can say generally: _That is beautiful which pleases in the mere act of
judging it_ (not in the sensation of it, or by means of a concept). Now
art has always a definite design of producing something. But if this
something were bare sensation (something merely subjective), which is
to be accompanied with pleasure, the product would please in the act
of judgement only by mediation of sensible feeling. And again, if the
design were directed towards the production of a definite Object, then,
if this were attained by art, the Object would only please by means of
concepts. But in both cases the art would not please _in the mere act
of judging_; _i.e._ it would not please as beautiful, but as mechanical.
Hence the purposiveness in the product of beautiful art, although it
is designed, must not seem to be designed; _i.e._ beautiful art must
_look_ like nature, although we are conscious of it as art. But a
product of art appears like nature when, although its agreement with
the rules, according to which alone the product can become what it
ought to be, is _punctiliously_ observed, yet this is not _painfully_
apparent; [the form of the schools does not obtrude itself][78]--it
shows no trace of the rule having been before the eyes of the artist
and having fettered his mental powers.
§ 46. _Beautiful Art is the art of genius_
_Genius_ is the talent (or natural gift) which gives the rule to Art.
Since talent, as the innate productive faculty of the artist, belongs
itself to Nature, we may express the matter thus: _Genius_ is the
innate mental disposition (_ingenium_) _through which_ Nature gives the
rule to Art.
Whatever may be thought of this definition, whether it is merely
arbitrary or whether it is adequate to the concept that we are
accustomed to combine with the word _genius_ (which is to be examined
in the following paragraphs), we can prove already beforehand that
according to the signification of the word here adopted, beautiful arts
must necessarily be considered as arts of _genius_.
For every art presupposes rules by means of which in the first instance
a product, if it is to be called artistic, is represented as possible.
But the concept of beautiful art does not permit the judgement upon the
beauty of a product to be derived from any rule, which has a _concept_
as its determining ground, and therefore has at its basis a concept
of the way in which the product is possible. Therefore, beautiful art
cannot itself devise the rule according to which it can bring about its
product. But since at the same time a product can never be called Art
without some precedent rule, Nature in the subject must (by the harmony
of its faculties) give the rule to Art; _i.e._ beautiful Art is only
possible as a product of Genius.
We thus see (1) that genius is a _talent_ for producing that for which
no definite rule can be given; it is not a mere aptitude for what can
be learnt by a rule. Hence _originality_ must be its first property.
(2) But since it also can produce original nonsense, its products
must be models, _i.e._ _exemplary_; and they consequently ought not
to spring from imitation, but must serve as a standard or rule of
judgement for others. (3) It cannot describe or indicate scientifically
how it brings about its products, but it gives the rule just as nature
does. Hence the author of a product for which he is indebted to his
genius does not himself know how he has come by his Ideas; and he has
not the power to devise the like at pleasure or in accordance with a
plan, and to communicate it to others in precepts that will enable them
to produce similar products. (Hence it is probable that the word genius
is derived from _genius_, that peculiar guiding and guardian spirit
given to a man at his birth, from whose suggestion these original
Ideas proceed.) (4) Nature by the medium of genius does not prescribe
rules to Science, but to Art; and to it only in so far as it is to be
beautiful Art.
§ 47. _Elucidation and confirmation of the above explanation of Genius_
Every one is agreed that genius is entirely opposed to the _spirit of
imitation_. Now since learning is nothing but imitation, it follows
that the greatest ability and teachableness (capacity) regarded _quâ_
teachableness, cannot avail for genius. Even if a man thinks or invents
for himself, and does not merely take in what others have taught,
even if he discovers many things in art and science, this is not the
right ground for calling such a (perhaps great) _head_, a genius (as
opposed to him who because he can only learn and imitate is called a
_shallow-pate_). For even these things could be learned, they lie in
the natural path of him who investigates and reflects according to
rules; and they do not differ specifically from what can be acquired
by industry through imitation. Thus we can readily learn all that
_Newton_ has set forth in his immortal work on the Principles of
Natural Philosophy, however great a head was required to discover it;
but we cannot learn to write spirited poetry, however express may be
the precepts of the art and however excellent its models. The reason
is that _Newton_ could make all his steps, from the first elements
of geometry to his own great and profound discoveries, intuitively
plain and definite as regards consequence, not only to himself but
to every one else. But a _Homer_ or a _Wieland_ cannot show how his
Ideas, so rich in fancy and yet so full of thought, come together in
his head, simply because he does not know and therefore cannot teach
others. In Science then the greatest discoverer only differs in degree
from his laborious imitator and pupil; but he differs specifically
from him whom Nature has gifted for beautiful Art. And in this there
is no depreciation of those great men to whom the human race owes so
much gratitude, as compared with nature’s favourites in respect of
the talent for beautiful art. For in the fact that the former talent
is directed to the ever-advancing greater perfection of knowledge and
every advantage depending on it, and at the same time to the imparting
this same knowledge to others--in this it has a great superiority
over [the talent of] those who deserve the honour of being called
geniuses. For art stands still at a certain point; a boundary is set to
it beyond which it cannot go, which presumably has been reached long
ago and cannot be extended further. Again, artistic skill cannot be
communicated; it is imparted to every artist immediately by the hand
of nature; and so it dies with him, until nature endows another in the
same way, so that he only needs an example in order to put in operation
in a similar fashion the talent of which he is conscious.
If now it is a natural gift which must prescribe its rule to art (as
beautiful art), of what kind is this rule? It cannot be reduced to
a formula and serve as a precept, for then the judgement upon the
beautiful would be determinable according to concepts; but the rule
must be abstracted from the fact, _i.e._ from the product, on which
others may try their own talent by using it as a model, not to be
_copied_ but to be _imitated_. How this is possible is hard to explain.
The Ideas of the artist excite like Ideas in his pupils if nature has
endowed them with a like proportion of their mental powers. Hence
models of beautiful art are the only means of handing down these Ideas
to posterity. This cannot be done by mere descriptions, especially not
in the case of the arts of speech, and in this latter classical models
are only to be had in the old dead languages, now preserved only as
“the learned languages.”
Although mechanical and beautiful art are very different, the first
being a mere art of industry and learning and the second of genius, yet
there is no beautiful art in which there is not a mechanical element
that can be comprehended by rules and followed accordingly, and in
which therefore there must be something _scholastic_ as an essential
condition. For [in every art] some purpose must be conceived; otherwise
we could not ascribe the product to art at all, and it would be a mere
product of chance. But in order to accomplish a purpose, definite rules
from which we cannot dispense ourselves are requisite. Now since the
originality of the talent constitutes an essential (though not the
only) element in the character of genius, shallow heads believe that
they cannot better show themselves to be full-blown geniuses than by
throwing off the constraint of all rules; they believe, in effect, that
one could make a braver show on the back of a wild horse than on the
back of a trained animal. Genius can only furnish rich _material_ for
products of beautiful art; its execution and its _form_ require talent
cultivated in the schools, in order to make such a use of this material
as will stand examination by the Judgement. But it is quite ridiculous
for a man to speak and decide like a genius in things which require
the most careful investigation by Reason. One does not know whether to
laugh more at the impostor who spreads such a mist round him that we
cannot clearly use our Judgement and so use our Imagination the more,
or at the public which naïvely imagines that his inability to cognise
clearly and to comprehend the masterpiece before him arises from new
truths crowding in on him in such abundance that details (duly weighed
definitions and accurate examination of fundamental propositions) seem
but clumsy work.
§ 48. _Of the relation of Genius to Taste_
For _judging_ of beautiful objects as such, _taste_ is requisite;
but for beautiful art, _i.e._ for the _production_ of such objects,
_genius_ is requisite.
If we consider genius as the talent for beautiful art (which the
special meaning of the word implies) and in this point of view analyse
it into the faculties which must concur to constitute such a talent, it
is necessary in the first instance to determine exactly the difference
between natural beauty, the judging of which requires only Taste, and
artificial beauty, whose possibility (to which reference must be made
in judging such an object) requires Genius.
A natural beauty is a _beautiful thing_; artificial beauty is a
_beautiful representation_ of a thing.
In order to judge of a natural beauty as such I need not have
beforehand a concept of what sort of thing the object is to be; _i.e._
I need not know its material purposiveness (the purpose), but its mere
form pleases by itself in the act of judging it without any knowledge
of the purpose. But if the object is given as a product of art, and as
such is to be declared beautiful, then, because art always supposes a
purpose in the cause (and its causality), there must be at bottom in
the first instance a concept of what the thing is to be. And as the
agreement of the manifold in a thing with its inner destination, its
purpose, constitutes the perfection of the thing, it follows that in
judging of artificial beauty the perfection of the thing must be taken
into account; but in judging of natural beauty (as _such_) there is no
question at all about this.--It is true that in judging of objects of
nature, especially objects endowed with life, _e.g._ a man or a horse,
their objective purposiveness also is commonly taken into consideration
in judging of their beauty; but then the judgement is no longer purely
aesthetical, _i.e._ a mere judgement of taste. Nature is no longer
judged inasmuch as it appears like art, but in so far as it _is_ actual
(although superhuman) art; and the teleological judgement serves as the
basis and condition of the aesthetical, as a condition to which the
latter must have respect. In such a case, _e.g._ if it is said “that is
a beautiful woman,” we think nothing else than this: nature represents
in her figure the purposes in view in the shape of a woman’s figure.
For we must look beyond the mere form to a concept, if the object
is to be thought in such a way by means of a logically conditioned
aesthetical judgement.
Beautiful art shows its superiority in this, that it describes as
beautiful things which may be in nature ugly or displeasing.[79]
The Furies, diseases, the devastations of war, etc., may [even
regarded as calamitous],[80] be described as very beautiful, and even
represented in a picture. There is only one kind of ugliness which
cannot be represented in accordance with nature, without destroying
all aesthetical satisfaction and consequently artificial beauty;
viz. that which excites _disgust_. For in this peculiar sensation,
which rests on mere imagination, the object is represented as it
were obtruding itself for our enjoyment while we strive against it
with all our might. And the artistic representation of the object
is no longer distinguished from the nature of the object itself in
our sensation, and thus it is impossible that it can be regarded as
beautiful. The art of sculpture again, because in its products art is
almost interchangeable with nature, excludes from its creations the
immediate representation of ugly objects; _e.g._ it represents death
by a beautiful genius, the warlike spirit by Mars, and permits [all
such things] to be represented only by an allegory or attribute[81]
that has a pleasing effect, and thus only indirectly by the aid of the
interpretation of Reason, and not for the mere aesthetical Judgement.
So much for the beautiful representation of an object, which is
properly only the form of the presentation of a concept, and the means
by which the latter is communicated universally.--But to give this form
to the product of beautiful art, mere taste is requisite. By taste,
after he has exercised and corrected it by manifold examples from art
or nature, the artist checks his work; and after many, often toilsome,
attempts to content taste he finds the form which satisfies him. Hence
this form is not, as it were, a thing of inspiration or the result of a
free swing of the mental powers, but of a slow and even painful process
of improvement, by which he seeks to render it adequate to his thought,
without detriment to the freedom of the play of his powers.
But taste is merely a judging and not a productive faculty; and what
is appropriate to it is not therefore a work of beautiful art. It
may be only a product belonging to useful and mechanical art or even
to science, produced according to definite rules that can be learned
and must be exactly followed. But the pleasing form that is given to
it is only the vehicle of communication, and a mode, as it were, of
presenting it, in respect of which we remain free to a certain extent,
although it is combined with a definite purpose. Thus we desire that
table appointments, a moral treatise, even a sermon, should have
in themselves this form of beautiful art, without it seeming to be
_sought_: but we do not therefore call these things works of beautiful
art. Under the latter class are reckoned a poem, a piece of music, a
picture gallery, etc.; and in some would-be works of beautiful art
we find genius without taste, while in others we find taste without
genius.
§ 49. _Of the faculties of the mind that constitute Genius_
We say of certain products of which we expect that they should at
least in part appear as beautiful art, they are without _spirit_[82];
although we find nothing to blame in them on the score of taste. A poem
may be very neat and elegant, but without spirit. A history may be
exact and well arranged, but without spirit. A festal discourse may be
solid and at the same time elaborate, but without spirit. Conversation
is often not devoid of entertainment, but yet without spirit: even of
a woman we say that she is pretty, an agreeable talker, and courteous,
but without spirit. What then do we mean by spirit?
_Spirit_, in an aesthetical sense, is the name given to the animating
principle of the mind. But that whereby this principle animates the
soul, the material which it applies to that [purpose], is that which
puts the mental powers purposively into swing, _i.e._ into such a
play as maintains itself and strengthens the [mental] powers in their
exercise.
Now I maintain that this principle is no other than the faculty of
presenting _aesthetical Ideas_. And by an aesthetical Idea I understand
that representation of the Imagination which occasions much thought,
without, however, any definite thought, _i.e._ any _concept_, being
capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely
compassed and made intelligible by language.--We easily see that it is
the counterpart (pendant) of a _rational Idea_, which conversely is a
concept to which no _intuition_ (or representation of the Imagination)
can be adequate.
The Imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is very powerful
in creating another nature, as it were, out of the material that
actual nature gives it. We entertain ourselves with it when experience
proves too commonplace, and by it we remould experience, always indeed
in accordance with analogical laws, but yet also in accordance with
principles which occupy a higher place in Reason (laws too which are
just as natural to us as those by which Understanding comprehends
empirical nature). Thus we feel our freedom from the law of association
(which attaches to the empirical employment of Imagination), so that
the material which we borrow from nature in accordance with this law
can be worked up into something different which surpasses nature.
Such representations of the Imagination we may call _Ideas_, partly
because they at least strive after something which lies beyond the
bounds of experience, and so seek to approximate to a presentation of
concepts of Reason (intellectual Ideas), thus giving to the latter the
appearance of objective reality,--but especially because no concept can
be fully adequate to them as internal intuitions. The poet ventures to
realise to sense, rational Ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of
the blessed, hell, eternity, creation, etc.; or even if he deals with
things of which there are examples in experience,--_e.g._ death, envy
and all vices, also love, fame, and the like,--he tries, by means of
Imagination, which emulates the play of Reason in its quest after a
maximum, to go beyond the limits of experience and to present them
to Sense with a completeness of which there is no example in nature.
It is, properly speaking, in the art of the poet, that the faculty
of aesthetical Ideas can manifest itself in its full measure. But
this faculty, considered in itself, is properly only a talent (of the
Imagination).
If now we place under a concept a representation of the Imagination
belonging to its presentation, but which occasions solely by itself
more thought than can ever be comprehended in a definite concept,
and which therefore enlarges aesthetically the concept itself in an
unbounded fashion,--the Imagination is here creative, and it brings
the faculty of intellectual Ideas (the Reason) into movement; _i.e._ a
movement, occasioned by a representation, towards more thought (though
belonging, no doubt, to the concept of the object) than can be grasped
in the representation or made clear.
Those forms which do not constitute the presentation of a given concept
itself but only, as approximate representations of the Imagination,
express the consequences bound up with it and its relationship to
other concepts, are called (aesthetical) _attributes_ of an object,
whose concept as a rational Idea cannot be adequately presented.
Thus Jupiter’s eagle with the lightning in its claws is an attribute
of the mighty king of heaven, as the peacock is of its magnificent
queen. They do not, like _logical attributes_, represent what lies in
our concepts of the sublimity and majesty of creation, but something
different, which gives occasion to the Imagination to spread itself
over a number of kindred representations, that arouse more thought
than can be expressed in a concept determined by words. They furnish
an _aesthetical Idea_, which for that rational Idea takes the place
of logical presentation; and thus as their proper office they enliven
the mind by opening out to it the prospect into an illimitable field
of kindred representations. But beautiful art does this not only in
the case of painting or sculpture (in which the term “attribute” is
commonly employed): poetry and rhetoric also get the spirit that
animates their works simply from the aesthetical attributes of the
object, which accompany the logical and stimulate the Imagination, so
that it thinks more by their aid, although in an undeveloped way, than
could be comprehended in a concept and therefore in a definite form of
words.-- For the sake of brevity I must limit myself to a few examples
only.
When the great King[83] in one of his poems expresses himself as
follows:
“Oui, finissons sans trouble et mourons sans regrets,
En laissant l’univers comblé de nos bienfaits.
Ainsi l’astre du jour au bout de sa carrière,
Répand sur l’horizon une douce lumière;
Et les derniers rayons qu’il darde dans les airs,
Sont les derniers soupirs qu’il donne à l’univers;”
he quickens his rational Idea of a cosmopolitan disposition at the end
of life by an attribute which the Imagination (in remembering all the
pleasures of a beautiful summer day that are recalled at its close
by a serene evening) associates with that representation, and which
excites a number of sensations and secondary representations for which
no expression is found. On the other hand, an intellectual concept may
serve conversely as an attribute for a representation of sense and
so can quicken this latter by means of the Idea of the supersensible;
but only by the aesthetical [element], that subjectively attaches to
the concept of the latter, being here employed. Thus, for example, a
certain poet[84] says, in his description of a beautiful morning:
“The sun arose
As calm from virtue springs.”
The consciousness of virtue, even if one only places oneself in
thought in the position of a virtuous man, diffuses in the mind a
multitude of sublime and restful feelings and a boundless prospect of
a joyful future, to which no expression measured by a definite concept
completely attains.[85]
In a word the aesthetical Idea is a representation of the Imagination
associated with a given concept, which is bound up with such a
multiplicity of partial representations in its free employment, that
for it no expression marking a definite concept can be found; and such
a representation, therefore, adds to a concept much ineffable thought,
the feeling of which quickens the cognitive faculties, and with
language, which is the mere letter, binds up spirit also.