Chapter III

This attitude of indiscrimination and indifference, observed by art in respect to history and philosophy, is also foreshadowed at that place of the _De interpretatione_ (_c_. 4), to which we have already referred, to obtain thence the confirmation of the thesis of the identity of art and language, and another confirmation, that of the identity of lyric and pure intuition. It is a really admirable passage, containing many profound truths in a few short, simple words, although, as is natural, without full consciousness of their richness. Aristotle, then, is still discussing the said rhetorical and poetical propositions, semantic and not apophantic, and he remarks that in them there rules no distinction between true and false: _to alaetheueion hae pseudeothai ouk hyparchei_. Art, in fact, is in contact with palpitating reality, but does not know that it is so in contact, and therefore is not truly in contact. Art does not allow itself to be troubled with the abstractions of the intellect, and therefore does not make mistakes; but it does not know that it does not make mistakes. If art, then (to return to what we said at the beginning), be the first and most ingenuous form of knowledge, it cannot give complete satisfaction to man's need to know, and therefore cannot be the ultimate end of the theoretic spirit. Art is the dream of the life of knowledge. Its complement is waking, lyricism no longer, but the concept; no longer the dream, but the judgment. Thought could not be without fancy; but thought surpasses and contains in itself the fancy, transforms the image into perception, and gives to the world of dream the clear distinctions and the firm contours of reality. Art cannot achieve this; and however great be our love of art, that cannot raise it in rank, any more than the love one may have for a beautiful child can convert it into an adult. We must accept the child as a child, the adult as an adult.

Therefore, the Aesthetic of pure intuition, while it proclaims energetically the autonomy of art and of the aesthetic activity, is at the same time averse to all _aestheticism_, that is, to every attempt at lowering the life of thought, in order to elevate that of fancy. The origin of aestheticism is the same as that of mysticism. Both proceed from a rebellion against the predominance of the abstract sciences and against the undue abuse of the principle of causation in metaphysic. When we pass from the stuffed animals of the zoological museums, from anatomical reconstructions, from tables of figures, from classes and sub-classes constituted by means of abstract characters, or from the fixation and mechanization of life for the ends of naturalistic science, to the pages of the poets, to the pictures of the painters, to the melodies of the composers, when in fact we look upon life with the eye of the artist, we have the impression that we are passing from death to life, from the abstract to the concrete, from fiction to reality. We are inclined to proclaim that only in art and in aesthetic contemplation is truth, and that science is either charlatanesque pedantry, or a modest practical expedient. And certainly art has the superiority of its own truth; simple, small, and elementary though it be, over the abstract, which, as such, is altogether without truth. But in violently rejecting science and frantically embracing art, that very form of the theoretic spirit is forgotten, by means of which we can criticize science and recognize the nature of art. Now this theoretic spirit, since it criticizes science, is not science, and, as reflective consciousness of art, is not art. Philosophy, the supreme fact of the theoretic world, is forgotten. This error has been renewed in our day, because the consciousness of the limits of the natural sciences and of the value of the truth which belongs to intuition and to art, have been renewed. But just as, a century ago, during the idealistic and romantic period, there were some who reminded the fanatics for art, and the artists who were transforming philosophy, that art was not "the most lofty form of apprehending the Absolute"; so, in our day, it is necessary to awaken the consciousness of Thought. And one of the means for attaining this end is an exact understanding of the limits of art, that is, the construction of a solid Aesthetic.

THE END