The immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last
conception, as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute
spirit. At other times, on the other hand, when religion has been
looked upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then has been
proclaimed the mortality, even the death, actual or at least imminent,
of art. This question has no meaning for us, because, seeing that the
function of art is a necessary degree of the spirit, to ask if art can
be eliminated is the same as to ask if sensation or intelligence can be
eliminated. But Metaphysic, in the above sense, transplanting itself
into an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in its particulars,
any more than we can criticize the botany of the garden of Alcina or
the navigation of the voyage of Astolfo. Criticism can only exist when
we refuse to join in the game; that is to say, when we reject the very
possibility of Metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated.
There is therefore no intellectual intuition in philosophy, as there
is no surrogate or equivalent of it in art, or any other mode by which
this imaginary function may be called and represented. There does not
exist (if we may repeat ourselves) a fifth degree, a fifth or supreme
faculty, theoretic or practical-theoretic, imaginative-intellectual, or
intellectual-imaginative, or however otherwise it may be attempted to
conceive such a faculty.
IX
INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR DEGREES AND CRITICISM OF
RHETORIC
[Sidenote: _The characters of art._]
It is customary to give long catalogues of the _characters_ of art.
Having reached this point of the treatise, after having studied
art as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special
theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discover that those
varied and numerous determinations of characters, where they refer
to anything real, do nothing but represent what we have already met
with as genera, species and individuality of the æsthetic form. To the
generic are reducible, as we have already observed, the characters, or
rather, the verbal variants of _unity,_ and of _unity_ in _variety,_
of _simplicity,_ or _originality,_ and so on; to the specific,
the characters of _truth,_ of _sincerity,_ and the like; to the
individual, the characters of _life,_ of _vivacity,_ of _animation,_ of
_concreteness,_ of _individuality,_ of _characteristicality_. The words
may change again, but they will not contribute anything scientifically
new. The analysis of expression as such is completely effected in the
results expounded above.
[Sidenote: _Non-existence of modes of expression._]
It might, on the other hand, be asked at this point if there be _modes_
or _degrees_ of expression; if, having distinguished two degrees of
activity of the spirit, each of which is subdivided into two other
degrees, one of these, the intuitive-expressive, is not in its turn
subdivided into two or more intuitive modes, into a first, second or
third degree of expression. But this further division is impossible;
a classification of intuition-expressions is certainly permissible,
but is not philosophical: individual expressive facts are so many
individuals, not one of which is interchangeable with another, save
in its common quality of expression. To employ the language of the
schools: expression is a species which cannot function in its turn
as a genus. Impressions or contents vary; every content differs from
every other content, because nothing repeats itself in life; and
the irreducible variety of the forms of expression corresponds to
the continual variation of the contents, the æsthetic synthesis of
impressions.
[Sidenote: _Impossibility of translations._]
A corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations,_ in so
far as they pretend to effect the re-moulding of one expression into
another, like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a
vase of another shape. We can elaborate logically what we have already
elaborated in æsthetic form only; but we cannot reduce what has already
possessed its æsthetic form to another form also æsthetic. Indeed,
every translation either diminishes and spoils, or it creates a new
expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mingling
it with the personal impressions of the so-called translator. In the
former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original,
the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not
properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two
expressions, but with two different contents. "Faithful ugliness or
faithless beauty" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with
which every translator is faced. Un-æsthetic translations, such as
those that are word for word, or paraphrastic, are to be looked upon as
simple commentaries upon the original.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the rhetorical categories._]
The illegitimate division of expressions into various grades is known
in literature by the name of doctrine of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical
categories._ But similar attempts at distinctions in other artistic
groups are not wanting: suffice it to recall the _realistic_ and
_symbolic_ forms, so often mentioned in relation to painting and
sculpture.
_Realistic_ and _symbolic, objective_ and _subjective, classical_
and _romantic, simple_ and _ornate, proper_ and _metaphorical,_ the
fourteen forms of metaphor, the figures of _word_ and _sentence,
pleonasm, ellipse, inversion, repetition, synonyms_ and _homonyms,_
these and all other determinations of modes or degrees of expression
reveal their philosophical nullity when the attempt is made to develop
them in precise definitions, because they either grasp the void or
fall into the absurd. A typical example of this is the very common
definition of metaphor as of _another word used in place of the proper
word._ Now why give oneself this trouble? Why substitute the improper
for the proper word? Why take the worse and longer road when you know
the shorter and better road? Perhaps, as is commonly said, because the
proper word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the so-called
improper word or metaphor? But if this be so the metaphor is exactly
the proper word in that case, and the so-called "proper" word, if
it were used, would be _inexpressive_ and therefore most improper.
Similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the
other categories, as, for example, the general one of the _ornate._
Here for instance it may be asked how an ornament can be joined to
expression. Externally? In that case it is always separated from the
expression. Internally? In that case, either it does not assist the
expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not an
ornament, but a constituent element of the expression, indivisible and
indistinguishable in its unity.
It is needless to say how much harm has been done by rhetorical
distinctions. Rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although
there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles
have, at the same time, been carefully preserved (perhaps in order to
show proof of philosophic consistency). In literature the rhetorical
categories have contributed, if not to make dominant, at least to
justify theoretically, that particular kind of _bad writing_ which is
called _fine writing_ or writing according to rhetoric.
[Sidenote: _Use of these categories as synonyms of the æsthetic fact._]
The terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools,
where we all of us learned them (only we never found an opportunity
of using them in strictly æsthetic discussions, or at most of doing
so jocosely and with a comic intention), were it not that they can
sometimes be employed in one of the following significations: as
_verbal variants_ of the æsthetic concept; as indications of the
_anti-æsthetic,_ or, finally (and this is their most important use), no
longer in the service of art and æsthetic, but of _science_ and _logic._
[Sidenote: _Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._]
_First._ Expressions considered directly or positively are
not divisible into classes, but some are successful, others
half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and imperfect,
successful and unsuccessful expressions. The words recorded, and others
of the same sort, may therefore sometimes indicate the successful
expression, and the various forms of the failures. But they do this in
the most inconstant and capricious manner, so much so that the same
word serves sometimes to proclaim the perfect, sometimes to condemn the
imperfect.
For example, some will say of two pictures--one without inspiration, in
which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the
other inspired, but without close relation to existing objects--that
the first is _realistic,_ the second _symbolic._ Others, on the
contrary, utter the word _realistic_ before a picture strongly felt
representing a scene of ordinary life, while they apply that of
_symbolic_ to another picture that is but a cold allegory. It is
evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic and realistic
inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic
and symbolic with inartistic. What wonder, then, that some hotly
maintain the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is
inartistic; others, that the realistic is artistic and the symbolic
inartistic? We cannot but grant that both are right, since each uses
the same words in such a different sense.
The great disputes about _classicism_ and _romanticism_ were frequently
based upon such equivocations. Sometimes the former was understood
as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and
imperfect; at others "classic" meant cold and artificial, "romantic"
pure, warm, powerful, truly expressive. Thus it was always possible
reasonably to take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of
the romantic against the classic.
The same thing happens as regards the word _style._ Sometimes it is
said that every writer must have style. Here style is synonymous with
form of expression. At others the form of a code of laws or of a
mathematical work is said to be without style. Here the error is again
committed of admitting diverse modes of expression, an ornate and a
naked form, because, if style is form, the code and the mathematical
treatise must also be asserted, strictly speaking, to have each its
style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming some one for
"having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is clear
that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and
pretentious expression, a form of the inartistic.
[Sidenote: _Their use to indicate various æsthetic imperfections._]
_Second._ The second not altogether meaningless use of these words
and distinctions is to be found when we hear in the examination of a
literal composition such remarks as these: here is a pleonasm, here an
ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an ambiguity. The
meaning is: Here is an error consisting of using a larger number of
words than necessary (pleonasm); here, on the other hand, the error
arises from too few having been used (ellipse), here from the use of
an unsuitable word (metaphor), here of two words which seem to say
two different things, but really say the same thing (synonym); here,
on the contrary, of one word which seems to express the same thing,
whereas it says two different things (ambiguity). This depreciatory
and pathological use of the terms is, however, less common than the
preceding.
[Sidenote: _Their use in a sense transcending æsthetic, in the
service of science._]
_Thirdly_ and finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no
æsthetic signification similar or analogous to those passed in review,
and yet one feels that it is not void of meaning and designates
something that deserves to be noted, this means that it is used in
the service of logic and of science. Granted that a concept used by
a writer in a scientific sense is designated by a definite term, it
is natural that other terms found in use by that writer on which he
incidentally employs himself to signify the same thought, become _in
respect to_ the vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors,
synecdoches, synonyms, elliptical forms and the like. We ourselves in
the course of this treatise have several times made use of, and intend
again to make use of such language, in order to make clear the sense of
the words we employ, or may find employed. But this proceeding, which
is of value in discussions pertaining to the criticism of science and
philosophy, has none whatever in literary and artistic criticism. There
are words and metaphors proper to science: the same concept may be
psychologically formed in various circumstances and therefore differ in
its intuitional expression. When the scientific terminology of a given
writer has been established and one of these modes fixed as correct,
then all other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the
æsthetic fact there are none but proper words: the same intuition can
be expressed in one way only, precisely because it is intuition and not
concept.
[Sidenote: _Rhetoric in the schools._]
Some, while admitting the æsthetic non-existence of the rhetorical
categories, yet make a reservation as to their utility and the service
they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. We
confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate
the mind to logical distinction, or aid the teaching of a science
which they disturb and obscure. Perhaps what is meant is that such
distinctions, as empirical classes, can aid memory and learning, as was
admitted above for literary and artistic kinds. To this there is no
objection. There is certainly another purpose for which the rhetorical
categories should continue to appear in schools: to be criticized
there. The errors of the past must not be forgotten and no more said,
and truths cannot be kept alive save by making them combat errors.
Unless an account of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied
by a criticism of them, there is a risk of their springing up again,
and it may be said that they are already springing up among certain
philologists as the latest _psychological_ discoveries.
[Sidenote: _The resemblances of expressions._]
It might seem that we thus wished to deny all bond of resemblance
between different expressions and works of art. Resemblances
exist, and by means of them, works of art can be arranged in this
or that group. But they are likenesses such as are observed among
individuals, and can never be rendered with abstract determinations.
That is to say, it would be incorrect to apply identification,
subordination, co-ordination and the other relations of concepts to
these resemblances, which consist wholly of what is called a _family
likeness,_ derived from the historical conditions in which the various
works have appeared and from relationship of soul among the artists.
[Sidenote: _The relative possibility of translations._]
It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of
translations; not as reproductions of the same original expressions
(which it would be vain to attempt), but as productions of _similar_
expressions more or less nearly resembling the originals. The
translation called good is an approximation which has original value as
a work of art and can stand by itself.
X
ÆSTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY
[Sidenote: _Various significations of the word feeling._]
Passing to the study of more complex concepts, where the æsthetic
activity is to be considered in conjunction with other orders of facts,
and showing the mode of their union or complication, we find ourselves
first face to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with those
feelings that are called _æsthetic._
The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings in philosophic
terminology. We have already had occasion to meet with it once, among
those used to designate the spirit in its passivity, the matter or
content of art, and so as synonym of _impressions._ Once again (and
then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as
designating the _non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the
æsthetic fact, that is to say, pure intuition, a form of truth which
defines no concept and affirms no fact.
[Sidenote: _Feeling as activity._]
But here it is not regarded in either of these two meanings, nor in
the others which have also been conferred upon it to designate other
_cognitive_ forms of the spirit, but only in that where feeling is
understood as a special activity, of non-cognitive nature, having its
two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain._
This activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have
therefore attempted either to deny it as activity, or to attribute it
to _nature,_ excluding it from the spirit. But both these solutions
bristle with difficulties of such a kind as to prove them finally
unacceptable to any one who examines them with care. For what could
a non-spiritual activity ever be, an _activity of nature,_ when we
have no other knowledge of activity save as spirituality, nor of
spirituality save as activity? Nature is in this case, by definition,
the merely passive, inert, mechanical, material. On the other hand,
the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically
disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in
it and manifest activity in its concreteness, or, so to say, quivering.
[Sidenote: _Identification of feeling with economic activity._]
This critical conclusion should place us especially in the greatest
embarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given
above we have left no room for the new activity of which we are now
obliged to recognize the existence. But the activity of feeling, if
it is activity, is not new. It has already had its place assigned to
it in the system that we have sketched, where, however, it has been
given another name, _economic_ activity. What is called the activity of
feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical
activity which we have distinguished from the ethical activity and made
to consist of the appetition and volition for some individual end,
apart from any moral determination.
If feeling has been sometimes considered to be an organic or natural
activity, this has happened just because it does not coincide either
with logical, æsthetic or ethical activity. Looked at from the
standpoint of those three (which were the only ones admitted), it
has seemed to lie _outside_ the true and real spirit, spirit in its
aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature, or of the
soul in so far as it is nature. From this too results the truth of
another thesis, often maintained, that the æsthetic activity, like the
ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling. This thesis is
inexpugnable, when feeling has already been understood implicitly and
unconsciously as economic volition.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of hedonism._]
The view refuted in this thesis is known as _hedonism._ This consists
in reducing all the various forms of the spirit to one, which thus also
loses its own distinctive character and becomes something obscure
and mysterious, like "the night in which all cows are black." Having
brought about this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do
not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and
pain. They find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art
and that of easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and
that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs.
[Sidenote: _Feeling as a concomitant of every form of activity._]
But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be
substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not
said that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them of
necessity, because they are all in close relation both with one another
and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for
concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains,
known as feeling. But we must not confound a concomitant with the
principal fact, and substitute the one for the other. The discovery of
a truth, or the fulfilment of a moral duty, produces in us a joy which
makes vibrate our whole being, which, by attaining the aim of those
forms of spiritual activity, attains at the same time that to which
it was _practically_ tending, as its end. Nevertheless, _economic_
or _hedonistic_ satisfaction, _ethical_ satisfaction, _æsthetic_
satisfaction, _intellectual_ satisfaction, though thus united, remain
always distinct.
A question often asked is thus answered at the same time, one which
has correctly seemed to be a matter of life or death for æsthetic
science, namely, whether feeling and pleasure precede or follow, are
cause or effect of the æsthetic fact. We must widen this question to
include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and answer
it by maintaining that one cannot talk of cause and effect and of a
chronological before and after in the unity of the spirit.
And once the relation above expounded is established, all necessity for
inquiry as to the nature of æsthetic, moral, intellectual and even what
was sometimes called economic feelings, must disappear. In this last
case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one,
and inquiry as to economic feeling must be the same as that relating to
economic activity. But in the other cases also, we must attend, not to
the substantive, but to the adjective: the æsthetic, moral and logical
character will explain the colouring of the feelings as æsthetic, moral
and intellectual, whereas feeling, studied alone, will never explain
those refractions and colorations.
[Sidenote: _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._]
A further consequence is, that we no longer need retain the well-known
distinctions between values or feelings _of value,_ and feelings
that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; _disinterested_
and _interested_ feelings, _objective_ feelings and feelings not
_objective_ but simply _subjective_ feelings of _approbation_ and of
_mere pleasure_ (cf. the distinction of _Gefallen_ and _Vergnügen_
in German). Those distinctions were used to save the three spiritual
forms, which were recognized as the triad of the _True,_ the _Good_
and the _Beautiful,_ from confusion with the fourth form, still
unknown, and therefore insidious in its indeterminateness and mother
of scandals. For us this triad has completed its task, because we are
capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by receiving
also the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings among the
respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were
conceived (by ourselves and others), between value and feelings, as
between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but
differences between value and value.
[Sidenote: _Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union._]