Chapter XIV: Conclusion (3)

It was at this same period that opposition became clearly marked between those accustomed "_à juger par le sentiment_" and those used to "_raisonner par principes_."[29] The Frenchman, Du Bos, author of _Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture_ (1719), upholds the theory of feeling; according to him art is simply a self-abandonment "_aux impressions que les objets étrangers font sur nous,_" setting aside all reflective labour. He laughs at those philosophers who deny the force of imagination, and Malebranche's eloquent discourse founded on this denial draws from Du Bos the remark, "_c'est à notre imagination qu'il parle contre l'abus de l'imagination._" He refuses to see any intellectual nucleus in the productions of the arts, saying that art consists not in instruction but in style: nor is he too respectful towards the probable: he says he finds himself unable to set limits between it and the marvellous, and leaves to "born poets" the task of thus miraculously uniting opposites. For Du Bos there is no criterion of art save feeling, which he calls a "_sixième sens,_" against which dispute is vain since in such matters popular opinion invariably wins the day over the dogmatic pronouncements of artists and men of letters: all the ingenious conceits of the greatest metaphysicians, though unimpeachable in themselves, will not in the slightest degree diminish the lustre of poetry or despoil it of one single attraction. Attempts to discredit Ariosto and Tasso in the eyes of Italians were as vain as those made against the _Cid_ in France. Other people's arguments can never persuade us of the contrary of what we feel.[29] These notions were adopted by many French writers: for example Cartaut de la Villate[30] observes, "_Le grand talent d'un écrivain qui veut plaire, est de tourner ses réflexions en sentiments_;" and Trublet, "_C'est un principe sûr, que la poésie doit être une expression de sentiment._"[30] Nor were the English slow in emphasizing the concept of "emotion" in their theories of literature.

[Sidenote: _Tendency to unite these terms._]

In the writings of this period _imagination_ was often identified with _wit, wit_ with _taste, taste_ with _feeling,_ and _feeling_ with first apprehensions or _imagination_;[31] we have already noted that taste is sometimes critical and sometimes productive: this fusion, identification and subordination of terms apparently distinct shows how they gravitate round one single concept.

[Sidenote: _Difficulties and contradictions in their definition._]

A German critic, one of the very few who have sought to penetrate the darkness surrounding the origins of modern Æsthetic, considers the concept of taste (which we owe, he thinks, to Gracian) "the most important æsthetic doctrine which remained for modern times to discover."[32] But without going so far as to say that taste is the chief doctrine of the science, and the foundation of all the rest, instead of only a particular doctrine, and without recapitulating what we have already said of Gracian's relation to the theory of taste, it is well to repeat that taste, wit, imagination, feeling, and so on, instead of new concepts scientifically grasped, were simply new words corresponding to vague impressions: at most they were problems, not concepts: apprehensions of ground still to be conquered, not yet annexed and brought into subjection. It must not be forgotten that the very men who made use of these terms could scarcely grope after the ideas they suggested without falling back into the old traditions, the only ones on which they had an intellectual grasp. To them the new words were shades, not bodies: when they tried to embrace them their arms returned empty to their own breasts.

[Sidenote: _Wit and intellect._]

Certainly wit differs to a certain extent from intellect. Yet Pellegrini and Tesauro, with other writers of treatises, never fail to point out that intellectual truth lies at the root of wit. Trevisano defines it as "an internal virtue of the soul which invents methods for expressing and executing its own concepts: it is recognizable now in the arrangement of things we invent, now in the clear expression of them: sometimes in cunning reconciliations of matters seemingly opposed, sometimes in tracing analogies but faintly discernible." To sum up, one must not "allow the actions of wit to go unaccompanied by those of intellect," or even by those of practical morality.[33] More ingenuously Muratori says, "Wit is that virtue and active force with which the intellect is able to assemble, unite and discover the similarities, relations and reasons of things."[34] In this manner wit, after having been distinguished from intellect, eventually becomes a part or a manifestation of it. By a somewhat different path the same conclusion is reached by Alexander Pope when he counsels that wit be reined in like a mettlesome horse, and observes:

For wit and judgement often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid like man and wife.[35]

[Sidenote: _Taste and intellectual judgement._]

Similar vicissitudes befell the word "taste," outcome of a metaphor (as was noted by Kant) whose effect was to stand in opposition to intellectualistic principles, as if to say that the judgement governing the choice of food destined solely for the delectation of the palate is of the same nature as that which decides opinions in matters of art.[36] Nevertheless, the very definition of this anti-intellectualistic concept contained a reference to intellect and reason; the implicit comparison with the palate was ultimately taken as signifying an anticipation of reflexion: as Voltaire wrote in the following century: "_De même que la sensation du palais anticipe la réflexion._"[37] Intellect and reason glimmer through all the definitions of taste belonging to this period. Mme. Dacier wrote in 1684, "_Une harmonie, un accord de l'esprit et de la raison._"[38] "_Une raison éclairée qui, d'intelligence avec le cœur, fait toujours un juste choix parmi des choses opposées ou semblables,_" wrote the author of _Entretiens galants._[39] According to another writer quoted by Bonhours, "taste" is "a natural feeling implanted in the soul, independent of any science that can possibly be acquired"; it is practically "an instinct of right reason."[40] The same Bouhours, whilst deprecating this interpretation of one metaphor by another, says, "Taste is more nearly allied to judgement than wit."[41] The Italian Ettori thinks that it may generally be described as "judgement regulated by art,"[42] and Baruffaldi (1710) identifies it with "discernment" reduced from theory to practice.[43] De Crousaz (1715) observes: "_Le bon goût nous fait d'abord estimer par sentiment ce que la raison aurait approuvé, après qu'elle se serait donné le temps de l'examiner assez pour en juger par des justes idées._"[44] And somewhat prior to him Trevisano considered it "a sentiment always willing to conform to whatsoever reason accepts," and in conjunction with divine grace, a powerful help to man in revealing the true and good, no longer able to circulate freely among mankind owing to original sin. For König (1727) in Germany taste was "a power of the intellect, product of a healthy mind and acute judgement which makes one able to feel the true, good and beautiful"; and for Bodmer in 1736 (after lengthy correspondence on the subject with his Italian friend Calepio) "a practised reflexion, prompt and penetrating into the smallest details, by which intellect is able to distinguish the true from the false, the perfect from the imperfect." Calepio and Bodmer were opponents of pure feeling, and made a distinction between "taste" and "good taste."[45] Traversing the same intellectualistic path, Muratori speaks of "good taste" in "erudition" and others of "good taste in philosophy."

[Sidenote: _The "je ne sais quoi."_]

Perhaps those authors were wise who preferred to remain vague and to identify taste with an indefinable Something, a _je ne sais quoi_; a _nescio quid_: a new expression which expressed nothing new, but at least called attention to the problem. Bouhours (1671) discusses it at length: "_Les Italiens, qui font mystère de tout, emploient en toutes rencontres leur_ non so che: _on ne voit rien de plus commune dans leurs poètes,_" and quotes Tasso and others in confirmation.[45] A note upon it is found in Salvini: "This 'good taste' has but recently come to the front; it seems a vague term applicable to nothing particular, and is equivalent to the _non so che,_ to a happy or successful turn of wit."[46] Father Feijóo, who wrote on the _Razón del gusto_ and on _El no se qué_ (1733), says very wisely: "_En muchas producciones no solo de la naturaleza, sino del arte, y aun mas del arte que de la naturaleza, encuentran los hombres, fuera di aquellas perfecciones sujetes á su comprehension racional, otro genero de primor misterioso que, lisonjeando el gusto, atormenta el entendemento. Los sentidos le palpan, pero no le puede dissipar la razon, y así, al querer explicarle, no se encuentran voces ni conceptos que cuadren á su idea, y salimos del paso con decir que hay un non se qué, que agrada, que enamora que hechiza, sin que pueda encontrarse revelacion mas clara da este natural misterio._"[47] And President Montesquieu: "_Il y a quelquefois dans les personnes ou dans les choses un charme invisible, une grâce naturelle, qu'on n'a pu définir, et qu'on a été forcé d'appeler le je ne sais quoi. Il me semble que c'est un effet principalement fondé sur la surprise._"[48] Some writers rebelled against the subterfuge of the _je ne sais quoi,_ saying, rightly enough, that it was a confession of ignorance: but they knew not how to escape that ignorance without falling into confusion between taste and intellectual judgement.

[Sidenote: _Imagination and sensationalism. The corrective of Imagination._]

If the attempt to define "wit" and "taste" usually resulted in intellectualism, it was easy to transform imagination and feeling into sensationalistic doctrines. We have seen how earnestly Pallavicino insisted on the non-intellectuality of the fantasies and inventions of the imagination. "Nothing presents itself to the admirer of the beautiful (he writes) to enable him to verify his cognition and satisfy himself that the object recognized is or is not that for which he takes it; if either by vision or by strong apprehension he is led to think it actually present by an act of judgement, his taste for beauty as beauty does not arise from such act of judgement, but from the vision or lively apprehension which might remain in ourselves even when the deception of belief was corrected"; just as happens when we are drowsy and know ourselves to be but half awake, yet are unwilling to tear ourselves from sweet dreams. For Pallavicino imagination cannot err; he assimilates it wholly to the sensations, which are incapable of truth or falsity. And if imaginative knowledge pleases, it is not because it holds a special truth (imaginative truth), but because it creates objects which "though false are pleasing": the painter makes not likenesses but images which, all resemblance apart, are pleasing to the sight: the poet awakens apprehensions "sumptuous, novel, marvellous, splendid."[49] His opinion coincides, if we mistake not, with Marino's sensationalism: "The poet should aim only at the marvellous ... he who cannot amaze his hearers is not worth a straw":[50] he applauds the oft-repeated dictum of "Gabriel Chiabrera, that Pindar of Savona, that poetry should cause the eyebrows to arch themselves."[51] But in the _Treatise upon Style_ written later (1646) he repents of his youthful achievement and appears willing to return to the pedagogic theory: "And forasmuch as I theorized concerning poetry in the basest manner, treating it solely as a minister of that delight which the mind enjoys in the less noble operation of imagination or apprehension arising from imagination; and, therefore, in consequence I somewhat relaxed the strings which bind it to the probable: I now wish to demonstrate that poetry has other functions more exalted and fruitful, while remaining in strict servitude to the probable: which office is to guide our minds in the noble exercise of judgement; thus it becomes the nurse of philosophy which it nourishes with sweet milk."[52] The Jesuit Ettori, while inculcating the use of imagination and recommending orators to go to school with the "actors," points out that imagination should fulfil the simple office of "interpreter" between intellect and truth, never assuming dominion, otherwise the orator would be treating his audience or readers "not as men, to whom intellect is proper, but as beasts whom imagination satisfies."[53]

The conception of imagination as purely sensuous shows strongly in Muratori, who is so convinced that the faculty, if left to itself, would deteriorate into a riot of dreams and intoxication, that he links it to intellect as to "an authoritative friend" who shall influence the choice and combination of images.[54] The problem of the nature of imagination had strong attraction for Muratori, and, while traducing and vilifying, he returns to it again in his _Della forza della fantasia umana_;[55] describing it as a material faculty essentially different from the mental or spiritual, and denying it the validity of knowledge. Although he had observed that the aim of poetry is distinct from that of science, in that the latter seeks to "know," and the former to "represent" truth,[56] he persisted in counting Poetry as an "art of delectation" subordinate to Moral Philosophy, of whom she was one of the three servants or ministers.[57] Very similarly Gravina held that along with novelty and delight in the marvellous, poetry should endow the mind of the vulgar with "truth and universal cognitions."[58]

Outside Italy the same movement was going on. Bacon, although he assigned poetry to imagination, yet considered it as something intermediary between history and science, approximating epic to history and the most lofty style, the parabolic, to science: ("_poēsis parabolica inter reliquas eminet"._) Elsewhere he calls poetry _somnium_ or declares absolutely that "_scientias fere non parit,_" and that "_pro lusu potius ingenii quam pro scientia est habenda_": music, painting and sculpture are voluptuous arts.[59] Addison identified the pleasures of the imagination with those produced by visible objects or the ideas to which they give rise: such pleasures are not so strong as those of the senses nor so refined as those of the intellect: he groups together the pleasures experienced respectively in comparing imitations with the objects imitated, and in sharpening by this means the faculty of observation.[60]

[Sidenote _Feeling and Sensationalism._]

The sensationalism of Du Bos and other upholders of feeling appears very clearly. For Du Bos art is a pastime whose pleasantness consists in the fact that it occupies the mind without fatigue, and has affinities with the pleasure provoked by gladiatorial contests, bullfights and tourneys.[61]

For these reasons, whilst noting the importance, in the prehistory of Æsthetic, of these new words and the new views they express; and while recognizing their value as a ferment in the discussion of the æsthetic problem, taken up by thinkers of the Renaissance at the point at which it had been left by the ancients; we yet cannot discern in their apparition the true origin of our science. By these words and the discussions they aroused, the æsthetic fact clamoured even louder and more insistently for its own philosophical justification; but this it was not yet to attain either by this means or by any other.

[1] _E.g._ Molière, _Préc. ridic._ sc. i, 10.

[2] _I fonti dell' ingegno ridotti ad arte,_ Bologna, 1650.

[3] _Delle acutezze che altrimenti spiriti, vivezze e concetti volgarmenti si appellano,_ Genova-Bologna, 1639.

[4] _Agudeza y arte de ingenio,_ Madrid, 1642; enlarged, Huesca, 1649.

[5] _Saggio del gusto e delle belle arti,_ 1783, ch. I, _note._

[6] Ital. trans. in Orsi, _Considerazioni,_ etc. (Modena, 1735), vol. i. dial. 1.

[7] _Orl. Furioso_, xxxv. 26; L. Dolce, _Dial. del pittura_ (Venice, 1557); _ad init_.

[8] Borinski, _Poet. d. Renaiss._ p. 308 _seqq._; _B. Gracian_, pp. 39-54.

[9] _Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto_ (Venice, 1766), introd. pp. 72-84.

[10] Gracian, _Obras_ (Antwerp, 1669); _El héroe, El discreto,_ with introd. by A. Farinelli, Madrid, 1900. Cf. Borinski, _Poet. d. Renais, l.c._

[11] _Les Caractères, ou les mœurs du siècle,_ ch. I; _Des ouvrages de l'esprit._

[12] In the programme: _Von der Nachahmung der Franzosen,_ Leipzig, 1687.

[13] _Opera ... nella quale con alcune certe considerazioni si mostra in che consista il vero buon gusto ne' suddetti componimenti,_ etc., etc., Bologna, 1696.

[14] _Delle riflessioni sopra il buon gusto nelle scienze e nell' arti,_ 1708 (Venice, 1766).

[15] Muratori, _Della perfetta poesia italiana,_ Modena, 1706, bk. ii. ch. 5.

[16] Mazzuchelli, _Scrittori d' Italia,_ vol. ii. part iv. p. 2389.

[17] Cicero, _De oratore,_ iii. ch. 50; Quintilian, _Inst. Orator,_ vi. ch. 5.

[18] _De la délicatesse,_ Paris, 1671.

[19] _Il buon gusto,_ ch. 39, p. 367.

[20] _Del bene_ (Naples, 1681), bk. i. part i. chs. 49-53. Cf. the same writer's _Arte della perfezion cristiana,_ Rome, 1665, bk. i. ch. 3.

[21] _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. i. chs. 14, 21.

[22] _Ragion poetica,_ in _Prose italiane,_ ed. De Stefano, Naples, 1839, i. ch. 7. 2 _Il buon gusto,_ p. 10.

[23] _Esame degl' ingegni degl' huomini per apprender le scienze_ (Ital. trans. by C. Camilli, Venice, 1586), chs. 9-12.

[24] _De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum,_ bk. ii. ch. 13.

[25] _De homine_ (in _Opera phil.,_ ed. Molesworth, vol. iii.), ch. 2.

[26] _Spectator,_ Nos. 411-421 (_Works,_ London, 1721, pp. 486-519).

[27] _Die Discourse der Mahlern,_ 1721--1723; _Von dem Einflüss und Gebrauche der Einbildungskraft,_ etc., 1727; and other writings of Bodmer and Breitinger.

[28] Pascal, _Pensées sur l'éloquence et le style,_ § 15.

[29] _Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture,_ 1719 (ed. 7, Paris, 1770) _passim._; see especially sections 1, 23, 26, 28, 33, 34.

[30] Cartaut de la Villate, _Essais historiques et philosophiques sur le goût,_ Aix, 1737; Trublet, _Essais sur divers sujets de littérature et de morale,_ Amsterdam, 1755.

[31] Cf. Du Bos, _op. cit._ § 33.

[32] Borinski, _B. Gracian_, p. 39.

[33] Trevisano, _op. cit._ pp. 82, 84.

[34] _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. ii. ch. I (_ed. cit._ i. p. 299).

[35] A. Pope, _An Essay on Criticism,_ 1709 (in _Poetical Works,_ London, 1827), lines 81, 82.

[36] _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_ (ed. Kirchmann), § 33.

[37] _Essai sur le goût_ (in appendix to A. Gérard, _Essai sur le goût,_ Paris, 1766).

[38] _Ibid._

[39] Quoted in Sulzer, _Allg. Th. d. s. K._ ii. p. 377.

[40] _Manière de bien penser_ (Ital. trans. _cit._), dial. 4. 2 _Ibid._

[41] _Op. cit._ chs. 2-4.

[42] _Osservazioni critiche_ (in vol. ii. of Orsi's _Considerazioni)_, ch. 8, p. 23.

[43] _Traité du beau_ (Amsterdam ed., 1724), i. p. 170.

[44] J. Ulr. König, _Untersuchung von dem guten Geschmack in der Dicht- und Redekunst,_ Leipzig, 1727, and (Calepio-Bodmer) _Briefwechsel von der Natur des poetischen Geschmackes,_ Zürich, 1736; cf. for both Sulzer, ii. p. 380.

[45] _Les Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugène,_ 1671 (Paris ed., 1734), conversation v.; "_Le je ne sçai quoi_"; cf. Gracian, _Oraculo manual,_ No. 127, and _El héroe,_ ch. 13.

[46] In the notes to Muratori's _Perfetta poesia._

[47] Feijóo, _Theatro critico,_ vol. vi. Nos. 11-12.

[48] _Essai sur le goût dans les choses de la nature et de l'art._ Posthumous fragment (in appendix to A. Gérard, _op. cit._).

[49] _Del bene, cap. cit._

[50] Marino, in one of the sonnets in the _Murtoleide_ (1608).

[51] _Del bene,_ bk. i. part i. ch. 8.

[52] _Trattato dello stile_ (Rome, 1666), ch. 30.

[53] _Il buon gusto,_ pp. 12-13.

[54] _Perf. poesia,_ i. ch. 18, pp. 232-233.

[55] Venice, 1745.

[56] _Perf. poesia,_ i. ch. 6.

[57] _Op. cit._ i. ch. 4, p. 42.

[58] _Ragion poetica,_ i. ch. 7.

[59] _De dignitate,_ ii. ch. 13; iii. ch. I; iv. ch. 2; v. ch. 1.

[60] _Spectator, loc. cit._ esp. pp. 487, 503.

[61] _Op. cit._ § 2.

IV

ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE CARTESIAN AND LEIBNITIAN SCHOOLS, AND THE "ÆSTHETIC" OF BAUMGARTEN

[Sidenote: _Cartesianism and imagination._]

The obscure world of wit, taste, imagination, feeling and the _je ne sais quoi_ was not selected for examination or even, so to speak, included in the picture of Cartesian philosophy. The French philosopher abhorred imagination, the outcome, according to him, of the agitation of the animal spirits: and though not utterly condemning poetry, he allowed it to exist only in so far as it was guided by intellect, that being the sole faculty able to save men from the caprices of the _folle du logis._ He tolerated it, but that was all; and went so far as not to deny it anything "_qu'un philosophe lui puisse permettre sans offenser sa conscience._"[1] It has been observed that the æsthetic parallel with Cartesian intellectualism is to be found in Boileau,[2] slave to rigid _raison_ ("_Mais nous que la raison à ses règles engage ..._") and enthusiastic partisan of allegory. We have already had occasion to draw attention to the diatribe of Malebranche against imagination. The mathematical spirit fostered in France by Descartes forbade all possibility of a serious consideration of poetry and art. The Italian Antonio Conti, living in that country and witness of the literary disputes raging around him, thus describes the French critics (La Motte, Fontenelle and their followers): "_Ils ont introduit dans les belles lettres l'esprit et la méthode de M. Descartes; et ils jugent de la poésie et de l'éloquence indépendamment des qualités sensibles. De là vient aussi qu'ils confondent le progrès de la philosophie avec celui des arts. Les modernes, dit l'Abbé Terrasson, sont plus grands géomètres que les anciens: donc ils sont plus grands orateurs et plus grands poètes._"[3] The fight against this mathematical spirit in the matters of art and feeling was still going on in France in the day of the encyclopædists; the din of the battle was heard in Italy, as is shown by the writings of Bettinelli and others. At the time when Du Bos published his daring book there was a counsellor in the parliament of Bordeaux, Jean-Jacques Bel by name, who composed a dissertation (1726) against the doctrine that feeling should be the judge of art.[4]

[Sidenote: _Crousaz and André._]

Cartesianism was incapable of an Æsthetic of imagination. The _Traité du beau_ by the eclectic Cartesian J. P. de Crousaz (1715), maintained the dependence of beauty not upon pleasure or feeling, matters about which there can be no difference of opinion, but upon that which can be _approved_ and therefore reduced to ideas. He enumerates five such ideas: variety, unity, regularity, order and proportion, observing, "_La variété tempérée par l'unité, la régularité, l'ordre et la proportion, ne sont pas assurément des chimères; elles ne sont pas du ressort de la fantaisie, ce n'est pas le caprice qui en décide_": for him, that is to say, they were real qualities of the beautiful founded in nature and truth. He discovered similar characteristics of the beautiful in the individual beauties of the sciences (geometry, algebra, astronomy, physics, history), of virtue, eloquence and religion, finding in each the qualities laid down above.[5] Another Cartesian, the Jesuit André (1742),[6] distinguished between an _essential_ beauty, independent of every institution, human and even divine; a _natural_ beauty, independent of the opinions of mankind; and, lastly, a beauty to a certain extent _arbitrary_ and of human invention: the first composed of regularity, order, proportion and symmetry (here André relied upon Plato and also as an afterthought brought in St. Augustine's definition): the second having its principal measure in the light which generates colours (as a good Cartesian, he took full advantage of Newton's discoveries): the third belonging to fashion and convention, but never at liberty to violate essential beauty. Each of these three forms of beauty was subdivided into _sensible_ beauty pertaining to bodies, and _intelligible_ beauty of soul.

[Sidenote: _The English: Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and the Scottish School._]

Like Descartes in France, Locke in England (1690) is an intellectualist, and recognizes no form of spiritual elaboration save reflexion on the senses. None the less he takes over from contemporary literature the distinction between wit and judgement; according to him the former combines ideas with pleasing variety, discovering their similarities and relations and thus grouping them into beautiful pictures which divert and strike the imagination: the latter (judgement or intellect) seeks dissimilarities, guided by the criterion of truth. "The mind, without looking any further, rests satisfied with the agreeableness of the picture, and the gaiety of the fancy; and it is a kind of an affront to go about to examine it by the severe rules of truth and good reason; whereby it appears that it consists in something that is not perfectly conformable to them."[7] England produced philosophers who developed an abstract and transcendent Æsthetic, but one more tinged with sensationalism than that of the French Cartesians. Shaftesbury (1709) raises taste to a sense or instinct for the beautiful; a sense of order and proportion identical with moral sense and, with its preconceptions or presentations, anticipating the recognition of reason. Bodies, spirits, God are the three degrees of beauty.[8] Lineal descendant of Shaftesbury was Francis Hutcheson (1723), who succeeded in popularizing the idea of an inward sense of beauty as something intermediate between sense and reason, and adapted to distinguish unity in variety, concord in the manifold, the true, the beautiful and the good in their substantial identity. Hutcheson maintains that from this sense springs the pleasure we take in art, in imitation and in the likeness between copy and original: the last a relative, as distinct from an absolute, beauty.[9] This view on the whole predominated in England during the eighteenth century and was adopted by Adam Smith as well as by Reid, head of the Scottish school.

[Sidenote: _Leibniz. Petites perceptions and confused knowledge._]

Much more thoroughly and with much greater philosophical vigour Leibniz opened the door to that crowd of psychic facts from which Cartesianism recoiled in horror. In his conception of the real, governed by the law of continuity (_natura non facit saltus_), presenting an uninterrupted scale of existence from the lowest beings to God, imagination, taste, wit and the like found ample room for shelter. The facts now called æsthetic were identified by Leibniz with Descartes' _confused_ cognition, which might be _clear_ without being _distinct_: scholastic terms borrowed, it would appear, from Duns Scotus, whose works were reprinted and widely read in the seventeenth century.[10]

In his _De cognitione, veritate et ideis_ (1684), after dividing _cognitio_ into _obscura vel clara,_ the _clara_ into _confusa vel distincta,_ and the _distincta_ into _adaequata vel inadaequata,_ Leibniz remarks that while painters and other artists are able to judge works of art very fairly they can give no reason for their decisions, and if questioned as to the reason of their condemnation of any work of art, they reply it lacks a _je ne sais quoi_: ("_at iudicii sui rationem reddere saepe non posse, et quaerenti dicere, se in re, quae displicet, desiderare nescio quid_").[11] They do possess, in fact, clear cognition, but confused and not distinct; what we should call to-day imaginative, not _ratiocinative,_ consciousness: and indeed the latter does not exist in the case of art. There are things impossible to define: "_on ne les fait connaître que par des exemples, et, au reste, il faut dire que c'est un je ne sais quoi, jusqu'à ce qu'on en déchiffre la contexture_."[12] But these _perceptions confuses ou sentiments_ have "_plus grande efficacité que l'on ne pense: ce sont elles qui forment ce je ne sais quoi, ces goûts, ces images des qualités des sens._"[13] Whence it appears plainly that in his discussion of these perceptions Leibniz reposes upon the æsthetic theories we discussed in the preceding chapter; indeed at one point[14] he mentions Bouhours' book.

[Sidenote: _Intellectualism of Leibniz_]

It might seem that by according _claritas_ and denying _distinctio_ to æsthetic facts Leibniz recognized that their peculiar character is neither sensuous nor intellectual. He might seem to have distinguished them by their "_claritas_" from pleasure or sense-motions, and from intellect by their lack of "_distinctio._" But the "_lex continui_" and the Leibnitian intellectualism forbid this interpretation. In this case obscurity and clarity are quantitative degrees of one single consciousness, distinct or intellectual, towards which both converge and with which in the extreme case they unite.

To admit that artists judge with confused perceptions, clear but not distinct, does not involve denying that these perceptions may be capable of being connected and verified by intellectual consciousness. The self-same object that is confusedly though clearly recognized by imagination is recognized clearly and distinctly by the intellect; which amounts to saying that a work of art may be perfected by being determined by thought. In the very terminology adopted by Leibniz, who represents sense and imagination as obscure and confused, there is a tinge of contempt, as well as the suggestion of a single form of all cognition. This will help us to understand Leibniz' definition of music as "_exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi._" Elsewhere he says: "_Le but principal de l'histoire, aussi bien que de la poésie, doit être d'enseigner la prudence et la vertu par des exemples, et puis de montrer le vice d'une manière qui en donne l'aversion et qui porte ou serve à l'éviter._"[15]

The "_claritas_" attributed to æsthetic fact is not specifically different from, but rather a partial anticipation of, the "_distinctio_" of intellect. Undoubtedly this distinction of degree marks a great advance: but careful analysis shows that Leibniz does not differ fundamentally from those who, by inventing the new words and empirical distinctions examined above, called attention to the peculiarities of æsthetic facts.

[Sidenote: _Speculation on language._]

We find the same invincible intellectualism in the speculations on language greatly in vogue at the time. When critics of the Renaissance and sixteenth century tried to rise above merely empirical and practical grammar and strove to reduce grammatical science to a systematic form, they fell into logicism and described grammatical forms by such terms as pleonastic, improper, metaphorical or elliptic. Thus Julius Cæsar Scaliger (1540); thus, too, the most learned of all, Francisco Sanchez (Sanctius or Sanzio), called Brocense, who, in his _Minerva_ (1587), asserts that names are attached to things by reason, exclusive of interjections which are not parts of speech but merely sounds expressive of joy or sorrow; he denies the existence of heterogeneous and heteroclitic words, and works out a system of syntax by means of four figures of construction, proclaiming the principle "_doctrinam supplendi esse valde necessarium,_" that is to say, that grammatical diversities must be explained as ellipsis, abbreviation or omission with reference to the typical logical form.[16] Gaspare Scioppio follows him exactly, abusing the old grammar with his accustomed violence and crying up the "Sanctian" method, at that time still almost unknown, in his _Grammatica philosophica_ (1628).[17] Amongst critics of the seventeenth century, Jacopo Perizonio must not be forgotten; he wrote a commentary on Sanchez' book (1687). Amongst recognized philosophers who studied the philosophy of grammar and noted the merits and defects of various tongues, we find Bacon.[18] In 1660 Claude Lancelot and Arnauld brought out the _Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal,_ a work applying the intellectualism of Descartes rigorously to grammatical forms, and dominated by the doctrine of the artificial nature of language. Locke and Leibniz both speculated about language,[19] but neither succeeded in creating a fresh point of view, although the latter did much to provoke inquiry into the historical origin of languages. All his life Leibniz cherished the notion of a universal language and of an "_ars characteristica universalis_" as a combination likely to result in great scientific discoveries: prior to him, Wilkins had fostered the same hope, nor indeed, in spite of its utter absurdity, is it even yet wholly extinct.

[Sidenote: _C. Wolff._]

In order to correct the æsthetic ideas of Leibniz it was necessary to alter the very foundations of his system, the Cartesianism upon which it rested. This could not be undertaken by disciples of his own personal school, in whom we notice rather an increase of intellectualism. Giving scholastic form to the brilliant observations of the master, Johann Christian Wolff's system began with the theory of knowledge conceived as an "organon" or instrument, followed by systems of natural law, ethics and politics, together constituting the "organon" of practical activity: the remainder was theology and metaphysics, or pneumatology and physics (doctrine of the soul and doctrine of phenomenal nature). Although Wolff distinguishes a productive imagination, ruled by the principle of sufficient reason, from the merely associative and chaotic,[20] yet a science of imagination considered as a new theoretical value could find no niche in his schematism. Knowledge of a lower order, as such, belonged to Pneumatology and was incapable of possessing its own "organon": at most it could be brought under the organon already existing, which corrected and transcended it by means of logical knowledge in the same way in which Ethics treats the "_facilitas appetitiva inferior._" As in France the poetics of Boileau corresponded with the philosophy of Descartes, so in Germany the rationalistic poetics of Gottsched[21] reflect the Cartesian-Leibnitian theories of Wolff (1729).

[Sidenote: _Demand for an organon of inferior knowledge._]

It was no doubt dimly seen that even in the inferior faculties some distinction was operative between perfect and imperfect, value and non-value. A passage in a book (1725) by the Leibnitian Bülffinger has often been quoted where he says: "_Vellem existerent qui circa facultatem sentiendi, imaginandi, attendendi, abstrahendi et memoriam praestarent quod bonus ille Aristoteles, adeo hodie omnibus sordens, praestitit circa intellectum: hoc est ut in artis formant redigerent quicquid ad illas in suo usu dirigendas et iuvandas pertinet et conducid, quem ad modum Aristoteles in Organo logicam sive facultatem demonstrandi redegit in ordinem._"[22] But on reading the extract in its context one recognizes at once that the desired organon would have been merely a series of recipes for strengthening the memory, educating the attention, and so forth: a technique, in a word, not an æsthetic. Similar ideas had been spread in Italy by Trevisano (1708), who, by declaring that the senses might be educated through the mind, asserted the possibility of an _art of feeling_ which should "endow manners with prudence and judgement with good taste."[23] We notice, moreover, that in his day Bülffinger was counted a depreciator of poetry, so much so that a tract against him was written in order to show that "poetry does not diminish the faculty of clear conception."[24] Bodmer and Breitinger were ready "to deduce all the parts of eloquence with mathematical precision" (1727), and the latter sketched a Logic of the Imagination (1740) to which he would have assigned the study of similitudes and metaphors; even had he carried out his project, it is difficult to see how it could have differed materially, from a philosophic point of view, from the treatises on the subject written by the Italian rhetoricians of the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: _Alexander Baumgarten: his "Æsthetic."_]

These discussions and experiments filled the boyhood and helped to form the intellect of young Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten of Berlin, a follower of the philosophy of Wolff and, at the same time, student and teacher of Latin rhetoric and poetry; these studies led him to reconsider the problem and search for some method by which the precepts of rhetoricians could be reduced to a rigorous philosophical system. On taking his doctor's degree in September 1735, when twenty-one years old, he published a thesis _Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poēma pertinentibus_:[25] in which the word "Æsthetic" appears for the first time as name of a special science.[26] Baumgarten always remained much attached to his youthful discovery, and in 1742 when called to teach at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and again in 1749, he gave by request a course of lectures on Æsthetic (_quaedam consilia dirigendarum facultatum inferiorum novam per acroasin exposuit_).[27] In 1750 he printed a voluminous treatise wherein the word "Æsthetic" attained the honours of a title-page;[28] in 1758 he published a more slender second part: illness and finally death in 1762 prevented him from completing the work.

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic as science of sensory consciousness._]

What was Æsthetic to Baumgarten? Its objects are sensible facts (ασθητά), carefully distinguished by the ancients from mental objects (νοητά);[29] hence it becomes _scientia cognitionis sensitivae, theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars analogi rationis_[30] Rhetoric and Poetry constitute two special and interdependent disciplines which are entrusted by Æsthetic with the distinction between the various styles in literature and other small differences,[31] for the laws she herself investigates are diffused throughout all the arts like guiding-stars for these various subsidiary arts (_quasi cynosura quaedam specialium_)[32] and must be extracted not from isolated cases only, or from incomplete induction empirically, but from the totality of facts (_falsa regula peior est quant nulla._)[33] Nor must Æsthetic be confounded with Psychology, which furnishes its presuppositions only; an independent science, it gives the norm of sensitive cognition (_sensitive quid cognoscendi_) and deals with "_perfectio cognitionis sensitivae, qua talis,_" which is beauty (_pulcritudo)_, just as the opposite, imperfection, is ugliness (_deformitas_)[34] From the beauty of sensitive cognition (_pulcritudo cognitionis_) we must exclude the beauty of objects and matter (_pulcritudo obiectorum et materiae_) with which it is often confused owing to habits of language, since it is easy to show that ugly things may be thought of in a beautiful manner and beautiful things in an ugly manner (_quacum ob receptam rei significationem saepe sed male confunditur; possunt turpia pulcre cogitare ut talia, et pulcriora turpiter_).[35] Poetical representations are confused or imaginative: distinctness, that is intellect, is not poetical. The greater the determination, the greater the poetry; individuals "_omnimode determinata_" are highly poetical; poetical also are images or phantasms as well as all that appertains to the senses.[36] That which judges sensible or imaginary presentations is taste, or "_indicium sensuum._" These, in brief, are the truths displayed by Baumgarten in his _Meditationes_ and, with many distinctions and examples, in his _Æsthetic._[37]

[Sidenote: _Cricisism of judgements based on Baumgarten._]

Nearly all German critics[38] are of opinion that from his own conception of Æsthetic as the science of sensitive cognition Baumgarten should have evolved a species of inductive Logic. But he can be cleared of this accusation: a better philosopher, perhaps, than his critics, he held that an inductive Logic must always be intellectual, since it leads to abstractions and the formation of concepts. The relation existing between "_cognitio confusa_" and the poetical and artistic facts which belong to the realm of taste had been shown before his day, by Leibniz: neither he nor Wolff nor any other of their school ever dreamed of transforming a treatment of the "_cognitio confusa_" or "_petites perceptions_" into an inductive Logic. On the other hand, as a kind of compensation, these critics attribute to Baumgarten a merit he cannot claim, at least to the extent implied by their praises. According to them, he effected a revolution by converting[39] Leibniz' differences of degree or quantitative distinctions into a specific difference, and turning confused knowledge into something no longer negative but positive[40] by attributing a "_perfectio_" to sensitive cognition _qua talis_; and by thus destroying the unity of the Leibnitian monad and breaking up the law of continuity, founded the science of Æsthetic. Had he really accomplished such a giant stride, his claim to the title of "father of Æsthetic" would have been placed beyond question. But, in order to win this appellation, Baumgarten ought to have been successful in unravelling all those contradictions in which he was involved no less than Leibniz and all intellectualists. It is not enough to posit a "_perfectio_"; even Leibniz did that when he attributed _claritas_ to confused cognition, which, when devoid of clearness, remains obscure, that is to say, imperfect. It was imperative that this perfection "_qua talis_" should be upheld against the "_lex continui,_" and kept uncontaminated by any intellectualistic admixture. Otherwise he was bound to fall back into the pathless labyrinth of the "probable" which is and is not false, of the wit which is and is not intellect, of the taste which is and is not intellectual judgement, of the imagination and feeling which are and are not sensibility and material pleasure. And in that case, notwithstanding the new name: notwithstanding (as we freely admit) the greater insistence than that of Leibniz upon the sensible nature of poetry, Æsthetic, as a science, would not have been born.

[Sidenote: _Intellectualism of Baumgarten._]

Now Baumgarten overcame none of the obstacles above mentioned. Unprejudiced and continued study of his works forces one to this conclusion. Already in his _Meditationes_ he does not seem able to distinguish clearly between imagination and intellect, confused and distinct cognition. The law of continuity leads him to set up a scale of more and less: amongst cognitions, the obscure are less poetical than the confused; the distinct are not poetical, but even those of the higher kinds (that is the distinct and intellectual) are to a certain extent poetical in proportion as they are lower in their nature; compound concepts are more poetical than simple; those of larger comprehension are "_extensive clariores._"[41] In the _Æsthetic_ Baumgarten expounds his thought more fully and thereby exposes its defects. If the introduction of the book leads one to believe that he sees æsthetic truth to consist in consciousness of the individual, the belief is shattered by the explanations which follow. As a good objectivist he asserts that truth in the metaphysical sense has its counterpart in the soul, namely, subjective truth, logical truth in a wide sense, or æsthetico-logical.[42] And the complete truth lies not in the genus or species, but in the individual. The genus is true, the species more true, the individual most true.[43] Formal logical truth is acquired "_cum iactura,_" by jettisoning much great material perfection: "_quid enim est abstractio, si iactura non est?_"[44] So much being granted, logical truth differs from æsthetic in this: metaphysical or objective truth is presented now to the intellect, when it is logical truth in a narrow sense; now to the analogy of reason and the lower cognitive faculties, when it is æsthetic;[45] a lesser truth in exchange for the greater which man is not always able to attain, thanks to the "_malum metaphysicum._"[46] Thus moral truths are comprehended in one fashion by a comic poet, in another by a moral philosopher; an eclipse is described in one way by an astronomer and in another by a shepherd speaking to his friends or his sweetheart.[47] Universals even are accessible, in part at least, to the inferior faculty.[48] Take the case of two philosophers, a dogmatic and a sceptic, arguing, with an æsthete listening to them. If the arguments of either party are so balanced that the hearer cannot determine which is true and which false, this appearance is to him æsthetic truth: if one adversary succeed in overbearing the other so that one argument is shown clearly to be wrong, the error just revealed is likewise æsthetic[49] falsity. Truths strictly æsthetic are (and this is the decisive point) those which appear neither entirely true nor entirely false: probable truths. "_Talia autem de quibus non complete quidem certi sumus, neque tamen falsitatem aliquam in iisdem appercipimus, sunt verisimilia. Est ergo veritas æsthetica, a potiori dicta verisimilitudo, ille veritatis gradus, qui, etiamsi non evectus sit ad completam certitudinem, tamen nihil contineat falsitatis observabilis._"[50] And especially the immediate sequel: "_Cujus habent spectator es auditor esve intra animum quum vident audiuntve, quasdam anticipationes, quod plerumque fit, quod fieri solet, quod in opinione positum est, quod habet ad haec in se quandam similitudinem, sive id falsum (logice et latissime), sive verum sit (logice et strictissime), quod non sit facile a nostris sensibus abhorrens: hoc illud_ est εἰκός _et verisimile quod, Aristotele et Cicerone assentiente, sectetur æstheticus._"[51] The probable embraces that which is true and certain to the intellect and the senses, that which is certain to the senses but not to the intellect, that which is probable logically and æsthetically, or logically improbable but æsthetically probable, or, finally, æsthetically improbable but on the whole probable or that whose improbability is not evident.[52] So we reach the admission of the impossible and absurd, the _αδύνατον_ and _ἄτοπον_ of Aristotle.

If after reading these paragraphs, highly important as revealing the true thought of Baumgarten, we turn once more to the Introduction to his work, we notice at once his commonplace and erroneous conception of the poetic faculty. To a friend who suggested that there was no need for him to concern himself with confused or inferior consciousness both because "_confusio mater erroris_" and because "_facilitate inferior es, caro, debellandae potius sunt quam excitandae et confirmandae,_" Baumgarten replied that confusion is a condition wherein to find truth: that nature makes no sudden leap from obscurity to clarity: that noonday light is reached from night time through the dawn (_ex node per auroram meridies_): that in the case of the inferior faculties a guide, not a tyrant, is needed (_imperium in facilitates inferiores poscitur, non tyrannis_).[53] This is still the attitude of Leibniz, Trevisano and Bülffinger. Baumgarten is terrified lest he should be accused of treating subjects unworthy a philosopher. "_Quousque tandem_" (says he to himself), "dost thou, professor of theoretic and moral philosophy, dare to praise lies and mixtures of true and false as though they were noble works?"[54] And if there is one thing above all others from which he is anxious to guard himself it is sensualism, unbridled and non-moralized. The sensitive perfection of Cartesianism and Wolffianism was liable to be confused with simple pleasure, with the feeling of the perfection of our organism:[55] but Baumgarten falls into no such confusion. When in 1745 one Quistorp combated his æsthetic theory by saying that if poetry consisted in sensuous perfection it was a thing hurtful to men, Baumgarten answered disdainfully that he did not expect he should ever find time to reply to a critic of such calibre as to mistake his "_oratio perfecta sensitiva_" for an "_oratio perfecte_ (that is _omnino) sensitiva._"[56]

[Sidenote: _New names and old meanings._]

Save in its title and its first definitions Baumgarten's _Æsthetic_ is covered with the mould of antiquity and commonplace. We have seen that he refers back to Aristotle and Cicero for the first principles of his science; in another instance he attaches his Æsthetic to the Rhetoric of antiquity, quoting the truth enunciated by Zeno the Stoic, "_esse duo cogitandi genera, alterum perpetuum et latius, quod Rhetorices sit, alterum concisum et contractius, quod Dialectices,_" and identifying the former with the æsthetic horizon, the latter with the logical.[57] In his _Meditationes_ he rests upon Scaliger and Vossius;[58] of modern writers beside the philosophers (Leibniz, Wolff, Bülffinger) he quotes Gottsched, Arnold,[59] Werenfels, Breitinger[60]; by means of these latter he is able to make acquaintance with discussions upon taste and imagination, even without direct acquaintance with Addison and Du Bos, as well as the Italians, whose writings had immense vogue in Germany in his day, and with whom his resemblances leap to the eye. Baumgarten always feels himself to be in perfect accord with his predecessors; never at variance with them. He never felt himself to be a revolutionary; and though some have been revolutionaries without knowing it, Baumgarten was not one of them. Baumgarten's works are but another presentation of the problem of Æsthetic still clamouring for solution in a voice so much the stronger as it uttered a commonplace: he proclaims a new science and presents it in conventional scholastic form; the babe about to be born receives the name of Æsthetic by premature baptism at his hands: and the name remains. But the new name is devoid of new matter; the philosophical armour covers no muscular body. Our good Baumgarten, full of ardour and conviction, and often curiously brisk and vivacious in his scholastic Latinism, is a most sympathetic and attractive figure in the history of Æsthetic: of the science in formation, that is to say, not of the science brought to completion: of Æsthetic _condenda_ not _condita._

[1] Letters to Balzac and the Princess Elizabeth.

[2] _Art poétique_ (1669-1674).

[3] Letters to Marquis Maffei, about 1720, in _Prose e poesie,_ Venice, 1756, ii. p. cxx.

[4] Sulzer, _op. cit._ i. p. 50.

[5] _Traité du beau_ (2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1724; Paris ed., 1810).

[6] _Essai sur le beau,_ Paris, 1741.

[7] _An Essay concerning Human Understanding_ (French trans. in _Œuvres,_ Paris, 1854), bk. ii. ch. 11, § 2.

[8] _Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,_ 1709-1711.

[9] _Enquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,_ London, 1723.

[10] See above, p. 179.

[11] _Opera philosophica_ (ed. Erdmann), p. 78.

[12] _Ibid,_ preface.

[13] _Nouveaux Essais,_ ii. ch. 22.

[14] _Op. cit._ ii. ch. 11.

[15] _Essais de Théodicée,_ part. ii. § 148.

[16] Francisci Sanctii, _Minerva seu de causis linguæ latinæ commentarius,_ 1587 (ed. with add. by Gaspare Scioppio, Padua, 1663); cf. bk. i. chs. 2, 9, and bk. iv.

[17] Gasperis Sciopii, _Grammatica philosophica,_ Milan, 1628 (Venice, 1728).

[18] _De dignitate,_ etc., bk. vi. ch. i.

[19] Locke, _Essay,_ etc., bk. lii.; Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais,_ bk. iii.

[20] _Psychol. empirica_ (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1738), §§ 138-172.

[21] Joh. Chr. Gottsched, _Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst,_ Leipzig, 1729.

[22] _Dilucidationes philosophicæ de Deo, anima humana et mundo,_ 1725 (Tübingen, 1768), § 268.

[23] Preface to _Rifless. sul gusto, ed. cit._ p. 75.

[24] Borinski, _Poetik d. Renaiss._ p. 380 note.

[25] Halæ Magdeburgicæ, 1735 (reprinted, ed. B. Croce, Naples, 1900).

[26] _Med._ § 116.

[27] _Æsthetica,_ i. pref.

[28] _Æsthetica. Scripsit_ Alex. Gottlieb Baumgarten, _Prof. Philosoph., Traiecti eis Viadrum, Impens. Ioannis Christiani Kleyb,_ 1750; 2nd part, 1758.

[29] _Med._ § 116.

[30] _Æsth._ § i.

[31] _Med.%_ 117.

[32] _Æsth._ § 71.

[33] _Ibid._ § 53.

[34] _Med._ § 115.

[35] _Æsth._ § 14.

[36] _Ibid._ § 18.

[37] _Med._ § 92.

[38] Ritter, _Gesch. d. Philos._ (Fr. trans., _Hist, de la phil. mod._ iii. p. 365); Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Æsth._ p. 168; J. Schmidt, _L. u. B._ p. 48.

[39] Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 218; Meyer, _L. u. B._ pp. 35-38.

[40] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 44.

[41] _Med._ §§ 19, 20, 23.

[42] _Æsth._ § 424.

[43] _Op. cit._ § 441.

[44] _Op. cit._ § 560.

[45] _Æsth._ § 424.

[46] _Op. cit._ § 557.

[47] _Op. cit._ §§ 425, 429.

[48] _Op. cit._ § 443.

[49] _Op. cit._ § 448.

[50] _Op. cit._ § 483.

[51] _Op. cit._ § 484.

[52] _Æsth._ §§ 485, 486.

[53] _Op. cit._ §§ 7, 12.

[54] _Op. cit._ § 478.

[55] Cf. Wolff, Psych, empir. § 511, and the passage there quoted from Descartes; also §§ 542, 550.

[56] Th. Joh. Quistorp, in _Neuen Bücher-Saal,_ 1745, fasc. 5; _Erweis dass die Poesie schon für sie selbst ihre Liebhaber leichtlich unglücklich machen könne_; and A. G. Baumgarten, _Metaphysica,_ 2nd ed., 1748, preface; cf. Danzel, _Gottsched,_ pp. 215, 221.

[57] _Æsth._ § 122.

[58] _Med._ § 9.

[59] _Op. cit._ §§ 111, 113.

[60] _Æsth._ § 11.

V

GIAMBATTISTA VICO

[Sidenote: _Vico as inventor of æsthetic science._]

The real revolutionary who by putting aside the concept of probability and conceiving imagination in a novel manner actually discovered the true nature of poetry and art and, so to speak, invented the science of Æsthetic, was the Italian Giambattista Vico.

Ten years prior to the publication in Germany of Baumgarten's first treatise, there had appeared in Naples (1725) the first _Scienza nuova,_ which developed ideas on the nature of poetry outlined in a former work (1721), _De constantia iurisprudentis,_ outcome of "twenty-five years' continuous and harsh meditation."[1] In 1730 Vico republished it with fresh developments which gave rise to two special books (_Della sapienza poetica_ and _Della discoperta del vero Omero_) in the second _Scienza Nuova._ Nor did he ever tire of repeating his views and forcing them upon the attention of his hostile contemporaries at every opportunity, seizing such occasion even in prefaces and letters, poems on the occasion of weddings or funerals, and in such press notices as fell to his duty as public censor of literature.

And what were these ideas? Neither more nor less, we may say, than the solution of the problem stated by Plato, attacked but not solved by Aristotle, and again vainly attacked during the Renaissance and afterwards: is poetry rational or irrational, spiritual or brutal? and, if spiritual, what is its special nature and what distinguishes it from history and science?

As we know, Plato confined it within the baser part of the soul, the animal spirits. Vico re-elevates it and makes of it a period in the history of humanity: and since history for him means an ideal history whose periods consist not of contingent facts but of forms of the spirit, he makes it a moment in the ideal history of the spirit, a form of consciousness. Poetry precedes intellect, but follows sense; through confusing it with the latter, Plato failed to grasp the position it should really occupy and banished it from his Republic. "Men at first feel without being aware; next they become aware with a perturbed and agitated soul; finally they reflect with an undisturbed mind. This Aphorism is the Principle of poetical sentences which are formed by the sense of passions and affections; differing thereby from philosophical sentences which are formed by reflexion through ratiocination; whence the latter approach more nearly to truth the more they rise towards the universal, while the former have more of certainty the more they approach the individual."[2] An imaginative phase of consciousness, but one possessed of positive value.

[Sidenote: _Poetry and Philosophy: imagination and intellect._]