Chapter IV: Other Particular Doctrines (5)

All these observations are just, and fully confirm the fact that natural beauty is simply a _stimulus_ to æsthetic reproduction, which presupposes previous production. Without the previous æsthetic intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot awaken any at all. As regards natural beauty, man is like the mythical Narcissus at the fountain. Leopardi said that natural beauty is "rare, scattered, and fugitive": it is imperfect, equivocal, variable. Each refers the natural fact to the expression in his mind. One artist is thrown into transports by a smiling landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by the pretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance of an old rascal. Perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and the ugly face of the old rascal are _repulsive_; the second, that the smiling landscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid._ They may dispute for ever; but they will never agree, save when they are supplied with a sufficient dose of æsthetic knowledge to enable them to recognize that both are right. _Artificial_ beauty, created by man, supplies an aid that is far more ductile and efficacious.

[Sidenote: _Mixed beauty._]

In addition to these two classes, æstheticians also sometimes talk in their treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. A mixture of what? Precisely of natural and artificial. Whoever fixes and externalizes, operates with natural data which he does not create but combines and transforms. In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty, as of a special category. But it sometimes happens that combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and include in our design groups of trees or ponds already in place. On other occasions externalization is limited by the impossibility of producing certain effects artificially. Thus we can mix colouring matters, but we cannot create a powerful voice or a face and figure appropriate to this or that character in a play. We must therefore seek them among already existing things, and make use of them when found. When, therefore, we employ a great number of combinations already existing in nature, such as we should not be able to produce artificially if they did not exist, the resulting fact is called _mixed_ beauty.

[Sidenote: _Writings._]

We must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments of reproduction called _writings,_ such as alphabets, musical notes, hieroglyphics, and all pseudolanguages, from the language of flowers and flags to the language of patches (so much in vogue in the society of the eighteenth century). Writings are not physical facts which arouse directly impressions answering to æsthetic expressions; they are simple _indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such physical facts. A series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the movements which we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to emit certain definite sounds. If, through practice, we become able to hear the words without opening our mouths and (what is much more difficult) to hear the sounds by running the eye along the stave, all this does not alter in any way the nature of the writings, which are altogether different from direct physical beauty. No one calls the book which contains the _Divine Comedy,_ or the score which contains _Don Giovanni,_ beautiful in the same sense in which the block of marble which contains Michæl Angelo's _Moses,_ or the piece of coloured wood which contains the _Transfiguration,_ is metaphorically called beautiful. Both serve the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former by a far longer and more indirect route than the latter.

[Sidenote: _Free and non-free beauty._]

Another division of the beautiful, still found in treatises, is that into _free and not free._ By not-free beauties have been understood those objects which have to serve a double purpose, extra-æsthetic and æsthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since it seems that the first purpose sets limits and barriers in the way of the second, the resulting beautiful object has been considered as not-free beauty.

Architectural works are especially cited; and just for this reason, architecture has often been excluded from the number of what are called the fine arts. A temple must above all things be for the use of a cult; a house must contain all the rooms needed for the convenience of life, and they must be arranged with a view to this convenience; a fortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks of given armies and the blows of given instruments of war. It is therefore concluded that the architect's field is restricted: he may _embellish_ to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but he is bound by the _object_ of those edifices, and he can only manifest that part of his vision of beauty which does not impair their extra-æsthetic but fundamental objects.

Other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry. Plates, glasses, knives, guns and combs can be made beautiful; but it is held that their beauty must not be pushed so far as to prevent our eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife, firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. The same is said of the art of typography: a book should be beautiful, but not to the extent of being difficult or impossible to read.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of non-free beauty._]

In respect of all this we must observe in the first place that the extrinsic purpose is not necessarily, precisely because it is such, a limit or impediment to the other purpose of being a stimulus to æsthetic reproduction. It is therefore quite false to maintain that architecture, for example, is by its nature imperfect and not free, since it must also obey other practical purposes; in fact, the mere presence of fine works of architecture is enough to dispel any such illusion.

In the second place, not only are the two purposes not necessarily contradictory, but we must add that the artist always has the means of preventing this contradiction from arising. How? by simply making the _destination_ of the object which serves a practical end enter as material into his æsthetic intuition and externalization. He will not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the instrument of æsthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted to its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express their end. A garment is only beautiful because it is exactly suitable to a given person in given conditions. The sword bound to the side of the warrior Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "so adorned that it may seem a useless ornament, not the free instrument of war," or it was beautiful, if you will, but to the eyes and imagination of the sorceress, who liked to see her lover equipped in that effeminate way. The æsthetic activity can always agree with the practical, because expression is truth.

It cannot however be denied that æsthetic contemplation sometimes hinders practical usage. For instance, it is a quite common experience to find certain new objects seem so well adapted to their purpose, and therefore so beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in maltreating them by passing from their contemplation to their use. It was for this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia showed such repugnance to sending his magnificent grenadiers, so well adapted to war, into the mud and fire of battle, while his less æsthetic son, Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent service.

[Sidenote: _Stimulants of production._]

It might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful as a simple aid to the reproduction of the internally beautiful, or expressions, that the artist creates his expressions by painting or by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and that therefore the physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimes precedes the æsthetically beautiful. This would be a somewhat superficial mode of understanding the procedure of the artist, who never in reality makes a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with his imagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke, not in order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist), but as a kind of experiment and in order to have a point of departure for further meditation and internal concentration. The physical point of departure is not the physically beautiful instrument of reproduction, but a means that may be called _pedagogic,_ like retiring into solitude, or the many other expedients frequently very strange, adopted by artists and scientists, who vary in these according to their various idiosyncrasies. The old æsthetician Baumgarten advised poets seeking inspiration to ride on horseback, to drink wine in moderation, and (provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women.

XIV

ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSICS AND ÆSTHETIC

We must mention a series of fallacious scientific doctrines which have arisen from the failure to understand the purely external relation between the æsthetic fact or artistic vision and the physical fact or instrument which aids in its reproduction, together with brief criticisms of them deduced from what has already been said.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic associationism._]

That form of associationism which identifies the æsthetic fact with the _association_ of two images finds support in such lack of apprehension. By what path has it been possible to arrive at such an error, so repugnant to our æsthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of perfect unity, never of duality? Precisely because the physical and æsthetic facts have been considered separately, as two distinct images, which enter the spirit, the one drawn in by the other, first one and then the other. A picture has been divided into the image of the _picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, into the image of the _words_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the words. But this dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not enter the spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image (the only image, which is the æsthetic fact), in so far as it blindly stimulates the psychic organism and produces the impression which answers to the æsthetic expression already produced.

The efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the field of Æsthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some way the unity which has been destroyed by their principle of association, are highly instructive. Some maintain that the image recalled is unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on the contrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ of the æsthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. But the dilemma is inexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity and give up association. No third way out of the difficulty exists.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic physics._]

From the failure to analyse so-called natural beauty thoroughly and to recognize that it is simply an incident of æsthetic reproduction, and from having looked upon it, on the contrary, as given in nature, is derived all that portion of treatises upon Æsthetic entitled _Beauty of Nature_ or _Æsthetic Physics_; sometimes even subdivided, save the mark, into æsthetic Mineralogy, Botany and Zoology. We do not wish to deny that such treatises contain many just observations, and are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as they represent beautifully the imaginings and fancies or impressions of their authors. But we must affirm it to be scientifically false to ask oneself if the dog be beautiful and the ornithorhynchus ugly, the lily beautiful and the artichoke ugly. Indeed, the error is here double. On the one hand, æsthetic Physics falls back into the equivocation of the theory of artistic and literary kinds, of attempting to attach æsthetic determinations to the abstractions of our intellect; on the other, it fails to recognize, as we said, the true formation of so-called natural beauty, a formation which excludes even the possibility of the question as to whether some given individual animal, flower or man be beautiful or ugly. What is not produced by the æsthetic spirit, or cannot be referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. The æsthetic process arises from the ideal connexions in which natural objects are placed.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the beauty of the human body._]

The double error can be exemplified by the question as to the _Beauty of the human body,_ upon which whole volumes have been written. Here we must before everything turn those who discuss this subject from the abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "What do you mean by the human body, that of the male, the female, or the hermaphrodite?" Let us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct inquiries, as to male and female beauty (there really are writers who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more beautiful); and let us continue: "Masculine or feminine beauty; but of what race of men--the white, the yellow or the black, or any others that may exist, according to the division you prefer?" Let us assume that they limit themselves to the white race, and drive home the argument: "To what sub-species of the white race?" And when we have restricted them gradually to one corner of the white world, going, let us say, from the Italian to the Tuscan, the Siennese, the Porta Camollia quarter, we will proceed: "Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in what condition and stage--that of the newborn babe, of the child, of the boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and of him who is at rest or of him who is at work, or of him who is occupied like Paul Potter's bull, or the Ganymede of Rembrandt?"

Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual _omnimode determinatum,_ or rather at "this man here," pointed out with the finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling what we have said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now ugly, according to the point of view and to what is passing in the soul of the artist. If even the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, and if there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of northern seas; is it really possible that such relativity does not exist for the human body, source of the most varied suggestions?

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the beauty of geometrical figures._]

The question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected with æsthetic Physics. But if by geometrical figures be understood the concepts of geometry (the concepts of the triangle, the square, the cone), these are neither beautiful nor ugly, just because they are concepts. If, on the other hand, by such figures be understood bodies which possess definite geometrical forms, they will be beautiful or ugly, like every natural fact, according to the ideal connexions in which they are placed. Some hold that those geometrical figures are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion of firmness and of power. We do not deny that this may be so. But it must not be denied on the other hand that those also may possess beauty which give the impression of instability and weakness, where they represent just the insecure and the feeble; and that in these last cases the firmness of the straight fine and the lightness of the cone or of the equilateral triangle would seem to be on the contrary elements of ugliness.

Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty of geometry, like others analogous as to the historically beautiful and human beauty, seem less absurd in the Æsthetic of the sympathetic, which really means by the words "æsthetic beauty" the representation of the pleasing. But the claim to determine scientifically what are sympathetic contents and what are irremediably antipathetic is none the less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after laying down those premises. One can only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely long postscript the _Sunt quos_ of the first ode of the first book of Horace, and the _Havvi chi_ of Leopardi's letter to Carlo Pepoli. To each man his beautiful (= sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. Philography is not science.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of another aspect of the imitation of nature._]

The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are called his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers and so on. Let us run over the sketches, studies and notes of artists: Leonardo noted down in his pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper: "Giovannina, weird face, is at St. Catherine's, at the Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione is at the Pietà, he has a fine head; Christ, Giovan Conte, of Cardinal Mortaro's suite." And so on. From this comes the illusion that the artist _imitates nature,_ when it would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. The illusion that _art imitates nature_ has sometimes found ground and support in this illusion, as also in its variant, more easily maintained, which makes of art the _idealizer of nature._ This last theory presents the process out of its true order, which indeed is not merely upset but actually inverted; for the artist does not proceed from external reality, in order to modify it by approximating it to the ideal; he goes from the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, his ideal, and from this passes to the natural fact, which he employs as instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful._]

Another consequence of the confusion between the æsthetic fact and the physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful._ If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact on the contrary, in which it externalizes itself, can easily be divided and subdivided: for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words and so on. The parts thus obtained are not æsthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, arbitrarily divided. If this path were followed and the confusion persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true elementary forms of the beautiful are _atoms._

The æsthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have _bulk,_ could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the imperceptibility of the too small, or the inapprehensibility of the too large. But a greatness determined by perceptibility, not by measurement, implies a concept widely different from the mathematical. Indeed, what is called imperceptible and inapprehensible does not produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the demand for bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the actual presence of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful.

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

Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective conditions of the beautiful,_ it has been asked: To what physical facts does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The persistent fruitlessness of the attempt should have given rise before long to some suspicion of its vanity. In our times, especially, necessity for an _inductive_ Æsthetic has been often proclaimed, of an Æsthetic starting _from below,_ proceeding like natural science and not jumping to its conclusions. Inductive? But Æsthetic has always been both inductive and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a true science. But the word "induction" was not pronounced here by chance. The intention was to imply that the æsthetic fact is really nothing but a physical fact, to be studied by the methods proper to the physical and natural sciences.

With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Æsthetic or Æsthetic _from below_ (what pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It conscientiously began by making a collection of _beautiful things,_ for example, a great number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and asked which of these give the impression of beauty and which of ugliness. As was to be expected, the inductive æstheticians speedily found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect appeared beautiful in another. A coarse yellow envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped paper, which in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an irony, enclosed in a square envelope of English paper. Such considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive æstheticians that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause them to desist from their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they had recourse to an expedient, as to which we should hardly like to say how far it belongs to the strict method of natural science. They sent their envelopes round and opened a _referendum,_ trying to settle in what beauty or ugliness consists by the votes of the majority.

[Sidenote: _The Astrology of Æsthetic._]

We will not waste time over this subject, lest we should seem to be turning ourselves into tellers of comic tales rather than expositors of æsthetic science and of its problems. It is a matter of fact that the inductive æstheticians have not yet discovered _one single law._

He who despairs of doctors is apt to abandon himself to charlatans. This has befallen those who have believed in the naturalistic laws of the beautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that of the proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that is to say, of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the less is to the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_be : ac = ac : ab_). Such canons easily become their superstitions, and they attribute to them the success of their works. Thus Michæl Angelo left as a precept to his disciple Marco del Pino da Siena that "he should always make a pyramidal serpentine figure multiplied by one two and three," a precept which did not enable Marco da Siena to emerge from that mediocrity which we can yet observe in many of his paintings that exist here in Naples. Others took Michæl Angelo's words as authority for the precept that serpentine undulating lines were the true _lines of beauty._ Whole volumes have been composed on these laws of beauty, on the golden section and on the undulating and serpentine lines. These should in our opinion be looked upon as the _astrology of Æsthetic._

XV

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

[Sidenote: _The practical activity of externalization._]

The fact of the production of physical beauty implies, as has already been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowing certain visions, intuitions or representations to be lost. Such a will must be able to act with the utmost rapidity and as it were instinctively, and may also need long and laborious deliberations. In any case, thus and thus only does the practical activity enter into relations with the æsthetic, that is to say, no longer as its simple accompaniment, but as a really distinct moment of it. We cannot will or not will our æsthetic vision: we can however will or not will to externalize it, or rather, to preserve and communicate to others, or not, the externalization produced.

[Sidenote: _The technique of externalization._]

This volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex of various kinds of knowledge. These are known as _technique,_ like all knowledge which precedes a practical activity. Thus we talk of an _artistic technique_ in the same metaphorical and elliptic manner that we talk of the physically beautiful, that is to say (in more precise language), _knowledge at the service of the practical activity directed to producing stimuli to æsthetic reproduction._ In place of employing so lengthy a phrase, we shall here avail ourselves of ordinary terminology, whose meaning we now understand.

The possibility of this technical knowledge, at the service of artistic reproduction, is what has led minds astray to imagine the existence of an æsthetic technique of internal expression, which is tantamount to saying, a doctrine of the _means of internal expression,_ a thing that is altogether inconceivable. And we know well the reason of its inconceivability; expression, considered in itself, is a primary theoretic activity, and as such precedes practice and intellectual knowledge which illumines practice and is independent alike of both. It aids for its part to illumine practice, but is not illuminated by it. Expression does not possess _means,_ because it has not an _end_; it has intuitions of things, but it does not will and is therefore unanalysable into the abstract components of volition, means and end. Sometimes a certain writer is said to have invented a new technique of fiction or of drama, or a painter is said to have discovered a new technique of distributing light. The word is used here at hazard; because the so-called _new technique_ is really _that romance itself, or that new picture_ itself and nothing else. The distribution of light belongs to the vision of the picture itself; as the technique of a dramatist is his dramatic conception itself. On other occasions, the word "technique" is used to designate certain merits or defects in a work that is a failure; and it is euphemistically said that the conception is bad but the technique good, or that the conception is good but the technique bad.

On the other hand, when we talk of the different ways of painting in oils, or of etching, or of sculpturing in alabaster, then the word "technique" is in its place; but in such a case the adjective "artistic" is used metaphorically. And if a dramatic technique in the æsthetic sense be impossible, a theatrical technique of processes of externalization of certain particular æsthetic works is not impossible. When, for instance, women were introduced on the stage in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century, in place of men dressed as women, this was a true and real discovery in theatrical technique; such too was the perfecting in the following century of machines for the rapid changing of scenery by the impresarios of Venice.

The collection of technical knowledge at the service of artists desirous of externalizing their expressions, can be divided into groups, which may be entitled _theories of the arts._ Thus arises a theory of Architecture, comprising mechanical laws, information relating to the weight or resistance of the materials of construction or of fortification, manuals relating to the method of mixing lime or stucco; a theory of Sculpture, containing advice as to the instruments to be used for sculpturing the various sorts of stone, for obtaining a successful mixture of bronze, for working with the chisel, for the accurate casting of the clay or plaster model, for keeping clay damp; a theory of Painting, on the various techniques of tempera, of oil-painting, of water-colour, of pastel, on the proportions of the human body, on the laws of perspective; a theory of Oratory, with precepts as to the method of producing, of exercising and of strengthening the voice, of attitude in impersonation and gesture; a theory of Music, on the combinations and fusions of tones and sounds; and so on. Such collections of precepts abound in all literatures. And since it is impossible to say what is useful and what useless to know, books of this sort become very often a sort of encyclopædias or _catalogues of desiderata._ Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture, claims for the architect a knowledge of letters, of drawing, of geometry, of arithmetic, of optic, of history, of natural and moral philosophy, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of astrology, of music, and so on. Everything is worth knowing: learn the art and have done with it.

[Sidenote: _Technical theories of the different arts._]

It should be evident that such empirical collections are not reducible to science. They are composed of notions, taken from various sciences and disciplines, and their philosophical and scientific principles are to be found in the latter. To propose to construct a scientific theory of the different arts would be to wish to reduce to the single and homogeneous what is by nature multiple and heterogeneous; to wish to destroy the existence as a collection of what was put together precisely to form a collection. Were we to try to give scientific form to the manuals of the architect, the painter, or the musician, it is clear that nothing would remain in our hands but the general principles of Mechanics, Optics, or Acoustics. And if we were to extract and isolate what may be scattered among them of properly artistic observations, to make of them a scientific system, then the sphere of the individual art would be abandoned and that of Æsthetic entered, for Æsthetic is always general Æsthetic, or rather it cannot be divided into general and special. This last case (that is, the attempt to furnish a technique which ends in composing an Æsthetic) arises when men possessing strong scientific instincts and a natural tendency to philosophy set themselves to work to produce such theories and technical manuals.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic theories of particular arts_.]

But the confusion between Physics and Æsthetic has attained to its highest degree, when æsthetic theories of particular arts are imagined, to answer such questions as: What are the _limits_ of each art? What can be represented with colours, and what with sounds? What with simple monochromatic lines and what with touches of various colours? What with tones, and what with metres and rhythms? What are the limits between the figurative and the auditive arts, between painting and sculpture, poetry and music?

This, translated into scientific language, is tantamount to asking: What is the connexion between Acoustics and æsthetic expression? What between the latter and Optics?--and the like. Now, if _there is no passage_ from the physical fact to the æsthetic, how could there be from the æsthetic to particular groups of physical facts, such as the phenomena of Optics or of Acoustics?

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the classification of the arts._]

The so-called _arts_ have no æsthetic limits, because, in order to have them, they would need to have also æsthetic existence in their particularity; and we have demonstrated the altogether empirical genesis of those partitions. Consequently, any attempt at an æsthetic classification of the arts is absurd. If they be without limits, they are not exactly determinable, and consequently cannot be philosophically classified. All the books dealing with classifications and systems of the arts could be burned without any loss whatever. (We say this with the utmost respect to the writers who have expended their labours upon them.)

The impossibility of such systematizations finds something like a proof in the strange attempts made to carry it out. The first and most common partition is that into arts of _hearing, sight,_ and _imagination_; as if eyes, ears, and imagination were on the same level and could be deduced from the same logical variable as _fundamentum divisionis._ Others have proposed the division into arts of _space_ and arts of _time,_ arts of _rest_; and _movement_; as if the concepts of space, time, rest and motion could determine special æsthetic forms and possess anything in common with art as such. Finally, others have amused themselves by dividing them into _classic_ and _romantic,_ or into _oriental, classic,_ and _romantic,_ thereby conferring the value of scientific concepts upon simple historical denominations, or falling into those rhetorical partitions of expressive forms, already criticized above; or into arts _that can only be seen from one side,_ like painting, and arts _that can be seen from all sides,_ like sculpture--and similar extravagances, which hold good neither in heaven nor on earth.

The theory of the limits of the arts was perhaps at the time when it was put forward a beneficial critical reaction against those who believed in the possibility of remodelling one expression into another, as the _Iliad_ or _Paradise Lost_ into a series of paintings, and indeed held a poem to be of greater or lesser value according as it could or could not be translated into pictures by a painter. But if the rebellion were reasonable and resulted in victory, this does not mean that the arguments employed and the systems constructed for the purpose were sound.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the union of the arts._]

Another theory which is a corollary to that of the arts and their limits, falls with them; that of the _union of the arts._ Given particular arts, distinct and limited, it was asked: Which is the most _powerful_? Do we not obtain _more powerful_ effects by _uniting_ several? We know nothing of this: we know only that in each particular case certain given artistic intuitions have need of definite physical means for their reproduction and other artistic intuitions of other means. We can obtain the effect of certain plays by simply reading them; others need declamation and scenic display: there are some artistic intuitions which need for their full externalization words, song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors; while others are quite complete in a slight outline made with the pen, or a few strokes of the pencil. But it is false to suppose that declamation and scenic effects and all the other things together that we have mentioned are _more powerful_ than a simple reading or a simple outline of pen or pencil; because each of those facts or groups of facts has, so to say, a different purpose, and the power of the means cannot be compared when the purposes are different.

[Sidenote: _Relation of the activity of externalization to utility and morality._]

Finally, it is only from the point of view of a clear and rigorous distinction between the true and proper æsthetic activity and the practical activity of externalization that we can solve the complicated and confused questions as to the relations between _art and utility_ and _art and morality._

We have demonstrated above that art as art is independent both of utility and of morality, as also of all practical value. Without this independence, it would not be possible to speak of an intrinsic value of art, nor indeed to conceive an æsthetic science, which demands the autonomy of the æsthetic fact as its necessary condition.

But it would be erroneous to maintain that this independence of the vision or intuition or _internal expression_ of the artist should be simply extended to the practical activity of externalization and communication which may or may not follow the æsthetic fact. If by art be understood the externalization of art, then utility and morality have a perfect right to enter into it; that is to say, the right to be master in one's own house.

Indeed we do not externalize and fix all the many expressions and intuitions which we form in our spirit; we do not declare our every thought in a loud voice, or write it down, or print, or draw, or paint, or expose it to the public. We _select_ from the crowd of intuitions which are formed or at least sketched within us; and the selection is ruled by the criteria of the economic disposition of life and of its moral direction. Therefore, when we have fixed an intuition, we have still to decide whether or no we should communicate it to others, and to whom, and when, and how; all which deliberations come equally under the utilitarian and ethical criterion.

Thus we find the concepts of _selection,_ of the _interesting,_ of _morality,_ of an _educational end,_ of _popularity,_ etc., to some extent justified, although these can in no way be justified when imposed upon art as art, and we have ourselves rejected them in pure Æsthetic. Error always contains an element of truth. He who formulated those erroneous æsthetic propositions in reality had his eye on practical facts, which attach themselves externally to the æsthetic fact and belong to economic and moral fife.

It is well to advocate yet greater freedom in making known the means of æsthetic reproduction; we are of the same opinion, and leave projects for legislation and for legal action against immoral art, to hypocrites, to the ingenuous and to wasters of time. But the proclamation of this freedom, and the fixing of its limits, how wide soever they be, is always the task of morality. And it would in any case be out of place to invoke that highest principle, that _fundamentum æsthetices,_ which is the independence of art, to deduce from it the guiltlessness of the artist who calculates like an immoral speculator upon the unhealthy tastes of his readers in the externalization of his imaginings, or the freedom of hawkers to sell obscene statuettes in the public squares. This last case is the affair of the police, as the first must be brought before the tribunal of the moral consciousness. The æsthetic judgement on the work of art has nothing to do with the morality of the artist as a practical man, or with the provisions to be taken that the things of art may not be diverted to evil ends alien to her nature, which is pure theoretic contemplation.

XVI

TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic judgement. Its identity with æsthetic reproduction._]

When the entire æsthetic and externalizing process has been completed, when a beautiful expression has been produced and it has been fixed in a definite physical material, what is meant by _judging ill To reproduce it in oneself,_ answer the critics of art, almost with one voice. Very good. Let us try thoroughly to understand this fact, and with that object in view, let us represent it schematically.

The individual A is seeking the expression of an impression which he feels or anticipates, but has not yet expressed. See him trying various words and phrases which may give the sought-for expression, that expression which must exist, but which he does not possess. He tries the combination _m,_ but rejects it as unsuitable, inexpressive, incomplete, ugly: he tries the combination _n,_ with a like result. _He does not see at all, or does not see clearly._ The expression still eludes him. After other vain attempts, during which he sometimes approaches, sometimes retreats from the mark at which he aims, all of a sudden (almost as though formed spontaneously of itself) he forms the sought-for expression, and _lux facta est._ He enjoys for an instant æsthetic pleasure or the pleasure of the beautiful. The ugly, with its correlative displeasure, was the æsthetic activity which had not succeeded in conquering the obstacle; the beautiful is the expressive activity which now displays itself triumphant.

We have taken this example from the domain of speech, as being nearer and more accessible, and because we all talk, though we do not all draw or paint. Now if another individual, whom we shall call B, is to judge that expression and decide whether it be beautiful or ugly, he _must of necessity place himself at A's point of view,_ and go through the whole process again, with the help of the physical sign supplied to him by A. If A has seen clearly, then B (who has placed himself at A's point of view) will also see clearly and will see this expression as beautiful. If A has not seen clearly, then B also will not see clearly, and will find the expression more or less ugly, _just as A did._

[Sidenote: _Impossibility of divergences._]

It may be observed that we have not taken into consideration two other cases: that of A having a clear and B an obscure vision; and that of A having an obscure and B a clear vision. Strictly speaking, these two cases are _impossible._

Expressive activity, just because it is activity, is not caprice, but spiritual necessity; it cannot solve a definite æsthetic problem save in one way, which is the right way. It will be objected to this plain statement that works which seem beautiful to the artists are afterwards found to be ugly by the critics; while other works with which the artists were discontented and held to be imperfect or failures are, on the contrary, held to be beautiful and perfect by the critics. But in this case, one of the two is wrong: either the critics or the artists, sometimes the artists, at other times the critics. Indeed, the producer of an expression does not always fully realize what is happening in his soul. Haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, make people say, and others sometimes almost believe, that works of ours are beautiful, which, if we really looked into ourselves, we should see to be ugly, as they are in reality. Thus poor Don Quixote, when he had reattached to his helmet as well as he could the vizor of cardboard--the vizor that had showed itself to possess but the feeblest force of resistance at the first encounter,--took good care not to test it again with a well-delivered sword-thrust, but simply declared and maintained it to be (says the author) _por celada finisima de encaxe._ And in other cases, the same reasons, or opposite but analogous ones, trouble the consciousness of the artist, and cause him to value badly what he has successfully produced, or to strive to undo! and do again for the worse what he has done well in artistic spontaneity. An instance of this is Tasso and his passage from the _Gerusalemme liberata_ to the _Gerusalemme conquistata._ In the same way, haste, laziness, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, personal sympathies or animosities, and other motives of a similar sort, sometimes cause the critics to proclaim ugly what is beautiful, and beautiful what is ugly. Were they to eliminate such disturbing elements, they would feel the work of art as it really is, and would not leave it to posterity, that more diligent and more dispassionate judge, to award the palm, or to do that justice which they have refused.

[Sidenote: _Identity of taste and genius._]

It is clear from the preceding theorem that the activity of judgement which criticizes and recognizes the beautiful is identical with what produces it. The only difference lies in the diversity of circumstances, since in the one case it is a question of æsthetic production, in the other of reproduction. The activity which judges is called _taste_; the productive activity is called _genius_: genius and taste are therefore substantially _identical._

The common remark that the critic should possess something of the genius of the artist and that the artist should possess taste, gives a glimpse of this identity; or the remark that there exists an active (productive) and a passive (reproductive) taste. But it is also negated in other equally common remarks, as when people speak of taste without genius, or of genius without taste. These last observations are meaningless, unless they allude to quantitative or psychological differences, those being called geniuses without taste who produce works of art, inspired in their chief parts and neglected or defective in their secondary parts, and men of taste without genius, those who, while they succeed in obtaining certain isolated or secondary merits, do not possess sufficient power for a great artistic synthesis. Analogous explanations can easily be given of other similar expressions. But to posit a substantial difference between genius and taste, between artistic production and reproduction, would render both communication and judgement alike inconceivable. How could we judge what remained external to us? How could that which is produced by a given activity be judged by a _different_ activity? The critic may be a small genius, the artist a great one; the former may have the strength of ten, the latter of a hundred; the former, in order to reach a certain height, will have need of the assistance of the other; but the nature of both must remain the same. To judge Dante, we must raise ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we are not Dante, nor Dante we; but in that moment of contemplation and judgement, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one thing. In this identity alone resides the possibility that our little souls can echo great souls, and grow great with them in the universality of the spirit.

[Sidenote: _Analogy with other activities._]

Let us remark in passing that what has been said of the æsthetic judgement holds good equally for every other activity and for every other judgement; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism is effected in a like manner. To limit ourselves to this last, only if we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he found himself who took a given resolution, can we form a judgement as to whether his decision were moral or immoral. An action would otherwise remain incomprehensible and therefore impossible to judge. A homicide may be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent as regards the defence of society, which condemns both to the same punishment, it is not indifferent to one who wishes to distinguish and judge from the moral point of view, and we therefore cannot dispense with reconstructing the individual psychology of the homicide, in order to determine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its legal, but also in its moral aspect. In Ethics, a moral taste or tact is sometimes mentioned, answering to what is generally called the moral consciousness, that is to say, to the activity of the good will itself.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic absolutism (intellectualism) and relativism._]

The explanation above given of æsthetic judgement or reproduction both agrees with and condemns the absolutists and relativists, those who affirm and those who deny the absoluteness of taste.

In affirming that the beautiful can be judged, the absolutists are right; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is not tenable, because they conceive of the beautiful, that is, æsthetic value, as something placed outside the æsthetic activity, as a concept or a model which an artist realizes in his work, and of which the critic avails himself afterwards in judging the work itself. These concepts and models have no existence in art, for when proclaiming that every art can be judged only in itself and that it has its model in itself, they implicitly denied the existence of objective models of beauty, whether these are intellectual concepts, or ideas suspended in a metaphysical heaven.

In proclaiming this, their-adversaries, the relativists, are perfectly right, and effect an advance upon them. However, the initial rationality of their thesis in its turn becomes converted into a false theory. Repeating the ancient adage that there is no accounting for tastes, they believe that æsthetic expression is of the same nature as the pleasant and the unpleasant, which every one feels in his own way, and about which there is no dispute. But we know that the pleasant and the unpleasant are utilitarian, practical facts. Thus the relativists deny the specific character of the æsthetic fact, and again confound expression with impression, the theoretic with the practical.

The true solution lies in rejecting alike relativism or psychologism and false absolutism; and in recognizing that the criterion of taste is absolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect, which expresses itself in ratiocination. The criterion of taste is absolute, with the intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. Thus any act of expressive activity, which is so really, is to be recognized as beautiful, and any fact as ugly in which expressive activity and passivity are found engaged with one another in an unfinished struggle.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of relative relativism._]

Between absolutists and relativists is a third class, which may be called that of the relative relativists. These affirm the existence of absolute values in other fields, such as Logic and Ethic, but deny it in the field of Æsthetic. To dispute about science or morals seems to them to be rational and justifiable, because science depends upon the universal, common to all men, and morality upon duty, which is also a law of human nature; but how dispute about art, which depends upon imagination? Not only, however, is the imaginative activity universal and no less inherent in human nature than the logical concept and practical duty; but there is a preliminary objection to the thesis in question. If the absoluteness of the imagination be denied, we must also deny intellectual or conceptual truth and implicitly morality. Does not morality presuppose logical distinctions? How could these be known, otherwise than in expressions and words, that is to say, in imaginative form? If the absoluteness of the imagination were removed, the life of the spirit would tremble to its foundations. One individual would no longer understand another, nor indeed his own self of a moment before, which is already another individual considered a moment after.

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

Nevertheless, variety of judgements is an indubitable fact. Men disagree as to logical, ethical, and economical valuations; and they disagree equally or even more as to the æsthetic. If certain reasons recorded by us above, such as haste, prejudices, passions, etc., may lessen the importance of this disagreement, they do not on that account annul it. When speaking of the stimuli of reproduction we have added a caution, for we said that reproduction takes place, _if all the other conditions remain equal._ Do they remain equal? Does the hypothesis correspond to reality?

It would appear not. In order to reproduce an impression several times by means of a suitable physical stimulus it is necessary that this stimulus be not changed, and that the organism remain in the same psychical conditions as those in which was experienced the impression that it is desired to reproduce. Now it is a fact that the physical stimulus is continually changing, and in like manner the psychological conditions.

Oil-paintings grow dark, frescoes fade, statues lose noses, hands and legs, architecture becomes totally or partially a ruin, the tradition of the execution of a piece of music is lost, the text of a poem is corrupted by bad copyists or bad printing. These are obvious instances of I the changes which daily occur in objects or physical stimuli. As regards psychological conditions, we will not dwell upon the cases of deafness or blindness, that is to say, upon the loss of entire orders of psychical impressions; these cases are secondary and of less importance compared with the fundamental, daily, inevitable and perpetual changes of the society around us and of the internal conditions of our individual life. The phonetic manifestations or words and verses of Dante's _Commedia_ must produce a very different impression on an Italian citizen engaged in the politics of the third Rome, from that experienced by a well-informed and intimate contemporary of the poet. The Madonna of Cimabue is still in the Church of Santa Maria Novella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as to the Florentines of the thirteenth century? Even though she were not also darkened by time, must we not suppose that the impression which she now produces is altogether different from that of former times? And even in the case of the same individual poet, will a poem composed by him in youth make the same impression upon him when he re-reads it in his old age, with psychic conditions altogether changed?

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the distinction of signs into natural and conventional._]