Chapter XXI: Part III: System of the Particular Arts (1)

Under the head of “System of the Particular Arts,” Hegel sets forth, in this third part, the theory of each of the arts—_Architecture_, _Sculpture_, _Painting_, _Music_ and _Poetry_.

Before proceeding to the division of the arts, he glances at the different _styles_ which distinguish the different epochs of their development. He reduces them to three styles: the _simple_ or severe, the _ideal_ or beautiful, and the graceful.

1. At first the simple and natural style presents itself to us, but it is not the truly natural or true simplicity. That supposes a previous perfection. Primitive simplicity is gross, confused, rigid, inanimate. Art in its infancy is heavy and trifling, destitute of life and liberty, without expression, or with an exaggerated vivacity. Still harsh and rude in its commencements, it becomes by degrees master of form, and learns to unite it intimately with content. It arrives thus at a severe beauty. This style is the Beautiful in its lofty simplicity. It is restricted to reproducing a subject with its essential traits. Disdaining grace and ornament, it contents itself with the general and grand expression which springs from the subject, without the artist’s exhibiting himself and revealing his personality in it.

2. Next in order comes the beautiful style, the _ideal_ and pure style, which holds the mean between simple expression and a marked tendency to the graceful. Its character is vitality, combined with a calm and beautiful grandeur. Grace is not wanting, but there is rather a natural carelessness, a simple complacency, than the desire to please—a beauty indifferent to the exterior charms which blossom of themselves upon the surface. Such is the ideal of the beautiful style—the style of Phidias and Homer. It is the culminating point of art.

3. But this movement is short. The ideal style passes quickly to the graceful, to the agreeable. Here appears an aim different from that of the realization of the beautiful, which pure art ought to propose to itself, to wit: the intention of pleasing, of producing an impression on the soul. Hence arise works of a style elaborate with art, and a certain seeking for external embellishments. The subject is no more the principal thing. The attention of the artist is distracted by ornaments and accessories—by the decorations, the trimmings, the simpering airs, the attitudes and graceful postures, or the vivid colors and the attractive forms, the luxury of ornaments and draperies, the learned making of verse. But the general effect remains without grandeur and without nobleness. Beautiful proportions and grand masses give place to moderate dimensions, or are masked with ornaments. The graceful style begets the style _for effect_, which is an exaggeration of it. The art then becomes altogether conspicuous; it calls the attention of the spectator by everything that can strike the senses. The artist surrenders to it his personal ends and his design. In this species of _tête-à-tête_ with the public, there is betrayed through all, the desire of exhibiting his wit, of attracting admiration for his ability, his skill, his power of execution. This art—without naturalness, full of coquetry, of artifice and affectation, the opposite of the severe style which yields nothing to the public—is the style of the epochs of decadence. Frequently it has recourse to a last artifice, to the affectation of profundity and of simplicity, which is then only obscurity, a mysterious profundity which conceals an absence of ideas and a real impotence. This air of mystery, which parades itself, is in its turn, hardly better than coquetry; the principle is the same—the desire of producing an effect.

The author then passes to the _Division of the Arts_. The common method classes them according to their means of representation, and the senses to which they are addressed. Two senses only are affected by the perception of the beautiful: _sight_, which perceives forms and colors, and _hearing_, which perceives sounds. Hence the division into _arts of design_ and _musical art_. _Poetry_, which employs speech, and addresses itself to the imagination, forms a domain apart. Without discarding this division, Hegel combines it with another more philosophical principle of classification, and one which is taken no longer from the external means of art, but from their internal relation to the very content of the ideas which it is to represent.

Art has for object the representation of the ideal. The arts ought then to be classed according to the measure in which they are more or less capable of expressing it. This gradation will have at the same time the advantage of corresponding to historic progress, and to the fundamental forms of art previously studied.

According to this principle, the arts marshal themselves, and succeed one another, to form a regular and complete system, thus:

1. First _Architecture_ presents itself. This art, in fact, is incapable of representing an idea otherwise than in a vague, indeterminate manner. It fashions the masses of inorganic nature, according to the laws of matter and geometrical proportions; it disposes them with regularity and symmetry in such a manner as to offer to the eyes an image which is a simple reflex of the spirit, a dumb symbol of the thought. Architecture is at the same time appropriated to ends which are foreign to it: it is destined to furnish a dwelling for man and a temple for Divinity; it must shelter under its roof, in its enclosure, the other arts, and, in particular, sculpture and painting.

For these reasons architecture should, historically and logically, be placed first in the series of the arts.

2. In a higher rank is Sculpture, which already exhibits spirit under certain determinate traits. Its object, in fact, is spirit individualized, revealed by the human form and its living organism. Under this visible appearance, by the features of the countenance, and the proportions of the body, it expresses ideal beauty, divine calmness, serenity—in a word, the classic ideal.

3. Although retained in the world of visible forms, Painting offers a higher degree of spirituality. To form, it adds the different phases of visible appearance, the illusions of perspective, color, light and shades, and thereby it becomes capable, not only of reproducing the various pictures of nature, but also of expressing upon canvas the most profound sentiments of the human soul, and all the scenes of ethical life.

4. But, as an expression of sentiment, _Music_ still surpasses painting. What it expresses is the soul itself, in its most intimate and profound relations; and this by a sensuous phenomenon, equally invisible, instantaneous, intangible—sound—sonorous vibrations, which resound in the abysses of the soul, and agitate it throughout.

5. All these arts culminate in Poetry, which includes them and surpasses them, and whose superiority is due to its mode of expression—_speech_. It alone is capable of expressing all ideas, all sentiments, all passions, the highest conceptions of the intelligence, and the most fugitive impressions of the soul. To it alone is given to represent an action in its complete development and in all its phases. It is the universal art—its domain is unlimited. Hence it is divided into many species, of which the principal are _epic_, _lyric_ and _dramatic_ poetry.

These five arts form the complete and organized system of the arts. Others, such as the _art of gardening, dancing, engraving, etc._, are only accessories, and more or less connected with the preceding. They have not the right to occupy a distinct place in a general theory; they would only introduce confusion, and disfigure the fundamental type which is peculiar to each of them.

Such is the division adopted by Hegel. He combines it, at the same time, with his general division of the forms of the historic development of art. Thus architecture appears to him to correspond more particularly to the _symbolic_ type; sculpture is the _classic_ art, _par excellence_; painting and music fill the category of the _romantic_ arts. Poetry, as art universal, belongs to all epochs.

I. ARCHITECTURE.—In the study of architecture, Hegel follows a purely historic method. He limits himself to describing and characterizing its principal forms in the different epochs of history. This art, in fact, lends itself to an abstract theory less than the others. There are here few principles to establish; and when we depart from generalities, we enter into the domain of mathematical laws, or into the technical applications, foreign to pure science. It remains, then, only to determine the sense and the character of its monuments, in their relation to the spirit of the people, and the epochs to which they belong. It is to this point of view that the author has devoted himself. The division which he adopts on this subject, and the manner in which he explains it, are as follows:

The object of architecture, independent of the positive design and the use to which its monuments are appropriated, is to express a general thought, by forms borrowed from inorganic nature, by masses fashioned and disposed according to the laws of geometry and mechanics. But whatever may be the ideas and the impressions which the appearance of an edifice produces, it never furnishes other than an obscure and enigmatic emblem. The thought is vaguely represented by those material forms which spirit itself does not animate.

If such is the nature of this art, it follows that, essentially symbolic, it must predominate in that first epoch of history which is distinguished by the symbolic character of its monuments. It must show itself there freer, more independent of practical utility, not subordinated to a foreign end. Its essential object ought to be to express ideas, to present emblems, to symbolize the beliefs of those peoples, incapable as they are of otherwise expressing them. It is the proper language of such an epoch—a language enigmatic and mysterious; it indicates the effort of the imagination to represent ideas, still vague. Its monuments are problems proposed to future ages, and which as yet are but imperfectly comprehended.

Such is the character of oriental architecture. There the end is valueless or accessory; the symbolic expression is the principal object. Architecture is _independent_, and sculpture is confounded with it.

The monuments of Greek and Roman architecture present a wholly different character. Here, the aim of utility appears clearly distinct from expression. The purpose, the design of the monument comes out in an evident manner. It is a dwelling, a shelter, a temple, etc.

Sculpture, for its part, is detached from architecture, and assigns its end to it. The image of the god, enclosed in the temple, is the principal object. The temple is only a shelter, an external attendant. Its forms are regulated according to the laws of numbers, and the proportions of a learned eurythmy; but its true ornaments are furnished to it by sculpture. Architecture ceases then to be independent and symbolic; it becomes dependent, subordinated to a positive end.

As to Christian architecture or that of the Middle Ages, it presents the union of the two preceding characteristics. It is at once devoted to a useful end, and eminently expressive or symbolic—_dependent_ and _independent_. The temple is the house of God; it is devoted to the uses and ceremonies of worship, and shows throughout its design in its forms; but at the same time these symbolize admirably the Christian idea.

Thus the symbolic, classic and romantic forms, borrowed from history, and which mark the whole development of art, serve for the division and classification of the forms of architecture. This being especially the art which is exercised in the domain of matter, the essential point to be distinguished is whether the monument which is addressed to the eyes includes in itself its own meaning, or whether it is considered as a means to a foreign end, or finally whether, although in the service of a foreign end, it preserves its independence.

The _basis_ of the division being thus placed, Hegel justifies it by describing the characters of the monuments belonging to these three epochs. All this descriptive part can not be analyzed: we are obliged to limit ourselves to securing a comprehension of the general features, and to noting the most remarkable points.

(_a_) Since the distinctive characteristic of symbolic architecture is the expression of a general thought, without other end than the representation of it, the interest in its monuments is less in their positive design than in the religious conceptions of the people, who, not having other means of expression, have embodied their thought, still vague and confused, in these gigantic masses and these colossal images. Entire nations know not how otherwise to express their religious beliefs. Hence the symbolic character of the structures of the Babylonians, the Indians and the Egyptians, of those works which absorbed the life of those peoples, and whose meaning we seek to explain to ourselves.

It is difficult to follow a regular order in the absence of chronology, when we review the multiplicity of ideas and forms which these monuments and these symbols present. Hegel thinks, nevertheless, that he is able to establish the following gradations:

In the first rank are the simplest monuments, such as seem only designed to serve as a bond of union to entire nations, or to different nations. Such gigantic structures as the tower of Belus or Babylon, upon the shores of the Euphrates, present the image of the union of the peoples before their dispersion. Community of toil and effort is the aim and the very idea of the work; it is the common work of their united efforts, the symbol of the dissolution of the primitive family and of the formation of a vaster society.

In a rank more elevated, appear the monuments of a more determined character, where is noticeable a mingling of architecture and sculpture, although they belong to the former. Such are those symbols which, in the East, represent the generative force of nature; the _phallus_ and the _lingam_ scattered in so great numbers throughout Phrygia and Syria, and of which India is the principal seat; in Egypt, the obelisks, which derive their symbolic significance from the rays of the sun; the Memnons, colossal statues which also represent the sun and his beneficent influence upon nature; the sphinxes, which one finds in Egypt in prodigious numbers and of astonishing size, ranged in rows in the form of avenues. These monuments, of an imposing sculpture, are grouped in masses, surrounded by walls so as to form buildings.

They present, in a striking manner, the twofold character indicated above: free from all positive design, they are, above all, symbols; afterward, sculpture is confounded with architecture. They are structures without roof, without doors, without aisles, frequently forests of colums where the eye loses itself. The eye passes over objects which are there for their own sake, designed only to strike the imagination by their colossal aspect and their enigmatic sense, not to serve as a dwelling for a god, and as a place of assemblage for his worshippers. Their order and their disposition alone preserve for them an architectural character. You walk on into the midst of those human works, mute symbols which remind you of divine things; your eyes are everywhere struck with the aspect of those forms and those extraordinary figures, of those walls besprinkled with hieroglyphics, books of stone, as it were, leaves of a mysterious book. Everything there is symbolically determined—the proportions, the distances, the number of columns, etc. The Egyptians, in particular, consecrated their lives to constructing and building these monuments, by instinct, as a swarm of bees builds its hive. This was the whole life of the people. It placed there all its thought, for it could no otherwise express it.

Nevertheless, that architecture, in one point, by its chambers and its halls, its tombs, begins to approach the following class, which exhibits a more positive design, and of which the type is a house.

A third rank marks the transition of symbolic to classic architecture. Architecture already presents a character of utility, of conformity to an end. The monument has a precise design; it serves for a particular use taken aside from the symbolic sense. It is a temple or a tomb. Such, in the first place, is the subterranean architecture of the Indians, those vast excavations which are also temples, species of subterranean cathedrals, the caverns of Mithra, likewise filled with symbolic sculpture. But this transition is better characterized by the double architecture, (subterranean and above ground) of the Egyptians, which is connected with their worship of the dead. An individual being, who has his significance and his proper value; the dead one, distinct from his habitation which serves him only for covering and shelter, resides in the interior. The most ancient of these tombs are the pyramids, species of crystals, envelopes of stone which enclose a kernel, an invisible being, and which serve for the preservation of the bodies. In this concealed dead one, resides the significance of the _monument_ which is subordinate to him.

Here, then, _Architecture_ ceases to be independent. It divides itself into two elements—the end and the means; it is the means, and it is subservient to an end. Further, sculpture separates itself from it, and obtains a distinct office—that of shaping the image within, and its accessories. Here appears clearly the special design of architecture, conformity to an end; also it assumes inorganic and geometric forms, the abstract, mathematical form, which befits it in particular. The pyramid already exhibits the design of a house, the rectangular form.

(_b_) Classic architecture has a two-fold point of departure—symbolic architecture and necessity. The adaptation of parts to an end, in symbolic architecture, is accessory. In the house, on the contrary, all is controlled, from the first, by actual necessity and convenience. Now classic architecture proceeds both from the one and from the other principle, from necessity and from art, from the useful and from the beautiful, which it combines in the most perfect manner. Necessity produces regular forms, right angles, plane surfaces. But the end is not simply the satisfaction of a physical necessity; there is also an idea, a religious representation, a sacred image, which it has to shelter and surround, a worship, a religious ceremonial. The temple ought then, like the temple fashioned by sculpture, to spring from the creative imagination of the artist. There is necessary a dwelling for the god, fashioned by art and according to its laws.

Thus, while falling under the law of conformity to an end, and ceasing to be independent, architecture escapes from the useful and submits to the law of the beautiful; or rather, the beautiful and useful meet and combine themselves in the happiest manner. Symmetry, eurythmy, organic forms the most graceful, the most rich, and the most varied, join themselves as ornaments to the architectural forms. The two points of view are united without being confounded, and form an harmonious whole; there will be, at the same time, a useful, convenient and beautiful architecture.

What best marks the transition to Greek architecture, is the appearance of the column, which is its type. The column is a support. Therein is its useful and mechanical design; it fulfils that design in the most simple and perfect manner, because with it the power of support is reduced to its minimum of material means. From another side, in order to be adapted to its end and to beauty, it must give up its natural and primitive form. The beautiful column comes from a form borrowed from nature; but carved, shaped, it takes a regular and geometric configuration. In Egypt, human figures serve as columns; here they are replaced by caryatides. But the natural, primitive form is the tree, the trunk, the flexible stock, which bears its crown. Such, too, appears the Egyptian column; columns are seen rising from the vegetable kingdom in the stalks of the lotus and other trees; the base resembles an onion. The leaf shoots from the root, like that of a reed, and the capital presents the appearance of a flower. The mathematical and regular form is absent. In the Greek column, on the contrary, all is fashioned according to the mathematical laws of regularity and proportion. The beautiful column springs from a form borrowed from nature, but fashioned according to the artistic sense.

Thus the characteristic of classic architecture, as of architecture in general, is the union of beauty and utility. Its beauty consists in its regularity, and although it serves a foreign end, it constitutes a whole perfect in itself; it permits its essential aim to look forth in all its parts, and through the harmony of its relations, it transforms the useful into the beautiful.

The character of classic architecture being subordination to an end, it is that end which, without detriment to beauty, gives to the entire edifice its proper signification, and which becomes thus the principal regulator of all its parts; as it impresses itself on the whole, and determines its fundamental form. The first thing as to a work of this sort, then, is to know what is its purpose, its design. The general purpose of a Grecian temple is to hold the statue of a god. But in its exterior, the character of the temple relates to a different end, and its spirit is the life of the Greek people.

Among the Greeks, open structures, colonnades and porticoes, have as object the promenade in the open air, conversation, public life under a pure sky. Likewise the dwellings of private persons are insignificant. Among the Romans, on the contrary, whose national architecture has a more positive end in utility, appears later the luxury of private houses, palaces, villas, theatres, circuses, amphitheatres, aqueducts and fountains. But the principal edifice is that whose end is most remote from the wants of material life; it is the temple designed to serve as a shelter to a divine object, which already belongs to the fine arts—to the statue of a god.

Although devoted to a determinate end, this architecture is none the less free from it, in the sense, that it disengages itself from organic forms; it is more free even than sculpture, which is obliged to reproduce them; it invents its plan, the general configuration, and it displays in external forms all the richness of the imagination; it has no other laws than those of good taste and harmony; it labors without a direct model. Nevertheless, it works within a limited domain, that of mathematical figures, and it is subjected to the laws of mechanics. Here must be preserved, first of all, the relations between the width, the length, the height of the edifice; the exact proportions of the columns according to their thickness, the weight to be supported, the intervals, the number of columns, the style, the simplicity of the ornaments. It is this which gives to the theory of this art, and in particular of this form of architecture, the character of dryness and abstraction. But there dominates throughout, a natural eurythmy, which their perfectly accurate sense enabled the Greeks to find and fix as the measure and rule of the beautiful.

We will not follow the author in the description which he gives of the particular characteristics of architectural forms; we will omit also some other interesting details upon building in wood or in stone as the primitive type, upon the relation of the different parts of the Greek temple. In here following Vitruvius, the author has been able to add some discriminating and judicious remarks. What he says, in particular, of the column, of its proportions and of its design, of the internal unity of the different parts and of their effects as a whole, adds to what is already known a philosophical explication which satisfies the reason. We remark, especially, this passage, which sums up the general character of the Greek temple: “In general, the Greek temple presents an aspect which satisfies the vision, and, so to speak, surfeits it. Nothing is very elevated, it is regularly extended in length and breadth. The eye finds itself allured by the sense of extent, while Gothic architecture mounts even beyond measurement, and shoots upward to heaven. Besides, the ornaments are so managed that they do not mar the general expression of simplicity. In this, the ancients observe the most beautiful moderation.”

The connection of their architecture with the genius, the spirit, and the life of the Greek people, is indicated in the following passage: “In place of the spectacle of an assemblage united for a single end, all appears directed towards the exterior, and presents us the image of an animated promenade. There men who have leisure abandon themselves to conversations without end, wherein rule gayety and serenity. The whole expression of such a temple remains truly simple and grand in itself, but it has at the same time an air of serenity, something open and graceful.” This prepares and conducts us to another kind of architecture, which presents a striking contrast to the preceding Christian or Gothic architecture.

(_c_) We shall not further attempt to reproduce, even in its principal features, the description which Hegel gives, in some pages, of Romantic or Gothic architecture. The author has proposed to himself, as object, in the first place, to compare the two kinds of architecture, the Greek and the Christian, then to secure the apprehension of the relation of this form of architecture to the Christian idea. This is what constitutes the peculiar interest of this remarkable sketch, which, by its vigor and severity of design, preserves its distinctive merit when compared with all descriptions that have been made of the architecture of the Middle Ages.

_Gothic_ architecture, according to Hegel, unites, in the first place, the opposite characters of the two preceding kinds. Notwithstanding, this union does not consist in the simple fusion of the architectural forms of the East and of Greece. Here, still more than in the Greek temple, the house furnishes the fundamental type. An architectural edifice which is the house of God, shows itself perfectly in conformity with its design and adapted to worship; but the monument is also there for its own sake, independent, absolute. Externally, the edifice ascends, shoots freely into the air.

The conformity to the end, although it presents itself to the eyes, is therefore effaced, and leaves to the whole the appearance of an independent existence. The monument has a determinate sense, and shows it; but, in its grand aspect and its sublime calm, it is lifted above all end in utility, to something infinite in itself.

If we examine the relation of this architecture to the inner spirit and the idea of Christian worship, we remark, in the first place, that the fundamental form is here the house wholly closed. Just as, in fact, the Christian spirit withdraws itself into the interior of the conscience, just so the church is an enclosure, sealed on all sides, the place of meditation and silence. “It is the place of the reflection of the soul into itself, which thus shuts itself up materially in space. On the other hand, if, in Christian meditation, the soul withdraws into itself, it is, at the same time, lifted above the finite, and this equally determines the character of the house of God. Architecture takes, then, for its independent signification, elevation towards the infinite, a character which it expresses by the proportions of its architectural forms.” These two traits, depth of self-examination and elevation of the soul towards the infinite, explain completely the Gothic architecture and its principal forms. They furnish also the essential differences between Gothic and Greek architecture.

The impression which the Christian church ought to produce in contrast with this open and serene aspect of the Greek temple, is, in the first place, the calmness of the soul which reflects into itself, then that of a sublime majesty which shoots beyond the confines of sense. Greek edifices extend horizontally; the Christian church should lift itself from the ground and shoot into the air.

The most striking characteristic which the house of God presents, in its whole and its parts, is, then, the free flight, the shooting in points formed either by broken arches or by right lines. In Greek architecture, exact proportion between support and height is everywhere observed. Here, on the contrary, the operation of supporting and the disposition at a right angle—the most convenient for this end—disappears or is effaced. The walls and the column shoot without marked difference between what supports and what is supported, and meet in an acute angle. Hence the acute triangle and the ogee, which form the characteristic traits of Gothic architecture.

We are not able to follow the author in the detailed explication of the different forms and the divers parts of the Gothic edifice, and of its total structure.

THE METAPHYSICS OF MATERIALISM.
By D. G. BRINTON.

_Ubi tres physici, ibi duo athei_,—the proverb is something musty. Natural science is and always has been materialistic. The explanation is simple. There is as great antagonism between chemical research and metaphysical speculation, as there is between what

“Youthful poets dream,
On summer’s eve by haunted stream,”

and book-keeping by double entry, and nothing is more customary than to deny what we do not understand. Of late years this scientific materialism has been making gigantic strides. Since the imposing fabric of the Hegelian philosophy proved but a house built on sands, the scales and metre have become our only gods.

Germany—mystic, metaphysical Germany—strange to say, leads the van in this crusade against all faith and all idealism. Vogt, the geologist, Moleschott, the physiologist, Virchow, the greatest of all living histologists, Büchner, Tiedemann, Reuchlin, Meldeg, and many others, not only hold these opinions, but have left the seclusion of the laboratory and the clinic to enter the arena of polemics in their favor. We do not mention the French and English advocates of “positive philosophy.” Their name is Legion.

It is not our design to enter at all at large into these views, still less to dispute them, but merely to give the latest and most approved defence of a single point of their position, a point which we submit is the kernel of the whole controversy, and which we believe to be the very Achilles heel and crack in the armor of their panoply of argument—that is, the _Theory of the Absolute_. Demonstrate the possibility of the Absolute, and materialism is impossible; disprove it, and all other philosophies are empty nothings,—_vox et præterea nihil_. Here, and only here, is materialism brought face to face with metaphysics; here is the combat _à l’outrance_ in which one or the other must perish. No one of its apostles has accepted the proffered glaive more heartily, and defended his position with more wary dexterity, than Moleschott, and it is mainly from his work, entitled _Der Kreislauf des Lebens_, that we illustrate the present metaphysics of materialism.

Our first question is, What is the test of truth, what sanctions a law? Until this is answered, all assertion is absurd, and until it is answered correctly, all philosophy is vain. The response of the naturalist is: “The necessary sequence of cause and effect is the prime law of the experimentalist—a law which he does not ask from revelation, but will find out for himself by observation.” The source of truth is sensation; the uniform result of manifold experience is a law. Here a double objection arises: first, that the term “a necessary sequence” presupposes a law, and begs the question at issue; and, secondly, that, this necessity unproved, such truth is nothing more than a probability, for it is impossible to be certain that our next experiment may not have quite a different result. Either this is not the road to absolute truth, or absolute truth is unattainable. The latter horn of the dilemma is at once accepted; we neither know, nor can know, a law to be absolute; to us, the absolute does not exist. Matter and force with their relations are there, but what we know of them is a varying quantity, is of this age or the last, of this man or that, dependent upon the extent and accuracy of empirical science; we cannot speak of what we do not know, and we know no law that conceivable experience might not contradict.

But how, objects the reader, can this be reconciled with the pure mathematics? Here seem to be laws above experience, laws admitting no exception.

The response leads us back to the origin of our notions of _Space_ and _Time_, on the the former of which mathematics is founded. The supposition that they are innate ideas is of course rejected by the materialist; for he looks upon innate ideas as fables; he considers them perceptions derived positively from the senses, but they do not belong to the senses alone, nor are they perceptions merely; “they are ideas, but ideas that without the sensuous perceptions of proximity and sequence could never have arisen. Nay, more—the perception of space must precede that of time,” for it is only through the former that we can reach the latter. The plainest laws of space, those which were the earliest impressions on the _tabula rasa_ of the infant mind, and which the hourly experience of life verifies, are called, by the mathematician, _axioms_, and on these simplest generalizations of our perceptions he bases the whole of his structure. Axioms, therefore, are the uniform results of experiments, the possible conditions of which are extremely limited, and the factors of which have been subjected to all these conditions.

It follows from a denial of the absolute that all existence is concrete. Indeed, we may say that the corner stone of the edifice of materialism is embraced in the terse sentence of Moleschott—_all existence is existence through attributes_. Existence _per se_ (_Fürsichsein_) is a meaningless term, and substance apart from attribute, the _ens ineffabile_, is a pedantic figment and nothing more. Finally, there can be no attribute except through a relation.

Let this trilogy of existence, attribute and relation, be clearly before the mind, and the position that the positive philosophy bears to all others becomes at once luminous enough. There is no existence apart from attributes, no attributes but through relations, no relations but to other existences. To exemplify: a stone is heavy, hard, colored, perhaps bitter to the taste. Now, says the idealist, this weight, this hardness, this color, this bitterness, these are not the stone, they are merely its properties or attributes, and the stone itself is some substance behind them all, to which they adhere and which we cannot detect with our senses; further, he might add, if a moderate in his school, these attributes are independently existent, the bitterness is there when we are not tasting it, and the attribute of color, though there be no light. All this the materialist denies. To him, the attributes and nothing else constitute the stone, and these attributes have no existence apart from their relations to other objects. The bitterness exists only in relation to the organs of taste, and the color to the organs of sight, and the weight to other bodies of matter. Nothing, in short, can be said to exist to us that is not cognizable by our senses. But, objects some one, there may be an existence which is not _to us_, which is as much beyond our ken as color is beyond the conception of the born blind. The expression was used advisedly: no such existence can become the subject of rational language. “Does not all knowledge predicate a knower, consequently a relation of the subject to the the observer? Such a relation is an attribute. Without it, knowledge is inconceivable. Neither God nor man can raise himself above the knowledge furnished by these relations to his organs of apprehension.”

A disagreeable sequence to this logic will not fail to occur to every one. If all knowledge comes from the organs of sense, then differently formed organs must furnish very different and contradictory knowledge, and one is as likely to be correct as another. The radiate animal, who sees the world through a cornea alone, must have quite another notion of light, color, and relative size, from the spider whose eye is provided with lenses and a vitreous humor. Consonantly with the theory, each of these probably opposing views is equally true. This ugly dilemma is foreseen by our author, for he grants that “the knowledge of the insect, its knowledge of the action of the outer world, is altogether a different one from that of man,” but he avoids the ultimate result of this reasoning.

To sum up the views of this school: matter is eternal, force is eternal, but each is impossible without the other; what bears any relation to our senses we either know or can know; what does not, it is absurd to discuss; the highest thought is but the physical elaboration of sensations, or, to use the expression of Carl Vogt, “thought is a secretion of the brain as urine is of the kidneys. Without phosphorus there is no thought.” “And so,” concludes Moleschott, “only when thought is based on fact, only when the reason is granted no sphere of action but the historical which arises from observation, when the perception is at the same time thought, and the understanding sees with consciousness, does the contradiction between Philosophy and Science disappear.”

This, then, is the last word of materialism, this the solution it now offers us of the great problem of Life. We enter no further into its views, for all collateral questions concerning the origin of the ideas of the true, the good and the beautiful, the vital force, and the spiritual life, depend directly on the question we have above mentioned. Let the reader turn back precisely a century to the _Système de la Nature_, so long a boasted bulwark of the rationalistic school, and judge for himself what advance, if any, materialism has made in fortifying this, the most vital point of her structure. Let him ask himself anew whether the criticism of Hume on the law of cause and effect can in any way be met except after the example of Kant, by the assumption of the absolute idea, and we have little doubt what conclusion he will arrive at in reference to that system which, while it boasts to offer the only method of discovering truth, starts with the flat denial of all truth other than relative.

LETTERS ON FAUST.
By H. C. BROCKMEYER.

I.

DEAR H.—Yours of a recent date, requesting an epistolary criticism of “Goethe’s Faust,” has come to hand, and I hasten to assure you of a compliance of some sort. I say a compliance of some sort, for I cannot promise you a criticism. This, it seems to me, would be both too little and too much; too little if understood in the ordinary sense, as meaning a mere statement of the _relation_ existing between the work and myself; too much if interpreted as pledging an expression of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, in the terms of the understanding, and submitting the result to the canons of art.

The former procedure, usually called criticism, reduced to its simplest forms, amounts to this: that I, the critic, report to you, that I was amused or bored, flattered or satirized, elevated or degraded, humanized or brutalized, enlightened or mystified, pleased or displeased, by the work under consideration; and—since it depends quite as much upon my own humor, native ability, and culture acquired, which set of adjectives I may be able to report, as it does upon the work—I cannot perceive what earthly profit such a labor could be to you. For that which is clear to you may be dark to me; hence, if I report that a given work is a “perfect riddle to me,” you will only smile at my simplicity. Again, that which amuses me may bore you, for I notice that even at the theatre, some will yawn with _ennui_ while others thrill with delight, and applaud the play. Now, if each of these should tell you how _he_ liked the performance, the one would say “excellent,” and the other “miserable,” and you be none the wiser. To expect, therefore, that I intend to enter upon a labor of this kind, is to expect too little.

Besides, such an undertaking seems to me not without its peculiar danger; for it may happen that the work measures or criticises the critic, instead of the latter the former. If, for example, I should tell you that the integral and differential calculus is all fog to me—mystifies me completely—you would conclude my knowledge of mathematics to be rather imperfect, and thus use my own report of that work as a sounding-lead to ascertain the depth of my attainment. Nay, you might even go further, and regard the work as a kind of Doomsday Book, on the title page of which I had “written myself down an ass.” Now, as I am not ambitious of a memorial of this kind, especially when there is no probability that the pages in contemplation—Goethe’s Faust—will perish any sooner than the veritable Doomsday Book itself, I request you, as a special favor, not to understand of me that I propose engaging in any undertaking of this sort.[16]

Nor are you to expect an inquiry into the quantity or quality of the author’s food, drink or raiment. For the present infantile state of analytic science refuses all aid in tracing such _primary_ elements, so to speak, in the composition of the poem before us; and hence such an investigation would lead, at best, to very secondary and remote conclusions. Nor shall we be permitted to explore the likes and dislikes of the poet, in that fine volume of scandal, for the kindred reason that neither crucible, reagent nor retort are at hand which can be of the remotest service.

By the by, has it never occurred to you, when perusing works of the kind last referred to, what a glowing picture the pious Dean of St. Patrick’s, the _saintly Swift_, has bequeathed to us of their producers, when he places the great authors, the historical Gullivers of our race, in all their majesty of form, astride the public thoroughfare of a Liliputian age, and marches the inhabitants, in solid battalions, through between their legs? you recollect what he says?

Nor yet are you to expect a treat of that most delightful of all compounds, the table talk and conversation—or, to use a homely phrase, the _literary dishwater_ retailed by the author’s scullion. To expect such, or the like, would be to expect too little.

On the other hand, to expect that I shall send you an expression, in the terms of the understanding, of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, and submit the result to the canons of art, is to expect too much. For while I am ready, and while I intend to comply with the first part of this proposition, I am unable to fulfil the requirement of the latter part—that is, I am not able to submit the result to the canons of art. The reason for this inability it is not necessary to develop in this connection any further than merely to mention that I find it extremely inconvenient to lay my hand upon the aforementioned canons just at this time.

I must, therefore, content myself with the endeavor to summon before you the _Idea_ which creates the poem—each act, scene and verse—so that we may see the part in its relation to the whole, and the whole in its concrete, organic articulation. If we succeed in this, then we may say that we _comprehend_ the work—a condition precedent alike to the beneficial enjoyment and the rational judgment of the same.

II.

In my first letter, dear friend, I endeavored to guard you against misapprehension as to what you might expect from me. Its substance, if memory serves me, was that I did not intend to write on Anthropology or Psychology, nor yet on street, parlor or court gossip, but simply about a work of art.

I deemed these remarks pertinent in view of the customs of the time, lest that, in my not conforming to them, you should judge me harshly without profit to yourself. With the same desire of keeping up a fair understanding with you, I must call your attention to some terms and distinctions which we shall have occasion to use, and which, unless explained, might prove shadows instead of lights along the path of our intercourse.

I confess to you that I share the (I might say) abhorrence so generally entertained by the reading public, of the use of any general terms whatsoever, and would avoid them altogether if I could only see how. But in reading the poem that we are to consider, I come upon such passages as these:

(_Choir of invisible Spirits._)

“Woe! Woe!
Thou hast destroyed it,
The beautiful world!
It reels, it crumbles,
Crushed by a demigod’s mighty hand!”

and I cannot see how we are to understand these spirits, or the poet who gave them voice, unless we attack this very general expression “The beautiful world,” here said to have been destroyed by Faust.

I am, however, somewhat reconciled to this by the example of my neighbor—a non-speculative, practical farmer—now busily engaged in harvesting his wheat. For I noticed that he first directed his attention, after cutting the grain, to collecting and tying it together in bundles; and I could not help but perceive how much this facilitated his labor, and how difficult it would have been for him to collect his wheat, grain by grain, like the sparrow of the field. Though wheat it were, and not chaff, still such a mode of handling would reduce it even below the value of chaff.

Just think of handling the wheat crop of these United States, the two hundred and twenty-five millions of bushels a year, in this manner! It is absolutely not to be thought of, and we must have recourse to agglomeration, if not to generalization. But the one gives us general _masses_, and the other general _terms_. The only thing that we can do, therefore, is, in imitation of our good neighbor of the wheat field, to handle bundles, bushels, and bags, or—what is still better, if it can be done by some daring system of intellectual elevators—whole ship loads of grain at a time, due care being taken that we tie wheat to wheat, oats to oats, barley to barley, and not promiscuously.

Now, with this example well before our minds, and the necessity mentioned, which compels us to handle—not merely the wheat crop of the United States for one year, but—whatever has been raised by the intelligence of man from the beginning of our race to the time of Goethe the poet, together with the ground on which it was raised, and the sky above—for no less than this seems to be contained in the expression “The beautiful world”—I call your attention first to the expression “form and matter,” which, when applied to works of intelligence, we must take the liberty of changing into the expression “form and content,” for since there is nothing in works of this kind that manifests gravity, it can be of no use to say so, but may be of some injury.

The next is the expression “works of art,” which sounds rather suspicious in some of its applications—sounds as if it was intended to conceal rather than reveal the worker. Now I take it that the “works of art” are the works of the intelligence, and I shall have to classify them accordingly. Another point with reference to this might as well be noticed, and that is that the old expressions “works of art” and “works of nature” do not contain, as they were intended to, all the works that present themselves to our observation—the works of science, for example. Besides, we have government, society, and religion, all of which are undoubtedly distinct from the “works of art” no less than from the “works of nature,” and to tie them up in the same bundle with either of them, seems to me to be like tying wheat with oats, and therefore to be avoided, as in the example before our minds. This seems to be done in the expression “works of self-conscious intelligence,” and “works of nature.”

But if we reflect upon the phrases “works of self-conscious intelligence” and “works of nature,” it becomes obvious that there must be some inaccuracy contained in them; for how can two distinct subjects have the same predicate? It would, therefore, perhaps be better to say “the works of self-conscious intelligence” and the “_products_ of nature.”

Without further rasping and filing of old phrases, I call your attention, in the next place, to the most general term which we shall have occasion to use—“the world.”

Under this we comprehend:

I. The natural world—Gravity.;
II. The spiritual world—Self-determination.

I. Under the natural world we comprehend the terrestrial globe, and that part of the universe which is involved in its processes; these are:

(_a_) (1.) Mechanic=Gravity, } Meteorologic=Electricity.
(2.) Chemic=Affinity, }
(_b_) (1.) Organic=Galvanism, } Vital=Sensation.
(2.) Vegetative=Assimilation, }

II. Under “The Spiritual World,” the world of conscious intelligence, we comprehend:

(_a_) The real world=implement, mediation.
(_b_) The actual world=self-determination.

(_a_) The real world contains whatever derives the end of its existence only, from self-conscious intelligence.

(1.) The family=Affection.
(2.) Society=Ethics, } Mediation.
(3.) State=Rights, }

(_b_) The actual world contains whatever derives the end and the _means_ of its existence from self-conscious intelligence.

(1.) Art=Manifestation, }
(2.) Religion=Revelation, } Self-determination.
(3.) Philosophy=Definition, }

From this it appears that we have divided the world into three large slices—the Natural, the Real, and the Actual—with gravity for one and self-determination for the other extreme, and mediation between them.

III.

In my last, I gave you some general terms, and the sense in which I intend to use them. I also gave you a reason why I should use them, together with an illustration. But I gave you no reason why I used these and no others—or I did not advance anything to show that there are _objects_ to which they _necessarily apply_. I only take it for granted that there are some objects presented to your observation and mine, that gravitate or weigh something, and others that do not. To each I have applied as nearly as I could the ordinary terms. Now this procedure, although very unphilosophical, I can justify only by reminding you of the object of these letters.

If we now listen again to the chant of the invisible choir,

“Thou hast destroyed it,
The beautiful world,”

it will be obvious that this can refer only to the world of mediation and self-determination, to the world of spirit, of self-conscious intelligence, for the world of gravitation is not so easily affected. But how is this—how is it that the world of self-conscious intelligence is so easily affected, is so dependent upon the individual man? This can be seen only by examining its genesis.

In the genesis of Spirit we have three stages—manifestation, realization, and actualization. The first of these, upon which the other two are dependent and sequent, falls in the individual man. For, in him it is that Reason manifests itself before it can realize, or embody itself in this or that political, social, or moral institution. And it is not merely necessary that it should so manifest itself in the individual; it must also realize itself in these institutions before it can actualize itself in Art, Religion, and Philosophy. For in this actualization it is absolutely dependent upon the former two stages of its genesis for a content. From this it appears that Art _shows_ what Religion _teaches_, and what Philosophy _comprehends_; or that Art, Religion, and Philosophy have the same content. Nor is it difficult to perceive why this world of spirit or self-conscious intelligence is so dependent upon the individual man.

Again, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, this content, the self-conscious intelligence, is the _self-consciousness_ of an individual, a nation, or an age. And art, in the sphere of actuality, is this or that work of art, this poem, that painting, or yonder piece of sculpture, with the self-consciousness of this or that individual, nation, or age, for its content. Moreover, the particularity (the individual, nation, or age) of the content constitutes the individuality of the work of Art. And not only this, but this particularity of the _self-consciousness_ furnishes the very contradiction itself with the development and solution of which the work of art is occupied. For the self-consciousness which constitutes the content, being the self consciousness of an individual, a nation, or an age, instead of being self-conscious intelligence in its pure universality, contains in that very particularity the contradiction which, in the sphere of manifestation and reality, constitutes the collision, conflict, and solution.[17]

Now, if we look back upon the facts stated, we have the manifestation, the realization, and the actualization of self-conscious intelligence as the three spheres or stages in the process which evolves and involves the entire activity of man, both practical and theoretical. It is also obvious that the realization of self-conscious intelligence in the family, society, and the state, and its actualization in Art, Religion, and Philosophy, depend in their genesis upon its manifestation in the individual. Hence a denial of the possibility of this manifestation is a denial of the possibility of the realization and actualization also.