a book
-on the subject. For the romantic period see Alfred Michiels, _Histoire
-des idées littéraires en France au XIXe siècle, et de leurs origines
-dans les siècles antérieures,_ 4th ed., Paris, 1863. For Italy see G.
-A. Borgese, _op. cit._
-
-§ 3. For the early history of the distinction and classification of the
-arts see the literature quoted above in relation to Lessing, and his
-_Laokoon,_ with notes by Blümner. For subsequent history, H. Lotze,
-_Geschichte,_ cit., bk. iii.: Max Schasler, _Das System der Künste
-auf einem neuen, im Wesen der Kunst begründeten Gliederungsprincip,_
-2nd ed., Leipzig-Berlin, 1881, introd.: Ed. v. Hartmann, _Deutsche
-Ästh. s. Kant,_ bk. ii. part ii. especially pp. 524-580: V. Basch,
-_Essai sur l'esth. de Kant,_ pp. 483-496.
-
-§ 4. For the doctrine of styles in antiquity see Volkmann, _op. cit._
-pp. 532-566. The history of grammar and parts of speech is treated
-fully so far as Græco-Roman antiquity is concerned in Laur. Lersch,
-_Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten,_ Bonn, 1838-1841: better still by
-Steinthal, _Geschichte,_ cit. vol. ii. For Apollonius Dyscolus see
-Egger, _Apollon Dyscole,_ Paris, 1854. For the history of grammar in
-the Middle Ages see Ch. Thurot, _Extraits de divers manuscrits latins
-pour servir à l'histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen âge,_
-Paris, 1869. For modern times, C. Trabalza, _Storia della grammatica
-italiana,_ Milan, 1908. For the history of Criticism several books
-mentioned under § 2 may be consulted: in addition to these, B. Croce,
-_Per la storia della critica e storiografia letteraria,_ containing
-Italian examples (_Probl. d. est._ pp. 419-448): for the theories of
-recent French criticism see Ém. Hennequin, _La Critique scientifique,_
-Paris, 1888, and Ernest Tissot, _Les évolutions de la critique
-française,_ Paris, 1890. On the concept of "romanticism" see G. Muoni,
-_Note per una poetica storica del romanticismo,_ Milan, 1906: cf. B.
-Croce, _Le definizioni del romanticismo,_ in _Critica,_ iv. pp. 241-245
-(reprinted in _Probl. di estetica,_ pp. 285-294).
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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