Chapter IV: Other Particular Doctrines (4)

_Thirdly_ and finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no æsthetic signification similar or analogous to those passed in review, and yet one feels that it is not void of meaning and designates something that deserves to be noted, this means that it is used in the service of logic and of science. Granted that a concept used by a writer in a scientific sense is designated by a definite term, it is natural that other terms found in use by that writer on which he incidentally employs himself to signify the same thought, become _in respect to_ the vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms, elliptical forms and the like. We ourselves in the course of this treatise have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of such language, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or may find employed. But this proceeding, which is of value in discussions pertaining to the criticism of science and philosophy, has none whatever in literary and artistic criticism. There are words and metaphors proper to science: the same concept may be psychologically formed in various circumstances and therefore differ in its intuitional expression. When the scientific terminology of a given writer has been established and one of these modes fixed as correct, then all other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the æsthetic fact there are none but proper words: the same intuition can be expressed in one way only, precisely because it is intuition and not concept.

[Sidenote: _Rhetoric in the schools._]

Some, while admitting the æsthetic non-existence of the rhetorical categories, yet make a reservation as to their utility and the service they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. We confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate the mind to logical distinction, or aid the teaching of a science which they disturb and obscure. Perhaps what is meant is that such distinctions, as empirical classes, can aid memory and learning, as was admitted above for literary and artistic kinds. To this there is no objection. There is certainly another purpose for which the rhetorical categories should continue to appear in schools: to be criticized there. The errors of the past must not be forgotten and no more said, and truths cannot be kept alive save by making them combat errors. Unless an account of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied by a criticism of them, there is a risk of their springing up again, and it may be said that they are already springing up among certain philologists as the latest _psychological_ discoveries.

[Sidenote: _The resemblances of expressions._]

It might seem that we thus wished to deny all bond of resemblance between different expressions and works of art. Resemblances exist, and by means of them, works of art can be arranged in this or that group. But they are likenesses such as are observed among individuals, and can never be rendered with abstract determinations. That is to say, it would be incorrect to apply identification, subordination, co-ordination and the other relations of concepts to these resemblances, which consist wholly of what is called a _family likeness,_ derived from the historical conditions in which the various works have appeared and from relationship of soul among the artists.

[Sidenote: _The relative possibility of translations._]

It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of translations; not as reproductions of the same original expressions (which it would be vain to attempt), but as productions of _similar_ expressions more or less nearly resembling the originals. The translation called good is an approximation which has original value as a work of art and can stand by itself.

X

ÆSTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY

[Sidenote: _Various significations of the word feeling._]

Passing to the study of more complex concepts, where the æsthetic activity is to be considered in conjunction with other orders of facts, and showing the mode of their union or complication, we find ourselves first face to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with those feelings that are called _æsthetic._

The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings in philosophic terminology. We have already had occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate the spirit in its passivity, the matter or content of art, and so as synonym of _impressions._ Once again (and then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as designating the _non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the æsthetic fact, that is to say, pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept and affirms no fact.

[Sidenote: _Feeling as activity._]

But here it is not regarded in either of these two meanings, nor in the others which have also been conferred upon it to designate other _cognitive_ forms of the spirit, but only in that where feeling is understood as a special activity, of non-cognitive nature, having its two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain._

This activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have therefore attempted either to deny it as activity, or to attribute it to _nature,_ excluding it from the spirit. But both these solutions bristle with difficulties of such a kind as to prove them finally unacceptable to any one who examines them with care. For what could a non-spiritual activity ever be, an _activity of nature,_ when we have no other knowledge of activity save as spirituality, nor of spirituality save as activity? Nature is in this case, by definition, the merely passive, inert, mechanical, material. On the other hand, the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifest activity in its concreteness, or, so to say, quivering.

[Sidenote: _Identification of feeling with economic activity._]

This critical conclusion should place us especially in the greatest embarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given above we have left no room for the new activity of which we are now obliged to recognize the existence. But the activity of feeling, if it is activity, is not new. It has already had its place assigned to it in the system that we have sketched, where, however, it has been given another name, _economic_ activity. What is called the activity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical activity which we have distinguished from the ethical activity and made to consist of the appetition and volition for some individual end, apart from any moral determination.

If feeling has been sometimes considered to be an organic or natural activity, this has happened just because it does not coincide either with logical, æsthetic or ethical activity. Looked at from the standpoint of those three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie _outside_ the true and real spirit, spirit in its aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature, or of the soul in so far as it is nature. From this too results the truth of another thesis, often maintained, that the æsthetic activity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling. This thesis is inexpugnable, when feeling has already been understood implicitly and unconsciously as economic volition.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of hedonism._]

The view refuted in this thesis is known as _hedonism._ This consists in reducing all the various forms of the spirit to one, which thus also loses its own distinctive character and becomes something obscure and mysterious, like "the night in which all cows are black." Having brought about this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and pain. They find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art and that of easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs.

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

But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not said that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them of necessity, because they are all in close relation both with one another and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains, known as feeling. But we must not confound a concomitant with the principal fact, and substitute the one for the other. The discovery of a truth, or the fulfilment of a moral duty, produces in us a joy which makes vibrate our whole being, which, by attaining the aim of those forms of spiritual activity, attains at the same time that to which it was _practically_ tending, as its end. Nevertheless, _economic_ or _hedonistic_ satisfaction, _ethical_ satisfaction, _æsthetic_ satisfaction, _intellectual_ satisfaction, though thus united, remain always distinct.

A question often asked is thus answered at the same time, one which has correctly seemed to be a matter of life or death for æsthetic science, namely, whether feeling and pleasure precede or follow, are cause or effect of the æsthetic fact. We must widen this question to include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and answer it by maintaining that one cannot talk of cause and effect and of a chronological before and after in the unity of the spirit.

And once the relation above expounded is established, all necessity for inquiry as to the nature of æsthetic, moral, intellectual and even what was sometimes called economic feelings, must disappear. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one, and inquiry as to economic feeling must be the same as that relating to economic activity. But in the other cases also, we must attend, not to the substantive, but to the adjective: the æsthetic, moral and logical character will explain the colouring of the feelings as æsthetic, moral and intellectual, whereas feeling, studied alone, will never explain those refractions and colorations.

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

A further consequence is, that we no longer need retain the well-known distinctions between values or feelings _of value,_ and feelings that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; _disinterested_ and _interested_ feelings, _objective_ feelings and feelings not _objective_ but simply _subjective_ feelings of _approbation_ and of _mere pleasure_ (cf. the distinction of _Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_ in German). Those distinctions were used to save the three spiritual forms, which were recognized as the triad of the _True,_ the _Good_ and the _Beautiful,_ from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, and therefore insidious in its indeterminateness and mother of scandals. For us this triad has completed its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by receiving also the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings among the respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were conceived (by ourselves and others), between value and feelings, as between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but differences between value and value.

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

As has already been said, feeling or the economic activity presents itself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure and pain, which we can now translate into useful and disuseful (or hurtful). This bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of the activistic character of feeling, and one which is to be found in all forms of activity. If each of these is _value,_ each has opposed to it _antivalue_ or _disvalue._ Absence of value is not sufficient to cause dis value, but activity and passivity must be struggling between themselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence the contradiction and disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed, impeded, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely: disvalue is its contrary.

We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, without entering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue, that is, the problem of contraries (that is to say, whether they are to be thought of dualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, which is also contrariety). This definition of the two terms will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear the nature of æsthetic activity, and at this particular point one of the most obscure and disputed concepts of Æsthetic: the concept of the _Beautiful._

[Sidenote: _The Beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without qualification._]

Æsthetic, intellectual, economic and ethical values and disvalues are variously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good, useful, expedient, just, right_ and so on--thus designating the free development of spiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production, when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad, useless, inexpedient, unjust,_ wrong designating embarrassed activity, the product that is a failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations are being continually shifted from one order of facts to another. _Beautiful,_ for instance, is said not only of a successful expression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully achieved, and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectual beauty,_ of a _beautiful action,_ of a _moral beauty._ The attempt to keep up with these infinitely varying usages leads into a trackless labyrinth of verbalism in which many philosophers and students of art have lost their way. For this reason we have thought it best studiously to avoid the use of the word "beautiful" to indicate successful expression in its positive value. But after all the explanations that we have given, all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and since on the other hand we cannot fail to recognize that the prevailing tendency, both in current speech and in philosophy, is to limit the meaning of the word "beautiful" precisely to the æsthetic value, it seems now both permissible and advisable to define beauty as _successful expression,_ or rather, as _expression_ and nothing more, because expression when it is not successful is not expression.

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

Consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. The paradox is true, for works of art that are failures, that the beautiful presents itself as _unity,_ the ugly as _multiplicity._ Hence we hear of _merits_ in relation to works of art that are more or less failures, that is to say, of _those parts of them that are beautiful,_ which is not the case with perfect works. It is in fact impossible to enumerate the merits or to point out what parts of the latter are beautiful, because being a complete fusion they have but one value. Life circulates in the whole organism: it is not withdrawn into the several parts.

[Sidenote: _Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor ugly._]

Unsuccessful works may have merit in various degrees, even the greatest. The beautiful does not possess degrees, for there is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, on the other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost beautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were _complete,_ that is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reason cease to be ugly, because it would be without the contradiction in which is the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become non-value; activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not at war, save when activity is really present to oppose it.

And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the ugly is based on the conflicts and contradictions in which æsthetic activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest instances of expression. Hence the illusion that there are expressions neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without sensible effort and appear easy and natural being considered such.

[Sidenote: _True æsthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental feelings._]

The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to these henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there exist perfect æsthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, we must recommend him to concentrate his attention in the æsthetic fact, upon that which is truly æsthetic pleasure. Æsthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced or rather complicated by pleasures arising from extraneous facts, which are only accidentally found united with it. The poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely æsthetic pleasure at the moment when he sees (or intuites) his work for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amusement, or that of laughingly snatching a nail from his coffin, accompanies the moment of true æsthetic pleasure in the art of the dramatist and actors. The same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the æsthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-complacency satisfied, or even of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. Instances could be multiplied.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of apparent feelings._]

A category of _apparent_ æsthetic feelings has been formed in modern Æsthetic, not arising from the form, that is to say, from the works of art as such, but from their content. It has been remarked that artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite shades of variety. We tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture and with the melody of music. But these feelings are not such as would be aroused by the real fact outside art; or rather, they are the same in quality, but are quantitatively an attenuation of real things. Æsthetic and _apparent_ pleasure and pain show themselves to be light, shallow, mobile. We have no need to treat here of these _apparent feelings,_ for the good reason that we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have hitherto treated of nothing but them. What are these apparent or manifested feelings, but feelings objectified, intuited, expressed? And it is natural that they do not trouble and afflict us as passionately as those of real life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula of _apparent feelings_ is therefore for us nothing but a tautology, through which we can run the pen without scruple.

XI

CRITICISM OF ÆSTHETIC HEDONISM

As we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theory based upon the pleasure and pain intrinsic to the economic activity and accompanying every other form of activity, which, confounding container and content, fails to recognize any process but the hedonistic; so we are opposed to æsthetic hedonism in particular, which looks at any rate upon the æsthetic, if not also upon all other activities, as a simple fact of feeling, and confounds the pleasurable expression, which is the beautiful, with the simply pleasurable and all its other species.

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

The æsthetic-hedonistic point of view has been presented in several forms. One of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that which pleases sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called _higher senses._ When analysis of æsthetic facts first began, it was, indeed, difficult to avoid the false belief that a picture and a piece of music are impressions of sight or hearing and correctly to interpret the obvious remark that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor the deaf man the music. To show, as we have shown, that the æsthetic fact does not depend upon the nature of the impressions, but that all sensible impressions can be raised to æsthetic expression and that none need of necessity be so raised, is an idea which presents itself only when all other doctrinal constructions of this problem have been tried. Any one who holds that the æsthetic fact is something pleasing to the eyes or to the hearing, has no line of defence against him who consistently proceeds to identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in general, and includes in Æsthetic cooking, or (as some positivists have called it) the viscerally beautiful.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of play._]

The theory of _play_ is another form of æsthetic hedonism. The concept of play has sometimes helped towards the realization of the activistic character of the expressive fact: man (it has been said) is not really man, save when he begins to play (that is to say, when he frees himself from natural and mechanical causality and works spiritually); and his first game is art. But since the word "play" also means that pleasure which arises from the expenditure of the exuberant energy of the organism (which is a practical fact), the consequence of this theory has been that every game has been called an æsthetic fact, or that the æsthetic function has been called a game, because like science and everything else, it may form part of a game. Morality alone cannot ever be caused by the will to play (for it will never consent to such an origin), but on the contrary itself dominates and regulates the act itself of playing.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theories of sexuality and of triumph._]

Finally, some have tried to deduce the pleasure of art from the echo of that of the sexual organs. And some of the most recent æstheticians confidently find the genesis of the æsthetic fact in the pleasure of _conquering_ and in that of _triumphing,_ or, as others add, in the wish of the male to conquer the female. This theory is seasoned with much anecdotal erudition, heaven knows of what degree of credibility, as to the customs of savage peoples. But there was really no need for such assistance, since in ordinary life one often meets poets who adorn themselves with their poetry, like cocks raising their crests, or turkeys spreading out their tails. But any one who does this, in so far as he does it, is not a poet but a poor fool, in fact, a poor fool of a cock or turkey, and the desire for the victorious conquest of women has nothing to do with the fact of art. It would be just as correct to look upon poetry as _economic,_ because there once were court poets and salaried poets, and there are poets now who find in the sale of their verses an aid to life if not a complete living. This deduction and definition has not failed to attract some zealous neophytes in historical materialism.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the Æsthetic of the sympathetic. Meaning in it of content and form._]

Another less vulgar current of thought considers Æsthetic as the science of the _sympathetic,_ as that with which we sympathize, which attracts, rejoices, arouses pleasure and admiration. But the sympathetic is nothing but the image or representation of what pleases. And as such it is a complex fact, resulting from a constant element, the æsthetic element of representation, and a variable element, the pleasing in its infinite forms, arising from all the various classes of values.

In ordinary language, there is sometimes a feeling of repugnance at calling an expression "beautiful," unless it is an expression of the sympathetic. Hence the continual conflicts between the point of view of the æsthetician or art critic and that of the ordinary person, who cannot succeed in persuading himself that the image of pain and baseness can be beautiful or at least that it has as much right to be beautiful as the pleasing and the good.

The conflict could be put an end to by distinguishing two different sciences, one of expression and the other of the sympathetic, if the latter could be the object of a special science; that is to say, if it were not, as has been shown, a complex and equivocal concept. If predominance be given to the expressive fact, it enters Æsthetic as science of expression; if to the pleasurable content, we fall back to the study of facts essentially hedonistic (utilitarian), however complicated they may appear. The particular origin of the doctrine which conceives the relation between form and content as the sum of two values is also to be sought in the doctrine of the sympathetic.

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic hedonism and moralism._]

In all the doctrines just now discussed, art is considered as a merely hedonistic thing. But æsthetic hedonism cannot be maintained, save by uniting it with a general philosophical hedonism, which does not admit any other form of value. Hardly has this hedonistic conception of art been received by philosophers who admit one or more spiritual values, truth or morality, when the following question must necessarily be asked: What must be done with art? To what use should it be put? Should a free course be allowed to the pleasures it procures? And if so, to what extent? The question of the _end of art,_ which in the Æsthetic of expression is inconceivable, has a clear significance in the Æsthetic of the Sympathetic and demands a solution.

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

Now it is evident that such solution can have but two forms, one altogether negative, the other of a restrictive nature. The first, which we shall call _rigoristic_ or _ascetic,_ appears several times, although not frequently, in the history of ideas. It looks upon art as an inebriation of the senses and therefore as not only useless but harmful. According to this theory, then, we must exert all our strength to liberate the human soul from its disturbing influence. The other solution, which we shall call _pedagogic_ or _moralistic-utilitarian,_ admits art, but only in so far as it co-operates with the end of morality; in so far as it assists with innocent pleasure the work of him who points the way to the true and the good; in so far as it anoints the edge of the cup of wisdom and morality with sweet honey.

It is well to observe that it would be an error to divide this second view into intellectualistic and moralistic-utilitarian, according as to whether be assigned to art the end of leading to the true or to what is practically good. The educational task which is imposed upon it, precisely because it is an end which is sought after and advised, is no longer merely a theoretical fact, but a theoretical fact already become the ground for practical action; it is not, therefore, intellectualism, but pedagogism and practicism. Nor would it be more exact to subdivide the pedagogic view into pure utilitarian and moralistic-utilitarian; because those who admit only the satisfaction of the individual (the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ulterior justification for art.

But to enunciate these theories at the point to which we have attained is to confute them. We prefer to restrict ourselves to observing that in the pedagogic theory of art is to be found another of the reasons why the claim has erroneously been made that the content of art should be _chosen_ with a view to certain practical effects.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of pure beauty._]

The thesis that art consists of _pure beauty_ has often been brought forward against hedonistic and pedagogic Æsthetic, and eagerly taken up by artists: "Heaven places all our joy in _pure beauty,_ and the Verse is everything." If by this be understood that art is not to be confounded with sensual pleasure (utilitarian practicism), nor with the exercise of morality, then our Æsthetic also must be permitted to adorn itself with the title of _Æsthetic of pure beauty._ But if (as is often the case) something mystical and transcendent be meant by this, something unknown to our poor human world, or something spiritual and beatific, but not expressive, we must reply that while applauding the conception of a beauty _free from all that is not the spiritual form of expression,_ we are unable to conceive a beauty superior to this and still less that it should be _purified of expression,_ or severed from itself.

XII

THE ÆSTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-ÆSTHETIC CONCEPTS

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

The doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded in this by the capricious metaphysical and mystical Æsthetic, and by that blind traditionalism which assumes an intimate connection between things fortuitously treated together by the same authors in the same books), has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of Æsthetic a series of concepts a rapid mention of which suffices to justify our resolute expulsion of them from our own treatise.

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

Since that doctrine took the sympathetic as its special object, it was naturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of the sympathetic, any of the mixtures or gradations by means of which, starting from the sympathetic in its loftiest and most intense manifestation, its contrary, the antipathetic and repugnant, is finally reached. And since the sympathetic content was held to be the _beautiful_ and the antipathetic the _ugly,_ the varieties (tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, etc.) constituted for that conception of Æsthetic the shades and gradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the ugly in art and of the overcoming of it._]

Having enumerated and defined as well as it could, the chief of these varieties, the Æsthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem of the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art._ This problem is without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the anti-æsthetic or inexpressive, which can never form _part_ of the æsthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its _antithesis._ But in the doctrine which we are here criticizing the positing and discussion of that problem meant neither more nor less than the necessity of reconciling in some way the false and defective idea of art from which it started--art reduced to the representation of the pleasurable--with real art, which occupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial attempt to settle what examples of the _ugly_ (antipathetic) could be admitted in artistic representation, and for what reasons, and in what ways.

The answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be _overcome_; an unconquerable ugliness, such as the _disgusting_ or the _nauseating,_ being altogether excluded. Further, that the duty of the ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening the effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of contrasts, from which the pleasurable may issue more efficacious and joy-giving. It is, indeed, a common observation that pleasure is more vividly felt when preceded by abstinence and suffering. Thus the ugly in art was looked upon as adapted for the service of the beautiful, a stimulant and condiment of æsthetic pleasure.

That special refinement of hedonistic theory which used to be pompously called the doctrine of the _overcoming of the ugly_ falls with the Æsthetic of the sympathetic, and with it the enumeration and definition of the concepts mentioned above, which show themselves to be completely foreign to Æsthetic. For Æsthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic or their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of representation.

[Sidenote: _Pseudo-æsthetic concepts belong to Psychology._]

Nevertheless, the important place which, as we have said, those concepts have hitherto occupied in æsthetic treatises makes it advisable to supply a rather more complete explanation as to their nature. What shall be their lot? Excluded from Æsthetic, in what other part of Philosophy will they be received?

In truth, nowhere; for all those concepts are without philosophical value. They are nothing but a series of classes, which can be fashioned in the most various ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is sought to reduce the infinite complications and shadings of the values and disvalues of life. Of these classes, some have an especially positive significance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic, the solemn, the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others a significance chiefly negative, like the ugly, the painful, the horrible, the dreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the insipid, the extravagant; finally in others a mixed significance prevails, such as the comic, the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic. The complications are infinite, because the individuations are infinite; hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in the arbitrary and approximate manner proper to the natural sciences, satisfied with making the best classification they can of that reality which they can neither exhaust by enumeration, nor understand and conquer speculatively. And since _Psychology_ is the naturalistic science which undertakes to construct types and schemes of the spiritual life of man (a science whose merely empirical and descriptive character becomes more evident day by day), these concepts do not belong to Æsthetic, nor to Philosophy in general, but must simply be handed over to Psychology.

[Sidenote: _Impossibility of rigorous definitions of them._]

The case of those concepts is that of all other psychological constructions: no rigorous definitions of them are possible; and consequently they cannot be deduced from one another nor be connected in a system, though this has often been attempted, with great waste of time and without obtaining thereby any useful results. Nor can it be claimed as possible to obtain empirical definitions, universally acceptable as precise and true in the place of those philosophical definitions recognized as impossible. For no single definition of a single fact can be given, but there are innumerable definitions of it, according to the cases and the purposes for which they are made; and it is clear that if there were only one which had the value of truth it would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical definition. And as a matter of fact whenever one of the terms to which we have referred has been employed (or indeed any other belonging to the same class), a new definition of it has been given at the same time, expressed or understood. Each one of those definitions differed somehow from the others, in some particular, however minute, and in its implied reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became a special object of attention and was raised to the position of a general type. Thus it is that not one of such definitions satisfies either the hearer or the constructor of it. For a moment later he finds himself before a new instance to which he recognizes that his definition is more or less insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of retouching. So we must leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or the comic, the tragic or the humorous, on every occasion as they please and as may suit the end they have in view. And if an empirical definition of universal validity be demanded, we can but submit this one:--The sublime (or comic, tragic, humorous, etc.) is _everything_ that is or shall be so _called_ by those who have employed or shall employ these _words._

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

What is the sublime? The unexpected affirmation of an overwhelming moral force: that is one definition. But the other definition is equally good, which recognizes the sublime also where the force which affirms itself is certainly overwhelming, but immoral and destructive. Both remain vague and lack precision, until applied to a concrete case, to an example which makes clear what is meant by "overwhelming," and what by unexpected. They are quantitative concepts, but falsely quantitative, since there is no way of measuring them; they are at bottom metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical tautologies. The humorous will be laughter amid tears, bitter laughter, the sudden spring from the comic to the tragic and from the tragic to the comic, the romantic comic, the opposite of the sublime, war declared against every attempt at insincerity, compassion ashamed to weep, a laugh, not at the fact, but at the ideal itself; and what you will beside, according as it is wished to get a view of the physiognomy of this or that poet, of this or that poem, which, in its uniqueness, is its own definition, and though momentary and circumscribed, is alone adequate. The comic has been defined as the displeasure arising from the perception of a deformity immediately followed by a greater pleasure arising from the relaxation of our psychical forces, strained in expectation of a perception looked upon as important. While listening to a narrative, which might, for example, be a description of the magnificently heroic purpose of some individual, we anticipate in imagination the occurrence of a magnificent and heroic action, and we prepare for its reception by concentrating our psychic forces. All of a sudden, however, instead of the magnificent and heroic action, which the preliminaries and the tone of the narrative had led us to expect, there is an unexpected change to a small, mean, foolish action, which does not satisfy to our expectation. We have been deceived, and the recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant of displeasure. But this instant is as it were conquered by that which immediately follows: we are able to relax our strained attention, to free ourselves from the provision of accumulated psychic energy henceforth superfluous, to feel ourselves light and well. This is the pleasure of the comic, with its physiological equivalent of laughter. If the unpleasant fact that has appeared should painfully affect our interests, there would not be pleasure, laughter would be at once suffocated, the psychic energy would be strained and overstrained by other more weighty perceptions. If on the other hand such more weighty perceptions do not appear, if the whole loss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight, then the feeling of our psychic wealth that ensues affords ample compensation for this very slight disappointment. Such, expressed in a few words, is one of the most accurate modern definitions of the comic. It boasts of containing in itself, justified or corrected and verified, the manifold attempts to define the comic, from Hellenic antiquity to our own day, from Plato's definition in the _Philebus,_ and from Aristotle's, which is more explicit, and looks upon the comic as an _ugliness without pain,_ to that of Hobbes, who replaced it in the feeling of _individual superiority_; of Kant, who saw in it the _relaxation of a tension_; or from the other proposals of those for whom it was _the conflict between great and small, between the finite and the infinite_ and so on. But on close observation, the analysis and definition above given, although in appearance most elaborate and precise, yet enunciates characteristics which are applicable, not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; such as the succession of painful and pleasing moments and the satisfaction arising from the consciousness of strength and of its free expansion. The differentiation is here given by quantitative determinations whose limits cannot be laid down. They therefore remain vague words, possessing some degree of meaning from their reference to this or that particular comic fact, and from the psychic disposition of qualities of the speaker. If such definitions be taken too seriously, there happens to them what Jean Paul Richter said of all the definitions of the comic: namely, that their sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to produce in reality the fact which they vainly try to fix logically. And who will ever logically determine the dividing line between the comic and the non-comic, between laughter and smiles, between smiling and gravity, or cut the ever varying continuum into which life melts into clearly divided parts?

[Sidenote: _Relation between these concepts and æsthetic concepts._]

The facts, classified as far as possible in these psychological concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond the general one, that all of them, in so far as they constitute the material of life, can become the object of artistic representation; and the other, an accidental relation, that æsthetic facts also may sometimes enter the processes described, such as the impression of the sublime aroused by the work of a Titanic artist, such as Dante or Shakespeare, and of the comic produced by the attempts of a dauber or scribbler.

But here too the process is external to the æsthetic fact, to which is linked only the feeling of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. Dante's Farinata is æsthetically beautiful and nothing but beautiful: if the force of will of that personage seem also sublime, or the expression that Dante gives him seem, by reason of his great genius, sublime in comparison with that of a less energetic poet, these are things altogether outside æsthetic consideration. We repeat again that this last pays attention always and only to the adequateness of the expression, that is to say, to beauty.

XIII

THE "PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL" IN NATURE AND IN ART

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic activity and physical concepts._]

Æsthetic activity, distinct from the practical activity, is always accompanied by it in its manifestations. Hence its utilitarian or hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain which are, as it were, the practical echo of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. But this practical side of the æsthetic activity has in its turn a _physical_ or _psycho-physical_ accompaniment, which consists of sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, and so on.

Does it _really_ possess this side, or does it only seem to possess it, through the construction which we put on it in physical science, and the useful and arbitrary methods which we have already several times set in relief as proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our reply cannot be doubtful, that is, it must affirm to the second of the two hypotheses.

However, it will be better to leave this point in suspense, since it is not at present necessary to press this line of inquiry further. The mere mention suffices to secure our speaking (for reasons of simplicity and adhesion to ordinary language) of the physical element as something objective and existing, against leading to hasty conclusions as to the concepts of spirit and nature and their relation.

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

It is important, on the other hand, to make clear that as the existence of the hedonistic side in every spiritual activity has given rise to the confusion between the æsthetic activity and the useful or pleasurable, so the existence of, or rather the possibility of constructing, this physical side, has caused the confusion between _æsthetic_ expression and expression _in a naturalistic sense_; that is to say, between a spiritual fact and a mechanical and passive fact (not to say, between a concrete reality and an abstraction or fiction). In common speech, sometimes it is the words of the poet that are called _expressions,_ the notes of the musician, or the figures of the painter; sometimes the blush which generally accompanies the feeling of shame, the pallor often due to fear, the grinding of the teeth proper to violent anger, the shining of the eyes and certain movements of the muscles of the mouth, which manifest cheerfulness. We also say that a certain degree of heat is the _expression_ of fever, that the falling of the barometer is the _expression_ of rain, and even that the height of the exchange _expresses_ the depreciation of the paper currency of a State, or social discontent the approach of a revolution. One can well imagine what sort of scientific results would be attained by allowing oneself to be governed by verbal usage and classing together facts so widely different. But there is, in fact, an abyss between a man who is the prey of anger with all its natural manifestations and another man who expresses it æsthetically; between the appearance, the cries and contortions of some one grieving at the loss of a dear one and the words or song with which the same individual portrays his suffering at another time; between the grimace of emotion and the gesture of the actor. Darwin's book on the expression of the emotions in man and animals does not belong to Æsthetic; because there is nothing in common between the science of spiritual expression and a _Semiotic,_ whether it be medical, meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic.

Expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks _expression in the spiritual sense,_ that is to say, the very character of activity and of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into the poles of beauty and of ugliness. It is nothing but a relation between cause and effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process of æsthetic production can be symbolized in four stages, which are: _a,_ impressions; _b,_ expression or spiritual æsthetic synthesis; _c,_ hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (æsthetic pleasure); _d,_ translation of the æsthetic fact into physical phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, etc.). Any one can see that the capital point, the only one that is properly speaking æsthetic and truly real, is in _b,_ which is lacking to the merely naturalistic manifestation or construction also metaphorically called expression.

The expressive process is exhausted when these four stages have been passed through. It begins again with new impressions, a new æsthetic synthesis, and the accompaniments that belong to it.

[Sidenote: _Representations and memory._]

Expressions or representations follow one another, the one drives out the other. Certainly, this passing away, this being driven out, is not a perishing, it is not total elimination: nothing that is born dies with that complete death which would be identical with never having been born. If all things pass away, nothing can die. Even the representations that we have forgotten persist somehow in our spirit, for without this we could not explain acquired habits and capacities. Indeed the strength of life lies in this apparent forgetting: one forgets what has been absorbed and what life has superseded.

But other representations are also powerful elements in the present processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent upon us not to forget them, or to be capable of recalling them when they are wanted. The will is always vigilant in this work of preservation, which aims at preserving (we may say) the greater, the more fundamental part of all our riches. But its vigilance does not always suffice. Memory, as we say, abandons or betrays us in different ways. For this very reason, the human spirit devises expedients which succour the weakness of memory and are its _aids._

[Sidenote: _The production of aids to memory._]

How these aids are possible we have been informed from what has been said. Expressions or representations are _also_ practical facts, which are also called physical in so far as physics classifies and reduces them to types. Now it is clear that if we can succeed in making those practical or physical facts somehow permanent, it will always be possible (all other conditions remaining equal) on perceiving them to reproduce in ourselves the already produced expression or intuition.

If that be called the object or physical stimulus in which the practical concomitant acts, or (to use physical terms) in which the movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent, and if that object or stimulus be designated by the letter _e_; the process of reproduction will take place in the following order: _e,_ the physical stimulus; _d-b,_ perception of physical facts (sounds, tones, mimetic, combinations of lines and colours, etc.), which is together the æsthetic synthesis, already produced; _c_, the hedonistic accompaniment, which is also reproduced.

And what else are those combinations of words called poetry, prose, poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical stimulants of reproduction_ (the stage _e_); what else are those combinations of sound called operas, symphonies, sonatas; or those combinations of lines and colours called pictures, statues, architecture? The spiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of the physical facts above mentioned, makes possible the preservation and the reproduction of the intuitions produced by man. The physiological organism and with it the memory become weakened; the monuments of art are destroyed, and lo, all that æsthetic wealth, the fruit of the labours of many generations, diminishes and rapidly disappears.

[Sidenote: _Physical beauty._]

Monuments of art, the stimulants of æsthetic reproduction, are called _beautiful things_ or _physical beauty._ This combination of words constitutes a verbal paradox, for the beautiful is not a physical fact; it does not belong to things, but to the activity of man, to spiritual energy. But it is now clear through what transferences and associations, physical things and facts which are simply aids to the reproduction of the beautiful are finally called elliptically beautiful things and physical beauty. And now that we have explained this elliptical usage, we shall ourselves employ it without hesitation.

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

The intervention of "physical beauty" serves to explain another meaning of the words "_content_" and "_form,_" as used by æstheticians. Some call "content" the internal fact or expression (for us, on the other hand, form), and "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm, the sounds (for us the antithesis of form); thus looking upon the physical fact as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. It also serves to explain another aspect of what is called æsthetic "ugliness." Somebody who has nothing definite to express may try to conceal his internal emptiness in a flood of words, in sounding verse, in deafening polyphony, in painting that dazzles the eye, or by heaping together great architectural masses which arrest and astonish us without conveying anything whatever. Ugliness, then, is the capricious, the charlatanesque; and, in reality, if practical caprice did not intervene in the theoretic function, there might be absence of beauty, but never the real presence of something deserving the adjective "ugly."

[Sidenote: _Natural and artificial beauty._]

Physical beauty is usually divided into _natural_ and _artificial_ beauty. Thus we reach one of the facts which have given the greatest trouble to thinkers: _natural beauty._ These words often designate facts of merely practical pleasure. Any one who calls a landscape beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where the body moves briskly and the warm sun envelops and caresses the limbs, does not speak of anything æsthetic. But it is nevertheless indubitable that on other occasions the adjective "beautiful," applied to objects and scenes existing in nature, has a completely æsthetic signification.

It has been observed that in order to enjoy natural objects æsthetically, we must abstract from their external and historical reality, and separate their simple semblance or appearance from existence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between our legs, so as to cancel our wonted relations with it, the landscape appears to us to be an ideal spectacle; that nature is beautiful only for him who contemplates her _with the eye of the artist_; that zoologists and botanists do not recognize _beautiful_ animals and flowers; that natural beauty is _discovered_ (and examples of discovery are the points of view, pointed out by men of taste and imagination, to which more or less æsthetic travellers and excursionists afterwards have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a kind of collective _suggestion)_; that, without the _aid of the imagination,_ no part of nature is beautiful, and that with such aid the same natural object or fact is, according to the disposition of the soul, now expressive, now insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now of another, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that a _natural beauty_ which an artist would not _to some extent correct, does not exist._