it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong to the world of
theory, but to the world of feeling, and so forth, arise from the
failure to realize exactly the theoretic character of simple intuition.
This simple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge,
as it is distinct from perception of the real; and the statements
quoted above arise from the belief that only intellectual cognition is
knowledge. We have seen that intuition is knowledge, free from concepts
and more simple than the so-called perception of the real. Therefore
art is knowledge, form; it does not belong to the world of feeling or
to psychic matter. The reason why so many æstheticians have so often
insisted that art is _appearance_ (_Schein_), is precisely that they
have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the more complex fact
of perception, by maintaining its pure intuitiveness. And if for the
same reason it has been claimed that art is _feeling_ the reason is
the same. For if the concept as content of art, and historical reality
as such, be excluded from the sphere of art, there remains no other
content than reality apprehended in all its ingenuousness and immediacy
in the vital impulse, in its _feeling,_ that is to say again, pure
intuition.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of æsthetic senses._]
The theory of the _æsthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure to
establish, or from having lost to view, the character of expression as
distinct from impression, of form as distinct from matter.
This theory can be reduced to the error just indicated of wishing to
find a passage from the qualities of the content to those of the form.
To ask, in fact, what the æsthetic senses are, implies asking what
sensible impressions are able to enter into æsthetic expressions, and
which must of necessity do so. To this we must at once reply, that
all impressions can enter into æsthetic expressions or formations,
but that none are bound to do so of necessity. Dante raised to the
dignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire"
(visual impressions), but also tactual or thermic impressions, such as
the "dense air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch the more" the
throat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visual
impressions is a curious illusion. The bloom on a cheek, the warmth of
a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the edge of a
sharp knife, are not these, too, impressions obtainable from a picture?
Are they visual? What would a picture mean to an imaginary man, lacking
all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the organ
of sight alone? The picture we are looking at and believe we see only
with our eyes would seem to his eyes to be little more than an artist's
paint-smeared palette.
Some who hold firmly to the æsthetic character of certain groups of
impressions (for example, the visual and auditive), and exclude others,
are nevertheless ready to admit that if visual and auditive impressions
enter _directly_ into the æsthetic fact, those of the other senses
also enter into it, but only as _associated._ But this distinction is
altogether arbitrary. Æsthetic expression is synthesis, in which it
is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are
placed by it on a level, in so far as they are æstheticized. A man who
absorbs the subject of a picture or poem does not have it before him as
a series of impressions, some of which have prerogatives and precedence
over the others. He knows nothing as to what has happened prior to
having absorbed it, just as, on the other hand, distinctions made after
reflexion have nothing whatever to do with art as such.
The theory of the æsthetic senses has also been presented in another
way; as an attempt to establish what physiological organs are necessary
for the æsthetic fact. The physiological organ or apparatus is nothing
but a group of cells, constituted and disposed in a particular manner;
that is to say, it is a merely physical and natural fact or concept.
But expression does not know physiological facts. Expression has its
point of departure in the impressions, and the physiological path
by which these have found their way to the mind is to it altogether
indifferent. One way or another comes to the same thing: it suffices
that they should be impressions.
It is true that the want of given organs, that is, of certain groups of
cells, prevents the formation of certain impressions (when these are
not otherwise obtained through a kind of organic compensation). The
man born blind cannot intuite and express light. But the impressions
are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by the stimuli which
operate upon the organ. One who has never had the impression of the sea
will never be able to express it, in the same way as one who has never
had the impression of the life of high society or of the political
arena will never express either. This, however, does not prove the
dependence of the expressive function on the stimulus or on the
organ. It merely repeats what we know already: expression presupposes
impression, and particular expressions particular impressions. For the
rest, every impression excludes other impressions during the moment in
which it dominates; and so does every expression.
[Sidenote: _Unity and indivisibility of the work of art._]
Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the
_indivisibility_ of the work of art. Every expression is a single
expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic
whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation
that the work of art should have _unity,_ or, what amounts to the same
thing, _unity in variety._ Expression is a synthesis of the various, or
multiple, in the one.
The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, a poem into scenes,
episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and
objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem opposed to this
affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividing the
organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the living
being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms in which
division gives rise to other living beings, but in such a case we must
conclude, maintaining the analogy between the organism and the work of
art, that in the latter case too there are numerous germs of life each
ready to grow, in a moment, into a single complete expression.
It may be said that expression sometimes arises from other expressions.
There are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. One must surely
admit some difference between the _eureka,_ with which Archimedes
expressed all his joy at his discovery, and the expressive act (indeed
all the five acts) of a regular tragedy.--Not in the least: expression
always arises directly from impressions. He who conceives a tragedy
puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of impressions:
expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused
together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as we can
cast into a melting furnace formless pieces of bronze and choicest
statuettes. Those choicest statuettes must be melted just like the
pieces of bronze, before there can be a new statue. The old expressions
must descend again to the level of impressions, in order to be
synthesized in a new single expression.
[Sidenote: _Art as liberator._]
By elaborating his impressions, man _frees_ himself from them. By
objectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself their
superior. The liberating and purifying function of art is another
aspect and another formula of its character as activity. Activity is
the deliverer, just because it drives away passivity.
This also explains why it is usual to attribute to artists both the
maximum of sensibility or _passion_, and the maximum of insensibility
or Olympian _serenity._ The two characters are compatible, for they do
not refer to the same object. The sensibility or passion relates to
the rich material which the artist absorbs into his psychic organism;
the insensibility or serenity to the form with which he subdues and
dominates the tumult of the sensations and passions.
III
ART AND PHILOSOPHY
[Sidenote: _Inseparability of intellectual from intuitive knowledge._]
The two forms of knowledge, æsthetic and intellectual or conceptual,
are indeed different, but this does not altogether amount to separation
and disjunction, as of two forces each pulling in its own direction.
If we have shown that the æsthetic form is altogether independent of
the intellectual and suffices to itself without external support, we
have not said that the intellectual can stand without the æsthetic. To
describe the independence as _reciprocal_ would not be true.
What is knowledge by concepts? It is knowledge of the relations of
things, and things are intuitions. Concepts are not possible without
intuitions, just as intuition is itself impossible without the matter
of impressions. Intuitions are: this river, this lake, this brook,
this rain, this glass of water; the concept is: water, not this or
that appearance and particular example of water, but water in general,
in whatever time or place it be realized; the material of infinite
intuitions, but of one single constant concept.
But the concept, the universal, if it be no longer intuition in one
respect, is intuition in another respect, and cannot fail of being
intuition. The man who thinks has impressions and emotions, in so far
as he thinks. His impression and emotion will be not love or hate,
not the passion of the man who is not a philosopher, not hate or love
for certain objects and individuals, but _the effort of his thought
itself,_ with the pain and the joy, the love and the hate joined to it.
This effort cannot but assume an intuitive form, in becoming objective
to the spirit. To speak is not to think logically; but to _think
logically_ is also to _speak._
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the negations of this thesis._]
That thought cannot exist without speech, is a truth generally
admitted. The negations of this thesis are all founded on equivocations
and errors.
The first of the equivocations is that of those who observe that one
can likewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers,
ideographic signs, without any word, even pronounced silently and
almost insensibly within one; that there are languages in which the
word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless the written sign
also be examined, and so on. But when we said "speak," we intended
to employ a synecdoche, by which was to be understood "expression"
in general, for we have already remarked that expression is not only
so-called verbal expression. It may or may not be true that certain
concepts may be thought without phonetic manifestations. But the very
examples adduced to show this also prove that those concepts never
exist without expressions.
Others point out that animals, or certain animals, think and reason
without speaking. Now as to how, whether, and what animals think,
whether they be rudimentary men, like savages who refuse to be
civilized, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists
maintained, are questions that do not concern us here. When the
philosopher talks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature
and the like, he does not base himself on such conjectures as to
dogs or cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called
animal and brutal in man: of the animal side or basis of what we feel
in ourselves. If individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants,
possess something of the activity of man, so much the better, or so
much the worse, for them. This means that in respect to them also we
must talk, not of "nature" as a whole, but of its animal basis, as
being perhaps larger and stronger in them than the animal basis of
man. And if we suppose that animals think and form concepts, what kind
of conjecture would justify the assertion that they do so without
corresponding expressions? Analogy with man, knowledge of the spirit,
human psychology, the instrument of all our conjectures as to animal
psychology, would constrain us on the contrary to suppose that if they
think in any way, they also somehow speak.
Another objection is derived from human psychology, and indeed literary
psychology, to the effect that the concept can exist without the word,
for it is certainly true that we all know books _well thought and
ill written_: that is to say, a thought which remains _beyond_ the
expression, or _notwithstanding_ faulty expression. But when we talk of
books well thought and ill written, we cannot mean anything but that in
such books are parts, pages, periods or propositions well thought and
well written, and other parts (perhaps the least important) ill thought
and ill written, not really thought and so not really expressed. Where
Vico's _Scienza nuova_ is really ill written, it is also ill thought.
If we pass from the consideration of big books to a short sentence, the
error or inaccuracy of such a contention will leap to the eyes. How
could a single sentence be clearly thought and confusedly written?
All that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts
(concepts) in an intuitive form, which is an abbreviated or rather
peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient to
communicate it easily to any other given person or persons. Hence it
is incorrect to say that we have the thought without the expression;
whereas we should rather say that we have, indeed, the expression, but
in such a form that it is not easy to communicate it to others. This,
however, is a very variable, relative fact. There are always those who
catch our thought on the wing, prefer it in this abbreviated form,
and would be wearied by the greater development of it required by
others. In other words, the thought considered abstractly and logically
will be the same; but æsthetically we are dealing with two different
intuition-expressions, into which different psychological elements
enter. The same argument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret
correctly, the altogether empirical distinctior between an _internal_
and an _external_ language.
[Sidenote: _Art and science._]
The most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and of
intuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, Art and
Science. Art and Science, then, are different and yet linked together;
they meet on one side, which is the æsthetic side. Every scientific
work is also a work of art. The æsthetic side may remain little noticed
when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort to understand the
thought of the man of science and to examine its truth. But it is no
longer unnoticed when we pass from the activity of understanding to
that of contemplation and see that thought either develop itself before
us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous or insufficient
words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken,
embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes called great
writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less
fragmentary writers even if their fragments have the scientific value
of harmonious, coherent, and perfect works.
We pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. The
fragments, the flashes, console us for the whole, because it is far
easier to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary
work of genius, to liberate the flame latent in the spark, than to
achieve the discovery of genius. But how can we pardon mediocre
expression in pure artists? "_Mediocribus esse poetis non di, non
homines, non concessere columnae_" The poet or painter who lacks
form, lacks everything, because he lacks _himself._ Poetical material
permeates the souls of all: the expression alone, that is to say,
the form, makes the poet. And here appears the truth of the view
which denies all content to art, just the intellectual concept being
understood as content. In this sense, when we take "content" as equal
to "concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist of
content, but also that _it has no content._
[Sidenote: _Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry._]
The distinction between _poetry and prose_ also cannot be justified,
save as that between art and science. It was seen in antiquity that
such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such as
rhythm and metre, or on rhymed or unrhymed form; that it was, on the
contrary, altogether internal. Poetry is the language of feeling, prose
of the intellect; but since the intellect is also feeling, in its
concreteness and reality, all prose has its poetical side.
[Sidenote: _The relation of first and second degree._]
The relation between intuitive knowledge or expression and intellectual
knowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannot
be otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of _double degree._
The first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the first
can stand without the second, but the second cannot stand without the
first. There is poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry.
Expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. Poetry
is "the mother tongue of the human race"; the first men "were by nature
sublime poets." We assert this in another way, when we observe that
the passage from soul to spirit, from animal to human activity, is
effected by means of language. And this should be said of intuition
or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to
define language or expression as an _intermediate_ link between nature
and humanity, as though it were a mixture of both. Where humanity
appears, the other has already disappeared; the man who expresses
himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does
emerge: he does not stand half within and half without, as the use of
the phrase "intermediate link" would imply.
[Sidenote: _Non-existence of other forms of knowledge._]
The cognitive spirit has no form other than these two. Expression and
concept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man is
spent in passing from one to the other and back again.
[Sidenote: _Historicity. Its identity with and difference from art._]
_Historicity_ is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form.
Historicity is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but
intuition or æsthetic fact. History does not seek for laws nor form
concepts; it employs neither induction nor deduction; it is directed
_ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum_; it does not construct universals
and abstractions, but posits intuitions. The this and here, the
_individuum omnimode determinatum,_ is its domain, as it is the domain
of art. History, therefore, is included in the universal concept of art.
As against this doctrine, in view of the impossibility of conceiving
a third mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward which
would lead to the affiliation of history to intellectual or scientific
knowledge. The greater portion of these objections is animated by the
prejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptual
science something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. This
really arises from a false idea of art, conceived not as an essential
theoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity.
Without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned
is finally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been
and still is widely repeated. Its purpose is to show the logical and
scientific nature of history. The sophism consists in admitting that
historical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not the
representation, it is added, but rather the concept of the individual.
From this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific
form of knowledge. History, in fact, is supposed to work out the
concept of a personage such as Charlemagne or Napoleon; of an epoch,
like the Renaissance or the Reformation; of an event, such as the
French Revolution and the Unification of Italy. This it is held to do
in the same way as Geometry works out the concepts of spatial forms, or
Æsthetic that of expression. But all this is untrue. History cannot do
otherwise than _represent_ Napoleon and Charlemagne, the Renaissance
and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy
as individual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the
sense in which logicians use the word "represent" when they say that
one cannot have a concept of the individual, but only a representation.
The so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or
general concept, full of characteristics, supremely full, if you like,
but however full it be, incapable of attaining to that individuality to
which historical knowledge, as æsthetic knowledge, alone attains.
To show how the content of history comes to be distinguished from
that of art in the narrow sense, we must recall what has already
been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first
perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. Only
at a later stage does the spirit form the concepts of external and
internal, of what has happened and what is desired, of object and
subject, and the like: only at this later stage, that is, does it
distinguish historical from non-historical intuition, the _real_ from
the _unreal,_ real imagination from pure imagination. Even internal
facts, what is desired and imagined, castles in the air, and countries
of Cockaigne, have their reality, and the soul, too, has its history.
His illusions form part of the biography of every individual as real
facts. But the history of an individual soul is history, because
the distinction between the real and the unreal is always active
in it, even when the illusions themselves are the real. But these
distinctive concepts do not appear in history like the concepts of
science, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and melted
in the æsthetic intuitions, although in history they stand out in a
manner altogether special to themselves. History does not construct
the concepts of the real and unreal, but makes use of them. History,
in fact, is not the theory of history. Mere conceptual analysis is
of no use in ascertaining whether an event in our lives was real or
imaginary. We must mentally reproduce the intuitions in the most
complete form, as they were at the moment of production. Historicity
is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination as any one
intuition is distinguished from any other: in memory.
[Sidenote: _Historical criticism._]
Where this is not possible, where the delicate and fleeting shades
between the real and unreal intuitions are so slight as to mingle
the one with the other, we must either renounce for the time being at
least the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or
we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability. The
principle of verisimilitude and of probability in fact dominates all
historical criticism. Examination of sources and authorities is devoted
to establishing the most credible evidence. And what is the most
credible evidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those
who best remember and (be it understood) have not wished to falsify,
nor had interest in falsifying the truth of things?
[Sidenote: _Historical scepticism._]
From this it follows that intellectualistic scepticism finds it easy
to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history
differs from that of science. It is the certainty of memory and
of authority, not that of analysis and demonstration. To speak of
historical induction or demonstration is to make a metaphorical use of
these expressions, which bear a quite different meaning in history to
that which they bear in science. The conviction of the historian is the
undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses,
listened attentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him.
Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a
negligible minority compared with the occasions when he grasps the
truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists in
believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but what the
individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlarge
and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places
is dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is,
and taken as a whole it is rich in truth. Only in a spirit of paradox
can one doubt that there ever was a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or a
Cæsar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on
the 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were fixed to the door of
the church at Wittemberg, or that the Bastile was taken by the people
of Paris on the 14th of July 1789.