[Sidenote] _Aesthetic activity and physical concepts._
Aesthetic activity is distinct from practical activity but when it
expresses itself is always physical accompanied by practical activity.
Hence its utilitarian or hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain,
which are, as it were, the practical echo of aesthetic values and
disvalues, of the beautiful and of the ugly. But this practical side of
the aesthetic activity has also, in its turn, a _physical_ or
_psychophysical_ 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,
as the result of the construction which we raise in physical science,
and of the useful and arbitrary methods, which we have shown to be
proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our reply cannot be
doubtful, that is, it cannot be affirmative as to the first of the two
hypotheses.
However, it will be better to leave it at this point in suspense, for it
is not at present necessary to prosecute this line of inquiry any
further. The mention already made must suffice to prevent our having
spoken of the physical element as of something objective and existing,
for reasons of simplicity and adhesion to ordinary language, from
leading to hasty conclusions as to the concepts and the connexion
between spirit and nature.
[Sidenote] _Expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in
the naturalistic sense._
It is important to make clear that as the existence of the hedonistic
side in every spiritual activity has given rise to the confusion between
the aesthetic activity and the useful or pleasurable, so the existence,
or, better, the possibility of constructing this physical side, has
generated the confusion between _aesthetic_ expression and expression
_in the naturalistic sense_; between a spiritual fact, that is to say,
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 is
wont to accompany the feeling of shame, the pallor resulting from fear,
the grinding of the teeth proper to violent anger, the glittering of the
eyes, and certain movements of the muscles of the mouth, which reveal
cheerfulness. A certain degree of heat is also said to be the
_expression_ of fever, as the falling of the barometer is of rain, and
even that the height of the rate of exchange _expresses_ the discredit
of the paper-money 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 linguistic usage and
placing in one sheaf 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 aesthetically; between
the aspect, the cries, and the contortions of one who is tortured with
sorrow at the loss of a dear one, and the words or song with which the
same individual portrays his torture at another moment; between the
distortion of emotion and the gesture of the actor. Darwin's book on the
expression of the feelings in man and animals does not belong to
Aesthetic; 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 characteristic itself of activity
and of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into poles of beauty
and of ugliness. It is nothing more than a relation between cause and
effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process of
aesthetic production can be symbolized in four steps, which are: _a_,
impressions; _b_, expression or spiritual aesthetic synthesis; _c_,
hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (aesthetic
pleasure); _d_, translation of the aesthetic fact into physical
phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours,
etc.). Anyone can see that the capital point, the only one that is
properly speaking aesthetic and truly real, is in that _b_, which is
lacking to the mere manifestation or naturalistic construction,
metaphorically also called expression.
The expressive process is exhausted when those four steps have been
taken. It begins again with new impressions, a new aesthetic synthesis,
and relative accompaniments.
[Sidenote] _Intuitions and memory._
Expressions or representations follow and expel one another. Certainly,
this passing away, this disassociation, is not perishing, it is not
total elimination: nothing of what is born dies with that complete death
which would be identical with never having been born. Though all things
pass away, yet none can die. The representations which we have
forgotten, also persist in some way in our spirit, for without them we
could not explain acquired habits and capacities. Thus, the strength of
life lies in this apparent forgetting: one forgets what has been
absorbed and what life has superseded.
But many other things, many other representations, are still efficacious
elements in the actual processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent on
us not to forget them, or to be capable of recalling them when necessity
demands them. The will is always vigilant in this work of preservation,
for it aims at preserving (so to say) the greater and more fundamental
part of all our riches. Certainly its vigilance is not always
sufficient. Memory, we know, leaves or betrays us in various ways. For
this very reason, the vigilant will excogitates expedients, which help
memory in its weakness, and are its _aids_.
[Sidenote] _The production of aids to memory._
We have already explained how these aids are possible. Expressions or
representations are, at the same time, practical facts, which are also
called physical facts, in so far as to the physical belongs the task of
classifying them and reducing them to types. Now it is clear, that if we
can succeed in making those facts in some way permanent, it will always
be possible (other conditions remaining equal) to reproduce in us, by
perceiving it, the already produced expression or intuition.
If that in which the practical concomitant acts, or (to use physical
terms) the movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent,
be called the object or physical stimulus, and if it be designated by
the letter _e_; then the process of reproduction will take place in the
following order: _e_, the physical stimulus; _d-b_, perceptions of
physical facts (sounds, tones, mimic, combinations of lines and colours,
etc.), which form together the aesthetic synthesis, already produced;
_c_, the hedonistic accompaniment, which is also reproduced.
And what are those combinations of words which are called poetry, prose,
poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical stimulants
of reproduction_ (the _e_ stage); what are those combinations of sound
which are called operas, symphonies, sonatas; and what those of lines
and of colours, which are called pictures, statues, architecture? The
spiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of those physical facts
above mentioned, makes possible the preservation and the reproduction of
the intuitions produced, often so laboriously, by ourselves and by
others. If the physiological organism, and with it memory, become
weakened; if the monuments of art be destroyed; then all the aesthetic
wealth, the fruit of the labours of many generations, becomes lessened
and rapidly disappears.
[Sidenote] _The physically beautiful._
Monuments of art, which are the stimulants of aesthetic reproduction,
are called _beautiful things or the physically beautiful_. This
combination of words constitutes a verbal paradox, because the beautiful
is not a physical fact; it does not belong to things, but to the
activity of man, to spiritual energy. But henceforth it is clear through
what wanderings and what abbreviations, physical things and facts, which
are simply aids to the reproduction of the beautiful, end by being
called, elliptically, beautiful things and physically beautiful. And now
that we have made the existence of this ellipse clear, we shall
ourselves make use of it without hesitation.
[Sidenote] _Content and form: another meaning._
The intervention of the physically beautiful serves to explain another
meaning of the words _content and form_, as employed by aestheticians.
Some call "content" the internal fact or expression (which is for us
already form), and they call "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm,
the sounds (for us form no longer); thus they look upon the physical
fact as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. This
serves to explain another aspect of what is called aesthetic ugliness.
He who has nothing definite to express may try to hide his internal
emptiness with a flood of words, with sounding verse, with deafening
polyphony, with painting that dazzles the eye, or by collocating great
architectonic masses, which arrest and disturb, although, at bottom,
they convey nothing. Ugliness, then, is the arbitrary, the
charlatanesque; and, in reality, if the practical will do not intervene
in the theoretic function, there may be absence of beauty, but never
effective presence of the ugly.
[Sidenote] _Natural and artificial beauty._
Physical beauty is wont to be divided into _natural_ and _artificial_
beauty. Thus we reach one of the facts, which has given great labour to
thinkers: _the beautiful in nature_. These words often designate simply
facts of practical pleasure. He alludes to nothing aesthetic who calls a
landscape beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where bodily
motion is easy, and where the warm sun-ray envelops and caresses the
limbs. But it is nevertheless indubitable, that on other occasions the
adjective "beautiful," applied to objects and scenes existing in nature,
has a completely aesthetic signification.
It has been observed, that in order to enjoy natural objects
aesthetically, we should withdraw them from their external and
historical reality, and separate their simple appearance or origin from
existence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between our
legs, in such a way as to remove ourselves from our wonted relations
with it, the landscape appears as 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, and to which more or less aesthetic travellers and
excursionists afterwards have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a more or
less 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 now expressive, according to the
disposition of the soul, now insignificant, now expressive of one
definite thing, now of another, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous,
sweet or laughable; finally, that _natural beauty_, which an artist
would not _to some extent correct, does not exist_.
All these observations are most just, and confirm the fact that natural
beauty is simply a _stimulus_ to aesthetic reproduction, which
presupposes previous production. Without preceding aesthetic intuitions
of the imagination, nature cannot arouse any at all. As regards natural
beauty, man is like the mythical Narcissus at the fountain. They show
further that since this stimulus is accidental, it is, for the most
part, imperfect or equivocal. Leopardi said that natural beauty is
"rare, scattered, and fugitive." Every one refers the natural fact to
the expression which is in his mind. One artist is, as it were, carried
away by a laughing landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by the
pretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance of an
old ruffian. Perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and the ugly
face of the old ruffian are _disgusting_; the second, that the laughing
landscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid_. They may dispute
for ever; but they will never agree, save when they have supplied
themselves with a sufficient dose of aesthetic knowledge, which will
enable them to recognize that they are both right. _Artificial_ beauty,
created by man, is a much more ductile and efficacious aid to
reproduction.
[Sidenote] _Mixed beauty._
In addition to these two classes, aestheticians also sometimes talk in
their treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. Of what is it a mixture? Just of
natural and artificial. Whoso fixes and externalizes, operates with
natural materials, which he does not create, but combines and
transforms. In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of
nature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed
beauty, as of a special category. But it happens that, in certain cases,
combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more than
in others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and
include in our design groups of trees or ponds which are already there.
On other occasions externalization is limited by the impossibility of
producing certain effects artificially. Thus we may mix the colouring
matters, but we cannot create a powerful voice or a personage and an
appearance appropriate to this or that personage of a drama. We must
therefore seek for them among things already existing, and make use of
them when we find them. When, therefore, we adopt a great number of
combinations already existing in nature, such as we should not be able
to produce artificially if they did not exist, the result is called
_mixed_ beauty.
[Sidenote] _Writings._
We must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments of
reproduction called _writings_, such as alphabets, musical notes,
hieroglyphics, and all pseudo-languages, from the language of flowers
and flags, to the language of patches (so much the vogue in the society
of the eighteenth century). Writings are not physical facts which arouse
directly impressions answering to aesthetic expressions; they are simple
_indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such physical
facts. A series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the movements
which we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to emit certain
definite sounds. If, through practice, we become able to hear the words
without opening our mouths and (what is much more difficult) to hear the
sounds by running the eye down the page of the music, all this does not
alter anything of the nature of the writings, which are altogether
different from direct physical beauty. No one calls the book which
contains the _Divine Comedy_, or the portfolio which contains _Don
Giovanni_, beautiful in the same sense as the block of marble which
contains Michael Angelo's _Moses_, or the piece of coloured wood which
contains the _Transfiguration_ are metaphorically called beautiful. Both
serve for the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former by a far
longer and far more indirect route than the latter.
[Sidenote] _The beautiful as free and not free._
Another division of the beautiful, which is still found in treatises, is
that into _free and not free_. By beauties that are not free, are
understood those objects which have to serve a double purpose,
extra-aesthetic and aesthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since it
appears that the first purpose limits and impedes the second, the
beautiful object resulting therefrom has been considered as a beauty
that is not free.
Architectural works are especially cited; and precisely for this reason,
has architecture often been excluded from the number of the so-called
fine arts. A temple must be above all things adapted to the use of a
cult; a house must contain all the rooms requisite for commodity of
living, and they must be arranged with a view to this commodity; a
fortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks of
certain armies and the blows of certain instruments of war. It is
therefore held that the architect's field is limited: he may be able to
_embellish_ to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but his
hands are bound by the _object_ of these buildings, and he can only
manifest that part of his vision of beauty in their construction which
does not impair their extrinsic, but fundamental, objects.
Other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry.
Plates, glasses, knives, guns, and combs can be made beautiful; but it
is held that their beauty must not so far exceed as to prevent our
eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife,
firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. The same is
said of the art of printing: a book should be beautiful, but not to the
extent of its being difficult or impossible to read it.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the beautiful that is not free._
In respect to all this, we must observe, in the first place, that the
external purpose, precisely because it is such, does not of necessity
limit or trammel the other purpose of being a stimulus to aesthetic
reproduction. Nothing, therefore, can be more erroneous than the thesis
that architecture, for example, is by its nature not free and imperfect,
since it must also fulfil other practical objects. Beautiful
architectural works, however, themselves undertake to deny this by their
simple presence.
In the second place, not only are the two objects not necessarily in
opposition; but, we must add, the artist always has the means of
preventing this contradiction from taking place. In what way? By taking,
as the material of his intuition and aesthetic externalization,
precisely the _destination_ of the object, which serves a practical end.
He will not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the
instrument of aesthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted
to its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and
barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are
embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express the purpose for
which they were made. A garment is only beautiful because it is quite
suitable to a given person in given conditions. The sword bound to the
side of the warrior Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "so
adorned that it seemed a useless ornament, not the warlike instrument of
a warrior." It was beautiful, if you will, in the eyes and imagination
of the sorceress, who loved her lover in this effeminate way. The
aesthetic fact can always accompany the practical fact, because
expression is truth.
It cannot, however, be denied that aesthetic contemplation sometimes
hinders practical use. For instance, it is a quite common experience to
find certain new things so well adapted to their purpose, and yet so
beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in maltreating them by
using after contemplating them, which amounts to consuming them. It was
for this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia evinced
repugnance to ordering his magnificent grenadiers, so well suited for
war, to endure the strain of battle; but his less aesthetic son,
Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent services.
[Sidenote] _The stimulants of production._
It might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful as a
simple adjunct for the reproduction of the internally beautiful, that is
to say, of expressions, that the artist creates his expressions by
painting or by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and that
therefore the physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimes
precedes the aesthetically beautiful. This would be a somewhat
superficial mode of understanding the procedure of the artist, who never
makes a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with his
imagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke, not
in order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist), but
as though to have a rallying point for ulterior meditation and for
internal concentration. The physical point on which he leans is not the
physically beautiful, instrument of reproduction, but what may be called
a pedagogic means, similar to retiring into solitude, or to the many
other expedients, frequently very strange, adopted by artists and
philosophers, who vary in these according to their various
idiosyncrasies. The old aesthetician Baumgarten advised poets to ride on
horseback, as a means of inspiration, to drink wine in moderation, and
(provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women.