AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION

AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE

BY

DOUGLAS AINSLIEB. A. (OXON. )

1909

THE AESTHETIC IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE MEMORY OF HIS PARENTSPASQUALE AND LUISA SIPARI AND OF HIS SISTER MARIA

NOTE

I give here a close translation of the complete _Theory of Aesthetic_, and in the Historical Summary, with the consent of the author, anabbreviation of the historical portion of the original work. 

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THEORY

IINTUITION AND EXPRESSION

Intuitive knowledge--Its independence in respect to the intellect--Intuition and perception--Intuition and the concepts of space andtime--Intuition and sensation--Intuition and association--Intuitionand representation--Intuition and expression--Illusions as to theirdifference--Identity of intuition and expression. 

IIINTUITION AND ART

Corollaries and explanations--Identity of art and of intuitive knowledge--No specific difference--No difference of intensity--Difference extensiveand empirical--Artistic genius--Content and form in Aesthetic--Critiqueof the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion--Critique of artconceived as a sentimental, not a theoretic fact--The origin of Aesthetic, and sentiment--Critique of the theory of Aesthetic senses--Unity andindivisibility of the work of art--Art as deliverer. 

IIIART AND PHILOSOPHY

Indissolubility of intellective and of intuitive knowledge--Critiqueof the negations of this thesis--Art and science--Content and form:another meaning. Prose and poetry--The relation of first and seconddegree--Inexistence of other cognoscitive forms--Historicity--Identityand difference in respect of art--Historical criticism--Historicalscepticism--Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called naturalsciences, and their limits--The phenomenon and the noumenon. 

IVHISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN AESTHETIC

Critique of the verisimilar and of naturalism--Critique of ideas inart, of art as thesis, and of the typical--Critique of the symbol andof the allegory--Critique of the theory of artistic and literarycategories--Errors derived from this theory in judgments on art--Empirical meaning of the divisions of the categories. 

VANALOGOUS ERRORS IN HISTORY AND IN LOGIC

Critique of the philosophy of History--Aesthetic invasions of Logic--Logic in its essence--Distinction between logical and non-logicaljudgments--The syllogism--False Logic and true Aesthetic--Logicreformed. 

VITHEORETIC AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITY

The will--The will as ulterior grade in respect of knowledge--Objectionsand explanations--Critique of practical judgments or judgments ofvalue--Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic--Critique ofthe theory of the end of art and of the choice of content--Practicalinnocence of art--Independence of art--Critique of the saying: thestyle is the man--Critique of the concept of sincerity in art. 

VIIANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL

The two forms of practical activity--The economically useful--Distinction between the useful and the technical--Distinction betweenthe useful and the egoistic--Economic and moral volition--Pureeconomicity--The economic side of morality--The merely economical andthe error of the morally indifferent--Critique of utilitarianism andthe reform of Ethic and of Economic--Phenomenon and noumenon inpractical activity. 

VIIIEXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS

The system of the spirit--The forms of genius--Inexistence of a fifthform of activity--Law; sociality--Religiosity--Metaphysic--Mentalimagination and the intuitive intellect--Mystical Aesthetic--Mortalityand immortality of art. 

IXINDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OFRHETORIC

The characteristics of art--Inexistence of modes of expression--Impossibility of translations--Critique of rhetorical categories--Empirical meaning of rhetorical categories--Their use as synonymsof the aesthetic fact--Their use as indicating various aestheticimperfections--Their use as transcending the aesthetic fact, andin the service of science--Rhetoric in schools--Similarities ofexpressions--Relative possibility of translations. 

XAESTHETIC SENTIMENTS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THEUGLY

Various meanings of the word sentiment--Sentiment as activity--Identification of sentiment with economic activity--Critique ofhedonism--Sentiment as concomitant of every form of activity--Meaningof certain ordinary distinctions of sentiments--Value and disvalue:the contraries and their union--The beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without adjunct--The ugly and the elements of beauty thatconstitute it--Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautifulnor ugly--Proper aesthetic sentiments and concomitant and accidentalsentiments--Critique of apparent sentiments. 

XICRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM

Critique of the beautiful as what pleases the superior senses--Critiqueof the theory of play--Critique of the theory of sexuality and of thetriumph--Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic--Meaning in it ofcontent and of form--Aesthetic hedonism and moralism--The rigoristicnegation, and the pedagogic negation of art--Critique of pure beauty. 

XIITHE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS

Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the Aesthetic of the sympathetic--Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of its surmounting--Pseudo-aesthetic concepts appertain to Psychology--Impossibility ofrigorous definitions of these--Examples: definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous--Relation between those concepts andaesthetic concepts. 

XIIITHE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND IN ART

Aesthetic activity and physical concepts--Expression in the aestheticsense, and expression in the naturalistic sense--Intuitions andmemory--The production of aids to memory--The physically beautiful--Content and form: another meaning--Natural beauty and artificialbeauty--Mixed beauty--Writings--The beautiful that is free and thatwhich is not free--Critique of the beautiful that is not free--Stimulants of production. 

XIVERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC

Critique of aesthetic associationism--Critique of aesthetic physic--Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body--Critique ofthe beauty of geometrical figures--Critique of another aspect of theimitation of nature--Critique of the theory of the elementary forms ofthe beautiful--Critique of the search for the objective conditions ofthe beautiful--The astrology of Aesthetic. 

XVTHE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS

The practical activity of externalization--The technique ofexternalization--Technical theories of single arts--Critique of theclassifications of the arts--Relation of the activity of externalizationwith utility and morality. 

XVITASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART

Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction--Impossibility of divergences--Identity of taste and genius--Analogywith the other activities--Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) andof aesthetic relativism--Critique of relative relativism--Objectionsfounded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic disposition--Critique of the distinction of signs as natural and conventional--Thesurmounting of variety--Restorations and historical interpretation. 

XVIITHE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND OF ART

Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance--Artistic andliterary history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from theaesthetic judgment--The method of artistic and literary history--Critiqueof the problem of the origin of art--The criterion of progress andhistory--Inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic andliterary history--Errors in respect of this law--Other meanings ofthe word "progress" in relation to Aesthetic. 

XVIIICONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC

Summary of the inquiry--Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic--Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language--Origin of language and its development--Relation between Grammaticand Logic--Grammatical categories or parts of speech--Individualityof speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of anormative Grammatic--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguisticelements, or roots--The aesthetic judgment and the model language--Conclusion. 

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity--In the Middle Age and at the Renaissance--Fermentation of thought in the seventeenthcentury--Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and inthe "Aesthetic" of Baumgarten--G. B. Vico--Aesthetic doctrines inthe eighteenth century--Emmanuel Kant--The Aesthetic of Idealismwith Schiller and Hegel--Schopenhauer and Herbart--FriedrichSchleiermacher--The philosophy of language with Humboldt andSteinthal--Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the firsthalf of the nineteenth century--Francesco de Sanctis--The Aestheticof the epigoni--Positivism and aesthetic naturalism--Aestheticpsychologism and other recent tendencies--Glance at the historyof certain particular doctrines--Conclusion. 

APPENDIX

Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature ofart, delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress ofPhilosophy at Heidelberg. 

INTRODUCTION

There are always Americas to be discovered: the most interesting inEurope. 

I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim tohave discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he dwellson the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antiqueParthenope. 

Croce's America cannot be expressed in geographical terms. It is moreimportant than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. Itbelongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. Thatprovince which most interests me, I have striven in the following pagesto annex to the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; an act which cannotbe blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more trulythan of love, that "to divide is not to take away. "

The Historical Summary will show how many a brave adventurer hasnavigated the perilous seas of speculation upon Art, how Aristotle'smarvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how Plato threw awayits golden fruit, how Baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters, Kantsailed along its coast without landing, and Vico hoisted the Italianflag upon its shore. 

But Benedetto Croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cuttinghis way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. Hehas measured its length and breadth, marked out and described itsspiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won tophilosophy will always bear his name, _Estetica di Croce_, a newAmerica. 

It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the Philosopherof Aesthetic. Benedetto Croce, although born in the Abruzzi, Province ofAquila (1866), is essentially a Neapolitan, and rarely remains long absentfrom the city, on the shore of that magical sea, where once Ulyssessailed, and where sometimes yet (near Amalfi) we may hear the Syrens singtheir song. But more wonderful than the song of any Syren seems to me theTheory of Aesthetic as the Science of Expression, and that is why I haveovercome the obstacles that stood between me and the giving of thistheory, which in my belief is the truth, to the English-speaking world. 

No one could have been further removed than myself, as I turned over atNaples the pages of _La Critica_, from any idea that I was nearing thesolution of the problem of Art. All my youth it had haunted me. As anundergraduate at Oxford I had caught the exquisite cadence of WalterPater's speech, as it came from his very lips, or rose like the perfumeof some exotic flower from the ribbed pages of the _Renaissance_. 

Seeming to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, he solved it not--onlydelighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he ledone along the pathways of his Enchanted Garden, where I shall alwayslove to tread. 

Oscar Wilde, too, I had often heard at his best, the most brillianttalker of our time, his wit flashing in the spring sunlight of Oxfordluncheon-parties as now in his beautiful writings, like the jewelledrapier of Mercutio. But his works, too, will be searched in vain by theseeker after definite aesthetic truth. 

With A. C. Swinburne I had sat and watched the lava that yet flowed fromthose lips that were kissed in youth by all the Muses. Neither from himnor from J. M. Whistler's brilliant aphorisms on art could be gatheredanything more than the exquisite pleasure of the moment: the_monochronos haedonae_. Of the great pedagogues, I had known, but neversat at the feet of Jowett, whom I found far less inspiring than any ofthe great men above mentioned. Among the dead, I had studied HerbertSpencer and Matthew Arnold, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Guyau: I hadconversed with that living Neo-Latin, Anatole France, the modernRousseau, and had enjoyed the marvellous irony and eloquence of hiswritings, which, while they delight the society in which he lives, maywell be one of the causes that lead to its eventual destruction. 

The solution of the problem of Aesthetic is not in the gift of the Muses. 

To return to Naples. As I looked over those pages of the bound volumesof _La Critica_. I soon became aware that I was in the presence of amind far above the ordinary level of literary criticism. The profoundstudies of Carducci, of d'Annunzio, and of Pascoli (to name but three), in which those writers passed before me in all their strength and in alltheir weakness, led me to devote several days to the _Critica_. At theend of that time I was convinced that I had made a discovery, and wroteto the philosopher, who owns and edits that journal. 

In response to his invitation, I made my way, on a sunny day in November, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like anecklace, the Rione de la Bellezza, and wound zigzag along theover-crowded Toledo. I knew that Signor Croce lived in the old part ofthe town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as Iexperienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself inold Naples. This has already been described elsewhere, and I will nothere dilate upon this world within a world, having so much of greaterinterest to tell in a brief space. I will merely say that the costumeshere seemed more picturesque, the dark eyes flashed more dangerouslythan elsewhere, there was a quaint life, an animation about the streets, different from anything I had known before. As I climbed the lofty stonesteps of the Palazzo to the floor where dwells the philosopher ofAesthetic I felt as though I had stumbled into the eighteenth centuryand were calling on Giambattista Vico. After a brief inspection by ayoung man with the appearance of a secretary, I was told that I wasexpected, and admitted into a small room opening out of the hall. Thence, after a few moments' waiting, I was led into a much larger room. The walls were lined all round with bookcases, barred and numbered, filled with volumes forming part of the philosopher's great library. Ihad not long to wait. A door opened behind me on my left, and a rathershort, thick-set man advanced to greet me, and pronouncing my name atthe same time with a slight foreign accent, asked me to be seated besidehim. After the interchange of a few brief formulae of politeness inFrench, our conversation was carried on in Italian, and I had a betteropportunity of studying my host's air and manner. His hands he heldclasped before him, but frequently released them, to make those vividgestures with which Neapolitans frequently clinch their phrase. His mostremarkable feature was his eyes, of a greenish grey: extraordinary eyes, not for beauty, but for their fathomless depth, and for the sympathywhich one felt welling up in them from the soul beneath. This wasespecially noticeable as our conversation fell upon the question of Artand upon the many problems bound up with it. I do not know how long thatfirst interview lasted, but it seemed a few minutes only, during whichwas displayed before me a vast panorama of unknown height and headland, of league upon league of forest, with its bright-winged birds of thoughtflying from tree to tree down the long avenues into the dim blue vistasof the unknown. 

I returned with my brain awhirl, as though I had been in fairyland, andwhen I looked at the second edition of the _Estetica_, with hisinscription, I was sure of it. 

These lines will suffice to show how the translation of the _Estetica_originated from the acquaintance thus formed, which has developed intofriendship. I will now make brief mention of Benedetto Croce's otherwork, especially in so far as it throws light upon the _Aesthetic_. For this purpose, besides articles in Italian and German reviews, Ihave made use of the excellent monograph on the philosopher, by G. Prezzolini. [1]

First, then, it will be well to point out that the _Aesthetic_ formspart of a complete philosophical system, to which the author gives thegeneral title of "Philosophy of the Spirit. " The _Aesthetic_ is thefirst of the three volumes. The second is the _Logic_, the third the_Philosophy of the Practical_. 

In the _Logic_, as elsewhere in the system, Croce combats that falseconception, by which natural science, in the shape of psychology, makesclaim to philosophy, and formal logic to absolute value. The thesis ofthe _pure concept_ cannot be discussed here. It is connected with thelogic of evolution as discovered by Hegel, and is the only logic whichcontains in itself the interpretation and the continuity of reality. Bergson in his _L'Evolution Créatrice_ deals with logic in a somewhatsimilar manner. I recently heard him lecture on the distinction betweenspirit and matter at the Collège de France, and those who read Frenchand Italian will find that both Croce's _Logic_ and the book abovementioned by the French philosopher will amply repay their labour. Theconception of nature as something lying outside the spirit which informsit, as the non-being which aspires to being, underlies all Croce'sthought, and we find constant reference to it throughout hisphilosophical system. 

With regard to the third volume, the _Philosophy of the Practical_, itis impossible here to give more than a hint of its treasures. I merelyrefer in passing to the treatment of the will, which is posited as aunity _inseparable from the volitional act_. For Croce there is nodifference between action and intention, means and end: they are onething, inseparable as the intuition-expression of Aesthetic. The_Philosophy of the Practical_ is a logic and science of the will, not anormative science. Just as in Aesthetic the individuality of expressionmade models and rules impossible, so in practical life the individualityof action removes the possibility of catalogues of virtues, of the exactapplication of laws, of the existence of practical judgments andjudgments of value _previous to action_. 

The reader will probably ask here: But what, then, becomes of morality?The question will be found answered in the _Theory of Aesthetic_, and Iwill merely say here that Croce's thesis of the _double degree_ of thepractical activity, economic and moral, is one of the greatestcontributions to modern thought. Just as it is proved in the _Theory ofAesthetic_ that the _concept_ depends upon the _intuition_, which is thefirst degree, the primary and indispensable thing, so it is proved inthe _Philosophy of the Practical_ that _Morality_ or _Ethic_ dependsupon _Economic_, which is the _first_ degree of the practical activity. The volitional act is _always economic_, but true freedom of the willexists and consists in conforming not merely to economic, but to moralconditions, to the human spirit, which is greater than any individual. Here we are face to face with the ethics of Christianity, to which Croceaccords all honour. 

This Philosophy of the Spirit is symptomatic of the happy reaction ofthe twentieth century against the crude materialism of the second halfof the nineteenth. It is the spirit which gives to the work of art itsvalue, not this or that method of arrangement, this or that tint orcadence, 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 naturalsciences are very well in their place, but discoveries such as aviationare of infinitely less importance to the race than the smallest additionto the philosophy of the spirit. Empirical science, with the collusionof positivism, has stolen the cloak of philosophy and must be made togive it back. 

Among Croce's other important contributions to thought must be mentionedhis definition of History as being aesthetic and differing from Artsolely in that history represents the _real_, art the _possible_. Inconnection with this definition and its proof, the philosopher recountshow he used to hold an opposite view. Doing everything thoroughly, hehad prepared and written out a long disquisition on this thesis, whichwas already in type, when suddenly, from the midst of his meditations, _the truth flashed upon him_. He saw for the first time clearly thathistory cannot be a science, since, like art, it always deals with theparticular. Without a moment's hesitation he hastened to the printersand bade them break up the type. 

This incident is illustrative of the sincerity and good faith ofBenedetto Croce. One knows him to be severe for the faults andweaknesses of others, merciless for his own. 

Yet though severe, the editor of _La Critica_ is uncompromisingly just, and would never allow personal dislike or jealousy, or any extrinsicconsideration, to stand in the way of fair treatment to the writerconcerned. Many superficial English critics might benefit considerablyby attention to this quality in one who is in other respects also soimmeasurably their superior. A good instance of this impartiality is hiscritique of Schopenhauer, with whose system he is in completedisagreement, yet affords him full credit for what of truth is containedin his voluminous writings. [2]

Croce's education was largely completed in Germany, and on account oftheir thoroughness he has always been an upholder of German methods. Oneof his complaints against the Italian Positivists is that they only readsecond-rate works in French or at the most "the dilettante bookletspublished in such profusion by the Anglo-Saxon press. " This tendencytowards German thought, especially in philosophy, depends upon the factof the former undoubted supremacy of Germany in that field, but Crocedoes not for a moment admit the inferiority of the Neo-Latin races, andadds with homely humour in reference to Germany, that we "must not throwaway the baby with the bath-water"! Close, arduous study and clearthought are the only key to scientific (philosophical) truth, and Crocenever begins an article for a newspaper without the complete collectionof the works of the author to be criticized, and his own elaborate noteson the table before him. Schopenhauer said there were three kinds ofwriters--those who write without thinking, the great majority; those whothink while they write, not very numerous; those who write after theyhave thought, very rare. Croce certainly belongs to the last division, and, as I have said, always feeds his thought upon complete erudition. The bibliography of the works consulted for the _Estetica_ alone, asprinted at the end of the Italian edition, extends to many pages andcontains references to works in any way dealing with the subject in allthe European languages. For instance, Croce has studied Mr. B. Bosanquet's eclectic works on Aesthetic, largely based upon Germansources and by no means without value. But he takes exception to Mr. Bosanquet's statement that _he_ has consulted all works of importance onthe subject of Aesthetic. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bosanquet reveals hisignorance of the greater part of the contribution to Aesthetic made bythe Neo-Latin races, which the reader of this book will recognize as offirst-rate importance. 

This thoroughness it is which gives such importance to the literary andphilosophical criticisms of _La Critica_. Croce's method is alwayshistorical, and his object in approaching any work of art is to classifythe spirit of its author, as expressed in that work. There are, hemaintains, but two things to be considered in criticizing a book. Theseare, _firstly_, what is its _peculiarity_, in what way is it singular, how is it differentiated from other works? _Secondly_, what is itsdegree of purity?--That is, to what extent has its author kept himselffree from all considerations alien to the perfection of the work as anexpression, as a lyrical intuition? With the answering of thesequestions Croce is satisfied. He does not care to know if the authorkeep a motor-car, like Maeterlinck; or prefer to walk on Putney Heath, like Swinburne. This amounts to saying that all works of art must bejudged by their own standard. How far has the author succeeded in doingwhat he intended?

Croce is far above any personal animus, although the same cannot be saidof those he criticizes. These, like d'Annunzio, whose limitations hepoints out--his egoism, his lack of human sympathy--are often verybitter, and accuse the penetrating critic of want of courtesy. Thisseriousness of purpose runs like a golden thread through all Croce'swork. The flimsy superficial remarks on poetry and fiction which toooften pass for criticism in England (Scotland is a good deal morethorough) are put to shame by _La Critica_, the study of which I commendto all readers who read or wish to read Italian. [3] They will find inits back numbers a complete picture of a century of Italian literature, besides a store-house of philosophical criticism. The _Quarterly_ and_Edinburgh Reviews_ are our only journals which can be compared to _TheCritica_, and they are less exhaustive on the philosophical side. Weshould have to add to these _Mind_ and the _Hibbert Journal_ to get evenan approximation to the scope of the Italian review. 

As regards Croce's general philosophical position, it is important tounderstand that he is _not_ a Hegelian, in the sense of being a closefollower of that philosopher. One of his last works is that in which hedeals in a masterly manner with the philosophy of Hegel. The title maybe translated, "What is living and what is dead of the philosophy ofHegel. " Here he explains to us the Hegelian system more clearly thanthat wondrous edifice was ever before explained, and we realize at thesame time that Croce is quite as independent of Hegel as of Kant, ofVico as of Spinoza. Of course he has made use of the best of Hegel, justas every thinker makes use of his predecessors and is in his turn madeuse of by those that follow him. But it is incorrect to accuse ofHegelianism the author of an anti-hegelian _Aesthetic_, of a _Logic_where Hegel is only half accepted, and of a _Philosophy of thePractical_, which contains hardly a trace of Hegel. I give an instance. If the great conquest of Hegel be the dialectic of opposites, his greatmistake lies in the confusion of opposites with things which aredistinct but not opposite. If, says Croce, we take as an example theapplication of the Hegelian triad that formulates becoming (affirmation, negation and synthesis), we find it applicable for those opposites whichare true and false, good and evil, being and not-being, but _notapplicable_ to things which are distinct but not opposite, such as artand philosophy, beauty and truth, the useful and the moral. Theseconfusions led Hegel to talk of the death of art, to conceive aspossible a Philosophy of History, and to the application of the naturalsciences to the absurd task of constructing a Philosophy of Nature. Croce has cleared away these difficulties by shewing that if from themeeting of opposites must arise a superior synthesis, such a synthesiscannot arise from things which are distinct _but not opposite_, sincethe former are connected together as superior and inferior, and theinferior can exist without the superior, but _not vice versa_. Thus wesee how philosophy cannot exist without art, while art, occupying thelower place, can and does exist without philosophy. This brief examplereveals Croce's independence in dealing with Hegelian problems. 

I know of no philosopher more generous than Croce in praise andelucidation of other workers in the same field, past and present. Forinstance, and apart from Hegel, _Kant_ has to thank him for drawingattention to the marvellous excellence of the _Critique of Judgment_, generally neglected in favour of the Critiques of _Pure Reason and ofPractical Judgment_; _Baumgarten_ for drawing the attention of the worldto his obscure name and for reprinting his Latin thesis in which theword _Aesthetic_ occurs for the first time; and _Schleiermacher_ for thetributes paid to his neglected genius in the History of Aesthetic. _LaCritica_, too, is full of generous appreciation of contemporaries byCroce and by that profound thinker, Gentile. 

But it is not only philosophers who have reason to be grateful to Crocefor his untiring zeal and diligence. Historians, economists, poets, actors, and writers of fiction have been rescued from their undeservedlimbo by this valiant Red Cross knight, and now shine with duebrilliance in the circle of their peers. It must also be admitted that alarge number of false lights, popular will o' the wisps, have beenruthlessly extinguished with the same breath. For instance, Karl Marx, the socialist theorist and agitator, finds in Croce an exponent of hisviews, in so far as they are based upon the truth, but where heblunders, his critic immediately reveals the origin and nature of hismistakes. Croce's studies in Economic are chiefly represented by hiswork, the title of which may be translated "Historical Materialism andMarxist Economic. "

To indicate the breadth and variety of Croce's work I will mention thefurther monograph on the sixteenth century Neapolitan Pulcinella (theoriginal of our Punch), and the personage of the Neapolitan in comedy, amonument of erudition and of acute and of lively dramatic criticism, that would alone have occupied an ordinary man's activity for half alifetime. One must remember, however, that Croce's average working dayis of ten hours. His interest is concentrated on things of the mind, andalthough he sits on several Royal Commissions, such as those of theArchives of all Italy and of the monument to King Victor Emmanuel, hehas taken no university degree, and much dislikes any affectation ofacademic superiority. He is ready to meet any one on equal terms and trywith them to get at the truth on any subject, be it historical, literary, or philosophical. "Truth, " he says, "is democratic, " and I cantestify that the search for it, in his company, is very stimulating. Asis well said by Prezzolini, "He has a new word for all. "

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 systemby its action on others, then we must place the _Philosophy of theSpirit_ very high. It may be said with perfect truth that since thedeath of the poet Carducci there has been no influence in Italy tocompare with that of Benedetto Croce. 

His dislike of Academies and of all forms of prejudice runs parallelwith his breadth and sympathy with all forms of thought. His activity inthe present is only equalled by his reverence for the past. Naples heloves with the blind love of the child for its parent, and he has beenof notable assistance to such Neapolitan talent as is manifested in theworks of Salvatore di Giacomo, whose best poems are written in thedialect of Naples, or rather in a dialect of his own, which Croce haddifficulty in persuading the author always to retain. The original jetof inspiration having been in dialect, it is clear that to amend thisinspiration at the suggestion of wiseacres at the Café would have beento ruin it altogether. 

Of the popularity that his system and teaching have already attained wemay judge by the fact that the _Aesthetic_[4], despite the difficulty ofthe subject, is already in its third edition in Italy, where, owing toits influence, philosophy sells better than fiction; while the Frenchand Germans, not to mention the Czechs, have long had translations ofthe earlier editions. His _Logic_ is on the point of appearing in itssecond edition, and I have no doubt that the _Philosophy of thePractical_ will eventually equal these works in popularity. _Theimportance and value of Italian thought have been too long neglected inGreat Britain_. Where, as in Benedetto Croce, we get the clarity ofvision of the Latin, joined to the thoroughness and erudition of thebest German tradition, we have a combination of rare power andeffectiveness, which can by no means be neglected. 

The philosopher feels that he has a great mission, which is nothing lessthan the leading back of thought to belief in the spirit, deserted by somany for crude empiricism and positivism. His view of philosophy is thatit sums up all the higher human activities, including religion, and thatin proper hands it is able to solve any problem. But there is nofinality about problems: the solution of one leads to the posing ofanother, and so on. Man is the maker of life, and his spirit everproceeds from a lower to a higher perfection. Connected with this viewof life is Croce's dislike of "Modernism. " When once a problem has beencorrectly solved, it is absurd to return to the same problem. RomanCatholicism cannot march with the times. It can only exist by beingconservative--its only Logic is to be illogical. Therefore, Croce isopposed to Loisy and Neo-Catholicism, and supports the Encyclicalagainst Modernism. The Catholic religion, with its great stores of mythand morality, which for many centuries was the best thing in the world, is still there for those who are unable to assimilate other food. Another instance of his dislike for Modernism is his criticism ofPascoli, whose attempts to reveal enigmas in the writings of Dante helooks upon as useless. We do not, he says, read Dante in the twentiethcentury for his hidden meanings, but for his revealed poetry. 

I believe that Croce will one day be recognized as one of the very fewgreat teachers of humanity. At present he is not appreciated at nearlyhis full value. One rises from a study of his philosophy with a sense ofhaving 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 otherphilosophies. 

Croce has been called the philosopher-poet, and if we take philosophy asNovalis understood it, certainly Croce does belong to the poets, thoughnot to the formal category of those who write in verse. Croce is at anyrate a born philosopher, and as every trade tends to make its objectprosaic, so does every vocation tend to make it poetic. Yet no one hastoiled more earnestly than Croce. "Thorough" might well be his motto, and if to-day he is admitted to be a classic without the stiffness oneconnects with that term, be sure he has well merited the designation. His name stands for the best that Italy has to give the world ofserious, stimulating thought. I know nothing to equal it elsewhere. 

Secure in his strength, Croce will often introduce a joke or someamusing illustration from contemporary life, in the midst of a mostprofound and serious argument. This spirit of mirth is a sign ofsuperiority. He who is not sure of himself can spare no energy for themaking of mirth. Croce loves to laugh at his enemies and with hisfriends. So the philosopher of Naples sits by the blue gulf and explainsthe universe to those who have ears to hear. "One can philosophizeanywhere, " he says--but he remains significantly at Naples. 

Thus I conclude these brief remarks upon the author of the _Aesthetic_, confident that those who give time and attention to its study will begrateful for having placed in their hands this pearl of great price fromthe diadem of the antique Parthenope. 

DOUGLAS AINSLIE. 

THE ATHENAEUM, PALL MALL, _May_ 1909. 

[1] Napoli, Riccardo Ricciardi, 1909. 

[2] The reader will find this critique summarized in the historical portion of this volume. 

[3] _La Critica_ is published every other month by Laterza of Bari. 

[4] This translation is made from the third Italian edition (Bari, 1909), enlarged and corrected by the author. The _Theory of Aesthetic_ first appeared in 1900 in the form of a communication to the _Accademia Pontiana_ of Naples, vol. Xxx. The first edition is dated 1902, the second 1904 (Palermo). 

I

INTUITION AND EXPRESSION

 [Sidenote] _Intuitive knowledge. _

Human knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge orlogical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination orknowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual orknowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relationsbetween them: it is, in fact, productive either of images or ofconcepts. 

In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. Itis said to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; thatthey are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learntintuitively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, whois without a lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogueinsists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in thepupil before everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makesit a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judgeit by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live rather byintuition than by reason. 

But this ample acknowledgment, granted to intuitive knowledge inordinary life, does not meet with an equal and adequate acknowledgmentin the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists a very ancientscience of intellective knowledge, admitted by all without discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is timidly and withdifficulty admitted by but a few. Logical knowledge has appropriated thelion's share; and if she does not quite slay and devour her companion, yet yields to her with difficulty the humble little place of maidservantor doorkeeper. What, it says, is intuitive knowledge without the lightof intellective knowledge? It is a servant without a master; and thougha master find a servant useful, the master is a necessity to theservant, since he enables him to gain his livelihood. Intuition isblind; Intellect lends her eyes. 

 [Sidenote] _Its independence in respect to intellective knowledge. _

Now, the first point to be firmly fixed in the mind is that intuitiveknowledge has no need of a master, nor to lean upon any one; she doesnot need to borrow the eyes of others, for she has most excellent eyesof her own. Doubtless it is possible to find concepts mingled withintuitions. But in many other intuitions there is no trace of such amixture, which proves that it is not necessary. The impression of amoonlight scene by a painter; the outline of a country drawn by acartographer; a musical motive, tender or energetic; the words of asighing lyric, or those with which we ask, command and lament inordinary life, may well all be intuitive facts without a shadow ofintellective relation. But, think what one may of these instances, andadmitting further that one may maintain that the greater part of theintuitions of civilized man are impregnated with concepts, there yetremains 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 beenconcepts, but they have now become simple elements of intuition. The philosophical maxims placed in the mouth of a personage of tragedyor of comedy, perform there the function, not of concepts, but ofcharacteristics of such personage; in the same way as the red in apainted figure does not there represent the red colour of thephysicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait. The wholeit is that determines the quality of the parts. A work of art may befull of philosophical concepts; it may contain them in greaterabundance and they may be there even more profound than in aphilosophical dissertation, which in its turn may be rich tooverflowing with descriptions and intuitions. But, notwithstanding allthese concepts it may contain, the result of the work of art is anintuition; and notwithstanding all those intuitions, the result of thephilosophical dissertation is a concept. The _Promessi Sposi_ containscopious ethical observations and distinctions, but it does not forthat reason lose in its total effect its character of simple story, ofintuition. In like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions whichmay be found in the works of a philosopher like Schopenhauer, do notremove from those works their character of intellective treatises. Thedifference between a scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellective fact and an intuitive fact lies in the result, in the diverse effect aimed at by their respective authors. This it isthat determines and rules over the several parts of each. 

 [Sidenote] _Intuition and perception. _

But to admit the independence of intuition as regards concept does notsuffice to give a true and precise idea of intuition. Another errorarises among those who recognize this, or who, at any rate, do not makeintuition explicitly dependent upon the intellect. This error obscuresand confounds the real nature of intuition. By intuition is frequentlyunderstood the _perception_ or knowledge of actual reality, theapprehension of something as _real_. 

Certainly perception is intuition: the perception of the room in which Iam writing, of the ink-bottle and paper that are before me, of the pen Iam using, of the objects that I touch and make use of as instruments ofmy person, which, if it write, therefore exists;--these are allintuitions. But the image that is now passing through my brain of a mewriting in another room, in another town, with different paper, pen andink, is also an intuition. This means that the distinction betweenreality and non-reality is extraneous, secondary, to the true nature ofintuition. If we assume the existence of a human mind which should haveintuitions for the first time, it would seem that it could haveintuitions of effective reality only, that is to say, that it could haveperceptions of nothing but the real. But if the knowledge of reality bebased upon the distinction between real images and unreal images, and ifthis distinction does not originally exist, these intuitions would intruth not be intuitions either of the real or of the unreal, but pureintuitions. Where all is real, nothing is real. The child, with itsdifficulty of distinguishing true from false, history from fable, whichare all one to childhood, can furnish us with a sort of very vague andonly remotely approximate idea of this ingenuous state. Intuition is theindifferentiated unity of the perception of the real and of the simpleimage of the possible. In our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves toexternal reality as empirical beings, but we simply objectify ourimpressions, whatever they be. 

 [Sidenote] _Intuition and the concepts of space and time. _

Those, therefore, who look upon intuition as sensation formed andarranged simply according to the categories of space and time, wouldseem to approximate more nearly to the truth. Space and time (they say)are the forms of intuition; to have intuitions is to place in space andin temporal sequence. Intuitive activity would then consist in thisdouble and concurrent function of spatiality and temporality. But forthese two categories must be repeated what was said of intellectualdistinctions, found mingled with intuitions. We have intuitions withoutspace and without time: a tint of sky and a tint of sentiment, an Ah! ofpain and an effort of will, objectified in consciousness. These areintuitions, which we possess, and with their making, space and time havenothing to do. In some intuitions, spatiality may be found withouttemporality, in others, this without that; and even where both arefound, they are perceived by posterior reflexion: they can be fused withthe intuition in like manner with all its other elements: that is, theyare in it _materialiter_ and not _formaliter_, as ingredients and not asessentials. Who, without a similar act of interruptive reflexion, isconscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or a piece ofmusic? That which intuition reveals in a work of art is not space andtime, but character, individual physiognomy. Several attempts may benoted in modern philosophy, which confirm the view here exposed. Spaceand time, far from being very simple and primitive functions, are shownto be intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, evenin some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time thequality of forming or of categories and functions, one may observe theattempt to unify and to understand them in a different manner from thatgenerally maintained in respect of these categories. Some reduceintuition to the unique category of spatiality, maintaining that timealso can only be conceived in terms of space. Others abandon the threedimensions of space as not philosophically necessary, and conceive thefunction of spatiality as void of every particular spatialdetermination. But what could such a spatial function be, that shouldcontrol even time? May it not be a residuum of criticisms and ofnegations from which arises merely the necessity to posit a genericintuitive activity? And is not this last truly determined, when oneunique function is attributed to it, not spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing? Or, better, when this is conceived as itself acategory or function, which gives knowledge of things in theirconcretion and individuality?

 [Sidenote] _Intuition and sensation. _

Having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion ofintellectualism and from every posterior and external adjunct, we mustnow make clear and determine its limits from another side and from adifferent kind of invasion and confusion. On the other side, and beforethe inferior boundary, is sensation, formless matter, which the spiritcan never apprehend in itself, in so far as it is mere matter. This itcan only possess with form and in form, but postulates its concept as, precisely, a limit. Matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity;it is what the spirit of man experiences, but does not produce. Withoutit no human knowledge and activity is possible; but mere matter producesanimality, whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritualdominion, which is humanity. How often do we strive to understandclearly what is passing within us? We do catch a glimpse of something, but this does not appear to the mind as objectified and formed. In suchmoments it is, that we best perceive the profound difference betweenmatter and form. These are not two acts of ours, face to face with oneanother; but we assault and carry off the one that is outside us, whilethat within us tends to absorb and make its own that without. Matter, attacked and conquered by form, gives place to concrete form. It is thematter, the content, that differentiates one of our intuitions fromanother: form is constant: it is spiritual activity, while matter ischangeable. Without matter, however, our spiritual activity would notleave its abstraction to become concrete and real, this or thatspiritual 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 soeasily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of manwith the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save whenwe imagine, with Aesop, that _arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae_. Someeven affirm that they have never observed in themselves this"miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only oneof quantity, between sweating and thinking, feeling cold and the energyof the will. Others, certainly with greater reason, desire to unifyactivity and mechanism in a more general concept, though admitting thatthey are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain for the momentfrom examining if such a unification be possible, and in what sense, butadmitting that the attempt may be made, it is clear that to unify twoconcepts in a third implies a difference between the two first. And hereit is this difference that is of importance and we set it in relief. 

 [Sidenote] _Intuition and association. _

Intuition has often been confounded with simple sensation. But, sincethis confusion is too shocking to good sense, it has more frequentlybeen attenuated or concealed with a phraseology which seems to wish toconfuse and to distinguish them at the same time. Thus, it has beenasserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple sensationas _association_ of sensations. The equivoque arises precisely from theword "association. " Association is understood, either as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that case isevident the absurdity of wishing to join together in memory elementswhich are not intuified, distinguished, possessed in some way by thespirit and produced by consciousness: or it is understood as associationof unconscious elements. In this case we remain in the world ofsensation and of nature. Further, if with certain associationists wespeak of an association which is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but is a _productive_ association (formative, constructive, distinguishing); then we admit the thing itself and deny only its name. In truth, productive association is no longer association in the senseof the sensualists, but _synthesis_, that is to say, spiritual activity. Synthesis may be called association; but with the concept ofproductivity is already posited the distinction between passivity andactivity, between sensation and intuition. 

 [Sidenote] _Intuition and representation. _

Other psychologists are disposed to distinguish from sensation somethingwhich is sensation no longer, but is not yet intellective concept: _therepresentation or image_. What is the difference between theirrepresentation or image, and our intuitive knowledge? The greatest, andnone at all. "Representation, " too, is a very equivocal word. If byrepresentation be understood something detached and standing out fromthe psychic base of the sensations, then representation is intuition. If, on the other hand, it be conceived as a complex sensation, a returnis made to simple sensation, which does not change its quality accordingto its richness or poverty, operating alike in a rudimentary or in adeveloped organism full of traces of past sensations. Nor is theequivoque remedied by defining representation as a psychic product ofsecondary order in relation to sensation, which should occupy the firstplace. What does secondary order mean here? Does it mean a qualitative, a formal difference? If so, we agree: representation is elaboration ofsensation, it is intuition. Or does it mean greater complexity andcomplication, a quantitative, material difference? In that caseintuition would be again confused with simple sensation. 

 [Sidenote] _Intuition and expression. _

And yet there is a sure method of distinguishing true intuition, truerepresentation, from that which is inferior to it: the spiritual factfrom the mechanical, passive, natural fact. Every true intuition orrepresentation is, also, _expression_. That which does not objectifyitself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensationand naturality. The spirit does not obtain intuitions, otherwise than bymaking, forming, expressing. He who separates intuition from expressionnever succeeds in reuniting them. 

_Intuitive activity possesses intuitions to the extent that it expressesthem_. --Should this expression seem at first paradoxical, that ischiefly because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given tothe word "expression. " It is generally thought of as restricted toverbal expression. But there exist also non-verbal expressions, such asthose of line, colour, and sound; to all of these must be extended ouraffirmation. The intuition and expression together of a painter arepictorial; those of a poet are verbal. But be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or whatever else it be called, to no intuition canexpression be wanting, because it is an inseparable part of intuition. How can we possess a true intuition of a geometrical figure, unless wepossess so accurate an image of it as to be able to trace it immediatelyupon paper or on a slate? How can we have an intuition of the contour ofa region, for example, of the island of Sicily, if we are not able todraw it as it is in all its meanderings? Every one can experience theinternal illumination which follows upon his success in formulating tohimself his impressions and sentiments, but only so far as he is able toformulate them. Sentiments or impressions, then, pass by means of wordsfrom the obscure region of the soul into the clarity of thecontemplative spirit. In this cognitive process it is impossible todistinguish intuition from expression. The one is produced with theother at the same instant, because they are not two, but one. 

 [Sidenote] _Illusions as to their difference. _

The principal reason which makes our theme appear paradoxical as wemaintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a morecomplete intuition of reality than we really do. One often hears peoplesay that they have in their minds many important thoughts, but that theyare not able to express them. In truth, if they really had them, theywould have coined them into beautiful, ringing words, and thus expressedthem. If these thoughts seem to vanish or to become scarce and poor inthe act of expressing them, either they did not exist or they reallywere scarce and poor. People think that all of us ordinary men imagineand have intuitions of countries, figures and scenes, like painters; ofbodies, like sculptors; save that painters and sculptors know how topaint and to sculpture those images, while we possess them only withinour souls. They believe that anyone could have imagined a Madonna ofRaphael; but that Raphael was Raphael owing to his technical ability inputting the Madonna upon the canvas. Nothing can be more false than thisview. The world of which as a rule we have intuitions, is a small thing. It consists of little expressions which gradually become greater andmore ample with the increasing spiritual concentration of certainmoments. These are the sort of words which we speak within ourselves, the judgments that we tacitly express: "Here is a man, here is a horse, this is heavy, this is hard, this pleases me, " etc. It is a medley oflight and colour, which could not pictorially attain to any more sincereexpression than a haphazard splash of colours, from among which wouldwith difficulty stand out a few special, distinctive traits. This andnothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life; this is the basisof our ordinary action. It is the index of a book. The labels tied tothings take the place of the things themselves. This index and labels(which are themselves expressions) suffice for our small needs and smallactions. From time to time we pass from the index to the book, from thelabel to the thing, or from the slight to the greater intuitions, andfrom these to the greatest and most lofty. This passage is sometimes farfrom being easy. It has been observed by those who have best studied thepsychology of artists, that when, after having given a rapid glance atanyone, they attempt to obtain a true intuition of him, in order, forexample, to paint his portrait, then this ordinary vision, that seemedso precise, so lively, reveals itself as little better than nothing. What remains is found to be at the most some superficial trait, whichwould not even suffice for a caricature. The person to be painted standsbefore the artist like a world to discover. Michael Angelo said, "onepaints, not with one's hands, but with one's brain. " Leonardo shockedthe prior of the convent delle Grazie by standing for days togetheropposite the "Last Supper" without touching it with the brush. Heremarked of this attitude "that men of the most lofty genius, when theyare doing the least work, are then the most active, seeking inventionwith their minds. " The painter is a painter, because he sees what othersonly feel or catch a glimpse of, but do not see. We think we see asmile, but in reality we have only a vague impression of it, we do notperceive all the characteristic traits from which it results, as thepainter perceives them after his internal meditations, which thus enablehim to fix them on the canvas. Even in the case of our intimate friend, who is with us every day and at all hours, we do not possess intuitivelymore than, at the most, certain traits of his physiognomy, which enableus to distinguish him from others. The illusion is less easy as regardsmusical expression; because it would seem strange to everyone to saythat the composer had added or attached notes to the motive, which isalready in the mind of him who is not the composer. As if Beethoven'sNinth Symphony were not his own intuition and his own intuition theNinth Symphony. Thus, just as he who is deceived as to his materialwealth is confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so ishe confuted who nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughtsand images. He is brought back to reality, when he is obliged to crossthe Bridge of Asses of expression. We say to the former, count; to thelatter, speak, here is a pencil, draw, express yourself. 

We have each of us, as a matter of fact, a little of the poet, of thesculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer: but howlittle, as compared with those who are so called, precisely because ofthe lofty degree in which they possess the most universal dispositionsand energies of human nature! How little does a painter possess of theintuitions of a poet! How little does one painter possess those ofanother painter! Nevertheless, that little is all our actual patrimonyof intuitions or representations. Beyond these are only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions, or whatever else one may termwhat is outside the spirit, not assimilated by man, postulated for theconvenience of exposition, but effectively inexistent, if existence bealso a spiritual fact. 

 [Sidenote] _Identity of intuition and expression. _

We may then add this to the verbal variants descriptive of intuition, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge, independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function;indifferent to discriminations, posterior and empirical, to reality andto unreality, to formations and perceptions of space and time, even whenposterior: intuition or representation is distinguished as form fromwhat is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or frompsychic material; and this form this taking possession of, isexpression. To have an intuition is to express. It is nothing else!(nothing more, but nothing less) than _to express_. 

II

INTUITION AND ART

 [Sidenote] _Corollaries and explanations. _

Before proceeding further, it seems opportune to draw certainconsequences from what has been established and to add some explanation. 

 [Sidenote] _Identity of art and intuitive knowledge. _

We have frankly identified intuitive or expressive knowledge with theaesthetic or artistic fact, taking works of art as examples of intuitiveknowledge and attributing to them the characteristics of intuition, and_vice versa_. But our identification is combated by the view, held evenby many philosophers, who consider art to be an intuition of analtogether special sort. "Let us admit" (they say) "that art isintuition; but intuition is not always art: artistic intuition is of adistinct 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 moreconsists. It has sometimes been thought that art is not a simpleintuition, but an intuition of an intuition, in the same way as theconcept of science has been defined, not as the ordinary concept, but asthe concept of a concept. Thus man should attain to art, byobjectifying, not his sensations, as happens with ordinary intuition, but intuition itself. But this process of raising to a second power doesnot exist; and the comparison of it with the ordinary and scientificconcept does not imply what is wished, for the good reason that it isnot true that the scientific concept is the concept of a concept. Ifthis comparison imply anything, it implies just the opposite. Theordinary concept, if it be really a concept and not a simplerepresentation, is a perfect concept, however poor and limited. Sciencesubstitutes concepts for representations; it adds and substitutes otherconcepts larger and more comprehensive for those that are poor andlimited. It is ever discovering new relations. But its method does notdiffer from that by which is formed the smallest universal in the brainof the humblest of men. What is generally called art, by antonomasia, collects intuitions that are wider and more complex than those which wegenerally experience, but these intuitions are always of sensations andimpressions. 

Art is the expression of impressions, not the expression of expressions. 

 [Sidenote] _No difference of intensity. _

For the same reason, it cannot be admitted that intuition, which isgenerally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as tointensity. This would be the case if it were to operate differently onthe same matter. But since artistic function is more widely distributedin different fields, but yet does not differ in method from ordinaryintuition, the difference between the one and the other is not intensivebut extensive. The intuition of the simplest popular love-song, whichsays the same thing, or very nearly, as a declaration of love such asissues at every moment from the lips of thousands of ordinary men, maybe intensively perfect in its poor simplicity, although it beextensively so much more limited than the complex intuition of alove-song by Leopardi. 

 [Sidenote] _The difference is extensive and empirical. _

The whole difference, then, is quantitative, and as such, indifferent tophilosophy, _scientia qualitatum_. Certain men have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express certain complex states ofthe soul. These men are known in ordinary language as artists. Some verycomplicated and difficult expressions are more rarely achieved and theseare called works of art. The limits of the expressions and intuitionsthat are called art, as opposed to those that are vulgarly callednot-art, are empirical and impossible to define. If an epigram be art, why not a single word? If a story; why not the occasional note of thejournalist? If a landscape, why not a topographical sketch? The teacherof philosophy in Molière's comedy was right: "whenever we speak wecreate prose. " But there will always be scholars like Monsieur Jourdain, astonished at having created prose for forty years without knowing it, and who will have difficulty in persuading themselves that when theycall their servant John to bring their slippers, they have spokennothing less than--prose. 

We must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principalreasons which have prevented Aesthetic, the science of art, fromrevealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature, hasbeen its separation from the general spiritual life, the having made ofit a sort of special function or aristocratic circle. No one isastonished when he learns from physiology that every cellule is anorganism and every organism a cellule or synthesis of cellules. No oneis astonished at finding in a lofty mountain the same chemical elementsthat compose a small stone or fragment. There is not one physiology ofsmall animals and one of large animals; nor is there a special chemicaltheory of stones as distinct from mountains. In the same way, there isnot a science of lesser intuition distinct from a science of greaterintuition, nor one of ordinary intuition distinct from artisticintuition. There is but one Aesthetic, the science of intuitive orexpressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic fact. And thisAesthetic is the true analogy of Logic. Logic includes, as facts of thesame nature, the formation of the smallest and most ordinary concept andthe most complicated scientific and philosophical system. 

 [Sidenote] _Artistic genius. _

Nor can we admit that the word _genius_ or artistic genius, as distinctfrom the non-genius of the ordinary man, possesses more than aquantitative signification. Great artists are said to reveal us toourselves. But how could this be possible, unless there be identity ofnature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference beonly one of quantity? It were well to change _poeta nascitur_ into _homonascitur poeta_: some men are born great poets, some small. The cult andsuperstition of the genius has arisen from this quantitative differencehaving been taken as a difference of quality. It has been forgotten thatgenius is not something that has fallen from heaven, but humanityitself. The man of genius, who poses or is represented as distant fromhumanity, finds his punishment in becoming or appearing somewhatridiculous. Examples of this are the _genius_ of the romantic period andthe _superman_ of our time. 

But it is well to note here, that those who claim unconsciousness as thechief quality of an artistic genius, hurl him from an eminence far abovehumanity to a position far below it. Intuitive or artistic genius, likeevery form of human activity, is always conscious; otherwise it would beblind mechanism. The only thing that may be wanting to the artisticgenius is the _reflective_ consciousness, the superadded consciousnessof the historian or critic, which is not essential to artistic genius. 

 [Sidenote] _Content and form in Aesthetic. _

The relation between matter and form, or between _content and form_, asit is generally called, is one of the most disputed questions inAesthetic. Does the aesthetic fact consist of content alone, or of formalone, or of both together? This question has taken on various meanings, which we shall mention, each in its place. But when these words aretaken as signifying what we have above defined, and matter is understoodas emotivity not aesthetically elaborated, that is to say, impressions, and form elaboration, intellectual activity and expression, then ourmeaning cannot be doubtful. We must, therefore, reject the thesis thatmakes the aesthetic fact to consist of the content alone (that is, ofthe simple impressions), in like manner with that other thesis, whichmakes it to consist of a junction between form and content, that is, ofimpressions plus expressions. In the aesthetic fact, the aestheticactivity is not added to the fact of the impressions, but these latterare formed and elaborated by it. The impressions reappear as it were inexpression, like water put into a filter, which reappears the same andyet different on the other side. The aesthetic fact, therefore, is form, and nothing but form. 

From this it results, not that the content is something superfluous (itis, on the contrary, the necessary point of departure for the expressivefact); but that _there is no passage_ between the quality of the contentand that of the form. It has sometimes been thought that the content, inorder to be aesthetic, that is to say, transformable into form, shouldpossess some determinate or determinable quality. But were that so, thenform and content, expression and impression, would be the same thing. Itis true that the content is that which is convertible into form, but ithas no determinable qualities until this transformation takes place. Weknow nothing of its nature. It does not become aesthetic content atonce, but only when it has been effectively transformed. Aestheticcontent has also been defined as what is _interesting_. That is not anuntrue statement; it is merely void of meaning. What, then, isinteresting? Expressive activity? Certainly the expressive activitywould not have raised the content to the dignity of form, had it notbeen interested. The fact of its having been interested is precisely thefact of its raising the content to the dignity of form. But the word"interesting" has also been employed in another not illegitimate sense, which we shall explain further on. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion. _

The proposition that art is _imitation of nature_ has also severalmeanings. Now truth has been maintained or at least shadowed with thesewords, now error. More frequently, nothing definite has been thought. One of the legitimate scientific meanings occurs when imitation isunderstood as representation or intuition of nature, a form ofknowledge. And when this meaning has been understood, by placing ingreater relief the spiritual character of the process, the otherproposition becomes also legitimate: namely, that art is the_idealization_ or _idealizing_ imitation of nature. But if by imitationof nature be understood that art gives mechanical reproductions, more orless perfect duplicates of natural objects, before which the same tumultof impressions caused by natural objects begins over again, then theproposition is evidently false. The painted wax figures that seem to bealive, and before which we stand astonished in the museums where suchthings are shown, do not give aesthetic intuitions. Illusion andhallucination have nothing to do with the calm domain of artisticintuition. If an artist paint the interior of a wax-work museum, or ifan actor give a burlesque portrait of a man-statue on the stage, weagain have spiritual labour and artistic intuition. Finally, ifphotography have anything in it of artistic, it will be to the extentthat it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. And if it benot altogether art, that is precisely because the element of nature init remains more or less insubordinate 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 addsomething to any of them?

 [Sidenote] _Critique of art conceived as a sentimental not a theoretical fact. Aesthetic appearance and feeling. _

The statements repeated so often, with others similar, that art is notknowledge, that it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong tothe world of theory, but to the world of feeling, arise from the failureto realize exactly the theoretic character of the simple intuition. Thissimple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge, as it isdistinct from the perception of the real. The belief that only theintellective is knowledge, or at the most also the perception of thereal, also arises from the failure to grasp the theoretic character ofthe simple intuition. We have seen that intuition is knowledge, free ofconcepts and more simple than the so-called perception of the real. Since art is knowledge and form, it does not belong to the world offeeling and of psychic material. The reason why so many aestheticianshave so often insisted that art is _appearance_ (_Schein_), is preciselybecause they have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the morecomplex fact of perception by maintaining its pure intuitivity. For thesame reason it has been claimed that art is _sentiment_. In fact, if theconcept as content of art, and historical reality as such, be excluded, there remains no other content than reality apprehended in all itsingenuousness and immediateness in the vital effort, in _sentiment_, that is to say, pure intuition. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of theory of aesthetic senses. _

The theory of the _aesthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure toestablish, or from having lost to view the character of the expressionas distinct from the impression, of the form as distinct from thematter. 

As has just been pointed out, this reduces itself to the error ofwishing to seek a passage from the quality of the content to that of theform. To ask, in fact, what the aesthetic senses may be, implies askingwhat sensible impressions may be able to enter into aestheticexpressions, and what must of necessity do so. To this we must at oncereply, that all impressions can enter into aesthetic expressions orformations, but that none are bound to do so. Dante raised to thedignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire"(visual impression), but also tactile or thermic impressions, such asthe "thick air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch all the more" thethroat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visualimpressions is a curious illusion. The bloom of a cheek, the warmth of ayouthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the cutting of asharpened blade, are not these, also, impressions that we have from apicture? Maybe they are visual? What would a picture be for ahypothetical man, deprived of all or many of his senses, who should inan instant acquire the sole organ of sight? The picture we are standingopposite and believe we see only with our eyes, would appear to his eyesas little more than the paint-smeared palette of a painter. 

Some who hold firmly to the aesthetic character of given groups ofimpressions (for example, the visual, the auditive), and exclude others, admit, however, that if visual and auditive impressions enter _directly_into the aesthetic fact, those of the other senses also enter into it, but only as _associated_. But this distinction is altogether arbitrary. Aesthetic expression is a synthesis, in which it is impossible todistinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are by it placed on alevel, in so far as they are aestheticised. He who takes into himselfthe image of a picture or of a poem does not experience, as it were, aseries of impressions as to this image, some of which have a prerogativeor precedence over others. And nothing is known of what happens prior tohaving received it, for the distinctions made after reflexion havenothing to do with art. 

The theory of the aesthetic senses has also been presented in anotherway; that is to say, as the attempt to establish what physiologicalorgans are necessary for the aesthetic fact. The physiological organ orapparatus is nothing but a complex of cellules, thus and thusconstituted, thus and thus disposed; that is to say, it is merelyphysical and natural fact or concept. But expression does not recognizephysiological facts. Expression has its point of departure in theimpressions, and the physiological path by which these have found theirway to the mind is to it altogether indifferent. One way or anotheramounts to the same thing: it suffices that they are impressions. 

It is true that the want of given organs, that is, of given complexes ofcells, produces an absence of given impressions (when these are notobtained by another path by a kind of organic compensation). The manborn blind cannot express or have the intuition of light. But theimpressions are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by thestimuli which operate upon the organ. Thus, he who has never had theimpression of the sea will never be able to express it, in the same wayas he who has never had the impression of the great world or of thepolitical conflict will never express the one or the other. This, however, does not establish a dependence of the expressive function onthe stimulus or on the organ. It is the repetition of what we knowalready: expression presupposes impression. Therefore, given expressionsimply given impressions. Besides, every impression excludes otherimpressions during the moment in which it dominates; and so does everyexpression. 

 [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 uniqueexpression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that theworld of art should have _unity_, or, what amounts to the same thing, _unity in variety_. Expression is a synthesis of the various, themultiple, in the one. 

The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, as a poem into scenes, episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures andobjects, background, foreground, etc. , may seem to be an objection tothis affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividingthe organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns theliving being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms inwhich the division gives place to more living things, but in such acase, and if we transfer the analogy to the aesthetic fact, we mustconclude for a multiplicity of germs of life, that is to say, for aspeedy re-elaboration of the single parts into new single expressions. 

It will be observed that expression is sometimes based on otherexpressions. There are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. Onemust admit some difference between the _eureka_, with which Archimedesexpressed all his joy after his discovery, and the expressive act(indeed all the five acts) of a regular tragedy. Not in the least:expression is always directly based on impressions. He who conceives atragedy puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, ofimpressions: the expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as wecan cast into a smelting furnace formless pieces of bronze and mostprecious statuettes. Those most precious statuettes must be melted inthe same way as the formless bits of bronze, before there can be a newstatue. The old expressions must descend again to the level ofimpressions, in order to be synthetized in a new single expression. 

 [Sidenote] _Art as the deliverer. _

By elaborating his impressions, man _frees_ himself from them. Byobjectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself theirsuperior. The liberating and purifying function of art is another aspectand another formula of its character of activity. Activity is thedeliverer, just because it drives away passivity. 

This also explains why it is customary to attribute to artists alike themaximum of sensibility or _passion_, and the maximum insensibility orOlympic _serenity_. Both qualifications agree, for they do not refer tothe same object. The sensibility or passion relates to the rich materialwhich the artist absorbs into his psychic organism; the insensibility orserenity to the form with which he subjugates and dominates the tumultof the feelings and of the passions. 

III

ART AND PHILOSOPHY

 [Sidenote] _Indissolubility of intellective from intuitive knowledge. _

The two forms of knowledge, aesthetic and intellectual or conceptual, are indeed diverse, but this does not amount altogether to separationand disjunction, as we find with two forces going each its own way. Ifwe have shown that the aesthetic form is altogether independent of theintellectual and suffices to itself without external support, we havenot said that the intellectual can stand without the aesthetic. This_reciprocity_ would not be true. 

What is knowledge by concepts? It is knowledge of relations of things, and those things are intuitions. Concepts are not possible withoutintuitions, just as intuition is itself impossible without the materialof impressions. Intuitions are: this river, this lake, this brook, thisrain, this glass of water; the concept is: water, not this or thatappearance and particular example of water, but water in general, inwhatever time or place it be realized; the material of infiniteintuitions, but of one single and constant concept. 

However, the concept, the universal, if it be no longer intuition in onerespect, is in another respect intuition, and cannot fail of beingintuition. For the man who thinks has impressions and emotions, in sofar as he thinks. His impression and emotion will not be love or hate, but _the effort of his thought itself_, with the pain and the joy, thelove and the hate joined to it. This effort cannot but become intuitivein form, in becoming objective to the mind. To speak, is not to thinklogically; but to _think logically_ is, at the same time, to _speak_. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique 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 equivoques and errors. 

The first of the equivoques is implied by those who observe that one canlikewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers, ideographic signs, without a single word, even pronounced silently andalmost insensibly within one. They also affirm that there are languagesin which the word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless thewritten sign also be looked at. But when we said "speech, " we intendedto employ a synecdoche, and that "expression" generically, should beunderstood, for expression is not only so-called verbal expression, aswe have already noted. It may be admitted that certain concepts may bethought without phonetic manifestations. But the very examples adducedto show this also prove that those concepts never exist withoutexpressions. 

Others maintain that animals, or certain animals, think or reasonwithout speaking. Now as to how, whether, and what animals think, whether they be rudimentary, half-savage men resisting civilization, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists would haveit, are questions that do not concern us here. When the philosophertalks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature and the like, hedoes not base himself on conjectures as to these facts concerning dogsor cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called animaland brutal in man: of the boundary or animal basis of what we feel inourselves. If individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants, possesssomething of the activity of man, so much the better, or so much theworse for them. This means that as regards them also we must talk, notof their nature as a whole, but of its animal basis, as being perhapslarger and more strong than the animal basis of man. And if we supposethat animals think, and form concepts, what is there in the line ofconjecture to justify the admission that they do so withoutcorresponding expressions? The analogy with man, the knowledge of thespirit, human psychology, which is the instrument of all our conjecturesas to animal psychology, would oblige us to suppose that if they thinkin any way, they also have some sort of speech. 

It is from human psychology, that is, literary psychology, that comesthe other objection, to the effect that the concept can exist withoutthe word, because it is true that we all know books that are _wellthought and badly written_: that is to say, a thought which remainsthought _beyond_ the expression, _notwithstanding_ the imperfectexpression. But when we talk of books well thought and badly written, wecannot mean other than that in those books are parts, pages, periods orpropositions well thought out and well written, and other parts (perhapsthe least important) ill thought out and badly written, not trulythought out and therefore not truly expressed. Where Vico's _Scienzanuova_ is really ill written, it is also ill thought out. If we passfrom the consideration of big books to a short proposition, the error orthe imprecision of this statement will be recognized at once. How coulda proposition be clearly thought and confusedly written out?

All that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts(concepts) in an intuitive form, or in an abbreviated or, better, peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient tocommunicate it with ease to another or other definite individuals. Hencepeople say inaccurately, that we have the thought without theexpression; whereas it should properly be said that we have, indeed, theexpression, but in a form that is not easy of social communication. This, however, is a very variable and altogether relative fact. Thereare always people who catch our thought on the wing, and prefer it inthis abbreviated form, and would be displeased with the greaterdevelopment of it, necessary for other people. In other words, thethought considered abstractly and logically will be the same; butaesthetically we are dealing with two different intuition-expressions, into both of which enter different psychological elements. The sameargument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret correctly, thealtogether empirical distinction between an _internal_ and an _external_language. 

 [Sidenote] _Art and science. _

The most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and ofintuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, Art andScience. Art and Science, then, are different and yet linked together;they meet on one side, which is the aesthetic side. Every scientificwork is also a work of art. The aesthetic side may remain littlenoticed, when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort tounderstand the thought of the man of science, and to examine its truth. But it is no longer concealed, when we pass from the activity ofunderstanding to that of contemplation, and behold that thought eitherdeveloped before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluouswords, without lack of words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; orconfused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimestermed great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more orless fragmentary writers, if indeed their fragments are scientificallyto be compared with harmonious, coherent, and perfect works. 

 [Sidenote] _Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry. _

We pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. Thefragments console us for the failure of the whole, for it is far moreeasy to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary workof genius than to achieve the discovery of genius. But how can we pardonmediocre expression in pure artists? _Mediocribus esse poetis non di, non homines, non concessere columnae_. The poet or painter who lacksform, lacks everything, because he lacks _himself_. Poetical materialpermeates the Soul of all: the expression alone, that is to say, theform, makes the poet. And here appears the truth of the thesis whichdenies to art all content, as content being understood just theintellectual concept. In this sense, when we take "content" as equal to"concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist ofcontent, but also that _it has no content_. 

In the same way the distinction between _poetry and prose_ cannot bejustified, save in that of art and science. It was seen in antiquitythat such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such asrhythm and metre, or on the freedom or the limitation of the form; thatit was, on the contrary, altogether internal. Poetry is the language ofsentiment; prose of the intellect; but since the intellect is alsosentiment, in its concretion and reality, so all prose has a poeticalside. 

 [Sidenote] _The relation of first and second degree. _

The relation between intuitive knowledge or expression, and intellectualknowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannotbe otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of _double degree_. The first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the firstcan exist without the second, but the second cannot exist without thefirst. There exists poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry. Expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. Poetryis "the maternal language of the human race"; the first men "were bynature sublime poets. " We also admit this in another way, when weobserve that the passage from soul to mind, from animal to humanactivity, is effected by means of language. And this should be said ofintuition or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhatinaccurate to define language or expression as an _intermediate_ linkbetween nature and humanity, as though it were a mixture of the one andof the other. Where humanity appears, the rest has already disappeared;the man who expresses himself, certainly emerges from the state ofnature, but he really does emerge: he does not stand half within andhalf without, as the use of the phrase "intermediate link" would imply. 

 [Sidenote] _Inexistence of other forms of knowledge. _

The cognitive intellect has no form other than these two. Expression andconcept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man isspent in passing from one to the other and back again. 

 [Sidenote] _History. Its identity with and difference from art. _

_Historicity_ is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form. History is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but intuitionor aesthetic fact. History does not seek for laws nor form concepts; itemploys neither induction nor deduction; it is directed _ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum_; it does not construct universals andabstractions, but posits intuitions. The this, the that, the _individuumomni modo determinatum_, is its kingdom, as it is the kingdom of art. History, therefore, is included under the universal concept of art. 

Faced with this proposition and with the impossibility of conceiving athird mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward whichwould lead to the affiliation of history to intellective or scientificknowledge. The greater portion of these objections is dominated by theprejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptualscience, something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. Thisreally arises from a false idea of art, conceived, not as an essentialtheoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity. Without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned, isfinally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been andstill is widely repeated. It is intended to show the logical andscientific nature of history. The sophism consists in admitting thathistorical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not therepresentation, it is added, so much as the concept of the individual. From this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific formof knowledge. History, in fact, should elaborate the concept of apersonage such as Charlemagne or Napoleon; of an epoch, like theRenaissance or the Reformation; of an event, such as the FrenchRevolution and the Unification of Italy. This it is held to do in thesame way as Geometry elaborates the concepts of spatial form, orAesthetic those of expression. But all this is untrue. History cannot dootherwise than represent Napoleon and Charlemagne, the Renaissance andthe Reformation, the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy asindividual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the sameway as logicians state, that one cannot have a concept of an individual, but only a representation. The so-called concept of the individual isalways a universal or general concept, full of details, very rich, ifyou will, but however rich it be, yet incapable of attaining to thatindividuality, to which historical knowledge, as aesthetic knowledge, alone attains. 

Let us rather show how the content of history comes to be distinguishedfrom that of art. The distinction is secondary. Its origin will be foundin what has already been observed as to the ideal character of theintuition or first perception, in which all is real and thereforenothing is real. The mind forms the concepts of external and internal ata later stage, as it does those of what has happened and of what isdesired, of object and subject, and the like. Thus it distinguisheshistorical from non-historical intuition, the _real_ from the _unreal_, real fancy from pure fancy. Even internal facts, what is desired andimagined, castles in the air, and countries of Cockagne, have theirreality. The soul, too, has its history. His illusions form part of thebiography of every individual. But the history of an individual soul ishistory, because in it is always active the distinction between the realand the unreal, even when the real is the illusions themselves. Butthese distinctive concepts do not appear in history as do scientificconcepts, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and meltedin the aesthetic intuitions, although they stand out in history in analtogether new relief. History does not construct the concepts of thereal and unreal, but makes use of them. History, in fact, is not thetheory of history. Mere conceptual analysis is of no use in realizingwhether an event in our lives were real or imaginary. It is necessary toreproduce the intuitions in the mind in the most complete form, as theywere at the moment of production, in order to recognize the content. Historicity is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination onlyas one intuition is distinguished from another: in the memory. 

 [Sidenote] _Historical criticism. _ [Sidenote] _Historical scepticism. _

Where this is not possible, owing to the delicate and fleeting shadesbetween the real and unreal intuitions, which confuse the one with theother, we must either renounce, for the time at least, the knowledge ofwhat really happened (and this we often do), or we must fall back uponconjecture, verisimilitude, probability. The principle of verisimilitudeand of probability dominates in fact all historical criticism. Examination of the sources and of authority is directed towardestablishing the most credible evidence. And what is the most credibleevidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those who bestremember and (be it understood) have not desired to falsify, nor hadinterest in falsifying the truth of things? From this it follows thatintellectual scepticism finds it easy to deny the certainty of anyhistory, for the certainty of history is never that of science. Historical certainty is composed of memory and of authority, not ofanalyses and of demonstration. To speak of historical induction ordemonstration, is to make a metaphorical use of these expressions, whichbear quite a different meaning in history to that which they bear inscience. The conviction of the historian is the undemonstrableconviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses, listenedattentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him. Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a negligibleminority compared with the occasions when he gets hold of the truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists, inbelieving in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon, " but that whichthe individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlargeand to render as precise as possible this record, which in some placesis dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is, and taken as a whole, it is rich in truth. In a spirit of paradox only, can one doubt if there ever were a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or aCaesar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that onthe 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were seen fixed to thedoor of the church of Wittenberg, or that the Bastile was taken by thepeople of Paris on the 14th of July 1789. 

"What proof givest thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically. Humanity replies "I remember. "

 [Sidenote] _Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits. _

The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of history, is theworld that is called real, natural, including in this definition thereality that is called physical, as well as that which is calledspiritual and human. All this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be realistically shown as it is, or imaginary intuition, artisticin the strict sense, if shown under the aspect of the possible, that isto say, of the imaginable. 

Science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, notindividuality but universality, cannot be anything but a science of thespirit, that is, of what is universal in reality: Philosophy. If natural_sciences_ be spoken of, apart from philosophy, it is necessary toobserve that these are not perfect sciences: they are complexes ofknowledge, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. The so-called naturalsciences themselves recognize, in fact, that they are surrounded bylimitations. These limitations are nothing more than historical andintuitive data. They calculate, measure, establish equalities, regularity, create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their ownway how one fact arises out of other facts; but in their progress theyare always met with facts which are known intuitively and historically. Even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses, sincespace is not three-dimensional or Euclidean, but this assumption is madeuse of by preference, because it is more convenient. What there is oftruth in the natural sciences, is either philosophy or historical fact. What they contain proper to themselves is abstract and arbitrary. Whenthe natural sciences wish to form themselves into perfect sciences, theymust issue from their circle and enter the philosophical circle. Thisthey do when they posit concepts which are anything but natural, such asthose of the atom without extension in space, of ether or vibratingmatter, of vital force, of space beyond the reach of intuition, and thelike. These are true and proper philosophical efforts, when they are notmere words void of meaning. The concepts of natural science are, withoutdoubt, most useful; but one cannot obtain from them that _system_, whichbelongs only to the spirit. 

These historical and intuitive assumptions, which cannot be separatedfrom the natural sciences, furthermore explain, not only how, in theprogress of knowledge, that which was once considered to be truthdescends gradually to the grade of mythological beliefs and imaginaryillusions, but also how, among natural scientists, there are some whoterm all that serves as basis of argument in their teaching _mythicalfacts, verbal expedients_, or _conventions_. The naturalists andmathematicians who approach the study of the energies of the spiritwithout preparation, are apt to carry thither these mental habits and tospeak, in philosophy, of such and such conventions "as arranged by man. "They make conventions of truth and morality, and their supremeconvention is the Spirit itself! However, if there are to beconventions, something must exist about which there is no convention tobe made, but which is itself the agent of the convention. This is thespiritual activity of man. The limitation of the natural sciencespostulates the illimitation of philosophy. 

 [Sidenote] _The phenomenon and the noumenon. _

These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamentalforms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--Art, andScience 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, whileremaining concrete and individual. All the other forms (natural sciencesand mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous elements ofpractical origin. The intuition gives the world, the phenomenon; theconcept gives the noumenon, the Spirit. 

IV

HISTORICISM AND INTELLECTUALISM IN AESTHETIC

These relations between intuitive or aesthetic knowledge and the otherfundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitelyestablished, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a seriesof theories which have been, or are, presented, as theories ofAesthetic. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of verisimilitude and of naturalism. _

From the confusion between the exigencies of art in general and theparticular exigencies of history has arisen the theory (which has lostground to-day, but used to dominate in the past) of _verisimilitude_ asthe object of art. As is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the intention of those who employed and employ the concept ofverisimilitude has no doubt often been much more reasonable than thedefinition given of the word. By verisimilitude used to be meant theartistic _coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, itscompleteness and effectiveness. If "verisimilar" be translated by"coherent, " a most exact meaning will often be found in the discussions, examples, and judgments of the critics. An improbable personage, animprobable ending to a comedy, are really badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without artistic motive. It has beensaid with reason that even fairies and sprites must have verisimilitude, that is to say, be really sprites and fairies, coherent artisticintuitions. Sometimes the word "possible" has been used instead of"verisimilar. " As we have already remarked in passing, this wordpossible is synonymous with that which is imaginable or may be knownintuitively. Everything which is really, that is to say, coherently, imagined, is possible. But formerly, and especially by thetheoreticians, by verisimilar was understood historical credibility, orthat historical truth which is not demonstrable, but conjecturable, nottrue, but verisimilar. It has been sought to impose a like characterupon art. Who does not recall the great part played in literary historyby the criticism of the verisimilar? For example, the fault found withthe _Jerusalem Delivered_, based upon the history of the Crusades, or ofthe Homeric poems, upon that of the verisimilitude of the costume of theemperors and kings?

At other times has been imposed upon art the duty of the aestheticreproduction of historical reality. This is another of the erroneoussignifications assumed by the theory concerning _the imitation ofnature_. Verism and naturalism have since afforded the spectacle of aconfusion of the aesthetic fact with the processes of the naturalsciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or romance. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of ideas in art, of theses in art, and of the typical. _

The confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophicalsciences have been far more frequent. Thus it has often been held to bewithin the competence of art to develop concepts, to unite theintelligible with the sensible, to represent _ideas or universals_, putting art in the place of science, that is, confusing the artisticfunction in general with the particular case in which it becomesaesthetico-logical. 

The theory of art as supporting _theses_ can be reduced to the sameerror, as can be the theory of art considered as individualrepresentation, exemplifying scientific laws. The example, in so far asit is an example, stands for the thing exemplified, and is thus anexposition of the universal, that is to say, a form of science, more orless popular or vulgarized. 

The same may be said of the aesthetic theory of the _typical_, when bytype is understood, as it frequently is, just the abstraction or theconcept, and it is affirmed that art should make _the species shine inthe individual_. If by typical be here understood the individual, here, too, we have a merely verbal variation. To typify would signify, in thiscase, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent theindividual. Don Quixote is a type; but of whom is he a type, if not ofall Don Quixotes? A type, that is to say, of himself. Certainly he isnot a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense ofreality, or of the love of glory. An infinite number of personages canbe thought of under these concepts, who are not Don Quixote. In otherwords, we find our own impressions fully determined and verified in theexpression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). We call thatexpression typical, which we might call simply aesthetic. Poetical orartistic universals have been spoken of in like manner, in order to showthat the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal in itself. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the symbol and of the allegory. _

Continuing to correct these errors, or to make clear equivoques, we willnote that the _symbol_ has sometimes been given as essence of art. Now, if the symbol be given as inseparable from the artistic intuition, it isthe synonym of the intuition itself, which always has an idealcharacter. There is no double-bottom to art, but one only; in art all issymbolical, because all is ideal. But if the symbol be looked upon asseparable--if on the one side can be expressed the symbol, and on theother the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the intellectualisterror: that pretended symbol is the exposition of an abstract concept, it is an _allegory_, it is science, or art that apes science. But wemust be just toward the allegorical also. In some cases, it isaltogether harmless. Given the _Gerusalemme liberata_, the allegory wasimagined afterwards; given the _Adone_ of Marino, the poet of thelascivious insinuated afterwards that it was written to show how"immoderate indulgence ends in pain"; given a statue of a beautifulwoman, the sculptor can write on a card that the statue represents_Clemency_ or _Goodness_. This allegory linked to a finished work _postfestum_ does not change the work of art. What is it, then? It is anexpression externally _added_ to another expression. A little page ofprose is added to the _Gerusalemme_, expressing another thought of thepoet; a verse or a strophe is added to the _Adone_, expressing what thepoet would like to make a part of his public swallow; while to thestatue nothing more than the single word is added: _Clemency_ or_Goodness_. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of artistic and literary classes. _

But the greatest triumph of the intellectualist error lies in the theoryof artistic and literary classes, which still has vogue in literarytreatises, and disturbs the critics and the historians of art. Let usobserve its genesis. 

The human mind can pass from the aesthetic to the logical, just becausethe former is a first step, in respect to the latter. It can destroy theexpressions, that is, the thought of the individual with the thought ofthe universal. It can reduce expressive facts to logical relations. Wehave already shown that this operation in its turn becomes concrete inan expression, but this does not mean that the first expressions havenot been destroyed. They have yielded their place to the newaesthetico-logical expressions. When we are on the second step, we haveleft the first. 

He who enters a picture-gallery, or who reads a series of poems, may, after he has looked and read, go further: he may seek out the relationsof the things there expressed. Thus those pictures and compositions, each of which is an individual inexpressible by logic, are resolved intouniversals and abstractions, such as _costumes, landscapes, portraits, domestic life, battles, animals, flowers, fruit, seascapes, lakes, deserts, tragic, comic, piteous, cruel, lyrical, epic, dramatic, knightly, idyllic facts_, and the like. They are often also resolvedinto merely quantitative categories, such as _little picture, picture, statuette, group, madrigal, song, sonnet, garland of sonnets, poetry, poem, story, romance_, and the like. 

When we think the concept _domestic life_, or _knighthood_, or _idyll_, or _cruelty_, or any other quantitative concept, the individualexpressive fact from which we started is abandoned. From aesthetes thatwe were, we have been changed into logicians; from contemplators ofexpression, into reasoners. Certainly no objection can be made to such aprocess. In what other way could science be born, which, if aestheticexpressions be assumed in it, yet has for function to go beyond them?The logical or scientific form, as such, excludes the aesthetic form. Hewho begins to think scientifically has already ceased to contemplateaesthetically; although his thought will assume of necessity in its turnan aesthetic form, as has already been said, and as it would besuperfluous to repeat. 

The error begins when we try to deduce the expression from the concept, and to find in the thing substituting the laws of the thing substituted;when the difference between the second and the first step has not beenobserved, and when, in consequence, we declare that we are standing onthe first step, when we are really standing on the second. This error isknown as _the theory of artistic and literary classes_. 

What is the aesthetic form of domestic life, of knighthood, of theidyll, of cruelty, and so forth? How should these contents be_represented_? Such is the absurd problem implied in the theory ofartistic and literary classes. It is in this that consists all searchafter laws or rules of styles. Domestic life, knighthood, idyll, cruelty, and the like, are not impressions, but concepts. They are notcontents, but logico-aesthetic forms. You cannot express the form, forit is already itself expression. And what are the words cruelty, idyll, knighthood, domestic life, and so on, but the expression of thoseconcepts?

Even the most refined of these distinctions, those that have the mostphilosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as, for instance, whenworks of art are divided into the subjective and the objective styles, into lyric and epic, into works of feeling and works of design. It isimpossible to separate in aesthetic analysis, the subjective from theobjective side, the lyric from the epic, the image of feeling from thatof things. 

 [Sidenote] _Errors derived from this theory appearing in judgments on art. _

From the theory of the artistic and literary classes derive thoseerroneous modes of judgment and of criticism, thanks to which, insteadof asking before a work of art if it be expressive, and what itexpresses, whether it speak or stammer, or be silent altogether, it isasked if it be obedient to the _laws_ of the epic poem, or to those oftragedy, to those of historical portraiture, or to those of landscapepainting. Artists, however, while making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them, have really always disregardedthese _laws of styles_. Every true work of art has violated someestablished class and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus beenobliged to enlarge the number of classes, until finally even thisenlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the appearance of new worksof art, which are naturally followed by new scandals, new upsettings, and-new enlargements. 

From the same theory come the prejudices, owing to which at one time(and is it really passed?) people used to lament that Italy had notragedy (until a poet arose who gave to Italy that wreath which was theonly thing wanting to her glorious hair), nor France the epic poem(until the _Henriade_, which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). Eulogies accorded to the inventors of new styles are connected withthese prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century theinvention of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and thehonour 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 slightdraw-back) had nothing new or original to say. Mediocrities racked theirbrains to invent, artificially, new styles. The _piscatorial_ ecloguewas added to the _pastoral_, and then, finally, the _military_ eclogue. The _Aminta_ was bathed and became the _Alceo_. Finally, there have beenhistorians of art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas ofclasses, that they claimed to write the history, not of single andeffective literary and artistic works, but of their classes, those emptyphantoms. They have claimed to portray, not the evolution of the_artistic spirit_, but the _evolution of classes_. 

The philosophical condemnation of artistic and literary classes is foundin the formulation and demonstration of what artistic activity has eversought and good taste ever recognized. What is to be done if good tasteand the real fact, put into formulas, sometimes assume the air ofparadoxes?

 [Sidenote] _Empirical sense of the divisions of classes. _

Now if we talk of tragedies, comedies, dramas, romances, pictures ofeveryday life, battle-pieces, landscapes, seascapes, poems, versicles, lyrics, and the like, if it be only with a view to be understood, and todraw attention in general and approximatively to certain groups ofworks, to which, for one reason or another, it is desired to drawattention, in that case, no scientific error has been committed. Weemploy _vocables and phrases_; we do not establish _laws anddefinitions_. The mistake arises when the weight of a scientificdefinition is given to a word, when we ingenuously let ourselves becaught in the meshes of that phraseology. Pray permit me a comparison. It is necessary to arrange the books in a library in one way or another. This used generally to be done by means of a rough classification bysubjects (among which the categories of miscellaneous and eccentric werenot wanting); they are now generally arranged by sizes or by publishers. Who can deny the necessity and the utility of these groupings? But whatshould we say if some one began seriously to seek out the literary lawsof miscellanies and of eccentricities from the Aldine or Bodoniancollection, from size A or size B, that is to say, from these altogetherarbitrary groupings whose sole object has been their practical use?Well, whoever should undertake an enterprise such as this, would bedoing neither more nor less than those who seek out the aesthetic lawsof literary and artistic classes. 

V

ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN HISTORIC AND LOGIC

The better to confirm these criticisms, it will be opportune to cast arapid glance over analogous and opposite errors, born of ignorance as tothe true nature of art, and of its relation to history and to science. These errors have injured alike the theory of history and of science, ofHistoric (or Historiology) and of Logic. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the philosophy of history. _

Historical intellectualism has been the cause of the many researcheswhich have been made, especially during the last two centuries, researches which continue to-day, for _a philosophy of history_, for an_ideal history_, for a _sociology_, for a _historical psychology_, orhowever may be otherwise entitled or described a science whose object isto extract from history, universal laws and concepts. Of what kind mustbe these laws, these universals? Historical laws and historicalconcepts? In that case, an elementary criticism of knowledge suffices tomake clear the absurdity of the attempt. When such expressions as a_historical law_, a _historical concept_ are not simply metaphorscolloquially employed, they are true contradictions in terms: theadjective is as unsuitable to the substantive as in the expressions_qualitative quantity_ or _pluralistic monism_. History means concretionand individuality, law and concept mean abstraction and universality. If, on the other hand, the attempt to draw from history historical lawsand concepts be abandoned, and it be merely desired to draw from it lawsand concepts, the attempt is certainly not frivolous; but the sciencethus obtained will be, not a philosophy of history, but rather, according to the case, either philosophy in its various specificationsof Ethic, Logic, etc. , or empirical science in its infinite divisionsand subdivisions. Thus are sought out either those philosophicalconcepts which are, as has already been observed, at the bottom of everyhistorical construction and separate perception from intuition, historical intuition from pure intuition, history from art; or alreadyformed historical intuitions are collected and reduced to types andclasses, which is exactly the method of the natural sciences. Greatthinkers have sometimes donned the unsuitable cloak of the philosophy ofhistory, and notwithstanding the covering, they have conqueredphilosophical truths of the greatest magnitude. The cloak has beendropped, the truth has remained. Modern sociologists are rather to beblamed, not so much for the illusion in which they are involved whenthey talk of an impossible science of sociology, as for the infecunditywhich almost always accompanies their illusion. It is but a small evilthat Aesthetic should be termed sociological Aesthetic, or Logic, socialLogic. The grave evil is that their Aesthetic is an old-fashionedexpression of sensualism, their Logic verbal and incoherent. Thephilosophical movement, to which we have referred, has borne two goodfruits in relation to history. First of all has been felt the desire toconstruct a theory of historiography, that is, to understand the natureand the limits of history, a theory which, in conformity with theanalyses made above, cannot obtain satisfaction, save in a generalscience of intuition, in an Aesthetic, from which Historic would beseparated under a special head by means of the intervention of theuniversals. Furthermore, concrete truths relating to historical eventshave often been expressed beneath the false and presumptuous cloak of aphilosophy of history; canons and empirical advice have been formulatedby no means superfluous to students and critics. It does not seempossible to deny this utility to the most recent of philosophies ofhistory, to so-called historical materialism, which has thrown a veryvivid light upon many sides of social life, formerly neglected or illunderstood. 

 [Sidenote] _Aesthetic invasions into Logic. _

The principle of authority, of the _ipse dixit_, is an invasion ofhistoricity into the domains of science and philosophy which has ragedin the schools. This substitutes for introspection and philosophicalanalyses, this or that evidence, document, or authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense. But Logic, the science ofthought and of intellectual knowledge, has suffered the most grave anddestructive disturbances and errors of all, through the imperfectunderstanding of the aesthetic fact. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself aesthetic activity?An inexact Aesthetic must of necessity drag after it an inexact Logic. 

Whoever opens logical treatises, from the _Organum_ of Aristotle to themoderns, must admit that they all contain a haphazard mixture of verbalfacts and facts of thought, of grammatical forms and of conceptualforms, of Aesthetic and of Logic. Not that attempts have been wanting toescape from verbal expression and to seize thought in its effectivenature. Aristotelian logic itself did not become mere syllogistic andverbalism, without some stumbling and oscillation. The especiallylogical problem was often touched upon in the Middle Ages, by thenominalists, realists, and conceptualists, in their disputes. WithGalileo and with Bacon, the natural sciences gave an honourable place toinduction. Vico combated formalist and mathematical logic in favour ofinventive methods. Kant called attention to _a priori_ syntheses. Theabsolute idealists despised the Aristotelian logic. The followers ofHerbart, bound to Aristotle, on the other hand, set in relief thosejudgments which they called narrative, which are of a characteraltogether different from other logical judgments. Finally, thelinguists insisted upon the irrationality of the word, in relation tothe concept. But a conscious, sure, and radical movement of reform canfind no base or starting-point, save in the science of Aesthetic. 

 [Sidenote] _Logic in its essence. _

In a Logic suitably reformed on this basis, it will be fitting toproclaim before all things this truth, and to draw from it all itsconsequences: the logical fact, _the only logical fact_, is _theconcept_, the universal, the spirit that forms, and in so far as itforms, the universal. And if be understood by induction, as hassometimes been understood, the formation of universals, and by deductionthe verbal development of these, then it is clear that true Logic can benothing but inductive Logic. But since by the word "deduction" has beenmore frequently understood the special processes of mathematics, and bythe word "induction" those of the natural sciences, it will be advisableto avoid the one and the other denomination, and to say that true Logicis the Logic of the concept. The Logic of the concept, adopting a methodwhich is at once induction and deduction, will adopt neither the one northe other exclusively, that is, will adopt the (speculative) method, which is intrinsic to it. 

The concept, the universal, is in itself, abstractly considered, _inexpressible_. No word is proper to it. So true is this, that thelogical concept remains always the same, notwithstanding the variationof verbal forms. In respect to the concept, expression is a simple_sign_ or _indication_. There must be an expression, it cannot fail; butwhat it is to be, this or that, is determined by the historical andpsychological conditions of the individual who is speaking. The qualityof the expression is not deducible from the nature of the concept. Theredoes not exist a true (logical) sense of words. He who forms a conceptbestows on each occasion their true meaning on the words. 

 [Sidenote] _Distinction between logical and non-logical judgements. _

This being established, the only truly logical (that is, aesthetico-logical) propositions, the only rigorously logical judgments, can be nothing but those whose proper and exclusive content is thedetermination of a concept. These propositions or judgments are the_definitions_. Science itself is nothing but a complex of definitions, unified in a supreme definition; a system of concepts, or chief concept. 

It is therefore necessary to exclude from Logic all those propositionswhich do not affirm universals. Narrative judgments, not less than thosetermed non-enunciative by Aristotle, such as the expression of desires, are not properly logical judgments. They are either purely aestheticpropositions or historical propositions. "Peter is passing; it israining to-day; I am sleepy; I want to read": these and an infinity ofpropositions of the same kind, are nothing but either a mere enclosing, in words the impression of the fact that Peter is passing, of thefalling rain, of my organism inclining to sleep, and of my will directedto reading, or they are existential affirmation concerning those facts. They are expressions of the real or of the unreal, of historical or ofpure imagination; they are certainly not definitions of universals. 

 [Sidenote] _Syllogistic. _

This exclusion cannot meet with great difficulties. It is already almostan accomplished fact, and the only thing required is to render itexplicit, decisive, and coherent. But what is to be done with all thatpart of human experience which is called _syllogistic_, consisting ofjudgments and reasonings which are based on concepts. What issyllogistic? Is it to be looked down upon from above with contempt, assomething useless, as has so often been done in the reaction of thehumanists against scholasticism, in absolute idealism, in theenthusiastic admiration of our times for the methods of observation andexperiment of the natural sciences? Syllogistic, reasoning _in forma_, is not a discovery of truth; it is the art of exposing, debating, disputing with oneself and others. Proceeding from concepts alreadyformed, from facts already observed and making appeal to the persistenceof the true or of thought (such is the meaning of the principle ofidentity and contradiction), it infers consequences from these data, that is, it represents what has already been discovered. Therefore, ifit be an _idem per idem_ from the point of view of invention, it is mostefficacious as a teaching and an exposition. To reduce affirmations tothe syllogistic scheme is a way of controlling one's own thought and ofcriticizing that of others. It is easy to laugh at syllogisers, but, ifsyllogistic has been born and retains its place, it must have good rootsof its own. Satire applied to it can concern only its abuses, such asthe attempt to prove syllogistically questions of fact, observation, andintuition, or the neglect of profound meditation and unprejudicedinvestigation of problems, for syllogistic formality. And if so-called_mathematical Logic_ can sometimes aid us in our attempt to rememberwith ease, to manipulate the results of our own thought, let us welcomethis form of the syllogism also, long prophesied by Leibnitz and essayedby many, even in our days. 

But precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposing and ofdebating, its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophicalLogic, usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which isthe central and dominating doctrine, to which is reduced everythinglogical in syllogistic, without leaving a residuum (relations ofconcepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification, and so on). Normust it ever be forgotten that the concept, the (logical) judgment, andthe syllogism do not occupy the same position. The first alone is thelogical fact, the second and third are the forms in which the firstmanifests itself. These, in so far as they are forms, cannot be examinedsave aesthetically (grammatically); in so far as they possess logicalcontent, only by neglecting the forms themselves and passing to thedoctrine of the concept. 

 [Sidenote] _False Logic and true Aesthetic. _

This shows the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he whoreasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis isthe basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology, for to reasonwell is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is theintuitive possession of one's own logical thought. The principle ofcontradiction, itself, is at bottom nothing but the aesthetic principleof coherence. It will be said that starting from erroneous concepts itis possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is alsopossible to reason well; that some who are dull at research may yet bemost limpid writers. That is precisely because to write well dependsupon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it beerroneous; that is to say, not of its scientific, but of its aesthetictruth, since it is this truth itself. A philosopher like Schopenhauercan imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic ideas. Thisdoctrine is absolutely false scientifically, yet he may develop thisfalse knowledge in excellent prose, aesthetically most true. But we havealready replied to these objections, when we observed that at thatprecise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thoughtconcept, he is at the same time speaking ill and writing ill. He may, however, afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of histhought, which consist of true propositions, not connected with thepreceding errors, and lucid expressions may with him follow upon turbidexpressions. 

 [Sidenote] _Logic reformed. _

All enquiries as to the forms of judgments and of syllogisms, on theirconversion and on their various relations, which still encumbertreatises on Logic, are therefore destined to become less, to betransformed, to be reduced to something else. 

The doctrine of the concept and of the organism of the concepts, ofdefinition, of system, of philosophy, and of the various sciences, andthe like, will fill the place of these and will constitute the only trueand proper Logic. 

Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion betweenAesthetic and Logic and conceived Aesthetic as a _Logic of sensibleknowledge_, were strangely addicted to applying logical categories tothe new knowledge, talking of _aesthetic concepts, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic syllogisms_, and so on. We are less superstitious as regardsthe solidity of the traditional Logic of the schools, and betterinformed as to the nature of Aesthetic. We do not recommend theapplication of Logic to Aesthetic, but the liberation of Logic fromaesthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms orcategories of Logic, due to the following of altogether arbitrary andcrude distinctions. 

Logic thus reformed will always be _formal_ Logic; it will study thetrue form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding single andparticular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it were betterto call it _verbal_ or _formalistic_. Formal Logic will drive outformalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary tohave recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic, which isnot a science of thought, but thought itself in the act; not only aLogic, but the complex of Philosophy, in which Logic also is included. The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as that of fancy(Aesthetic) is the science of expression. The well-being of bothsciences lies in exactly following in every particular the distinctionbetween the two domains. 

VI

THEORETIC AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITY

The intuitive and intellective forms exhaust, as we have said, all thetheoretic form of the spirit. But it is not possible to know themthoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous aesthetictheories, without first establishing clearly their relations withanother form of the spirit, which is the _practical_ form. 

 [Sidenote] _The will. _

This form or practical activity is the _will_. We do not employ thisword here in the sense of any philosophical system, in which the will isthe foundation of the universe, the principle of things and the truereality. Nor do we employ it in the ample sense of other systems, whichunderstand by will the energy of the spirit, the spirit or activity ingeneral, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. Neithersuch metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For us, thewill is, as generally accepted, that activity of the spirit, whichdiffers from the mere theoretical contemplation of things, and isproductive, 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 thewill to do, is included, in the scientific sense, also what is vulgarlycalled not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the prometheutic will, is also action. 

 [Sidenote] _The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge. _

Man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practicalform he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, withthe other he creates it. But the first form is the basis of the second;and the relation of _double degree_, which we have already foundexisting between aesthetic and logical activity, is repeated betweenthese two on a larger scale. Knowledge independent of the will isthinkable; will independent of knowledge is unthinkable. Blind will isnot will; true will has eyes. 

How can we will, without having before us historical intuitions(perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, whichenlighten us as to the nature of those objects? How can we really will, if we do not know the world which surrounds us, and the manner ofchanging things by acting upon them?

 [Sidenote] _Objections and elucidations. _

It has been objected that men of action, practical men in the eminentsense, are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize: theirenergy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into will. Andconversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often verymediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected andthrust aside in the tumult of life. It is easy to see that thesedistinctions are merely empirical and quantitative. Certainly, thepractical man has no need of a philosophical system in order to act, butin the spheres where he does act, he starts from intuitions and conceptswhich are most clear to him. Otherwise he could not will the mostordinary actions. It would not be possible to will to feed oneself, forinstance, without knowledge of the food, and of the link of cause andeffect between certain movements and certain organic sensations. Risinggradually to the more complex forms of action, for example to thepolitical, how could we will anything politically good or bad, withoutknowing the real conditions of society, and consequently the means andexpedients to be adopted? When the practical man feels himself in thedark 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 theoreticalmoment, which in the rapid succession of human actions is hardly noticedand rapidly forgotten, becomes important and occupies consciousness fora longer time. And if this moment be prolonged, then the practical manmay become Hamlet, divided between desire for action and his smallamount of theoretical clarity as regards the situation and the means tobe employed. And if he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery, and leave willing and acting, to a more or less great extent, to others, there is formed in him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man ofscience, or of the philosopher, who are sometimes unpractical oraltogether blameworthy. These observations are all obvious. Theirexactitude cannot be denied. Let us, however, repeat that they arefounded on quantitative distinctions and do not disprove, but confirmthe fact that an action, however slight it be, cannot really be anaction, that is, an action that is willed, unless it be preceded bycognoscitive activity. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of practical judgments or judgments of value. _

Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action analtogether special class of judgments, which they call _practical_judgments or judgments _of value_. They say that in order to resolve toperform an action, it is necessary to have judged: "this action isuseful, this action is good. " And at first sight this seems to have thetestimony of consciousness on its side. But he who observes better andanalyses with greater subtlety, discovers that such judgments followinstead of preceding the affirmation of the will; they are nothing butthe expression of the already exercised volition. A good or usefulaction is an action that is willed. It will always be impossible todistil from the objective study of things a single drop of usefulness orgoodness. We do not desire things because we know them to be good oruseful; but we know them to be good and useful, because we desire them. Here too, the rapidity, with which the facts of consciousness follow oneanother has given rise to an illusion. Practical action is preceded byknowledge, but not by practical knowledge, or better by the practical:to obtain this, it is first necessary to have practical action. Thethird moment, therefore, of practical judgments, or judgments of value, is altogether imaginary. It does not come between the two moments ordegrees of theory and practice. That is why there exist no normativesciences in general, which regulate or command, discover and indicatevalues to the practical activity; because there is none for any otheractivity, assuming every science already realized and that activitydeveloped, which it afterwards takes as its object. 

 [Sidenote] _Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic. _

These distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous everytheory which confuses aesthetic with practical activity, or introducesthe laws of the second into the first. That science is theory and artpractice has been many times affirmed. Those who make this statement, and look upon the aesthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do socapriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because theyhave their eye on something which is really practical. But the practicalwhich they are looking at is not Aesthetic, nor within Aesthetic; it is_outside and beside it_; and although they are often found united, theyare not necessarily united, that is to say, by the bond of identity ofnature. 

The aesthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaborationof the impressions. When we have conquered the word within us, conceiveddefinitely 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 and _will_ to open them, tospeak, or our throats to sing, and declare in a loud voice and withextended throat what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or ifwe should stretch out and _will_ to stretch out our hands to touch thenotes of the piano, or to take up the brushes and the chisel, makingthus in detail those movements which we have already done rapidly, anddoing so in such a way as to leave more or less durable traces; this isall an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws to the first, and with these laws we have not to occupy ourselves for the moment. Letus, however, here recognize that this second movement is a production ofthings, a _practical_ fact, or a fact of _will_. It is customary todistinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminologyseems here to be infelicitous, for the work of art (the aesthetic work)is always _internal_; and that which is called _external_ is no longer awork of art. Others distinguish between _aesthetic_ fact and _artistic_fact, meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which mayand generally does follow the first. But in this case, it is simply acase of linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, although perhaps notopportune. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of the content. _

For the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous, whenit 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 ofthe same error. A selection from among impressions and sensationsimplies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can aselection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? To choose isto will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must bebefore us, they must be expressed. Practice follows, it does not precedetheory; expression is free inspiration. 

The true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows nothow; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will it ornot will it. If he were to wish to act in opposition to his inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born Anacreon, he were to wish to singof Atreus and of Alcides, his lyre would warn him of his mistake, echoing only of Venus and of Love, notwithstanding his efforts to thecontrary. 

 [Sidenote] _Practical innocence of art. _

The theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morallycharged with epithets of praise or of blame. When critics of art remarkthat a theme is _badly selected_, in cases where that observation has ajust foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of thetheme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist hastreated it. The expression has failed, owing to the contradictions whichit contains. And when the same critics rebel against the theme or thecontent as being unworthy of art and blameworthy, in respect to workswhich they proclaim to be artistically perfect; if these expressionsreally are perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise thecritics to leave the artists in peace, for they cannot get inspiration, save from what has made an impression upon them. The critics shouldthink rather of how they can effect changes in nature and in society, inorder that those impressions may not exist. If ugliness were to vanishfrom the world, if universal virtue and felicity were established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse or pessimisticsentiments, but sentiments that are calm, innocent, and joyous, likeArcadians of a real Arcady. But so long as ugliness and turpitude existin nature and impose themselves on the artist, it is not possible toprevent the expression of these things also; and when it has arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit_. We speak thus entirely from theaesthetic point of view, and from that of pure aesthetic criticism. 

We do not delay to pass here in review the damage which the criticism ofchoice does to artistic production, with the prejudices which itproduces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with thecontrast which it occasions between artistic impulse and criticalexigencies. It is true that sometimes it seems to do some good also, byassisting the artists to discover themselves, that is, their ownimpressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness ofthe task which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historicalmoment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. In thesecases, criticism of choice merely recognizes and aids the expressionswhich 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 theexpression: _art for art's sake_. Art is thus independent of science, asit is of the useful and the moral. Let it not be feared that thus may bejustified art that is frivolous or cold, since that which is trulyfrivolous or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; orin other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of theaesthetic elaboration, from the lack of a content, not from the materialqualities of the content. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the saying: the style is the man. _

The saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completelycriticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoreticand the practical, and from the theoretic character of the aestheticactivity. Man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is alsowill, which contains in it the cognoscitive moment. Now the saying iseither altogether void, as when it is understood that the man is thestyle, in so far as he is style, that is to say, the man, but only in sofar as he is an expression of activity; or it is erroneous, when theattempt is made to deduce from what a man has seen and expressed, thatwhich he has done and willed, inferring thereby that there is anecessary link between knowing and willing. Many legends in thebiographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generoussentiments should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; orthat the dramatist who gives a great many stabs in his plays, should nothimself have given a few at least in real life. Vainly do the artistsprotest: _lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba_. They are merely taxedin addition with lying and hypocrisy. O you poor women of Verona, howfar more subtle you were, when you founded your belief that Dante hadreally descended to hell, upon his dusky countenance! Yours was at anyrate a historical conjecture. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the concept of sincerity in art. _

Finally, _sincerity_ imposed upon the artist as a duty (this law ofethics which, they say, is also a law of aesthetic) arises from anotherequivoke. For by sincerity is meant either the moral duty not to deceiveone's neighbour; and in that case Is foreign to the artist. For he, infact, deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in hismind. He would deceive, only if he were to betray his duty as an artistby a lesser devotion to the intrinsic necessity of his task. If lies anddeceit are in his mind, then the form which he gives to these thingscannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is aesthetic. The artist, if he be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, purifies his other self byreflecting it in art. Or by sincerity is meant, fulness and truth ofexpression, and it is clear that this second sense has nothing to dowith the ethical concept. The law, which is at once ethical andaesthetic, reveals itself in this case in a word employed alike by Ethicand Aesthetic. 

VII

ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL

 [Sidenote] _The two forms of practical activity. _

The twofold grade of the theoretical activity, aesthetic and logical, has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yetbeen placed in due relief. The practical activity is also divided into afirst and second degree, the second implying the first. The firstpractical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; thesecond the _moral_ activity. 

Economy is, as it were, the Aesthetic of practical life; Morality itsLogic. 

 [Sidenote] _The economically useful. _

If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if its suitable placein the system of the mind has not been given to the economic activity, and it has been left to wander in the prolegomena to treatises onpolitical economy, often uncertain and but slightly elaborated, this isdue, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic hasbeen confused, now with the concept of _technique_, now with that of the_egoistic_. 

 [Sidenote] _Distinction between the useful and the technical. _

_Technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit. Technique is knowledge; or better, it is knowledge itself, in general, that takes this name, as we have seen, in so far as it serves as basisfor practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is presumed tobe not easily followed by practical action, is called pure: the sameknowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called applied; if itis presumed that it can be easily followed by the same action, it iscalled technical or applied. This word, then, indicates a _situation_ inwhich knowledge already is, or easily can be found, not a special formof knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether impossible toestablish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pureor applied. All knowledge, however abstract and philosophical one mayimagine it to be, can be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical errorin the ultimate principles of morals can be reflected and always isreflected in some way, in practical life. One can only speak roughly andunscientifically of truths that are pure and of others that are applied. 

The same knowledge which is called technical, can also be called_useful_. But the word "useful, " in conformity with the criticism ofjudgments of value made above, is to be understood as used here in alinguistic or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful forputting 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 theknowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen. There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between theuseful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration, and thisknowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoreticalactivity which precedes; the _action_ of him who extinguishes the fireis alone useful. 

 [Sidenote] _Distinction between the useful and the egoistic. _

Some economists identify utility with _egoïsm_, that is to say, withmerely economical action or desire, with that which is profitable to theindividual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed incomplete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is the immoral. Inthis case Economy would be a very strange science, standing, not beside, but facing Ethic, like the devil facing God, or at least like the_advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization. Such a conceptionof it is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is impliedin that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in _Logic_, the science of the true, and a science of ineffectual expression inAesthetic, the science of successful expression. If, then, Economy werethe scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethic, orEthic itself; because every moral determination implies, at the sametime, a negation of its contrary. 

Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is notto conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulousman must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish tobe inconclusive and, therefore, not truly 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 perfectlyanalogous to that in which is solved the problem of the relationsbetween the expression and the concept, between Aesthetic and Logic. 

To will economically is to _will an end_; to will morally is to _willthe rational end_. But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but willand act usefully (economically). How could he will the _rational_, unless he willed it also _as his particular end_?

 [Sidenote] _Pure economicity. _

The reciprocal is not true; as it is not true in aesthetic science thatthe expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact. It is possible to will economically without willing morally; and it ispossible to conduct oneself with perfect economic coherence, whilepursuing an end which is objectively irrational (immoral), or, better, an end which would be so judged in a superior grade of consciousness. 

Examples of the economic, without the moral character, are the Prince ofMachiavelli, Caesar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can helpadmiring their strength of will, although their activity is onlyeconomic, and is opposed to what we hold moral? Who can help admiringthe ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursuesand realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal, making the small and timidlittle thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim:"What manner of man is this, whose perversity, neither age, norinfirmity, nor the fear of death, which he sees at hand, nor the fear ofGod, before whose judgment-seat he must stand in a little while, havebeen able to remove, nor to cause that he should not wish to die as hehas lived?"

 [Sidenote] _The economic side of morality. _

The moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a CaesarBorgia, of an Iago, or of a ser Ciappelletto, the good will of the saintor of the hero. Or, better, good will would not be will, andconsequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the sidewhich makes it _good_, also that which makes it _will_. Thus a logicalthought, which does not succeed in expressing itself, is not thought, but at the most, a confused presentiment of a thought yet to come. 

It is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also theanti-economical man, or to make of morality an element of coherence inthe acts of life, and therefore of economicity. Nothing prevents us fromconceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during certainperiods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man altogetherwithout moral conscience. In a man thus organized, what for us isimmorality is not so for him, because it is not so felt. Theconsciousness of the contradiction between what is desired as a rationalend and what is pursued egoistically cannot be born in him. Thiscontradiction is anti-economicity. Immoral conduct becomes alsoanti-economical only in the man who possesses moral conscience. Themoral remorse which is the proof of this, is also economical remorse;that is to say, pain at not having known how to will completely and toattain to that moral ideal which was willed at the first moment, but wasafterwards perverted by the passions. _Video meliora proboque, deteriorasequor_. The _video_ and the _probo_ are here an initial willimmediately contradicted and passed over. In the man deprived of moralsense, we must admit a remorse which is _merely economic_; like that ofa thief or of an assassin who should be attacked when on the point ofrobbing or of assassinating, and should abstain from doing so, not owingto a conversion of his being, but owing to his impressionability andbewilderment, or even owing to a momentary awakening of the moralconsciousness. When he has come back to himself, that thief or assassinwill regret and be ashamed of his inconsequence; his remorse will not bedue to having done wrong, but to not having done it; his remorse is, therefore, economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded byhypothesis. However, a lively moral conscience is generally found amongthe majority of men, and its total absence is a rare and perhapsnon-existent monstrosity. It may, therefore, be admitted, that moralitycoincides 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 affirmed by us shouldintroduce afresh into the category of the _morally indifferent_, of thatwhich is in truth action and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral;the category in sum of the _licit_ and of the _permissible_, which hasalways been the cause or mirror of ethical corruption, as is the casewith Jesuitical morality in which it dominated. It remains quite certainthat indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activitypervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. Butthis, far from upsetting the parallelism, confirms it. Do there existintuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse, resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historicalaffirmations? We have already seen that true science, philosophy, knowsno external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-callednatural sciences. Science and morality entirely dominate, the one theaesthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, althoughneither of them can appear in the concrete, save in the intuitive formas regards the one, in the economic as regards the other. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and of Economic. _

This combined identity and difference of the useful and of the moral, ofthe economic and of the ethic, explains the fortune enjoyed now andformerly by the utilitarian theory of Ethic. It is in fact easy todiscover and to show a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it iseasy to show an aesthetic side of every logical proposition. Thecriticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot escape by denying this truthand seeking out absurd and inexistent examples of _useless_ moralactions. It must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as theconcrete form of morality, which consists of what is _within_ this form. Utilitarians do not see this within. This is not the place for a moreample development of such ideas. Ethic and Economic cannot but begainers, as we have said of Logic and Aesthetic, by a more exactdetermination of the relations that exist between them. Economic scienceis now rising to the animating concept of the useful, as it strives topass beyond the mathematical phase, in which it is still entangled; aphase which, when it superseded historicism, was in its turn a progress, destroying a series of arbitrary distinctions and false theories ofEconomic, implied in the confusion of the theoretical with thehistorical. With this conception, it will be easy on the one hand toabsorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pureeconomy, and on the other, by the introduction of successivecomplications and additions, and by passing from the philosophical tothe empirical or naturalistic method, to include the particular theoriesof the political or national economy of the schools. 

 [Sidenote] _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity. _

As aesthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and philosophicintuition the noumenon or spirit; so economic activity wills thephenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _Thespirit which desires itself_, its true self, the universal which is inthe empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhapsdefines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This willfor the true self is _absolute liberty_. 

VIII

EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS

 [Sidenote] _The system of the spirit. _

In this summary sketch that we have given, of the entire philosophy ofthe spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is conceived asconsisting of four moments or grades, disposed in such a way that thetheoretical activity is to the practical as is the first theoreticalgrade to the second theoretical, and the first practical grade to thesecond practical. The four moments imply one another regressively bytheir concretion. The concept cannot be without expression, the usefulwithout the one and the other, and morality without the three precedinggrades. If the aesthetic fact is alone independent, and the others moreor less dependent, then the logical is the least so and the moral willthe most. Moral intention operates on given theoretic bases, whichcannot be dispensed with, save by that absurd practice, the jesuitical_direction of intention_. Here people pretend to themselves not to knowwhat at bottom they know perfectly well. 

 [Sidenote] _The forms of genius. _

If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms ofgenius. Geniuses in art, in science, in moral will or heroes, havecertainly always been recognized. But the genius of pure Economic hasmet with opposition. It is not altogether without reason that a categoryof bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. Thepractical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rationalend, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. It would be amere question of words, were we to discuss whether the word "genius"should be applied only to creators of aesthetic expression, or also tomen of scientific research and of action. To observe, on the other hand, that genius, of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conceptionand an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already beenexplained as regards artistic genius. 

 [Sidenote] _Non-existence of a fifth form of activity. Law; sociality. _

A fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. It would be easy todemonstrate how all the other forms, either do not possess the characterof activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or are complex and derived facts, in which the various activities aremingled, or are filled with special contents and contingent data. 

The _judicial_ fact, for example, considered as what is called objectivelaw, 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 contained an economic relation willed by an individual or bya collectivity. This economic side at once unites it with anddistinguishes it from moral activity. Take another example. Sociology(among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimesconceived as the study of an original element, which is called_sociality_. Now what is it that distinguishes sociality, or therelations which are developed in a meeting of men, not of subhumanbeings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which existamong the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist onlyin a rudimentary degree, among the latter? Sociality, then, far frombeing an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex andcomplicated. This could be proved by the impossibility, generallyrecognized, of enunciating a single sociological law, properlyso-called. Those that are improperly called by that name are revealed aseither empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is tosay judgments, into which are translated the conceptions of thespiritual activities; when they are not simply empty and indeterminategeneralizations, like the so-called law of evolution. Sometimes, too, nothing more is understood by sociality than social rule, and so law;and thus sociology is confounded with the science or theory of lawitself. Law, sociality, and like terms, are to be dealt with in a modeanalogous to that employed by us in the consideration of historicity andtechnique. 

 [Sidenote] _Religiosity. _

It may seem fitting to form a different judgment as to _religious_activity. But religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differfrom its other forms and subforms. For it is in truth and in turn eitherthe expression of practical and ideal aspirations (religious ideals), orhistorical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma). 

It can therefore be maintained with equal truth, both that religion isdestroyed by the progress of human knowledge, and that it is alwayspresent there. Their religion was the whole patrimony of knowledge ofprimitive peoples: our patrimony of knowledge is our religion. Thecontent has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change andbecome better and more refined in the future also; but its function isalways the same. We do not know what use could be made of religion bythose who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activityof man, with his art, with his criticism, and with his philosophy. It isimpossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, likereligion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it. Catholicism, which is always coherent, will not tolerate a Science, aHistory, an Ethic, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. Therationalists are less coherent. They are disposed to allow a littlespace in their souls for a religion which is in contradiction with theirwhole theoretic world. 

These affectations and religious susceptibilities of the rationalists ofour times have their origin in the superstitious cult of the naturalsciences. These, as we know and as is confessed by the mouth of theirchief adepts, are all surrounded by _limits_. Science having beenwrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could beforeseen that the remainder would be asked of religion; that remainderwith which the human spirit cannot dispense. We are therefore indebtedto materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy andoften disingenuous reflowering of religious exaltation. Such things arethe business of the hospital, when they are not the business of thepolitician. 

 [Sidenote] _Metaphysic. _

Philosophy withdraws from religion all reason for existing, because itsubstitutes itself for religion. As the science of the spirit, it looksupon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychiccondition that can be surpassed. Philosophy shares the domain ofknowledge with the natural disciplines, with history and with art. Itleaves to the first, narration, measurement and classification; to thesecond, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third, the individually possible. There is nothing left to share with religion. For the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot bephilosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has been seen, _Philosophy ofHistory, nor Philosophy of Nature_; and therefore there cannot be aphilosophic science of what is not form and universal, but material andparticular. This amounts to affirming the impossibility of _metaphysic_. 

The Method or Logic of history followed the Philosophy of history; agnoseology of the conceptions which are employed in the natural sciencessucceeded natural philosophy. What philosophy can study of the one isits mode of construction (intuition, perception, document, probability, etc. ); of the others she can study the forms of the conceptions whichappear in them (space, time, motion, number, types, classes, etc. ). Philosophy, which should become metaphysical in the sense abovedescribed, would, on the other hand, claim to compete with narrativehistory, and with the natural sciences, which in their field are alonelegitimate and effective. Such a competition becomes in fact a labourspoiling labour. We are _antimetaphysical_ in this sense, while yetdeclaring ourselves _ultrametaphysical_, if by that word it be desiredto claim and to affirm the function of philosophy as theautoconsciousness of the spirit, as opposed to the merely empirical andclassificatory function of the natural sciences. 

 [Sidenote] _Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect. _

In order to maintain itself side by side with the sciences of thespirit, metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of aspecific spiritual activity, of which it would be the product. Thisactivity, which in antiquity was called _mental or superiorimagination_, and in modern times more often _intuitive intellect orintellectual intuition_, would unite in an altogether special form thecharacters of imagination and of intellect. It would provide the methodof passing, by deduction or dialectically, from the infinite to thefinite, from form to matter, from the concept to the intuition, fromscience to history, operating by a method which should be at once unityand compenetration of the universal and the particular, of the abstractand the concrete, of intuition and of intellect. A faculty marvellousindeed and delightful to possess; but we, who do not possess it, have nomeans of proving its existence. 

 [Sidenote] _Mystical aesthetic. _

Intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered as the trueaesthetic activity. At others a not less marvellous aesthetic activityhas been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogetherdifferent from simple intuition. The glories of this faculty have beensung, and to it have been attributed the fact of art, or at the leastcertain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. Art, religion, and philosophy have seemed in turn one only, or three distinctfaculties of the spirit, now one, now another of these being superior inthe dignity assigned to each. 

It is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed by thisconception of Aesthetic, which we will call _mystical_. We are here inthe kingdom, not of the science of imagination, but of imaginationitself, which creates its world with the varying elements of theimpressions and of the feelings. Let it suffice to mention that thismysterious faculty has been conceived, now as practical, now as a meanbetween the theoretic and the practical, at others again as a theoreticgrade together with philosophy and religion. 

 [Sidenote] _Mortality and immortality of art. _

The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this lastconception as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolutespirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been lookedupon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then the mortality, eventhe actual death, or at least the agony of art has been proclaimed. These questions have no meaning for us, because, seeing that thefunction of art is a necessary grade of the spirit, to ask if art can beeliminated is the same thing as asking if sensation or intelligence canbe eliminated. But metaphysic, in the above sense, since it transplantsitself to an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in detail, anymore than one can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or thenavigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only be made byrefusing to join the game; that is to say, by rejecting the verypossibility of metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated. 

As we do not admit intellectual intuition in philosophy, we can also notadmit its shadow or equivalent, aesthetic intellectual intuition, or anyother mode by which this imaginary function may be called andrepresented. We repeat again that we do not know of a fifth grade beyondthe four grades of spirit which consciousness reveals to us. 

IX

INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OFRHETORIC

 [Sidenote] _The characteristics of art. _

It is customary to give long enumerations of the characteristics of art. Having reached this point of the treatise, having studied the artisticfunction as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as specialtheoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discern that thosevarious and copious descriptions mean, when they mean anything at all, nothing but a repetition of what may be called the qualities of theaesthetic function, generic, specific, and characteristic. To the firstof these are referred, as we have already observed, the characters, orbetter, the verbal variants of _unity_, and of _unity_ in _variety_, those also of _simplicity_, of _originality_, and so on; to the second ofthese, the characteristics of _truth_, of _sincerity_, and the like; tothe third, the characteristics of _life_, of _vivacity_, of _animation_, of _concretion_, of _individuality_, of _characteristicality_. The wordsmay vary yet more, but they will not contribute anything scientificallynew. The results which we have shown have altogether exhausted theanalysis of expression as such. 

 [Sidenote] _Inexistence of modes of expression. _

But at this point, the question as to whether there be various _modes orgrades_ of expression is still perfectly legitimate. We havedistinguished two grades of activity, each of which is subdivided intotwo other grades, and there is certainly, so far, no visible logicalreason why there should not exist two or more modes of the aesthetic, that is of expression. --The only objection is that these modes do notexist. 

For the present at least, it is a question of simple internalobservation and of self consciousness. One may scrutinize aestheticfacts as much as one will: no formal differences will ever be foundamong them, nor will the aesthetic fact be divisible into a first and asecond degree. 

This signifies that a philosophical classification of expressions is notpossible. Single expressive facts are so many individuals, of which theone cannot be compared with the other, save generically, in so far aseach is expression. To use the language of the schools, expression is aspecies which cannot in its turn perform the functions of genus. Impressions, that is to say contents, vary; every content differs fromevery other content, because nothing in life repeats itself; and thecontinuous variation of contents follows the irreducible variety ofexpressive facts, the aesthetic syntheses of the impressions. 

 [Sidenote] _Impossibility of translations. _

A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations_, in so far asthey pretend to effect the transference of one expression into another, like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a vase ofanother shape. We can elaborate logically what we have alreadyelaborated in aesthetic form only; but we cannot reduce that which hasalready possessed its aesthetic form to another form also aesthetic. Intruth, every translation either diminishes and spoils; or it creates anew expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mixingit with other impressions belonging to the pretended translator. In theformer case, the expression always remains one, that of the original, the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, notproperly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be twoexpressions, but with two different contents. "Ugly faithful ones orfaithless beauties" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma withwhich every translator is faced. In aesthetic translations, such asthose which are word for word or interlinear, or paraphrastictranslations, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries on theoriginal. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of rhetorical categories. _

The division of expressions into various classes is known in literatureby the name of theory of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical categories_. Butsimilar attempts at classification in the other forms of art are notwanting: suffice it to mention the _realistic and symbolic forms_, spoken of in painting and sculpture. 

The scientific value to be attached in Aesthetic and in aestheticcriticism to these distinctions of _realistic and symbolic_, of _styleand absence of style_, of _objective and subjective_, of _classic andromantic_, of _simple and ornate_, of _proper and metaphorical_, of thefourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of _word_ and of _sentence_, and further of _pleonasm_, of _ellipse_, of _inversion_, of_repetition_, of _synonyms and homonyms_, and so on; is _nil_ oraltogether negative. To none of these terms and distinctions can begiven a satisfactory aesthetic definition. Those that have beenattempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid ofsense. A typical example of this is the very common definition ofmetaphor as of _another word used in place of the word itself_. Now whygive oneself this trouble? Why take the worse and longer road when youknow the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is generally said, becausethe correct word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as theso-called incorrect word or metaphor? But in that case the metaphorbecomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it wereused, would be _but little expressive_ and therefore most improper. Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding theother categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. Onecan ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. Externally?In that case it must always remain separate. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form partof it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression, indistinguishable from the whole. 

It is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has beenrebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefullypreserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence. Rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant in literaryproduction, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode ofwriting ill which is called fine writing or writing according torhetoric. 

 [Sidenote] _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories. _

The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools, where we all of us learned them (certain of never finding theopportunity of using them in strictly aesthetic discussions, or even ofdoing so jocosely and with a comic intention), save when occasionallyemployed in one of the following significations: as _verbal variants _ofthe aesthetic concept; as indications of the _anti-aesthetic_, or, finally (and this is their most important use), in a sense which is nolonger aesthetic and literary, _but merely logical_. 

 [Sidenote] _Use of these categories as synonyms of the aesthetic fact. _

Expressions are not divisible into classes, but some are successful, others half-successful, others failures. There are perfect andimperfect, complete and deficient expressions. The terms already cited, then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes thevarious forms of the failures. But they are employed in the mostinconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the sameword serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to condemn the imperfect. 

An instance of this is found when someone, criticizing two pictures--theone without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objectswithout intelligence; the other inspired, but without obvious likenessto existing objects--calls the first _realistic_, the second _symbolic_. Others, on the contrary, pronounce the word _realistic_ about a stronglyfelt picture representing a scene of ordinary life, while they talk of_symbolic_ in reference to another picture representing but a coldallegory. It is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic, and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymouswith artistic and symbolic with inartistic. How, then, can we beastonished when some hotly maintain that the true art form is thesymbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that therealistic is the artistic, and the symbolic the inartistic? We cannotbut grant that both are right, since each makes use of the same words insenses so diverse. 

The great disputes about the _classic_ and the _romantic_ are frequentlybased upon such equivokes. Sometimes the former was understood as theartistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect;at others, the classic was cold and artificial, the romantic sincere, warm, efficacious, and truly expressive. Thus it was always possible totake the side of the classic against the romantic, or of the romanticagainst the classic. 

The same thing happens as regards the word _style_. Sometimes it isaffirmed that every writer should have style. Here style is synonymouswith form or expression. Sometimes the form of a code of laws or of amathematical work is said to be devoid of style. Here the error ofadmitting diverse modes of expression is again committed, of admittingan ornate and a naked form of expression, because, since style is form, the code and the mathematical treatise must also, strictly speaking, have each its style. At other times, one hears the critics blamingsomeone for "having too much style" or for "writing a style. " Here it isclear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improperand pretentious expression, which is one form of the inartistic. 

 [Sidenote] _Their use to indicate various aesthetic imperfections. _

Passing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these wordsand distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literarycomposition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. This means thatin one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of wordsthan is necessary (pleonasm); that in another the error arises from toofew having been used (ellipse), elsewhere from the use of an unsuitableword (metaphor), or from the use of two words which seem to express twodifferent things, where they really express the same thing (synonym); orthat, on the contrary, it arises from having employed one which seems toexpress the same thing where it expresses two different things(equivoke). This pejorative and pathological use of the terms is, however, more uncommon than the preceding. 

 [Sidenote] _Their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in the service of science. _

Finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no aestheticsignification similar or analogous to those passed in review, and yetone is aware that it is not void of meaning and designates somethingthat deserves to be noted, it is then used in the service of logic andof science. If it be granted that a concept used in a scientific senseby a given writer is expressed with a definite term, it is natural thatother words formed by that writer as used to signify the same concept, or incidentally made use of by him, become, _in respect to_ thevocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms, elliptic forms, and the like. We, too, in the course of this treatise, have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of suchterms, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or mayfind employed. But this proceeding, which is of value in thedisquisitions of scientific and intellectual criticism, has nonewhatever in aesthetic criticism. For science there exist appropriatewords and metaphors. The same concept may be psychologically formed invarious circumstances and therefore be expressed with variousintuitions. When the scientific terminology of a given writer has beenestablished, and one of these modes has been fixed as correct, then allother uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the aesthetic factexist only appropriate words. The same intuition can only be expressedin one way, precisely because it is an intuition and not a concept. 

 [Sidenote] _Rhetoric in the schools. _

Some, while they admit the aesthetic insufficiency of the rhetoricalcategories, yet make a reserve as regards their utility and the servicethey are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. Weconfess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educatethe mind to logical clearness, or aid the teaching of a science whichthey disturb and obscure. Perhaps it may be desired to say that they canaid memory and learning as empirical classes, as was admitted above forliterary and artistic styles. But there is another purpose for which therhetorical categories should certainly continue to be admitted to theschools: to be criticized there. We cannot simply forget the errors ofthe past, and truth cannot be kept alive, save by making it fightagainst error. Unless a notion of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied by a suitable criticism of these, there is a risk of theirspringing up again. For they are already springing up with certainphilologists, disguised as most recent _psychological_ discoveries. 

 [Sidenote] _The resemblances of expressions. _

It would seem as though we wished to deny all bond of likeness amongthemselves between expressions and works of art. The likenesses exist, and owing to them, works of art can be arranged in this or that group. But they are likenesses such as are observed among individuals, and cannever be rendered with abstract definitions. That is to say, theselikenesses have nothing to do with identification, subordination, co-ordination, and the other relations of concepts. They consist whollyin what is called a _family likeness_, and are connected with thosehistorical conditions existing at the birth of the various works, or inan affinity of soul between the artists. 

 [Sidenote] _The relative possibility of translations. _

It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility oftranslations. This does not consist of the reproduction of the sameoriginal expressions (which it would be vain to attempt), but in themeasure that expressions are given, more or less nearly resemblingthose. The translation that passes for good is an approximation whichhas original value as a work of art and can stand by itself. 

X

AESTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE UGLY AND THEBEAUTIFUL

Passing on to the study of more complex concepts, where the aestheticactivity is found in conjunction with other orders of facts, and showingthe mode of this union or complication, we find ourselves at once faceto face with the concept of _feeling_ and with the feelings which arecalled _aesthetic_. 

 [Sidenote] _Various significances of the word feeling. _

The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings. We have alreadyhad occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate thespirit in its passivity, the matter or content of art, and also assynonym of _impressions_. Once again (and then the meaning wasaltogether different), we have met with it as designating the_non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the aesthetic fact, thatis to say pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept andstates no fact. 

 [Sidenote] _Feeling as activity. _

But feeling is not here understood in either of these two senses, nor inthe others in which it has nevertheless been used to designate other_cognoscitive_ forms of spirit. Its meaning here is that of a specialactivity, of non-cognoscitive nature, but possessing its two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain_. This activity hasalways greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have attempted either todeny it as an activity, or to attribute it to _nature_ and to exclude itfrom spirit. Both solutions bristle with difficulties, and these are ofsuch a kind that the solutions prove themselves finally unacceptable toanyone who examines them with care. For of what could a non-spiritualactivity consist, an _activity of nature_, when we have no otherknowledge of activity save as spiritual, and of spirituality save asactivity? Nature is, in this case, by definition, the merely passive, inert, mechanical and material. On the other hand, the negation of thecharacter of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by thosevery poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifestactivity in its concreteness, and, we will say, all aquiver. 

 [Sidenote] _Identification of feeling with economic activity. _

This critical conclusion ought to place us in the greatestembarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit givenabove, we have left no room for the new activity, of which we are nowobliged to recognize the existence. But activity of feeling, if it beactivity, is not specially new. It has already had its place assigned toit in the system which we have sketched, where, however, it has beenindicated under another name, as _economic_ activity. What is called theactivity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamentalpractical activity, which we have distinguished from ethical activity, and made to consist of the appetite and desire for some individual end, without any moral determination. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of hedonism. _

If feeling has been sometimes considered as organic or natural activity, this has happened precisely because it does not coincide either withlogical, aesthetic, or ethical activity. Looked at from the standpointof these three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie_outside_ the true and real spirit, the spirit in its aristocracy, andto be almost a determination of nature and of the soul, in so far as itis nature. Thus the thesis, several times maintained, that the aestheticactivity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling, becomes at once completely proved. This thesis was inexpugnable, whensensation had already been reduced confusedly and implicitly to economicvolition. The view which has been refuted is known by the name of_hedonism_. For hedonism, all the various forms of the spirit arereduced to one, which thus itself also loses its own distinctivecharacter and becomes something turbid and mysterious, like "the shadesin which all cows are black. " Having effected this reduction andmutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anythingelse in any activity but pleasure and pain. They find no substantialdifference between the pleasure of art and that of an easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the freshair with wide-expanded lungs. 

 [Sidenote] _Feeling as a concomitant to every form of activity. _

But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not besubstituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have notsaid that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them ofnecessity, because they are all in close relation, both with one anotherand with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has forconcomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and painswhich are known as feeling. But we must not confound what isconcomitant, with the principal fact, and take the one for the other. The discovery of the truth, or the satisfaction of a moral dutyfulfilled, produces in us a joy which makes our whole being vibrate, for, by attaining to those forms of spiritual activity, it attains atthe same time that to which it was _practically_ tending, as to its end, during the effort. Nevertheless, economic or hedonistic satisfaction, ethical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, remain always distinct, even when in union. 

Thus is solved at the same time the much-debated question, which hasseemed, not wrongly, a matter of life or death for aesthetic science, namely, whether the feeling and the pleasure precede or follow, arecause or effect of the aesthetic fact. We must enlarge this question, toinclude the relation between the various spiritual forms, and solve itin the sense that in the unity of the spirit one cannot talk of causeand effect and of what comes first and what follows it in time. 

And once the relation above exposed is established, the statements, which it is customary to make, as to the nature of aesthetic, moral, intellectual, and even, as is sometimes said, economic feelings, mustalso fall. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not oftwo terms, but of one, and the quest of economic feeling can be but thatsame one concerning the economic activity. But in the other cases also, the search can never be directed to the substantive, but to theadjective: aesthetic, morality, logic, explain the colouring of thefeelings as aesthetic, moral, and intellectual, while feeling, studiedalone, will never explain those refractions. 

 [Sidenote] _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings. _

A further consequence is, that we can free ourselves from thedistinction between values or feelings _of value_, and feelings that aremerely hedonistic and _without value_; also from other similardistinctions, like those between _disinterested_ feelings and_interested_ feelings, between _objective _feelings and the others thatare not _objective_ but simply _subjective_, between feelings of_approval_ and others of _mere pleasure_ (_Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_ ofthe Germans). Those distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritualforms, which have been recognised as the triad of the _True_, the_Good_, and the _Beautiful_, from confusion with the fourth form, stillunknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother ofscandals. For us this triad has finished its task, because we arecapable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming eventhe selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among therespectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses wereconceived of by ourselves and others, between value and feelings, asbetween spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing butdifference between value and value. 

 [Sidenote] _Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union. _

As has already been said, the economic feeling or activity revealsitself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure andpain, which we can now translate into useful, and useless or hurtful. This bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of the activecharacter of feeling, precisely because the same bipartition is found inall forms of activity. If each of these is a _value_, each has opposedto it _antivalue or disvalue_. Absence of value is not sufficient tocause disvalue, but activity and passivity must be struggling betweenthemselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence thecontradiction, and the disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed, contested, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely:disvalue is its contrary. 

We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, withoutentering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue, that is, between the problem of contraries. (Are these to be thought ofdualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like Ormuzd andAhriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, whichis also contrariety?) This definition of the two terms will besufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear aesthetic activity inparticular, and one of the most obscure and disputed concepts ofAesthetic which arises at this point: the concept of the _Beautiful_. 

 [Sidenote] _The Beautiful as the value of expression, or expression and nothing more. _

Aesthetic, intellectual, economic, and ethical values and disvalues arevariously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good, useful, just_, and so on--these words designate the free development ofspiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production, when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad, useless, unbecoming, unjust, inexact_ designate embarrassed activity, the product of which isa failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations are beingcontinually shifted from one order of facts to another, and from this tothat. _Beautiful_, for instance, is said not only of a successfulexpression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfullyachieved, and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectualbeauty_, of a _beautiful action_, of a _moral beauty_. Manyphilosophers, especially aestheticians, have lost their heads in theirpursuit of these most varied uses: they have entered an inextricable andimpervious verbal labyrinth. For this reason it has hitherto seemedconvenient studiously to avoid the use of the word beautiful to indicatesuccessful expression. But after all the explanations that have beengiven, and all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, andsince, on the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize that theprevailing tendency, alike in current speech and in philosophy, is tolimit the meaning of the vocable _beautiful_ altogether to the aestheticvalue, we may define beauty as _successful expression_, or better, as_expression_ and nothing more, because expression, when it is notsuccessful, is not expression. 

 [Sidenote] _The ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it. _

Consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. The paradox is true, that, in works of art that are failures, the beautiful is present as_unity_ and the ugly as _multiplicity_. Thus, with regard to works ofart that are more or less failures, we talk of qualities, that is to sayof _those parts of them that are beautiful_. We do not talk thus ofperfect works. It is in fact impossible to enumerate their qualities orto designate those parts of them that are beautiful. In them there iscomplete fusion: they have but one quality. Life circulates in the wholeorganism: it is not withdrawn into certain parts. 

The qualities of works that are failures may be of various degrees. Theymay even be very great. The beautiful does not possess degrees, forthere is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that ismore expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, onthe other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almostbeautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were _complete_, thatis to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reasoncease to be ugly, because in it would be absent the contradiction whichis the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become nonvalue;activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not at war, save when there effectively is war. 

 [Sidenote] _Illusions that there exist expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly. _

And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of theugly is based on the contrasts and contradictions in which aestheticactivity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomesattenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend fromthe more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest cases ofexpression. From this arises the illusion that there are expressionswhich are neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained withoutsensible effort and appear easy and natural being so considered. 

 [Sidenote] _True aesthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental feelings. _

The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to thesehenceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there existperfect aesthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, andothers, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, itis necessary to advise him to pay great attention, as regards theaesthetic fact, to that only which is truly aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced by pleasures arising fromextraneous facts, which are only casually found united with it. The poetor any other artist affords an instance of purely aesthetic pleasure, during the moment in which he sees (or has the intuition of) his workfor the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form andhis countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On theother hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to thetheatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure ofrest and amusement, and that of laughingly snatching a nail from thegaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aestheticpleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. Thesame may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure, when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aestheticpleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought ofself-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him fromhis work. Examples could be multiplied. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of apparent feelings. _

A category of _apparent_ aesthetic feelings has been formed in modernAesthetic. These have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations ofpleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. Onthe contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. It hasbeen observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain intheir infinite variety and gradations. We tremble with anxiety, werejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of adrama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melodyof music. But these feelings are not those that would give occasion tothe real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality, but they are quantitively an attenuation. Aesthetic and _apparent_pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable. " We haveno need to treat of these _apparent feelings_, for the good reason thatwe have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of themalone. What are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, butfeelings objectified, intensified, expressed? And it is natural thatthey do not trouble and agitate us passionately, as do those of reallife, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those trueand proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula, then, of _apparent feelings_ is nothing but a tautology. The best thatcan be done is to run the pen through it. 

XI

CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM

As we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theorywhich is based on the pleasure and pain intrinsic to Economy andaccompanies every other form of activity, confounding the content andthat which contains it, and fails to recognize any process but thehedonistic; so we are opposed to aesthetic hedonism in particular, whichlooks upon the aesthetic at any rate, if not also upon all otheractivities, as a simple fact of feeling, and confounds the _pleasurableof expression_, which is the beautiful, with the pleasurable and nothingmore, and with the pleasurable of all sorts. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher senses. _

The aesthetic-hedonistic point of view has been presented in severalforms. One of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that whichpleases the sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called superiorsenses. When analysis of aesthetic facts first began, it was, in fact, difficult to avoid the mistake of thinking that a picture and a piece ofmusic are impressions of sight or of hearing: it was and is anindisputable fact that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor thedeaf man the music. To show, as we have shown, that the aesthetic factdoes not depend upon the nature of the impressions, but that allsensible impressions can be raised to aesthetic expression and that noneneed of necessity be so raised, is an idea which presents itself onlywhen all the other ways out of the difficulty have been tried. But whosoimagines that the aesthetic fact is something pleasing to the eyes or tothe hearing, has no line of defence against him who proceeds logicallyto identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in general, and includescooking in Aesthetic, or, as some positivist has done, the viscerallybeautiful. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of play. _

The theory of _play_ is another form of aesthetic hedonism. Theconception of play has sometimes helped towards the realization of theactifying character of the expressive fact: man (it has been said) isnot really man, save when he begins to play; that is to say, when hefrees himself from natural and mechanical causality and operatesspiritually; and his first game is art. But since the word _play_ alsomeans that pleasure which arises from the expenditure of the exuberantenergy of the organism (that is to say, from a practical act), theconsequence of this theory has been, that every game has been called anaesthetic fact, and that the aesthetic function has been called a game, in so far as it is possible to play with it, for, like science and everyother thing, Aesthetic can be made part of a game. But morality cannotbe provoked at the intention of playing, on the ground that it does notconsent; on the contrary, it dominates and regulates the act of playingitself. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theories of sexuality and of the triumph. _

Finally, there have been some who have tried to deduce the pleasure ofart from the reaction of the sexual organs. There are some very modernaestheticians who place the genesis of the aesthetic fact in thepleasure of _conquering_, of _triumphing_, or, as others add, in thedesire of the male, who wishes to conquer the female. This theory isseasoned with much anecdotal erudition, Heaven knows of what degree ofcredibility! on the customs of savage peoples. But in very truth therewas no necessity for such important aid, for one often meets in ordinarylife poets who adorn themselves with their poetry, like cocks that raisetheir crests, or turkeys that spread their tails. But he who does suchthings, in so far as he does them, is not a poet, but a poor devil of acock or turkey. The conquest of woman does not suffice to explain theart fact. It would be just as correct to term poetry _economic_, becausethere have been aulic and stipendiary poets, and there are poets thesale of whose verses helps them to gain their livelihood, if it does notaltogether provide it. However, this definition has not failed to winover some zealous neophytes of historical materialism. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic. Meaning in it of content and form. _

Another less vulgar current of thought considers Aesthetic to be thescience of the _sympathetic_, of that with which we sympathize, whichattracts, rejoices, gives us pleasure and excites admiration. But thesympathetic is nothing but the image or representation of what pleases. And, as such, it is a complex fact, resulting from a constant element, the aesthetic element of representation, and from a variable element, the pleasing in its infinite forms, arising from all the various classesof values. 

In ordinary language, there is sometimes a feeling of repugnance atcalling an expression beautiful, which is not an expression of thesympathetic. Hence the continual contrast between the point of view ofthe aesthetician or of the art critic and that of the ordinary person, who cannot succeed in persuading himself that the image of pain and ofturpitude can be beautiful, or, at least, can be beautiful with as muchright as the pleasing and the good. 

The opposition could be solved by distinguishing two different sciences, one of expression and the other of the sympathetic, if the latter couldbe the object of a special science; that is to say, if it were not, ashas been shown, a complex fact. If predominance be given to theexpressive fact, it becomes a part of Aesthetic as science ofexpression; if to the pleasurable content, we fall back to the study offacts which are essentially hedonistic (utilitarian), howevercomplicated they may appear. The origin, also, of the connexion betweencontent and form is to be sought for in the Aesthetic of thesympathetic, when this is conceived as the sum of two values. 

 [Sidenote] _Aesthetic hedonism and moralism. _

In all the doctrines just now discussed, the art fact is posited asmerely hedonistic. But this view cannot be maintained, save by unitingit with a philosophic hedonism that is complete and not partial, that isto say, with a hedonism which does not admit any other form of value. Hardly has this hedonistic conception of art been received byphilosophers, who admit one or more spiritual values, of truth or ofmorality, than the following question must necessarily be asked: Whatshould be done with art? To what use should it be put? Should a freecourse be allowed to its pleasures? And if so, to what extent? Thequestion of the _end of art_, which in the Aesthetic of expression wouldbe a contradiction of terms, here appears in place, and altogetherlogical. 

 [Sidenote] _The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of art. _

Now it is evident that, admitting the premisses, but two solutions ofsuch a question can be given, the one altogether negative, the otherrestrictive. 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, notonly useless, but harmful. According to this theory, then, it isnecessary to drive it with all our strength from the human soul, whichit troubles. The other solution, which we shall call _pedagogic_ or_moralistico-utilitarian_, admits art, but only in so far as it concurswith the end of morality; in so far as it assists with innocent pleasurethe work of him who leads to the true and the good; in so far as itsprinkles with dulcet balm the sides of the vase of wisdom and ofmorality. 

It is well to observe that it would be an error to divide this secondview into intellectualist and moralistico-utilitarian, according towhether the end of leading to the true or to what is practically good, be assigned to art. The task of instructing, which is imposed upon it, precisely because it is an end which is sought after and advised, is nolonger merely a theoretical fact, but a theoretical fact become thematerial for practical action; it is not, therefore, intellectualism, butpedagogism and practicism. Nor would it be more exact to subdivide thepedagogic view into the pure utilitarian and the moralistico-utilitarian;because those who admit only the individually useful (the desire of theindividual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have nomotive for seeking an ulterior justification for art. 

But to enunciate these theories at the point to which we have attainedis to confute them. We therefore restrict ourselves to observing that inthe pedagogic theory of art is to be found another of the reasons why ithas been erroneously claimed that the content of art should be _chosen_with a view to certain practical effects. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of pure beauty. _

The thesis, re-echoed by the artists, that art consists of _purebeauty_, has often been brought forward against hedonistic and pedagogicAesthetic: "Heaven places All our joy in _pure beauty_, and the Verse iseverything. " If it is wished that this should be understood in the sensethat art is not to be confounded with sensual pleasure, that is, infact, with utilitarian practicism, nor with moralism, then our Aestheticalso must be permitted to adorn itself with the title of _Aesthetic ofpure beauty_. But if (as is often the case) something mystical andtranscendental be meant by this, something that is unknown to our poorhuman world, or something spiritual and beatific, but not expressive, wemust reply that while applauding the conception of a beauty, free of allthat is not the spiritual form of expression, we are yet unable toconceive a beauty altogether purified of expression, that is to say, separated from itself. 

XII

THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS

 [Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the aesthetic of the sympathetic. _

The doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded inthis by the capricious metaphysical and mystical Aesthetic, and by thatblind tradition which assumes an intimate connection between things bychance treated of together by the same authors and in the same books), has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of Aesthetic, a seriesof concepts, of which one example suffices to justify our resoluteexpulsion of them from our own treatise. 

Their catalogue is long, not to say interminable: _tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic, humoristic, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble, decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac, cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting, dreadful, nauseating_; the list can be increased at will. 

Since that doctrine took as its special object the sympathetic, it wasnaturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of this, or any of thecombinations or gradations which lead at last from the sympathetic tothe antipathetic. And seeing that the sympathetic content was held to bethe _beautiful_ and the antipathetic the _ugly_, the varieties (tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, etc. ) constituted for it the shades andgradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of the ugly surmounted. _

Having enumerated and defined, as well as it could, the chief amongthese varieties, the Aesthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problemof the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art_. This problem iswithout meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save theanti-aesthetic or inexpressive, which can never form part of theaesthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its antithesis. But the questionfor the doctrine which we are here criticizing was to reconcile in someway the false and defective idea of art from which it started, reducedto the representation of the agreeable, with effective art, whichoccupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial attempt to settle whatexamples of the ugly (antipathetic) could be admitted in artisticrepresentation, 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 theugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening theeffect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series ofcontrasts, from which the pleasurable shall issue more efficacious andpleasure-giving. It is, in fact, a common observation that pleasure ismore vividly felt when It has been preceded by abstinence or bysuffering. Thus the ugly in art was looked upon as the servant of thebeautiful, its stimulant and condiment. 

That special theory of hedonistic refinement, which used to be pompouslycalled the _surmounting of the ugly_, falls with the general theory ofthe sympathetic; and with it the enumeration and the definition of theconcepts mentioned above remain completely excluded from Aesthetic. ForAesthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic Intheir varieties, but only the spiritual activity of the representation. 

 [Sidenote] _Pseudo-aesthetic concepts belong to Psychology. _

However, the large space which, as we have said, those concepts havehitherto occupied in aesthetic treatises makes opportune a rather morecopious explanation of what they are. What will be their lot? As theyare excluded from Aesthetic, in what other part of Philosophy will theybe received?

Truly, in none. All those concepts are without philosophical value. Theyare nothing but a series of classes, which can be bent in the mostvarious ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is sought to reducethe infinite complications and shadings of the values and disvalues oflife. Of those classes, there are some that have an especially positivesignificance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic, the solemn, the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others have asignificance especially negative, like the ugly, the horrible, thedreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the foolish, the extravagant;in others prevails a mixed significance, as is the case with the comic, the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic. Thecomplications are infinite, because the individuations are infinite;hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in thearbitrary and approximate manner of the natural sciences, whose duty itis to make as good a plan as possible of that reality which they cannotexhaust by enumeration, nor understand and surpass speculatively. Andsince _Psychology_ is the naturalistic discipline, which undertakes toconstruct types and plans of the spiritual processes of man (of which, in fact, it is always accentuating in our day the merely empirical anddescriptive character), these concepts do not appertain to Aesthetic, nor, in general, to Philosophy. They must simply be handed over toPsychology. 

 [Sidenote] _Impossibility of rigoristic definitions of them. _

As is the case with all other psychological constructions, so is it withthose concepts: no rigorous definitions are possible; and consequentlythe one cannot be deduced from the other and they cannot be connected ina system, as has, nevertheless, often been attempted, at great waste oftime and without result. But it can be claimed as possible to obtain, apart from philosophical definitions recognised as impossible, empiricaldefinitions, universally acceptable as true. Since there does not exista unique definition of a given fact, but innumerable definitions can begiven of it, according to the cases and the objects for which they aremade, so it is clear that if there were only one, and that the true one, this would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophicaldefinition. Speaking exactly, every time that one of the terms to whichwe have referred has been employed, or any other of the innumerableseries, a definition of it has at the same time been given, expressed orunderstood. And each one of these definitions has differed somewhat fromthe others, in some particular, perhaps of very small importance, suchas tacit reference to some individual fact or other, which thus becameespecially an object of attention and was raised to the position of ageneral type. So it happens that not one of such definitions satisfieshim who hears it, nor does it satisfy even him who constructs it. For, the moment after, this same individual finds himself face to face with anew case, for which he recognizes that his definition is more or lessinsufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of remodelling. It is necessary, therefore, to leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime orthe comic, the tragic or the humoristic, on every occasion, as theyplease and as may seem suitable to their purpose. And if you insist uponobtaining an empirical definition of universal validity, we can butsubmit this one:--The sublime (comic, tragic, humoristic, etc. ) is_everything_ that is or will be so _called_ by those who have employedor shall employ this _word_. 

 [Sidenote] _Examples: definitions of the sublime, the comic, and the humoristic. _

What is the sublime? The unexpected affirmation of an ultra-powerfulmoral force: that is one definition. But that other definition isequally good, which also recognizes the sublime where the force whichdeclares itself is an ultra-powerful, but immoral and destructive will. Both remain vague and assume no precise form, until they are applied toa concrete case, which makes clear what is here meant by_ultra-powerful_, and what by _unexpected_. They are quantitativeconcepts, but falsely quantitative, since there is no way of measuringthem; they are, at bottom, metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logicaltautologies. The humorous will be laughter mingled with tears, bitterlaughter, the sudden passage from the comic to the tragic, and from thetragic to the comic, the comic romantic, the inverted sublime, wardeclared against every attempt at insincerity, compassion which isashamed to lament, the mockery not of the fact, but of the ideal itself;and whatever else may better please, according as it is desired to get aview of the physiognomy of this or that poet, of this or that poem, which is, in its uniqueness, its own definition, and though momentaryand circumscribed, yet the sole adequate. The comic has been defined asthe displeasure arising from the perception of a deformity immediatelyfollowed by a greater pleasure arising from the relaxation of ourpsychical forces, which were strained in anticipation of a perceptionwhose importance was foreseen. While listening to a narrative, which, for example, should describe the magnificent and heroic purpose of adefinite person, we anticipate in imagination the occurrence of anaction both heroic and magnificent, and we prepare ourselves to receiveit, by straining our psychic forces. If, however, in a moment, insteadof the magnificent and heroic action, which the premises and the tone ofthe narrative had led us to expect, by an unexpected change there occura slight, mean, foolish action, unequal to our expectation, we have beendeceived, and the recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant ofdispleasure. But this instant is as it were overcome by the oneimmediately following, in which we are able to discard our strainedattention, to free ourselves from the provision of psychic energyaccumulated and, henceforth superfluous, to feel ourselves reasonableand relieved of a burden. This is the pleasure of the comic, with itsphysiological equivalent, laughter. If the unpleasant fact that hasoccurred should painfully affect our interests, pleasure would notarise, laughter would be at once choked, the psychic energy would bestrained and overstrained by other more serious perceptions. If, on theother hand, such more serious perceptions do not arise, if the wholeloss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight, then thesupervening feeling of our psychic wealth affords ample compensation forthis very slight displeasure. --This, stated in a few words, is one ofthe most accurate modern definitions of the comic. It boasts ofcontaining, justified or corrected, the manifold attempts to define thecomic, from Hellenic antiquity to our own day. It includes Plato'sdictum in the _Philebus_, and Aristotle's, which is more explicit. Thelatter looks upon the comic as an _ugliness without pain_. It containsthe theory of Hobbes, who placed it in the feeling of _individualsuperiority_; of Kant, who saw in it a _relaxation of tension_; andthose of other thinkers, for whom it was _the contrast between great andsmall, between the finite and the infinite_. But on close observation, the analysis and definition above given, although most elaborate andrigorous in appearance, yet enunciates characteristics which areapplicable, not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; suchas the succession of painful and agreeable moments and the satisfactionarising from the consciousness of force and of its free development. Thedifferentiation here given is that of quantitative determinations, towhich limits cannot be assigned. They remain vague phrases, attaining tosome meaning from their reference to this or that single comic fact. Ifsuch definitions be taken too seriously, there happens to them what JeanPaul Richter said of all the definitions of the comic: namely, thattheir sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to produce, in reality, the fact, which they vainly try to define logically. And who will everdetermine logically the dividing line between the comic and thenon-comic, between smiles and laughter, between smiling and gravity; whowill cut into clearly divided parts that ever-varying continuity intowhich life melts?

 [Sidenote] _Relations between those concepts and aesthetic concepts. _

The facts, classified as well as possible in the above-quotedpsychological concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyondthe generic that all of them, in so far as they designate the materialof life, can be represented by art; and the other accidental relation, that aesthetic facts also may sometimes enter into the processesdescribed, as in the impression of the sublime that the work of aTitanic artist such as Dante or Shakespeare may produce, and that of thecomic produced by the effort of a dauber or of a scribbler. 

The process is external to the aesthetic fact In this case also; for theonly feeling linked with that is the feeling of aesthetic value anddisvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. The Dantesque Farinata isaesthetically beautiful, and nothing but beautiful: if, in addition, theforce of will of this personage appear sublime, or the expression thatDante gives him, by reason of his great genius, seem sublime bycomparison with that of a less energetic poet, all this is not a matterfor aesthetic consideration. This consists always and only in adequationto truth; that is, in beauty. 

XIII

THE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND ART

 [Sidenote] _Aesthetic activity and physical concepts. _

Aesthetic activity is distinct from practical activity but when itexpresses itself is always physical accompanied by practical activity. Hence its utilitarian or hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain, which are, as it were, the practical echo of aesthetic values anddisvalues, of the beautiful and of the ugly. But this practical side ofthe aesthetic activity has also, in its turn, a _physical_ or_psychophysical_ 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, as the result of the construction which we raise in physical science, and of the useful and arbitrary methods, which we have shown to beproper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our reply cannot bedoubtful, that is, it cannot be affirmative as to the first of the twohypotheses. 

However, it will be better to leave it at this point in suspense, for itis not at present necessary to prosecute this line of inquiry anyfurther. The mention already made must suffice to prevent our havingspoken of the physical element as of something objective and existing, for reasons of simplicity and adhesion to ordinary language, fromleading to hasty conclusions as to the concepts and the connexionbetween spirit and nature. 

 [Sidenote] _Expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense. _

It is important to make clear that as the existence of the hedonisticside in every spiritual activity has given rise to the confusion betweenthe aesthetic activity and the useful or pleasurable, so the existence, or, better, the possibility of constructing this physical side, hasgenerated the confusion between _aesthetic_ expression and expression_in the naturalistic sense_; between a spiritual fact, that is to say, and a mechanical and passive fact (not to say, between a concretereality and an abstraction or fiction). In common speech, sometimes itis the words of the poet that are called _expressions_, the notes of themusician, or the figures of the painter; sometimes the blush which iswont to accompany the feeling of shame, the pallor resulting from fear, the grinding of the teeth proper to violent anger, the glittering of theeyes, and certain movements of the muscles of the mouth, which revealcheerfulness. A certain degree of heat is also said to be the_expression_ of fever, as the falling of the barometer is of rain, andeven that the height of the rate of exchange _expresses_ the discreditof the paper-money of a State, or social discontent the approach of arevolution. One can well imagine what sort of scientific results wouldbe attained by allowing oneself to be governed by linguistic usage andplacing in one sheaf facts so widely different. But there is, in fact, an abyss between a man who is the prey of anger with all its naturalmanifestations, and another man who expresses it aesthetically; betweenthe aspect, the cries, and the contortions of one who is tortured withsorrow at the loss of a dear one, and the words or song with which thesame individual portrays his torture at another moment; between thedistortion of emotion and the gesture of the actor. Darwin's book on theexpression of the feelings in man and animals does not belong toAesthetic; because there is nothing in common between the science ofspiritual expression and a _Semiotic_, whether it be medical, meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic. 

Expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks expression in thespiritual sense, that is to say, the characteristic itself of activityand of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into poles of beautyand of ugliness. It is nothing more than a relation between cause andeffect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process ofaesthetic production can be symbolized in four steps, which are: _a_, impressions; _b_, expression or spiritual aesthetic synthesis; _c_, hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (aestheticpleasure); _d_, translation of the aesthetic fact into physicalphenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, etc. ). Anyone can see that the capital point, the only one that isproperly speaking aesthetic and truly real, is in that _b_, which islacking to the mere manifestation or naturalistic construction, metaphorically also called expression. 

The expressive process is exhausted when those four steps have beentaken. It begins again with new impressions, a new aesthetic synthesis, and relative accompaniments. 

 [Sidenote] _Intuitions and memory. _

Expressions or representations follow and expel one another. Certainly, this passing away, this disassociation, is not perishing, it is nottotal elimination: nothing of what is born dies with that complete deathwhich would be identical with never having been born. Though all thingspass away, yet none can die. The representations which we haveforgotten, also persist in some way in our spirit, for without them wecould not explain acquired habits and capacities. Thus, the strength oflife lies in this apparent forgetting: one forgets what has beenabsorbed and what life has superseded. 

But many other things, many other representations, are still efficaciouselements in the actual processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent onus not to forget them, or to be capable of recalling them when necessitydemands them. The will is always vigilant in this work of preservation, for it aims at preserving (so to say) the greater and more fundamentalpart of all our riches. Certainly its vigilance is not alwayssufficient. Memory, we know, leaves or betrays us in various ways. Forthis very reason, the vigilant will excogitates expedients, which helpmemory in its weakness, and are its _aids_. 

 [Sidenote] _The production of aids to memory. _

We have already explained how these aids are possible. Expressions orrepresentations are, at the same time, practical facts, which are alsocalled physical facts, in so far as to the physical belongs the task ofclassifying them and reducing them to types. Now it is clear, that if wecan succeed in making those facts in some way permanent, it will alwaysbe possible (other conditions remaining equal) to reproduce in us, byperceiving it, the already produced expression or intuition. 

If that in which the practical concomitant acts, or (to use physicalterms) the movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent, be called the object or physical stimulus, and if it be designated bythe letter _e_; then the process of reproduction will take place in thefollowing order: _e_, the physical stimulus; _d-b_, perceptions ofphysical facts (sounds, tones, mimic, combinations of lines and colours, etc. ), which form together the aesthetic synthesis, already produced;_c_, the hedonistic accompaniment, which is also reproduced. 

And what are those combinations of words which are called poetry, prose, poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical stimulantsof reproduction_ (the _e_ stage); what are those combinations of soundwhich are called operas, symphonies, sonatas; and what those of linesand of colours, which are called pictures, statues, architecture? Thespiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of those physical factsabove mentioned, makes possible the preservation and the reproduction ofthe intuitions produced, often so laboriously, by ourselves and byothers. If the physiological organism, and with it memory, becomeweakened; if the monuments of art be destroyed; then all the aestheticwealth, the fruit of the labours of many generations, becomes lessenedand rapidly disappears. 

 [Sidenote] _The physically beautiful. _

Monuments of art, which are the stimulants of aesthetic reproduction, are called _beautiful things or the physically beautiful_. Thiscombination of words constitutes a verbal paradox, because the beautifulis not a physical fact; it does not belong to things, but to theactivity of man, to spiritual energy. But henceforth it is clear throughwhat wanderings and what abbreviations, physical things and facts, whichare simply aids to the reproduction of the beautiful, end by beingcalled, elliptically, beautiful things and physically beautiful. And nowthat we have made the existence of this ellipse clear, we shallourselves make use of it without hesitation. 

 [Sidenote] _Content and form: another meaning. _

The intervention of the physically beautiful serves to explain anothermeaning of the words _content and form_, as employed by aestheticians. Some call "content" the internal fact or expression (which is for usalready form), and they call "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm, the sounds (for us form no longer); thus they look upon the physicalfact as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. Thisserves to explain another aspect of what is called aesthetic ugliness. He who has nothing definite to express may try to hide his internalemptiness with a flood of words, with sounding verse, with deafeningpolyphony, with painting that dazzles the eye, or by collocating greatarchitectonic masses, which arrest and disturb, although, at bottom, they convey nothing. Ugliness, then, is the arbitrary, thecharlatanesque; and, in reality, if the practical will do not intervenein the theoretic function, there may be absence of beauty, but nevereffective presence of the ugly. 

 [Sidenote] _Natural and artificial beauty. _

Physical beauty is wont to be divided into _natural_ and _artificial_beauty. Thus we reach one of the facts, which has given great labour tothinkers: _the beautiful in nature_. These words often designate simplyfacts of practical pleasure. He alludes to nothing aesthetic who calls alandscape beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where bodilymotion is easy, and where the warm sun-ray envelops and caresses thelimbs. But it is nevertheless indubitable, that on other occasions theadjective "beautiful, " applied to objects and scenes existing in nature, has a completely aesthetic signification. 

It has been observed, that in order to enjoy natural objectsaesthetically, we should withdraw them from their external andhistorical reality, and separate their simple appearance or origin fromexistence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between ourlegs, in such a way as to remove ourselves from our wonted relationswith it, the landscape appears as an ideal spectacle; that nature isbeautiful only for him who contemplates her _with the eye of theartist_; that zoologists and botanists do not recognize beautifulanimals and flowers; that natural beauty is _discovered_ (and examplesof discovery are the points of view, pointed out by men of taste andimagination, and to which more or less aesthetic travellers andexcursionists afterwards have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a more orless collective _suggestion_); that, _without the aid of theimagination_, no part of nature is beautiful, and that with such aid thesame natural object or fact is now expressive, according to thedisposition of the soul, now insignificant, now expressive of onedefinite thing, now of another, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that _natural beauty_, which an artistwould not _to some extent correct, does not exist_. 

All these observations are most just, and confirm the fact that naturalbeauty is simply a _stimulus_ to aesthetic reproduction, whichpresupposes previous production. Without preceding aesthetic intuitionsof the imagination, nature cannot arouse any at all. As regards naturalbeauty, man is like the mythical Narcissus at the fountain. They showfurther that since this stimulus is accidental, it is, for the mostpart, imperfect or equivocal. Leopardi said that natural beauty is"rare, scattered, and fugitive. " Every one refers the natural fact tothe expression which is in his mind. One artist is, as it were, carriedaway by a laughing landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by thepretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance of anold ruffian. Perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and the uglyface of the old ruffian are _disgusting_; the second, that the laughinglandscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid_. They may disputefor ever; but they will never agree, save when they have suppliedthemselves with a sufficient dose of aesthetic knowledge, which willenable them to recognize that they are both right. _Artificial_ beauty, created by man, is a much more ductile and efficacious aid toreproduction. 

 [Sidenote] _Mixed beauty. _

In addition to these two classes, aestheticians also sometimes talk intheir treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. Of what is it a mixture? Just ofnatural and artificial. Whoso fixes and externalizes, operates withnatural materials, which he does not create, but combines andtransforms. In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture ofnature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixedbeauty, as of a special category. But it happens that, in certain cases, combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more thanin others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden andinclude in our design groups of trees or ponds which are already there. On other occasions externalization is limited by the impossibility ofproducing certain effects artificially. Thus we may mix the colouringmatters, but we cannot create a powerful voice or a personage and anappearance appropriate to this or that personage of a drama. We musttherefore seek for them among things already existing, and make use ofthem when we find them. When, therefore, we adopt a great number ofcombinations already existing in nature, such as we should not be ableto produce artificially if they did not exist, the result is called_mixed_ beauty. 

 [Sidenote] _Writings. _

We must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments ofreproduction called _writings_, such as alphabets, musical notes, hieroglyphics, and all pseudo-languages, from the language of flowersand flags, to the language of patches (so much the vogue in the societyof the eighteenth century). Writings are not physical facts which arousedirectly impressions answering to aesthetic expressions; they are simple_indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such physicalfacts. A series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the movementswhich we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to emit certaindefinite sounds. If, through practice, we become able to hear the wordswithout opening our mouths and (what is much more difficult) to hear thesounds by running the eye down the page of the music, all this does notalter anything of the nature of the writings, which are altogetherdifferent from direct physical beauty. No one calls the book whichcontains the _Divine Comedy_, or the portfolio which contains _DonGiovanni_, beautiful in the same sense as the block of marble whichcontains Michael Angelo's _Moses_, or the piece of coloured wood whichcontains the _Transfiguration_ are metaphorically called beautiful. Bothserve for the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former by a farlonger and far more indirect route than the latter. 

 [Sidenote] _The beautiful as free and not free. _

Another division of the beautiful, which is still found in treatises, isthat into _free and not free_. By beauties that are not free, areunderstood those objects which have to serve a double purpose, extra-aesthetic and aesthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since itappears that the first purpose limits and impedes the second, thebeautiful object resulting therefrom has been considered as a beautythat is not free. 

Architectural works are especially cited; and precisely for this reason, has architecture often been excluded from the number of the so-calledfine arts. A temple must be above all things adapted to the use of acult; a house must contain all the rooms requisite for commodity ofliving, and they must be arranged with a view to this commodity; afortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks ofcertain armies and the blows of certain instruments of war. It istherefore held that the architect's field is limited: he may be able to_embellish_ to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but hishands are bound by the _object_ of these buildings, and he can onlymanifest that part of his vision of beauty in their construction whichdoes not impair their extrinsic, 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 itis held that their beauty must not so far exceed as to prevent oureating 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 issaid of the art of printing: a book should be beautiful, but not to theextent of its being difficult or impossible to read it. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful that is not free. _

In respect to all this, we must observe, in the first place, that theexternal purpose, precisely because it is such, does not of necessitylimit or trammel the other purpose of being a stimulus to aestheticreproduction. Nothing, therefore, can be more erroneous than the thesisthat architecture, for example, is by its nature not free and imperfect, since it must also fulfil other practical objects. Beautifularchitectural works, however, themselves undertake to deny this by theirsimple presence. 

In the second place, not only are the two objects not necessarily inopposition; but, we must add, the artist always has the means ofpreventing this contradiction from taking place. In what way? By taking, as the material of his intuition and aesthetic externalization, precisely the _destination_ of the object, which serves a practical end. He will not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it theinstrument of aesthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adaptedto its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches andbarracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they areembellished and adorned, but in so far as they express the purpose forwhich they were made. A garment is only beautiful because it is quitesuitable to a given person in given conditions. The sword bound to theside of the warrior Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "soadorned that it seemed a useless ornament, not the warlike instrument ofa warrior. " It was beautiful, if you will, in the eyes and imaginationof the sorceress, who loved her lover in this effeminate way. Theaesthetic fact can always accompany the practical fact, becauseexpression is truth. 

It cannot, however, be denied that aesthetic contemplation sometimeshinders practical use. For instance, it is a quite common experience tofind certain new things so well adapted to their purpose, and yet sobeautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in maltreating them byusing after contemplating them, which amounts to consuming them. It wasfor this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia evincedrepugnance to ordering his magnificent grenadiers, so well suited forwar, to endure the strain of battle; but his less aesthetic son, Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent services. 

 [Sidenote] _The stimulants of production. _

It might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful as asimple adjunct for the reproduction of the internally beautiful, that isto say, of expressions, that the artist creates his expressions bypainting or by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and thattherefore the physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimesprecedes the aesthetically beautiful. This would be a somewhatsuperficial mode of understanding the procedure of the artist, who nevermakes a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with hisimagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke, notin order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist), butas though to have a rallying point for ulterior meditation and forinternal concentration. The physical point on which he leans is not thephysically beautiful, instrument of reproduction, but what may be calleda pedagogic means, similar to retiring into solitude, or to the manyother expedients, frequently very strange, adopted by artists andphilosophers, who vary in these according to their variousidiosyncrasies. The old aesthetician Baumgarten advised poets to ride onhorseback, as a means of inspiration, to drink wine in moderation, and(provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women. 

XIV

MISTAKES ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC

It is necessary to mention a series of scientific mistakes which havearisen from the failure to understand the purely external relationbetween the aesthetic fact or artistic vision, and the physical fact orinstrument, which serves as an aid to reproduce it. We must hereindicate the proper criticism, which derives from what has already beensaid. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of aesthetic associationism_

That form of associationism which identifies the aesthetic fact with the_association of two_ images finds a place among these errors. By whatpath has it been possible to arrive at such a mistake, against which ouraesthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of perfect unity, never of duality, rebels? Just because the physical and the aestheticfacts have been considered separately, as two distinct images, whichenter the spirit, the one drawn forth from the other, the one first andthe other afterwards. A picture is divided into the image of the_picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, intothe image of the words and the image of the _meaning_ of the words. Butthis dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not enterthe spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image (theonly image, which is the aesthetic fact), in so far as it blindlystimulates the psychic organism and produces an impression answering tothe aesthetic expression already produced. 

The efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the fieldof Aesthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some waythe unity which has been destroyed by their principle of associationism, are highly instructive. Some maintain that the image called back againis unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on thecontrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ ofthe aesthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. But the dilemma isinexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity andgive up association. No third way out of the difficulty exists. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of aesthetic physic. _

From the failure to analyze so-called natural beauty thoroughly, and torecognize that it is simply an incident of aesthetic reproduction, andfrom having, on the contrary, looked upon it as given in nature, isderived all that portion of treatises upon Aesthetic which is entitled_The Beautiful in Nature or Aesthetic Physic_; sometimes evensubdivided, save the mark! into Aesthetic Mineralogy, Botany, andZoology. We do not wish to deny that such treatises contain many justremarks, and are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as theyrepresent beautifully the imaginings and fantasies, that is theimpressions, of their authors. But we must state that it isscientifically false to ask oneself if the dog be beautiful, and theornithorhynchus ugly; if the lily be beautiful, and the artichoke ugly. Indeed, the error is here double. On one hand, aesthetic Physic fallsback into the equivoke of the theory of artistic and literary classes, by attempting to determine aesthetically the abstractions of ourintellect; on the other, fails to recognize, as we said, the trueformation of so-called natural beauty; for which the question as towhether some given individual animal, flower, or man be beautiful orugly, is altogether excluded. What is not produced by the aestheticspirit, or cannot be referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. Theaesthetic process arises from the ideal relations in which naturalobjects are arranged. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body. _

The double error can be exemplified by the question, upon which wholevolumes have been written, as to the _Beauty of the human body_. Here itis necessary, above all things, to urge those who discuss this subjectfrom the abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "What do you mean bythe human body, that of the male, of the female, or of the androgyne?"Let us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinctinquiries, as to the virile and feminine beauty (there really arewriters who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the morebeautiful); and let us continue: "Masculine or feminine beauty; but ofwhat race of men--the white, the yellow, or the black, and whateverothers there may be, according to the division of races?" Let us assumethat they limit themselves to the white race, and let us continue: "Whatsub-species of the white race?" And when we have restricted themgradually to one section of the white world, that is to say, to theItalian, Tuscan, Siennese, or Porta Camollia section, we will continue:"Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in what condition andstate of development--that of the new-born babe, of the child, of theboy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and is theman at rest or at work, or is he occupied as is Paul Potter's cow, orthe Ganymede of Rembrandt?"

Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual_omnimode determinatum_, or, better, at the man pointed out with thefinger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling what hasbeen said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now ugly, according to the point of view, according to what is passing in the mindof the artist. Finally, if the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, andif there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomyfirs, " the "clouds and perpetual north winds, " of the northern seas; letit be believed, if possible, that such relativity does not exist for thehuman body, source of the most various suggestions!

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the beauty of geometric figures. _

The question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected withaesthetic Physic. But if by geometrical figures be understood theconcepts of geometry, the concept of the triangle, the square, the cone, these are neither beautiful nor ugly: they are concepts. If, on theother hand, by such figures be understood bodies which possess definitegeometrical forms, these will be ugly or beautiful, like every naturalfact, according to the ideal connexions in which they are placed. Somehold that those geometrical figures are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion of firmness and of force. It is notdenied that such may be the case. But neither must it be denied thatthose also which give the impression of instability and of being crusheddown may possess their beauty, where they represent just the ill-formedand the crushed; and that in these last cases the firmness of thestraight line and the lightness of the cone or of the equilateraltriangle would, on the contrary, seem elements of ugliness. 

Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty ofgeometry, like the others analogous of the historically beautiful and ofhuman beauty, seem less absurd in the Aesthetic of the sympathetic, which means, at bottom, by the words "aesthetic beauty" therepresentation of what is pleasing. But the pretension to determinescientifically what are the sympathetic contents, and what are theirremediably antipathetic, is none the less erroneous, even in thesphere of that doctrine and after the laying down of those premises. Onecan only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely longpostscript 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 manhis beautiful ( = sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. Philographyis not a science. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature. _

The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, inproducing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These arecalled his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers, and so on. Let us run overthe sketches, the studies, and the notes of the artists: Leonardo noteddown in his pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper:"Giovannina, fantastic appearance, is at St. Catherine's, at theHospital; Cristofano di Castiglione is at the Pietà, he has a fine head;Christ, Giovan Conte, is of the suite of Cardinal Mortaro. " And so on. From this comes the illusion that the artist _imitates nature_; when itwould perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, andobeys him. The theory that _art imitates nature_ has sometimes beengrounded upon and found sustenance in this illusion, as also itsvariant, more easily to be defended, which makes art the _idealizer ofnature_. This last theory presents the process in a disorderly manner, indeed inversely to the true order; for the artist does not proceed fromextrinsic reality, in order to modify it by approaching it to the ideal;but he proceeds from the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, to his ideal, and from this he passes to the naturalfact, which he employs as the instrument of reproduction of the idealfact. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful. _

Another consequence of the confusion between the aesthetic and thephysical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful_. If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact, inwhich it externalizes itself, can well be divided and subdivided; forexample, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves oflines, 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 notaesthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, cut up in an arbitrarymanner. If this path were followed, and the confusion persisted in, weshould end by concluding that the true forms of the beautiful are_atoms_. 

The aesthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have_bulk_, could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be theimperceptibility of the too small, nor the unapprehensibility of the toolarge. But a bigness which depends upon perceptibility, not measurement, derives from a concept widely different from the mathematical. For whatis called imperceptible and incomprehensible does not produce animpression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the requisiteof bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the effective reality of thephysical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful. _

Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objectiveconditions of the beautiful_, it has been asked: To what physical factsdoes the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions oftones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries areas if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange inthe physical nature of the objects exchanged. The constant infecundityof the attempt should have at once given rise to some suspicion as toits vanity. In our times, especially, has the necessity for an_inductive_ Aesthetic been often proclaimed, of an Aesthetic starting_from below_, which should proceed like natural science and not hastenits conclusions. Inductive? But Aesthetic has always been both inductiveand deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deductioncannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize atrue science. But the word "inductive" was not here pronouncedaccidentally and without special intention. It was wished to imply byits use that the aesthetic fact is nothing, at bottom, but a physicalfact, which should be studied by applying to it the methods proper tothe physical and natural sciences. With such a presupposition and insuch a faith did inductive Aesthetic or Aesthetic of the inferior (whatpride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It has conscientiously begunby making a collection of _beautiful things_, for example of a greatnumber of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and has asked which ofthese give the impression of the beautiful and which of the ugly. As wasto be expected, the inductive aestheticians speedily found themselves ina difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspectwould appear beautiful in another. A yellow, coarse envelope, whichwould be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is, however, just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stampedpaper. This in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate anirony, if enclosed in a square English envelope. Such considerations ofsimple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductiveaestheticians, that the beautiful has no physical existence, and causethem to remit their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they have hadrecourse to an expedient, as to which we would find it difficult to sayhow far it belongs to natural science. They have sent their envelopesround from one to the other and opened a _referendum_, thus striving todecide by the votes of the majority in what consists the beautiful andthe ugly. 

We will not waste time over this argument, because we should seem to beturning ourselves into narrators of comic anecdotes rather thanexpositors of aesthetic science and of its problems. It is an actualfact, that the inductive aestheticians have not yet discovered _onesingle law_. 

 [Sidenote] _Astrology of Aesthetic. _

He who dispenses with doctors is prone to abandon himself to charlatans. Thus it has befallen those who have believed in the natural laws of thebeautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that of theproportions 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 tothe greater as is the greater to the whole line (_bc: ac=ac: ab_). Suchcanons easily become their superstitions, and they attribute to such thesuccess of their works. Thus Michael Angelo left as a precept to hisdisciple Marco del Pino of Siena that "he should always make a pyramidalserpentine figure multiplied by one, two, three, " a precept which didnot enable Marco di Siena to emerge from that mediocrity which we canyet observe in his many works, here in Naples. Others extracted from thesayings of Michael Angelo the precept that serpentine undulating lineswere the true _lines of beauty_. Whole volumes have been composed onthese laws of beauty, on the golden section and on the undulating andserpentine lines. These should in our opinion be looked upon as the_astrology of Aesthetic_. 

XV

THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION, TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS

 [Sidenote] _The practical activity of externalization. _

The fact of the production of the physically beautiful implies, as hasalready been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowingcertain visions, intuitions, or representations, to be lost. Such a willmust be able to act with the utmost rapidity, and as it wereinstinctively, and also be capable of long and laborious deliberations. Thus and only thus does the practical activity enter into relations withthe aesthetic, that is to say, in effecting the production of physicalobjects, which are aids to memory. Here it is not merely a concomitant, but really a distinct moment of the aesthetic activity. We cannot willor not will our aesthetic vision: we can, however, will or not will toexternalize it, or better, to preserve and communicate, or not, toothers, the externalization produced. 

 [Sidenote] _The technique of externalization. _

This volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex ofvarious kinds of knowledge. These are known as _techniques_, like allknowledge which precedes the practical activity. Thus we talk of anartistic technique in the same metaphorical and elliptic manner that wetalk of the physically beautiful, that is to say (in more preciselanguage), _knowledge employed by the practical activity engaged inproducing stimuli to aesthetic reproduction_. In place of employing solengthy a phrase, we shall here avail ourselves of the vulgarterminology, since we are henceforward aware of its true meaning. 

The possibility of this technical knowledge, at the service of artisticreproduction, has caused people to imagine the existence of an aesthetictechnique of internal expression, which is tantamount to saying, _adoctrine of the means of internal expression_, which is altogetherinconceivable. And we know well the reason why it is inconceivable;expression, considered in itself, is primary theoretic activity, and, inso far as it is this, it precedes the practical activity and theintellectual knowledge which illumines the practical activity, and isthus independent alike of the one and of the other. It also helps toillumine the practical activity, but is not illuminated by it. Expression does not employ _means_, because it has not an _end_; it hasintuitions of things, but does not will them, and is thus indivisibleinto means and end. Thus if it be said, as sometimes is the case, that acertain writer has invented a new technique of fiction or of drama, orthat a painter has discovered a new mode of distribution of light, theword is used in a false sense; because the so-called _new technique isreally that romance itself, or that new picture_ itself. Thedistribution of light belongs to the vision itself of the picture; asthe technique of a dramatist is his dramatic conception itself. On otheroccasions, the word "technique" is used to designate certain merits ordefects in a work which is a failure; and it is said, euphemistically, that the conception is bad, but the technique good, or that theconception is good, and the technique bad. 

On the other hand, when the different ways of painting in oils, or ofetching, or of sculpturing in alabaster, are discussed, 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 artisticsense be impossible, a theatrical technique is not impossible, that isto say, processes of externalization of certain given aesthetic works. When, for instance, women were introduced on the stage in Italy in thesecond half of the sixteenth century, in place of men dressed as women, this was a true and real discovery in theatrical technique; such too wasthe perfecting in the following century by the impresarios of Venice, ofmachines for the rapid changing of the scenes. 

 [Sidenote] _The theoretic techniques of the individual arts. _

The collection of technical knowledge at the service of artists desirousof externalizing their expressions, can be divided into groups, whichmay be entitled _theories of the arts_. Thus is born a theory ofArchitecture, comprising mechanical laws, information relating to theweight or to the resistance of the materials of construction or offortification, manuals relating to the method of mixing chalk or stucco;a theory of Sculpture, containing advice as to the instruments to beused for sculpturing the various sorts of stone, for obtaining asuccessful fusion of bronze, for working with the chisel, for the exactcopying of the model in chalk or plaster, for keeping chalk damp; atheory of Painting, on the various techniques of tempera, ofoil-painting, of water-colour, of pastel, on the proportions of thehuman body, on the laws of perspective; a theory of Oratory, withprecepts as to the method of producing, of exercising and ofstrengthening the voice, of mimic and gesture; a theory of Music, on thecombinations and fusions of tones and sounds; and so on. Suchcollections of precepts abound in all literatures. And since it soonbecomes impossible to say what is useful and what useless to know, booksof this sort become very often a sort of encyclopaedias or catalogues ofdesiderata. Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture, claims for thearchitect a knowledge of letters, of drawing, of geometry, ofarithmetic, of optic, of history, of natural and moral philosophy, ofjurisprudence, of medicine, of astrology, of music, and so on. Everything is worth knowing: learn the art and lay it aside. 

It should be evident that such empirical collections are not reducibleto a science. They are composed of notions, taken from various sciencesand teachings, and their philosophical and scientific principles are tobe found in them. To undertake the construction of a scientific theoryof the different arts, would be to wish to reduce to the single andhomogeneous what is by nature multiple and heterogeneous; to wish todestroy the existence as a collection of what was put together preciselyto form a collection. Were we to give a scientific form to the manualsof the architect, the painter, or the musician, it is clear that nothingwould remain in our hands but the general principles of Mechanic, Optic, or Acoustic. Or if the especially artistic observations disseminatedthrough it be extracted and isolated, and a science be made of them, then the sphere of the individual art is deserted and that of Aestheticentered upon, for Aesthetic is always general Aesthetic, or better, itcannot be divided into general and special. This last case (that is, theattempt to furnish a technique of Aesthetic) is found, when menpossessing strong scientific instincts and a natural tendency tophilosophy, set themselves to work to produce such theories andtechnical manuals. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the aesthetic theories of the individual arts. _

But the confusion between Physic and Aesthetic has attained to itshighest degree, when aesthetic theories of the different arts areimagined, to answer such questions as: What are the _limits_ of eachart? What can be represented with colours, and what with sounds? Whatwith simple monochromatic lines, and what with touches of variouscolours? What with notes, and what with metres and rhymes? What are thelimits between the figurative and the auditional arts, between paintingand sculpture, poetry and music?

This, translated into scientific language, is tantamount to asking: Whatis the connexion between Acoustic and aesthetic expression? What betweenthe latter and Optic?--and the like. Now, if _there is no passage_ fromthe physical fact to the aesthetic, how could there be from theaesthetic to particular groups of aesthetic facts, such as the phenomenaof Optic or of Acoustic?

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the classifications of the arts. _

The things called _Arts_ have no aesthetic limits, because, in order tohave them, they would need to have also aesthetic existence; and we havedemonstrated the altogether empirical genesis of those divisions. Consequently, any attempt at an aesthetic classification of the arts isabsurd. If they be without limits, they are not exactly determinable, and consequently cannot be philosophically classified. All the booksdealing with classifications and systems of the arts could be burnedwithout any loss whatever. (We say this with the utmost respect to thewriters who have expended their labours upon them. )

The impossibility of such classifications finds, as it were, its proofin the strange methods to which recourse has been had to carry them out. The first and most common classification is that into arts of _hearing, sight_, and _imagination_; as if eyes, ears, and imagination were on thesame level, and could be deduced from the same logical variable, asfoundation of the division. Others have proposed the division into artsof _space and time_, and arts of _rest_ and _motion_; as if the conceptsof space, time, rest, and motion could determine special aestheticforms, or have anything in common with art as such. Finally, others haveamused themselves by dividing them into _classic and romantic_, or into_oriental, classic, and romantic_, thereby conferring the value ofscientific concepts on simple historical denominations, or adoptingthose pretended partitions of expressive forms, already criticizedabove; or by talking of arts _that can only be seen from one side_, likepainting, and of arts _that can be seen from all sides_, likesculpture--and similar extravagances, which exist neither in heaven noron the earth. 

The theory of the limits of the arts was, perhaps, at the time when itwas put forward, a beneficial critical reaction against those whobelieved in the possibility of the flowing of one expression intoanother, as of the _Iliad_ or of _Paradise Lost_ into a series ofpaintings, and thus held a poem to be of greater or lesser value, according as it could or could not be translated into pictures by apainter. But if the rebellion were reasonable and victorious, this doesnot mean that the arguments adopted and the theories made as requiredwere sound. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the union of the arts. _

Another theory which is a corollary to that of the limits of the arts, falls with them; that of the _union of the arts_. Granted differentarts, distinct and limited, the questions were asked: Which is the mostpowerful? Do we not obtain more powerful effects by uniting several? Weknow nothing of this: we know only, in each individual case, thatcertain given artistic intuitions have need of definite physical meansfor their reproduction, and that other artistic intuitions have need ofother physical means. We can obtain the effect of certain dramas bysimply reading them; others need declamation and scenic display: someartistic intuitions, for their full extrinsication, need words, song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors; whileothers are beautiful and complete in a single delicate sweep of the pen, or with a few strokes of the pencil. But it is false to suppose thatdeclamation and scenic effects, and all the other things we havementioned together, are _more powerful_ than simply reading, or than thesimple stroke with the pen and with the pencil; because each of thesefacts or groups of facts has, so to say, a different object, and thepower of the different means employed cannot be compared when theobjects are different. 

 [Sidenote] _Connexion of the activity of externalization with utility and morality. _

Finally, it is only from the point of view of a clear and rigorousdistinction between the true and proper aesthetic activity, and thepractical activity of externalization, that we can solve the involvedand confused questions as to the relations between _art and utility_, and _art and morality_. 

That art as art is independent alike of utility and of morality, as alsoof every volitional form, we have above demonstrated. Without thisindependence, it would not be possible to speak of an intrinsic value ofart, nor indeed to conceive an aesthetic science, which demands theautonomy of the aesthetic fact as a necessity of its existence. 

But it would be erroneous to maintain that this independence of thevision or intuition or internal expression of the artist should be atonce extended to the practical activity of externalization and ofcommunication, which may or may not follow the aesthetic fact. If art beunderstood as the externalization of art, then utility and morality havea perfect right to deal with it; that is to say, the right one possessesto deal with one's own household. 

We do not, as a matter of fact, externalize and fix all of the manyexpressions and intuitions which we form in our mind; we do not declareour every thought in a loud voice, or write down, or print, or draw, orcolour, or expose it to the public gaze. _We select_ from the crowd ofintuitions which are formed or at least sketched within us; and theselection is governed by selection of the economic conditions of lifeand of its moral direction. Therefore, when we have formed an intuition, it remains to decide whether or no we should communicate it to others, and to whom, and when, and how; all of which considerations fall equallyunder 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 someextent justified, although these can in no wise be justified as imposedupon art as art, and we have ourselves denounced them in pure Aesthetic. Error always contains an element of truth. He who formulated thoseerroneous aesthetic propositions had his eye on practical facts, whichattach themselves externally to the aesthetic fact in economic and morallife. 

By all means, be partisans of a yet greater liberty in the vulgarizationof the means of aesthetic reproduction; we are of the same opinion, andlet us leave the proposals for legislative measures, and for actions tobe instigated against immoral art, to hypocrites, to the ingenuous, andto idlers. But the proclamation of this liberty, and the fixation of itslimits, how wide soever they be, is always the affair of morality. Andit would in any case be out of place to invoke that highest principle, that _fundamentum Aesthetices_, which is the independence of art, inorder to deduce from it the guiltlessness of the artist, who, in theexternalization of his imaginings, should calculate upon the unhealthytastes of his readers; or that licenses should be granted to the hawkerswho sell obscene statuettes in the streets. This last case is the affairof the police; the first must be brought before the tribunal of themoral conscience. The aesthetic judgment on the work of art has nothingto do with the morality of the artist, in so far as he is a practicalman, nor with the precautions to be taken that art may not be employedfor evil purposes alien to its essence, which is pure theoreticcontemplation. 

XVI

TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART

 [Sidenote] _Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction. _

When the entire aesthetic and externalizing process has been completed, when a beautiful expression has been produced and fixed in a definitephysical material, what is meant by _judging it_? _To reproduce it inoneself_, answer the critics of art, almost with one voice. Very good. Let us try thoroughly to understand this fact, and with that object inview, let us represent it schematically. 

The individual A is seeking the expression of an impression, which hefeels or has a presentiment of, but has not yet expressed. Behold himtrying various words and phrases, which may give the sought-forexpression, which must exist, but which he does not know. He tries thecombination _m_, but rejects it as unsuitable, inexpressive, incomplete, ugly: he tries the combination _n_, with a like result. _He does not seeanything, or he does not see clearly_. The expression still flies fromhim. After other vain attempts, during which he sometimes approaches, sometimes leaves the sign that offers itself, all of a sudden (almost asthough formed spontaneously of itself) he creates the sought-forexpression, and _lux facta est_. He enjoys for an instant aestheticpleasure or the pleasure of the beautiful. The ugly, with itscorrelative displeasure, was the aesthetic activity, which had notsucceeded in conquering the obstacle; the beautiful is the expressiveactivity, which now displays itself triumphant. 

We have taken this example from the domain of speech, as being nearerand more accessible, and because we all talk, though we do not all drawor paint. Now if another individual, whom we shall term B, desire tojudge this expression and decide whether it be beautiful or ugly, he_must of necessity place himself at A's point of view_, and go throughthe whole process again, with the help of the physical sign, supplied tohim by A. If A has seen clearly, then B (who has placed himself at A'spoint of view) will also see clearly and will find this expressionbeautiful. 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 othercases: that of A having a clear and B an obscure vision; and that of Ahaving an obscure and B a clear vision. Philosophically speaking, thesetwo cases are _impossible_. 

Spiritual activity, precisely because it is activity, is not a caprice, but a spiritual necessity; and it cannot solve a definite aestheticproblem, save in one way, which is the right way. Doubtless certainfacts may be adduced, which appear to contradict this deduction. Thusworks which seem beautiful to artists, are judged to be ugly by thecritics; while works with which the artists were displeased and judgedimperfect or failures, are held to be beautiful and perfect by thecritics. But this does not mean anything, save that one of the two iswrong: either the critics or the artists, or in one case the artist andin another the critic. In fact, the producer of an expression does notalways fully realize what has happened in his soul. Haste, vanity, wantof reflexion, theoretic prejudices, make people say, and sometimesothers almost believe, that works of ours are beautiful, which, if wewere truly to turn inwards upon ourselves, we should see ugly, as theyreally are. Thus poor Don Quixote, when he had mended his helmet as wellas he could with cardboard--the helmet that had showed itself to possessbut the feeblest force of resistance at the first encounter, --took goodcare not to test it again with a well-delivered sword-thrust, but simplydeclared and maintained it to be (says the author) _por celada finisimade encaxe_. And in other cases, the same reasons, or opposite butanalogous ones, trouble the consciousness of the artist, and cause himto disapprove of what he has successfully produced, or to strive to undoand do again worse, what he has done well, in his artistic spontaneity. An example of this is the _Gerusalemme conquistata_. In the same way, haste, laziness, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, personalsympathies, or animosities, and other motives of a similar sort, sometimes cause the critics to proclaim beautiful what is ugly, and uglywhat is beautiful. Were they to eliminate such disturbing elements, theywould feel the work of art as it really is, and would not leave toposterity, that more diligent and more dispassionate judge, to award thepalm, or to do that justice, which they have refused. 

 [Sidenote] _Identity of taste and genius. _

It is clear from the preceding theorem, that the judicial activity, which criticizes and recognizes the beautiful, is identical with thatwhich produces it. The only difference lies in the diversity ofcircumstances, since in the one case it is a question of aestheticproduction, in the other of reproduction. The judicial activity iscalled _taste_; the productive activity is called _genius_: genius andtaste are therefore substantially _identical_. 

The common remark, that the critic should possess some of the genius ofthe artist and that the artist should possess taste, reveals a glimpseof this identity; or that there exists an active (productive) taste anda passive (reproductive) taste. But a denial of this is contained inother equally common remarks, as when people speak of taste withoutgenius, or of genius without taste. These last observations aremeaningless, unless they be taken as alluding to quantitativedifferences. In this case, those would be called geniuses without tastewho produce works of art, inspired in their culminating parts andneglected and defective in their secondary parts, and those men of tastewithout genius, who succeed in obtaining certain isolated or secondaryeffects, but do not possess the power necessary for a vast artisticsynthesis. Analogous explanations can easily be given of other similarpropositions. But to posit a substantial difference between genius andtaste, between artistic production and reproduction, would rendercommunication and judgment alike inconceivable. How could we judge whatremained extraneous to us? How could that which is produced by a givenactivity be judged by a different activity? The critic will be a smallgenius, the artist a great genius; the one will have the strength often, the other of a hundred; the former, in order to raise himself tothe altitude of the latter, will have need of his assistance; but thenature of both must be the same. In order to judge Dante, we must raiseourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically weare not Dante, nor Dante we; but in that moment of judgment andcontemplation, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in thatmoment we and he are one single thing. In this identity alone residesthe possibility that our little souls can unite with the great souls, and become great with them, in the universality of the spirit. 

 [Sidenote] _Analogy with the other activities. _

Let us remark in passing that what has been said of the aesthetic_judgment_ holds good equally for every other activity and for everyother judgment; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism iseffected in a like manner. To limit ourselves to this last, it is onlyif we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he whotook a given resolution found himself, that we can form a judgment as towhether his resolution were moral or immoral. An action would otherwiseremain incomprehensible, and therefore impossible to judge. A homicidemay be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent asregards the safety of society, which condemns both to the samepunishment, it is not indifferent to him who wishes to distinguish andto judge from the moral point of view, and we cannot dispense withstudying again the individual psychology of the homicide, in order todetermine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its judicial, butalso in its moral aspect. In Ethic, a moral taste or tact is sometimesreferred to, which answers to what is generally called moral conscience, that is to say, to the activity itself of good-will. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism. _

The explanation above given of aesthetic judgment or reproduction atonce affirms and denies the position of the absolutists and relativists, of those, that is to say, who affirm and of those who deny the existenceof an absolute taste. 

The absolutists, who affirm that they can judge of the beautiful, areright; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is notmaintainable. They conceive of the beautiful, that is, of aestheticvalue, as of something placed outside the aesthetic activity; as if itwere a model or a concept which an artist realizes in his work, and ofwhich the critic avails himself afterwards in order to judge the workitself. Concepts and models alike have no existence in art, for byproclaiming that every art can be judged only in itself, and has its ownmodel in itself, they have attained to the denial of the existence ofobjective models of beauty, whether they be intellectual concepts, orideas suspended in the metaphysical sky. 

In proclaiming this, the adversaries, the relativists, are perfectlyright, and accomplish a progress. However, the initial rationality oftheir thesis becomes in its turn a false theory. Repeating the old adagethat there is no accounting for tastes, they believe that aestheticexpression is of the same nature as the pleasant and the unpleasant, which every one feels in his own way, and as to which there is nodisputing. But we know that the pleasant and the unpleasant areutilitarian and practical facts. Thus the relativists deny thepeculiarity of the aesthetic fact, again confounding expression withimpression, 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 isabsolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect, which is developed by reason. The criterion of taste is absolute, withthe intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. Thus every act ofexpressive activity, which is so really, will be recognized asbeautiful, and every fact in which expressive activity and passivity arefound engaged with one another in an unfinished struggle, will berecognized as ugly. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of relative relativism. _

There lies, between absolutists and relativists, a third class, whichmay be called that of the relative relativists. These affirm theexistence of absolute values in other fields, such as Logic and Ethic, but deny their existence in the field of Aesthetic. To them it appearsnatural and justifiable to dispute about science and morality; becausescience rests on the universal, common to all men, and morality on duty, which is also a law of human nature; but how, they say, can one disputeabout art, which rests on imagination? Not only, however, is theimaginative activity universal and belongs to human nature, like thelogical concept and practical duty; but we must oppose a capitalobjection to this intermediary thesis. If the absolute nature of theimagination were denied, we should be obliged to deny also that ofintellectual or conceptual truth, and, implicitly, of morality. Does notmorality presuppose logical distinctions? How could these be known, otherwise than by expressions and words, that is to say, in imaginativeform? If the absoluteness of the imagination were removed, spirituallife would tremble to its base. One individual would no longerunderstand another, nor indeed his own self of a moment before, which, when considered a moment after, is already another individual. 

 [Sidenote] _Objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and on the psychic disposition. _

Nevertheless, variety of judgments is an indisputable fact. Men are atvariance in their logical, ethical, and economical appreciations; andthey are equally, or even more at variance in their aestheticappreciations. If certain reasons detailed by us, above, such as haste, prejudices, passions, etc. , may be held to lessen the importance of thisdisagreement, they do not thereby annul it. We have been cautious, whenspeaking of the stimuli of reproduction, for we said that reproductiontakes place, _if all the other conditions remain equal_. Do they remainequal? Does the hypothesis correspond to reality?

It would appear not. In order to reproduce several times an impressionby employing a suitable physical stimulus, it is necessary that thisstimulus be not changed, and that the organism remain in the samepsychical conditions as those in which was experienced the impressionthat it is desired to reproduce. Now it is a fact, that the physicalstimulus is continually changing, and in like manner the psychologicalconditions. 

Oil paintings grow dark, frescoes pale, statues lose noses, hands, andlegs, architecture becomes totally or partially a ruin, the tradition ofthe execution of a piece of music is lost, the text of a poem iscorrupted by bad copyists or bad printing. These are obvious instancesof the changes which daily occur in objects or physical stimuli. Asregards psychological conditions, we will not dwell upon the cases ofdeafness or blindness, that is to say, upon the loss of entire orders ofpsychical impressions; these cases are secondary and of less importancecompared with the fundamental, daily, inevitable, and perpetual changesof the society around us, and of the internal conditions of ourindividual life. The phonic manifestations, that is, the words andverses of the Dantesque _Commedia_, must produce a very differentimpression on a citizen engaged in the politics of the third Rome, tothat experienced by a well-informed and intimate contemporary of thepoet. The Madonna of Cimabue is still in the Church of Santa MariaNovella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as she spoke to theFlorentines of the thirteenth century? Even though she were not alsodarkened by time, would not the impression be altogether different? Andfinally, how can a poem composed in youth make the same impression onthe same individual poet when he re-reads it in his old age, with hispsychic dispositions altogether changed?

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the division of signs into natural and conventional. _

It is true, that certain aestheticians have attempted a distinctionbetween stimuli and stimuli, between _natural and conventional_ signs. They would grant to the former a constant effect on all; to the latter, only on a limited circle. In their belief, signs employed in paintingare natural, while the words of poetry are conventional. But thedifference between the one and the other is only of degree. It has oftenbeen affirmed that painting is a language which all understand, whilewith poetry it is otherwise. Here, for example, Leonardo placed one ofthe prerogatives of his art, "which hath not need of interpreters ofdifferent languages as have letters, " and in it man and brute findsatisfaction. He relates the anecdote of that portrait of the father ofa family, "which the little grandchildren were wont to caress while theywere still in swaddling-clothes, and the dogs and cats of the house inlike manner. " But other anecdotes, such as those of the savages who tookthe portrait of a soldier for a boat, or considered the portrait of aman on horseback as furnished with only one leg, are apt to shake one'sfaith in the understanding of painting by sucklings, dogs, and cats. Fortunately, no arduous researches are necessary to convince oneselfthat pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no effects save onsouls prepared to receive them. Natural signs do not exist; because theyare all conventional in a like manner, or, to speak with greaterexactitude, all are _historically conditioned_. 

 [Sidenote] _The surmounting of variety. _

This being so, how are we to succeed in causing the expression to bereproduced by means of the physical object? How obtain the same effect, when the conditions are no longer the same? Would it not, rather, seemnecessary to conclude that expressions cannot be reproduced, despite thephysical instruments made by man for the purpose, and that what iscalled reproduction consists in ever new expressions? Such would indeedbe the conclusion, if the variety of physical and psychic conditionswere intrinsically unsurmountable. But since the insuperability has noneof the characteristics of necessity, we must, on the contrary, conclude:that the reproduction always occurs, when we can replace ourselves inthe conditions in which the stimulus (physical beauty) was produced. 

Not only can we replace ourselves in these conditions, as an abstractpossibility, but as a matter of fact we do so continually. Individuallife, which is communion with ourselves (with our past), and sociallife, which is communion with our like, would not otherwise be possible. 

 [Sidenote] _Restorations and historical interpretation. _

As regards the physical object, paleographers and philologists, who_restore_ to texts their original physiognomy, _restorers_ of picturesand of statues, and similar categories of workers, exert themselves topreserve or to give back to the physical object all its primitiveenergy. These efforts certainly do not always succeed, or are notcompletely successful, for never, or hardly ever, is it possible toobtain a restoration complete in its smallest details. But theunsurmountable is only accidentally present, and cannot cause us to failto recognize the favourable results which are nevertheless obtained. 

_Historical interpretation_ likewise labours to reintegrate in ushistorical conditions which have been altered in the course of history. It revives the dead, completes the fragmentary, and affords us theopportunity of seeing a work of art (a physical object) as its authorsaw it, at the moment of production. 

A condition of this historical labour is tradition, with the help ofwhich it is possible to collect the scattered rays and cause them toconverge on one centre. With the help of memory, we surround thephysical stimulus with all the facts among which it arose; and thus wemake it possible for it to react upon us, as it acted upon him whoproduced it. 

When the tradition is broken, interpretation is arrested; in this case, the products of the past remain _silent_ for us. Thus the expressionscontained in the Etruscan or Messapian inscriptions are unattainable;thus we still hear discussions among ethnographers as to certainproducts of the art of savages, whether they be pictures or writings;thus archaeologists and prehistorians are not always able to establishwith certainty, whether the figures found on the ceramic of a certainregion, and on other instruments employed, be of a religious or of aprofane nature. But the arrest of interpretation, as that ofrestoration, is never a definitely unsurmountable barrier; and the dailydiscoveries of historical sources and of new methods of betterexploiting antiquity, which we may hope to see ever improving, link upbroken tradition. 

We do not wish to deny that erroneous historical interpretation producesat times what we may term _palimpsests_, new expressions imposed uponthe antique, artistic imaginings instead of historical reproductions. The so-called fascination of the past depends in part upon theseexpressions of ours, which we weave into historical expressions. Thus inhellenic plastic art has been discovered the calm and serene intuitionof life of those peoples, who feel, nevertheless, so poignantly, theuniversality of sorrow; thus has recently been discerned on the faces ofthe Byzantine saints "the terror of the millennium, " a terror which isan equivoke, or an artificial legend invented by modern scholars. But_historical criticism_ tends precisely to circumscribe _vain imaginings_and to establish with exactitude the point of view from which we mustlook. 

Thus we live in communication with other men of the present and of thepast; and we must not conclude, because sometimes, and indeed often, wefind ourselves face to face with the unknown or the badly known, thatwhen we believe we are engaged in a dialogue, we are always speaking amonologue; nor that we are unable even to repeat the monologue which, inthe past, we held with ourselves. 

XVII

THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND ART

 [Sidenote] _Historical criticism in literature and art. Its importance. _

This brief exposition of the method by which is obtained reintegrationof the original conditions in which the work of art was produced, and bywhich reproduction and judgment are made possible, shows how importantis the function fulfilled by historical research concerning artistic andliterary works; that is to say, by what is usually called _historicalcriticism_, or method, in literature and art. 

Without tradition and historical criticism, the enjoyment of all ornearly all works of art produced by humanity, would be irrevocably lost:we should be little more than animals, immersed in the present alone, orin the most recent past. Only fools despise and laugh at him whoreconstitutes an authentic text, explains the sense of words andcustoms, investigates the conditions in which an artist lived, andaccomplishes all those labours which revive the qualities and theoriginal colouring of works of art. 

Sometimes the depreciatory or negative judgment refers to the presumedor proved uselessness of many researches, made to recover the correctmeaning of artistic works. But, it must be observed, in the first place, that historical research does not only fulfil the task of helping toreproduce and judge artistic works: the biography of a writer or of anartist, for example, and the study of the costume of a period, alsopossess their own interest, foreign to the history of art, but notforeign to other forms of history. If allusion be made to thoseresearches which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor tofulfil any purpose, it must be replied that the historical student mustoften reconcile himself to the useful, but little glorious, office of acataloguer of facts. These facts remain for the time being formless, incoherent, and insignificant, but they are preserves, or mines, for thehistorian of the future and for whomsoever may afterwards want them forany purpose. In the same way, books which nobody asks for are placed onthe shelves and are noted in the catalogues, because they may be askedfor at some time or other. Certainly, in the same way that anintelligent librarian gives the preference to the acquisition and to thecataloguing of those books which he foresees may be of more or betterservice, so do intelligent students possess the instinct as to what isor may more probably be useful from among the mass of facts which theyare investigating. Others, on the other hand, less well-endowed, lessintelligent, or more hasty in producing, accumulate useless selections, rejections and erasures, and lose themselves in refinements and gossipydiscussions. But this appertains to the economy of research, and is notour affair. At the most, it is the affair of the master who selects thesubjects, of the publisher who pays for the printing, and of the criticwho is called upon to praise or to blame the students for theirresearches. 

On the other hand, it is evident, that historical research, directed toilluminate a work of art by placing us in a position to judge it, doesnot alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit: taste, and animagination trained and awakened, are likewise presupposed. The greatesthistorical erudition may accompany a taste in part gross or defective, alumbering imagination, or, as it is generally phrased, a cold, hardheart, closed to art. Which is the lesser evil?--great erudition anddefective taste, or natural good taste and great ignorance? The questionhas often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny itspossibility, because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, orwhat exactly that means. The merely learned man never succeeds inentering into communication with the great spirits, and keeps wanderingfor ever about the outer courts, the staircases, and the antechambers oftheir palaces; but the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieceswhich are to him inaccessible, or instead of understanding the works ofart, as they really are, he invents others, with his imagination. Now, the labour of the former may at least serve to enlighten others; but theingenuity of the latter remains altogether sterile. How, then, can wefail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive man oftalent, who is not really talented, if he resign himself, and in so faras he resigns himself, to come to no conclusion?

 [Sidenote] _Literary and artistic history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from artistic judgement. _

It is necessary to distinguish accurately _the history, of art andliterature_ from those historical labours which make use of works ofart, but for extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious, and political history, etc. ), and also from historical erudition, whoseobject is preparation for the Aesthetic synthesis of reproduction. 

The difference between the first of these is obvious. The history of artand literature has the works of art themselves for principal subject;the other branches of study call upon and interrogate works of art, butonly as witnesses, from which to discover the truth of facts which arenot aesthetic. The second difference to which we have referred may seemless profound. However, it is very great. Erudition devoted to renderingclear again the understanding of works of art, aims simply at makingappear a certain internal fact, an aesthetic reproduction. Artistic andliterary history, on the other hand, does not appear until suchreproduction has been obtained. It demands, therefore, further labour. Like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts ashave really taken place, that is, artistic and literary facts. A manwho, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition, reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply a manof taste, or express at the most his own feeling, with an exclamation ofbeautiful or ugly. This does not suffice for the making of a historianof literature and art. There is further need that the simple act ofreproduction be followed in him by a second internal operation. What isthis new operation? It is, in its turn, an expression: the expression ofthe reproduction; the historical description, exposition, orrepresentation. There is this difference, then, between the man of tasteand the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the work ofart; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it historically, thus applying to it those categories by which, as we know, history isdifferentiated from pure art. Artistic and literary history is, therefore, _a historical work of art founded upon one or more works ofart_. 

The denomination of artistic or literary critic is used in varioussenses: sometimes it is applied to the student who devotes his servicesto literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of artof the past in their reality; more often to both. By critic is sometimesunderstood, in a more restricted sense, he who judges and describescontemporary literary works; and by historian, he who is occupied withless recent works. These are but linguistic usages and empiricaldistinctions, which may be neglected; because the true difference lies_between the learned man, the man of taste, and the historian of art_. These words designate, as it were, three successive stages of work, ofwhich each is relatively independent of the one that follows, but not ofthat which precedes. As we have seen, a man may be simply learned, yetpossess little capacity for understanding works of art; he may indeed beboth learned and possess taste, yet be unable to write a page ofartistic and literary history. But the true and complete historian, while containing in himself, as necessary pre-requisites, both thelearned man and the man of taste, must add to their qualities the giftof historical comprehension and representation. 

 [Sidenote] _The method of artistic and literary history. _

The method of artistic and literary history presents problems anddifficulties, some common to all historical method, others peculiar toit, because they derive from the concept of art itself. 

 [Sidenote] _Critique of the problem of the origin of art. _

History is wont to be divided into the history of man, the history ornature, and the mixed history of both the preceding. Without examininghere the question of the solidity of this division, it is clear thatartistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since itconcerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper toman. And since this activity is its subject, the absurdity ofpropounding the historical _problem of the origin of art_ becomes atonce evident. We should note that by this formula many different thingshave in turn been included on many different occasions. _Origin_ hasoften meant _nature_ or _disposition_ of the artistic fact, and here wasa real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem, in fact, which our treatise has tried to solve. At other times, by origin hasbeen understood the ideal genesis, the search for the reason of art, thededuction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing initself both spirit and nature. This is also a philosophical problem, andit is complementary to the preceding, indeed it coincides with it, though it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by meansof an arbitrary and semi-fantastic metaphysic. But when it has beensought to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was_historically formed_, this has resulted in the absurdity to which wehave referred. If expression be the first form of consciousness, how canthe historical origin be sought of what is _presupposed_ not to be aproduct of nature and of human history? How can we find the historicalgenesis of that which is a category, by means of which every historicalgenesis and fact are understood? The absurdity has arisen from thecomparison with human institutions, which have, in fact, been formed inthe course of history, and which have disappeared or may disappear inits course. There exists between the aesthetic fact and a humaninstitution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) a difference tosome extent comparable with that between simple and compound bodies inchemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, theycease to be simple and become compound. 

The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is onlyjustified when it is proposed to seek, not for the formation of thefunction, but where and when art has appeared for the first time(appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or inwhat 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 most antique orprimitive history, is the object of research. This problem forms onewith that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. Data forits solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstractpossibility, and certainly attempts and hypotheses for its solutionabound. 

 [Sidenote] _History and the criterion of progress. _

Every form of human history has the concept of _progress_ forfoundation. But by progress must not be understood the imaginary andmetaphysical _law of progress_, which should lead the generations of manwith irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to aprovidential plan which we can logically divine and understand. Asupposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of thataccidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish theconcrete fact from the abstraction. And for the same reason, progresshas nothing to do with the so-called _law of evolution_. If evolutionmean the concrete fact of reality which evolves (that is, which isreality), it is not a law. If, on the other hand, it be a law, itbecomes confounded with the law of progress in the sense just described. The progress of which we speak here, is nothing but the _concept ofhuman activity itself_, which, working upon the material supplied to itby nature, conquers obstacles and bends nature to its own ends. 

Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity appliedto a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian ofhumanity. No one but a mere collector of stray facts, a simple seeker, or an incoherent chronicler, can put together the smallest narrative ofhuman deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, anintimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts whichhe has undertaken to relate. The historical work of art cannot beachieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save bymeans of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definitefigure from that rough and incoherent mass. The historian of a practicalaction should know what is economy and what morality; the historian ofmathematics, what are mathematics; the historian of botany, what isbotany; the historian of philosophy, what is philosophy. But if he donot really know these things, he must at least have the illusion ofknowing them; otherwise he will never be able to delude himself that heis writing history. 

We cannot delay here to demonstrate the necessity and the inevitabilityof this subjective criterion in every narrative of human affairs. Wewill merely say that this criterion is compatible with the utmostobjectivity, impartiality, and scrupulosity in dealing with data, andindeed forms a constitutive element of such subjective criterion. Itsuffices to read any book of history to discover at once the point ofview of the author, if he be a historian worthy of the name and know hisown business. There exist liberal and reactionary, rationalist andcatholic historians, who deal with political or social history; for thehistory of philosophy there are metaphysical, empirical, sceptical, idealist, and spiritualist historians. Absolutely historical historiansdo not and cannot exist. Can it be said that Thucydides and Polybius, Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Giannone and Voltaire, were without moral and political views; and, in our time, Guizot orThiers, Macaulay or Balbo, Ranke or Mommsen? And in the history ofphilosophy, from Hegel, who was the first to raise it to a greatelevation, to Ritter, Zeller, Cousin, Lewes, and our Spaventa, was thereone who did not possess his conception of progress and criterion ofjudgment? Is there one single work of any value in the history ofAesthetic, which has not been written from this or that point of view, with this or that bias (Hegelian or Herbartian), from a sensualist orfrom an eclectic point of view, and so on? If the historian is to escapefrom the inevitable necessity of taking a side, he must become apolitical and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business ofeunuchs. They would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes ofnot useless erudition, _elumbis atque fracta_, which are called, notwithout reason, monkish. 

If, then, the concept of progress, the point of view, the criterion, beinevitable, the best to be done is not to try and escape from them, butto obtain the best possible. Everyone strives for this end, when heforms his own convictions, seriously and laboriously. Historians whoprofess to wish to interrogate the facts, without adding anything oftheir own to them, are not to be believed. This, at the most, is theresult of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always addwhat they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it bewithout knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doingso, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the mostinsinuating and penetrative of methods. 

 [Sidenote] _Non-existence of a unique line of progress in artistic and literary history. _

Artistic and literary history cannot dispense with the criterion ofprogress any more easily than other history. We cannot show what a givenwork of art is, save by proceeding from a conception of art, in order tofix the artistic problem which the author of such work of art had tosolve, and by determining whether or no he have solved it, or by howmuch and in what way he has failed to do so. But it is important to notethat the criterion of progress assumes a different form in artistic andliterary history to that which it assumes (or is believed to assume) inthe history of science. 

The whole history of knowledge can be represented by one single line ofprogress and regress. Science is the universal, and its problems arearranged in one single vast system, or complex problem. All thinkersweary themselves over the same problem as to the nature of reality andof knowledge: contemplative Indians and Greek philosophers, Christiansand Mohammedans, bare heads and heads with turbans, wigged heads andheads with the black berretta (as Heine said); and future generationswill weary themselves with it, as ours has done. It would take too longto inquire here if this be true or not of science. But it is certainlynot true of art; art is intuition, and intuition is individuality, andindividuality is never repeated. To conceive of the history of theartistic production of the human race as developed along a single lineof progress and regress, would therefore be altogether erroneous. 

At the most, and working to some extent with generalizations andabstractions, it may be admitted that the history of aesthetic productsshows progressive cycles, but each cycle has its own problem, and isprogressive only in respect to that problem. When many are at work onthe same subject, without succeeding in giving to it the suitable form, yet drawing always more nearly to it, there is said to be progress. Whenhe who gives to it definite form appears, the cycle is said to becomplete, progress ended. A typical example of this would be theprogress in the elaboration of the mode of using the subject-matter ofchivalry, during the Italian Renaissance, from Pulci to Ariosto. (Ifthis instance be made use of, excessive simplification of it must beexcused. ) Nothing but repetition and imitation could be the result ofemploying that same material after Ariosto. The result was repetition orimitation, diminution or exaggeration, a spoiling of what had alreadybeen achieved; in sum, decadence. The Ariostesque epigoni prove this. Progress begins with the commencement of a new cycle. Cervantes, withhis more open and conscious irony, is an instance of this. In what didthe general decadence of Italian literature at the end of the sixteenthcentury consist? Simply in having nothing more to say, and in repeatingand exaggerating motives already found. If the Italians of this periodhad even been able to express their own decadence, they would not havebeen altogether failures, but have anticipated the literary movement ofthe Renaissance. Where the subject-matter is not the same, a progressivecycle does not exist. Shakespeare does not represent a progress asregards Dante, nor Goethe as regards Shakespeare. Dante, however, represents a progress in respect to the visionaries of the Middle Ages, Shakespeare to the Elizabethan dramatists, Goethe, with _Werther_ andthe first part of _Faust_, in respect to the writers of the _Sturm undDrang_. This mode of presenting the history of poetry and art contains, however, as we have remarked, something of abstract, of merelypractical, and is without rigorous philosophical value. Not only is theart of savages not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples, provided it be correlative to the impressions of the savage; but everyindividual, indeed every moment of the spiritual life of an individual, has its artistic world; and all those worlds are, artistically, incomparable with one another. 

 [Sidenote] _Errors committed in respect to this law. _

Many have sinned and continue to sin against this special form of thecriterion of progress in artistic and literary history. Some, forinstance, talk of the infancy of Italian art in Giotto, and of itsmaturity in Raphael or in Titian; as though Giotto were not quiteperfect and complete, in respect to his psychic material. He wascertainly incapable of drawing a figure like Raphael, or of colouring itlike Titian; but was Raphael or Titian by any chance capable of creatingthe _Matrimonio di San Francesco con la Povertà_, or the _Morte di SanFrancesco_? The spirit of Giotto had not felt the attraction of the bodybeautiful, which the Renaissance studied and raised to a place ofhonour; but the spirits of Raphael and of Titian were no longer curiousof certain movements of ardour and of tenderness, which attracted theman of the fourteenth century. How, then, can a comparison be made, where there is no comparative term?

The celebrated divisions of the history of art suffer from the samedefect. They are as follows: an oriental period, representing adisequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the second; aclassical, representing an equilibrium between idea and form; aromantic, representing a new disequilibrium between idea and form, withprevalence of the idea. There are also the divisions into oriental art, representing imperfection of form; classical, perfection of form;romantic or modern, perfection of content and of form. Thus classic andromantic have also received, among their many other meanings, that ofprogressive or regressive periods, in respect to the realization of someindefinite artistic ideal of humanity. 

 [Sidenote] _Other meanings of the word "progress" in respect to Aesthetic. _

There is no such thing, then, as an _aesthetic_ progress of humanity. However, by aesthetic progress is sometimes meant, not what the twowords coupled together really signify, but the ever-increasingaccumulation of our historical knowledge, which makes us able tosympathize with all the artistic products of all peoples and of alltimes, or, as is said, to make our taste more catholic. The differenceappears very great, if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escapingfrom itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike Hellenicand Roman art, now better understood, Byzantine, mediaeval, Arabic, andRenaissance art, the art of the Cinque Cento, baroque art, and the artof the seventeenth century. Egyptian, Babylonian, Etruscan, and evenprehistoric art, are more profoundly studied every day. Certainly, thedifference between the savage and civilized man does not lie in thehuman faculties. The savage has speech, intellect, religion, andmorality, in common with civilized man, and he is a complete man. Theonly difference lies in that civilized man penetrates and dominates alarger portion of the universe with his theoretic and practicalactivity. We cannot claim to be more spiritually alert than, forexample, the contemporaries of Pericles; but no one can deny that we arericher than they--rich with their riches and with those of how manyother peoples and generations besides our own?

By aesthetic progress is also meant, in another sense, which is alsoimproper, the greater abundance of artistic intuitions and the smallernumber of imperfect or decadent works which one epoch produces inrespect to another. Thus it may be said that there was aestheticprogress, an artistic awakening, at the end of the thirteenth or of thefifteenth centuries. 

Finally, aesthetic progress is talked of, with an eye to the refinementand to the psychical complications exhibited in the works of art of themost civilized peoples, as compared with those of less civilizedpeoples, barbarians and savages. But in this case, the progress is thatof the complex conditions of society, not of the artistic activity, towhich the material is indifferent. 

These are the most important points concerning the method of artisticand literary history. 

XVIII

CONCLUSION:

IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC

 [Sidenote] _Summary of the inquiry. _

A glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed theentire programme of our treatise. We have studied the nature ofintuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artisticfact (I. And II. ), and we have described the other form of knowledge, namely, the intellectual, with the secondary complications of its forms(III. ). Having done this, it became possible to criticize all erroneoustheories of art, which arise from the confusion between the variousforms, and from the undue transference of the characteristics of oneform to those of another (IV. ), and in so doing to indicate the inverseerrors which are found in the theory of intellectual knowledge and ofhistoriography (V. ). Passing on to examine the relations between theaesthetic activity and the other spiritual activities, no longertheoretic but practical, we have indicated the true character of thepractical activity and the place which it occupies in respect to thetheoretic activity, which it follows: hence the critique of the invasionof aesthetic theory by practical concepts (VI. ). We have alsodistinguished the two forms of the practical activity, as economic andethic (VII. ), adding to this the statement that there are no other formsof the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed; hence (VIII. ) thecritique of every metaphysical Aesthetic. And, seeing that there existno other spiritual forms of equal degree, therefore there are nooriginal subdivisions of the four established, and in particular ofAesthetic. From this arises the impossibility of classes of expressionsand the critique of Rhetoric, that is, of the partition of expressionsinto simple and ornate, and of their subclasses (IX. ). But, by the lawof the unity of the spirit, the aesthetic fact is also a practical fact, and as such, occasions pleasure and pain. This led us to study thefeelings of value in general, and those of aesthetic value, or of thebeautiful, in particular (X. ), to criticize aesthetic hedonism in allits various manifestations and complications (XI. ), and to expel fromthe system of Aesthetic the long series of pseudo-aesthetic concepts, which had been introduced into it (XII. ). Proceeding from aestheticproduction to the facts of reproduction, we began by investigating themode of fixing externally the aesthetic expression, with the view ofreproduction. This is the so-called physically beautiful, whether it benatural or artificial (XIII. ). We then derived from this distinction thecritique of the errors which arise from confounding the physical withthe aesthetic side of things (XIV. ). We indicated the meaning ofartistic technique, that which is the technique serving forreproduction, thus criticizing the divisions, limits, andclassifications of the individual arts, and establishing the connectionsbetween art, economy, and morality (XV. ). Because the existence of thephysical objects does not suffice to stimulate to the full aestheticreproduction, and because, in order to obtain this result, it isnecessary to recall the conditions in which the stimulus first operated, we have also studied the function of historical erudition, directedtoward the end of re-establishing our communication with the works ofthe past, and toward the creation of a base for aesthetic judgment(XVI. ). We have closed our treatise by showing how the reproduction thusobtained is afterwards elaborated by the intellectual categories, thatis to say, by an excursus on the method of literary and artistic history(XVII. ). 

The aesthetic fact has thus been considered both in itself and in itsrelations with the other spiritual activities, with the feelings ofpleasure and of pain, with the facts that are called physical, withmemory, and with historical elaboration. It has passed from the positionof _subject_ to that of _object_, that is to say, from the moment of_its birth_, until gradually it becomes changed for the spirit into_historical argument_. 

Our treatise may appear to be somewhat meagre, when compared with thegreat volumes usually consecrated to Aesthetic. But it will not seem so, when it is observed that these volumes, as regards nine-tenths of theircontents, are full of matter which does not appertain to Aesthetic, suchas definitions, either psychical or metaphysical, of pseudo-aestheticconcepts (of the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the humorous, etc. ), orof the exposition of the supposed Zoology, Botany, and Mineralogy ofAesthetic, and of universal history judged from the aestheticstandpoint. The whole history of concrete art and literature has alsobeen dragged into those Aesthetics and generally mangled; they containjudgments upon Homer and Dante, upon Ariosto and Shakespeare, uponBeethoven and Rossini, Michelangelo and Raphael. When all this has beendeducted from them, our treatise will no longer be held to be toomeagre, but, on the contrary, far more copious than ordinary treatises, for these either omit altogether, or hardly touch at all, the greaterpart of the difficult problems proper to Aesthetic, which we have feltit to be our duty to study. 

 [Sidenote] _Identity of Linguistic and Aesthetic. _

Aesthetic, then, as the science of expression, has been here studied byus from every point of view. But there yet remains to justify thesub-title, which we have joined to the title of our book, _GeneralLinguistic_, and to state and make clear the thesis that the science ofart is that of language. Aesthetic and Linguistic, in so far as they aretrue sciences, are not two different sciences, but one single science. Not that there is a special Linguistic; but the linguistic sciencesought for, general Linguistic, _in so far as what it contains isreducible to philosophy_, is nothing but Aesthetic. Whoever studiesgeneral Linguistic, that is to say, philosophical Linguistic, studiesaesthetic problems, and _vice versa_. _Philosophy of language andphilosophy of art are the same thing_. 

Were Linguistic a _different_ science from Aesthetic, it should not haveexpression, which is the essentially aesthetic fact, for its object. This amounts to saying that it must be denied that language isexpression. But an emission of sounds, which expresses nothing, is notlanguage. Language is articulate, limited, organized sound, employed inexpression. If, on the other hand, language were a _special_ science inrespect to Aesthetic, it would necessarily have for its object a_special class_ of expressions. But the inexistence of classes ofexpression is a point which we have already demonstrated. 

 [Sidenote] _Aesthetic formulization of linguistic problems. Nature of language. _

The problems which Linguistic serves to solve, and the errors with whichLinguistic strives and has striven, are the same that occupy andcomplicate Aesthetic. If it be not always easy, it is, on the otherhand, always possible, to reduce the philosophic questions of Linguisticto their aesthetic formula. 

The disputes as to the nature of the one find their parallel in those asto the nature of the other. Thus it has been disputed, whetherLinguistic be a scientific or a historical discipline, and thescientific having been distinguished from the historical, it has beenasked whether it belong to the order of the natural or of thepsychological sciences, by the latter being understood empiricalPsychology, as much as the science of the spirit. The same has happenedwith Aesthetic, which some have looked upon as a natural science, confounding aesthetic expression with physical expression. Others havelooked upon it as a psychological science, confounding expression in itsuniversality, with the empirical classification of expressions. Othersagain, denying the very possibility of a science of such a subject, havelooked upon it as a collection of historical facts. Finally, it has beenrealized that it belongs to the sciences of activity or of values, whichare the spiritual sciences. 

Linguistic expression, or speech, has often seemed to be a fact of_interjection_, which belongs to the so-called physical expressions ofthe feelings, common alike to men and animals. But it was soon admittedthat an abyss yawns between the "Ah!" which is a physical reflex ofpain, 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 theoryof _association or convention_ appeared. This theory was refuted by thesame objection which destroyed aesthetic associationism in general:speech is unity, not multiplicity of images, and multiplicity does notexplain, but presupposes the existence of the expression to explain. Avariant of linguistic associationism is the imitative, that is to say, the theory of the onomatopoeia, which the same philologists deride underthe name of the "bow-wow" theory, after the imitation of the dog's bark, which, according to the onomatopoeists, gives its name to the dog. 

The most usual theory of our times as regards language (apart from merecrass naturalism) consists of a sort of eclecticism or mixture of thevarious theories to which we have referred. It is assumed that languageis in part the product of interjections and in part of onomatopes andconventions. This doctrine is altogether worthy of the scientific andphilosophic decadence of the second half of the nineteenth century. 

 [Sidenote] _Origin of language and its development. _

We must here note a mistake into which have fallen those veryphilologists who have best penetrated the active nature of language. These, although they admit that language was _originally a spiritualcreation_, yet maintain that it was largely increased later by_association_. But the distinction does not prevail, for origin in thiscase cannot mean anything but nature or essence. If, therefore, languagebe a spiritual creation, it will always be a creation; if it beassociation, it will have been so from the beginning. The mistake hasarisen from not having grasped the general principle of Aesthetic, whichwe have noted: namely, that expressions already produced must redescendto the rank of impressions before they can give rise to new impressions. When we utter new words, we generally transform the old ones, varying orenlarging their meaning; but this process is not associative. It iscreative, although the creation has for material the impressions, not ofthe hypothetical primitive man, but of man who has lived long ages insociety, and who has, so to say, stored so many things in his psychicorganism, and among them so much language. 

 [Sidenote] _Relation between Grammar and Logic. _

The question of the distinction between the aesthetic and theintellectual fact has appeared in Linguistic as that of the relationsbetween Grammar and Logic. This question has found two solutions, whichare partially true: that of the indissolubility of Logic and Grammar, and that of their dissolubility. The complete solution is this: if thelogical form be indissoluble from the grammatical (aesthetic), thegrammatical is dissoluble from the logical. 

 [Sidenote] _Grammatical classes or parts of speech. _

If we look at a picture which, for example, portrays a man walking on acountry road, we can say: "This picture represents a fact of movement, which, if conceived as volitional, is called _action_. And because everymovement implies _matter_, and every action a being that acts, thispicture also represents either _matter_ or a _being_. But this movementtakes place in a definite place, which is a part of a given _star_ (theEarth), and precisely in that part of it which is called _terra-firma_, and more properly in a part of it that is wooded and covered with grass, which is called _country_, cut naturally or artificially, in a mannerwhich is called _road_. Now, there is only one example of that givenstar, which is called Earth: Earth is an _individual_. But_terra-firma_, _country_, _road_, are _classes or universals_, becausethere are other terra-firmas, other countries, other roads. " And itwould be possible to continue for a while with similar considerations. By substituting a phrase for the picture that we have imagined, forexample, one to this effect, "Peter is walking on a country road, " andby making the same remarks, we obtain the concepts of _verb_ (motion oraction), of _noun_ (matter or agent), of _proper noun_, of _commonnouns_; and so on. 

What have we done in both cases? Neither more nor less than to submit tological elaboration what was first elaborated only aesthetically; thatis to say, we have destroyed the aesthetical by the logical. But, as ingeneral Aesthetic, error begins when It is wished to return from thelogical to the aesthetical, and it is asked what is the expression ofmovement, action, matter, being, of the general, of the individual, etc. ; thus in like manner with language, error begins when motion oraction are called verb, being, or matter, noun or substantive, and whenlinguistic categories, or _parts of speech_, are made of all these, nounand verb and so on. The theory of parts of speech is at bottomaltogether the same as that of artistic and literary classes, alreadycriticized in the Aesthetic. 

It is false to say that the verb or the noun is expressed in definitewords, truly distinguishable from others. Expression is an indivisiblewhole. Noun and verb do not exist in themselves, but are abstractionsmade by our destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is _theproposition_. This last is to be understood, not in the usual mode ofgrammarians, but as an organism expressive of a complete meaning, froman exclamation to a poem. This sounds paradoxical, but is nevertheless amost simple truth. 

And as in Aesthetic, the artistic productions of certain peoples havebeen looked upon as imperfect, owing to the error above mentioned, because the supposed kinds have seemed still to be indiscriminate orabsent with them; so, in Linguistic, the theory of the parts of speechhas caused the analogous error of dividing languages into formed andunformed, according to whether there appear in them or not some of thosesupposed parts of speech; for example, the verb. 

 [Sidenote] _The individuality of speech and the classification of languages. _

Linguistic also discovered the irreducible individuality of theaesthetic fact, when it affirmed that the word is what is really spoken, and that two truly identical words do not exist. Thus were synonyms andhomonyms destroyed, and thus was shown the impossibility of reallytranslating one word into another, from so-called dialect into so-calledlanguage, and from a so-called mother-tongue into a so-called foreigntongue. 

But the attempt to classify languages agrees ill with this correct view. Languages have no reality beyond the propositions and complexes ofpropositions really written and pronounced by given peoples for definiteperiods. That is to say, they have no existence outside the works ofart, in which they exist concretely. What is the art of a given peoplebut the complex of all its artistic products? What is the character ofan art (say, Hellenic art or Provençal literature), but the complexphysiognomy of those products? And how can such a question be answered, save by giving the history of their art (of their literature, that is tosay, of their language in action)?

It will seem that this argument, although possessing value as againstmany of the wonted classifications of languages, yet is without any asregards that queen of classifications, the historico-genealogical, thatglory of comparative philology. And this is certainly true. But why?Precisely because the historico-genealogical method is not aclassification. He who writes history does not classify, and thephilologists themselves have hastened to say that the languages whichcan be arranged in a historical series (those whose series have beentraced) are, not distinct and definite species, but a complex of factsin the various phases of its development. 

 [Sidenote] _Impossibility of a normative grammar. _

Language has sometimes been looked upon as an act of volition or ofchoice. But others have discovered the impossibility of creatinglanguage artificially, by an act of will. _Tu, Caesar, civitatem darepotes homini, verbo non poles!_ was once said to the Roman Emperor. 

The aesthetic (and therefore theoretic) nature of expression suppliesthe method of correcting the scientific error which lies in theconception of a (normative) _Grammar_, containing the rules of speakingwell. Good sense has always rebelled against this error. An example ofsuch rebellion is the "So much the worse for grammar" of Voltaire. Butthe impossibility of a normative grammar is also recognized by those whoteach it, when they confess that to write well cannot be learned byrules, that there are no rules without exceptions, and that the study ofGrammar should be conducted practically, by reading and by examples, which form the literary taste. The scientific reason of thisimpossibility lies in what we have already proved: that a technique ofthe theoretical amounts to a contradiction in terms. And what could a(normative) grammar be, but just a technique of linguistic expression, that is to say, of a theoretic fact?

 [Sidenote] _Didactic purposes. _

The case in which Grammar is understood merely as an empiricaldiscipline, that is to say, as a collection of groups useful forlearning languages, without any claim whatever to philosophic truth, isquite different. Even the abstractions of the parts of speech are inthis case both admissible and of assistance. 

Many books entitled treatises of Linguistic have a merely didacticpurpose; they are simply scholastic manuals. We find in them, in truth, a little of everything, from the description of the vocal apparatus andof the artificial machines (phonographs) which can imitate it, tosummaries of the most important results obtained by Indo-European, Semitic, Coptic, Chinese, or other philologies; from philosophicgeneralizations on the origin or nature of language, to advice oncalligraphy, and the arrangement of schedules for philological spoils. But this mass of notions, which is here taught in a fragmentary andincomplete manner as regards the language in its essence, the languageas expression, resolves itself into notions of Aesthetic. Nothing existsoutside _Aesthetic_, 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, the history ofconcrete literary productions, which is substantially identical with the_History of literature_. 

 [Sidenote] _Elementary linguistic facts or roots. _

The same mistake of confusing the physical with the aesthetic, fromwhich the elementary forms of the beautiful originate, is made by thosewho seek for elementary aesthetic facts, decorating with that name thedivisions of the longer series of physical sounds into shorter series. Syllables, vowels, and consonants, and the series of syllables calledwords which give no definite sense when taken alone, are not facts oflanguage, but simple physical concepts of sounds. 

Another mistake of the same sort is that of roots, to which the mostable philologists now accord but a very limited value. Having confusedphysical with linguistic or expressive facts, and observing that, in theorder of ideas, the simple precedes the complex, they necessarily endedby thinking that _the smaller_ physical facts were _the more simple_. Hence the imaginary necessity that the most antique, primitivelanguages, had been monosyllabic, and that the progress of historicalresearch must lead to the discovery of monosyllabic roots. But (tofollow up the imaginary hypothesis) the first expression that the firstman conceived may also have had a mimetic, not a phonic reflex: it mayhave been exteriorised, not in a sound but in a gesture. And assumingthat it was exteriorised in a sound, there is no reason to suppose thatsound to have been monosyllabic rather than plurisyllabic. Philologistsfrequently blame their own ignorance and impotence, if they do notalways succeed in reducing plurisyllabism to monosyllabism, and theytrust in the future. But their faith is without foundation, as theirblame of themselves is an act of humility arising from an erroneouspresumption. 

Furthermore, the limits of syllables, as those of words, are altogetherarbitrary, and distinguished, as well as may be, by empirical use. Primitive speech, or the speech of the uncultured man, is _continuous_, unaccompanied by any reflex consciousness of the divisions of the wordand of the syllables, which are taught at school. No true law ofLinguistic can be founded on such divisions. Proof of this is to befound in the confession of linguists, that there are no truly phoneticlaws of the hiatus, of cacophony, of diaeresis, of synaeresis, butmerely laws of taste and convenience; that is to say, _aesthetic_ laws. And what are the laws of _words_ which are not at the same time laws of_style_?

 [Sidenote] _Aesthetic judgment and the model language. _

The search for a _model language_, or for a method of reducinglinguistic usage to _unity_, arises from the misconception of arationalistic measurement of the beautiful, from the concept which wehave termed that of false aesthetic absoluteness. In Italy, we call thisquestion that of the _unity of the language_. 

Language is perpetual creation. What has been linguistically expressedcannot be repeated, save by the reproduction of what has already beenproduced. The ever-new impressions give rise to continuous changes ofsounds and of meanings, that is, to ever-new expressions. To seek themodel language, then, is to seek the immobility of motion. Every onespeaks, and should speak, according to the echoes which things arouse inhis soul, that is, according to his impressions. It is not withoutreason that the most convinced supporter of any one of the solutions ofthe problem of the unity of language (be it by the use of Latin, offourteenth-century Italian, or of Florentine) feels a repugnance inapplying his theory, when he is speaking in order to communicate histhoughts and to make himself understood. The reason for this is that hefeels that were he to substitute Latin, fourteenth-century Italian, orFlorentine speech for that of a different origin, but which answers tohis impressions, he would be falsifying the latter. He would become avain listener to himself, instead of a speaker, a pedant in place of aserious man, a histrion instead of a sincere person. To write accordingto a theory is not really to write: at the most, it is _makingliterature_. 

The question of the unity of language is always reappearing, because, put as it is, there can be no solution to it, owing to its being basedupon a false conception of what language is. Language is not an arsenalof ready-made arms, and it is not _vocabulary_, which, in so far as itis thought of as progressive and in living use, is always a cemetery, containing corpses more or less well embalmed, that is to say, acollection of abstractions. 

Our mode of settling the question of the model language, or of the unityof the language, may seem somewhat abrupt, and yet we would not wish toappear otherwise than respectful towards the long line of literary menwho have debated this question in Italy for centuries. But those ardentdebates were, at bottom, debates upon aestheticity, not upon aestheticscience, upon literature rather than upon literary theory, uponeffective speaking and writing, not upon linguistic science. Their errorconsisted in transforming the manifestation of a want into a scientificthesis, the need of understanding one another more easily among a peopledialectically divided, in the philosophic search for a language, whichshould be one or ideal. Such a search was as absurd as that other searchfor a _universal language_, with the immobility of the concept and ofthe abstraction. The social need for a better understanding of oneanother cannot be satisfied save by universal culture, by the increaseof communications, and by the interchange of thought among men. 

 [Sidenote] _Conclusion. _

These observations must suffice to show that all the scientific problemsof Linguistic are the same as those of Aesthetic, and that the truthsand errors of the one are the truths and errors of the other. IfLinguistic and Aesthetic appear to be two different sciences, thisarises from the fact that people think of the former as grammar, or as amixture between philosophy and grammar, that is, an arbitrary mnemonicscheme. They do not think of it as a rational science and as a purephilosophy of speech. Grammar, or something grammatical, also causes theprejudice in people's minds, that the reality of language lies inisolated and combinable words, not in living discourse among expressiveorganisms, rationally indivisible. 

Those linguists, or glottologists with philosophical endowments, whohave best fathomed questions of language, resemble (to employ a worn butefficacious figure) workmen piercing a tunnel: at a certain point theymust hear the voices of their companions, the philosophers of Aesthetic, who have been piercing it from the other side. At a certain stage ofscientific elaboration, Linguistic, in so far as it is philosophy, mustbe merged in Aesthetic; and indeed it is merged in it, without leaving aresidue. 

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

I

AESTHETIC IDEAS IN GRAECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY

The question, as to whether Aesthetic should be looked upon as ancientor modern, has often been discussed. The answer will depend upon theview taken of the nature of Aesthetic. 

Benedetto Croce has proved that Aesthetic is _the science of expressiveactivity_. But this knowledge cannot be reached, until has been definedthe nature of imagination, of representation, of expression, or whateverwe may term that faculty which is theoretic, but not intellectual, whichgives knowledge of the individual, but not of the universal. 

Now the deviations from this, the correct theory, may arise in two ways:by _defect_ or by _excess_. Negation of the special aesthetic activity, or of its autonomy, is an instance of the former. This amounts to amutilation of the reality of the spirit. Of the latter, the substitutionor superposition of another mysterious and non-existent activity is anexample. 

These errors each take several forms. That which errs by defect may be:(_a_) pure hedonism, which looks upon art as merely sensual pleasure;(_b_) rigoristic hedonism, agreeing with (_a_), but adding that art isirreconcilable with the loftiest activities of man; (_c_) moralistic orpedagogic hedonism, which admits, with the two former, that art is meresensuality, but believes that it may not only be harmless, but of someservice to morals, if kept in proper subjection and obedience. 

The error by excess also assumes several forms, but these areindeterminable _a priori_. This view is fully dealt with under the nameof _mystic_, in the Theory and in the Appendix. 

Graeco-Roman antiquity was occupied with the problem in all these forms. In Greece, the problem of art and of the artistic faculty arose for thefirst time after the sophistic movement, as a result of the Socraticpolemic. 

With the appearance of the word _mimesis_ or _mimetic_, we have a firstattempt at grouping the arts, and the expression, allegoric, or itsequivalent, used in defence of Homer's poetry, reminds us of what Platocalled "the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry. "

But when internal facts were all looked upon as mere phenomena ofopinion or feeling, of pleasure or of pain, of illusion or of arbitrarycaprice, there could be no question of beautiful or ugly, of differencebetween the true and the beautiful, or between the beautiful and thegood. 

The problem of the nature of art assumes as solved those problemsconcerning the difference between rational and irrational, material andspiritual, bare fact and value, etc. This was first done in the Socraticperiod, and therefore the aesthetic problem could only arise afterSocrates. 

And in fact it does arise, with Plato, _the author of the only greatnegation of art which appears in the history of ideas_. 

Is art rational or irrational? Does it belong to the noble region of thesoul, where dwell philosophy and virtue, or does it cohabit withsensuality and with crude passion in the lower regions? This was thequestion that Plato asked, and thus was the aesthetic problem stated forthe first time. 

His Gorgias remarks with sceptical acumen, that tragedy is a deception, which brings honour alike to deceived and to deceiver, and therefore itis blameworthy not to know how to deceive and not to allow oneself to bedeceived. This suffices for Gorgias, but Plato, the philosopher, mustresolve the doubt. If it be in fact deception, down with tragedy and theother arts! If it be not deception, then what is the place of tragedy inphilosophy and in the righteous life? His answer was that art or mimeticdoes not realize the ideas, or the truth of things, but merelyreproduces natural or artificial things, which are themselves mereshadows of the ideas. Art, then, is but a shadow of a shadow, a thing ofthird-rate degree. The artificer fashions the object which the painterpaints. The artificer copies the divine idea and the painter copies him. Art therefore does not belong to the rational, but to the irrational, sensual sphere of the soul. It can serve but for sensual pleasure, whichdisturbs and obscures. Therefore must mimetic, poetry, and poets beexcluded from the perfect Republic. 

Plato observed with truth, that imitation does not rise to the logicalor conceptual sphere, of which poets and painters, as such, are, infact, ignorant. But he _failed to realize_ that there could be any formof knowledge other than the intellectual. 

We now know that Intuition lies on this side or outside the Intellect, from which it differs as much as it does from passion and sensuality. 

Plato, with his fine aesthetic sense, would have been grateful to anyonewho could have shown him how to place art, which he loved and practisedso supremely himself, among the lofty activities of the spirit. But inhis day, no one could give him such assistance. His conscience and hisreason saw that art makes the false seem the true, and therefore heresolutely banished it to the lower regions of the spirit. 

The tendency among those who followed Plato in time was to find somemeans of retaining art and of depriving it of the baleful influencewhich it was believed to exercise. Life without art was to thebeauty-loving Greek an impossibility, although he was equally consciousof the demands of reason and of morality. Thus it happened that art, which, on the purely hedonistic hypothesis, had been treated as abeautiful courtezan, became in the hands of the moralist, a pedagogue. Aristophanes and Strabo, and above all Aristotle, dwell upon thedidactic and moralistic possibility of poetry. For Plutarch, poetryseems to have been a sort of preparation for philosophy, a twilight towhich the eyes should grow accustomed, before emerging into the fulllight of day. 

Among the Romans, we find Lucretius comparing the beauties of his greatpoem to the sweet yellow honey, with which doctors are wont to anointthe rim of the cup containing their bitter drugs. Horace, as sofrequently, takes his inspiration from the Greek, when he offers thedouble view of art: as courtezan and as pedagogue. In his _Ad Pisones_occur the passages, in which we find mingled with the poetic function, that of the orator--the practical and the aesthetic. "Was Virgil a poetor an orator?" The triple duty of pleasing, moving, and teaching, wasimposed upon the poet. Then, with a thought for the supposedmeretricious nature of their art, the ingenious Horace remarks that bothmust employ the seductions of form. 

The _mystic_ view of art appeared only in late antiquity, with Plotinus. The curious error of looking upon Plato as the head of this school andas the Father of Aesthetic assumes that he who felt obliged to banishart altogether from the domain of the higher functions of the spirit, was yet ready to yield to it the highest place there. The mystical viewof Aesthetic accords a lofty place indeed to Aesthetic, placing it evenabove philosophy. The enthusiastic praise of the beautiful, to be foundin the _Gorgias_, _Philebus_, _Phaedrus_, and _Symposium_ is responsiblefor this misunderstanding, but it is well to make perfectly clear thatthe beautiful, of which Plato discourses in those dialogues, has nothingto do with the _artistically_ beautiful, nor with the mysticism of theneo-Platonicians. 

Yet the thinkers of antiquity were aware that a problem lay in thedirection of Aesthetic, and Xenophon records the sayings of Socratesthat the beautiful is "that which is fitting and answers to the endrequired. " Elsewhere he says "it is that which is loved. " Plato likewisevibrates between various views and offers several solutions. Sometimeshe appears almost to confound the beautiful with the true, the good andthe divine; at others he leans toward the utilitarian view of Socrates;at others he distinguishes between what is beautiful In itself and whatpossesses but a relative beauty. At other times again, he is a hedonist, and makes it to consist of pure pleasure, that is, of pleasure with noshadow of pain; or he finds it in measure and proportion, or in the verysound, the very colour itself. The reason for all this vacillation ofdefinition lay in Plato's exclusion of the artistic or mimetic fact fromthe domain of the higher spiritual activities. The _Hippias major_expresses this uncertainty more completely than any of the otherdialogues. What is the beautiful? That is the question asked at thebeginning, and left unanswered at the end. The Platonic Socrates andHippias propose the most various solutions, one after another, butalways come out by the gate by which they entered in. Is the beautifulto be found in ornament? No, for gold embellishes only where it is inkeeping. Is the beautiful that which seems ugly to no man? But it is aquestion of being, not of seeming. Is it their fitness which makesthings seem beautiful? But in that case, the fitness which makes themappear beautiful is one thing, the beautiful another. If the beautifulbe the useful or that which leads to an end, then evil would also bebeautiful, because the useful may also end evilly. Is the beautiful thehelpful, that which leads to the good? No, for in that case the goodwould not be beautiful, nor the beautiful good, because cause and effectare different. 

Thus they argued in the Platonic dialogues, and when we turn to thepages of Aristotle, we find him also uncertain and inclined to vary hisdefinitions. [5] Sometimes for him the good and pleasurable are thebeautiful, sometimes it lies in actions, at others in things motionless, or in bulk and order, or is altogether undefinable. Antiquity alsoestablished canons of the beautiful, and the famous canon ofPolycleitus, on the proportions of the human body, fitly compares withthat of later times on the golden line, and with the Ciceronian phrasefrom the Tusculan Disputations. But these are all of them mere empiricalobservations, mere happy remarks and verbal substitutions, which lead tounsurmountable difficulties when put to philosophical test. 

One important identification is absent in all those early attempts attruth. The beautiful is never identified with art, and the artistic factis always clearly distinguished from beauty, mimetic from its content. Plotinus first identified the two, and with him the beautiful and artare dissolved together in a passion and mystic elevation of the spirit. The beauty of natural objects is the archetype existing in the soul, which is the fountain of all natural beauty. Thus was Plato (he said) inerror, when he despised the arts for imitating nature, for natureherself imitates the idea, and art also seeks her inspiration directlyfrom those ideas whence nature proceeds. We have here, with Plotinus andwith Neoplatonism, the first appearance in the world of mysticalAesthetic, destined to play so important a part in later aesthetictheory. 

Aristotle was far more happy in his attempts at defining Aesthetic asthe science of representation and of expression than in his definitionsof the beautiful. He felt that some element of the problem had beenoverlooked, and in attempting in his turn a solution, he had theadvantage over Plato of looking upon the ideas as simple concepts, notas hypostases of concepts or of abstractions. Thus reality was morevivid for Aristotle: it was the synthesis of matter and form. He sawthat art, or mimetic, was a theoretic fact, or a mode of contemplation. "But if Poetry be a theoretic fact, in what way is it to be distinguishedfrom science and from historical knowledge?" Thus magnificently does thegreat philosopher pose the problem at the commencement of his _Poetics_, and thus alone can it be posed successfully. We ask the same question inthe same words to-day. But the problem is difficult, and the masterlystatement of it was not equalled by the method of solution thenavailable. He made an excellent start on his voyage of discovery, butstopped half way, irresolute and perplexed. Poetry, he says, differs fromhistory, by portraying the possible, while history deals with what hasreally happened. Poetry, like philosophy, aims at the universal, but in adifferent way, which the philosopher indicates as something more (_mallontha katholon_) which differentiates poetry from history, occupied with theparticular (_malon tha kath ekaston_). What, then, is the possible, thesomething more, and the particular of poetry? Aristotle immediately fallsinto error and confusion, when he attempts to define these words. Sinceart has to deal with the absurd and with the impossible, it cannot beanything rational, but a mere imitation of reality, in accordance withthe Platonic theory--a fact of sensual pleasure. Aristotle does not, however, attain to so precise a definition as Plato, whose erroneousdefinition he does not succeed in supplanting. The truth is that hefailed of his self-imposed task; he failed to discern the true nature ofAesthetic, although he restated and re-examined the problem with suchmarvellous acumen. 

After Aristotle, there comes a lull in the discussion, until Plotinus. The _Poetics_ were generally little studied, and the admirable statementof the problem generally neglected by later writers. Antique psychologyknew the fancy or imagination, as preserving or reproducing sensuousimpressions, or as an intermediary between the concepts and feeling: itsautonomous productive activity was not yet understood. In the _Life ofApollonius of Tyana_, Philostratus is said to have been the first tomake clear the difference between mimetic and creative imagination. Butthis does not in reality differ from the Aristotelian mimetic, which isconcerned, not only with the real, but also with the possible. Cicerotoo, before Philostratus, speaks of a kind of exquisite beauty lyinghidden in the soul of the artist, which guides his hand and art. Antiquity seems generally to have been entrammelled in the meshes of thebelief in mimetic, or the duplication of natural objects by the artistPhilostratus and the other protagonists of the imagination may havemeant to combat this error, but the shadows lie heavy until we reachPlotinus. 

We find already astir among the sophists the question as to the natureof language. Admitting that language is a sign, are we to take thatas signifying a spiritual necessity (_phusis_) or as a psychologicalconvention (_nomos_)? Aristotle made a valuable contribution to thisdifficult question, when he spoke of a kind of proposition other thanthose which predicate truth or falsehood, that is, logic. With him_euchae_ is the term proper to designate desires and aspirations, which are the vehicle of poetry and of oratory. (It must be rememberedthat for Aristotle words, like poetry, belonged to mimetic. ) Theprofound remark about the third mode of proposition would, one wouldhave thought, have led naturally to the separation of linguisticfrom logic, and to its classification with poetry and art. But theAristotelian logic assumed a verbal and formal character, which setback the attainment of this position by many hundred years. Yet thegenius of Epicurus had an intuition of the truth, when he remarkedthat the diversity of names for the same things arose, not fromarbitrary caprice, but from the diverse impression derived from thesame object. The Stoics, too, seem to have had an inkling of thenon-logical nature of speech, but their use of the word _lekton_leaves it doubtful whether they distinguished by it the linguisticrepresentation from the abstract concept, or rather, generically, themeaning from the sound. 

[5] In the Appendix will be found further striking quotations from and references to Aristotle. --(D. A. )

II

AESTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGE AND IN THE RENAISSANCE

Well-nigh all the theories of antique Aesthetic reappear in the MiddleAges, as it were by spontaneous generation. Duns Scotus Erigenatranslated the Neoplatonic mysticism of the pseudo-Dionysus. TheChristian God took the place of the chief Good or Idea: God, wisdom, goodness, supreme beauty are the fountains of natural beauty, and theseare steps in the stair of contemplation of the Creator. In this mannerspeculation began to be diverted from the art fact, which had been soprominent with Plotinus. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle indistinguishing the beautiful from the good, and applied his doctrine ofimitation to the beauty of the second person of the Trinity (_in quantumest imago expressa Patris_). With the troubadours, we may find traces ofthe hedonistic view of art, and the rigoristic hypothesis finds inTertullian and in certain Fathers of the Church staunch upholders. Theretrograde Savonarola occupied the same position at a later period. Butthe narcotic, moralistic, or pedagogic view mostly prevailed, for itbest suited an epoch of relative decadence in culture. It suitedadmirably the Middle Age, offering at once an excuse for the new-bornChristian art, and for those works of classical or pagan art which yetsurvived. Specimens of this view abound all through the Middle Age. Wefind it, for instance, in the criticism of Virgil, to whose work wereattributed four distinct meanings: literal, allegorical, moral, andanagogic. For Dante poetry was _nihil aliud quam fictio rhetorica inmusicaque posita_. "If the vulgar be incapable of appreciating my innermeaning, then they shall at least incline their minds to the perfectionof my beauty. If from me ye cannot gather wisdom, at the least shall yeenjoy me as a pleasant thing. " Thus spoke the Muse of Dante, whose_Convivio_ is an attempt to aid the understanding in its effort to graspthe moral and pedagogic elements of verse. Poetry was the _gaiascienza_, "a fiction containing many useful things covered or veiled. "

It would be inexact to identify art in the Middle Age with philosophyand theology. Its pleasing falsity could be adapted to useful ends, muchin the same way as matrimony excuses love and sexual union. This, however, implies that for the Middle Age the ideal state was celibacy;that is, pure knowledge, divorced from art. 

The only line of explanation that was altogether neglected in the MiddleAge was the right one. 

The _Poetics_ of Aristotle were badly rendered into Latin, from thefaulty paraphrase of Averroes, by one Hermann (1256). The nominalist andrealist dispute brought again into the arena the relations betweenthought and speech, and we find Duns Scotus occupied with the problem inhis _De modis significandi seu grammatica speculativa_. Abelard haddefined sensation as _confusa conceptio_, and with the importance givento intuitive knowledge, to the perception of the individual, of the_species specialissima_ in Duns Scotus, together with the denominationof the forms of knowledge as _confusae, indistinctae_, and _distinctae_, we enter upon a terminology, which we shall see appearing again, bigwith results, at the commencement of modern Aesthetic. 

The doctrine of the Middle Age, in respect to art and letters, may thusbe regarded as of interest rather to the history of culture than to thatof general knowledge. A like remark holds good of the Renaissance. Theories of antiquity are studied, countless treatises in many forms arewritten upon them, but no really new Ideas as regards aesthetic scienceappear on the horizon. 

We find among the spokesmen of mystical Aesthetic in the thirteenthcentury such names as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Bemboand many others wrote on the Beautiful and on Love in the century thatfollowed. The _Dialogi di Amore_, written in Italian by a Spanish Jewnamed Leone and published in 1535, had a European success, beingtranslated into many languages. He talks of the universality of love andof its origin, of beauty that is grace, which delights the soul andimpels it to love. Knowledge of lesser beauties leads to loftierspiritual beauties. Leone called these remarks _Philographia_. 

Petrarch's followers versified similar intuitions, while others wroteparodies and burlesques of this style; Luca Paciolo, the friend ofLeonardo, made the (false) discovery of the golden section, basing hisspeculating upon mathematics; Michael Angelo established an empiricalcanon for painting, attempting to give rules for imparting grace andmovement to figures, by means of certain arithmetical proportions;others found special meanings in colours; while the Platonicians placedthe seat of beauty in the soul, the Aristotelians in physical qualities. Agostino Nifo, the Averroist, after some inconclusive remarks, is atlast fortunate enough to discover where natural beauty really dwells:its abode is the body of Giovanna d'Aragona, Princess of Tagliacozzo, towhom he dedicates his book. Tasso mingled the speculations of the_Hippias major_ with those of Plotinus. 

Tommaso Campanella, in his _Poetica_, looks upon the beautiful as_signum boni_, the ugly as _signum mali_. By goodness, he means Power, Wisdom, and Love. Campanella was still under the influence of theerroneous Platonic conception of the beautiful, but the use of the word_sign_ in this place represents progress. It enabled him to see thatthings in themselves are neither beautiful nor ugly. 

Nothing proves more clearly that the Renaissance did not overstep thelimits of aesthetic theory reached in antiquity, than the fact that thepedagogic theory of art continued to prevail, in the face oftranslations of the _Poetics_ of Aristotle and of the diffuse laboursexpended upon that work. This theory was even grafted upon the_Poetics_, where one is surprised to find it. There are a few hedonistsstanding out from the general trend of opinion. The restatement of thepedagogic position, reinforced with examples taken from antiquity, wasdisseminated throughout Europe by the Italians of the Renaissance. France, Spain, England, and Germany felt its influence, and we find thewriters of the period of Louis XIV. Either frankly didactic, like LeBossu (1675), for whom the first object of the poet is to instruct, orwith La Ménardière (1640) speaking of poetry as "cette science agréablequi mêle la gravité des préceptes avec la douceur du langage. " For theformer of these critics, Homer was the author of two didactic manualsrelating to military and political matters: the _Iliad_ and the_Odyssey_. 

Didacticism has always been looked upon as the Poetic of theRenaissance, although the didactic is not mentioned among the kinds ofpoetry of that period. The reason of this lies in the fact that for theRenaissance all poetry was didactic, in addition to any other qualitieswhich it might possess. The active discussion of poetic theory, thecriticism of Aristotle and of Plato's exclusion of poetry, of thepossible and of the verisimilar, if it did not contribute much originalmaterial to the theory of art, yet at any rate sowed the seeds whichafterwards germinated and bore fruit. Why, they asked with Aristotle, atthe Renaissance, does poetry deal with the universal, history with theparticular? What is the reason for poetry being obliged to seekverisimilitude? What does Raphael mean by the "certain idea, " which hefollows in his painting?

These themes and others cognate were dealt with by Italian and bySpanish writers, who occasionally reveal wonderful acumen, as whenFrancesco Patrizio, criticizing Aristotle's theory of imitation, remarks: "All languages and all philosophic writings and all otherwritings would be poetry, because they are made of words, and words areimitations. " But as yet no one dared follow such a clue to thelabyrinth, and the Renaissance closes with the sense of a mystery yet tobe revealed. 

III

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

The seventeenth century is remarkable for the ferment of thought uponthis difficult problem. Such words as genius, taste, imagination orfancy, and feeling, appear in this literature, and deserve a passingnotice. As regards the word "genius, " we find the Italian "ingegno"opposed to the intellect, and Dialectic adorned with the attributes ofthe latter, while Rhetoric has the advantage of "ingegno" in all itsforms, such as "concetti" and "acutezze. " With these the English wordingenious has an obvious connection, especially in its earlier use asapplied to men of letters. The French worked upon the word "ingegno" andevolved from it in various associations the expressions "esprit, " "beauxEsprits. " The manual of the Spanish Jesuit, Baltasar Gracian, becamecelebrated throughout Europe, and here we find "ingegno" described asthe truly inventive faculty, and from it the English word "genius, " theItalian "genio, " the French "génie, " first enter into general use. 

The word "gusto" or taste, "good taste, " in its modern sense, alsosprang into use about this time. Taste was held to be a judicialfaculty, directed to the beautiful, and thus to some extent distinctfrom the intellectual judgment. It was further bisected into active andpassive; but the former ran into the definition of "ingegno, " the latterdescribed sterility. The word "gusto, " or taste as judgment, was in usein Italy at a very early period; and in Spain we find Lope di Vega andhis contemporaries declaring that their object is to "delight the taste"of their public. These uses of the word are not of significance asregards the problem of art, and we must return to Baltasar Gracian(1642) for a definition of taste as a special faculty or attitude of thesoul. Italian writers of the period echo the praises of this laconicmoralist, who, when he spoke of "a man of taste, " meant to describe whatwe call to-day "a man of tact" in the conduct of life. 

The first use of the word in a strictly aesthetic sense occurs in Francein the last quarter of the seventeenth century. La Bruyère writes in his_Caractères_ (1688): "Il y a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme debonté ou de maturité dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime, ale goût parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deçà ou audelà, a le goût défectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goût, etl'on dispute des goûts avec fondement. " Delicacy and variability orvariety were appended as attributes of taste. This French definition ofthe Italian word was speedily adopted in England, where it became "goodtaste, " and we find it used in this sense in Italian and German writersof about this period. 

The words "imagination" and "fancy" were also passed through thecrucible in this century. We find the Cardinal Sforza-Pallavicino (1644)blaming those who look for truth or falsehood, for the verisimilar orfor historical truth, in poetry. Poetry, he holds, has to do with theprimary apprehensions, which give neither truth nor falsehood. Thus thefancy takes the place of the verisimilar of certain students ofAristotle. The Cardinal continues his eloquence with the clinchingremark that if the intention of poetry were to be believed true, thenits real end would be falsehood, which is absolutely condemned by thelaw of nature and by God. The sole object of poetic fables is, he says, to adorn our intellect with sumptuous, new, marvellous, and splendidimaginings, and so great has been the benefits accruing from this to thehuman race, that poets have been rewarded with a glory superior to anyother, and their names have been crowned with divine honours. This, hesays in his treatise, _Del Bene_, has been the just reward of poets, albeit they have not been bearers of knowledge, nor have they manifestedtruth. 

This throwing of the bridle on the neck of Pegasus seemed to Muratorisixty years later to be altogether too risky a proceeding--althoughadvocated by a Prince of the Church! He reinserts the bit of theverisimilar, though he talks with admiration of the fancy, that"inferior apprehensive" faculty, which is content to "represent" things, without seeking to know if they be true or false, a task which it leavesto the "superior apprehensive" faculty of the intellect. The severeGravina, too, finds his heart touched by the beauty of poetry, when hecalls it "a witch, but wholesome. "

As early as 1578, Huarte had maintained that eloquence is the work ofthe imagination, not of the intellect; in England, Bacon (1605)attributed knowledge to the intellect, history to memory, and poetry tothe imagination or fancy; Hobbes described the manifestations of thelatter; and Addison devoted several numbers of the _Spectator_ to theanalysis of "the pleasures of the imagination. "

During the same period, the division between those who are accustomed "àjuger par le sentiment" and those who "raisonnent par les principes"became marked in France, Du Bos (1719) is an interesting example of theupholder of the feelings as regards the production of art. Indeed, thereis in his view no other criterion, and the feeling for art is a sixthsense, against which intellectual argument is useless. This Frenchschool of thought found a reflex in England with the position assignedthere to emotion in artistic work. But the confusion of such words asimagination, taste, feeling, wit, shows that at this time there was asuspicion that these words were all applicable to the same fact. Alexander Pope thus distinguished wit and judgment:

 For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid like man and wife. 

But there was a divergence of opinion as to whether the latter should belooked upon as part of the intellect or not. 

There was the same divergence of opinion as to taste and intellectualjudgment. As regards the former, the opposition to the intellectualprinciple was reinforced in the eighteenth century by Kant in his_Kritik der Urtheilskraft_. But Voltaire and writers anterior to himfrequently fell back into intellectualist definitions of a word inventedprecisely to avoid them. Dacier (1684) writes of taste as "Une harmonie, un accord de l'esprit et de la raison. " The difficulties surrounding atrue definition led to the creation of the expression _non so che_, or_je ne sais quoi_, or _no se qué_, which throws into clear relief theconfusion between taste and intellectual judgment. 

As regards imagination and feeling, or sentiment, there was a strongtendency to sensualism. The Cardinal Sforza-Pallavicino talks of poetryas ignoring alike truth or falsehood and yet delighting the senses. Heapproves of the remark that poetry should make us "raise our eyebrows, "but in later life this keen-eyed prince seems to have fallen back fromthe brilliant intuition of his earlier years into the pedagogic theory. Muratori was convinced that fancy was entirely sensual, and therefore heposted the intellect beside it, "to refrain its wild courses, like afriend having authority. " Gravina practically coincides in this view ofpoetic fancy, as a subordinate faculty, incapable of knowledge, fit onlyto be used by moral philosophy for the introduction into the mind of thetrue, by means of novelty and the marvellous. 

In England, also, Bacon held poetry to belong to the fancy, and assignedto it a place between history and science. Epic poetry he awarded to theformer, "parabolic" poetry to the latter. Elsewhere he talks of poetryas a dream, and affirms that it is to be held "rather as an amusement ofthe intelligence than as a science. " For him music, painting, sculpture, and the other arts are merely pleasure-giving. Addison reduced thepleasures of the imagination to those caused by visible objects, or byideas taken from them. These pleasures he held to be inferior to thoseof the senses and less refined than those of the intellect. He lookedupon imaginative pleasure as consisting in resemblances discoveredbetween imitations and things imitated, between copies and originals, anexercise adapted to sharpen the spirit of observation. 

The sensualism of the writers headed by Du Bos, who looked upon art as amere pastime, like a tournament or a bull-fight, shows that the truthabout Aesthetic had not yet succeeded in emerging from the otherspiritual activities. Yet the new words and the new views of theseventeenth century have great importance for the origins of Aesthetic;they were the direct result of the restatement of the problem by thewriters of the Renaissance, who themselves took it up where Antiquityhad left it. These new words, and the discussions which arose from them, were the demands of Aesthetic for its theoretical justification. Butthey were not able to provide this justification, and it could not comefrom elsewhere. 

With Descartes, we are not likely to find much sympathy for such studiesas relate to wit, taste, fancy, or feelings. He ignored the famous _nonso che_; he abhorred the imagination, which he believed to result fromthe agitation of the animal spirits. He did not altogether condemnpoetry, but certainly looked upon it as the _folle du logis_, which mustbe strictly supervised by the reason. Boileau is the aestheticequivalent of Cartesian intellectualism, Boileau _que la raison à sesrègles engage_, Boileau the enthusiast for allegory. France was infectedwith the mathematical spirit of Cartesianism and all possibility of aserious consideration of poetry and of art was thus removed. Witness thediatribes of Malebranche against the imagination, and listen to theItalian, Antonio Conti, writing from France in 1756 on the theme of theliterary disputes that were raging at the time: "They have introducedthe method of M. Descartes into belles-lettres; they judge poetry andeloquence independently of their sensible qualities. Thus they alsoconfound the progress of philosophy with that of the arts. The AbbéTerrasson says that the moderns are greater geometricians than theancients; therefore they are greater orators and greater poets. " LaMotte, Fontenelle, Boileau, and Malebranche carried on this battle, which was taken up by the Encyclopaedists, and when Du Bos published hisdaring book, Jean Jacques le Bel published a reply to it (1726), inwhich he denied to sentiment its claim to judge of art. ThusCartesianism could not possess an Aesthetic of the imagination. TheCartesian J. P. De Crousaz (1715) found the beautiful to consist in whatis approved of, and thereby reduced it to ideas, ignoring the pleasingand sentiment. 

Locke was as intellectualist in the England of this period as wasDescartes in France. He speaks of wit as combining ideas in an agreeablevariety, which strikes the imagination, while the intellect or judgmentseeks for differences according to truth. The wit, then, consists ofsomething which is not at all in accordance with truth and reason. ForShaftesbury, taste is a sense or instinct of the beautiful, of order andproportion, identical with the moral sense and with its "preconceptions"anticipating the recognition of reason. Body, spirit, and God are thethree degrees of beauty. Francis Hutcheson proceeded from Shaftesburyand made popular "the internal sense of beauty, which lies somewherebetween sensuality and rationality and is occupied with discussing unityin variety, concord in multiplicity, and the true, the good, and thebeautiful in their substantial identity. " Hutcheson allied the pleasureof art with this sense, that is, with the pleasure of imitation and ofthe likeness of the copy to the original. This he looked upon asrelative beauty, to be distinguished from absolute beauty. The same viewdominates the English writers of the eighteenth century, among whom maybe mentioned Reid, the head of the Scottish school, and Adam Smith. 

With far greater philosophical vigour, Leibnitz in Germany opened thedoor to that crowd of psychic facts which Cartesian intellectualism hadrejected with horror. His conception of reality as _continuous_ (_naturanon facit saltus_) left room for imagination, taste, and theircongeners. Leibnitz believed that the scale of being ascended from thelowliest to God. What we now term aesthetic facts were then identifiedwith what Descartes and Leibnitz had called "confused" knowledge, whichmight become "clear, " but not distinct. It might seem that when heapplied this terminology to aesthetic facts, Leibnitz had recognizedtheir peculiar essence, as being neither sensual nor intellectual. Theyare not sensual for him, because they have their own "clarity, "differing from pleasure and sensual emotion, and from intellectual"distinctio. " But the Leibnitzian law of continuity and intellectualismdid not permit of such an interpretation. Obscurity and clarity are hereto be understood as quantitative grades of a _single_ form of knowledge, the distinct or intellectual, toward which they both tend and reach at asuperior grade. Though artists judge with confused perceptions, whichare clear but not distinct, these may yet be corrected and proved trueby intellective knowledge. The intellect clearly and distinctly knowsthe thing which the imagination knows confusedly but clearly. This viewof Leibnitz amounts to saying that the realization of a work of art canbe perfected by intellectually determining its concept. Thus Leibnitzheld that there was only one true form of knowledge, and that all otherforms could only reach perfection in that. His "clarity" is not aspecific difference; it is merely a partial anticipation of hisintellective "distinction. " To have posited this grade is an importantachievement, but the view of Leibnitz is not fundamentally differentfrom that of the creators of the words and intuitions already studied. All contributed to attract attention to the peculiarity of aestheticfacts. 

Speculation on language at this period revealed an equally determinedintellectualist attitude. Grammar was held to be an exact science, andgrammatical variations to be explainable by the ellipse, byabbreviation, and by failure to grasp the typical logical form. InFrance, with Arnauld (1660), we have the rigorous Cartesianintellectualism; Leibnitz and Locke both, speculated upon this subject, and the former all his life nourished the thought of a universallanguage. The absurdity of this is proved in this volume. 

A complete change of the Cartesian system, upon which Leibnitz based hisown, was necessary, if speculation were ever to surpass the Leibnitzianaesthetic. But Wolff and the other German pupils of Leibnitz were asunable to shake themselves free of the all-pervading intellectualism aswere the French pupils of Descartes. 

Meanwhile a young student of Berlin, named Alexander Amedeus Baumgarten, was studying the Wolffian philosophy, and at the same time lecturing inpoetry and Latin rhetoric. While so doing, he was led to rethink andpose afresh the problem of how to reduce the precepts of rhetoric to arigorous philosophical system. Thus it came about that Baumgartenpublished in September 1735, at the age of twenty-one, as the thesis forhis degree of Doctor, an opuscule entitled, _Meditationes philosophicaede nonnullis ad poèma pertinentibus_, and in it we find written_for the first time_ the word "Aesthetic, " as the name of a specialscience. Baumgarten ever afterwards attached great importance to hisjuvenile discovery, and lectured upon it by request in 1742, atFrankfort-on-the-Oder, and again in 1749. It is interesting to know thatin this way Emmanuel Kant first became acquainted with the theory ofAesthetic, which he greatly altered when he came to treat of it in hisphilosophy. In 1750, Baumgarten published the first volume of a moreample treatise, and a second part in 1762. But illness, and death in1762, prevented his completing his work. 

What is Aesthetic for Baumgarten? It is the science of sensibleknowledge. Its objects are the sensible facts (_aisthaeta_), which the Greeks were always careful to distinguish from the mentalfacts (_noaeta_). It is therefore _scientia cognitionissensitivae, theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcrecogitandi, ars analogi rationis_. Rhetoric and Poetic are for himspecial cases of Aesthetic, which is a general science, embracing both. Its laws are diffused among all the arts, like the mariner's star(_cynosura quaedam_), and they must be always referred to in all cases, for they are universal, not empirical or merely inductive (_falsa regulapejor est quam nulla_). Aesthetic must not be confounded withPsychology, which supplies only suppositions. Aesthetic is anindependent science, which gives the rules for knowing sensibly, and isoccupied with the perfection of sensible knowledge, which is beauty. Itscontrary is ugliness. The beauty of objects and of matter must beexcluded from the beauty of sensible knowledge, because beautifulobjects can be badly thought and ugly objects beautifully thought. Poetic representations are those which are confused or imaginative. Distinction and intellectuality are not poetic. The greater thedetermination, the greater the poetry; individuals absolutely determined(_omnimodo determinata_) are very poetical, as are images or fancies, and everything which refers to feeling. The judgment of sensible andimaginative representations is taste. 

Such are, in brief, the truths which Baumgarten stated in his_Meditationes_, and further developed and exemplified in his_Aesthetica_. Close study of the two works above-mentioned leads to theconviction that Baumgarten did not succeed in freeing himself from theunity of the Leibnitzian monadology. He obtained from Leibnitz hisconception of the poetic as consisting of the confused, but Germancritics are wrong in believing that he attributed to it a positive, nota negative quality. Had he really done this, he would have broken at ablow the unity of the Leibnitzian monad, and conquered the science ofAesthetic. 

This giant's step he did not take: he failed to banish thecontradictions of Leibnitz and of the other intellectualists. To posit a_perfection_ did not suffice. It was necessary to maintain it againstthe _lex continui_ of Leibnitz and to proclaim its independence of allintellectualism. Aesthetic truths for Baumgarten were those which didnot seem altogether false or altogether true: in fact, the verisimilar. If it were objected to Baumgarten that one should not occupy oneselfwith what, like poetry, he defines as confused and obscure, he wouldreply that confusion is a condition of finding the truth, that we do notpass at once from night to dawn. Thus he did not surpass the thought ofLeibnitz in this respect. Poor Baumgarten was always in suspense lest heshould be held to occupy himself with things unworthy of a philosopher!"How can you, a professor of philosophy, dare to praise lying and themixture of truth and falsehood?" He imagined that some such reproachmight be addressed to him on account of his purely philosophicalspeculations, and true enough he actually received a criticism of histheory, in which it was argued, that if poetry consisted of sensualperfection, then it was a bad thing for mankind. Baumgartencontemptuously replied that he had not the time to argue with thosecapable of confounding his _oratio perfecta sensitiva_ with an _oratioperfecte (omnino!) sensitiva_. 

The fact about Baumgarten is that apart from baptizing the new scienceAesthetic, and apart from his first definitions, he does not stray farfrom the old ruts of scholastic thought. The excellent Baumgarten, withall his ardour and all his convictions, is a sympathetic and interestingfigure in the history of Aesthetic not yet formed, but in process offormation. 

The revolutionary who set aside the old definitions of Aesthetic, andfor the first time revealed the true nature of art and poetry, is theItalian, Giambattista Vico. 

What were the ideas developed by Vico in his _Scienza nuova_ (1725)?They were neither more nor less than the solution of the problem, posedby Plato, attempted in vain by Aristotle, again posed and again unsolvedat the Renaissance. 

Is poetry a rational or an irrational thing? Is it spiritual or animal?If it be spiritual, what is its true nature, and in what way does itdiffer from art and science?

Plato, we know, banished poetry to the inferior region of the soul, among the animal spirits. Vico on the contrary raises up poetry, andmakes of it a period in the history of humanity. And since Vico's is anideal history, whose periods are not concerned with contingent facts, but with spiritual forms, he makes of it a moment of the ideal historyof the spirit, a form of knowledge. Poetry comes before the intellect, but _after_ feeling. Plato had _confused_ it with feeling, and for thatreason banished it from his Republic. "Men _feel_, " says Vico, "beforeobserving, then they observe with perturbation of the soul, finally theyreflect with the pure intellect, " He goes on to say, that poetry beingcomposed of passion and of feeling, the nearer it approaches to the_particular_, the more _true_ it is, while exactly the reverse is trueof philosophy. 

Imagination is independent and autonomous as regards the intellect. Notonly does the intellect fail of perfection, but all it can do is todestroy it. "The studies of Poetry and Metaphysic are _naturallyopposed_. Poets are the feeling, philosophers the intellect of the humanrace. " The weaker the reason, the stronger the imagination. Philosophy, he says, deals with abstract thought or universals, poetry with theparticular. Painters and poets differ only in their material. Homer andthe great poets appear in barbaric times. Dante, for instance, appearedin "the renewed barbarism of Italy. " The poetic ages preceded thephilosophical, and poetry is the father of prose, by "necessity ofnature, " not by the "caprice of pleasure. " Fables or "imaginaryuniversals" were conceived before "reasoned or philosophicaluniversals. " To Homer, says Vico, belongs wisdom, but only poeticwisdom. "His beauties are not those of a spirit softened and civilizedby any philosophy. "

If any one make poetry in epochs of reflexion, he becomes a child again;he does not reflect with his intellect, but follows his fancy and dwellsupon particulars. If the true poet make use of philosophic ideas, heonly does so that he may change logic into imagination. 

Here we have a profound statement of the line of demarcation betweenscience and art. _They cannot be confused again_. 

His statement of the difference between poetry and history is a trifleless clear. He explains why to Aristotle poetry seemed morephilosophical than history, and at the same time he refutes Aristotle'serror that poetry deals with the universal, history with the particular. Poetry equals science, not because it is occupied with the intellectualconcept, but because, like science, it is ideal. A good poetical fablemust be all ideal: "With the idea the poet gives their being to thingswhich are without it. Poetry is all fantastic, as being the art ofpainting the idea, not icastic, like the art of painting portraits. Thatis why poets, like painters, are called divine, because in that respectthey resemble God the Creator. " Vico ends by identifying poetry andhistory. The difference between them is posterior and accidental. "But, as it is impossible to impart false ideas, because the false consists ofa vicious combination of ideas, so it is impossible to impart atradition, which, though it be false, has not at first contained someelement of truth. Thus mythology appears for the first time, not as theinvention of an individual, but as the spontaneous vision of the truthas it appears to primitive man. "

Poetry and language are for Vico substantially identical. He finds inthe origins of poetry the origins of languages and letters. He believedthat the first languages consisted in mute acts or acts accompanied bybodies which had natural relations to the ideas that it was desired tosignify. With great cleverness he compared these pictured languages toheraldic arms and devices, and to hieroglyphs. He observed that duringthe barbarism of the Middle Age, the mute language of signs must return, and we find it in the heraldry and blazonry of that epoch. Hence comethree kinds of languages: divine silent languages, heroic emblematiclanguages, and speech languages. 

Formal logic could never satisfy a man with such revolutionary ideasupon poetry and language. He describes the Aristotelian syllogism as amethod which explains universals In their particulars, rather thanunites particulars to obtain universals, looks upon Zeno and the soritesas a means of subtilizing rather than sharpening the intelligence, andconcludes that Bacon is a great philosopher, when he advocates andillustrates _induction_, "which has been followed by the English to thegreat advantage of experimental philosophy. " Hence he proceeds tocriticize mathematics, which, had hitherto always been looked upon asthe type of the _perfect science_. 

Vico is indeed a revolutionary, a pioneer. He knows very well that he isin direct opposition to all that has been thought before about poetry. "My new principles of poetry upset all that first Plato and thenAristotle have said about the origin of poetry, all that has been saidby the Patrizzi, by the Scaligers, and by the Castelvetri. I havediscovered that It was through lack of human reason that poetry was bornso sublime that neither the Arts, nor the Poetics, nor the Critiquescould cause another equal to it to be born, I say equal, and notsuperior. " He goes as far as to express shame at having to report thestupidities of great philosophers upon the origin of song and verse. Heshows his dislike for the Cartesian philosophy and its tendency to dryup the imagination "by denying all the faculties of the soul which cometo it from the body, " and talks of his own time as of one "which freezesall the generous quality of the best poetry and thus precludes it frombeing understood. "

As regards grammatical forms, Vico may be described as an adherent ofthe great reaction of the Renaissance against scholastic verbalism andformalism. This reaction brought back as a value the experience offeeling, and afterwards with Romanticism gave its right place to theimagination. Vico, in his _Scienza nuova_, may be said to have been thefirst to draw attention to the imagination. Although he makes manyluminous remarks on history and the development of poetry among theGreeks, his work is not really a history, but a science of the spirit orof the ideal. It is not the ethical, logical, or economic moment ofhumanity which interests him, but the _imaginative_ moment. _Hediscovered the creative imagination_, and it may almost be said of the_Scienza nuova_ of Vico that it is Aesthetic, the discovery of a newworld, of a new mode of knowledge. 

This was the contribution of the genius of Vico to the progress ofhumanity: he showed Aesthetic to be an autonomous activity. It remainedto distinguish the science of the spirit from history, the modificationsof the human spirit from the historic vicissitudes of peoples, Aestheticfrom Homeric civilization. 

But although Goethe, Herder, and Wolf were acquainted with the _Scienzanuova_, the importance of this wonderful book did not at first dawn uponthe world. Wolf, in his prolegomena to Homer, thought that he wasdealing merely with an ingenious speculator on Homeric themes. He didnot realize that the intellectual stature of Vico far surpassed that ofthe most able philologists. 

The fortunes of Aesthetic after Vico were very various, and the list ofaestheticians who fell back into the old pedagogic definition, orelaborated the mistakes of Baumgarten, is very long. Yet with C. H. Heydenreich in Germany and Sulzer in Switzerland we find that the truthscontained in Baumgarten have begun to bear fruit. J. J. Herder (1769) wasmore important than these, and he placed Baumgarten upon a pedestal, though criticizing his pretension of creating an _ars pulchre cogitandi_instead of a simple _scientia de pulchro et pulchris philosophicecogitans_. Herder admitted Baumgarten's definition of poetry as _oratiosensitiva perfecta_, perfect sensitived speech, and this is _probablythe best definition of poetry that has ever been given_. It touches thereal essence of poetry and opens to thought the whole of the philosophyof the beautiful. Herder, although he does not cite Vico upon aestheticquestions, yet praises him as a philosopher. His remarks about poetry as"the maternal language of humanity, as the garden is more ancient thanthe cultivated field, painting than writing, song than declamation, exchange than commerce, " are replete with the spirit of the Italianphilosopher. 

But despite similar happy phrases, Herder is philosophically theinferior of the great Italian. He is a firm believer in the Leibnitzianlaw of continuity, and does not surpass the conclusions of Baumgarten. 

Herder and his friend Hamann did good service as regards the philosophyof language. The French encyclopaedists, J. J. Rousseau, d'Alembert, andmany others of this period, were none of them able to get free of theidea that a word is either a natural, mechanical fact, or a signattached to a thought. The only way out of this difficulty is to lookupon the imagination as itself active and expressive in _verbalimagination_, and language as the language of _intuition_, not of theintelligence. Herder talks of language as "an understanding of the soulwith itself. " Thus language begins to appear, not as an arbitraryinvention or a mechanical fact, but as a primitive affirmation of humanactivity, as a _creation_. 

But all unconscious of the discoveries of Vico, the great mass ofeighteenth century writers try their hands at every sort of solution. The Abbé Batteux published in 1746 _Les Beaux-arts réduits a un seulprincipe_, which is a perfect little bouquet of contradictions. The Abbéfinds himself confronted with difficulties at every turn, but with "unpeu d'esprit on se tire de tout, " and when for instance he has toexplain artistic enjoyment of things displeasing, he remarks that theimitation never being perfect like reality, the horror caused by realitydisappears. 

But the French were equalled and indeed surpassed by the English intheir amateur Aesthetics. The painter Hogarth was one day reading inItalian a speech about the beauty of certain figures, attributed toMichael Angelo. This led him to imagine that the figurative arts dependupon a principle which consists of conforming to a given line. In 1745he produced a serpentine line as frontispiece of his collection ofengravings, which he described as "the line of beauty. " Thus hesucceeded in exciting universal curiosity, which he proceeded to satisfywith his "Analysis of Beauty. " Here he begins by rightly combating theerror of judging paintings by their subject and by the degree of theirimitation, instead of by their form, which is the essential in art. Hegives his definition of form, and afterwards proceeds to describe thewaving lines which are beautiful and those which are not, and maintainsthat among them all there is but one that is really worthy to be called"the line of beauty, " and one definite serpentine line "the line ofgrace. " The pig, the bear, the spider, and the frog are ugly, becausethey do not possess serpentine lines. E. Burke, with a like assurance inhis examples, was equally devoid of certainty in his general principles. He declares that the natural properties of an object cause pleasure orpain to the imagination, but that the latter also procures pleasure fromtheir resemblance to the original. He does not speak further of thesecond of these, but gives a long list of the natural properties of thesensible, beautiful object. Having concluded his list, he remarks thatthese are in his opinion the qualities upon which beauty depends andwhich are the least liable to caprice and confusion. But "comparativesmallness, delicate structure, colouring vivid but not too much so, " areall mere empirical observations of no more value than those of Hogarth, with whom Burke must be classed as an aesthetician. Their works arespoken of as "classics. " Classics indeed they are, but of the sort thatarrive at no conclusion. 

Henry Home (Lord Kaimes) is on a level a trifle above the two justmentioned. He seeks "the true principles of the beaux-arts, " in order totransform criticism into "a rational science. " He selects facts andexperience for this purpose, but in his definition of beauty, which hedivides into two parts, relative and intrinsic, he is unable to explainthe latter, save by a final cause, which he finds in the Almighty. 

Such theories as the three above mentioned defy classification, becausethey are not composed by any scientific method. Their authors pass fromphysiological sensualism to moralism, from imitation of nature tofinalism, and to transcendental mysticism, without consciousness of theincongruity of their theses, at variance each with itself. 

The German, Ernest Platner, at any rate did not suffer from a likeconfusion of thought. He developed his researches on the lines ofHogarth, but was only able to discover a prolongation of sexual pleasurein aesthetic facts. "Where, " he exclaims, "is there any beauty that doesnot come from the feminine figure, the centre of all beauty? Theundulating line is beautiful, because it is found in the body of woman;essentially feminine movements are beautiful; the notes of music arebeautiful, when they melt into one another; a poem is beautiful, whenone thought embraces another with lightness and facility. "

French sensualism shows itself quite incapable of understandingaesthetic production, and the associationism of David Hume is not morefortunate in this respect. 

The Dutchman Hemsterhuis (1769) developed an ingenious theory, minglingmystical and sensualist theory with some just remarks, which afterwards, in the hands of Jacobi, became sentimentalism. Hemsterhuis believedbeauty to be a phenomenon arising from the meeting by thesentimentalism, which gives multiplicity, with the internal sense, whichtends to unity. Consequently the beautiful will be that which presentsthe greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time. To man isdenied supreme unity, but here he finds approximative unity. Hence thejoy arising from the beautiful, which has some analogy with the joy oflove. 

With Winckelmann (1764) Platonism or Neo-platonism was vigorouslyrenewed. The creator of the history of the figurative arts saw in thedivine indifference and more than human elevation of the works of Greeksculpture a beauty which had descended from the seventh heaven andbecome incarnate in them. Mendelssohn, the follower of Baumgarten, haddenied beauty to God: Winckelmann, the Neoplatonician, gave it back toHim. He holds that perfect beauty is to be found only in God. "Theconception of human beauty becomes the more perfect in proportion as itcan be thought as in agreement with the Supreme Being, who isdistinguished from matter by His unity and indivisibility. " To the othercharacteristics of supreme beauty, Winckelmann adds "the absence of anysort of signification" (Unbezeichnung). Lines and dots cannot explainbeauty, for it is not they alone which form it. Its form is not properto any definite person, it expresses no sentiment, no feeling ofpassion, for these break up unity and diminish or obscure beauty. According to Winckelmann, beauty must be like a drop of pure water takenfrom the spring, which is the more healthy the less it has of taste, because it is purified of all foreign elements. 

A special faculty is required to appreciate this beauty, whichWinckelmann is inclined to call intelligence, or a delicate internalsense, free of all instinctive passions, of pleasure, and of friendship. Since it becomes a question of perceiving something immaterial, Winckelmann banishes colour to a secondary place. True beauty, he says, is that of form, a word which describes lines and contours, as thoughlines and contours could not also be perceived by the senses, or couldappear to the eye without any colour. 

It is the destiny of error to be obliged to contradict itself, when itdoes not decide to dwell in a brief aphorism, in order to live as wellas may be with facts and concrete problems. The "History" of Winckelmanndealt with historic concrete facts, with which it was necessary toreconcile the idea of a supreme beauty. His admission of the contours oflines and his secondary admission of colours is a compromise. He makesanother with regard to the principle of expression. "Since there is nointermediary between pain and pleasure in human nature, and since ahuman being without these feelings is inconceivable, we must place thehuman figure in a moment of action and of passion, which is what istermed expression in art. " So Winckelmann studied expression afterbeauty. He makes a third compromise between his one, indivisible, supreme, and constant beauty and individual beauties. Winckelmannpreferred the male to the female body as the most complete incarnationof supreme beauty, but he was not able to shut his eyes to theindisputable fact that there also exist beautiful bodies of women andeven of animals. 

Raphael Mengs, the painter, was an intimate friend of Winckelmann andassociated himself with him in his search for a true definition of thebeautiful. His ideas were generally in accordance with those ofWinckelmann. He defines beauty as "the visible idea of perfection, whichis to perfection what the visible is to the mathematical point. " Hefalls under the influence of the argument from design. The Creator hasordained the multiplicity of beauties. Things are beautiful according toour ideas of them, and these ideas come from the Creator. Thus eachbeautiful thing has its own type, and a child would appear ugly if itresembled a man. He adds to his remarks in this sense: "As the diamondis alone perfect among stones, gold among metals, and man among livingcreatures, so there is distinction in each species, and but little isperfect. " In his _Dreams of Beauty_, he looks upon beauty as "anintermediate disposition, " which contains a part of perfection and apart of the agreeable, and forms a _tertium quid_, which differs fromthe other two and deserves a special name. He names four sources of theart of painting: beauty, significant or expressive character, harmony, and colouring. The first of these he finds among the ancients, thesecond with Raphael, the third with Correggio, the fourth with Titian. Mengs does not succeed in rising above this empiricism of the studio, save to declaim about the beauty of nature, virtue, forms, andproportions, and indeed everything, including the First Cause, which isthe most beautiful of all. 

The name of G. E. Lessing (1766) is well known to all concerned with artproblems. The ideas of Winckelmann reappear in Lessing, with less of ametaphysical tinge. For Lessing, the end of art is the pleasing, andsince this is "a superfluous thing, " he thought that the legislatorshould not allow to art the liberty indispensable to science, whichseeks the truth, necessary to the soul. For the Greeks painting was, asit should always be, "imitation of beautiful bodies. " Everythingdisagreeable or ill-formed should be excluded from painting. "Painting, as clever imitation, may imitate deformity. Painting, as a fine art, does not permit this. " He was more inclined to admit deformity inpoetry, as there it is less shocking, and the poet can make use of it toproduce in us certain feelings, such as the ridiculous or the terrible. In his _Dramaturgie_ (1767), Lessing followed the Peripatetics, andbelieved that the rules of Aristotle were as absolute as the theorems ofEuclid. His polemic against the French school is chiefly directed toclaiming a place in poetry for the verisimilar, as against absolutehistorical exactitude. He held the universal to be a sort of mean ofwhat appears in the individual, the catharsis was in his view atransformation of the passions into virtuous dispositions, and he heldthe duty of poetry to be inspiration of the love of virtue. He followedWinckelmann in believing that the expression of physical beauty was thesupreme object of painting. This beauty exists only as an ideal, whichfinds its highest expression in man. Animals possess it to a slighterextent, vegetable and inanimate nature not at all. Those mistaken enoughto occupy themselves with depicting the latter are imitating beautiesdeprived of all ideal. They work only with eye and hand; genius haslittle if any share in their productions. Lessing found the physicalideal to reside chiefly in form, but also in the ideal of colour, and inpermanent expression. Mere colouring and transitory expression were forhim without ideal, "because nature has not imposed upon herself anythingdefinite as regards them. " At bottom he does not care for colouring, finding in the pen drawings of artists "a life, a liberty, a delicacy, lacking to their pictures. " He asks "whether even the most wonderfulcolouring can make up for such a loss, and whether it be not desirablethat the art of oil-painting had never been invented. "

This "ideal beauty, " wonderfully constructed from divine quintessenceand subtle pen and brush strokes, this academic mystery, had greatsuccess. In Italy it was much discussed in the environment of Mengs andof Winckelmann, who were working there. 

The first counterblast to their aesthetic Neo-platonism came from anItalian named Spalletti, and took the form of a letter addressed toMengs. He represents the _characteristic_ as the true principle of art. The pleasure obtained from beauty is intellectual, and truth is itsobject. When the soul meets with what is characteristic, and what reallysuits the object to be represented, the work is held to be beautiful. Awell-made man with a woman's face is ugly. Harmony, order, variety, proportion, etc. --these are elements of beauty, and man enjoys thewidening of his knowledge before disagreeable things characteristicallyrepresented. Spalletti defines beauty as "that modification inherent tothe object observed, which presents it, as it should appear, with aninfallible characteristic. "

Thus the Aristotelian thesis found a supporter in Italy, some yearsbefore any protestation was heard in Germany. Louis Hirt, the historianof art (1797) observed that ancient monuments represented all sorts offorms, from the most beautiful and sublime to the most ugly and mostcommon. He therefore denied that ideal beauty was the principle of art, and for it substituted the _characteristic_, applicable equally to gods, heroes, and animals. 

Wolfgang Goethe, in 1798, forgetting the juvenile period, during whichhe had dared to raise a hymn to Gothic architecture, now began seriouslyto seek a middle term between beauty and expression. He believed that hehad found it, in certain characteristic contents presenting to theartist beautiful shapes, which the artist would then develop and reduceto perfect beauty. Thus for Goethe at this period, the characteristicwas simply the _starting-point_, or framework, from which the beautifularose, through the power of the artist. 

But these writers mentioned after J. B. Vico are not true philosophers. Winckelmann, Mengs, Hogarth, Lessing, and Goethe are great in otherways. Meier called himself a historian of art, but he was inferior bothto Herder and to Hamann. From J. B. Vico to Emmanuel Kant, Europeanthought is without a name of great importance as regards this subject. 

Kant took up the problem, where Vico had left it, not in the historical, but in the ideal sense. He resembled the Italian philosopher, in thegravity and the tenacity of his studies in Aesthetic, but he was farless happy in his solutions, which did not attain to the truth, and towhich he did not succeed in giving the necessary unity andsystematization. The reader must bear in mind that Kant is herecriticized solely as an aesthetician: his other conclusions do not enterdirectly into the discussion. 

What was Kant's idea of art? The answer is: the same in substance asBaumgarten's. This may seem strange to those who remember his sustainedpolemic against Wolf and the conception of beauty as confusedperception. But Kant always thought highly of Baumgarten. He calls him"that excellent analyst" in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, and he usedBaumgarten's text for his University lectures on Metaphysic. Kant lookedupon Logic and Aesthetic as cognate studies, and in his scheme ofstudies for 1765, and in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, he proposes tocast a glance at the Critique of Taste, that is to say, Aesthetic, "since the study of the one is useful for the other and they aremutually illuminative. " He followed Meier in his distinctions betweenlogical and aesthetic truth. He even quoted the Instance of the younggirl, whose face when distinctly seen, i. E. With a microscope, is nolonger beautiful. It is true, aesthetically, he said, that when a man isdead he cannot come to life, although this be opposed both to logicaland to moral truth. It is aesthetically true that the sun plunges intothe sea, although that is not true logically or objectively. 

No one, even among the greatest, can yet tell to what extent logicaltruth should mingle with aesthetic truth. Kant believed that logicaltruth must wear the habit of Aesthetic, in order to become _accessible_. This habit, he thought, was discarded only by the rational sciences, which tend to depth. Aesthetic certainly is subjective. It is satisfiedwith authority or with an appeal to great men. We are so feeble thatAesthetic must eke out our thoughts. Aesthetic is a vehicle of Logic. But there are logical truths which are not aesthetic. We must excludefrom philosophy exclamations and other emotions, which belong toaesthetic truth. For Kant, poetry is the harmonious play of thought andsensation, differing from eloquence, because in poetry thoughts arefitted to suggestions, in eloquence the reverse is true. Poetry shouldmake virtue and intellect visible, as was done by Pope in his _Essay onMan_. Elsewhere, he says frankly that logical perfection is thefoundation of all the rest. 

The confirmation of this is found in his _Critique of Judgment_, whichSchelling looked upon as the most important of the three _Critiques_, and which Hegel and other metaphysical idealists always especiallyesteemed. 

For Kant art was always "a sensible and imaged covering for anintellectual concept. " He did not look upon art as pure beauty without aconcept. He looked upon it as a beauty adherent and fixed about aconcept. The work of genius contains two elements: imagination andintelligence. To these must be added taste, which combines the two. Artmay even represent the ugly in nature, for artistic beauty "is not abeautiful thing but a beautiful representation of a thing. " But thisrepresentation of the ugly has its limits in the arts (here Kantremembers Lessing and Winckelmann), and an absolute limit in thedisgusting and the repugnant, which kills the representation itself. Hebelieves that there may be artistic productions without a concept, suchas are flowers in nature, and these would be ornaments to frameworks, music without words, etc. , etc. , but since they represent nothingreducible to a definite concept, they must be classed, like flowers, with free beauties. This would certainly seem to exclude them fromAesthetic, which, according to Kant, should combine imagination andintelligence. 

Kant is shut in with intellectualist barriers. A complete definition ofthe _imagination_ is _wanting_ to his system. He does not admit that theimagination belongs to the powers of the mind. He relegates it to thefacts of sensation. He is aware of the reproductive and combinativeimagination, but he does not recognize _fancy_ (_fantasia_), which isthe true productive imagination. 

Yet Kant was aware that there exists an activity other than theintellective. Intuition is referred to by him as preceding intellectiveactivity and differing from sensation. He does not speak of it, however, in his critique of art, but in the first section of the _Critique ofPure Reason_. Sensations do not enter the mind, until it has given them_form_. This is neither sensation nor intelligence. It is _pureintuition_, the sum of the _a priori_ principles of sensibility. Hespeaks thus: "There must, then, exist a science that forms the firstpart of the transcendental doctrine of the elements, distinct from thatwhich contains the principles of pure thought and is calledtranscendental Logic. "

What does he call this new science? He calls it _TranscendentalAesthetic_, and refuses to allow the term to be used for the Critique ofTaste, which could never become a science. 

But although he thus states so clearly the necessity of a science of theform of the sensations, that is of _pure intuition_, Kant here appearsto fall into grave error. This arises from _his inexact idea_ of the_essence of the aesthetic faculty or of art_, which, as we now know, ispure intuition. He conceives the form of sensibility to be reducible tothe _two categories of space and time_. 

Benedetto Croce has shown that space and time are far from beingcategories or functions: they are complex posterior formations. Kant, however, looked upon density, colour, etc. , as material for sensations;but the mind only observes colour or hardness when it has _already_given a form to its sensations. Sensations, in so far as they are _crudematter_, are _outside_ the mind: they are a _limit_. Colour, hardness, density, etc. , are _already_ intuitions. _They are the aestheticactivity in its rudimentary manifestation. _

Characterizing or qualifying imagination, that is, _aesthetic activity_, should therefore _take the place occupied by the study of space andtime_ in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, and constitute the true_Transcendental Aesthetic_, prologue to Logic. 

Had Kant done this, he would have surpassed Leibnitz and Baumgarten; hewould have equalled Vico. 

Kant did not identify the Beautiful with art. He established what hecalled "the four moments of Beauty, " amounting to a definition of it. The two negative moments are, "That is beautiful which pleases _withoutinterest_"; this thesis was directed against the sensualist school ofEnglish writers, with whom Kant had for a time agreed; and "That isbeautiful which pleases without a concept, " directed against theintellectualists. Thus he affirmed the existence of a spiritual domain, distinct from that of organic pleasure, of the useful, the good, and thetrue. The two other moments are, "That is beautiful which has the formof finality without the representation of an end, " and "That isbeautiful which is the object of universal pleasure. " What is thisdisinterested pleasure that we experience before pure colours, puresounds, and flowers? Benedetto Croce replies that this mysterious domainhas no existence; that the instances cited represent, either instancesof organic pleasure, or are artistic facts of expression. 

Kant was less severe with the Neoplatonicians than with the two schoolsof thought above mentioned. His _Critique of Judgment_ contains somecurious passages, in one of which he gives his distinction of form frommatter: "In music, the melody is the matter, harmony the form: in aflower, the scent is the matter, the shape or configuration the form. "In the other arts, he found that the design was the essential. "Not whatpleases in sensation, but what is approved for its form, is thefoundation of taste. "

In his pursuit of the phantom of a beauty, which is neither that of artnor of sensual pleasure, exempt alike from expression and fromenjoyment, he became enveloped in inextricable contradictions. Littledisposed as he was to let himself be carried away by the imagination, heexpressed his contempt for philosopher-poets like Herder, and keptsaying and unsaying, affirming and then immediately criticizing his ownaffirmations as to this mysterious beauty. The truth is that _thismystery is simply his own individual uncertainty before a problem whichhe could not solve_, owing to his having no clear idea of an activity ofsentiment. Such an activity represented for him a logical contradiction. Such expressions as "necessary universal pleasure, " "finality withoutthe idea of end, " are verbal proofs of his uncertainty. 

How was he to emerge from this uncertainty, this contradiction? He fellback upon the concept of a base of subjective finality as the base ofthe judgment of taste, that is of the subjective finality of nature bythe judgment. But nothing can be known or disclosed to the object bymeans of this concept, which is indeterminate in itself and not adaptedfor knowledge. Its determining reason is perhaps situated in "thesuprasensible substratum of humanity. " Thus beauty becomes a symbol ofmorality. "The subjective principle alone, that is, the indeterminateidea of the suprasensible in us, can be indicated as the sole key toreveal this faculty, which remains unknown to us in its origin. Nothingbut this principle can make that hidden faculty comprehensible. "

Kant had a tendency to mysticism, which this statement does not serve toconceal, but it was a mysticism without enthusiasm, a mysticism almostagainst the grain. His failure to penetrate thoroughly the nature of theaesthetic activity led him to see double and even triple, on severaloccasions. Art being unknown to him in its essential nature, he inventsthe functions of _space_ and _time_ and terms this _transcendentalaesthetic_; he develops the theory of the imaginative beautifying of theintellectual concept by genius; he is finally forced to admit amysterious power of feeling, intermediate between the theoretic and thepractical activity. This power is cognoscitive and non-cognoscitive, moral and indifferent to morality, agreeable and yet detached from thepleasure of the senses. His successors hastened to make use of thismysterious power, for they were glad to be able to find some sort ofjustification for their bold speculations in the severe philosopher ofKönigsberg. 

In addition to Schelling and Hegel, for whom, as has been said, the_Critique of Judgment_ seemed the most important of the three Critiques, we must now mention the name of a poet who showed himself as great inphilosophical as in aesthetic achievement. 

_Friedrich Schiller_ first elaborated that portion of the Kantianthought contained in the _Critique of Judgment_. Before any professionalphilosopher, Schiller studied that sphere of activity which unitesfeeling with reason. Hegel talks with admiration of this artisticgenius, who was also so profoundly philosophical and first announced theprinciple of reconciliation between life as duty and reason on the onehand, and the life of the senses and feeling on the other. 

To Schiller belongs the great merit of having opposed the subjectiveidealism of Kant and of having made the attempt to surpass it. 

The exact relations between Kant and Schiller, and the extent to whichthe latter may have been influenced by Leibnitz and Herder, are of lessimportance to the history of Aesthetic than the fact that Schiller_unified_ once for all art and beauty, which had been separated by Kant, with his distinctions between adherent and pure beauty. Schiller'sartistic sense must doubtless have stood him here in good stead. 

Schiller found a very unfortunate and misleading term to apply to theaesthetic sphere. He called it the sphere of _play_ (Spiel). He stroveto explain that by this he did not mean ordinary games, nor materialamusement. For Schiller, this sphere of play lay intermediate betweenthought and feeling. Necessity in art gives place to a free dispositionof forces; mind and nature, matter and form are here reconciled. Thebeautiful is life, but not physiological life. A beautiful statue mayhave life, and a living man be without it. Art conquers nature withform. The great artist effaces matter with form. The less we aresensible of the material in a work of art, the greater the triumph ofthe artist. The soul of the spectator should leave the magic sphere ofart as pure and as perfect as when it left the hands of the Creator. Themost frivolous theme should be so treated that we can pass at once fromit to the most rigorous, and _vice versa_. Only when man has placedhimself outside the world and contemplates it aesthetically, can he knowthe world. While he is merely the passive receiver of sensations, he isone with the world, and therefore cannot realize it. Art isindeterminism. With the help of art, man delivers himself from the yokeof the senses, and is at the same time free of any rational or moralduty: he may enjoy for a moment the luxury of serene contemplation. 

Schiller was well aware that the moment art is employed to teach moralsdirectly, it ceases to be art. All other teachings give to the soul aspecial imprint. Art alone is favourable to all without prejudice. Owingto this indifference of art, it possesses a great educative power, byopening the path to morality without preaching or persuasion; withoutdetermining, it produces determinability. This was the main theme of thecelebrated "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, " which Schillerwrote to his patron the Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg. Here, and in hislectures at the University of Jena, it is clear that Schiller addresseshimself to a popular audience. He began a work, on scientific Aesthetic, which he intended to entitle "Kallias, " but unfortunately died withoutcompleting it. We possess only a few fragments, contained in hiscorrespondence with his friend Körner. Körner did not feel satisfiedwith the formula of Schiller, and asks for some more precise andobjective mark of the beautiful. Schiller tells him that he has foundit, but what he had found we shall never know, as there is no documentto inform us. 

The fault of Schiller's aesthetic theory was its lack of precision. Hisartistic faculty enabled him to give unsurpassable descriptions of thecatharsis and of other effects of art, but he fails to give a precisedefinition of the aesthetic function. True, he disassociates it frommorality, yet admits that it may in a measure be associated with it. Theonly formal activities that he recognizes are the moral and theintellectual, and he denies altogether (against the sensualists) thatart can have anything to do with passion or sensuality. His intellectualworld consisted only of the logical and the intellectual, leaving outthe imaginative activity. 

What is art for Schiller? He admits four modes of relation between manand external things. They are the physical, the logical, the moral, andthe aesthetic. He describes this latter as a mode by which things affectthe whole of our different forces, without being a definite object forany one in particular. Thus a man may be said to please aesthetically, "when he does so without appealing to any one of the senses directly, and without any law or end being thought of in connection with him. "Schiller cannot be made to say anything more definite than this. Hisgeneral position was probably much like Kant's (save in the case abovementioned, where he made a happy correction), and he probably lookedupon Aesthetic as a mingling of several faculties, as a play ofsentiment. 

Schiller was faithful to Kant's teaching in its main lines, and hisuncertainty was largely due to this. The existence of a _third sphere_uniting form and matter was for Schiller rather an ideal conformable toreason than a _definite_ activity; it was supposititious, rather thaneffective. 

But the Romantic movement in literature, which was at that time gainingground, with its belief in a superhuman faculty called imagination, ingenius breaker of rules, found no such need for restraint. Schiller'smodest reserve was set aside, and with J. P. Richter we approach amythology of the imagination. Many of his observations are, however, just, and his distinction between productive and reproductiveimagination is excellent. How could humanity appreciate works of genius, he asks, were it without some common measure? All men who can go as faras saying "this is beautiful" before a beautiful thing, are capable ofthe latter. He then proceeds to establish to his own satisfactioncategories of the imagination, leading from simple talent to the supremeform of male genius in which all faculties flourish together: a facultyof faculties. 

The Romantic conception of art is, in substance, that of idealist Germanphilosophy, where we find it in a more coherent and systematic form. Itis the conception of Schelling, Solger, and Hegel. 

Fichte, Kant's first great pupil, cannot be included with these, for hisview of Aesthetic, largely influenced by Schiller, is transformed in theFichtian system to a moral activity, to a representation of the ethicalideal. The subjective idealism of Fichte, however, generated anAesthetic: that of irony as the base of art. The I that has created theuniverse can also destroy it. The universe is a vain appearance, smiledat by the Ego its creator, who surveys it as an artist his work, fromwithout and from above. For Friedrich Schlegel, art was a perpetualfarce, a parody of itself; and Tieck defined irony as a force whichallows the poet to dominate his material. 

Novalis, that Romantic Fichtian, dreamed of a magical idealism, an artof creating by an instantaneous act of the Ego. But Schelling's "systemof transcendental idealism" was the first great philosophicalaffirmation of Romanticism and of conscious Neo-platonism reborn inAesthetic. 

Schelling has obviously studied Schiller, but he brings to the problem amind more purely philosophical and a method more exactly scientific. Heeven takes Kant to task for faultiness of method. His remarks as toPlato's position are curious, if not conclusive. He says that Platocondemned the art of his time, because it was realistic andnaturalistic: like all antique art, it exhibited a _finite_ character. Plato's judgment would have been quite different had he known Christianart, of which the character is _infinity_. 

Schelling held firm to the fusion of art and beauty effected bySchiller, but he combated Winckelmann's theory of abstract beauty withits negative conception of the characteristic, assigning to art thelimits of the individual. Art is characteristic beauty; it is not theindividual, but the living conception of the individual. When the artistrecognizes the eternal idea in an individual, and expresses itoutwardly, he transforms the individual into a world apart, into aspecies, into an eternal idea. Characteristic beauty is the fulness ofform which slays form: it does not silence passion, but restrains it asthe banks of a river the waters that flow between them, but do notoverflow. 

Schelling's starting-point is the criticism of teleological judgment, asstated by Kant in his third Critique. Teleology is the union oftheoretic with practical philosophy. But the system would not becomplete, unless we could show the identity of the two worlds, theoreticand practical, in the subject itself. He must demonstrate the existenceof an activity, which is at once unconscious as nature and conscious asspirit. This activity we find in Aesthetic, which is therefore "thegeneral organ of philosophy, the keystone of the whole building. "

Poetry and philosophy alone possess the world of the ideal, in which thereal world vanishes. True art is not the impression of the moment, butthe representation of infinite life: it is transcendental intuitionobjectified. The time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, which was its source, and on the new philosophy will arise a newmythology. Philosophy does not depict real things, but their ideas; sotoo, art. Those same ideas, of which real things are, as philosophyshows, the imperfect copies, reappear in art objectified as ideas, andtherefore in their perfection. Art stands nearest to philosophy, whichitself stands nearest to the Idea, and therefore nearest to perfection. Art differs from philosophy only by its _specialization_: in all otherways it is the ideal world in its most complete expression. The threeIdeas of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty correspond to the three powers ofthe ideal and of the real world. Beauty is not the universal whole, which is truth, nor is it the only reality, which is action: it is theperfect mingling of the two. "Beauty exists where the real or particularis so adequate to its concept that this infinite thing enters into thefinite, and is contemplated in the concrete. " Philosophy unites truth, morality, and beauty, in what they possess in common, and deduces themfrom their unique Source, which is God. If philosophy assume thecharacter of science and of truth, although it be superior to truth, thereason for this lies in the fact that science and truth are simply theformal determination of philosophy. 

Schelling looked upon mythology as a necessity for every art. Ideas areGods, considered from the point of view of reality; for the essence ofeach is equal to God in a _particular_ form. The characteristics of allGods, including the Christian, are _pure limitation and absoluteindivisibility_. Minerva has wisdom and strength, but lacks womanlytenderness; Juno has power and wisdom, but is without amorous charm, which she borrows with the girdle of Venus, who in her turn is withoutthe wisdom of Minerva. What would these Gods become without theirlimitations? They would cease to be the objects of Fancy. Fancy is afaculty, apart from the pure intellect and from the reason. Distinctfrom imagination, which develops the products of art, Fancy hasintuitions of them, grasps them herself, and herself represents them. Fancy is to imagination as intellectual intuition is to reason. Fancy, then, is intellectual intuition in art. In the thought of Schelling, fancy, the new or artistic intuition, sister of intellectual intuition, came to dominate alike the intellect and the old conception of the fancyand the imagination, in a system for which reason alone did not suffice. 

C. G. Solger followed Schelling and agreed with him in finding but littletruth in the theories of Kant, and especially of Fichte. He held thattheir dialectic had failed to solve the difficulty of intellectualintuition. He too conceived of fancy as distinct from imagination, anddivided the former into three degrees. Imagination he held to appertainto ordinary knowledge, "which re-establishes the original intuition toinfinity. " Fancy "originates from the original antithesis in the idea, and so operates that the opposing elements which are separated from theidea become perfectly united in reality. By means of fancy, we are ableto understand things more lofty than those of common knowledge, and inthem we recognize the idea itself as real. In art, fancy is the facultyof transforming the idea into reality. "

For Solger as for Schelling, beauty belongs to the region of Ideas, which are inaccessible to common knowledge. Art is nearly allied toreligion, for as religion is the abyss of the idea, into which ourconsciousness plunges, that it may become essential, so Art and theBeautiful resolve, in their way, the world of distinctions, theuniversal and the particular. Artistic activity is more thantheoretical: it is practical, realized and perfect, and thereforebelongs to practical, not to theoretic philosophy, as Kant wronglybelieved. Since art must touch infinity on one side, it cannot haveordinary nature for its object. Art therefore _ceases_ in the portrait, and this explains why the ancients generally chose Gods or Heroes asmodels for sculpture. Every deity, even in a limited and particularform, expresses a definite modification of the Idea. 

G. G. F. Hegel gives the same definition of art as Solger and Schelling, All three were mystical aestheticians, and the various shades ofmystical Aesthetic, presented by these three writers, are not of greatinterest. Schelling forced upon art the abstract Platonic ideas, whileHegel reduced it to the _concrete idea_. This concrete idea was forHegel the first and lowest of the three forms of the liberty of thespirit. It represented immediate, sensible, objectified knowledge; whileReligion filled the second place, as representative consciousness withadoration, which is an element foreign to art alone. The third place wasof course occupied by Philosophy, the free thought of the absolutespirit. Beauty and Truth are one for Hegel; they are united in the Idea. The beautiful he defined as _the sensible appearance of the Idea_. 

Some writers have erroneously believed that the views of the threephilosophers above mentioned lead back to those of Baumgarten. But thatis not correct. They well understood that art cannot be made a mediumfor the expression of philosophic concepts. Not only are they opposed tothe moralistic and intellectualistic view, but they are its activeopponents. Schelling says that aesthetic production is in its essenceabsolutely free, and Hegel that art does not contain the universal assuch. 

Hegel accentuated the _cognoscitive_ character of art, more than any ofhis predecessors. We have seen that he placed it with Philosophy andReligion in the sphere of the absolute Spirit. But he does not alloweither to Art or to Religion any difference of function from that ofPhilosophy, which occupies the highest place in his system. They aretherefore inferior, necessary, grades of the Spirit. Of what use arethey? Of none whatever, or at best, they merely represent transitory andhistorical phases of human life. 

Thus we see that the tendency of Hegelianism is _anti-artistic_, as itis rationalistic and anti-religious. 

This result of thought was a strange and a sad thing for one who lovedart so fervently as Hegel. Our memories conjure up Plato, who also lovedart well, and yet found himself logically obliged to banish the poetfrom his ideal Republic, after crowning him with roses. But the Germanphilosopher was as staunch to the (supposed) command of reason as theGreek, and felt himself obliged to announce the death of art. Art, hesays, occupies a lofty place in the human spirit, but not the mostlofty, for it is limited to a restricted content and only a certaingrade of truth can be expressed in art. Such are the Hellenic Gods, whocan be transfused in the sensible and appear in it adequately. TheChristian conception of truth is among those which cannot be soexpressed. The spirit of the modern world, and more precisely the spiritof our religion and rational development, seem to have gone beyond thepoint at which art is the chief way of apprehending the Absolute. Thepeculiarity of artistic production no longer satisfies our highestneeds. Thought and reflexion have surpassed art, the beautiful. He goeson to say that the reason generally given for this is the prevalence ofmaterial and political interests. But the true reason is the inferiorityin degree of art as compared with pure thought. Art is dead, andPhilosophy can therefore supply its complete biography. 

Hegel's _Vorlesungen Über Aesthetik_ amounts therefore to a funeraloration upon Art. 

Romanticism and metaphysical idealism had placed art, sometimes abovethe clouds, sometimes within them, and believing that it was no goodthere to anyone, Hegel provided a decent burial. 

Nothing perhaps better shows how well this fantastic conception of artsuited the spirit of the time, than the fact that even the adversariesof Schelling, Solger, and Hegel either admit agreement with thatconception, or find themselves involuntarily in agreement with it, whilebelieving themselves to be very remote. They too are mysticalaestheticians. 

We all know with what virulence Arthur Schopenhauer attacked andcombated Schelling, Hegel, and all the "charlatans" and "professors" whohad divided among them the inheritance of Kant. 

Well, Schopenhauer's theory of art starts, just like Hegel's, from thedifference between the abstract and the concrete concept, which is the_Idea_. Schopenhauer's ideas are the Platonic ideas, although in theform which he gives to them, they have a nearer resemblance to the Ideasof Schelling than to the Idea of Hegel. 

Schopenhauer takes much trouble to differentiate his ideas fromintellectual concepts. He calls the idea "unity which has becomeplurality by means of space and time. It is the form of our intuitiveapperception. The concept is, on the contrary, unity extracted fromplurality by means of abstraction, which is an act of our intellect. Theconcept may be called _unitas post rem_, the idea _unitas ante rem_. "

The origin of this psychological illusion of the ideas or types ofthings is always to be found in the changing of the empiricalclassifications created for their own purposes by the natural sciences, into living realities. 

Thus each art has for its sphere a special category of ideas. Architecture and its derivatives, gardening (and strange to saylandscape-painting is included with it), sculpture and animal-painting, historical painting and the higher forms of sculpture, etc. , all possesstheir special ideas. Poetry's chief object is man as idea. Music, on thecontrary, does not belong to the hierarchy of the other arts. Schellinghad looked upon music as expressing the rhythm of the universe itself. For Schopenhauer, music does not express ideas, but the _Will itself_. 

The analogies between music and the world, between fundamental notes andcrude matter, between the scale and the scale of species, between melodyand conscious will, lead Schopenhauer to the conclusion that music isnot only an arithmetic, as it appeared to Leibnitz, but indeed ametaphysic: "the occult metaphysical exercise of a soul not knowing thatit philosophizes. "

For Schopenhauer, as for his idealist predecessors, art is beatific. Itis the flower of life; he who is plunged in artistic contemplationceases to be an individual; he is the conscious subject, pure, freedfrom will, from pain, and from time. 

Yet in Schopenhauer's system exist elements for a better and a moreprofound treatment of the problem of art. He could sometimes showhimself to be a lucid and acute analyst. For instance, he continuallyremarks that the categories of space and time are not applicable to art, _but only the general form of representation_. He might have deducedfrom this that art is the most immediate, not the most lofty grade ofconsciousness, since it precedes even the ordinary perceptions of spaceand time. Vico had already observed that this freeing oneself fromordinary perception, this dwelling in imagination, does not really meanan ascent to the level of the Platonic Ideas, but, on the contrary, aredescending to the sphere of immediate intuition, a return tochildhood. 

On the other hand, Schopenhauer had begun to submit the Kantiancategories to impartial criticism, and finding the two forms ofintuition insufficient, added a third, causality. 

He also drew comparisons between art and history, and was moresuccessful here than the idealist excogitators of a philosophy ofhistory. Schopenhauer rightly saw that history was irreducible toconcepts, that it is the contemplation of the individual, and thereforenot a science. Having proceeded thus far, he might have gone further, and realized that the material of history is always the particular inits particularity, that of art what is and always is identical. But hepreferred to execute a variation on the general motive that was infashion at this time. 

The fashion of the day! It rules in philosophy as elsewhere, and we arenow about to see the most rigid and arid of analysts, the leader of theso-called _realist_ school, or school of _exact science_ in Germany inthe nineteenth century, plunge headlong into aesthetic mysticism. 

G. F. Herbart (1813) begins his Aesthetic by freeing it from thediscredit attaching to Metaphysic and to Psychology. He declares thatthe only true way of understanding art is to study particular examplesof the beautiful and to note what they reveal as to its essence. 

We shall now see what came of Herbart's analysis of these examples ofbeauty, and how far he succeeded in remaining free of Metaphysic. 

For Herbart, beauty consists of _relations_. The science of Aestheticconsists of an enumeration of all the fundamental relations betweencolours, lines, tones, thoughts, and will. But for him these relationsare not empirical or physiological. They cannot therefore be studied ina laboratory, because thought and the will form part of them, and thesebelong as much to Ethics as to the external world. But Herbartexplicitly states that no true beauty is sensible, although sensationmay and does often precede and follow the intuition of beauty. There isa profound distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable orpleasant: the latter does not require a representation, while the formerconsists in representations of relations, which are immediately followedby a judgment expressing unconditioned approval. Thus the merelypleasurable becomes more and more indifferent, but the beautiful appearsalways as of more and more permanent value. The judgment of taste isuniversal, eternal, immutable. The complete representation of the samerelations always carries with it the same judgment. For Herbart, aesthetic judgments are the general class containing the sub-class ofethical judgments. The five ethical ideas, of internal liberty, ofperfection, of benevolence, of equity, and of justice, are fiveaesthetic ideas; or better, they are aesthetic concepts applied to thewill in its relations. 

Herbart looked upon art as a complex fact, composed of an externalelement possessing logical or psychological value, the content, and of atrue aesthetic element, which is the form. Entertainment, instruction, and pleasure of all sorts are mingled with the beautiful, in order toobtain favour for the work in question. The aesthetic judgment, calm andserene in itself, may be accompanied by all sorts of psychic emotions, foreign to it. But the content is always transitory, relative, subjectto moral laws, and judged by them. The form alone is perennial, absolute, and free. The true catharsis can only be effected byseparating the form from the content. Concrete art may be the sum of twovalues, _but the aesthetic fact is form alone_. 

For those capable of penetrating beneath appearances, the aestheticdoctrines of Herbart and of Kant will appear very similar. Herbart isnotable as insisting, in the manner of Kant, on the distinction betweenfree and adherent beauty (or adornment as sensuous stimulant), on theexistence of pure beauty, object of necessary and universal judgments, and on a certain mingling of ethical with his aesthetic theory. Herbart, indeed, called himself "a Kantian, but of the year 1828. " Kant'saesthetic theory, though it be full of errors, yet is rich in fruitfulsuggestions. Kant belongs to a period when philosophy is still young andpliant. Herbart came later, and is dry and one-sided. The romantics andthe metaphysical idealists had unified the theory of the beautiful andof art. Herbart restored the old duality and mechanism, and gave us anabsurd, unfruitful form of mysticism, void of all artistic inspiration. 

Herbart may be said to have taken all there was of false in the thoughtof Kant and to have made it into a system. 

The beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany is notable for thegreat number of philosophical theories and of counter-theories, broachedand rapidly discussed, before being discarded. None of the mostprominent names in the period belong to philosophers of first-rateimportance, though they made so much stir in their day. 

The thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher was obscured and misunderstoodamid those crowding mediocrities; yet it is perhaps the most interestingand the most noteworthy of the period. 

Schleiermacher looked upon Aesthetic as an altogether modern form ofthought. He perceived a profound difference between the "Poetics" ofAristotle, not yet freed from empirical precepts, and the tentative ofBaumgarten in the eighteenth century. He praised Kant as having been thefirst to include Aesthetic among the philosophical disciplines. Headmitted that with Hegel it had attained to the highest pinnacle, beingconnected with religion and with philosophy, and almost placed upontheir level. 

But he was dissatisfied with the absurdity of the attempt made by thefollowers of Baumgarten to construct a science or theory of sensuouspleasure. He disapproved of Kant's view of taste as being the principleof Aesthetic, of Fichte's art as moral teaching, and of the vagueconception of the beautiful as the centre of Aesthetic. 

He approved of Schiller's marking of the moment of spontaneity inproductive art, and he praised Schelling for having drawn attention tothe figurative arts, as being less liable than poetry to be diverted tofalse and illusory moralistic ends. Before he begins the study of theplace due to the artistic activity in Ethic, he carefully excludes fromthe study of Aesthetic all practical rules (which, being empirical, areincapable of scientific demonstration). 

For Schleiermacher, the sphere of Ethic included the whole Philosophy ofthe Spirit, in addition to morality. These are the two forms of humanactivity--that which, like Logic, is the same in all men, and is calledactivity of identity, and the activity of difference or individuality. There are activities which, like art, are internal or immanent andindividual, and others which are external or practical. _The true workof art is the internal picture_. Measure is what differentiates theartist's portrayal of anger on the stage and the anger of a really angryman. Truth is not sought in poetry, or if it be sought there, it istruth of an altogether different kind. The truth of poetry lies incoherent presentation. Likeness to a model does not compose the merit ofa picture. Not the smallest amount of knowledge comes from art, whichexpresses only the truth of a particular consciousness. Art has for itsfield the immediate consciousness of self, which must be carefullydistinguished from the thought of the Ego. This last is theconsciousness of identity in the diversity of moments as they pass; theimmediate consciousness of self is the diversity itself of the moments, of which we should be aware, for life is nothing but the development ofconsciousness. In this field, art has sometimes been confused with twofacts which accompany it there: these are sentient consciousness (thatis, the feelings of pleasure and of pain) and religion. Schleiermacherhere alludes to the sensualistic aestheticians of the eighteenthcentury, and to Hegel, who had almost identified art and religion. Herefutes both points of view by pointing out that sentient pleasure andreligious sentiment, however different they may be from other points ofview, are yet both determined by an objective fact; while art, on thecontrary, is free productivity. 

Dream is the best parallel and proof of this free productivity. All theessential elements of art are found in dream, which is the result offree thoughts and of sensible intuitions, consisting simply of images. But dream, as compared with art, is chaotic: when measure and order isestablished in dream, it becomes art. Thoughts and images are alikeessential to art, and to both is necessary ponderation, reflexion, measure, and unity, because otherwise every image would be confused withevery other image. Thus the moments of inspiration and of ponderationare both necessary to art. 

Schleiermacher's thought, so firm and lucid up to this point, begins tobecome less secure, with the discussion of typicity and of the extent towhich the artist should follow Nature. He says that ideal figures, whichNature would give, were she not impeded by external obstacles, are theproducts of art. He notes that when the artist represents somethingreally given, such as a portrait or a landscape, he renounces freedom ofproduction and adheres to the real. In the artist is a double tendency, toward the perfection of the type and toward the representation ofnatural reality. He should not fall into the abstraction of the type, nor into the insignificance of empirical reality. Schleiermacher feelsall the difficulty of such a problem as whether there be one or severalideals of the human figure. This problem may be transferred to thesphere of art, and we may ask whether the poet is to represent only theideal, or whether he should also deal with those obstacles to it thatimpede Nature in her efforts to attain. Both views contain half thetruth. To art belongs the representation of the ideal as of the real, ofthe subjective and of the objective alike. The representation of thecomic, that is of the anti-ideal and of the imperfect ideal, belongs tothe domain of art. For the human form, both morally and physically, oscillates between the ideal and caricature. 

He arrives at a most important definition as to the independence of artin respect to morality. The nature of art, as of philosophicspeculation, excludes moral and practical effects. Therefore, _there isno other difference between works of art than their respective artisticperfection (Vollkommenheit in der Kunst)_. If we could correctlypredicate volitional acts in respect of works of art, then we shouldfind ourselves admiring only those works which stimulated the will, andthere would thus be established a difference of valuation, independentof artistic perfection. The true work of art depends upon the degree ofperfection with which the external in it agrees with the internal. 

Schleiermacher rightly combats Schiller's view that art is in any sensea game. That, he says, is the view held by mere men of business, to whombusiness alone is serious. But artistic activity is universal, and a mancompletely deprived of it unthinkable, although the difference herebetween man and man, is gigantic, ranging from the simple desire totaste of art to the effective tasting of it, and from this, by infinitegradations, to productive genius. 

The regrettable fact that Schleiermacher's thought has reached us onlyin an imperfect form, may account for certain of its defects, such ashis failure to eliminate aesthetic classes and types, his retention of acertain residue of abstract formalism, his definition of art as theactivity of difference. Had he better defined the moment of artisticreproduction, realized the possibility of tasting the art of varioustimes and of other nations, and examined the true relation of art toscience, he would have seen that this difference is merely empirical andto be surmounted. He failed also to recognize the identity of theaesthetic activity, with language as the base of all other theoreticactivity. 

But Schleiermacher's merits far outweigh these defects. He removed fromAesthetic its _imperativistic_ character; he distinguished _a form ofthought_ different from logical thought. He attributed to our science a_non-metaphysical, anthropological_ character. He _denied_ the conceptof the beautiful, substituting for it _artistic perfection_, andmaintaining the aesthetic equality of a small with a great work of art, he looked upon the aesthetic fact as an exclusively _humanproductivity_. 

Thus Schleiermacher, the theologian, in this period of metaphysicalorgy, of rapidly constructed and as rapidly destroyed systems, perceived, with the greatest philosophical acumen, what is reallycharacteristic of art, and distinguished its properties and relations. Even where he fails to see clearly his way, he never abandons analysisfor mere guess-work. 

Schleiermacher, thus exploring the obscure region of the _immediateconsciousness_, or of the aesthetic fact, can almost be heard crying outto his straying contemporaries: _Hic Rhodus, hi salta_!

Speculation upon the origin and nature of language was rife at this timein Germany. Many theories were put forward, among the most curious beingthat of Schelling, who held language and mythology to be the product ofa pre-human consciousness, allegorically expressed as the diabolicsuggestions which had precipitated the Ego from the infinite to thefinite. 

Even Wilhelm von Humboldt was unable to free himself altogether from theintellectualistic prejudice of the substantial identity and the merelyhistorical and accidental diversity of logical thought and language. Hespeaks of a _perfect_ language, broken up and diminished with the lessercapacities of lesser peoples. He believed that language is somethingstanding outside the individual, independent of him, and capable ofbeing revived by use. But there were two men in Humboldt, an old man anda young one. The latter was always suggesting that language should belooked upon as a living, not as a dead thing, as an activity, not as aword. This duality of thought sometimes makes his writing difficult andobscure. Although he speaks of an internal form of speech, he fails toidentify this with art as expression. The reason is that he looks uponthe word in too unilateral a manner, as a means of developing logicalthought, and his ideas of Aesthetic are too vague and too inexact toenable him to discover their identity. Despite his perception of theprofound truth that poetry precedes prose, Humboldt gives grounds fordoubt as to whether he had clearly recognized and firmly grasped thefact that language is always poetry, and that prose (science) is adistinction, not of aesthetic form, but of content, that is, of logicalform. 

Steinthal, the greatest follower of Humboldt, solved his master'scontradictions, and in 1855 sustained successfully against the HegelianBecker the thesis that words are necessary for thought. He pointed tothe deaf-mute with his signs, to the mathematician with his formulae, tothe Chinese language, where the figurative portion is an essential ofspeech, and declared that Becker was wrong in believing that theSanskrit language was derived from twelve cardinal concepts. He showedeffectively that the concept and the word, the logical judgment and theproposition, are not comparable. The proposition is not a judgment, butthe representation of a judgment; and all propositions do not representlogical judgments. Several judgments can be expressed with oneproposition. The logical divisions of judgments (the relations ofconcepts) have no correspondence in the grammatical division ofpropositions. "If we speak of a logical form of the proposition, we fallinto a contradiction in terms not less complete than his who shouldspeak of the angle of a circle, or of the periphery of a triangle. " Hewho speaks, in so far as he speaks, has not thoughts, but language. 

When Steinthal had several times solemnly proclaimed the independence oflanguage as regards Logic, and that it produces its forms in completeautonomy, he proceeded to seek the origin of language, recognizing withHumboldt that the question of Its origin is the same as that of itsnature. Language, he said, belongs to the great class of reflexmovements, but this only shows one side of it, not its true nature. Animals, like men, have reflex actions and sensations, though natureenters the animal by force, takes it by assault, conquers and enslavesit. With man is born language, because he is resistance to nature, governance of his own body, and liberty. "Language is liberation; evento-day we feel that our soul becomes lighter, and frees itself from aweight, when we speak. " Man, before he attains to speech, must beconceived of as accompanying all his sensations with bodily movements, mimetic attitudes, gestures, and particularly with articulate sounds. What is still lacking to him, that he may attain to speech? Theconnexion between the reflex movements of the body and the state of thesoul. If his sentient consciousness be already consciousness, then helacks the consciousness of consciousness; if it be already intuition, then he lacks the intuition of intuition. In sum, he lacks the _internalform of language_. With this comes speech, which forms the connexion. Man does not choose the sound of his speech. This is given to him and headopts it instinctively. 

When we have accorded to Steinthal the great merit of having renderedcoherent the ideas of Humboldt, and of having clearly separatedlinguistic from logical thought, we must note that he too failed toperceive the _identity_ of the internal form of language, or "intuitionof the intuition, " as he called it, with the aesthetic _imagination_. Herbart's psychology, to which Steinthal adhered, did not afford him anymeans for this identification. Herbart separated logic from psychology, calling it a normative science; he failed to discern the exact limitsbetween feeling and spiritual formation, psyche or soul, and spirit, andto see that one of these spiritual formations is logical thought oractivity, which is not a code of laws imposed from without. For Herbart, Aesthetic, as we know, was a code of beautiful formal relations. ThusSteinthal, following Herbart in psychology, was bound to look upon Artas a beautifying of thought, Linguistic as the science of speech, Rhetoric and Aesthetic as the science of beautiful speech. 

Steinthal never realized that to speak is to speak well or beautifully, under penalty of _not_ speaking, and that the revolution which he andHumboldt had effected in the conception of language must inevitablyreact upon and transform Poetic, Rhetoric, and Aesthetic. 

Thus, despite so many efforts of conscientious analysis on the part ofHumboldt and of Steinthal, the unity of language and of poetry, and theidentification of the science of language and the science of poetrystill found its least imperfect expression in the prophetic aphorisms ofVico. 

The philosophical movement in Germany from the last quarter of theeighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth, notwithstandingits many errors, is yet so notable and so imposing with the philosophersalready considered, as to merit the first place in the European thoughtof that period. This is even more the case as regards Aesthetic than asregards philosophy in general. 

France was the prey of Condillac's sensualism, and therefore incapableof duly appreciating the spiritual activity of art. We hardly get aglimpse of Winckelmann's transcendental spiritualism in Quatremère deQuincy, and the frigid academics of Victor Cousin were easily surpassedby Theodore Jouffroy, though he too failed of isolating the aestheticfact. French Romanticism defined literature as "the expression ofsociety, " admired under German influence the grotesque and thecharacteristic, declared the independence of art in the formula of "artfor art's sake, " but did not succeed in surpassing philosophically theold doctrine of the "imitation of nature. " F. Schlegel and Solger indeedwere largely responsible for the Romantic movement in France--Schlegelwith his belief in the characteristic or _interesting_ as the principleof modern art, which led him to admire the cruel and the ugly; Solgerwith his dialectic arrangement, whereby the finite or terrestrialelement is absorbed and annihilated in the divine and thus becomes thetragic, or _vice versa_, and the result is the comic. Rosenkranzpublished in Königsberg an Aesthetic of the Ugly, and the works ofVischer and Zeising abound in subtleties relating to the Idea and to itsexpression in the beautiful and sublime. These writers conceived of theIdea as the Knight Purebeautiful, constrained to abandon his tranquilease through the machinations of the Ugly; the Ugly leads him into allsorts of disagreeable adventures, from all of which he eventuallyemerges victorious. The Sublime, the Comic, the Humorous, and so on, arehis Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. Another version of their knight'sadventures might be described as his conquest by his enemies, but at themoment of conquest he transforms and irradiates his conquerors. To sucha mediocre and artificial mythology led the much-elaborated theory ofthe Modifications of the Beautiful. 

In England, the associationist psychology continued to hold sway, andshowed, with Dugald Stewart's miserable attempt at establishing twoforms of association, its incapacity to rise to the conception of theimagination. With the poet Coleridge, England also showed the influenceof German thought, and Coleridge elaborated with Wordsworth a morecorrect conception of poetry and of its difference from science. But themost notable contribution in English at that period came from anotherpoet, P. B. Shelley, whose _Defence of Poetry_ contains profound, thoughunsystematic views, as to the distinction between reason andimagination, prose and poetry, on primitive language, and on the poeticpower of objectification. 

In Italy, Francesco de Sanctis gave magnificent expression to theindependence of art. He taught literature in Naples from 1838 to 1848, in Turin and Zurich from 1850 to 1860, and after 1870 he was a professorin the University of Naples. His _Storia della letteratura italiana_ isa classic, and in it and in monographs on individual writers he exposedhis doctrines. 

Prompted by a natural love of speculation, he began to examine the oldgrammarians and rhetoricians, with a view to systematize them. But verysoon he proceeded to criticize and to surpass their theories. The coldrules of reason did not find favour with him, and he advised young mento go direct to the original works. 

The philosophy of Hegel began to penetrate Italy, and the study of Vicowas again taken up. De Sanctis translated the _Logic_ of Hegel inprison, where the Bourbon Government had thrown him for his liberalism. Benard had begun his translation of the _Aesthetic_ of Hegel, and socompletely in harmony was De Sanctis with the thought of this master, that he is said to have guessed from a study of the first volume whatthe unpublished volumes must contain, and to have lectured upon them tohis pupils. Traces of mystical idealism and of Hegelianism persist evenin his later works, and the distinction, which he always maintained, between imagination and fancy certainly came to him from Hegel andSchelling. He held fancy alone to be the true poetic faculty. 

De Sanctis absorbed all the juice of Hegel, but rejected the husks ofhis pedantry, of his formalism, of his apriority. 

Fancy for De Sanctis was not the mystical transcendental apperception ofthe German philosophers, but simply the faculty of poetic synthesis andcreation, opposed to the imagination, which reunites details and alwayshas something mechanical about it. Faith and poetry, he used to say, arenot dead, but transformed. His criticism of Hegel amounted in manyplaces to the correction of Hegel; and as regards Vico, he is careful topoint out, that when, in dealing with the Homeric poems, Vico talks ofgeneric types, he is no longer the critic of art, but the historian ofcivilization. De Sanctis saw that, _artistically_, Achilles must alwaysbe Achilles, never a force or an abstraction. 

Thus De Sanctis succeeded in keeping himself free from the Hegeliandomination, at a moment when Hegel was the acknowledged master ofspeculation. 

But his criticism extended also to other German aestheticians. By acurious accident, he found himself at Zurich in the company of TheodoreVischer, that ponderous Hegelian, who laughed disdainfully at themention of poetry, of music, and of the decadent Italian race. DeSanctis laughed at Vischer's laughter. Wagner appeared to him acorrupter of music, and "nothing in the world more unaesthetic than theAesthetic of Theodore Vischer. " His lectures on Ariosto and Petrarch, before an international public at Zurich, were delivered with the desireof correcting the errors of these and of other German philosophers andlearned men. He gave his celebrated definitions of French and Germancritics. The French critic does not indulge in theories: one feelswarmth of impression and sagacity of observation in his argument. Henever leaves the concrete; he divines the quality of the writer's geniusand the quality of his work, and studies the man, in order to understandthe writer. His great fault is shown in substituting for criticism ofthe actual art work a historical criticism of the author and of histime. For the German, on the other hand, there is nothing so simple thathe does not contrive to distort and to confuse it. He collects shadowsaround him, from which shoot vivid rays. He laboriously brings to birththat morsel of truth which he has within him. He would seize and definewhat is most fugitive and impalpable in a work of art. Although nobodytalks so much of life as he does, yet no one so much delights indecomposing and generalizing it. Having thus destroyed the particular, he is able to show you as the result of this process, final inappearance, but in reality preconceived and apriorist, one measurementfor all feet, one garment for all bodies. 

About this time he studied Schopenhauer, who was then becoming thefashion. Schopenhauer said of this criticism of De Sanctis: "ThatItalian has absorbed me _in succum et sanguinem_. " What weight did heattach to Schopenhauer's much-vaunted writings on art? Having exposedthe theory of Ideas, he barely refers to the third volume, "whichcontains an exaggerated theory of Aesthetic. "

In his criticism of Petrarch, De Sanctis finally broke with metaphysicalAesthetic, saying of Hegel's school that it believed the beautiful tobecome art when it surpassed form and revealed the concept or pure idea. This theory and the subtleties derived from it, far from characterizingart, represent its contrary: the impotent velleity for art, which cannotslay abstractions and come in contact with life. 

De Sanctis held that outside the domain of art all Is shapeless. Theugly is of the domain of art, if art give it form. Is there anythingmore beautiful than Iago? If he be looked upon merely as a contrast toOthello, then we are in the position of those who looked upon the starsas placed where they are to serve as candles for the earth. 

Form was for De Sanctis the word which should be inscribed over theentrance to the Temple of Art. In the work of art are form and content, but the latter is no longer chaotic: the artist has given to it a newvalue, has enriched it with the gift of his own personality. But if thecontent has not been assimilated and made his own by the artist, thenthe work lacks generative power: it is of no value as art or literature, though as history or scientific document its value may be great. TheGods of Homer's _Iliad_ are dead, but the _Iliad_ remains. Guelf andGhibelline have disappeared from Italy: not so the _Divine Comedy_, which is as vigorous to-day as when Dante first took pen in hand. ThusDe Sanctis held firmly to the independence of art, but he did not acceptthe formula of "art for art's sake, " in so far as it meant separation ofthe artist from life, mutilation of the content, art reduced to meredexterity. 

For De Sanctis, form was identical with imagination, with the artist'spower of expressing or representing his artistic vision. This much mustbe admitted by his critics. But he never attained to a clear definitionof art. His theory of Aesthetic always remained a sketch: wonderfulindeed, but not clearly developed and deduced. The reason for this wasDe Sanctis' love of the concrete. No sooner had he attained from generalideas a sufficient clarity of vision for his own purposes, than heplunged again into the concrete and particular. He did not confine hisactivity to literature, but was active also in politics and in theprosecution and encouragement of historical studies. 

As a critic of literature, De Sanctis is far superior to Sainte-Beuve, Lessing, Macaulay, or Taine. Flaubert's genial intuition adumbrated whatDe Sanctis achieved. In one of his letters to Georges Sand, Flaubertspeaks of the lack of an _artistic_ critic. "In Laharpe's time, criticism was grammatical; in the time of Sainte-Beuve and of Taine, itis historical. They analyse with great subtlety the historicalenvironment in which the work appeared and the causes which haveproduced it. But the _unconscious_ element In poetry? Whence does Itcome? And composition? And style? And the point of view of the author?Of all that they never speak. For such a critic, great imagination andgreat goodness are necessary. I mean an ever-ready faculty ofenthusiasm, and then _taste_, a quality so rare, even among the best, that it is never mentioned. "

De Sanctis alone fulfilled the conditions of Flaubert, and Italy has inhis writings a looking-glass for her literature unequalled by any othercountry. 

But with De Sanctis, the philosopher of art, the aesthetician, is not sogreat as the critic of literature. The one is accessory to the other, and his use of aesthetic terminology is so inconstant that a lack ofclearness of thought might be found in his work by anyone who had notstudied it with care. But his want of system is more than compensated byhis vitality, by his constant citation of actual works, and by hisintuition of the truth, which never abandoned him. His writings bear thefurther charm of suggesting new kingdoms to conquer, new mines ofrichness to explore. 

While the cry of "Down with Metaphysic" was resounding in Germany, and afurious reaction had set in against the sort of Walpurgisnacht to whichthe later Hegelians had reduced science and history, the pupils ofHerbart came forward and with an insinuating air they seemed to say:"What is this? Why, it is a rebellion against Metaphysic, the very thingour master wished for and tried to achieve, half a century ago! But herewe are, his heirs and successors, and we want to be your allies! Anunderstanding between us will be easy. Our Metaphysic is in agreementwith the atomic theory, our Psychology with mechanicism, our Ethic andAesthetic with hedonism. " Herbart, who died in 1841, would probably havedisdained and rejected his followers, who thus courted popularity andcheapened Metaphysic, putting a literal interpretation on his realities, his ideas and representations, and upon all his most loftyexcogitations. 

The protagonist of these neo-Herbartians was Robert Zimmermann. Heconstructed his system of Aesthetic out of Herbart, whom he perverted tohis own uses, and even employed the much-abused Hegelian dialectic inorder to introduce modifications of the beautiful into pure beauty. Thebeautiful, he said, is a model which possesses greatness, fulness, order, correction, and definite compensation. Beauty appears to us in acharacteristic form, as a copy of this model. 

Vischer, against whom was directed this work of Zimmermann, found iteasy to reply. He ridiculed Zimmermann's meaning of the symbol as theobject around which are clustered beautiful forms. "Does an artist painta fox, simply that he may depict an object of animal nature. No, no, mydear sir, far from it. This fox is a symbol, because the painter hereemploys lines and colours, in order to express something different fromlines and colours. 'You think I am a fox, ' cries the painted animal. 'You are mightily mistaken; I am, on the contrary, a portmanteau, anexhibition by the painter of red, white, grey, and yellow tints. '"Vischer also made fun of Zimmermann's enthusiasm for the aesthetic valueof the sense of touch. "What joy it must be to touch the back of thebust of Hercules in repose! To stroke the sinuous limbs of the Venus ofMilo or of the Faun of Barberini must give a pleasure to the hand equalto that of the ear as it listens to the puissant fugues of Bach or tothe suave melodies of Mozart. " Vischer defined the formal Aesthetic ofZimmermann as a queer mixture of mysticism and mathematic. 

Lotze, in common with the great majority of thinkers, was dissatisfiedwith Zimmermann, but could only oppose his formalism with a variety ofthe old mystical Aesthetic. Who, he asked, could believe that the humanform pleases only by its external proportions, regardless of the spiritwithin. Art, like beauty, should "enclose the world of values in theworld of forms. " This struggle between the Aesthetic of the content andthe Aesthetic of the form attained its greatest height in Germanybetween 1860 and 1870, with Zimmermann, Vischer, and Lotze asprotagonists. 

These writers were followed by J. Schmidt, who in 1875 ventured to saythat both Lotze and Zimmermann had failed to see that the problem ofAesthetic concerned, not the beauty or ugliness of the content or of theform as mathematical relations, but their representation; Köstlin, whoerected an immense artificial structure with the materials of hispredecessors modified; Schasler, who is interesting as having convertedthe old Vischer to his thesis of the importance of the Ugly, asintroducing modifications into the beautiful and being the principle ofmovement there. Vischer confesses that at one time he had followed theHegelian method and believed that in the essence of beauty is born adisquietude, a fermentation, a struggle: the Idea conquers, hurls theimage into the unlimited, and the Sublime is born; but the image, offended in its finitude, declares war upon the Idea, and the Comicappears. Thus the fight is finished and the Beautiful returns to itself, as the result of these struggles. But now, he says, Schasler haspersuaded him that the Ugly is the leaven which is necessary to all thespecial forms of the Beautiful. 

E. Von Hartmann is in close relation with Schasler. His Aesthetic (1890)also makes great use of the Ugly. Since he insists upon appearance as anecessary characteristic of the beautiful, he considers himselfjustified in calling his theory concrete idealism. Hartmann considershimself in opposition to the formalism of Herbart, inasmuch as heinsists upon the idea as an indispensable and determining element ofbeauty. Beauty, he says, is truth, but it is not historical truth, norscientific nor reflective truth: it is metaphysical and ideal. "Beautyis the prophet of idealistic truth in an age without faith, hatingMetaphysic, and acknowledging only realistic truth. " Aesthetic truth iswithout method and without control: it leaps at once from the subjectiveappearance to the essence of the ideal. But in compensation for this, itpossesses the fascination of conviction, which immediate intuition alonepossesses. The higher Philosophy rises, the less need has she of passingthrough the world of the senses and of science: she approaches ever morenearly to art. Thus Philosophy starts on the voyage to the ideal, likeBaedeker's traveller, "without too much baggage. " In the Beautiful isimmanent logicity, the microcosmic idea, the unconscious. By means ofthe unconscious, the process of intellectual intuition takes place init. The Beautiful is a mystery, because its root is in the Unconscious. 

No philosopher has ever made so great a use of the Ugly as Hartmann. Hedivides Beauty into grades, of which the one below is ugly as comparedwith that above it. He begins with the mathematical, superior to thesensibly agreeable, which is unconscious. Thence to formal beauty of thesecond order, the dynamically agreeable, to formal beauty of the thirdorder, the passive teleological; to this degree belong utensils, andlanguage, which in Hartmann's view is a dead thing, inspired withseeming life, only at the moment of use. Such things did the philosopherof the Unconscious dare to print in the country of a Humboldt during thelifetime of a Steinthal! He proceeds in his list of things beautiful, with formal beauty of the fourth degree, which is the active or livingteleological, with the fifth, which is that of species. Finally hereaches concrete beauty, or the individual microcosm, the highest ofall, because the individual idea is superior to the specific, and isbeauty, no longer formal, but of content. 

All these degrees of beauty are, as has been said, connected with oneanother by means of the ugly, and even in the highest degree, which hasnothing superior to it, the ugly continues its office of beneficenttitillation. The outcome of this ultimate phase is the famous theory ofthe Modifications of the Beautiful. None of these modifications canoccur without a struggle, save the sublime and the graceful, whichappear without conflict at the side of supreme beauty. Hartmann givesfour instances: the solution is either immanent, logical, transcendental, or combined. The idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, theglad, the elegiac, are instances of the immanent solution; the comic inall its forms is the logical solution; the tragic is the transcendentalsolution; the combined form is found in the humorous, the tragi-comic. When none of these solutions is possible, we have the ugly; and when anugliness of content is expressed by a formal ugliness, we have themaximum of ugliness, the true aesthetic devil. 

Hartmann is the last noteworthy representative of the Germanmetaphysical school. His works are gigantic in size and appearformidable. But if one be not afraid of giants and venture to approachnear, one finds nothing but a big Morgante, full of the most commonplaceprejudices, quite easily killed with the bite of a crab!

During this period, Aesthetic had few representatives in othercountries. The famous conference of the Academy of Moral and PoliticalSciences, held in Paris in 1857, gave to the world the "Science du Beau"of Lévèque. No one is interested in it now, but it is amusing to notethat Lévèque announced himself to be a disciple of Plato, and went on toattribute eight characteristics to the beautiful. These he discovered byclosely examining the lily! No wonder he was crowned with laurels! Heproved his wonderful theory by instancing a child playing with itsmother, a symphony of Beethoven, and the life of Socrates! One of hiscolleagues, who could not resist making fun of his learned friend, remarked that he would be glad to know what part was played in the lifeof a philosopher by the normal vivacity of colour!

Thus German theory made no way in France, and England proved even morerefractory. 

J. Ruskin showed a poverty, an incoherence, and a lack of system inrespect to Aesthetic, which puts him almost out of court. His was thevery reverse of the philosophic temperament. His pages of brilliantprose contain his own dreams and caprices. They are the work of anartist and should be enjoyed as such, being without any value forphilosophy. His theoretic faculty of the beautiful, which he held to bedistinct alike from the intelligence and from feeling, is connected withhis belief in beauty as a revelation of the divine intentions, "the sealwhich God sets upon his works. " Thus the natural beauty, which isperceived by the pure heart, when contemplating some object untouched bythe hand of man, is far superior to the work of the artist. Ruskin wastoo little capable of analysis to understand the complicatedpsychologico-aesthetic process taking place within him, as hecontemplated some streamlet, or the nest of some small bird. 

At Naples flourished between 1861 and 1884 Antonio Tari, who kepthimself in touch with the movement of German thought, and followed theGerman idealists in placing Aesthetic in a sort of middle kingdom, atemperate zone, between the glacial, inhabited by the Esquimaux ofthought, and the torrid, dwelt in by the giants of action. He dethronedthe Beautiful, and put Aesthetic in its place, for the Beautiful is butthe first moment; the later ones are the Comic, the Humorous, and theDramatic. His fertile imagination found metaphors and similes ineverything: for instance, he called the goat the Devil, opposed to thelamb, Jesus. His remarks on men and women are full of quaint fancies. Hegranted to women grace, but not beauty, which resides in equilibrium. This is proved by her falling down so easily when she walks; by her bowlegs, which have to support her wide hips, made for gestation; by hernarrow shoulders, and her opulent breast. She is therefore a creaturealtogether devoid of equilibrium!

I wish that it were possible to record more of the sayings of theexcellent Tari, "the last joyous priest of an arbitrary Aesthetic, source of confusion. "

The ground lost to the German school of metaphysicians was occupiedduring the second half of the nineteenth century by the evolutionary andpositivist metaphysicians, of whom Herbert Spencer is the most notablerepresentative. The peculiarity of this school lies in repeating atsecond or third hand certain idealist views, deprived of the element ofpure philosophy, given to them by a Schelling or a Hegel, and insubstituting a quantity of minute facts and anecdotes, with a view toproviding the positivist varnish. These theories are dear to vulgarminds, because they correspond to inveterate religious beliefs, and thelustre of the varnish explains the good fortune of Spencerian positivismin our time. Another notable trait of this school is its barbariccontempt for history, especially for the history of philosophy, and itsconsequent lack of all link with the series composed of the secularefforts of so many thinkers. Without this link, there can be no fruitfullabour and no possibility of progress. 

Spencer is colossal in his ignorance of all that has been written orthought on the subject of Aesthetic (to limit ourselves to this branchalone). He actually begins his work on the Philosophy of Style withthese words: "No one, I believe, has ever produced a complete theory ofthe art of writing. " This in 1852! He begins his chapter on aestheticfeelings in the _Principles of Psychology_ by admitting that he hasheard of the observation made by a German author, whose name he forgets(Schiller!), on the connexion between art and play. Had Spencer'sremarks on Aesthetic been written in the eighteenth century, they mighthave occupied a humble place among the first rude attempts at aestheticspeculation, but appearing in the nineteenth century, they are withoutvalue, as the little of value they contain had been long said by others. 

In his _Principles of Psychology_ Spencer looks upon aesthetic feelingsas arising from the discharge of the exuberant energy of the organism. This he divides into degrees, and believes that we attain completeenjoyment when these degrees are all working satisfactorily each on itsown plane, and when what is painful in excessive activity has beenavoided. His degrees are sensation, sensation accompanied byrepresentative elements, perception accompanied by more complex elementsof representation, then emotion, and that state of consciousness whichsurpasses sensations and perceptions. But Spencer has no suspicion ofwhat art really is. His views oscillate between sensualism and moralism, and he sees little in the whole art of antiquity, of the Middle Ages, orof modern times, which can be looked upon as otherwise than imperfect!

The Physiology of Aesthetics has also had its votaries in Great Britain, among whom may be mentioned J. Sully, A. Bain, and Allen. These at anyrate show some knowledge of the concrete fact of art. Allen harks backto the old distinction between necessary and vital activities andsuperfluous activities, and gives a physiological definition, which maybe read in his _Physiological Aesthetics_. More recent writers also lookupon the physiological fact as the cause of the pleasure of art; but forthem it does not alone depend upon the visual organ, and the muscularphenomena associated with it, but also on the participation of some ofthe most important bodily functions, such as respiration, circulation, equilibrium, intimate muscular accommodation. They believe that art owesits origin to the pleasure that some prehistoric man must haveexperienced in breathing regularly, without having to re-adapt hisorgans, when he traced for the first time on a bone or on clay regularlines separated by regular intervals. 

A similar order of physico-aesthetic researches has been made inGermany, under the auspices of Helmholtz, Brücke, and Stumpf. But thesewriters have succeeded better than the above-mentioned, by restrictingthemselves to the fields of optic and acoustic, and have suppliedinformation as to the physical processes of artistic technique and as tothe pleasure of visual and auditive impressions, without attempting tomelt Aesthetic into Physic, or to deprive the former of its spiritualcharacter. They have even occasionally indicated the difference betweenthe two kinds of research. Even the degenerate Herbartians, convertingthe metaphysical forms of their master into physiological phenomena, made soft eyes at the new sensualists and aesthetico-physiologists. 

The Natural Sciences have become in our day a sort of superstition, allied to a certain, perhaps unconscious, hypocrisy. Not only havechemical, physical, and physiological laboratories become a sort ofSibylline grots, where resound the most extraordinary questions abouteverything that can interest the spirit of man, but even those whoreally do prosecute their researches with the old inevitable method ofinternal observation, have been unable to free themselves from theillusion that they are, on the contrary, employing _the method of thenatural sciences_. 

Hippolyte Taine's Philosophy of Art represents such an illusion. Hedeclares that when we have studied the diverse manifestations of art inall peoples and at all epochs, we shall then possess a completeAesthetic. Such an Aesthetic would be a sort of Botany applied to theworks of man. This mode of study would provide moral science with abasis equally as sure as that which the natural sciences alreadypossess. Taine then proceeds to define art without regard to the naturalsciences, by analysing, like a simple mortal, what passes in the humansoul when brought face to face with a work of art. But what analysis andwhat definitions!

Art, he says, is imitation, but of a sort that tries to express anessential characteristic. Thus the principal characteristic of a lion isto be "a great carnivore, " and we observe this characteristic in all itslimbs. Holland has for essential characteristic that of being a landformed of alluvial soil. 

Now without staying to consider these two remarkable instances, let usask, what is this essential characteristic of Taine? It is the same asthe ideas, types, or concepts that the old aesthetic teaching assignedto art as its object. Taine himself removes all doubt as to this, bysaying that this characteristic is what philosophers call the essence ofthings, and for that reason they declare that the purpose of art is tomanifest things. He declares that he will not employ the word essence, which is technical. But he accepts and employs the thought that the wordexpresses. He believes that there are two routes by which man can attainto the superior life: science and art. By the first, he apprehendsfundamental laws and causes, and expresses them in abstract terms; bythe second, he expresses these same laws and causes in a mannercomprehensible to all, by appealing to the heart and feeling, as well asto the reason of man. Art is both superior and popular; it makesmanifest what is highest, and makes it manifest to all. 

That Taine here falls into the old pedagogic theory of Aesthetic isevident. Works of art are arranged for him in a scale of values, as forthe aesthetic metaphysicians. He began by declaring the absurdity of alljudgment of taste, "à chacun son goût, " but he ends by declaring thatpersonal taste is without value, that we must establish a common measurebefore proceeding to praise or blame. His scale of values is double ortriple. We must first fix the degree of importance of thecharacteristic, that is, the greater or less generality of the idea, andthe degree of good in it, that is to say, its greater or lesser moralvalue. These, he says, are two degrees of the same thing, strength, seenfrom different sides. We must also establish the degree of convergenceof the effects, that is, the fulness of expression, the harmony betweenthe idea and the form. 

This half-moral, half-metaphysical exposition is accompanied with theusual protestations, that the matter in hand is to be studiedmethodically, analytically, as the naturalist would study it, that hewill try to reach "a law, not a hymn. " As if these protestations couldabolish the true nature of his thought! Taine actually went so far as toattempt dialectic solutions of works of art! "In the primitive period ofItalian art, we find the soul without the body: Giotto. At theRenaissance, with Verrocchio and his school, we find the body withoutthe soul. With Raphael, in the sixteenth century, we find expression andanatomy in harmony: body and soul. " Thesis, antithesis, synthesis!

With G. T. Fechner we find the like protestations and the likeprocedure. He will study Aesthetic inductively, from beneath. He seeksclarity, not loftiness. Proceeding thus inductively, he discovers a longseries of laws or principles of Aesthetic, such as unity in variety, association and contrast, change and persistence, the golden mean, etc. He exhibits this chaos with delight at showing himself so much of aphysiologist, and so inconclusive. Then he proceeds to describe hisexperiments in Aesthetics. These consist of attempts to decide, forinstance, by methods of choice, which of certain rectangles of cardboardis the most agreeable, and which the most disagreeable, to a largenumber of people arbitrarily chosen. Naturally, these results do notagree with others obtained on other occasions, but Fechner knows thaterrors correct themselves, and triumphantly publishes long lists ofthese valuable experiments. He also communicates to us the shapes andmeasurements of a large number of pictures in museums, as compared withtheir respective subjects! Such are the experiments of physiologicalaestheticians. 

But Fechner, when he comes to define what beauty and what art reallyare, is, like everyone else, obliged to fall back upon introspection. But his definition is trivial, and his comparison of his three degreesof beauty to a family is simply grotesque in its _naïveté_. He termsthis theory the eudemonistic theory, and we are left wondering why, whenhe had this theory all cut and dried in his mind, he should all the samegive himself the immense trouble of compiling his tables and ofenumerating his laws and principles, which do not agree with his theory. Perhaps it was all a pastime for him, like playing at patience, orcollecting postage-stamps?

Another example of superstition in respect to the natural sciencesis afforded by Ernest Grosse. Grosse abounds in contempt for whathe calls speculative Aesthetic. Yet he desires a Science of Art(Kunstwissenschaft), which shall formulate its laws from thosehistorical facts which have hitherto been collected. 

But Grosse wishes us to complete the collection of historical evidencewith ethnographical and prehistoric materials, for we cannot obtainreally general laws of art from the exclusive study of cultivatedpeoples, "just as a theory of reproduction exclusively based upon theform it takes with mammifers, must necessarily be imperfect!"

He is, however, aware that the results of experiences among savages andprehistoric races do not alone suffice to furnish us with an equipmentfor such investigations as that concerning the nature of Art, and, likeany ordinary mortal, he feels obliged to interrogate, before starting, the spirit of man. He therefore proceeds to define Aesthetic onapriorist principles, which, he remarks, can be discarded when we shallhave obtained the complete theory, in like manner with the scaffoldingthat has served for the erection of a house. 

Words! Words! Vain words! He proceeds to define Aesthetic as theactivity which in its development and result has the immediate value offeeling, and is, therefore, an end in itself. Art is the opposite ofpractice; the activity of games stands intermediate between the two, having also its end in its own activity. 

The Aesthetics of Taine and of Grosse have been called sociological. Seeing that any true definition of sociology as a science is impossible, for it is composed of psychological elements, which are for evervarying, we do not delay to criticize the futile attempts at definition, but pass at once to the objective results attained by the sociologists. This superstition, like the naturalistic, takes various forms inpractical life. We have, for instance, Proudhon (1875), who would harkback to Platonic Aesthetic, class the aesthetic activity among themerely sensual, and command the arts to further the cause of virtue, onpain of judicial proceedings in case of contumacy. 

But M. Guyau is the most important of sociological aestheticians. Hisworks, published in Paris toward the end of last century, and hisposthumous work, entitled _Les problèmes de l'Esthétique contemporaine_, substitute for the theory of play, that of _life_, and the posthumouswork above-mentioned makes it evident that by life he means social life. Art is the development of social sympathy, but the whole of art does notenter into sociology. Art has two objects; the production of agreeablesensations (colours, sounds, etc. ) and of phenomena of psychologicalinduction, which include ideas and feelings of a more complex naturethan the foregoing, such as sympathy for the personages represented, interest, piety, indignation, etc. Thus art becomes the expression oflife. Hence arise two tendencies: one for harmony, consonance, for allthat delights the ear and eye; the other transforming life, under thedominion of art. True genius is destined to balance these twotendencies; but the decadent and the unbalanced deprive art of itssympathetic end, setting aesthetic sympathy against human sympathy. Ifwe translate this language into that with which we are by this timequite familiar, we shall see that Guyau admits an art that is merelyhedonistic, and places above it another art, also hedonistic, butserving the ends of morality. 

M. Nordau wages war against the decadent and unbalanced, in much thesame manner as Guyau. He assigns to art the function of re-establishingthe integrity of life, so much broken up and specialized in ourindustrial civilization. He remarks that there is such a thing as artfor art's sake, the simple expression of the internal states of theindividual, but it is the art of the cave-dweller. 

C. Lombroso's theory of genius as degeneration may be grouped with thenaturalistic theories. His argument is in essence the following. Greatmental efforts, and total absorption in one dominant thought, oftenproduce physiological disorders or atrophy of important vital functions. Now these disorders often lead to madness; therefore, genius may beidentified with madness. This proof, from the particular to the general, does not follow that of traditional Logic. But with Lombroso, Büchner, Nordau, and the like we have come to the boundary between specious andvulgar error. They confuse scientific analysis with historical research. Such inquiries may have value for history, but they have none forAesthetic. Thus, too, A. Lang maintains that the doctrine of the originof art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty is notconfirmed in what we know of primitive art, which is rather decorativethan expressive. But primitive art, which is a given fact to beinterpreted, cannot ever become its own criterion of interpretation. 

The naturalistic misunderstanding has had a bad effect on linguisticresearches, which have not been carried out on the lofty plane to whichHumboldt and Steinthal had brought them. 

Max Müller is popular and exaggerated. He fails clearly to distinguishthought from logical thought, although in one place he remarks that theformation of names has a more intimate connexion with wit than withjudgment. He holds that the science of language is not historical, butnatural, because language is not the invention of man, altogetherignoring the science of the spirit, philosophy, of which language is apart. For Max Müller, the natural sciences were the only sciences. Theconsciousness of the science of the spirit becomes ever more obscured, and we find the philologist W. D. Whitney combating Max Müller's"miracles" and maintaining the separability of thought and speech. 

With Hermann Paul (1880) we have an awakening of Humboldt's spirit. Paulmaintains that the origin of language is the speech of the individualman, and that a language has its origin every time it is spoken. Paulalso showed the fallacies contained in the _Völkerpsychologie_ ofSteinthal and Lazarus, demonstrating that there is no such thing as acollective soul, and that there is no language save that of theindividual. 

W. Wundt (1886), on the other hand, commits the error of connectinglanguage with Ethnopsychology and other non-existent sciences, andactually terms the glorious doctrine of Herder and of Humboldt_Wundertheorie_, or theory of miracle, accusing them of mysticalobscurity. Wundt confuses the question of the historical appearance oflanguage with that of its internal nature and genesis. He looks upon thetheory of evolution as having attained to its complete triumph, in itsapplication to organic nature in general, and especially to man. He hasno suspicion whatever of the function of fancy, and of the true relationbetween thought and expression, between expression in the naturalistic, and expression in the spiritual and linguistic sense. He looks uponspeech as a specially developed form of psycho-physical vitalmanifestations, of expressive animal movements. Language is developedcontinuously from such facts, and thus is explained how, "beyond thegeneral concept of expressive movement, there is no specific qualitywhich delimits language in a non-arbitrary manner. "

Thus the philosophy of Wundt reveals its weak side, showing itselfincapable of understanding the spiritual nature of language and of art. In the _Ethic_ of the same author, aesthetic facts are presented as amixture of logical and ethical elements, a special normative aestheticscience is denied, and Aesthetic is merged in Logic and Ethic. 

The neo-critical and neo-Kantian movement in thought was not able tomaintain the concept of the spirit against the hedonistic, moralistic, and psychological views of Aesthetic, in vogue from about the middle oflast century. Neo-criticism inherited from Kant his view as to theslight importance of the creative imagination, and appears indeed to havebeen ignorant of any form of knowledge, other than the intellective. 

Kirchmann (1868) was one of the early adherents to psychologicalAesthetic, defining the beautiful as the idealized image of pleasure, the ugly as that of pain. For him the aesthetic fact is the idealizedimage of the real. Failing to apprehend the true nature of the aestheticfact, Kirchmann invented a new psychological category of ideal orapparent feelings, which he thought were attenuated images from thoseof real life. 

The aged Theodore Fischer describes Aesthetic in his auto-criticism asthe union of mimetic and harmony, and the beautiful as the harmony ofthe universe, which is never realized in fact, because it is infinite. When we think to grasp the beautiful, we experience that exquisiteillusion, which is the aesthetic fact. Robert Fischer, son of theforegoing, introduced the word _Einfühlung_, to express the vitalitywhich he believed that man inspired into things with the help of theaesthetic process. 

E. Siebeck and M. Diez, the former writing in 1875, the latter in 1892, unite a certain amount of idealistic influence, derived from Kant andHerbart, with the merely empirical and psychological views that have oflate been the fashion. Diez, for instance, would explain the artisticfunction as the ideal of feeling, placing it parallel to science; theideal of thought, morality; the ideal of will and religion, the ideal ofthe personality. But this ideal of feeling escapes definition, and wesee that these writers have not had the courage of their ideas: theyhave not dared to push their thought to its logical conclusion. 

The merely psychological and associationist view finds in Theodore Lippsits chief exponent. He criticizes and rejects a series of aesthetictheories, such as those of play, of pleasure, of art as recognition ofreal life, even if disagreeable, of emotionality, of syncretism, whichattaches to art a number of other ends, in addition to those of play andof pleasure. 

The theory of Lipps does not differ very greatly from that of Jouffroy, for he assumes that artistic beauty is the sympathetic. "Our ego, transplanted, objectified, and recognized in others, is the object ofsympathy. We feel ourselves in others, and others in us. " Thus theaesthetic pleasure is entirely composed of sympathy. This extends evento the pleasure derived from architecture, geometrical forms, etc. Whenever we meet with the positive element of human personality, weexperience this feeling of beatitude, which is the aesthetic emotion. But the value of the personality is an ethical value: the whole sphereof ethic is included in it. Therefore all artistic or aesthetic pleasureis the enjoyment of something which has ethical value, but this value isnot an element of a compound, but the object of aesthetic intuition. Thus is aesthetic activity deprived of all autonomous existence andreduced to a mere retainer of Ethic. 

C. Groos (1895) shows some signs of recognizing aesthetic activity as atheoretic value. Feeling and intellect, he says, are the two poles ofknowledge, and he recognizes the aesthetic fact as internal imitation. Everything beautiful belongs to aestheticity, but not every aestheticfact is beautiful. The beautiful is the representation of sensiblepleasure, and the ugly of sensible displeasure. The sublime is therepresentation of something powerful, in a simple form. The comic is therepresentation of an inferiority, which provokes in us the pleasurablefeeling of "superiority. " Groos very wisely makes mock of the supposedfunction of the Ugly, which Hartmann and Schasler had inherited anddeveloped from a long tradition. Lipps and Groos agree in denyingaesthetic value to the comic, but Lipps, although he gives an excellentanalysis of the comic, is nevertheless in the trammels of his moralisticthesis, and ends by sketching out something resembling the doctrine ofthe overcoming of the ugly, by means of which may be attained a higheraesthetic and (sympathetic) value. 

Labours such as those of Lipps have been of value, since they havecleared away a number of errors that blocked the way, and restrainedspeculation to the field of the internal consciousness. Similar is themerit of E. Véron's treatise (1883) on the double form of Aesthetic, inwhich he combats the academic view of the absolute beauty, and showsthat Taine confuses Art and Science, Aesthetic and Logic. He acutelyremarks that if the object of art were to reveal the essence of things, the greatest artists would be those who best succeeded in doing this, and the greatest works would all be _identical_; whereas we know thatthe very opposite is the case. Véron was a precursor of Guyau, and weseek for scientific system in vain in his book. Véron looks upon art astwo things: the one _decorative_, pleasing eye and ear, the other_expressive_, "l'expression émue de la personalité humaine. " He thoughtthat decorative art prevailed in antiquity, expressive art in moderntimes. 

We cannot here dwell upon the aesthetic theories of men of letters, suchas that of E. Zola, developing his thesis of natural science and historymixed, which is known as that of the human document or as theexperimental theory, or of Ibsen and the moralization of the artproblem, as presented by him and by the Scandinavian school. Perhaps noFrench writer has written more profoundly upon art than GustaveFlaubert. His views are contained in his Correspondence, which has beenpublished. L. Tolstoï wrote his book on art while under the influence ofVéron and his hatred of the concept of the beautiful. Art, he says, communicates the feelings, as the word communicates the thoughts. Buthis way of understanding this may be judged from the comparison which heinstitutes between Art and Science. According to this, "Art has for itsmission to make assimilable and sensible what may not have beenassimilated in the form of argument. There is no science for science'ssake, no art for art's sake. Every human effort should be directedtoward increasing morality and suppressing violence. " This amounts tosaying that well-nigh all the art that the world has hitherto seen isfalse. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Bach, Beethoven, are all, according to Tolstoï, "false reputations, made by the critics. "

We must also class F. Nietzsche with the artists, rather than with thephilosophers. We should do him an injustice (as with J. Ruskin) were weto express in intellectual terminology his aesthetic affirmations. Thecriticism which they provoke would be too facile. Nowhere has Nietzschegiven a complete theory of art, not even in his first book, _Die Geburtder Tragödie oder Griechentum und Pessimismus_. What seems to be theorythere, is really the confession of the feelings and aspirations of thewriter. Nietzsche was the last, splendid representative of the romanticperiod. He was, therefore, deeply preoccupied with the art problem andwith the relation of art to natural science and to philosophy, though henever succeeded in definitely fixing those relations. From Romanticism, rather than from Schopenhauer, he gathered those elements of thought outof which he wove his conception of the two forms of art: the Apollonian, all serene contemplation, as expressed in the epic and in sculpture; theDionysaïc, all tumult and agitation, as expressed in music and thedrama. These doctrines are not rigorously proved, and their power ofresistance to criticism is therefore but slender, but they serve totransport the mind to a more lofty spiritual level than any others ofthe second half of the nineteenth century. 

The most noteworthy thought on aesthetic of this period is perhaps to befound among the aestheticians of special branches of the arts, and sincewe know that laws relating only to special branches are not conceivable, this thought may be considered as bearing upon the general theory ofAesthetic. 

The Bohemian critic E. Hanslick (1854) is perhaps the most important ofthese writers. His work _On Musical Beauty_ has been translated intoseveral languages. His polemic is chiefly directed against R. Wagner andthe pretension of finding in music a determined content of ideas andfeelings. He expresses equal contempt for those sentimentalists whoderive from music merely pathological effects, passionate excitement, orstimulus for practical activity, in place of enjoying the musical works. "If a few Phrygian notes sufficed to instil courage into the soldierfacing the enemy, or a Doric melody to assure the fidelity of a wifewhose husband was absent, then the loss of Greek music may cause pain togenerals and to husbands, but aestheticians and composers will have noreason to deplore it. " "If every Requiem, every lamenting Adagio, possessed the power to make us sad, who would be able to supportexistence in such conditions? But if a true musical work look upon uswith the clear and brilliant eyes of beauty, we feel ourselves bound byits invincible fascination, though its theme be all the sorrows of thecentury. "

For Hanslick, the only end of music was form, or musical beauty. Thefollowers of Herbart showed themselves very tender towards thisunexpected and vigorous ally, and Hanslick, not to be behindhand inpoliteness, returned their compliments, by referring to Herbart and toR. Zimmermann, in the later editions of his work, as having "completelydeveloped the great aesthetic principle of form. " Unfortunately Hanslickmeant something altogether different from the Herbartians by his use ofthe word form. Symmetry, merely acoustic relations, and the pleasure ofthe ear, did not constitute the musically beautiful for him. Mathematicswere in his view useless in the Aesthetic of music. "Sonorous forms arenot empty, but perfectly full; they cannot be compared to simple linesenclosing a space; they are the spirit, which takes form, making its ownbodily configuration. Music is more of a picture than is an arabesque;but it is a picture of which the subject is inexpressible in words, noris it to be enclosed in a precise concept. In music, there is a meaningand a connexion, but of a specially musical nature: it is a languagewhich we speak and understand, but which it is impossible to translate. "Hanslick admits that music, if it do not render the quality ofsentiments, renders their tone or dynamic side; it renders adjectives, if it fail to render substantives; if not "murmuring tenderness" or"impetuous courage, " at any rate the "murmuring" and the "impetuous. "

The essence of his book is contained in the negation that it is possibleto separate form and content in music. "Take any motive you will, andsay where form begins and content ends. Are we to call the soundscontent? Very good, but they have already received form. What are we tocall form? Sounds again? But they are already form filled, that is tosay, possessing a content. " These observations testify to an acutepenetration of the nature of art. Hanslick's belief that they werecharacteristics peculiar to music, not common to every form of art, alone prevented him from seeing further. 

C. Fiedler, published in German (in 1887) an extremely luminous work onthe origin of artistic activity. He describes eloquently how the passivespectator seems to himself to grasp all reality, as the shows of lifepass before him; but at the moment that he tries to realize thisartistically, all disappears, and leaves him with the emptiness of hisown thoughts. Yet by concentration alone do we attain to expression; artis a language that we gradually learn to speak. Artistic activity isonly to be attained by limiting ourselves; it must consist of "formsprecisely determined, tangible, sensibly demonstrable, precisely becauseit is spiritual. " Art does not imitate nature, for what is nature, butthat vast confusion of perceptions and representations that werereferred to above? Yet in a sense art does imitate nature; it usesnature to produce values of a kind peculiar to itself. Those values aretrue visibility. 

Fiedler's views correspond with those of his predecessor, Hanslick, butare more rigorously and philosophically developed. The sculptor A. Hildebrand may be mentioned with these, as having drawn attention to thenature of art as architectonic rather than imitative, with specialapplication to the art of sculpture. 

What we miss with these and with other specialists, is a broad view ofart and language, as one and the same thing, the inheritance of allhumanity, not of a few persons, specially endowed. H. Bergson in hisbook on laughter (1900) falls under the same criticism. He develops histheory of art in a manner analogous to Fiedler, and errs like him inlooking upon it as something different and exceptional in respect to thelanguage of every moment. He declares that in life the individuality ofthings escapes us: we see only as much as suffices for our practicalends. The influence of language aids this rude simplification: all butproper names are abstractions. Artists arise from time to time, whorecover the riches hidden beneath the labels of ordinary life. 

Amid the ruin of idealist metaphysics, is to be desired a healthy returnto the doctrine of Baumgarten, corrected and enriched with thediscoveries that have been made since his time, especially byromanticism and psychology. C. Hermann (1876) announced this return, buthis book is a hopeless mixture of empirical precepts and of metaphysicalbeliefs regarding Logic and Aesthetic, both of which, he believes, dealnot with the empirical thought and experience of the soul, but with thepure and absolute. 

B. Bosanquet (1892) gives the following definition of the beautiful, as"that which has a characteristic or individual expressivity for thesensible perception, or for the imagination, subject to the conditionsof general or abstract expressivity for the same means. " The problem asposed by this writer by the antithesis of the two German schools of formand content, appears to us insoluble. 

Though De Sanctis left no school in Italy, his teaching has been clearedof the obscurities that had gathered round it during the last ten years;and the thesis of the true nature of history, and of its nature, altogether different from natural science, has been also dealt with inGermany, although its precise relation to the aesthetic problem has notbeen made clear. Such labours and such discussions constitute a morefavourable ground for the scientific development of Aesthetic than thestars of mystical metaphysic or the stables of positivism and ofsensualism. 

We have now reached the end of the inquiry into the history of aestheticspeculation, and we are struck with the smallness of the number of thosewho have seen clearly the nature of the problem. No doubt, amid thecrowd of artists, critics, and writers on other subjects, many haveincidentally made very just remarks, and if all these were added to thefew philosophers, they would form a gallant company. But if, as Schillertruly observed, the rhythm of philosophy consist in a withdrawal frompublic opinion, in order to return to it with renewed vigour, it isevident that this withdrawal is essential, and indeed that in it liesthe whole progress of philosophy. 

During our long journey, we have witnessed grave aberrations from thetruth, which were at the same time attempts to reach it; such were thehedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity, of thesensualists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenthcenturies; the moralistic hedonism of Aristophanes and the Stoics, ofthe Roman eclectics, of the writers of the Middle Age and of theRenaissance; the ascetic and logical hedonism of Plato and the Fathersof the Church; the aesthetic mysticism of Plotinus, reborn to itsgreatest triumphs, during the classic period of German thought. 

Through the midst of these variously erroneous theories, that traversethe field of thought in all directions, runs a tiny rivulet of goldentruth. Starting from the subtle empiricism of Aristotle, it flows in theprofound penetration of Vico to the nineteenth century, where it appearsagain in the masterly analyses of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, and DeSanctis. 

This brief list shows that the science of Aesthetic is no longer to bediscovered, but it also shows _that it is only at its beginning_. 

The birth of a science is like the birth of a human being. In order tolive, a science, like a man, has to withstand a thousand attacks of allsorts. These appear in the form of errors, which must be extirpated, ifthe science is not to perish. And when one set has been weeded, anothercrops up; when these have been dealt with, the former errors oftenreturn. Therefore _scientific criticism_ is always necessary. No sciencecan repose on its laurels, complete, unchallenged. Like a human being, it must maintain its position by constant efforts, constant victoriesover error. The general errors which reveal a negation of the veryconcept of art have already been dealt with in the Historical Summary. The particular errors have been exposed in the Theory. They may bedivided under three heads: (i. ) Errors as to the characteristic qualityof the aesthetic fact, or (ii. ) as to its specific quality, or (iii. ) asto its generic quality. These are contradictions of the characteristicsof intuition, of theoretic contemplation, and of spiritual activity, which constitute the aesthetic fact. 

The principal bar to a proper understanding of the true nature oflanguage has been and still is Rhetoric, with the modern form it hasassumed, as style. The rhetorical categories are still mentioned intreatises and often referred to, as having definite existence among theparts of speech. Side by side with such phrases goes that of the doubleform, or metaphor, which implies that there are two ways of saying thesame thing, the one simple, the other ornate. 

Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and many minor personages, have been shown to bevictims of the rhetorical categories, and in our own day we have writersin Italy and in Germany who devote much attention to them, such as R. Bonghi and G. Gröber; the latter employs a phraseology which he borrowsfrom the modern schools of psychology, but this does not alter the truenature of his argument. De Sanctis gave perhaps the clearest and moststimulating advice in his lectures on Rhetoric, which he termedAnti-rhetoric. 

But even he failed to systematize his thought, and we may say that thetrue critique of Rhetoric can only be made from the point of view of theaesthetic activity, which is, as we know, _one_, and therefore does notgive rise to divisions, and _cannot express the same content now in oneform, now in another_. Thus only can we drive away the double monster ofnaked form deprived of imagination, and of decorated form, which wouldrepresent something more than imagination. The same remarks apply toartistic and literary styles, and to their various laws or rules. Inmodern times they have generally been comprised with rhetoric, andalthough now discredited, they cannot be said to have altogetherdisappeared. 

J. C. Scaliger may be entitled the protagonist of the unities incomparatively modern times: he it was who "laid the foundations of theclassical Bastille, " and supplied tyrants of literature, like Boileau, with some of their best weapons. Lessing opposed the French rules andrestrictions with German rules and restrictions, giving as his opinionthat Corneille and others had wrongly interpreted Aristotle, whose rulesdid not really prevent Shakespeare from being included among correctwriters! Lessing undoubtedly believed in intellectual rules for poetry. Aristotle was the tyrant, father of tyrants, and we find Corneillesaying "qu'il est aisé de s'accommoder avec Aristote, " much in the sameway as Tartuffe makes his "accommodements avec le ciel. " In the nextcentury, several additions were made to the admitted styles, as forinstance the "tragédie bourgeoise. "

But these battles of the rules with one another are less interestingthan the rebellion against all the rules, which began with PietroAretino in the sixteenth century, who makes mock of them in theprologues to his comedies. Giordano Bruno took sides against the makersof rules, saying that the rules came from the poetry, and "thereforethere are as many genuses and species of true rules as there are genusesand species of true poets. " When asked how the true poets are to beknown, he replies, "by repeating their verses, which either causedelight, or profit, or both. " Guarini, too, said that "the world judgespoetry, and its sentence is without appeal. "

Strangely enough, it was priest-ridden Spain that all through thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries led the van of revolt against therules and precepts of the grammarians. While Torquato Tasso remained themiserable slave of grammarians unworthy to lick the dust from his feet, Lope de Vega slyly remarked that when he wrote his comedies, he lockedup the givers of precepts with six keys, that they might not reproachhim. J. B. Marino declared that he knew the rules better than all thepedants in the world; "but the true rule is to know when to break therules, in accordance with the manners of the day and the taste of theage. " Among the most acute writers of the end of the seventeenth centuryis to be mentioned Gravina, who well understood that a work of art mustbe its own criterion, and said so clearly when praising a contemporaryfor a work which did not enter any one of the admitted categories. Unfortunately Gravina did not clearly formulate his views. 

France of the eighteenth century produced several writers like Du Bos, who declared that men will always prefer the poems that move them, tothose composed according to rule. La Motte combated the unities of placeand time, and Batteux showed himself liberal in respect to rules. Voltaire, although he opposed La Motte and described the three unitiesas the three great laws of good sense, was also capable of declaringthat all styles but the tiresome are good, and that the best style isthat which is best used. In England we find Home in his _Elements ofCriticism_ deriding the critics for asserting that there must be aprecise criterion for distinguishing epic poetry from all other forms ofcomposition. Literary compositions, he held, melt into one another, justlike colours. 

The literary movement of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning ofthe nineteenth centuries attacked rules of all sorts. We will not dwellupon the many encounters of these periods, nor record the names of thosethat conquered gloriously, or their excesses. In France the preface tothe _Cromwell_ of V. Hugo (1827), in Italy the _Lettera semiseria diGrisostomo_, were clarions of rebellion. The principle first laid downby A. W. Schlegel, that the form of compositions must be organic and notmechanic, resulting from the nature of the subject, from its internaldevelopment not from an external stamp, was enunciated in Italy. Art isalways a whole, a synthesis. 

But it would be altogether wrong to believe that this empirical defeatof the styles and rules implied their final defeat in philosophy. Evenwriters who were capable of dispensing with prejudice when judging worksof art, once they spoke as philosophers, were apt to reassume theirbelief in those categories which, empirically, they had discarded. Thespectacle of these literary or rhetorical categories, raised by Germanphilosophers to the honours of philosophical deduction, is even moreamusing than that which afforded amusement to Home. The truth is thatthey were unable to free their aesthetic systems of intellectualism, although they proclaimed the empire of the mystic idea. Schelling (1803)at the beginning, Hartmann (1890) at the end of the century, furnish agood example of this head and tail. 

Schelling, in his Philosophy of Art, declares that, historicallyspeaking, the first place in the styles of poetry is due to Epic, but, scientifically speaking, it falls to Lyric. In truth, if poetry be therepresentation of the infinite in the finite, then lyric poetry, inwhich prevails the finite, must be its first moment. Lyric poetrycorresponds to the first of the ideal series, to reflection, toknowledge; epic poetry corresponds to the second power, to action. Thisphilosopher finally proceeds to the unification of epic and lyricpoetry, and from their union he deduces the dramatic form, which is inhis view "the supreme incarnation of the essence and of the _in-se_ ofevery art. "

With Hartmann, poetry is divided into poetry of declamation and poetryfor reading. The first is subdivided into Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic; theEpic is divided into plastic epic, proper epic, pictorial epic, andlyrical epic; Lyric is divided into epical lyric, lyrical lyric, anddramatic lyric; Dramatic is divided into lyrical dramatic, epicaldramatic, and dramatical dramatic. The second (readable poetry) isdivided into poetry which is chiefly epical, lyrical, and dramatic, withthe tertiary division of moving, comic, tragic, and humoristic; andpoetry which can all be read at once, like a short story, or thatrequires several sittings, like a romance. 

These brief extracts show of what dialectic pirouettes and sublimetrivialities even philosophers are capable, when they begin to treatof the Aesthetic of the tragic, comic, and humorous. Such falsedistinctions are still taught in the schools of France and Germany, andwe find a French critic like Ferdinand Brunetière devoting a wholevolume to the evolution of literary styles or classes, which he reallybelieves to constitute literary history. This prejudice, less franklystated, still infests many histories of literature, even in Italy. 

We believe that the falsity of these rules of classes should bescientifically demonstrated. In our Theory of Aesthetic we have shownhow we believe that it should be demonstrated. 

The proof of the theory of the limits of the arts has been credited toLessing, but his merit should rather be limited to having been the firstto draw attention to the problem. His solution was false, but hisachievement nevertheless great, in having posed the question clearly. Noone before him, in antiquity, in the Middle Age, or in modern times, hadseriously asked: What is the value of the distinctions between the arts?Which of them comes first? Which second? Leonardo da Vinci had declaredhis personal predilection for painting, Michael Angelo for sculpture, but the question had not been philosophically treated before Lessing. 

Lessing's attention was drawn to the problem, through his desire todisprove the assertions of Spence and of the Comte de Caylus, the formerin respect to the close union between poetry and painting in antiquity, the latter as believing that a poem was good according to the number ofsubjects which it should afford the painter. Lessing argued thus:Painting manifests itself in space, poetry in time: the mode ofmanifestation of painting is through objects which coexist, that ofpoetry through objects which are consecutive. The objects which coexist, or whose parts are coexistent, are called bodies. Bodies, then, owing totheir visibility, are the true objects of painting. Objects which areconsecutive, or whose parts are consecutive, are called, in general, actions. Actions, then, are the suitable object of poetry. He admittedthat painting might represent an action, but only by means of bodieswhich make allusion to it; that poetry can represent bodies, but only bymeans of actions. Returning to this theme, he explained the action ormovement in painting as added by our imagination. Lessing was greatlypreoccupied with the naturalness and the unnaturalness of signs, whichis tantamount to saying that he believed each art to be strictly limitedto certain modes of expression, which are only overstepped at the costof coherency. In the appendix to his _Laocoön_, he quotes Plutarch assaying that one should not chop wood with a key, or open the door withan axe. He who should do so would not only be spoiling both thoseutensils, but would also be depriving himself of the utility of both. Hebelieved that this applied to the arts. 

The number of philosophers and writers who have attempted empiricalclassifications of the arts is enormous: it ranges in comparativelyrecent times from Lessing, by way of Schasler, Solger, and Hartmann, toRichard Wagner, whose theory of the combination of the arts was firstmooted in the eighteenth century. 

Lotze, while reflecting upon the futility of these attempts, himselfadopts a method, which he says is the most "convenient, " and therebyincurs the censure of Schasler. This method is in fact suitable for hisstudies in botany and in zoology, but useless for the philosophy of thespirit. Thus both these thinkers maintained Lessing's wrong principle asto the constancy, the limits, and the peculiar nature of each art. 

Who among aestheticians has criticized this principle? Aristotle had aglimpse of the truth, when he refused to admit that the distinctionbetween prose and poetry lay in an external fact, the metre. Schleiermacher seems to have been the only one who was thoroughly awareof the difficulty of the problem. In analysis, indeed, he goes so far asto say that what the arts have in common is not the external fact, whichis an element of diversity; and connecting such an observation as thiswith his clear distinction between art and what is called technique, wemight argue that Schleiermacher looked upon the divisions between thearts as non-existent. But he does not make this logical inference, andhis thought upon the problem continues to be wavering and undecided. Nebulous, uncertain, and contradictory as is this portion ofSchleiermacher's theory, he has yet the great merit of having doubtedLessing's theory, and of having asked himself by what right are specialarts held to be distinct in art. 

Schleiermacher _absolutely denied the existence of a beautiful innature_, and praised Hegel for having sustained this negation. Hegel didnot really deserve this praise, as his negation was rather verbal thaneffective; but the importance of this thesis as stated by Schleiermacheris very great, in so far as he denied the existence of an objectivenatural beauty not produced by the spirit of man. This theory of thebeautiful in nature, when taken in a metaphysical sense, does notconstitute an error peculiar to aesthetic science. It forms part of afallacious general theory, which can be criticized together with itsmetaphysic. 

The theory of aesthetic senses, that is, of certain superior senses, such as sight and hearing, being the only ones for which aestheticimpressions exist, was debated as early as Plato. The _Hippias major_contains a discussion upon this theme, which Socrates leads to theconclusion that there exist beautiful things, which do not reach usthrough impressions of eye or ear. But further than this, there existthings which please the eye, but not the ear, and _vice versa_;therefore the reason of beauty cannot be visibility or audibility, butsomething different from, yet common to both. Perhaps this question hasnever been so acutely and so seriously dealt with as in this Platonicdialogue. Home, Herder, Hegel, Diderot, Rousseau, Berkeley, all dealtwith the problem, but in a more or less arbitrary manner. Herder, forinstance, includes touch with the higher aesthetic senses, but Hegelremoves it, as having immediate contact with matter as such, and withits immediate sensible qualities. 

Schleiermacher, with his wonted penetration, saw that the problem wasnot to be solved so easily. He refuted the distinction between clear andconfused senses. He held that the superiority of sight and hearing overthe other senses lay in their free activity, in their capacity of anactivity proceeding from within, and able to create forms and soundswithout receiving external impressions. The eye and the ear are notmerely means of perception, for in that case there could be no visualand no auditive arts. They are also functions of voluntary movements, which fill the domain of the senses. Schleiermacher, however, consideredthat the difference was rather one of quantity, and that we should allowto the other senses a minimum of independence. 

The sensualists, as we know, maintain that all the senses are aesthetic. That is the hedonistic hypothesis, which has been dealt with anddisproved in this book. We have shown the embarrassment in which thehedonists find themselves, when they have dubbed all the senses"aesthetic, " or have been obliged to differentiate in an absurd mannersome of the senses from the others. The only way out of the difficultylies in abandoning the attempt to unite orders of facts so diverse asthe representative form of the spirit and the conception of givenphysical organs or of a given material of impressions. 

The origin of classes of speech and of grammatical forms is to be foundin antiquity, and as regards the latter, the disputes among theAlexandrian philosophers, the analogists, and the anomalists, resultedin logic being identified with grammar. Anything which did not seemlogical was excluded from grammar as a deviation. The analogists, however, did not have it all their own way, and grammar in the modernsense of the word is a compromise between these extreme views, that is, it contains something of the thought of Chrysippus, who composed atreatise to show that the same thing can be expressed with differentsounds, and of Apollonius Discolus, who attempted to explain what therigorous analogists refused to admit into their schemes andclassifications. It is only of late years that we have begun to emergefrom the superstitious reverence for grammar, inherited from the MiddleAge. Such writers as Pott, in his introduction to Humboldt, and Paul inhis _Principien d. Sprachgeschichte_, have done good service in throwingdoubt upon the absolute validity of the parts of speech. If the oldsuperstitions still survive tenaciously, we must attribute this partlyto empirical and poetical grammar, partly to the venerable antiquity ofgrammar itself, which has led the world to forget its illegitimate andturbid origin. 

The theory of the relativity of taste is likewise ancient, and it wouldbe interesting to know whether the saying "there's no accounting fortastes" could be traced to a merely gustatory origin. In this sense, thesaying would be quite correct, as it is _quite wrong_ when applied toaesthetic facts. The eighteenth century writers exhibit a piteousperplexity of thought on this subject. Home, for instance, after muchdebate, decides upon a common "standard of taste, " which he deduces fromthe necessity of social life and from what he calls "a final cause. " Ofcourse it will not be an easy matter to fix this "standard of taste. " Asregards moral conduct, we do not seek our models among savages, so withregard to taste, we must have recourse to those few whose taste has notbeen corrupted nor spoilt by pleasure, who have received good taste fromnature, and have perfected it by education and by the practice of life. If after this has been done, there should yet arise disputes, it will benecessary to refer to the principles of criticism, as laid down in hisbook by the said Home. 

We find similar contradictions and vicious circles in the _Discourse onTaste_ of David Hume. We search his writings in vain for the distinctivecharacteristics of the man of taste, whose judgments should be final. Although he asserts that the general principles of taste are universalin human nature, and admits that no notice should be accorded toperversions and ignorance, yet there exist diversities of taste that areirreconcilable, insuperable, and blameless. 

But the criticism of the sensualist and relativist positions cannot bemade from the point of view of those who proclaim the absolute nature oftaste and yet place it among the intellectual concepts. It has beenshown to be impossible to escape from sensualism and relativity save byfalling into the intellectualist error. Muratori in the eighteenthcentury is an instance of this. He was one of the first to maintain theexistence of a rule of taste and of universal beauty. André also spokeof what appears beautiful in a work of art as being not that whichpleases at once, owing to certain particular dispositions of thefaculties of the soul and of the organs of the body, but that which hasthe right of pleasing the reason and reflection through its ownexcellence. Voltaire admitted an "universal taste, " which was"intellectual, " as did many others. Kant appeared, and condemned alikethe intellectualist and the sensualistic error; but placing thebeautiful in a symbol of morality, he failed to discover the imaginativeabsoluteness of taste. Later speculative philosophy did not attachimportance to the question. 

The correct solution was slow in making its way. It lies, as we know, inthe fact that to judge a work of art we must place ourselves in theposition of the artist at the time of production, and that to judge isto reproduce. Alexander Pope, in his _Essay on Criticism_, was among thefirst to state this truth:

 A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ. 

Remarks equally luminous were made by Antonio Conti, Terrasson, andHeydenreich in the eighteenth century, the latter with considerablephilosophical development. De Sanctis gave in his adhesion to thisformula, but a true theory of aesthetic criticism had not yet beengiven, because for such was necessary, not only an exact conception ofnature in art, but also of the relations between the aesthetic fact andits historical conditions. In more recent times has been denied thepossibility of aesthetic criticism; it has been looked upon as merelyindividual and capricious, and historical criticism has been set up inits place. This would be better called a criticism of extrinsicerudition and of bad philosophical inspiration--positivist andmaterialist. The true history of literature will always require thereconstruction and then the judgment of the work of art. Those who havewished to react against such emasculated erudition have often thrownthemselves into the opposite extreme, that is, into a dogmatic, abstract, intellectualistic, or moralistic form of criticism. 

This mention of the history of certain doctrines relating to Aestheticsuffices to show the range of error possible in the theory. Aesthetichas need to be surrounded by a vigilant and vigorous critical literaturewhich shall derive from it and be at once its safeguard and its sourceof strength. 

APPENDIX

I here add as an appendix, at the request of the author, a translationof his lecture which he delivered before the Third InternationalCongress of Philosophy, at Heidelberg, on 2nd September 1908. 

The reader will find that it throws a vivid light upon Benedetto Croce'sgeneral theory of Aesthetic. 

PURE INTUITION AND THE LYRICAL CHARACTER OF ART. 

_A Lecture delivered at Heidelberg at the second general session of theThird International Congress of Philosophy. _

There exists an _empirical_ Aesthetic, which although it admits theexistence of facts, called aesthetic or artistic, yet holds that theyare irreducible to a single principle, to a rigorous philosophicalconcept. It wishes to limit itself to collecting as many of those factsas possible, and in the greatest possible variety, thence, at the most, proceeding to group them together in classes and types. The logicalideal of this school, as declared on many occasions, is zoology orbotany. This Aesthetic, when asked what art is, replies by indicatingsuccessively single facts, and by saying: "Art is this, and this, andthis too is art, " and so on, indefinitely. Zoology and botany renew therepresentatives of fauna and of flora in the same way. They calculatethat the species renewed amount to some thousand, but believe that theymight easily be increased to twenty or a hundred thousand, or even to amillion, or to infinity. 

There is another Aesthetic, which has been called hedonistic, utilitarian, moralistic, and so on, according to its variousmanifestations. Its complex denomination should, however, be_practicism_, because that is precisely what constitutes its essentialcharacter. This Aesthetic differs from the preceding, in the belief thataesthetic or artistic facts are not a merely empirical or nominalisticgrouping together, but that all of them possess a common foundation. Itsfoundation is placed in the practical form of human activity. Thosefacts are therefore considered, either generically, as manifestations ofpleasure and pain, and therefore rather as economic facts; or, moreparticularly, as a special class of those manifestations; or again, asinstruments and products of the ethical spirit, which subdues and turnsto its own ends individual hedonistic and economic tendencies. 

There is a third Aesthetic, the _intellectualist_, which, while alsorecognizing the reducibility of aesthetic facts to philosophicaltreatment, explains them as particular cases of logical thought, identifying beauty with intellectual truth; art, now with the naturalsciences, now with philosophy. For this Aesthetic, what is prized in artis what is learned from it. The only distinction that it admits betweenart and science, or art and philosophy, is at the most that of more orless, or of perfection and imperfection. According to this Aesthetic, art would be the whole mass of easy and popular truths; or it would be atransitory form of science, a semi-science and a semi-philosophy, preparatory to the superior and perfect form of science and ofphilosophy. 

A fourth Aesthetic there is, which may be called _agnostic_. It springsfrom the criticism of the positions just now indicated, and being guidedby a powerful consciousness of the truth, rejects them all, because itfinds them too evidently false, and because it is too loth to admit thatart is a simple fact of pleasure or pain, an exercise of virtue, or afragmentary sketch of science and philosophy. And while rejecting them, it discovers, at the same time, that art is not now this and now that ofthose things, or of other things, indefinitely, but that it has its ownprinciple and origin. However, it is not able to say what this principlemay be, and believes that it is impossible to do so. This Aestheticknows that art cannot be resolved into an empirical concept; knows thatpleasure and pain are united with the aesthetic activity only in anindirect manner; that morality has nothing to do with art; that it isimpossible to rationalize art, as is the case with science andphilosophy, and to prove it beautiful or ugly with the aid of reason. Here this Aesthetic is content to stop, satisfied with a knowledgeconsisting entirely of negative terms. 

Finally, there is an Aesthetic which I have elsewhere proposed to call_mystic_. This Aesthetic avails itself of those negative terms, todefine art as a spiritual form without a practical character, because itis theoretic, and without a logical or intellective form, because it isa theoretic form, differing alike from those of science and ofphilosophy, and superior to both. According to this view, art would bethe highest pinnacle of knowledge, whence what is seen from other pointsseems narrow and partial; art would alone reveal the whole horizon orall the abysses of Reality. 

Now, the five Aesthetics so far mentioned are not referable tocontingent facts and historical epochs, as are, on the other hand, thedenominations of Greek and Mediaeval Aesthetic, of Renaissance andeighteenth-century Aesthetic, the Aesthetic of Wolff and of Herbart, ofVico and of Hegel. These five are, on the contrary, mental attitudes, which are found in all periods, although they have not alwaysconspicuous representatives of the kind that are said to becomehistorical. Empirical Aesthetic is, for example, called Burke in theeighteenth, Fechner in the nineteenth century; moralistic Aesthetic isHorace or Plutarch in antiquity, Campanella in modern times;intellectualist or logical Aesthetic is Cartesian in the seventeenth, Leibnitzian in the eighteenth, and Hegelian in the nineteenth century;agnostic Aesthetic is Francesco Patrizio at the Renaissance, Kant in theeighteenth century; mystic Aesthetic is called Neoplatonism at the endof the antique world, Romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, and if it be adorned during the former period with the name ofPlotinus, in the latter it will bear the name of Schelling or of Solger, And not only are those attitudes and mental tendencies common to allepochs, but they are also all found to some extent developed orindicated in every thinker, and even in every man. Thus it is somewhatdifficult to classify philosophers of Aesthetic according to one or theother category, because each philosopher also enters more or less intosome other, or into all the other categories. 

Nor can these five conceptions and points of view be looked upon asincreasable to ten or twenty, or to as many as desired, or that I haveplaced them in a certain order, but that they could be capriciouslyplaced in another order. If this were so, they would be altogetherheterogeneous and disconnected among themselves, and the attempt toexamine and criticize them would seem altogether desperate, as alsowould be that of comparing one with the other, or of stating a new one, which should dominate them all. It is precisely thus that ordinarysceptics look upon various and contrasting scientific views. They groupthem all in the same plane, and believing that they can increase them atwill, conclude that one is as good as another, and that therefore everyone is free to select that which he prefers from a bundle of falsehoods. The conceptions of which we speak are definite in number, and appear ina necessary order, which is either that here stated by me, or anotherwhich might be proposed, better than mine. This would be the necessaryorder, which I should have failed to realize effectively. They areconnected one with the other, and in such a way that the view whichfollows includes in itself that which precedes it. 

Thus, if the last of the five doctrines indicated be taken, which may besummed up as the proposition that art is a form of the theoretic spirit, superior to the scientific and philosophic form--and if it be submittedto analysis, it will be seen that in it is included, in the first place, the proposition affirming the existence of a group of facts, which arecalled aesthetic or artistic. If such facts did not exist, it is evidentthat no question would arise concerning them, and that nosystematization would be attempted. And this is the truth of empiricalAesthetic. But there is also contained in it the proposition: that thefacts examined are reducible to a definite principle or category of thespirit. This amounts to saying, that they belong either to the practicalspirit, or to the theoretical, or to one of their subforms. And this isthe truth of practicist Aesthetic, which is occupied with the enquiry asto whether these ever are practical facts, and affirms that in everycase they are a special category of the spirit. Thirdly, there iscontained in it the proposition: that they are not practical facts, butfacts which should rather be placed near the facts of logic or ofthought. This is the truth of intellectualistic Aesthetic. In the fourthplace, we find also the proposition; that aesthetic facts are neitherpractical, nor of that theoretic form which is called logical andintellective. They are something which cannot be identified with thecategories of pleasure, nor of the useful, nor with those of ethic, norwith those of logical truth. They are something of which it is necessaryto find a further definition. This is the truth of that Aesthetic whichis termed agnostic or negative. 

When these various propositions are severed from their connection; when, that is to say, the first is taken without the second, the secondwithout the third, and so on, --and when each, thus mutilated, isconfined in itself and the enquiry which awaits prosecution isarbitrarily arrested, then each one of these gives itself out as thewhole of them, that is, as the completion of the enquiry. In this way, each becomes error, and the truths contained in empiricism, inpracticism, in intellectualism, in agnostic and in mystical Aesthetic, become, respectively, falsity, and these tendencies of speculation areindicated with names of a definitely depreciative colouring. Empiriabecomes empiricism, the heuristic comparison of the aesthetic activitywith the practical and logical, becomes a conclusion, and thereforepracticism and intellectualism. The criticism which rejects falsedefinitions, and is itself negative, affirms itself as positive anddefinite, becoming agnosticism; and so on. 

But the attempt to close a mental process in an arbitrary manner isvain, and of necessity causes remorse and self-criticism. Thus it comesabout, that each one of those unilateral and erroneous doctrinescontinually tends to surpass itself and to enter the stage which followsit. Thus empiricism, for example, assumes that it can dispense with anyphilosophical conception of art; but, since it severs art fromnon-art--and, however empirical it be, it will not identify apen-and-ink sketch and a table of logarithms, as if they were just thesame thing, or a painting and milk or blood (although milk and bloodboth possess colour)--thus empiricism too must at last resort to somekind of philosophical concept. Therefore, we see the empiricistsbecoming, turn and turn about, hedonists, moralists, intellectualists, agnostics, mystics, and sometimes they are even better than mystics, upholding an excellent conception of art, which can only be found faultwith because introduced surreptitiously and without justification. Ifthey do not make that progress, it is impossible for them to speak inany way of aesthetic facts. They must return, as regards such facts, tothat indifference and to that silence from which they had emerged whenthey affirmed the existence of these facts and began to consider them intheir variety. The same may be said of all other unilateral doctrines. They are all reduced to the alternative of advancing or of going back, and in so far as they do not wish to do either, they live amidcontradictions and in anguish. But they do free themselves from these, more or less slowly, and thus are compelled to advance, more or lessslowly. And here we discover why it is so difficult, and indeedimpossible, exactly to identify thinkers, philosophers, and writers withone or the other of the doctrines which we have enunciated, because eachone of them rebels when he finds himself limited to one of thosecategories, and it seems to him that he is shut up in prison. It isprecisely because those thinkers try to shut themselves up in aunilateral doctrine, that they do not succeed, and that they take astep, now in one direction, now in another, and are conscious of beingnow on this side, now on the other, of the criticisms which areaddressed to them. But the critics fulfil their duty by putting them inprison, thus throwing into relief the absurdity into which they are ledby their irresolution, or their resolution not to resolve. 

And from this necessary connection and progressive order of the variouspropositions indicated arise also the resolve, the counsel, theexhortation, to "return, " as they say, to this or that thinker, to thisor that philosophical school of the past. Certainly, such returns areimpossible, understood literally; they are also a little ridiculous, like all impossible attempts. We can never return to the past, preciselybecause it is the past. No one is permitted to free himself from theproblems which are put by the present, and which he must solve with allthe means of the present (which includes in it the means of the past). Nevertheless, it is a fact that the history of philosophy everywhereresounds with cries of return. Those very people who in our day deridethe "return to Hume" or the "return to Kant, " proceed to advise the"return to Schelling, " or the "return to Hegel. " This means that we mustnot understand those "returns" literally and in a material way. Intruth, they do not express anything but the necessity and theineliminability of the logical process explained above, for which theaffirmations contained in philosophical problems appear connected withone another in such a way that the one follows the other, surpasses it, and includes it in itself. Empiricism, practicism, intellectualism, agnosticism, mysticism, are _eternal stages of the search for truth_. They are eternally relived and rethought in the truth which eachcontains. Thus it would be necessary for him who had not yet turned hisattention to aesthetic facts, to begin by passing them before his eyes, that is to say, he must first traverse the empirical stage (aboutequivalent to that occupied by mere men of letters and mere amateurs ofart); and while he is at this stage, he must be aroused to feel the wantof a principle of explanation, by making him compare his presentknowledge with the facts, and see if they are explained by it, that isto say, if they be utilitarian and moral, or logical and intellective. Then we should drive him who has made this examination to theconclusion, that the aesthetic activity is something different from allknown forms, a form of the spirit, which it yet remains to characterize. For the empiricists of Aesthetic, intellectualism and moralism representprogress; for the intellectualists, hedonistic and moralistic alike, agnosticism is progress and may be called Kant. But for Kantians, whoare real Kantians (and not neo-Kantians), progress is represented by themystical and romantic point of view; not because this comes after thedoctrine of Kant chronologically, but because it surpasses it ideally. In this sense, and in this sense alone, we should now "return" to theromantic Aesthetic. We should return to it, because it is ideallysuperior to all the researches in Aesthetic made in the studies ofpsychologists, of physio-psychologists, and of psycho-physiologists ofthe universities of Europe and of America. It is ideally superior to thesociological, comparative, prehistoric Aesthetic, which studiesespecially the art of savages, of children, of madmen, and of idiots. Itis ideally superior also to that other Aesthetic, which has recourse tothe conceptions of the genetic pleasure, of games, of illusion, ofself-illusion, of association, of hereditary habit, of sympathy, ofsocial efficiency, and so on. It is ideally superior to the attempts atlogical explanation, which have not altogether ceased, even to-day, although they are somewhat rare, because, to tell the truth, fanaticismfor Logic cannot be called the failing of our times. Finally, it isideally superior to that Aesthetic which repeats with Kant, that thebeautiful is finality without the idea of end, disinterested pleasure, necessary and universal, which is neither theoretical nor practical, butparticipates in both forms, or combines them in itself in an originaland ineffable manner. But we should return to it, bringing with us theexperience of a century of thought, the new facts collected, the newproblems that have arisen, the new ideas that have matured. Thus weshall return again to the stage of mystical and romantic Aesthetic, butnot to the personal and historical stage of its representatives. For inthis matter, at least, they are certainly inferior to us: they lived acentury ago and therefore inherited so much the less of the problems andof the results of thought which day by day mankind laboriouslyaccumulates. 

They should return, but not to remain there; because, if a return to theromantic Aesthetic be advisable for the Kantians (while the idealistsshould not be advised to "return to Kant, " that is to say, to a lowerstage, which represents a recession), so those who come over, or alreadyfind themselves on the ground of mystical Aesthetic, should, on theother hand be advised to proceed yet further, in order to attain to adoctrine which represents a stage above it. This doctrine is that of the_pure intuition_ (or, what amounts to the same thing, of pureexpression); a doctrine which also numbers representatives in all times, and which may be said to be immanent alike in all the discourses thatare held and in all the judgments that are passed upon art, as in allthe best criticism and artistic and literary history. 

This doctrine arises logically from the contradictions of mysticalAesthetic; I say, _logically_, because it contains in itself thosecontradictions and their solution; although _historically_ (and thispoint does not at present concern us) that critical process be notalways comprehensible, explicit, and apparent. 

Mystical Aesthetic, which makes of art the supreme function of thetheoretic spirit, or, at least, a function superior to that ofphilosophy, becomes involved in inextricable difficulties. How could artever be superior to philosophy, if philosophy make of art its object, that is to say, if it place art beneath itself, in order to analyse anddefine it? And what could this new knowledge be, supplied by art and bythe aesthetic activity, appearing when the human spirit has come fullcircle, after it has imagined, perceived, thought, abstracted, calculated, and constructed the whole world of thought and history?

As the result of those difficulties and contradictions, mysticalAesthetic itself also exhibits the tendency, either to surpass itsboundary, or to sink below its proper level. The descent takes placewhen it falls back into agnosticism, affirming that art is art, that is, a spiritual form, altogether different from the others and ineffable; orworse, where it conceives art as a sort of repose or as a game; asthough diversion could ever be a category and the spirit know repose! Wefind an attempt at overpassing its proper limit, when art is placedbelow philosophy, as inferior to it; but this overpassing remains asimple attempt, because the conception of art as instrument of universaltruth is always firmly held; save that this instrument is declared lessperfect and less efficacious than the philosophical instrument. Thusthey fall back again into intellectualism from another side. 

These mistakes of mystical Aesthetic were manifested during the Romanticperiod in some celebrated paradoxes, such as those of _art as irony_ andof the _death of art_. They seemed calculated to drive philosophers todesperation as to the possibility of solving the problem of the natureof art, since every path of solution appeared closed. Indeed, whoeverreads the aestheticians of the romantic period, feels strongly inclinedto believe himself at the heart of the enquiry and to nourish aconfident hope of immediate discovery of the truth. Above all, theaffirmation of the theoretic nature of art, and of the differencebetween its cognitive method and that of science and of logic, is feltas a definite conquest, which can indeed be combined with otherelements, but which must not in any case be allowed to slip between thefingers. And further, it is not true that all ways of solution areclosed, or that all have been attempted. There is at least one stillopen that can be tried; and it is precisely that for which we resolutelydeclare ourselves: the Aesthetic of the pure intuition. 

This Aesthetic reasons as follows:--Hitherto, in all attempts to definethe place of art, it has been sought, either at the summit of thetheoretic spirit, above philosophy, or, at least, in the circle ofphilosophy itself. But is not the loftiness of the search the reason whyno satisfactory result has hitherto been obtained? Why not invert theattempt, and instead of forming the hypothesis that art is _one of thesummits or the highest grade_ of the theoretic spirit, form the veryopposite hypothesis, namely, that it is _one of the lower grades_, orthe lowest of all? Perhaps such epithets as "lower" and "lowest" areirreconcilable with the dignity and with the splendid beauty of art? Butin the philosophy of the spirit, such words as lowest, weak, simple, elementary, possess only the value of a scientific terminology. All theforms of the spirit are necessary, and the higher is so only becausethere is the lower, and the lower is as much to be despised or less tobe valued to the same extent as the first step of a stair is despicable, or of less value in respect to the topmost step. 

Let us compare art with the various forms of the theoretic spirit, andlet us begin with the sciences which are called _natural_ or _positive_. The Aesthetic of pure intuition makes it clear that the said sciencesare more _complex_ than History, because they presuppose historicalmaterial, that is, collections of things that have happened (to men oranimals, to the earth or to the stars). They submit this material to afurther treatment, which consists in the abstraction and systematizationof the historical facts. _History_, then, is less complex than thenatural sciences. History further presupposes the world of theimagination and the pure philosophical concepts or categories, andproduces its judgments or historical propositions, by means of thesynthesis of the imagination with the concept. And _Philosophy_ may besaid to be even less complex than History, in so far as it isdistinguished from the former as an activity whose special function itis to make clear the categories or pure concepts, neglecting, in acertain sense at any rate, the world of phenomena. If we compare _Art_with the three forms above mentioned, it must be declared inferior, thatis to say, less complex than the _natural Sciences_, in so far as it isaltogether without abstractions. In so far as it is without conceptualdeterminations and does not distinguish between the real and the unreal, what has really happened and what has been dreamed, it must be declaredinferior to _History_. In so far as it fails altogether to surpass thephenomenal world, and does not attain to the definitions of the pureconcepts, it is inferior to _Philosophy_ itself. It is also inferior to_Religion_, assuming that religion is (as it is) a form of speculativetruth, standing between thought and imagination. Art is governedentirely by imagination; its only riches are images. Art does notclassify objects, nor pronounce them real or imaginary, nor qualifythem, nor define them. Art feels and represents them. Nothing more. Arttherefore is _intuition_, in so far as it is a mode of knowledge, notabstract, but concrete, and in so far as it uses the real, withoutchanging or falsifying it. In so far as it apprehends it immediately, before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must be called_pure intuition_. 

The strength of art lies in being thus simple, nude, and poor. Itsstrength (as often happens in life) arises from its very weakness. Henceits fascination. If (to employ an image much used by philosophers forvarious ends) we think of man, in the first moment that he becomes awareof theoretical life, with mind still clear of every abstraction and ofevery reflexion, in that first purely intuitive instant he must be apoet. He contemplates the world with ingenuous and admiring eyes; hesinks and loses himself altogether in that contemplation. By creatingthe first representations and by thus inaugurating the life ofknowledge, art continually renews within our spirit the aspects ofthings, which thought has submitted to reflexion, and the intellect toabstraction. Thus art perpetually makes us poets again. Without art, thought would lack the stimulus, the very material, for its hermeneuticand critical labour. Art is the root of all our theoretic life. To bethe root, not the flower or the fruit, is the function of art. Andwithout a root, there can be no flower and no fruit. 

II

Such is the theory of art as pure intuition, in its fundamentalconception. This theory, then, takes its origin from the criticism ofthe loftiest of all the other doctrines of Aesthetic, from the criticismof mystical or romantic Aesthetic, and contains in itself the criticismand the truth of all the other Aesthetics. It is not here possible toallow ourselves to illustrate its other aspects, such as would be thoseof the identity, which it lays down, between intuition and expression, between art and language. Suffice it to say, as regards the former, thathe alone who divides the unity of the spirit into soul and body can havefaith in a pure act of the soul, and therefore in an intuition, whichshould exist as an intuition, and yet be without its body, expression. Expression is the actuality of intuition, as action is of will; and inthe same way as will not exercised in action is not will, so anintuition unexpressed is not an intuition. As regards the second point, I will mention in passing that, in order to recognize the identity ofart and language, it is needful to study language, not in itsabstraction and in grammatical detail, but in its immediate reality, andin all its manifestations, spoken and sung, phonic and graphic. And weshould not take at hazard any proposition, and declare it to beaesthetic; because, if all propositions have an aesthetic side(precisely because intuition is the elementary form of knowledge and is, as it were, the garment of the superior and more complex forms), all arenot _purely_ aesthetic, but some are philosophical, historical, scientific, or mathematical; some, in fact, of these are more thanaesthetic or logical; they are aestheticological. Aristotle, in histime, distinguished between semantic and apophantic propositions, andnoted, that if all propositions be _semantic_, not all are _apophantic_. Language is art, not in so far as it is apophantic, but in so far as itis, generically, semantic. It is necessary to note in it the side bywhich it is expressive, and nothing but expressive. It is also well toobserve (though this may seem superfluous) that it is not necessary toreduce the theory of pure intuition, as has been sometimes done, to ahistorical fact or to a psychological concept. Because we recognize inpoetry, as it were, the ingenuousness, the freshness, the barbarity ofthe spirit, it is not therefore necessary to limit poetry to youth andto barbarian peoples. Though we recognize language as the first act oftaking possession of the world achieved by man, we must not imagine thatlanguage is born _ex nihilo_, once only in the course of the ages, andthat later generations merely adopt the ancient instrument, applying itto a new order of things while lamenting its slight adaptability to theusage of civilized times. Art, poetry, intuition, and immediateexpression are the moment of barbarity and of ingenuousness, whichperpetually recur in the life of the spirit; they are youth, that is, not chronological, but ideal. There exist very prosaic barbarians andvery prosaic youths, as there exist poetical spirits of the utmostrefinement and civilization. The mythology of those proud, giganticPatagonians, of whom our Vico was wont to discourse, or of those _bonsHurons_, who were lately a theme of conversation, must be looked upon asfor ever superseded. 

But there arises an apparently very serious objection to the Aestheticof pure intuition, giving occasion to doubt whether this doctrine, if itrepresent progress in respect to the doctrines which have preceded it, yet is also a complete and definite doctrine as regards the fundamentalconcept of art. Should it be submitted to a dialectic, by means of whichit must be surpassed and dissolved into a more lofty point of view? Thedoctrine of pure intuition makes the value of art to consist of itspower of intuition; in such a manner that just in so far as pure andconcrete intuitions are achieved will art and beauty be achieved. But ifattention be paid to judgments of people of good taste and of critics, and to what we all say when we are warmly discussing works of art andmanifesting our praise or blame of them, it would seem that what we seekin art is something quite different, or at least something more thansimple force and intuitive and expressive purity. What pleases and whatis sought in art, what makes beat the heart and enraptures theadmiration, is life, movement, emotion, warmth, the feeling of theartist. This alone affords the supreme criterion for distinguishing truefrom false works of art, those with insight from the failures. Wherethere are emotion and feeling, much is forgiven; where they are wanting, nothing can make up for them. Not only are the most profound thoughtsand the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art whichis looked upon as _cold_, but richness of imagery, ability and certaintyin the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization andcomposition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regretthat so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain. We do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts, nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, butthat he should have a _personality_, in contact with which the soul ofthe hearer or spectator may be heated. A personality of any sort isasked for in this case; its moral significance is excluded: let it besad or glad, enthusiastic or distrustful, sentimental or sarcastic, benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. Art criticism would seem toconsist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the workof art, and of what sort. A work that is a failure is an incoherentwork; that is to say, a work in which no single personality appears, buta number of disaggregated and jostling personalities, that is, really, none. There is no further correct significance than this in theresearches that are made as to the verisimilitude, the truth, the logic, the necessity, of a work of art. 

It is true that many protests have been made by artists, critics, andphilosophers by profession, against the characteristic of _personality_. It has been maintained that the bad artist leaves traces of hispersonality in the work of art, whereas the great artist cancels themall. It has been further maintained that the artist should portray thereality of life, and that he should not disturb it with the opinions, judgments, and personal feelings of the author, and that the artistshould give the tears of things and not his own tears. Hence_impersonality_, not personality, has been proclaimed to be thecharacteristic of art, that is to say, the very opposite. However, itwill not be difficult to show that what is really meant by this opposingformula is the same as in the first case. The theory of impersonalityreally coincides with that of personality in every point. The oppositionof the artists, critics, and philosophers above mentioned, was directedagainst the invasion by the empirical and volitional personality of theartist of the spontaneous and ideal personality which constitutes thesubject of the work of art. For instance, artists who do not succeed inrepresenting the force of piety or of love of country, add to theircolourless imaginings declamation or theatrical effects, thinking thusto arouse such feelings. In like manner certain orators and actorsintroduce into a work of art an emotion extraneous to the work of artitself. Within these limits, the opposition of the upholders of thetheory of impersonality was most reasonable. On the other hand, therehas also been exhibited an altogether irrational opposition topersonality in the work of art. Such is the lack of comprehension andintolerance evinced by certain souls for others differently constituted(of calm for agitated souls, for example). 

Here we find at bottom the claim of one sort of personality to deny thatof another. Finally, it has been possible to demonstrate from among theexamples given of impersonal art, in the romances and dramas callednaturalistic, that in so far and to the extent that these are completeartistic works, they possess personality. This holds good even when thispersonality lies in a wandering or perplexity of thought regarding thevalue to be given to life, or in blind faith in the natural sciences andin modern sociology. 

Where every trace of personality was really absent, and its place takenby the pedantic quest for human documents, the description of certainsocial classes and the generic or individual process of certainmaladies, there the work of art was absent. A work of science of more orless superficiality, and without the necessary proofs and control, filled its place. There is no upholder of impersonality but experiencesa feeling of fatigue for a work of the utmost exactitude in thereproduction of reality in its empirical sequence, or of industrious andapathetic combination of images. He asks himself why such a work wasexecuted, and recommends the author to adopt some other profession, since that of artist was not intended for him. 

Thus it is without doubt that if pure intuition (and pure expression, which is the same thing) are indispensable in the work of art, thepersonality of the artist is equally indispensable. If (to quote thecelebrated words in our own way) the _classic_ moment of perfectrepresentation or expression be necessary for the work of art, the_romantic_ moment of feeling is not less necessary. Poetry, or art ingeneral, cannot be exclusively _ingenuous_ or _sentimental_; it must beboth ingenuous and sentimental. And if the first or representativemoment be termed _epic_, and the second, which is sentimental, passionate, and personal, be termed _lyric_, then poetry and art must beat once epic and lyric, or, if it please you better, _dramatic_. We usethese words here, not at all in their empirical and intellectualistsense, as employed to designate special classes of works of art, exclusive of other classes; but in that of elements or moments, whichmust of necessity be found united in every work of art, how diversesoever it may be in other respects. 

Now this irrefutable conclusion seems to constitute exactly thatabove-mentioned apparently serious objection to the doctrine whichdefines art as pure intuition. But if the essence of art be merelytheoretic--and it is _intuibility_--can it, on the other hand, bepractical, that is to say, feeling, personality, and _passionality_? Or, if it be practical, how can it be theoretic? It will be answered thatfeeling is the _content_, intuibility the _form_; but form and contentdo not in philosophy constitute a duality, like water and its recipient;in philosophy content is form, and form is content. Here, on the otherhand, form and content appear to be different from one another; thecontent is of one quality, the form of another. Thus art appears to bethe sum of two qualities, or, as Herbart used to say in his time, of_two values_. Accordingly we have an altogether unmaintainableAesthetic, as is clear from recent largely vulgarized doctrines ofAesthetic as operating with the concept of the _infused personality_. Here we find, on the one hand, things intuible lying dead and soulless;on the other, the artist's feeling and personality. The artist is thensupposed to put himself into things, by an act of magic, to make themlive and palpitate, love and adore. But if we start with the_distinction_, we can never again reach _unity_: the distinctionrequires an intellectual act, and what the intellect has dividedintellect or reason alone, not art or imagination, can reunite andsynthetize. Thus the Aesthetic of infusion or transfusion--when it doesnot fall into the antiquated hedonistic doctrines of agreeable illusion, of games, and generally of what affords a pleasurable emotion; or ofmoral doctrines, where art is a symbol and an allegory of the good andthe true;--is yet not able, despite its airs of modernity and itspsychology, to escape the fate of the doctrine which makes of art asemi-imaginative conception of the world, like religion. The processthat it describes is mythological, not aesthetic; it is a making of godsor of idols. "To make one's gods is an unhappy art, " said an old Italianpoet; but if it be not unhappy, certainly it is not poetic and notaesthetic. The artist does not make the gods, because he has otherthings to do. Another reason is that, to tell the truth, he is soingenuous and so absorbed in the image that attracts him, that he cannotperform that act of abstraction and conception, wherein the image mustbe surpassed and made the allegory of a universal, though it be of thecrudest description. 

This recent theory, then, is of no use. It leads back to thedifficulties arising from the admission of two characteristics of art, _intuibility_ and _lyricism_, not unified. We must recognize, eitherthat the duality must be destroyed and proved illusory, _or_ that wemust proceed to a more ample conception of art, in which that of pureintuibility would remain merely secondary or particular. And to destroyand prove it illusory must consist in showing that here too form iscontent, and that pure intuition is _itself_ lyricism. 

Now, the truth is precisely this: _pure intuition is essentiallylyricism_. All the difficulties concerning this question arise from nothaving thoroughly understood that concept, from having failed topenetrate its true nature and to explore its multiple relations. When weconsider the one attentively, we see the other bursting from its bosom, or better, the one and the other reveal themselves as one and the same, and we escape from the desperate trilemma, of either denying the lyricaland personal character of art, or of asserting that it is adjunctive, external and accidental, or of excogitating a new doctrine of Aesthetic, which we do not know where to find. In fact, as has already beenremarked, what can pure intuition mean, but intuition pure of everyabstraction, of every conceptual element, and, for this reason, neitherscience, history, nor philosophy? This means that the content of thepure intuition cannot be either an abstract concept, or a speculativeconcept or idea, or a conceptualized, that is historicized, representation. Nor can it be a so-called perception, which is arepresentation intellectually, and so historically, discriminated. Butoutside logic in its various forms and blendings, no other psychiccontent remains, save that which is called appetites, tendencies, feelings, and will. These things are all the same and constitute thepractical form of the spirit, in its infinite gradations and in itsdialectic (pleasure and pain). Pure intuition, then, since it does notproduce concepts, must represent the will in its manifestations, that isto say, it can represent nothing but _states of the soul_. And states ofthe soul are passionality, feeling, personality, which are found inevery art and determine its lyrical character. Where this is absent, artis absent, _precisely because pure intuition is absent_, and we have atthe most, in exchange for it, _that reflex_, philosophical, historical, or scientific. In the last of these, passion is represented, notimmediately, but mediately, or, to speak exactly, it is no longerrepresented, but thought. Thus the origin of language, that is, its truenature, has several times been placed in _interjection_. Thus, too, Aristotle, when he wished to give an example of those propositions whichwere not _apophantic_, but generically _semantic_ (we should say, notlogical, but purely Aesthetic), and did not predicate the logically trueand false, but nevertheless said something, gave as example invocationor prayer, _hae enchae_. He added that these propositions do notappertain to Logic, but to Rhetoric and Poetic. A landscape is astate of the soul; a great poem may all be contained in an exclamationof joy, of sorrow, of admiration, or of lament. The more objective is awork of art, by so much the more is it poetically suggestive. 

If this deduction of lyricism from the intimate essence of pureintuition do not appear easily acceptable, the reason is to be sought intwo very deep-rooted prejudices, of which it is useful to indicate herethe genesis. The first concerns the nature of the _imagination_, and itslikenesses to and differences from _fancy_. Imagination and fancy havebeen clearly distinguished thus by certain aestheticians (and amongthem, De Sanctis), as also in discussions relating to concrete art: theyhave held fancy, not imagination, to be the special faculty of the poetand the artist. Not only does a new and bizarre combination of images, which is vulgarly called _invention_, not constitute the artist, but _nefait rien à l'affaire_, as Alceste remarked with reference to the lengthof time expended upon writing a sonnet. Great artists have oftenpreferred to treat groups of images, which had already been many timesused as material for works of art. The novelty of these new works hasbeen solely that of art or form, that is to say, of the new _accent_which they have known how to give to the old material, of the new way inwhich they have _felt_ and therefore _intuified_ it, thus creating _newimages_ upon the old ones. These remarks are all obvious and universallyrecognized as true. But if mere imagination as such has been excludedfrom art, it has not therefore been excluded from the theoretic spirit. Hence the disinclination to admit that a pure intuition must ofnecessity express a state of the soul, whereas it may also consist, asthey believe, of a pure image, without a content of feeling. If we forman arbitrary image of any sort, _stans pede in uno_, say of a bullock'shead on a horse's body, would not this be an intuition, a pureintuition, certainly quite without any content of reflexion? Would onenot attain to a work of art in this way, or at any rate to an artisticmotive? Certainly not. For the image given as an instance, and everyother image that may be produced by the imagination, not only is not apure intuition, but it is not a _theoretic_ product of any sort. It is aproduct of _choice_, as was observed in the formula used by ouropponents; and choice is external to the world of thought andcontemplation. It may be said that imagination is a practical artificeor game, played upon that patrimony of images possessed by the soul;whereas the fancy, the translation of practical into theoretical values, of states of the soul into images, is the _creation_ of that patrimonyitself. 

From this we learn that an image, which is not the expression of a stateof the soul, is not an image, since it is without any theoretical value;and therefore it cannot be an obstacle to the identification of lyricismand intuition. But the other prejudice is more difficult to eradicate, because it is bound up with the metaphysical problem itself, on thevarious solutions of which depend the various solutions of the aestheticproblem, and _vice versa_. If art be intuition, would it therefore beany intuition that one might have of a _physical_ object, appertainingto _external nature_? If I open my eyes and look at the first objectthat they fall upon, a chair or a table, a mountain or a river, shall Ihave performed by so doing an aesthetic act? If so, what becomes of thelyrical character, of which we have asserted the necessity? If not, whatbecomes of the intuitive character, of which we have affirmed the equalnecessity and also its identity with the former? Without doubt, theperception of a physical object, as such, does not constitute anartistic fact; but precisely for the reason that it is not a pureintuition, but a judgment of perception, and implies the application ofan abstract concept, which in this case is physical or belonging toexternal nature. And with this reflexion and perception, we findourselves at once outside the domain of pure intuition. We could have apure perception of a physical object in one way only; that is to say, ifphysical or external nature were a metaphysical reality, a truly realreality, and not, as it is, a construction or abstraction of theintellect. If such were the case, man would have an immediate intuition, in his first theoretical moment, both of himself and of external nature, of the spiritual and of the physical, in an equal degree. Thisrepresents the dualistic hypothesis. But just as dualism is incapable ofproviding a coherent system of philosophy, so is it incapable ofproviding a coherent Aesthetic. If we admit dualism, we must certainlyabandon the doctrine of art as pure intuition; but we must at the sametime abandon all philosophy. But art on its side tacitly protestsagainst metaphysical dualism. It does so, because, being the mostimmediate form of knowledge, it is in contact with activity, not withpassivity; with interiority, not exteriority; with spirit, not withmatter, and never with a double order of reality. Those who affirm theexistence of two forms of intuition--the one external or physical, theother subjective or aesthetic; the one cold and inanimate, the otherwarm and lively; the one imposed from without, the other coming from theinner soul--attain without doubt to the distinctions and oppositions ofthe vulgar (or dualistic) consciousness, but their Aesthetic is vulgar. 

The lyrical essence of pure intuition, and of art, helps to make clearwhat we have already observed concerning the persistence of theintuition and of the fancy in the higher grades of the theoreticalspirit, why philosophy, history, and science have always an artisticside, and why their expression is subject to aesthetic valuation. Theman who ascends from art to thought does not by so doing abandon hisvolitional and practical base, and therefore he too finds himself in aparticular _state of the soul_, the representation of which is intuitiveand lyrical, and accompanies of necessity the development of his ideas. Hence the various styles of thinkers, solemn or jocose, troubled orgladsome, mysterious and involved, or level and expansive. But it wouldnot be correct to divide intuition immediately into two classes, the oneof _aesthetic_, the other of _intellectual_ or _logical_ intuitions, owing to the persistence of the artistic element in logical thought, because the relation of degrees is not the relation of classes, andcopper is copper, whether it be found alone, or in combination asbronze. 

Further, this close connection of feeling and intuition in pureintuition throws much light on the reasons which have so often causedart to be separated from the theoretic and confounded with the practicalactivity. The most celebrated of these confusions are those formulatedabout the relativity of tastes and of the impossibility of reproducing, tasting, and correctly judging the art of the past, and in general theart of others. A life lived, a feeling felt, a volition willed, arecertainly impossible to reproduce, because nothing happens more thanonce, and my situation at the present moment is not that of any otherbeing, nor is it mine of the moment before, nor will be of the moment tofollow. But art remakes ideally, and ideally expresses my momentarysituation. Its image, produced by art, becomes separated from time andspace, and can be again made and again contemplated in its ideal-realityfrom every point of time and space. It belongs not to the _world_, butto the _superworld_; not to the flying moment, but to eternity. Thuslife passes, but art endures. 

Finally, we obtain from this relation between the intuition and thestate of the soul the criterion of exact definition of the _sincerity_required of artists, which is itself also an essential request. It isessential, precisely because it means that the artist must have a stateof the soul to express, which really amounts to saying, that he must bean artist. His must be a state of the soul really experienced, notmerely imagined, because imagination, as we know, is not a work oftruth. But, on the other hand, the demand for sincerity does not gobeyond asking for a state of the soul, and that the state of soulexpressed in the work of art be a desire or an action. It is altogetherindifferent to Aesthetic whether the artist have had only an aspiration, or have realized that aspiration in his empirical life. All that isquite indifferent in the sphere of art. Here we also find theconfutation of that false conception of sincerity, which maintains thatthe artist, in his volitional or practical life, should be at one withhis dream, or with his incubus. Whether or no he have been so, is amatter that interests his biographer, not his critic; it belongs tohistory, which separates and qualifies that which art does notdiscriminate, but represents. 

III

This attitude of indiscrimination and indifference, observed by art inrespect to history and philosophy, is also foreshadowed at that place ofthe _De interpretatione_ (_c_. 4), to which we have already referred, toobtain thence the confirmation of the thesis of the identity of art andlanguage, and another confirmation, that of the identity of lyric andpure intuition. It is a really admirable passage, containing manyprofound truths in a few short, simple words, although, as is natural, without full consciousness of their richness. Aristotle, then, is stilldiscussing the said rhetorical and poetical propositions, semantic andnot apophantic, and he remarks that in them there rules no distinctionbetween true and false: _to alaetheueion hae pseudeothai oukhyparchei_. Art, in fact, is in contact with palpitating reality, butdoes not know that it is so in contact, and therefore is not truly incontact. Art does not allow itself to be troubled with the abstractionsof the intellect, and therefore does not make mistakes; but it does notknow that it does not make mistakes. If art, then (to return to what wesaid at the beginning), be the first and most ingenuous form ofknowledge, it cannot give complete satisfaction to man's need to know, and therefore cannot be the ultimate end of the theoretic spirit. Art isthe dream of the life of knowledge. Its complement is waking, lyricismno longer, but the concept; no longer the dream, but the judgment. Thought could not be without fancy; but thought surpasses and containsin itself the fancy, transforms the image into perception, and gives tothe world of dream the clear distinctions and the firm contours ofreality. Art cannot achieve this; and however great be our love of art, that cannot raise it in rank, any more than the love one may have for abeautiful child can convert it into an adult. We must accept the childas a child, the adult as an adult. 

Therefore, the Aesthetic of pure intuition, while it proclaimsenergetically the autonomy of art and of the aesthetic activity, is atthe same time averse to all _aestheticism_, that is, to every attempt atlowering the life of thought, in order to elevate that of fancy. Theorigin of aestheticism is the same as that of mysticism. Both proceedfrom a rebellion against the predominance of the abstract sciences andagainst the undue abuse of the principle of causation in metaphysic. When we pass from the stuffed animals of the zoological museums, fromanatomical reconstructions, from tables of figures, from classes andsub-classes constituted by means of abstract characters, or from thefixation and mechanization of life for the ends of naturalistic science, to the pages of the poets, to the pictures of the painters, to themelodies of the composers, when in fact we look upon life with the eyeof the artist, we have the impression that we are passing from death tolife, from the abstract to the concrete, from fiction to reality. We areinclined to proclaim that only in art and in aesthetic contemplation istruth, and that science is either charlatanesque pedantry, or a modestpractical expedient. And certainly art has the superiority of its owntruth; simple, small, and elementary though it be, over the abstract, which, as such, is altogether without truth. But in violently rejectingscience and frantically embracing art, that very form of the theoreticspirit is forgotten, by means of which we can criticize science andrecognize the nature of art. Now this theoretic spirit, since itcriticizes science, is not science, and, as reflective consciousness ofart, is not art. Philosophy, the supreme fact of the theoretic world, is forgotten. This error has been renewed in our day, because theconsciousness of the limits of the natural sciences and of the value ofthe truth which belongs to intuition and to art, have been renewed. Butjust as, a century ago, during the idealistic and romantic period, therewere some who reminded the fanatics for art, and the artists who weretransforming philosophy, that art was not "the most lofty form ofapprehending the Absolute"; so, in our day, it is necessary to awakenthe consciousness of Thought. And one of the means for attaining thisend is an exact understanding of the limits of art, that is, theconstruction of a solid Aesthetic. 

THE END