Chapter XXII: Conclusion (11)

The Herbartian Siebeck (1875) abandoned the formalistic theory and tried to explain the fact of beauty by the concept of the appearance of personality.[7] He distinguishes between objects which please by their content alone (sensuous pleasures), those which please by form alone (moral facts), and those which please by the connexion of content with form (organic and æsthetic facts). In organic facts the form is not outside the content, but is the expression of the reciprocal action and conjunction of the constitutive elements: whereas in æsthetic facts the form is outside the content, and as it were its mere surface; not a means to the end, but an end in itself. Æsthetic intuition is a relation between the sensible and the spiritual, matter and spirit, and is thus form regarded as the appearance of personality. Æsthetic pleasure arises from the spirit's consciousness of discovering itself in the sensible. Siebeck borrows the theory of modifications of the beautiful from the metaphysical idealists, who held that only in such modifications can beauty be found in the concrete, just as humanity can only exist as a man of determinate race and nationality. The sublime is that species of beauty wherein the formal moment of circumscription is lost, and is therefore the unlimited, which is a kind of extensive or intensive infinity; the tragic arises when the harmony is not given but is the result of conflict and development; the comic is a relation of the small to the great; and so on. These traces of idealism, together with his firm hold on the Kantian and Herbartian absoluteness of the judgement of taste, make it impossible to regard Siebeck's Æsthetic as purely psychological and empirical and wholly devoid of philosophical elements.

[Sidenote: _M. Diez._]

It is the same with Diez, who, in his _Theory of Feeling as Foundation of Æsthetic_ (1892),[8] tries to explain the artistic activity as a return to the ideal of feeling (_Ideal des fühlenden Geistes_), parallel with science (ideal of thought), morality (ideal of will) and religion (ideal of personality). But whatever is this so-called feeling? is it the empirical feeling of the psychologists, irreducible to an ideal, or the mystic faculty of communication and conjunction with the Infinite and the Absolute? the absurd "pleasure-value" of Fechner, or the "judgement" of Kant? One is inclined to say that these writers, and others like them, still under the influence of metaphysical views, lack the courage of their opinions: they feel themselves to be in an atmosphere of hostility and speak under reservations or compromises. The psychologist Jodi asserts the existence of elementary æsthetic feelings, as discovered by Herbart, and defines them as "immediate excitations not resting upon associative or reproductive activity or on the fancy," although "in ultimate analysis they must be reduced to the same principles."[9]

[Sidenote: _Psychological tendency. Teodor Lipps._]

The purely psychological and associationistic tendency becomes clearly defined in Professor Teodor Lipps and his school. Lipps criticizes and rejects a whole series of æsthetic theories: (_a_) of play; (_b_) of pleasure; (_c_) of art as recognition of real life, even if displeasing; (_d_) of emotion and passional excitation; (_e_) syncretism, attributing to art beside the primary purpose of play and pleasure the further ends of recognition of life, in its reality, revelation of individuality, commotion, freedom from a weight, or free play of the imagination. His theory differs little at bottom from that of Jouffroy, for in his thesis he assumes artistic beauty to be the sympathetic. "The object of sympathy is our objectified ego, transposed into others and therefore discovered in them. We feel ourselves in others and we feel others in ourselves. In others, or by means of them, we feel ourselves happy, free, enlarged, elevated, or the contrary of all these. The æsthetic feeling of sympathy is not a mere mode of æsthetic enjoyment, it is that enjoyment itself. All æsthetic enjoyment is founded, in the last analysis, singly and wholly upon sympathy; even that caused by geometrical, architectonic, tectonic, ceramic, etc., lines and forms." "Whenever in a work of art we find a personality (not a defect of the man, but something positively human) which harmonizes with and awakes an echo in the possibilities and tendencies of our own life and vital activities: whenever we find positive, objective humanity, pure and free from all real interests lying outside the work of art, as art only can reproduce it and æsthetic contemplation alone can demand; the harmony, the resonance, fills us with joy. The value of personality is ethical value: outside it there is no possibility or determination of ethical character. All artistic and in general æsthetic enjoyment is, therefore, the enjoyment of something which has ethical value (_eines ethische Werthvollen_); not as element of a complex, but as object of æsthetic intuition."[10]

The æsthetic fact is thus deprived of all its own value and allowed merely a reflexion from the value of morality.

Without lingering over Lipps's pupils (such as Stern and others[11]) and writers of similar tendency (such as Biese, with his theory of anthropomorphism and universal metaphor;[12] or Konrad Lange, who propounds a thesis that art is conscious self-deception),[13] we will call attention to Professor Karl Groos (1892), who comes within measurable distance of the concept of æsthetic activity as a theoretic value.[14] Between the two poles of consciousness, sensibility and intellect, are several intermediate grades, amongst which lies intuition or fancy, whose product, the image or appearance (_Schein_), is midway between sensation and concept. The image is full like sensation, but regulated like the concept; it has neither the inexhaustible richness of the former, or the barren nudity of the latter. Of the nature of image or appearance is the æsthetic fact; which is distinguished from the simple, ordinary image not by its quality, but by its intensity alone: the æsthetic image is merely a simple image occupying the summit of consciousness. Representations pass through consciousness like a crowd of people hurrying over a bridge, each bent on his own business; but when a passer-by halts on the bridge and looks at the scene, then is it holiday, then arises the æsthetic fact. This is therefore not passivity but activity; according to the formula adopted by Groos it is internal imitation (_innere Nachahnung_).[15] It may be objected against the theory that every image, so far as it is an image at all, must occupy the summit of consciousness if only for an instant; and that the mere image is either the product of an activity just as is the æsthetic image, or it is not a real image at all. It may also be objected that the definition of the image as something sharing in the nature of sensation and concept may lead back to intellectual intuition and the other mysterious faculties of the metaphysical school, for which Groos professes abhorrence. His division of the æsthetic fact into form and content is even less happy. He recognizes four classes of content: associative (in the strict sense), symbolic, typical, individual:[16] and into his inquiries he introduces, quite unnecessarily, the concepts of infusion of personality and of play. In connexion with the latter he remarks that "internal imitation is the noblest game of man,"[17] and adds that "the concept of play applies fully to contemplation, but not to æsthetic production, save in the case of primitive peoples."[18]

[Sidenote: _The modifications of the Beautiful in Groos and Lipps._]

Groos does however free himself from the "modifications of Beauty," because, æsthetic activity having been identified with internal imitation, it is clear that whatever is not internal imitation is excluded from that activity as something different. "All Beauty (beauty understood in the sense of 'sympathetic') belongs to the æsthetic activity, but not every æsthetic fact is beautiful." Beauty, then, is the representation of the sensuously pleasant; ugliness, the representation of the unpleasant; the sublime, that of a mighty thing (_Gewaltiges_) in a simple form; the comic, that of an inferiority which arouses in us a pleasing sense of our own superiority. And so forth.[19] With great good sense Groos holds up to derision the office assigned to the ugly by Schasler and Hartmann with their superficial dialectic. To say that an ellipse contains an element of ugliness in comparison with the circle because it is symmetrical about its two axes only and not about infinite diameters is like saying "wine has a relatively unpleasant taste because in it is lacking (_ist aufgehoben_) the pleasant taste of beer."[20] Lipps too, in his writings upon Æsthetic, recognizes that the comic (of which he gives an accurate psychological analysis)[21] has in itself no æsthetic value; but his moralistic views lead him to outline a theory of it not unlike that of the overcoming of the ugly; he explains it as a process leading to a higher æsthetic value (_i.e._ sympathy).[22]

[Sidenote: _E. Viron and the double form of Æsthetic._]

Work such as that of Groos and, occasionally, of Lipps is of some value towards the elimination of errors, as well as confining æsthetic research to the field of internal analysis. Merit of the same kind belongs to the work of a Frenchman, Véron,[23] who controverts the Absolute Beauty of academical Æsthetic and, after accusing Taine of confounding Art with Science and Æsthetic with Logic, remarks that if it be the duty of art to make manifest the essence of things, their one dominating quality, then "the greatest artists would be those who have best succeeded in exhibiting this essence ... and the greatest works would resemble each other more closely than any others and would clearly demonstrate their common identity, whereas the exact opposite happens."[24] But one looks in vain for scientific method in Véron; a precursor of Guyau,[25] he asserts that art is at bottom two different things; there are two arts: one decorative, whose end is beauty, that is to say the pleasure of eye and ear resulting from determinate dispositions of fines, forms, colours, sounds, rhythms, movements, fight and shade, without necessary interventions of ideas and feelings, and capable of being studied by Optics and Acoustics: the other, expressive, which gives "the agitated expression of human personality." He considers that decorative art prevails in the ancient world, and expressive art in the modern.[26]

We cannot here examine in detail the æsthetic theories of artists and men of letters; the scientific and historicist prejudices, the theory of experiment and human document, which underlie the realism of Zola, or the moralism which underlies the problem-art of Ibsen and the Scandinavian school. Gustave Flaubert wrote of art profoundly, better perhaps than any other Frenchman has ever written, not in special treatises but throughout his letters, which were published after his death.[27]

[Sidenote: _L. Tolstoy._]

Under the influence of Véron and his hatred for the concept of beauty, Leo Tolstoy wrote his book on art,[28] which, according to the great Russian artist, communicates feelings in the same way in which words communicate thoughts. The meaning of this theory is made clear by the parallel he drew between Art and Science, and his conclusion that "the mission of art is to render sensible and capable of assimilation that which could not be assimilated under the form of argumentation"; and that "true science examines truths considered as important for a certain society at a given epoch and fixes them in the consciousness of man, whereas art transports them from the domain of knowledge to that of feeling."[29] There is therefore no such thing as art for art's sake, any more than science for science' sake. Every human function should be directed to increase morality and to suppress violence. This amounts to saying that nearly all art, from the beginning of the world, is false. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Raphæl, Michæl Angelo, Bach, Beethoven are (according to Tolstoy) "artificial reputations created by critics."[30]

[Sidenote: _F. Nietzsche._]

Amongst artists rather than amongst philosophers must be reckoned Friedrich Nietzsche, whom we should wrong (as we said of Ruskin) by trying to expound his æsthetic doctrines in scientific language and then holding them up to the facile criticism which, so translated, they would draw upon themselves. In none of his books, not even in his first, _The Birth of Tragedy,_[31] in spite of the title, does he offer us a real theory of art; what appears to be theory is the mere expression of the author's feelings and tendencies. He shows a kind of anxiety concerning the value and aim of art and the problem of its inferiority or superiority to science and philosophy, a state of mind characteristic of the Romantic period of which Nietzsche was, in many respects, a belated but magnificent representative. To Romanticism, as well as to Schopenhauer, belong the elements of thought which issued in the distinction between Apollinesque art (that of serene contemplation, to which belong the epic and sculpture) and Dionysiac art (the art of agitation and tumult, such as music and the drama). The thought is vague and does not bear criticism; but it is supported by a flight of inspiration which lifts the mind to a spiritual region seldom if ever reached again in the second half of the nineteenth century.

[Sidenote: _An æsthetician of music: E. Hanslick._]

The most notable æsthetic students of that time were perhaps a group of persons engaged in constructing theories of particular arts. And since--as we have seen[32]--philosophical laws or theories of individual arts are inconceivable, it was inevitable that the ideas presented by such thinkers should be (as indeed they are) nothing more than general æsthetic conclusions. First may be mentioned the acute Bohemian critic Eduard Hanslick, who published his work _On Musical Beauty_ in 1854; it was often reprinted and was translated into various languages.[33] Hanslick waged war against Richard Wagner and in general against the pretension of finding concepts, feelings and other definite contents in music. "In the most insignificant musical works, where the most powerful microscope can discover nothing, we are now asked to recognize a _Night Before the Battle,_ a _Summer Night in Norway,_ a _Longing for the Sea,_ or some such absurdity, should the cover have the audacity to affirm that this is the subject of the piece."[34] With equal vivacity he protests against the sentimental hearers who, instead of enjoying the work of art, set themselves to extract pathological effects of passionate excitement and practical activity. If it be true that Greek music produced effects of this kind, "if it needed but a few Phrygian strains to animate troops with courage in the face of the enemy, or a melody in the Dorian mode to ensure the fidelity of a wife whose husband was far away, then the loss of Greek music is a melancholy thing for generals and husbands; but æstheticians and composers need not regret it."[35] "If every senseless _Requiem,_ every noisy funeral march, every wailing _Adagio_ had the power of depressing us, who could put up with existence under such conditions? But let a real musical work confront us, clear-eyed and glowing with beauty, and we feel ourselves enslaved by its invincible fascination even if its material is all the sorrows of the age."[36]

[Sidenote: _Hanslick's concept of form._]

Hanslick maintained that the sole aim of music is form, musical beauty. This affirmation won him the goodwill of the Herbartians, who hastened to welcome such a vigorous and unexpected ally; by way of returning the compliment, Hanslick felt obliged in later editions of his work to mention Herbart himself and his faithful disciple Robert Zimmermann who had given (so he said) "full development to the great æsthetic principle of Form."[37] The praises of the Herbartians and the courteous declarations of Hanslick both arose from a misunderstanding: for the words "beauty" and "form" have one meaning for the former and quite another for the latter. Hanslick never thought that symmetry, purely acoustical relations and pleasures of the ear constituted musical beauty;[38] mathematics, he held, are utterly useless to musical Æsthetic.[39] Musical beauty is spiritual and significative: it has thoughts, undoubtedly; but those thoughts are musical. "Sonorous forms are not empty, but perfectly filled; they cannot be compared with simple lines delimiting a space; they are the spirit assuming body and extracting from itself the stuff of its own incarnation. Rather than an arabesque, music is a picture; but a picture whose subject can neither be expressed in words nor enclosed in precise concept. There are in music both meaning and connexion, but these are of a specifically musical nature; music is a language we understand and speak, but which it is not possible to translate."[40] Hanslick asserts that though music does not portray the quality of feelings, it does portray their dynamic aspect or tone: if not the substantives, then the adjectives: it depicts not "murmuring tenderness" or "impetuous courage," but the "murmuring" and the "impetuous."[41] The backbone of the book is the denial that form and content can ever be separated in music. "In music there can be no content in opposition to the form, since there can be no form outside the content." "Take a motive, the first that comes into your head; what is its content, what its form? where does this begin, and that end? ... What do you wish to call content? The sounds? Very well: but they have already received a form. What will you call form? Also the sounds? but they are form already filled; form supplied with content."[42] Such observations denote acute penetration of the nature of art, though not scientifically formulated or framed into a system. Hanslick thought he was dealing with peculiarities of music,[43] instead of with the universal and constitutive character of every form of art, and this prevented him from taking larger views.

[Sidenote: _Æstheticians of the figurative arts. C. Fiedler._]

Another specialist æsthetician is Conrad Fiedler, author of many essays on the figurative arts, the most important being his _Origin of Artistic Activity_ (1887).[44] No one, perhaps, has better or more eloquently emphasized the activistic character of art, which he compares with language. "Art begins exactly where intuition (perception) ends. The artist is not differentiated from other people by any special perceptive attitude enabling him to perceive more or with greater intensity, or endowing his eye with any special power of selecting, collecting, transforming, ennobling or illuminating; but rather by his peculiar gift of being able to pass immediately from perception to intuitive expression; his relation with nature is not perceptive, but expressive." "A man standing passively at gaze may well imagine himself in possession of the visible world as an immense, rich, varied whole: the entire absence of fatigue with which he traverses the infinite mass of visual impressions, the rapidity with which representations dart across his consciousness, convince him that he stands in the midst of an immense visible world, although he may quite well be unable at any one instant to represent it to himself as a whole. But this world, so great, so rich, so immeasurable, disappears the moment art seeks to become its master. The very first effort to emerge from this twilight and arrive at clear vision restricts the circle of things to be seen. Artistic activity may be conceived as continuation of that concentration by which consciousness makes the first step towards clear vision, which it reaches only by self-limitation." Spiritual process and bodily process are here an indivisible whole, which is expression.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and Expression._]

"This activity, simply because it is spiritual, must consist of forms wholly determinate, tangible, sensibly demonstrative." Art is not in a state of subjection to science. Like the man of science, the artist desires to escape from the natural perceptive state and to make the world his own; but there are regions to which we can penetrate not by the forms of thought and science but only through art. Art is, strictly speaking, not imitation of nature; for what is nature save this confused mass of perceptions and representations, whose real poverty has been demonstrated already? In another sense, however, art may be called imitation of nature inasmuch as its aim is not to expound concepts or to arouse emotions, that is to create values of intellect and feeling. Art does create both these values, if you like to say so; but only in one quite peculiar quality, which consists in complete visibility (_Sichtbarkeit_). Here we have the same sane conception, the same lively comprehension of the true nature of art which we found in Hanslick, only expressed in a more rigorous and philosophical manner. With Fiedler is connected his friend Adolf Hildebrand, who brought into high relief the activistic, or architectonic as opposed to imitative, character of art, illustrating his theoretical discussions especially from sculpture, the art which he himself followed.[45]

[Sidenote: _Narrow limits of these theories._]

What we chiefly miss in Fiedler and others of the same tendency is the conception of the æsthetic fact not as something exceptional, produced by exceptionally gifted men, but as a ceaseless activity of man as such; for man possesses the world, so far as he does possess it, only in the form of representation-expressions, and only knows in so far as he creates.[46] Nor are these writers justified in treating language as parallel with art, or art with language; for comparisons are drawn between things at least partially different, whereas art and language are identical.

[Sidenote: _H. Bergson._]

The same criticism can be made in the case of the French philosopher Bergson, who in his book on _Laughter_[47] states a theory of art very similar to that of Fiedler and makes the same mistake of conceiving the artistic faculty as something distinct and exceptional in comparison with the language of everyday use. In ordinary life, says Bergson, the individuality of things escapes us; we see only as much of them as our practical needs demand. Language helps this simplification; since all names, proper names excepted, are names of kinds or classes. Now and then, however, nature, as if in a fit of absence of mind, creates souls of a more divisible and detached kind (artists), who discover and reveal the riches hidden under the colourless signs and labels of everyday life, and help others (non-artists) to catch a glimpse of what they themselves see, employing for this purpose colours, forms, rhythmic connexions of words, and those rhythms of life and breath even more intimate to man, the sounds and notes of music.

[Sidenote: _Attempts to return to Baumgarten. C. Hermann._]

A healthy return to Baumgarten, a revival and correction of the old philosopher's theories in the light of later discoveries, might perhaps have given Æsthetic some assistance, after the collapse of the old idealistic metaphysic, towards thinking the concept of art in its universality and discovering its identity with pure and true intuitive knowledge. But Conrad Hermann, who preached the return to Baumgarten[48] in 1876, did bad service to what might have been a good cause. According to him Æsthetic and Logic are normative sciences; but Logic does not contain, as does Æsthetic, "a definite category of external objects exclusively and specifically adequate to the faculty of thought"; and on the other hand "the products and results of scientific thought are not so external and sensibly intuitive as those of artistic invention." Logic and Æsthetic alike refer not to the empirical thinking and feeling of the soul, but to pure and absolute sensation and thought. Art constructs a representation standing midway between the individual and the universal. Beauty expresses specific perfection, the essential or, so to speak, the rightful (_seinsollend_) character of things. Form is "the external sensible limit, or mode of appearance of a thing, in opposition to the kernel of the thing itself and to its essential and substantial content." Content and form are both æsthetic, and the æsthetic interest concerns the entirety of the beautiful object. The artistic activity has no special organ such as thought possesses in speech. The æsthetician, like the lexicographer, has the task of compiling a dictionary of tones and colours and of the different meanings which may possibly be attached to them.[49] We can see that Hermann accepted side by side the most inconsistent propositions. He welcomes even the æsthetic law of the golden section, and applies it to tragedy; the longer segment of the Une is the tragic hero; the punishment which overtakes him (the entire line) exceeds his crime in the same proportion in which he oversteps the common measure (the shorter segment of the line).[50] It reads almost like a joke.

Without direct reference to Baumgarten, a proposal that Æsthetic be reformed and treated as the "science of intuitive knowledge" was made in a miserable little work by one Willy Nef (1898),[51] who makes the dumb animals share his "intuitive knowledge," in which he distinguishes a formal side (intuition) and a material side or content (knowledge), and considers the everyday relations between men, their games and their art, as belonging to intuitive knowledge.

[Sidenote: _Eclecticism. B. Bosanquet._]

The English historian of Æsthetic, Bosanquet (1892) tried to find a reconciliation between content and form in unity of expression. "Beauty," says Bosanquet in the Introduction to his _History,_ "is that which has characteristic and individual expressiveness for sensuous perception or imagination, subject to the conditions of general or abstract expressiveness by the same means." In another passage he observes: "The difficulty of real Æsthetic is to show how the combination of decorative forms in characteristic representations, by intensifying the essential character immanent in them from the beginning, subordinates them to a central signification which stands to their complex combination as their abstract signification stands to each one of them taken singly."[52] But the problem, as propounded in a way suggested by the antithesis between the two schools (contentism and formalism) of German Æsthetic, is in our opinion insoluble.

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic of expression: present state._]

De Sanctis founded no school of æsthetic science in Italy. His thought was quickly misunderstood and mutilated by those who presumed to correct it, and, in fact, only returned to the outworn rhetorical conception of art as consisting of a little content and a little form. Only within the last ten years has there been a renewal of philosophical studies, arising out of discussions concerning the nature of history[53] and the relation in which it stands to art and science, and nourished by the controversy excited by the publication of De Sanctis' posthumous works.[54] The same problem of the relation between history and science, and their difference or antithesis, reappeared also in Germany, but without being put in its true connexion with the problem of Æsthetic.[55] These inquiries and discussions, and the revival of a Linguistic impregnated by philosophy in the work of Paul and some others, appear to us to offer much more favourable ground for the scientific development of Æsthetic than can be found on the summits of mysticism or the low plains of positivism and sensationalism.

[1] A. F. Lange, _Geschichte des Materialismus, u. Kritik seiner Bedeutung i. d. Gegenwart,_ 1866.

[2] J. F. v. Kirchmann, _Ästhetik auf realistischer Grundlage,_ Berlin, 1868.

[3] _Ästh. auf real. Grund._ vol. i. pp. 54-57; see above, pp. 80-81.

[4] _Kritische Gänge,_ vol. v. pp. 25-26, 131.

[5] R. Vischer, _Über das optische Formgefühl,_ Leipzig, 1873.

[6] _Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Ästh.,_ Jena, 1876.

[7] _Das Wesen d. ästh. Anschauung, Psychologische Untersuchungen z. Theorie d. Schönen u. d. Kunst,_ Berlin, 1875.

[8] Max Diez, _Theorie des Gefühls z. Begründung d. Ästhetik,_ Stuttgart, 1892.

[9] Friedr. Jodi, _Lehrb. der Psychologie,_ Stuttgart, 1896, § 53, pp. 404-414.

[10] _Komik und Humor, eine psychol. ästhet. Untersuch.,_ Hamburg-Leipzig, pp. 223-227.

[11] Paul Stern, _Einfühling u. Association i. d. neueren Ästh.,_ 1898, in _Beiträge z. Ästh.,_ ed. Lipps and R. M. Werner (Hamburg-Leipzig).

[12] Alfr. Biese, _Das Associationsprincip u. d. Anthropomorphismus i. d. Ästh.,_ 1890; _Die Philosophie des Metaphorischen,_ Hamburg-Leipzig, 1893.

[13] Konrad Lange, _Die bewusste Selbsttäuschung als Kern des künstlerischen Genusses,_ Leipzig, 1895.

[14] Karl Groos, _Einleitung i. d. Ästhetik,_ Giessen, 1892.

[15] _Op. cit._ pp. 6-46, 83-100.

[16] _Einleitung i. d. Ästh._ pp. 100-147.

[17] _Op. cit._ pp. 168-170.

[18] _Op. cit._ pp. 175-176.

[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 46-50, and all part iii.

[20] _Einleitung i. d. Ästh._ p. 292, note.

[21] See above, pp. 91-92.

[22] _Komik und Humor,_ p. 199 _seqq._

[23] Eug. Véron, _L'Esthétique,_ 2nd ed. Paris, 1883.

[24] _Op. cit._ p. 89.

[25] See above, pp. 399-400.

[26] _Esthétique,_ pp. 38, 109, 123 _seqq._

[27] _Correspondance,_ 1830-1880, 4 vols., new ed., Paris, 1902-1904.

[28] _What is Art?_ Eng. tr.

[29] _Op. cit._ pp. 171-172, 308.

[30] _Op. cit._ pp. 201-202.

[31] _Die Geburt der Tragödie oder Griechenthum und Pessimismus,_ 1872 (Ital. trans., Bari, 1907).

[32] See above, p. 114.

[33] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ Leipzig, 1854; 7th ed. 1885 (French trans., _Du beau dans la musique,_ Paris, 1877).

[34] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ p. 20.

[35] _Op. cit._ p. 98.

[36] _Op. cit._ p. 101.

[37] _Op. cit._ p. 119, note.

[38] _Op. cit._ p. 50.

[39] _Op. cit._ p. 65.

[40] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ pp. 50-51.

[41] _Op. cit._ pp. 25-39.

[42] _Op. cit._ p. 122.

[43] _Op. cit._ pp. 52, 67, 113, etc.

[44] Conrad Fiedler, _Der Ursprung der künstlerischen Thätigkeit,_ Leipzig, 1887. Collected with others of same author in _Schriften tiber die Kunst,_ ed. H. Marbach, Leipzig, 1896.

[45] _Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst,_ 2nd ed. 1898 (4th ed., Strassburg, 1903).

[46] See above, pp. 12-18.

[47] H. Bergson, _Le Rire, essai sur la signification du comique,_ Paris, 1900, pp. 153-161 (Eng. tr., London).

[48] Conrad Hermann, _Die Ästhetik in ihrer Geschichte und ah wissenschaftliches System,_ Leipzig, 1876.

[49] _Die Ästhetik,_ etc., _passim._

[50] _Die Ästhetik,_ § 56.

[51] Willy Nef, _Die Ästhetik als Wissenschaft der anschaulichen Erkenntniss,_ Leipzig, 1898.

[52] _A History of Æsthetics,_ pp. 4-6, 372, 391, 447, 458, 466.

[53] B. Croce, _La storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell' arte,_ 1893 (2nd ed. entitled _Il concetto della storia nelle sue relazioni col concetto dell' arte,_ Rome, 1896); P. R. Trojano, _La storia come scienza sociale,_ vol. i., Naples, 1897; G. Gentile, _Il concetto della storia_ (in Crivellucci's _Studî storici,_ 1889); see also F. de Sarlo, _Il problema estetico,_ in _Saggi di filosofia,_ vol. ii., Turin, 1897; and by same author, _I dati dell' esperienza psichica,_ Florence, 1903, concluding chapter.

[54] _La letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX,_ edited by B. Croce, Naples, 1896; also _Scritti varî,_ ed. Croce, Naples, 1898, 2 vols.

[55] H. Rickert, _Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung,_ Freiburg i. B., 1896-1902.

XIX

HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF SOME PARTICULAR DOCTRINES

[Sidenote: _Result of the history of Æsthetic._]

We have reached the end of our history. Having passed in review the travail and doubt through which the discovery of the æsthetic concept was achieved, the vicissitudes first of neglect, then of revival and rediscovery to which it was exposed, the various oscillations and failures in its exact determination, the resurrection, triumphant and overwhelming, of ancient errors supposed to be dead and buried; we may now conclude, without appearing to assert anything unproven, that of Æsthetic in the proper sense of the word we have seen very little, even including the last two centuries' active research. Exceptional intellects have hit the mark and have supported their views with energy, with logic, and with consciousness of what they were doing. It would no doubt be possible to extract many true affirmations leading to the same point of view from the works of non-philosophical writers, art-critics and artists, from commonly received opinions and proverbial sayings; such a collection would show that this handful of philosophers does not stand alone, but is surrounded by a throng of supporters and is in perfect agreement with the general mind and universal common sense. But if Schiller was right in saying that the rhythm of philosophy is to diverge from common opinion in order to return with redoubled vigour, it is evident that such divergence is necessary, and constitutes the growth of science, which is science itself. During this tedious process Æsthetic made mistakes which were at once deviations from the truth and attempts to reach it: such were the hedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity and of the sensationalists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenth century; the moralistic hedonism of Aristophanes, of the Stoics, of the Roman eclectics, of the mediæval and Renaissance writers; the ascetic and logical hedonism of Plato and the Fathers of the Church, of some mediæval and even some quite modern rigorists; and finally, the æsthetic mysticism which first appeared in Plotinus and reappeared again and again until its last and great triumph in the classical period of German philosophy. In the midst of these variously erroneous tendencies, ploughing the field of thought in every direction, a tenuous golden rivulet seems to flow, formed by the acute empiricism of Aristotle, the forceful penetration of Vico, the analytical work of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, De Sanctis and others who echoed them with weaker voice. This series of thinkers suffices to remind us that æsthetic science no longer remains to be discovered; but at the same time the fact that they are so few and so often despised, ignored or controverted, proves that it is in its infancy.

[Sidenote: _History of science and history of the scientific criticism of particular errors._]

The birth of a science is like that of a living being: its later development consists, like every life, in fighting the difficulties and errors, general and particular, which lurk in its path on every side. The forms of error are numerous in the extreme and mingle with each other and with the truth in complications equally numerous: root out one, another appears in its stead; the uprooted ones also reappear, though never in the same shape. Hence the necessity for perpetual scientific criticism and the impossibility of repose or finality in a science and of an end to further discussion. The errors which may be described as general, negations of the concept of art itself, have been touched on from time to time in the course of this History; whence it may be gathered a simple affirmation of the truth has not always been accompanied by any considerable recapture of enemy territory. As to what we have called particular errors, it is clear that when freed from confusing admixture of other forms and divested of fanciful expression, they reduce themselves to three heads, under which they have already been criticized in the first or theoretical part of this work. That is to say, errors may be directed (_a_) against the characteristic quality of the æsthetic fact; (_b_) against the specific; (_c_) against the generic: they may involve denial of the character of intuition, of theoretic contemplation, or of spiritual activity, which together constitute the æsthetic fact. Among the errors which fall into these three categories we are now to sketch in outline the history of those which have had, or have to-day, the greatest importance. Rather than a history it will be a historical essay, sufficient to show that, even in the criticism of individual errors, æsthetic science is in its infancy. If among these errors some appear to be decadent and nearly forgotten, they are not dead; they have not accomplished a legal demise at the hands of scientific criticism. Oblivion or instinctive rejection is not the same thing as scientific denial.

I

RHETORIC: OR THE THEORY OF ORNATE FORM

[Sidenote: _Rhetoric in the ancient sense._]

Proceeding according to rank in importance, we inevitably head the list of theories for examination with the theory of Rhetoric, or Ornate Form.

It will not be superfluous to observe that the meaning given in modern times to the word Rhetoric, namely, the doctrine of ornate form, differs from that which it had for the ancients. Rhetoric in the modern sense is above all a theory of elocution, while elocution (λέξις, φράσις, ἑρμηνεία, elocutio) was but one portion, and not the principal one, of ancient Rhetoric. Taken as a whole, it consisted strictly of a manual or _vade-mecum_ for advocates and politicians; it concerned itself with the two or the three "styles" (judicial, deliberative, demonstrative), and gave advice or furnished models to those striving to produce certain effects by means of speech. No definition of the art is more accurate than that given by its inventors the earliest Sicilian rhetoricians, scholars of Empedocles (Corax, Tisias, Gorgias): Rhetoric is the creator of persuasion (πειθος δημιουργός). It devoted itself to showing the method of using language so as to create a certain belief, a certain state of mind, in the hearer; hence the phrase "making the weaker case stronger" (τὸ τὸν ἥττω λόgον κρείττω ποιεῖν); the "increase or diminution according to circumstances" (_eloquentia in augendo minuendoque consistit_); the advice of Gorgias to "turn a thing to a jest if the adversary takes it seriously, or to a serious matter if he takes it as a jest,"[1] and many similar well-known maxims.

[Sidenote: _Criticism from moral point of view._]

He who acts in this manner is not only æsthetically accomplished, as saying beautifully that which he wishes to say; he is also and especially a practical man with a practical end in view. As a practical man, however, he cannot evade moral responsibility for his actions; this point was fastened upon by Plato's polemic against Rhetoric, that is to say against fluent political charlatans and unscrupulous lawyers and journalists. Plato was quite right to condemn Rhetoric (when dissociated from a good purpose) as blameworthy and discreditable, directed to arouse the passions, a diet ruinous to health, a paint disastrous to beauty. Even had Rhetoric allied herself to Ethics, becoming a true guide of the soul (ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ τῶν λόγον); had Plato's criticism been directed solely against her abusers (everything being liable to abuse save virtue itself, says Aristotle); had Rhetoric been purified, producing such an orator as Cicero desired, _non ex rhetorum officinis sed ex academiae spatiis_[2] and imposing on him, with Quintilian, the duty of being _vir bonus dicendi peritus_;[3] yet the unalterable fact remains that Rhetoric can never be considered a regular science, being formed of a congeries of widely dissimilar cognitions.

[Sidenote: _Accumulation without system._]

It included descriptions of passions and affections, comparisons of political and judicial institutions, theories of the abbreviated syllogism or enthymeme and of proof leading to a probable conclusion, pedagogic and popular exposition, literary elocution, declamation and mimicry, mnemonic, and so forth.

[Sidenote: _Its fortunes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance._]

The rich and heterogeneous content of this ancient Rhetoric (which reached its highest development in the hands of Hermagoras of Temnos in the second century B.C.) gradually diminished in volume with the decadence of the ancient world and the change in political conditions. This is not the place to dwell on its fortunes in the Middle Ages or its partial replacement by formularies and _Artes dictandi_ (and later by treatises upon the art of preaching), or to quote the reasons given by such writers as Patrizzi and Tassoni for its disappearance from the world of their day;[4] such history would be well worth writing, but would be out of place here. We will merely state that whilst conditions were at work on every side corroding this complex of cognitions, Louis Vives, Peter Ramus and Patrizzi himself were busy criticizing it from the point of view of systematic science.

[Sidenote: _Criticisms by Vives, Ramus and Patrizzi._]

Vives emphasized the confused methods of the ancient treatise-writers, who embraced _omnia,_ united eloquence with morality, and insisted that the orator must be _vir bonus._ He rejected four-fifths of ancient Rhetoric as extraneous: namely, memory, which is necessary in all arts; invention, which is the matter of each individual art; recitation, which is external; and disposition, which belongs to invention. He retained elocution only, not that which treats of _quid dicendum,_ but of _quem ad modum,_ extending it beyond the three styles or kinds to include history, apologue, epistles, novels and poetry.[5] Antiquity furnishes us with few and faint attempts at such extension; now and then a Rhetorician ventures to suggest that the γένος ίστορικόν and ἐπιστολικόν be included in Rhetoric, and even (in spite of opposition) "infinite" questions, that is to say merely theoretical questions with no practical application, which amounts to a scientific or philosophical genus;[6] others agreed with Cicero[7] that when one had mastered the most difficult of all arts, forensic eloquence, all else seemed child's-play (_ludus est homini non hebeti_ ...). Ramus and his pupil Omer Talon reproached Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian with having confused Dialectic and Rhetoric; and they assigned invention and disposition to the former, agreeing with Vives that "elocution" alone should be allowed to Rhetoric.[8] Patrizzi, on the other hand, refused the name of science to either, recognizing them as simple faculties, containing no individual matter (not even the three genera), and differentiating them only by attaching the term Dialectic to the dialogue form and proof of the necessary, and Rhetoric to connected discourse directed to persuasion in matters of opinion. Patrizzi observes that "conjoined speech" is used by historians, poets and philosophers, no less than by orators; and thus approaches the view of Vives.[9]

[Sidenote: _Survival into modern times._]

In spite of these opinions the body of rhetorical doctrine continued to flourish in the schools. Patrizzi was forgotten; if Ramus and Vives had some followers (such as Francisco Sanchez and Keckermann), they were generally held up to odium by the traditionalists. In the end, Rhetoric found a supporter in philosophy when Campanella made the following declaration in his _Rational Philosophy_: "_quodammodo Magiae portiuncula, quae affectus animi moderator et per ipsos voluntatem ciet ad quaecumque vult sequenda vel fugienda._"[10] Baumgarten owed to it his tripartition of Æsthetic into heuristic, methodology and semeiotic (invention, disposition and elocution), adopted later by Meier. Among Meier's numerous works is a little book entitled _Theoretic Doctrine of Emotional Disturbances in General_,[11] considered by him to be a psychological introduction to æsthetic doctrine. On the other hand, Immanuel Kant in his _Critique of Judgment_ observes that eloquence, in the sense of _ars oratoria_ or art of persuasion by means of beautiful appearance and dialectical form, must be distinguished from beautiful speaking (_Wohlredenheit)_; and that the art of oratory, playing upon the weakness of men to gain its own ends, "is worthy of no esteem" (_gar keiner Achtungwürdig)_[12] But in the schools it flourished in many celebrated compilations, including one by the French Jesuit Father Dominique de Colonne, which was in use until some few decades ago. Even to-day, in so-called Literary Institutions, we come across survivals of ancient Rhetoric, notably in chapters devoted to the art of oratory; and fresh manuals on judicial or sacred eloquence (Ortloff, Whately, etc.[13]) are actually appearing, though rarely, to-day. Still, Rhetoric in the ancient sense may be said to have disappeared from the system of the sciences; to-day no philosopher would dream of following Campanella in dedicating a special section of rational philosophy to Rhetoric.

[Sidenote: _Modern signification of Rhetoric. Theory of literary form._]

In compensation for this process, the theory of elocution and beautiful speech has been in modern times progressively emphasized and thrown into scientific form. But the idea of such a science is ancient, as we have seen; and equally ancient is the style of exposition, consisting in the doctrine of a double form and the concept of ornate form.

[Sidenote: _Concept of ornament._]

The concept of "ornament" must have occurred spontaneously to the mind as soon as attention was directed to the values of speech by listening to poets reciting[14] or to oratorical contests in public gatherings. It must very early have been thought that the difference between good speaking and bad, or between that which gave more pleasure and that which gave less, between grave or solemn, and commonplace or colloquial, consisted in something additional superimposed upon the canvas of ordinary speech like an embroidery by a skilful orator. These considerations led the Græco-Roman rhetoricians to adopt the practice, like the Indians, who arrived at the distinction independently, to distinguish the bare (ψιλή) or purely grammatical form from another form containing an addition which they called ornament, κόσμος: _ornatum est_ (Quintilian will serve, as typical of all the rest) quod perspicuo ac probabili plus est.[15]

The notion of ornament as something added on from outside forms the basis of the theory which Aristotle, the philosopher of Rhetoric, gave of the queen of ornaments, Metaphor. According to him the high pleasure aroused by metaphor arises from the collocation of different terms and the discovery of relations between species and genera, producing "learning and knowledge by means of the genus" (μαθησιν καi γνῶσιν διὰ τοῦ γένους), and that easy learning which is the greatest of human pleasures,[16] which amounts to saying that metaphor adds to the concept under consideration a group of minor incidental cognitions, as a kind of diversion and relief and pleasant instruction for the mind.

[Sidenote: _Classes of ornament._]

Ornaments were divided and subdivided in a number of different ways. Aristotle (and previously Isocrates, rather differently) classified the ornaments which diversify bare or nude form, under the heads of dialect forms, substitutions and epithets, prolongations, truncations and abbreviations of words, and other departures from common usage, and, finally, rhythm and harmony. Substitutions were of four classes: species for genus; genus for species; species for species; and proportionate.[17] After Aristotle, elocution was especially studied by Theophrastus and Demetrius Phalereus; these rhetoricians and their followers further solidified the classification of ornament by distinguishing tropes from figures (σχήματα) and dividing figures into figures of speech (scheimata τῆς λέχεως) and of thought (τῆς διανοίας), figures of speech into grammatical and rhetorical, and figures of thought into pathetic and ethic. Substitutions were divided into fourteen principal forms, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, antonomasia, onomatopeia, catachresis, metalepsis, epithet, allegory, enigma, irony, periphrase, hyperbaton and hyperbole; each divided into subspecies and contrasted with its relative vice. Figures of speech amounted to a score or so (repetition, anaphora, antistrophe, climax, asyndeton, assonance, etc.); figures of thought to about the same number (interrogation, prosopopœia, ætiopœia, hypotyposis, commotion, simulation, exclamation, apostrophe, aposiopesis, etc.). If these divisions have any value as aids to memory in relation to particular literary forms, considered rationally they are simply capricious, as is evidenced by the fact that many classes of the ornate appear now under the heading of tropes, now of figures; sometimes under figures of speech, then as those of thought, no reason for the alteration is given except the arbitrary caprice of an individual rhetorician which so decrees and disposes. And since one function which may be fulfilled by the rhetorical categories is to point out the divergence between two ways of expressing the same thing, one of which is arbitrarily selected as "proper,"[18] it is easy to see why the ancients defined metaphor as "_verbi vel sermonis a propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio,_" and figure as "_conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi et primum se offerenti ratione._"[19]

[Sidenote: _The concept of the Fitting._]

So far as we know, antiquity raised no revolt against the theory of ornament or of double form. We do sometimes hear Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca and others saying, _Ipsae res verba rapiunt, Pectus est quod disertos facit et vis mentis, Rem tene, verba sequentur, Curam verborum rerum volo esse sollicitudinem,_ or _Nulla est verborum nisi rei cohaerentium virtus._ But these maxims did not bear the weighty meanings which we moderns might attach to them; they were perhaps in contradiction with the theory of ornament, but as the contradiction was unheeded, it was ineffective: they were the protests of common sense, powerless to combat the fallacies of school doctrine. Moreover, the latter was fitted with a safety-valve, a sage contrivance to disguise its inherent absurdity. If the ornate consisted of a _plus,_ in what degree should it be used? if it gave pleasure, must we not conclude that the more it were used, the greater the pleasure derived? would its extravagant use be attended by extravagant pleasure? Herein was peril: instinctively the rhetoricians hastened to the defence, snatching up the first weapon that came to hand, namely, the fitting (πρέπον) Ornament must be used carefully; neither too much too little; _in medio virtus_; as much as is fitting (ἀλλά πρέπον). Aristotle recommends a style seasoned with "a certain dose" (δεῑ ἃρα κεκρᾶσθαί πως τούτοις.) for ornament should be a condiment, not a food (ἤδυσμα, οὐκ ἒδεσμα). [20] The fitting was a concept quite inconsistent with that of ornament; it was a rival, and enemy, destined to destroy it. Fitting to what? to expression of course; but that which is fitting to expression cannot be called an ornament, an external addition; it coincides with expression itself. But the rhetoricians contented themselves with maintaining peaceful relations between the ornate and the fitting, without troubling to mediate them through a third concept. The pseudo-Longinus alone in answer to an observation of his predecessor Cæcilius that more than two or three metaphors must not be used in the same place, remarked that a larger number ought to be used where passion (τὰ πάθη) rushes headlong like a torrent, carrying with it as necessaries (ὡς ἀναγκαῑον) a multitude of such substitutions.[21]

[Sidenote: _The theory of ornament in the Middle Ages and Renaissance._]

Preserved in the compilations of later antiquity (such as the works of Donatus and Priscian and the celebrated allegorical tract of Marcianus Capella), and in the compendia of Bede, Rhabanus Maurus and others, the theory of ornament passed to the Middle Ages. Throughout this period Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic continued to form the _trivium_ of the schools. The theory was to some extent favoured in mediæval times by the fact that writers and scholars made use of a dead language; this helped to reinforce the idea that beautiful form was not a spontaneous thing but consisted in an addition or embroidery. Under the Renaissance the theory continued to flourish and was revived by study of the best classical sources; to the works of Cicero were added the _Institutiones_ of Quintilian and the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, with the host of minor Latin and Greek rhetoricians, amongst whom was Hermogenes with his celebrated _Ideas,_ brought into fashion by Giulio Camillo.[22]

Even those writers who dared to criticize the organism of ancient Rhetoric left the theory of ornament unassailed. Vives lamented over the "exaggerated subtlety of the Greeks" which had multiplied distinctions to infinity in this matter without diffusing light,[23] but he never took up a definite stand against the theory of ornament. Patrizzi was dissatisfied with the insufficient definition of ornament given by the ancients; but he asserted the existence of ornaments and metaphors as well as seven different modes of "conjoined speech,"--narrative, proof, amplification, diminution, ornament with its contrary, elevation and depression.[24] The school of Ramus continued to entrust Rhetoric with the "embellishment" of thought. Owing to the vast extension and intensification of life and literature in the sixteenth century, it would be easy to quote phrases, as we have done from ancient authors, asserting the strict dependence of speech upon the things it wishes to express, and lively attacks on pedants and pedantic forms and rules for beautiful speech. But what would be the use? The theory of ornament was always in the background, tacitly admitted as indisputable by all. Juan de Valdés, for instance, makes the following confession of stylistic faith: "_Escribo como hablo; solamente tengo cuidado de usar de vocablos que sinifiquen bien lo que quiero decir, y dígolo cuanto más llanamente me es posible, porqué, á mi parecer, en ninguna lengua está bien la afectación._" But Valdés also says that beautiful language consists "_en que digais lo que quereis con las menos palabras que pudiéredes, de tal manera que ... no se pueda quitar ninguna sin ofender á la sentencia, ó al encarescimiento, ó á la elegancia._"[25] Here it seems that amplification and elegance are conceived as extraneous to the meaning or content.--A gleam of truth is visible in Montaigne, who, confronted by the laboured categories into which rhetoricians divide ornament, observes: "_Oyez dire Métonymie, Métaphore, Allégorie et aultres tels noms de la Grammaire; semble il pas qu'on signifie quelque forme de langage rare et pellegrin? Ce sont tiltres qui touchent le babil de vostre chambrière._"[26] That is to say, they are anything but language remote from the _primum se offerens ratio._

[Sidenote: Reductio ad absurdum in the seventeenth century.]

The impossibility of upholding the theory of ornament was first noticed during the decadence of Italian literature in the seventeenth century, when literary production became but a play of empty forms, and the convenient, long violated in practice, was abandoned and forgotten even in theory, and came to be looked on as a limit arbitrarily imposed on the fundamental principle of ornamentation. The opponents of that style loaded with conceits which is known as "secentismo" from its prevalence in the seventeenth century (Matteo Pellegrini, Orsi and others) felt the viciousness of the literary production of their day; they were aware that decadence was due to the fact that literature was no longer the serious expression of a content; but they were embarrassed by the reasoning of the champions of bad taste, who were able to demonstrate that the whole business conformed in every particular with the literary theory of ornament, the common ground of both parties. In vain did the former appeal to the "convenient," the "moderate," the "avoidance of affectation," to ornament as "condiment, not food," and all the other weapons which had sufficed in times when healthy literary production and sound æsthetic taste had automatically corrected faulty theory: the other party replied, there was no reason to be sparing in use of ornament when it lay in masses ready to hand, or to avoid an ostentatious display of wit when one had an inexhaustible supply.[27]

[Sidenote: _Polemic concerning the theory of ornament._]