CONCLUSION 65
APPENDIX. ART FORMS IN DEVELOPMENT 71
INTRODUCTION
Are we to look at the Beautiful with our feet firmly planted on
the Natural, or are we to look at the Natural from the apparently
precarious height of the Beautiful? This, after all, is the dilemma
of aesthetic, slow though men have been to realise it. As we read the
history of Aesthetic Theory we are puzzled by the tentativeness and the
uncertainty even of those philosophers who played the greatest part in
moulding human thought, until it dawns on us that, idealist though they
might be in all else, in this they were unconsciously disloyal to their
own systems, being in some measure materialist.
An attempt to form a philosophy of religion which should start from
the generally accepted facts of biological science and pass, through
the common experiences of personal relationship, to the ultimate
problems of Godhead and manhood, left at the close a keen sense of
something lacking--something more than the lack of unity and balance
inevitable in work written and published step by step. I had tried to
find in Love, which is the very nature of Godhead, an essential impulse
towards creation. It was clear that this creation must be the creation
of something _new_, if it were to be justified; and the conclusion
which forced itself upon me was that the creation of personal beings
fulfilled this demand.
Yet an unsatisfied sense remained either that even the experience of
love reciprocated by fresh personal beings could not be new for God
with that utter newness which belief in Him as Transcendent and Perfect
required, or else that His experience was not always perfect. At any
rate something that would make this newness self-evident was missing.
Something vital had clearly been left out. The one thing of which no
account had been taken was Beauty; and I began to consider whether this
missing something, all-pervading yet intangible, was not Beauty itself.
And in Beauty I seemed to find what I had missed.
To Aesthetic has generally been assigned the fate of Cinderella. Her
uglier sisters, Epistemology and Metaphysic, have monopolised the court
invitations, for the most part. Might she not, after all, be destined
to marry the Prince? A little thought made it clear that, properly
arrayed, she would bid fair to outshine the others. This book is not an
effort to dress her in a new fashion. Fairy godmother I cannot claim to
be, nor have I a magic wand. I shall only try to strip off some of the
rags, leaving her, like Psyche, to proclaim her own loveliness.
It is not my intention to give a systematic account of the development
of aesthetic theory. Such books as Dr Bosanquet’s _History of
Aesthetic_, and the historical portion of Croce’s _Aesthetic_, from
which works the following summary is chiefly derived, fortunately
make the task unnecessary. Nor does any detailed criticism of the
work of others fall within the scope of the present essay. My aim is
merely to suggest an idea, avoiding technicalities as far as I may,
and then to link it up with the Christian idea of God on the one hand,
and with the development of the human soul on the other. The very
briefest note on the course of speculation concerning Art and Beauty
will suffice to introduce the point of view that I wish to suggest,
which is that Beauty must be a first and not a last consideration for
metaphysic. To advocate this is to turn his own weapon against Croce;
but that is inevitable. Croce claims that Beauty is the expression
of that intuition of Reality which constitutes the first stage of
knowledge; but the philosophy of Croce is anti-metaphysical. Since
many, while agreeing with the great and original discovery involved in
his affirmation, must disagree profoundly with his negation, it follows
of necessity that sooner or later they will endeavour to hoist him with
his own petard.
Aesthetic theories show a steady and yet very remarkable change in
the views of philosophers concerning Art and even Beauty itself. The
Greeks tended, on the whole, to regard Art as mere imitation. Thus, at
best, the beauty produced by artistic creation was inferior, because
second-hand; in fact, as Plato argued, the artist’s representation
was really third-hand, for there is first the idea, then the concrete
individual object, then the representation. Stress was laid on
harmony, rhythm, order, as being indicative of the homogeneity of
an ideal world and therefore admirable. But, being an incomplete
reproduction of nature[1], art could have no primary importance. It
might be evil or good, in its own degree; and from the moral standpoint
it might be judged, for the beautiful and the good are not completely
distinguished. Being so judged, it was found wanting. It is one of the
tragedies of thought that the beauty-loving Plato should have been
driven to formulate a theory which is the negation of art, because it
seemed to him that art was simply the false endeavouring to masquerade
as the true. In Aristotle we find the beginnings of a freer idea.
Symbolism in art is implicitly recognised, and there is some escape,
though not much, from the moralistic bond; some dawning conception,
though not much, of the concrete expressiveness of artistic creation.
In the Middle Ages the mystical symbolic conception, characteristic
of Plotinus, was developed. Symmetry and rhythm are beautiful because
they symbolise reason and divinity, and relate the human soul, through
the perception of order, to the divine which created that order. St
Thomas Aquinas even goes so far as to say that in beauty desire is
quieted[2]--presumably because satisfied. We shall be led to disagree
profoundly with this statement.
Of Vico (1725), to whom Croce acknowledges so great a debt, we will
only here say that he was the discoverer of the creative intuition,
and this discovery entitles him to the honourable position of first
founder of a coherent theory of aesthetic. Vico was primarily concerned
with the nature of poetry. He showed that poetry was a ‘moment’ of the
spiritual consciousness, by which a man was brought into contact with
reality--that it represented a stage of knowledge _before_ reflection
(and was therefore an intuition) and that it expressed this knowledge
(and was therefore creative); while it was distinct from feeling, and
therefore free from the stigma which Plato attached to it, and which
led to his banishing it from his _Republic_.
Men first _feel_ without being aware; they then _become aware_
with troubled and affected soul; finally they reflect with pure
mind. This dignity is the _Principle of the poetical feelings_,
which are formed by the senses of _passions_ and of _affections_,
as distinct from the _philosophical feelings_, which are formed
from _reflection by reasoning_. Hence the philosophical feelings
approach more to truth, the more they rise to _universals_; the
poetical feelings are more certain the more they approach to
_particulars_[3].
Poetry is thus placed on the imaginative plane, says Professor Wildon
Carr, as distinct from the intellective, and this imaginative plane, or
as Croce calls it, degree, is furnished with positive value.
By Kant we first find the problem of aesthetic faced boldly and at
close quarters. Kant’s thought had led him to the formulation of two
Critiques, the one dealing with the world of abstract reason, the other
with the world of concrete, practical experience; and no systematic
bond yet existed between them. The unity of life itself made such a
dualism intolerable, and Kant sought the unifying medium in aesthetic
judgment, for judgment is pre-eminently a synthesis. The domain of
aesthetic consciousness, if purely subjective by Kant’s interpretation,
is yet clearly determined. It furnishes decisions on the quality,
the quantity and the relation of those objects with which practical
experience makes us acquainted, and with whose existence the intellect
is occupied. Yet beauty is for Kant subjective, devoid of abstract
conceptions, pleasing without interest, destitute of content; though he
fails in achieving more than a verbal consistency in this matter[4].
Subjective or not, however, it is symbolic of the moral order, and owes
its apparent rationality to the Order which it symbolises. No doubt
it is through the doctrine of symbolism that Kant is led on to his
discussion of the sublime as another species of the aesthetic judgment,
yet more subjective, yet more abstract.
With Schelling we reach the stage of philosophical appreciation of the
objectivity of beauty; and, with this objectivity, of the relation
of beauty to historical continuity, both in its own expression in
the mind of man, and in the sequence of objective episodes. The
artist recognises the eternal idea in an individual, and expresses
it outwardly, transforming the individual into a world apart, into a
species, into an eternal idea[5]. The divine, successively expressing
itself through man, gives a unity and absoluteness to all reality; and
reality is the object of the aesthetic judgment.
We have not stayed to discuss, or even state, the many definitions
of the Beautiful that have been given. Neither have we attempted to
represent the contribution of countless writers to the problem. Our
only object in this brief page of summary has been to indicate the
changing trend of thought.
The Greeks reared their philosophic system on an unstable foundation,
because they looked on Beauty as mere imitation. For them Art mimics
life as crudely as a company of strolling players at a country fair
mimics the doings of the great. Art is dramatic rather than true.
But with less rigorous and honest minds than Plato’s the instinctive
love of beauty weighed more strongly. Beauty was, at highest, too
ennobling to be wholly false; it must at least symbolise the true. And
when a more disciplined thought was once more turned upon Reality,
without beauty the world seemed dual--hard and cold, with theory and
practice divorced. The only bond appeared to lie in the region of
the judgment of values, itself essentially aesthetic. Men born out
of due time there were who showed here and there flashes of deeper
insight before Kant’s systematisation was effected, but to them
came only sporadic glimpses of the truth. These for the most part
were men deeply versed in the life and soul of man--the Dantes, the
Shakespeares, the Goethes. Only one was pre-eminent in the realm of
pure thought--Giambattista Vico. With other thinkers the tide rose and
fell alternately, yet always moved from the neap of Platonism towards
the spring.
Then, at the end, in our own time, Benedetto Croce set himself to
formulate the first adequate theory of the Aesthetic.
The importance of Beauty to any system of philosophy that could pretend
to completeness had been more and more recognised. It was left for
Croce to grasp the truth that Beauty is not judgment, but expression:
the expression of the intuition which is our first contact with
Reality; and that Aesthetic is the science of expressive activity.
Given this first movement of the spirit, the other modes of approach
to Reality follow--or rather are involved, since no temporal series is
concerned.
Croce’s philosophy as a whole, and especially his extension of the
logical _a priori_ synthesis on which it is founded, is difficult to
grasp; and for the sake of those who may not have made acquaintance
with his own exposition or with Professor Wildon Carr’s summary, a
brief discussion of one or two salient points may be forgiven. It is
only fair to state, however, that it is not possible to give a really
short and clear _résumé_ that will do justice to the most interesting
and elusive of modern philosophies.
We may begin by explaining what Croce means by an intuition, what he
means by the _a priori_ synthesis, and what part the relation of the
double degree plays in his system.
When you perceive an object, already you are using two mental
processes, which cannot in fact be separated, or exist the one without
the other. In the first place there is simple awareness of a reality.
You objectify an impression without arguing as to its reality at all,
or relating it to yourself or anything else. You merely characterise
the thing, and are aware of it as concrete and individual. This is the
Pure Intuition. It has no admixture of intellectual process. And its
salient characteristic is _that it is made or expressed by the mind_,
and is indeed identical with this expression. You cannot separate the
intuition from its expression. Moreover it is aesthetic in nature. Its
character is identical with the character of the mind-process which
makes the vision of the artist and the poet.
But this intuition is at once generalised, and related. The process of
generalisation is the formation of the Concept, and is characteristic
of the logical or intellectual activity. Moreover the Pure Concept is
universal, and expressive, belonging to all individuals; concrete, and
therefore real. Pseudo-concepts, which fail either in universality,
expressiveness or concreteness, do exist and are of great value, but
this value belongs not to the theoretical, but to the practical,
activity. ‘Evolution’ is a pure concept, ‘chair’ a pseudo-concept. For
our purpose it is not necessary to elaborate this point.
What does interest us is the relation between the two theoretical
activities of the spirit--Intuition and Concept. They are ‘moments in
the unity of a single process.’ Neither takes a prior place. “We cannot
think without universalising, and we cannot have an intuition without
thinking[6].” In other words, they are related in a synthesis that is
_a priori_. This means that the intellectual activity which relates
and generalises the intuitions or presentations does not depend upon
them, but is as much a condition of experience as are the presentations
themselves. Each of the two things, the intuition and the concept, is
essential to knowledge; the concept is empty of content without the
intuition, but you cannot have an intuition without thinking it. The
two form an indivisible, organic unity; neither able to exist without
the other. You cannot think without universalising, nor intuit without
thinking. This is the logical _a priori_ synthesis discovered by Kant.
But Croce proceeds to use it in a wider sense, as we shall see.
These two elements then, the intuitional and the conceptual, together
constitute the whole theoretic activity of knowing.
Now the first of these elements, the intuition, is expression of a
reality to the self. It is essentially aesthetic, for aesthetic is the
science of expressive activity. In forming an intuition, and expressing
it, we compass Beauty, for Beauty is expression.
But there is another side to the activity of the spirit. Thinking and
doing, willing and acting, go hand in hand.
The Practical Activity begins as Economic, directed towards
particular ends. There is individual action; but there is also action
universalised: directed to general ends: and this action is Ethical.
Utility passes over into goodness: there is no good action which is not
in some way useful, there is no useful action which is not in some way
good.
Here again, then, we have two inseparable activities, related, as
are the theoretic activities, as a first and second degree, yet each
involving the other. The relation is identical with that of the _a
priori_ synthesis, and the term may be extended to cover this relation
also.
Finally, the two sides of the activity of the spirit, the theoretic and
the practical, are themselves related in this same double degree by a
relation of synthesis that we may again term _a priori_. The theoretic
activity cannot exist apart from the practical, nor the practical
apart from the theoretic. The relation is again the same as that which
obtains for the relation of the elements constituting each pair of the
four ‘moments,’ and for the pairs themselves. The _a priori_ synthesis
is extended to cover all these relations.
With Croce’s theory of Beauty we have already made acquaintance. As
we have seen, Kant laid the foundations by his discussion of the
judgment of taste; Vico, by distinguishing the imaginative from the
intellectual plane, had supplied the basal idea; but it was left to
Croce to see that Beauty is expression, or the form given by the spirit
to its intuitions, through which it makes contact with Reality. It
must, however, be borne in mind that Croce draws an absolutely definite
line between the expression, which belongs to the Theoretic Activity,
and the technical embodiment of that expression, which belongs to the
domain of the Practical. The work of art affords simply the stimulus
which enables us to recreate the artist’s expression; and it is the
expression, not the work of art, that is beautiful. The Beautiful
is a distinct concept; the Ugly is ugly in so far as it fails in
distinctness, through failure to express. Beauty is simply aesthetic
value--the value of the expressed intuition; ugliness the lack of
aesthetic value, through lack of clarity in intuition and expression.
It is needless for us to follow out the rest of Croce’s system. The
chief point that remains is his identification of Philosophy with
History--the _thought_ about the presentation of Reality (Philosophy)
with that presentation itself as an unfolding of immanent life
(History). This identification really follows from the relation of the
double degree between the theoretic and the practical. In thinking
past history you bring it into the present as a practical issue; and
you introduce the logical element in thinking it, but you could not
do so if there were not an intuitive element in it intrinsically.
Philosophy is historically conditioned; without philosophy there could
be no history. With this line of argument, whose affinities with
the philosophy of Bergson are obvious, Croce rounds off his system,
completing his demonstration that the only Reality is living Spirit,
immanent and unfolding.
Thus, according to Croce, the expressive nature of the Intuition, as it
objectifies itself, and so differentiates itself from mere sensation,
is appreciated by the mind, and serves as the first step in the
formation of the Concept or judgment of definition. For the Concept
is expressive, universal, and concrete. Through the Concept we arrive
at knowledge of Reality; and this Concept reacts upon the Intuition,
giving rise to the individual judgment. Croce shows, by demonstrating
that analysis apart from synthesis, and equally synthesis apart from
analysis, in any act of thought, is inconceivable, that one must, by an
extension of the logical _a priori_ synthesis, identify the judgment of
definition and the individual judgment. You cannot, like the idealists,
separate the concept from the facts, nor, like the empiricists, the
facts from the concept. But neither in the realm of aesthetic interest
can you separate the fact from its expressive intuition, or _vice
versa_. The whole of Croce’s system is, as he says, a philosophy of
the spirit, which is itself all Reality. The activity of the spirit is
twofold. In its theoretic activity there are two stages, Aesthetic and
Logic, each involving the other, yet the first in a sense independent
because primary, the second dependent on the first. In its practical
activity there are also two degrees, the Economic and the Ethic,
related to each other in the same way. Yet of these two activities,
theoretic and practical, each involves the other, and in an _a priori_
synthesis each substantiates the other.
It is not our purpose to examine the philosophy of Croce as a whole.
Some points of disagreement with him will become manifest as we proceed
to develop our discussion of the nature of beauty. Notably, we shall
disagree with his rejection of a metaphysic and his denial of a God;
since their inclusion is not really so inimical to his system as he
supposes, their rejection by him would seem to be in a measure an
accident of his circumstances, while their omission leaves the why? of
spiritual and personal being unanswered. For the moment all we need
is his discovery that Beauty is Expression, Aesthetic the Science of
Expression; that to appreciate a work of art is to create it yourself
by entering into the mind, and following the same path, as the original
creator of it; and, first and most important of all, that our knowledge
of the Real owes its possibility and its first beginnings to the
movement of aesthetic intuition. It is a far cry from Plato to Croce.
If the fine arts be utterly distinct, having nothing in common save
a background of emotion, this Essay is a meaningless attempt to
express something which does not exist. It stands condemned; and
this condemnation it shares with many nobler works. But if, as Croce
urges, each art aims at presenting, through the practise of its own
conventions, aspects of Truth which are suitable to that special
medium, no effort to find a highest common factor of all arts is
necessarily doomed to failure.