It is necessary to mention a series of scientific mistakes which have
arisen from the failure to understand the purely external relation
between the aesthetic fact or artistic vision, and the physical fact or
instrument, which serves as an aid to reproduce it. We must here
indicate the proper criticism, which derives from what has already been
said.
[Sidenote] _Critique of aesthetic associationism_
That form of associationism which identifies the aesthetic fact with the
_association of two_ images finds a place among these errors. By what
path has it been possible to arrive at such a mistake, against which our
aesthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of perfect unity,
never of duality, rebels? Just because the physical and the aesthetic
facts have been considered separately, as two distinct images, which
enter the spirit, the one drawn forth from the other, the one first and
the other afterwards. A picture is divided into the image of the
_picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, into
the image of the words and the image of the _meaning_ of the words. But
this dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not enter
the spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image (the
only image, which is the aesthetic fact), in so far as it blindly
stimulates the psychic organism and produces an impression answering to
the aesthetic expression already produced.
The efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the field
of Aesthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some way
the unity which has been destroyed by their principle of associationism,
are highly instructive. Some maintain that the image called back again
is unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on the
contrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ of
the aesthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. But the dilemma is
inexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity and
give up association. No third way out of the difficulty exists.
[Sidenote] _Critique of aesthetic physic._
From the failure to analyze so-called natural beauty thoroughly, and to
recognize that it is simply an incident of aesthetic reproduction, and
from having, on the contrary, looked upon it as given in nature, is
derived all that portion of treatises upon Aesthetic which is entitled
_The Beautiful in Nature or Aesthetic Physic_; sometimes even
subdivided, save the mark! into Aesthetic Mineralogy, Botany, and
Zoology. We do not wish to deny that such treatises contain many just
remarks, and are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as they
represent beautifully the imaginings and fantasies, that is the
impressions, of their authors. But we must state that it is
scientifically false to ask oneself if the dog be beautiful, and the
ornithorhynchus ugly; if the lily be beautiful, and the artichoke ugly.
Indeed, the error is here double. On one hand, aesthetic Physic falls
back into the equivoke of the theory of artistic and literary classes,
by attempting to determine aesthetically the abstractions of our
intellect; on the other, fails to recognize, as we said, the true
formation of so-called natural beauty; for which the question as to
whether some given individual animal, flower, or man be beautiful or
ugly, is altogether excluded. What is not produced by the aesthetic
spirit, or cannot be referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. The
aesthetic process arises from the ideal relations in which natural
objects are arranged.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body._
The double error can be exemplified by the question, upon which whole
volumes have been written, as to the _Beauty of the human body_. Here it
is necessary, above all things, to urge those who discuss this subject
from the abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "What do you mean by
the human body, that of the male, of the female, or of the androgyne?"
Let us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct
inquiries, as to the virile and feminine beauty (there really are
writers who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more
beautiful); and let us continue: "Masculine or feminine beauty; but of
what race of men--the white, the yellow, or the black, and whatever
others there may be, according to the division of races?" Let us assume
that they limit themselves to the white race, and let us continue: "What
sub-species of the white race?" And when we have restricted them
gradually to one section of the white world, that is to say, to the
Italian, Tuscan, Siennese, or Porta Camollia section, we will continue:
"Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in what condition and
state of development--that of the new-born babe, of the child, of the
boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and is the
man at rest or at work, or is he occupied as is Paul Potter's cow, or
the Ganymede of Rembrandt?"
Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual
_omnimode determinatum_, or, better, at the man pointed out with the
finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling what has
been said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now ugly,
according to the point of view, according to what is passing in the mind
of the artist. Finally, if the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, and
if there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy
firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of the northern seas; let
it be believed, if possible, that such relativity does not exist for the
human body, source of the most various suggestions!
[Sidenote] _Critique of the beauty of geometric figures._
The question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected with
aesthetic Physic. But if by geometrical figures be understood the
concepts of geometry, the concept of the triangle, the square, the cone,
these are neither beautiful nor ugly: they are concepts. If, on the
other hand, by such figures be understood bodies which possess definite
geometrical forms, these will be ugly or beautiful, like every natural
fact, according to the ideal connexions in which they are placed. Some
hold that those geometrical figures are beautiful which point upwards,
since they give the suggestion of firmness and of force. It is not
denied that such may be the case. But neither must it be denied that
those also which give the impression of instability and of being crushed
down may possess their beauty, where they represent just the ill-formed
and the crushed; and that in these last cases the firmness of the
straight line and the lightness of the cone or of the equilateral
triangle would, on the contrary, seem elements of ugliness.
Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty of
geometry, like the others analogous of the historically beautiful and of
human beauty, seem less absurd in the Aesthetic of the sympathetic,
which means, at bottom, by the words "aesthetic beauty" the
representation of what is pleasing. But the pretension to determine
scientifically what are the sympathetic contents, and what are the
irremediably antipathetic, is none the less erroneous, even in the
sphere of that doctrine and after the laying down of those premises. One
can only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely long
postscript the _Sunt quos_ of the first ode of the first book of Horace,
and the _Havvi chi_ of Leopardi's letter to Carlo Pepoli. To each man
his beautiful ( = sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. Philography
is not a science.
[Sidenote] _Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature._
The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in
producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are
called his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers, and so on. Let us run over
the sketches, the studies, and the notes of the artists: Leonardo noted
down in his pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper:
"Giovannina, fantastic appearance, is at St. Catherine's, at the
Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione is at the Pietà, he has a fine head;
Christ, Giovan Conte, is of the suite of Cardinal Mortaro." And so on.
From this comes the illusion that the artist _imitates nature_; when it
would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and
obeys him. The theory that _art imitates nature_ has sometimes been
grounded upon and found sustenance in this illusion, as also its
variant, more easily to be defended, which makes art the _idealizer of
nature_. This last theory presents the process in a disorderly manner,
indeed inversely to the true order; for the artist does not proceed from
extrinsic reality, in order to modify it by approaching it to the ideal;
but he proceeds from the impression of external nature to expression,
that is to say, to his ideal, and from this he passes to the natural
fact, which he employs as the instrument of reproduction of the ideal
fact.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the
beautiful._
Another consequence of the confusion between the aesthetic and the
physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful_.
If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact, in
which it externalizes itself, can well be divided and subdivided; for
example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of
lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet,
syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings,
periods, phrases, words, and so on. The parts thus obtained are not
aesthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, cut up in an arbitrary
manner. If this path were followed, and the confusion persisted in, we
should end by concluding that the true forms of the beautiful are
_atoms_.
The aesthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have
_bulk_, could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the
imperceptibility of the too small, nor the unapprehensibility of the too
large. But a bigness which depends upon perceptibility, not measurement,
derives from a concept widely different from the mathematical. For what
is called imperceptible and incomprehensible does not produce an
impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the requisite
of bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the effective reality of the
physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful.
[Sidenote] _Critique of the search for the objective conditions of
the beautiful._
Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective
conditions of the beautiful_, it has been asked: To what physical facts
does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of
tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are
as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in
the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The constant infecundity
of the attempt should have at once given rise to some suspicion as to
its vanity. In our times, especially, has the necessity for an
_inductive_ Aesthetic been often proclaimed, of an Aesthetic starting
_from below_, which should proceed like natural science and not hasten
its conclusions. Inductive? But Aesthetic has always been both inductive
and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction
cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a
true science. But the word "inductive" was not here pronounced
accidentally and without special intention. It was wished to imply by
its use that the aesthetic fact is nothing, at bottom, but a physical
fact, which should be studied by applying to it the methods proper to
the physical and natural sciences. With such a presupposition and in
such a faith did inductive Aesthetic or Aesthetic of the inferior (what
pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It has conscientiously begun
by making a collection of _beautiful things_, for example of a great
number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and has asked which of
these give the impression of the beautiful and which of the ugly. As was
to be expected, the inductive aestheticians speedily found themselves in
a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect
would appear beautiful in another. A yellow, coarse envelope, which
would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is,
however, just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped
paper. This in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an
irony, if enclosed in a square English envelope. Such considerations of
simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive
aestheticians, that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause
them to remit their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they have had
recourse to an expedient, as to which we would find it difficult to say
how far it belongs to natural science. They have sent their envelopes
round from one to the other and opened a _referendum_, thus striving to
decide by the votes of the majority in what consists the beautiful and
the ugly.
We will not waste time over this argument, because we should seem to be
turning ourselves into narrators of comic anecdotes rather than
expositors of aesthetic science and of its problems. It is an actual
fact, that the inductive aestheticians have not yet discovered _one
single law_.
[Sidenote] _Astrology of Aesthetic._
He who dispenses with doctors is prone to abandon himself to charlatans.
Thus it has befallen those who have believed in the natural laws of the
beautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that of the
proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that is to say,
of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the less is to
the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_bc: ac=ac: ab_). Such
canons easily become their superstitions, and they attribute to such the
success of their works. Thus Michael Angelo left as a precept to his
disciple Marco del Pino of Siena that "he should always make a pyramidal
serpentine figure multiplied by one, two, three," a precept which did
not enable Marco di Siena to emerge from that mediocrity which we can
yet observe in his many works, here in Naples. Others extracted from the
sayings of Michael Angelo the precept that serpentine undulating lines
were the true _lines of beauty_. Whole volumes have been composed on
these laws of beauty, on the golden section and on the undulating and
serpentine lines. These should in our opinion be looked upon as the
_astrology of Aesthetic_.