Accordingly, if the æsthetic disposition of the mind must be looked upon
in _one_ respect as _nothing_—that is, when we confine our view to
separate and determined operations—it must be looked upon in another
respect as a state of the highest reality, in as far as we attend to the
absence of all limits and the sum of powers which are commonly active in
it. Accordingly we cannot pronounce them, again, to be wrong who
describe the æsthetic state to be the most productive in relation to
knowledge and morality. They are perfectly right, for a state of mind
which comprises the whole of humanity in itself must of necessity
include in itself also—necessarily and potentially—every separate
expression of it. Again, a disposition of mind that removes all
limitation from the totality of human nature must also remove it from
every special expression of the same. Exactly because its “æsthetic
disposition” does not exclusively shelter any separate function of
humanity, it is favorable to all without distinction; nor does it favor
any particular functions, precisely because it is the foundation of the
possibility of all. All other exercises give to the mind some special
aptitude, but for that very reason give it some definite limits; only
the æsthetical leads him to the unlimited. Every other condition in
which we can live refers us to a previous condition, and requires for
its solution a following condition; only the æsthetic is a complete
whole in itself, for it unites in itself all conditions of its source
and of its duration. Here alone we feel ourselves swept out of time, and
our humanity expresses itself with purity and _integrity_ as if it had
not yet received any impression or interruption from the operation of
external powers.
That which flatters our senses in immediate sensation opens our wreak
and volatile spirit to every impression, but makes us in the same degree
less apt for exertion. That which stretches our thinking power and
invites to abstract conceptions strengthens our mind for every kind of
resistance, but hardens it also in the same proportion, and deprives us
of susceptibility in the same ratio that it helps us to greater mental
activity. For this very reason, one as well as the other brings us at
length to exhaustion, because matter cannot long do without the shaping,
constructive force, and the force cannot do without the constructible
material. But on the other hand, if we have resigned ourselves to the
enjoyment of genuine beauty, we are at such a moment of our passive and
active powers in the same degree master, and we shall turn with ease
from grave to gay, from rest to movement, from submission to resistance,
to abstract thinking and intuition.
This high indifference and freedom of mind, united with power and
elasticity, is the disposition in which a true work of art ought to
dismiss us, and there is no better test of true æsthetic excellence. If
after an enjoyment of this kind we find ourselves specialty impelled to
a particular mode of feeling or action, and unfit for other modes, this
serves as an infallible proof that we have not experienced _any pure
æsthetic_ effect, whether this is owing to the object, to our own mode
of feeling—as generally happens—or to both together.
As in reality no purely æsthetical effect can be met with—for man can
never leave his dependence on material forces—the excellence of a work
of art can only consist in its greater approximation to its ideal of
æsthetic purity, and however high we may raise the freedom of this
effect, we shall always leave it with a particular disposition and a
particular bias. Any class of productions or separate work in the world
of art is noble and excellent in proportion to the universality of the
disposition and the unlimited character of the bias thereby presented to
our mind. This truth can be applied to works in various branches of art,
and also to different works in the same branch. We leave a grand musical
performance with our feelings excited, the reading of a noble poem with
a quickened imagination, a beautiful statue or building with an awakened
understanding; but a man would not choose an opportune moment who
attempted to invite us to abstract thinking after a high musical
enjoyment, or to attend to a prosaic affair of common life after a high
poetical enjoyment, or to kindle our imagination and astonish our
feelings directly after inspecting a fine statue or edifice. The reason
of this is, that music, _by its matter_, even when most spiritual,
presents a greater affinity with the senses than is permitted by
æsthetic liberty; it is because even the most happy poetry, having _for
its medium_ the arbitrary and contingent play of the imagination, always
shares in it more than the intimate necessity of the really beautiful
allows; it is because the best sculpture touches on severe science _by
what is determinate in its conception_. However, these particular
affinities are lost in proportion as the works of these three kinds of
art rise to a greater elevation, and it is a natural and necessary
consequence of their perfection, that, without confounding their
objective limits, the different arts come to resemble each other more
and more, in the action _which they exercise on the mind_. At its
highest degree of ennobling, music ought to become a form, and act on us
with the calm power of an antique statue; in its most elevated
perfection, the plastic art ought to become music and move us by the
immediate action exercised on the mind by the senses; in its most
complete development, poetry ought both to stir us powerfully like music
and like plastic art to surround us with a peaceful light. In each art,
the perfect style consists exactly in knowing how to remove specific
limits, while sacrificing at the same time the particular advantages of
the art, and to give it by a wise use of what belongs to it specially a
more general character.
Nor is it only the limits inherent in the specific character of each
kind of art that the artist ought to over step in putting his hand to
the work; he must also triumph over those which are inherent in the
particular subject of which he treats. In a really beautiful work of
art, the substance ought to be inoperative, the form should do
everything; for by the form the whole man is acted on; the substance
acts on nothing but isolated forces. Thus, however vast and sublime it
may be, the substance always exercises a restrictive action on the mind,
and true æsthetic liberty can only be expected from the form.
Consequently the true search of the matter consists in _destroying
matter by the form_; and the triumph of art is great in proportion as it
overcomes matter and maintains its sway over those who enjoy its work.
It is great particularly in destroying matter when most imposing,
ambitious, and attractive, when therefore matter has most power to
produce the effect proper to it, or, again, when it leads those who
consider it more closely to enter directly into relation with it. The
mind of the spectator and of the hearer must remain perfectly free and
intact; it must issue pure and entire from the magic circle of the
artist, as from the hands of the Creator. The most frivolous subject
ought to be treated in such a way that we preserve the faculty to
exchange it immediately for the most serious work. The arts which have
passion for their object, as a tragedy for example, do not present a
difficulty here; for, in the first place, these arts are not entirely
free, because they are in the service of a particular end (the
pathetic), and then no connoisseur will deny that even in this class a
work is perfect in proportion as amidst the most violent storms of
passion it respects the liberty of the soul. There is a fine art of
passion, but an impassioned fine art is a contradiction in terms, for
the infallible effect of the beautiful is emancipation from the
passions. The idea of an instructive fine art (didactic art) or
improving (moral) art is no less contradictory, for nothing agrees less
with the idea of the beautiful than to give a determinate tendency to
the mind.
However, from the fact that a work produces effects only by its
substance, it must not always be inferred that there is a want of form
in this work; this conclusion may quite as well testify to a want of
form in the observer. If his mind is too stretched or too relaxed, if it
is only accustomed to receive things either by the senses or the
intelligence, even in the most perfect combination, it will only stop to
look at the parts, and it will only see matter in the most beautiful
form. Only sensible of the coarse _elements_, he must first destroy the
æsthetic organization of a work to find enjoyment in it, and carefully
disinter the details which genius has caused to vanish, with infinite
art, in the harmony of the whole. The interest he takes in the work is
either solely moral or exclusively physical; the only thing wanting to
it is to be exactly what it ought to be—æsthetical. The readers of this
class enjoy a serious and pathetic poem as they do a sermon: a simple
and playful work, as an inebriating draught; and if on the one hand they
have so little taste as to demand _edification_ from a tragedy or from
an epos, even such as the “Messias,” on the other hand they will be
infallibly scandalized by a piece after the fashion of Anacreon and
Catullus.