Chapter XVI: Conclusion (5)

Karl Heinrich Heydenreich returns to a sounder tradition when he defines art (1790) as "a representation of a determinate state of sensibility," and observes that man, as a cognitive being, is impelled to enlarge the sphere of his cognitions and impart his discoveries to his fellows, while as a sensitive being he is impelled to represent and communicate his sensations; whence arise science and art. But Heydenreich does not clearly grasp the cognitive character of art; for in his opinion sensations become objects of artistic representation either because they are pleasing or, when not pleasing, because they are useful to further the moral aims of man as a social being; the objects of sensibility which enter into art must be possessed of intrinsic excellence and value and bear reference not to a single individual but to the individual as a rational being: hence the objectivity and necessity of taste. Like Baumgarten and Meier, he divides Æsthetic into three parts: a doctrine of _inventio,_ another of _methodica,_ a third of the _ars significandi_.[56]

[Sidenote: J. G. Herder.]

Another disciple of Baumgarten is J. G. Herder, who had an unbounded admiration for the old Berlin master, whom he calls "the Aristotle of his day," and defends him warmly against those who think fit to describe him as a "stupid and obtuse syllogizer" (1769). On the other hand he had slight esteem for subsequent Æsthetic, for example Meier's work, which he stigmatized accurately enough as "in part a re-mastication of Logic, in part a patchwork of metaphorical terms, comparisons and examples." "O Æsthetic!" he cries with emphasis, "O Æsthetic! the most fertile, the most beautiful and by far the most novel of all abstract sciences, in what cavern of the Muses is sleeping the youth of my philosophic nation destined to bring thee to perfection?"[57] He denied Baumgarten's claim to have established an _Ars pulchre cogitandi_ instead of limiting himself to a simple _Scientia de pulchro et pulchris philosophice cogitans,_ and ridiculed the scruple which held Æsthetic to be unworthy of the dignity of Philosophy.[58] To compensate for this, however, he accepted the fundamental definition cf poetry as _oratio sensitiva perfecta_: gem of definitions (says he), the best that has ever been invented, that penetrates to the heart of the matter, touches the true poetic principles and opens the most extended view over the entire philosophy of the beautiful, "coupling poetry with her sisters, the fine arts."[59] Like Cesarotti the Italian, but with much less vivacity and brilliance, Herder the German had studied primitive poetry, Ossian and the songs of ancient peoples, Shakespeare (1773), popular love-songs (1778), the spirit of Hebrew poetry (1782), and oriental poetry; these studies powerfully impressed upon his mind the sensitive nature of poetry. His friend Hamann (1762) had written these memorable words, which read like an extract from one of Vico's aphorisms: "Poetry is the mother-tongue of mankind: in the same way that the garden is older than the ploughed field, painting than writing, song than declamation, barter than trade. The repose of our most ancient progenitors was a slumber deeper than ours; their motion a tumultuous dance. They spent seven days in the silence of thought or of stupor; and opened their mouths to pronounce winged words. Their speech was sensation and passion, and they understood nothing but images. Of images is composed all the treasure of human knowledge and felicity."[60] Although Herder, who knew and admired Vico,[61] does not mention him by name when treating of language and poetry, one might suppose him to be influenced by the great Neapolitan at least in the final consolidation of his theories; but, on the contrary, the authors whom he chiefly quotes in this connexion are Du Bos, Goguet and Condillac, and observes "the first beginnings of human speech in tone, gesture, expression of sensations and thoughts by means of images and signs, can only have been a kind of crude poetry, and so it is among every savage nation in the world." Not a speech with punctuation and a sense of syllable, like ours, learning as we do to read and write, but an unsyllabled melody which gave birth to the primitive epic. "Natural man depicts what he sees and as he sees it, alive, powerful, monstrous; in order or disorder, as he sees and hears, so he reproduces. Not alone did barbarous tongues thus arrange their images, but Greek and Latin do the same. As the senses offered material, so the poets utilized it; especially in Homer we see how closely nature is followed in images which glow and fade perpetually and inimitably. He describes things and events line by line, scene by scene; and, in the same way, he paints men in their very bodies, actually as they speak and move." Later we distinguish epic from what we call history; because the former "not only describes what has happened but describes the event in its entirety, showing how it occurred in the only possible way, having regard to surrounding circumstance of body and spirit": this is the reason of the more philosophical character of poetry. As for pleasure, no doubt we do find poetry pleasant; but the idea that the poet's motive is merely to excite pleasure cannot be condemned too strongly. "Homer's gods were as essential and indispensable to the poet's world as the forces of motion are to the world of matter. Without the deliberations and activities of Olympus, none of the necessary events which happen on this earth could take place. Homer's magic island in the western sea belongs to the map of his hero's wanderings by the same necessity which placed it on the map of the world: it was necessary to the plan of his poem. It is the same with the severe Dante and his circles of Hell and Heaven." Art is formative: she disciplines, orders and governs the imagination and every faculty of man: not only did she generate history, "but, earlier yet, she created gods and heroes and purified the uncouth imaginations and fables of peoples with their Titans, monsters and Gorgons, reducing to limit and law the riotous imagination of ignorant men which knows no bounds or rule."[62]

Notwithstanding these intuitions, so like those of Vico early in the same century, Herder as a philosopher is inferior to his Italian predecessor, and in point of fact does not rise superior to Baumgarten. By application of Leibniz' law of continuity, he too arrived at the opinion that the pleasing, the true, the beautiful and the good are degrees of one single activity. For instance, sensible pleasure" is a participation in the true and the good, so far as the senses may comprehend them; the feeling of pleasure and pain is no other than the feeling of the true and the good, that is to say, the consciousness that the aim of our organism, the conservation of our well-being and the avoidance of our hurt, has been attained."[63] Fine arts and letters are all instructive (_bildend_): hence the terms _humaniora,_ the Greek _καλόν,_ the Latin _pulchrum,_ the _gentle_ arts of days of chivalry, _les belles lettres et les beaux arts_ of the French. A group of them (gymnastic, dance, etc.) educates the body; a second group (painting, plastic, music) educates the nobler senses of man, the eye, the ear, the hand and tongue; a third (poetry) touches the intellect, the imagination and the reason: a fourth group governs human tendencies and inclinations.[64] Herder disapproved of the facile theorists of art who began straight away with a definition of beauty, a complex and involved concept. He held that the theory of fine arts should be subdivided into three theories, each to be built up from the foundations, the theory of sight, of hearing and of touch, that is to say of painting, music and sculpture, _i.e._ into æsthetical Optics, æsthetical Acoustics and æsthetical Physiology. "Fairly well elaborated in the psychological and subjective aspects, Æsthetic is sadly undeveloped in all that belongs to the object and to the sensation of beauty, without which there can never be a fertile theory of the Beautiful capable of influencing all the arts."[65] Taste is not "a fundamental faculty of the soul but a habitual application of our judgement (intellectual judgement) to objects of beauty"; an acquired facility of the intellect (of which Herder outlines the genesis).[66] The poet is poet not only in his imagination but in his intellect. In 1782 he writes: "The barbarous name Æsthetic of recent invention indicates nothing beyond a section of Logic: that which we call taste is neither more nor less than a quick and rapid judgement which does not exclude truth and profundity, but rather presupposes and promotes them. All didactic poetry is nothing more than philosophy rendered sensible: the fable as exposition of a general doctrine is truth in act, in activity.... When expounded and applied to human affairs, Philosophy is not only a fine art in herself (_schöne Wissenschaft,_) but the mother of Beauty: it is only through her that Rhetoric and Poetry can ever be educational, useful, or in the truest sense pleasant."[67]

[Sidenote: _Philosophy of language._]

Herder and Hamann deserve our gratitude for having brought a current of fresh air into the study of the philosophy of language. The lead given by the Port-Royal authors had been followed since the beginning of the century by many writers of logical or general grammars. According to the French Encyclopædia, "_La grammaire générale est la science raisonnée des principes immuables et généraux de la parole prononcée ou écrite dans toutes les langues_,"[68] and d'Alembert spoke of grammarians of invention and grammarians of memory, assigning to the former the duty of studying the metaphysics of grammar.[69] General grammars had been written by Du Marsais, De Beauzée, and Condillac in France; Harris in England; and many others.[70] But what was the relation between general grammar and particular grammars? If logic be one, how comes it that languages are many? Is the variety of tongues but a deviation on their part from one single model? And, if there be no such deviation or error, what is the explanation of the fact? What is language, and how was it born? If language be external to thought, how can thought exist if not in language? "_Si les hommes_," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "_ont eu besoin de la parole pour apprendre à penser, ils ont eu bien plus besoin encore de savoir penser pour trouver l'art de la parole_"; appalled at the difficulty, he declares his conviction "_de l'impossibilité presque démontrée que les langues aient pu naître et s'établir par des moyens purement humains._"[71] Such questions became fashionable; books on the origin and formation of language were written by de Brosses (1765) and Court de Gébelin (1776) in France, by Monboddo (1774) in England, Süssmilch (1766) and Tiedemann in Germany, and Cesarotti (1785) in Italy, and by others who had some slight acquaintance with Vico, but profited little by it.[72] None of the above-named writers was able to free himself of the notion that speech was either natural and mechanical, or else a symbol attached to thought: whereas in fact it was impossible to solve the difficulties under which they were labouring except by dropping the notion of a sign or symbol and attaining the conception of the active and expressive imagination, verbal imagination, language as the expression not of intellect but of intuition. An approach towards this explanation was made by Herder in a brilliant and imaginative thesis in 1770 upon this subject of the origin of language, chosen for discussion by the Berlin Academy. In it he says that language is the reflexion or consciousness (_Besonnenheit_) of man. "Man shows reflexion when he puts forth freely such force of mind as enables him to make selection from amongst the crowd of sensations by which he is assailed: from the ocean of the senses, so to speak, to select a single wave and consciously to watch it. He shows reflexion when, amidst the thronging chaos of images which pass before him as in a dream, he can in a waking moment collect himself and fasten his attention upon a single image, examine it calmly and clearly, and separate it from its neighbours. Once again, man shows reflexion when he is able not merely to grasp vividly and clearly all the properties of an image, but also to recognize one or more of its distinctive properties." The language of man "does not depend on the organization of the mouth, for even he who is dumb from birth has, if he reflects, a language; it is not a cry of the senses, since it resides in a reflective creature, not in a breathing machine; it is not an affair of imitation, since imitation of nature is a means, and we are here trying to explain the end: much less is it an arbitrary convention; a savage in the depths of the forest would have had to create a language for himself even though he never used it. Language is an understanding of the soul with herself, necessary just in so far as man is man."[73] Here language begins to show itself no longer as purely mechanical or as something derived from arbitrary choice and invention, but as a creative activity and a primary affirmation of the activity of the human mind. Herder's essay may not state such a view unequivocally, but it points forward to such a conclusion in a striking way for which its author has not received the credit he deserves. Hamann, in reviewing his friend's theories, agreed with him in denying the origin of language by invention or arbitrary choice; while dwelling also on the liberty of man, he regarded language as something which man could only have learned by means of a mystical _communicatio idiomatum_ from God.[74] That, too, was one way of recognizing that the mystery of language is not to be solved except by placing it in the forefront of the problem of the spirit.

[1] Vico, _Opere, ed. cit._ iv. p. 305.

[2] Herder, _Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität,_ 1793-1797, Letter 59; Goethe, _Italien. Reise,_ Mar. 5, 1787.

[3] Letters from Wolf to Cesarotti, June 5, 1802; in Cesarotti, _Opere,_ vol. xxxviii. pp. 108-112; cf. _ibid._ pp. 43-44, and vol. xxxvii. pp. 281, 284, 324; cf. on the question of the relations between Wolf and Vico, Croce, _Bibliografia vichiana,_ pp. 51, 56-58, and _Supplem._ pp. 12-14.

[4] Letter in French to Mme. Ferrant (1719), and to the Marquis Maffei in _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. (1756), pp. lxxxv.-civ., cviii.-cix.

[5] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. i., 1739, pref.

[6] Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was an Irishman. Croce's mistake is probably due to the fact that he studied and taught at Glasgow, or that his family was ultimately of Scottish origin.--TR.

[7] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. clxxi.-clxxvii.

[8] See above, pp. 184-185.

[9] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. 242-246.

[10] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 249.

[11] _Op. cit._ ii. pp. 252-253.

[12] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. 233-234.

[13] _Op. cit._ i. pref.

[14] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 127.

[15] _Op. cit._ i. p. xliii.

[16] Fr. Sav. Quadrio, _Della storia e della ragione d' ogni poesia,_ Bologna, 1739, vol. i. part i. dist. i. ch. 1.

[17] Fr. M. Zanotti, _Dell' arte poetica, ragionamenti cinque,_ Bologna, 1768.

[18] On Ossian, _Opere,_ vols, ii.-v.; on Homer, vols, vi.-x.; _Saggio copra il diletto della tragedia,_ vol. xxix. pp. 117-167; _Saggio sul bello,_ vol. xxx. pp. 13-70; on _Filosofia del gusto,_ vol. i.; on _Eloquenza,_ lecture, vol. xxxi.

[19] _Opere,_ vol. xl. p. 49.

[20] _Ibid._ p. 55.

[21] Letter from Corniani to Cesarotti, November 21, 1790, in _Opere,_ vol. xxxvii. p. 146.

[22] _Saggio sopra le istituzioni scolastiche, private e pubbliche,_ in _Opere,_ vol. xxix. pp. 1-116.

[23] Letter of March 30, 1764, in _Opere,_ vol. xxxv. p. 202.

[24] Saverio Bettinelli, _Dell' entusiasmo nelle belle arti, 1769,_ in _Opere,_ iii. pp. xi.-xiii.

[25] Fr. M. Pagano, _De' saggi politici,_ Naples, 1783-1785, vol. i. Appendix to § 1, "Sull' origine e natura della poesia"; vol. ii. § 6, "Del gusto e delle belle arti."

[26] See above, p. 217.

[27] _Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften,_ Halle, 1748-1750.

[28] _Auszug aus den Anfangsgründe,_ etc., _ibid._ 1758.

[29] _Betrachtungen über den ersten Grundsätzen aller schönen Künste u. Wissenschaften, ibid._ 1757.

[30] Preface to 2nd ed. (1768) of vol. ii. of _Anfangsgründe,_ and _Betrachtungen, cit.,_ esp. §§ 1, 2, 34.

[31] Preface to vol. i., and cf. § 5.

[32] In a letter to Gottsched, 1747, in Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 215.

[33] _Anfangsgründe,_ § 23.

[34] _Op. cit._ § 92.

[35] _Op. cit._ § 49.

[36] _Op. cit._ § 55.

[37] _Op. cit._ §§ 355-370.

[38] _Op. cit._ §§ 529-540.

[39] _Op. cit._ § 5.

[40] _Op. cit._ § 413.

[41] Anfangsgründe, §§ 541-670.

[42] Betrachtungen, § 20.

[43] Op. cit. § 21.

[44] _Briefe über die Empfindungen,_ 1755 (in _Opere filosofiche,_ Ital. trans., Parma, 1800, vol. ii.). Letters 2, 5, 11.

[45] _Betrachtungen üb. d. Quellen d. sch. Wiss. u. K.,_ 1757, later entitled _Über die Hauptgrundsätze,_ etc., 1761, in _Opere, ed. cit._ ii. pp. 10, 12-15, 21-30.

[46] J. E. Schlegel, _Von der Nachahmung,_ 1742; cf. Braitmaier, _Gesch. d. poet. Th._ i. p. 249 _sqq._

[47] Koller, _Entwurf,_ p. 103.

[48] _Die ersten Grundsätze der schönen Kunst überhaupt, und der schönen Schreibart insbesondere,_ Bonn, 1790; cf. Sulzer, i. p. 55, and Koller, pp. 55-56.

[49] See Bibliographical Appendix.

[50] _Entwurf zur Geschichte u. Literatur d. Ästhetik,_ etc., Regensburg. 1799; see Bibl. App.

[51] Koller, _op. cit._ p. 7.

[52] Notices and extracts in Sulzer and Koller, _opp. citt._

[53] Joh. Aug. Eberhard, _Theorie der schönen Künste u. Wissenschaften,_ Halle, 1783; reprinted 1789, 1790.

[54] Joh. Joach. Eschenburg, _Entwurf einer Theorie u. Literatur d. s. W.,_ Berlin, 1783; reprinted 1789.

[55] Allgem. Th. d. sch. Künste, on words Schön, Schönheit, Wahrheit, Werke des Geschmacks, etc.

[56] Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, _System der Ästhetik,_ vol. i., Leipzig, 1790, esp. pp. 149-154. 367-385. 385-392.

[57] _Kritische Wälder oder Betrachtungen über die Wissenschaft und Kunst des Schönen,_ Fourth Forest, 1769, in _Sämmtliche Werke,_ ed. B. Suphan, Berlin, 1878, vol. iv. pp. 19, 21, 27.

[58] _Kritische Wälder, loc. cit._ pp. 22-27.

[59] Fragment, _Von Baumgarten Denkart_; and cf. _op. cit._ pp. 132-133.

[60] _Æsthetica in mice,_ in _Kreuzzüge des Philologen,_ Königsberg, quoted in Herder, _Werke,_ xii. 145.

[61] See above, p. 235.

[62] _Kaligone,_ 1800, in _Werke, ed. cit.,_ xii. pp. 145-150.

[63] _Kaligone,_ pp. 34-55.

[64] _Ibid._ pp. 308-317.

[65] _Kritische Wälder, loc. cit._ iv. pp. 47-127.

[66] _Op. cit._ pp. 27-36.

[67] _Sophron,_ 1782, § 4.

[68] _Encyclopédie, ad verb._

[69] _Éloge de Du Marsais,_ 1756 (introd. to _Œuvres de Du Marsais,_ Paris, 1797, vol. i.).

[70] Du Marsais, _Méthode raisonnée,_ 1722; _Traité des tropes,_ 1730; _Traité de grammaire générale_ (in _Encyclopédie_); De Beauzée, _Grammaire générale pour servir de fondement à l'étude de toutes les langues,_ 1767; Condillac, _Grammaire française,_ 1755; J. Harris, _Hermes, or a Philosophical Enquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar,_ 1751.

[71] _Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes,_ 1754.

[72] De Brosses, _Traité de la formation mécanique des langues,_ 1765; Court de Gébelin, _Histoire naturelle de la parole,_ 1776; Monboddo, _Origin and Progress of Language,_ 1774; Süssmilch, _Beweis dass der Ursprung der menschlichen Sprache göttlich sei,_ 1766; Tiedemann, _Ursprung der Sprache;_ Cesarotti, _Saggio sulla filosofia delle lingue,_ 1785 (in _Opere,_ vol. i.); D. Colao Agata, _Piano, ovvero ricerche filosofiche sulle lingue,_ 1774; Soave, _Ricerche intorno all' istituzione naturale d'una società e d'una lingua,_ 1774.

[73] _Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache,_ in a small book _Zwei Preisschriften,_ etc. (2nd ed., Berlin, 1789), esp. pp. 60-65.

[74] Steinthal, _Ursprung der Sprache,_ 4th ed., pp. 39-58.

VII

OTHER ÆSTHETIC DOCTRINES OF THE SAME PERIOD

[Sidenote: _Other writers of the eighteenth century: Batteux._]

A great medley of heterogeneous ideas is noticeable among other writers on Æsthetic during the same period. In 1746 appeared a little volume by Abbé Batteux bearing the attractive title of _The Fine Arts reduced to a Single Principle,_ in which the author attempted a unification of all the different rules laid down by the writers of treatises. All such rules (says Batteux) are branches emerging from one trunk; he who possesses the simple principle will be able to deduce the rules one by one without entangling himself in their mass, which can but involve him in endless coils. The author had passed in review the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace and that of Boileau, and the works of Rollin, Dacier, le Bossu and d'Aubignac; but had found real help only in Aristotle's principle of imitation, which he thought could be easily and strikingly applied to poetry, painting, music and the art of gesture. But suddenly the Aristotelian principle of imitation yields place to a wholly new rendering, namely the "imitation of natural _beauty._" The business of art is to "select the most beautiful parts of nature in order to frame them into an exquisite whole which shall be more beautiful than nature's self, without ceasing to be natural." Now, what may this greater perfection, this beautiful nature, be? On one occasion Batteux identifies it with truth: but "with the truth which may be; with beauty-truth, which is represented as though it really existed with all the perfections it could possibly receive," recalling one example from the ancients in the Helen of Zeuxis, and one from the moderns in the _Misanthrope_ of Molière. In another place he explains that beautiful nature, _"tum ipsius (obiecti) naturæ, tum nostræ convenit," i.e._ that it has the closest connexion with our own perfection, our advantage and our interest, and is, at the same time, perfect in itself. The aim of imitation is "to please, to move, to soften, in one word, to delight"; so beautiful nature must be interesting and furnished with unity, variety, symmetry and proportion. Embarrassed by the question of artistic imitation of things naturally ugly or objectionable, Batteux falls back on saying, as Castelvetro had said before him, that displeasing objects please when imitated, since imitation, being always imperfect, in comparison with the reality, cannot excite the horror and disgust aroused by the latter. From pleasure he deduces the other aim of utility: if the aim of poetry be to give pleasure, and "pleasure by moving the passions, then in order to give a perfect and enduring pleasure it ought to rouse such passions only as it is well to excite, not those inimical to goodness."[1]

[Sidenote: _The English: W. Hogarth._]

It is difficult to string together a more insubstantial mass of contradictions. But Batteux is rivalled and outdone by the English philosophers or rather scribblers on Æsthetic or rather on things in general which sometimes accidentally include æsthetic facts. Happening to find in Lomazzo some words attributed to Michæl Angelo on the beauty of shapes, Hogarth the artist took into his head the idea that the figurative arts can be regulated by a special principle which can be expressed in a particular fine.[2] Filled with this discovery, in 1745 he designed a frontispiece for a volume of his engravings; it depicted a painter's palette scored across with an undulating line and the words _The Line of Beauty._ Public curiosity was immediately aroused by this hieroglyphic, to be satisfied a little later by the publication of his book _The Analysis of Beauty_ (1753).[3] In this he combated the mistake of judging pictures either by the subject or the excellence of the imitation instead of by their form, which is the true essential of art and is composed "of symmetry, variety, uniformity, simplicity, intricacy and quantity; all things which co-operate in the production of beauty, correcting and restraining each other as required."[4] But immediately afterwards Hogarth proclaims that there must also be correspondence and agreement with the thing copied; for "regularity, uniformity and symmetry give pleasure in so far only as they serve to give the illusion of faithful correspondence."[5] Further on, the reader learns that "amongst the immense variety of undulating lines which may be conceived, there is but one which truly merits the name of the Line of Beauty, and this is a precisely serpentine line which may be called the Line of Grace."[6] Again, we are told that intricacy of lines is beautiful because "the active mind likes to be engaged," and the eye delights in being "guided in a sort of hunt."[7] A straight line has no beauty, and the pig, the bear, the spider and the toad are ugly because devoid of undulating lines.[8] The ancients showed much judgement in the management and grouping of lines, "varying from the precise line of grace only on those occasions when the character or action demanded."[9]

[Sidenote: _E. Burke._]

With similar indecision Edmund Burke wavers between the principle of imitation and other heterogeneous or imaginary principles in his book, _An Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_ (1756). He observes, "Natural properties contained in an object give pleasure or displeasure to the imagination: beyond this, however, imagination may delight in the likeness of a copy to its original"; he asserts that from "these two reasons" arises the whole pleasure of imagination.[10]

Without dwelling further on the second, he proceeds to a lengthy discussion of the natural qualities which should be found in an object of sensible beauty: "Firstly, comparative smallness; secondly, smooth surface; thirdly, variety in disposition of the parts; fourthly, that it have no angularity, all lines fusing one in another; fifthly, a structure of great delicacy betraying no signs of violence; sixthly, vivid colouring without glare or harshness; seventhly, if it have any glaring colour, let it be different from the background." These are the properties of beauty working in harmony with nature and least liable to suffer from caprice and differences of taste.[11]

[Sidenote: _H. Home._]

These books of Hogarth and Burke are generally described as classical; if so, they belong to the type of classic that fails to convince. To a somewhat higher type belongs the _Elements of Criticism_ (1761) of Henry Home, Lord Kaimes, who seeks "the true principles of the fine arts" with the object of converting criticism into "a rational science," and to this end chooses "the upward path of facts and experiments." Home confines himself to feelings derived from objects of sight and hearing, which, in so far as unaccompanied by desires, are more truly described as simple feelings (emotions, not passions). These occupy a middle position between mere sense-impressions and intellectual or moral ideas, and are therefore akin to both; and it is from these that the pleasures of beauty are derived. Beauty is divided into beauty of relation and intrinsic beauty.[12] Of the latter, Home's only account is that regularity, simplicity, uniformity, proportion, order and other pleasing qualities have been "so disposed by the Author of nature in order to increase our happiness here on earth which, as is clearly shown in numberless instances, is not foreign to his care." This notion is confirmed when he reflects that "our taste for such details is not accidental, but uniform and universal, being a very part of our nature"; adding that "regularity, uniformity, order and simplicity help to facilitate perception and make it possible for us to form clearer conception of objects than it would be possible to gain by the most earnest attention were such qualities not present." Proportions are often combined with a view to utility, "as we see that the best proportioned amongst animals are also the strongest; but there are also many examples in which this conjunction does not hold good"; wherefore the wisest plan "is to rest content with the final cause just mentioned: that of the increase of our happiness intended by the Author of nature."[13] In his _Essay on Taste_ (1758) and on _Genius_ (1774) Alexander Gérard employs by turns, according to the various forms of art, the principles of association, of direct pleasure, of expression, and even of moral sense: the same kind of explanation reappears in another _Essay on Taste_ by Alison (1792).

[Sidenote: _Eclecticism and sensationalism. E. Platner._]

It is impossible to classify works of such calibre, almost wholly lacking as they are in scientific method; on each page their writers pass from physiological sensationalism to moralism; from the imitation of nature to mysticism and transcendent finalism without the slightest sense of incongruity. It would be absurd to take them seriously; in comparison it is almost refreshing to come across a frank hedonist in the German, Ernst Plainer, who interpreted Hogarth's inquiry into lines after a fashion of his own and was unable to see anything in æsthetic facts except a reverberation of sexual pleasure. Where can we find a beauty, he asks, that is not derived from the female figure, the centre of all beauty? Undulating lines are beautiful because found in a woman's body; beautiful are all movements distinctively feminine; beautiful the tones of music melting one into another; beautiful the poem where one thought embraces another with tenderness and facility.[14] Condillac's sensationalism had already shown itself wholly incapable of understanding æsthetic productivity; the associationism especially promoted by the work of Hume fared no better.

[Sidenote: _Fr. Hemsterhuis._]

The Dutchman Hemsterhuis considered beauty as a phenomenon born of the meeting between sensibility, which gives multiplicity, and the internal sense, which tends to unity; hence the beautiful is "that which exhibits the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time." Man, to whom it is not permitted to attain ultimate unity, finds in beauty an approximate unity which gives him a pleasure somewhat analogous with the joy of love. This theory of Hemsterhuis, in which elements of mysticism and sensationalism mingle with glimpses of truth, developed later into the sentimentalism of Jacobi, for whom the totality of Truth and Goodness and even the Supersensible itself are sensibly present to the soul in the form of beauty.[15]

[Sidenote: _Neo-Platonism and mysticism. Winckelmann._]

Platonism or, more accurately, neo-Platonism was revived by the creator of the history of figurative art, Winckelmann (1764). Contemplation of the masterpieces of antique plastic art, and the impression of superhuman loftiness and divine indifference which they create all the more irresistibly because we cannot reawaken the life they once possessed or understand their real significance, led Winckelmann, and others with him, to the conception of a Beauty which, descending from the seventh heaven of the divine Idea, embodied itself in works of this description. Baumgarten's follower Mendelssohn had denied the enjoyment of beauty to God: the neo-Platonist Winckelmann gave it back to him and lodged it in his bosom.

[Sidenote: _Beauty and lack of significance._]

"Wise men who have meditated upon the causes of universal Beauty, seeking her amongst created things and trying to gain the contemplation of Supreme Beauty, have placed it in the perfect harmony of creatures with their ends and of their parts with one another. But as this is equivalent to perfection, which man is incapable of attaining, our concept of universal beauty remains indeterminate, and arises by means of particular cognitions which, when accurately collected and fitted together, give us the highest idea we can attain of human beauty, which we elevate in proportion as we raise it above matter. But, again, since the Creator deals out perfection to all his creatures in the proportion that befits them, and since every concept rests on some cause which must be sought outside the concept itself, the cause of Beauty which is to be found in every created thing cannot be sought in anything outside these created things. For this reason, and because our cognitions are comparative concepts, whereas Beauty cannot be compared with anything higher, it is difficult to attain a distinct and universal cognition of Beauty."[16] The only way out of this difficulty and others like it is the recognition that "supreme beauty resides in God": "the concept of human beauty becomes the more perfect in proportion as it can be thought more in conformity and agreement with supreme Being, which is distinguished from matter by its own unity and indivisibility. This conception of Beauty is as a spirit which, freed by fire from the prison of matter, strives to conjure up a creature in the likeness of the first reasonable creature formed by the divine intelligence. The forms of such an image are simple and continuous and within this unity they are varied and for that very reason harmonious."[17] 2 To these characteristics is added "lack of significance" (_Unbezeichnung_), since supreme beauty cannot be described with points or fines different from those which alone can constitute that beauty; its form "is not peculiar to this or that determinate person, neither does it express any state of feeling or sensation of passion, things which disturb unity and overcloud beauty." Winckelmann concludes: "We look upon Beauty as a purest water drawn from the centre of the spring; the less taste it has the higher it is esteemed because free from all impurities."[18]

To perceive pure beauty, a special faculty is required, which certainly is not sense, but may perhaps be intellect or even, as Winckelmann says, "a fine internal sense" free from all intentions or passions of instinct, inclination or pleasure. Having asserted beauty to be something supersensible, it is not surprising that Winckelmann should wish, if not wholly to exclude colour, at least to reduce it to a minimum, and treat it not as a constitutive element in beauty but as secondary and ancillary.[19] True beauty is given in form: by which he means line and surface, forgetting that these are only apprehended by the senses, and could not be seen without being in some way coloured.

[Sidenote: _Winckelmann's contradictions and compromises._]

When error refuses to retire, hermit-like, to the narrow cell of a brief aphorism, it finds itself condemned to self-contradiction in order to live at all in the world of concrete facts and problems. Although composed with a view to stating a theory, the work of Winckelmann always led him among concrete historical facts clamouring to be brought into relation with his formally stated idea of supreme beauty. In his admission of line-drawing and his further admission, on a lower plane, of colour, we have two compromises already; to which a third is added in his principle of Expression. "Since human nature has no state intermediate between pain and pleasure" and as living creature without such feelings is inconceivable, "the human figure must be represented in a condition of action and passion, which artists call expression." Hence Winckelmann, after dealing with Beauty, goes on to treat of Expression.[20] He then found himself obliged to effect a fourth compromise between the single constant supreme beauty and individual beauties; for while he preferred the male to the female body as a completer embodiment of perfect beauty, he could not shut his eyes to the obvious fact that we know and admire beautiful women's bodies and even beautiful animals' bodies.

[Sidenote: _A. R. Mengs._]

Friend and, in a sense, collaborator of Winckelmann was Raphæl Mengs the artist, no less eager than his archæological fellow-countryman to understand the nature of that beauty which the one studied as a critic while the other produced it as a painter. Remarking, writes Mengs, that of the two chief duties of a painter, the imitation of appearances and the selection of the most beautiful objects, much has been written on the former, while the latter "has scarcely been touched by the modems, who would have been ignorant of the art of drawing were it not for the statues of ancient Greece";[21] pondering this, "I read, asked and looked at everything likely to throw light on the subject, but never was I satisfied; either they spoke of beautiful things or of qualities which are the attributes of beauty, or they pretended to explain, as the saying is, the obscure by the more obscure, or even confused the beautiful with the pleasing: so that finally I determined to search for the nature of beauty on my own account."[22] One of his works on this subject was published during his lifetime by the advice and assistance of Winckelmann (1761); many others appeared posthumously (1780), all were reprinted several times and translated into several languages. In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he says, "I have been sailing a long time on a vast sea seeking the understanding of beauty, and still I am far from any shore and in great doubt how to shape my course: gazing around, my sight is confounded by the immensity of the subject."[23] In truth it seems as though Mengs never arrived at a formula satisfactory to himself, although he conformed more or less to Winckelmann's doctrine that "beauty consists in material perfection according to our ideas; and since God alone is perfect, beauty is divine"; it is the "visible idea of perfection" and stands in the same relation to it as does a visible to a mathematical point. Our ideas proceed from the purposes which the Creator has willed to fulfil in various things; hence the multiplicity of beauties. In general, Mengs finds the types of things in natural species: _e.g._ "a stone, of which we have the idea that it should be uniform in colour"; which" is called ugly if it happen to be spotted"; or a child "would be ugly if he were like a man of mature age, just as a man is ugly when shaped like a woman, and a woman when she is like a man." He adds surprisingly, "As among stones there is but one perfect species, the diamond; among metals, gold; and among animated creatures, man only; so there is difference and distinction in every order, and very rarely is there perfection."[24] In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he considers beauty as "a middle disposition, including perfection on the one hand and the pleasing on the other"; in reality it is a third thing, differing from perfection and the pleasing, and deserving a special name for itself.[25] The art of painting arises from four sources: beauty, significant or expressive character, the pleasing united to harmony, and colouring. Mengs finds the first amongst the ancients, the second in Raphæl, the third in Correggio and the fourth in Titian.[26] From this empirical studio-gossip he rouses himself to exclaim, "The force of beauty so transports me that I will tell thee, reader, what I feel. All nature is beautiful, and so is virtue; beautiful are forms and proportions; beautiful are appearances and beautiful the causes thereof; more beautiful is reason, most beautiful of all is the great first cause."[27]

[Sidenote: _G. E. Lessing._]

An attenuated, that is to say, a less metaphysical, echo of Winckelmann's theory is found in Lessing (1766), who infused a new spirit into the literature and social life of the Germany of his time. According to Lessing the aim of art is "delight"; and since delight is a "superfluous thing" it seems reasonable that the legislator should not allow to art that liberty which is indispensable to science in her search for truth, the soul's necessity. For the Greeks painting was what by its nature it ought to be, "the imitation of beautiful bodies." "Its (Hellenic) cultivator represented nothing but the beautiful: common beauty of a low grade served him as an accidental subject, an exercise, a diversion. The attractiveness of his work must depend simply and solely on the perfection of his subject: he was far too true an artist to wish his audience to content itself with the barren pleasure arising from mere resemblance or from the inspection of skilful workmanship: nothing in his art was dearer to him, nothing seemed more noble, than the end at which it aimed."[28] Pictorial representation must exclude everything unpleasing or ugly; "painting as imitation may express ugliness: painting as a fine art will refuse to do so: all visible objects belong to art taken under the former title: the latter may claim only such objects as awaken pleasing sensations." If, on the contrary, ugliness may be represented by the poet, the reason is this: poetic description "conveys a less displeasing sense of bodily malformation which, in the end, almost loses its character as such; unable to use it for itself, the poet uses it as a means to provoke certain mixed feelings (the ridiculous, the terrible), in which we are content to remain, in the absence of any purely pleasant feelings."[29] In his _Dramaturgie_ (1767) Lessing takes his stand upon the Aristotelian _Poetics_: it is well known that not only did he approve of rules in general but he believed those laid down by Aristotle to be as incontrovertible as the theorems of Euclid. His polemic against French writers and critics is waged in the name of probability, not to be confounded with historical accuracy. He understood the universal as a sort of average of what appears in individuals, and catharsis as a conversion of passions into virtuous dispositions, asserting it as beyond doubt that the aim of all poetry is to inspire a love for virtue.[30] He follows the example of Winckelmann in introducing the concept of ideal beauty into the doctrine of figurative art: "expression of corporeal beauty is the aim of painting: therefore supreme beauty of body is the supreme aim of art. But this supreme beauty of body is found in man only, and for him it exists only through the ideal. This ideal may be found among the brute creation in inferior degree; but is entirely absent from vegetable or inanimate nature." Landscape and flower painters are not really artists because "they imitate beauties possessed of no ideal: whereby they work by eye and hand alone, genius having little or no part in their compositions." Nevertheless, Lessing prefers a landscape painter to "the painter of historic pieces who, instead of making beauty his aim, merely depicts a crowd in order to show his cunning in simple expression, not in expression subordinate to beauty."[31] The ideal of bodily beauty then consists "chiefly in the ideal of form, but also in that of texture of the flesh, and in that of permanent expression. Mere colouring and transitory expression have no ideal since nature herself has placed no indelible seal upon them."[32] At the bottom of his heart Lessing dislikes colour; and when he finds the pen-sketches of painters showing "a life, a freedom, a brilliancy never to be found in their painted pictures," he asks himself "whether the most marvellous colouring can compensate so heavy a loss," and whether it is not to be wished "that painting in oils had never been invented"?[33]

[Sidenote: _Theorists of ideal beauty._]

Ideal beauty, that curious alliance between God and the subtle outline traced with pen or graver, that cold academical mysticism, came into fashion. In Italy (the home of Winckelmann and Mengs, who published many of their works in Italian) it was much discussed by artists, antiquaries and connoisseurs. The architect Francesco Milizia professed himself a follower of "the principles of Sulzer and Mengs";[34] the Spaniard d'Azara, living in Italy, edited and annotated Mengs, adding his own definition of beauty: "The union of the perfect and the pleasing made visible";[35] another Spaniard, Arteaga, one of the many Jesuit refugees in Italy, wrote a treatise on _Ideal Beauty_ (1789);[36] the Englishman Daniel Webb on coming to Rome and making the acquaintance of Mengs seized upon the ideas he heard him express on beauty, collected them and actually published them in a book anticipating Mengs' own.[37]

[Sidenote: _G. Spalletti and the characteristic._]

The first voice of dissent from this doctrine of ideal beauty was raised in 1764 by a small circle of Italians who asserted the characteristic to be the principle of art. As such appears to be the necessary interpretation of the little _Essay on Beauty_ written by Guiseppe Spalletti in the form of a letter to Mengs, with whom Spalletti had discussed the subject "in the solitudes of Grottaferrata," and who had urged him to put all his thoughts in writing.[38] Its polemical character, though not openly asserted, is discernible in every page. "Truth in general, conscientiously rendered by the artist, is the object of Beauty in general. When the soul finds those characteristics which wholly converge upon the matter which the work of art claims to represent, it judges that work beautiful. The same is true of the works of nature: if the soul perceives a man of fine proportions having the face of a lovely woman, which causes it to doubt whether the object before it be man or woman, it esteems that man ugly rather than the reverse, through deficiency of the characteristic of truth; if this can be said of natural Beauty, how much more can it be said of the Beauty of art." The pleasure given by Beauty is intellectual, that is to say, it is the pleasure of apprehending truth: when confronted by ugly things represented characteristically, man "delights in having increased his cognitions": Beauty, "with its property of supplying to the soul likeness, order, proportion, harmony and variety, provides it with an immense field for the construction of innumerable syllogisms, and by reasoning in this manner it will take pleasure in itself, in the object which arouses such pleasure, and in the feeling of its own perfection." Finally, the beautiful may be defined as "the inherent modification of the object under observation which presents it in the inevitably characteristic manner in which it is bound to appear."[39] In contrast to the fallacious profundity of Winckelmann and Mengs we welcome the sound good sense of this obscure Spalletti, upholder of the Aristotelian position against the revived neo-Platonism of the æstheticians.

[Sidenote: _Beauty and the characteristic: Hirt, Meyer, Goethe._]

Many years went by before a similar rebellion arose in Germany; at length in 1797 the art-historian Ludwig Hirt, basing his case on ancient works of art which depicted all things, even things utterly vulgar and ugly, ventured to deny the view that ideal beauty is the principle of art, and that expression has only a secondary place, above which it must not rise for fear of disturbing ideal beauty. For the ideal he substituted the characteristic, as a principle to be applied equally to gods, heroes or animals. Character is "that individuality by which form, movement, signs, physiognomy and expression, local colour, fight, shade and chiaroscuro are distinguished and represented in the manner demanded by the object."[40] Another historian of art, Heinrich Meyer, who started from the position of Winckelmann and went on by adopting a series of compromises, finally asserting an ideal of trees and landscape side by side with the ideal of man and various other animals, tried to find an intermediate position between this doctrine and Hirt's, in the course of controversy with the latter. And Wolfgang von Goethe, forgetful of his youthful days when he chanted the praises of Gothic architecture, returning home from an Italian tour impregnated with Greece and Rome in 1798, also sought a middle term between Beauty and Expression; dwelling on the thought of certain characteristic contents which should supply the artist with forms of beauty to be by him remodelled and developed into complete beauty. The characteristic was thus the mere point of departure, and beauty was simply the result of the artist's elaboration: "we must start from the characteristic" (says he) "in order to attain the beautiful."[41]

[1] _Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe,_ Paris, 1746; see esp. part i. ch. 3; part ii. chs. 4, 5; part iii. ch. 3.

[2] See above, p. 110.

[3] _Analysis of Beauty,_ London, 1753 (Ital. trans., Leghorn, 1761).

[4] _Op. cit._ p. 47.

[5] _Op. cit._ p. 57.

[6] _Op. cit._ p. 93.

[7] _Op. cit._ pp. 61, 65.

[8] _Analisi della bellezza,_ p. 91.

[9] _Op. cit._ p. 176.

[10] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful,_ 1756 (Ital. trans., Milan, 1804); cf. the preliminary discourse on "Taste."

[11] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful,_ part iii. § 18.

[12] _Elements of Criticism,_ 1761, vol. i. introd. and chs. 1-3.

[13] _Elements of Criticism,_ i. ch. 3, pp. 201-202.

[14] _Neue Anthropologie,_ Leipzig, 1790, § 814, and the lectures on Æsthetic published posthumously in 1836; cf. Zimmermann, _op. cit._ p. 204.

[15] Zimmermann, _op. cit._ pp. 302-309; v. Stein, _Entstehung d. n. Ästh._ p. 113.

[16] _Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums,_ 1764 (in _Werke,_ Stuttgart, 1847, vol. i.), bk. iv. ch. 2, § 51, p. 131.

[17] _Op. cit._ § 22, pp. 131-132.

[18] _Op. cit._ § 23, p. 132.

[19] _Geschichte,_ § 19, pp. 130-131.

[20] _Op. cit._ bk. iv. ch. ii. § 24.

[21] _Geschichte,_ bk. v. chs. ii. and vi.

[22] Letter of January 2, 1778, _Opere,_ Rome, 1787 (reprinted Milan, 1836), ii. pp. 315-316.

[23] _Opere,_ i. p. 206.

[24] _Riflessioni sulla bellezza e sul gusto della pittura,_ in _Opere,_ i. pp. 95, 100, 102-103.

[25] _Opere,_ i. p. 197.

[26] _Ibid._ p. 161.

[27] _Ibid._ p. 206.

[28] Laokoon, § 2.

[29] Op. cit. §§ 23, 24.

[30] Hamburg. Dramaturgie (ed. Göring, vols. xi. and xii.), passim, esp. Nos. 11, 18, 24, 78, 89.

[31] _Laokoon,_ appendix, § 31.

[32] _Op. cit._ §§ 22, 23.

[33] _Op. cit. ad fin._ p. 268.

[34] _Dell' arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i principi di Sulzer e di Mengs,_ Venice, 1871.

[35] D'Azara, in Mengs, _Opere,_ i. p. 168.

[36] _Investigaciones filosóficas sobre la belleza ideal, considerada como objeto de todas las artes de imitación,_ Madrid, 1789.

[37] _Ricerche su le bellezze della pittura_ (Ital. trans., Parma, 1804); cf. D'Azara, _Vita del Mengs,_ in _Opere,_ i. p. 27.

[38] _Saggio sopra la bellezza,_ dated "Grottaferrata, July 14, 1764," and published at Rome, 1765, anonymously.

[39] _Saggio,_ esp. §§ 3, 12, 15, 17, 19, 34.

[40] _Über das Kunstschöne,_ in the review _Die Horen,_ 1797; cf. Hegel, _Vorles. ii. Ästh._ i. p. 24; and Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Ästh._ pp. 356-357.

[41] Goethe, _Der Sammler und die Seinigen_ (in _Werke,_ ed. Goedecke, vol. xxx.)

VIII

IMMANUEL KANT

[Sidenote: _I. Kant._]

Of all these writers, Winckelmann and Mengs, Home and Hogarth, Lessing and Goethe, none was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: not even those who like Meier laid claim to the title, nor those who had some gifts for philosophy like Herder or Hamann. After Vico, the next European mind of real speculative genius is Immanuel Kant, who now comes before us in his turn.

[Sidenote: _Kant and Vico._]

That Kant took up the problem of philosophy where Vico laid it down (not, of course, in a directly historical, but in an ideal, sense) has already been noted by others.[1] How far he made an advance upon his predecessor and how far he failed to reach the same level it is not here our business to inquire; we must confine ourselves strictly to the consideration of Æsthetic questions.

Summarizing the results of such a consideration, we may say at once that though Kant holds an immensely important place in the development of German thought; though the book containing his examination of æsthetic facts is among his most influential works; and though in histories of Æsthetic written from the German point of view, which ignore practically the whole development of European thought from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Kant can pose as the man who discovered the problem of Æsthetic or solved it or brought it within sight of solution; yet in an unprejudiced and complete history whose aim is to take broad views and to consider not the popularity of a book or the historical importance of a nation but the intrinsic value of ideas, the judgement passed on Kant must be very different. Like Vico in the serious tenacity with which he reflected upon æsthetic facts, more fortunate than he in having a much larger stock of material gathered from preceding discussion and argument, Kant was at once unlike and less successful than Vico in that he was unable to attain a doctrine substantially true, and unable also to give his thoughts the necessary system and unity.

[Sidenote: _Identity of the concept of art in Kant and Baumgarten._]

In fact, what was Kant's idea of art? Strange as our reply may seem to those who recollect the explicit and insistent war waged by him against the school of Wolff, and the concept of beauty as a perfection confusedly perceived, we must assert that Kant's idea of art was fundamentally the same as that of Baumgarten and the Wolffian school.[2] In that school his mind had been trained; he always had a great respect for Baumgarten whom in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ he calls "that excellent analyst"; he chose the text of Baumgarten for two of his University lectures on Metaphysics, and that of Meier for his lecture on Logic (_Vernunftlehre_). Kant, like them, therefore considered Logic and Æsthetic (or theory of art) as conjoined sciences. They were thus described by him in his _Scheme of Lectures_ in 1765, when he proposed, while expounding the critique of reason, to "throw a glance at that of taste, that is to say, at Æsthetic, since the rules of one apply to the other and each throws light upon the other."

[Sidenote: _Kant's "Lectures."_]