constructions: no rigorous definitions of them are possible; and
consequently they cannot be deduced from one another nor be connected
in a system, though this has often been attempted, with great waste
of time and without obtaining thereby any useful results. Nor can it
be claimed as possible to obtain empirical definitions, universally
acceptable as precise and true in the place of those philosophical
definitions recognized as impossible. For no single definition of a
single fact can be given, but there are innumerable definitions of it,
according to the cases and the purposes for which they are made; and
it is clear that if there were only one which had the value of truth
it would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical
definition. And as a matter of fact whenever one of the terms to which
we have referred has been employed (or indeed any other belonging to
the same class), a new definition of it has been given at the same
time, expressed or understood. Each one of those definitions differed
somehow from the others, in some particular, however minute, and in its
implied reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became a
special object of attention and was raised to the position of a general
type. Thus it is that not one of such definitions satisfies either the
hearer or the constructor of it. For a moment later he finds himself
before a new instance to which he recognizes that his definition is
more or less insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of retouching. So
we must leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or the
comic, the tragic or the humorous, on every occasion as they please and
as may suit the end they have in view. And if an empirical definition
of universal validity be demanded, we can but submit this one:--The
sublime (or comic, tragic, humorous, etc.) is _everything_ that is or
shall be so _called_ by those who have employed or shall employ these
_words._
[Sidenote: _Examples: definitions of the sublime, the comic, the
humorous._]
What is the sublime? The unexpected affirmation of an overwhelming
moral force: that is one definition. But the other definition is
equally good, which recognizes the sublime also where the force which
affirms itself is certainly overwhelming, but immoral and destructive.
Both remain vague and lack precision, until applied to a concrete
case, to an example which makes clear what is meant by "overwhelming,"
and what by unexpected. They are quantitative concepts, but falsely
quantitative, since there is no way of measuring them; they are at
bottom metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical tautologies. The
humorous will be laughter amid tears, bitter laughter, the sudden
spring from the comic to the tragic and from the tragic to the comic,
the romantic comic, the opposite of the sublime, war declared against
every attempt at insincerity, compassion ashamed to weep, a laugh,
not at the fact, but at the ideal itself; and what you will beside,
according as it is wished to get a view of the physiognomy of this or
that poet, of this or that poem, which, in its uniqueness, is its own
definition, and though momentary and circumscribed, is alone adequate.
The comic has been defined as the displeasure arising from the
perception of a deformity immediately followed by a greater pleasure
arising from the relaxation of our psychical forces, strained in
expectation of a perception looked upon as important. While listening
to a narrative, which might, for example, be a description of the
magnificently heroic purpose of some individual, we anticipate in
imagination the occurrence of a magnificent and heroic action, and we
prepare for its reception by concentrating our psychic forces. All of
a sudden, however, instead of the magnificent and heroic action, which
the preliminaries and the tone of the narrative had led us to expect,
there is an unexpected change to a small, mean, foolish action, which
does not satisfy to our expectation. We have been deceived, and the
recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant of displeasure. But
this instant is as it were conquered by that which immediately follows:
we are able to relax our strained attention, to free ourselves from
the provision of accumulated psychic energy henceforth superfluous, to
feel ourselves light and well. This is the pleasure of the comic, with
its physiological equivalent of laughter. If the unpleasant fact that
has appeared should painfully affect our interests, there would not
be pleasure, laughter would be at once suffocated, the psychic energy
would be strained and overstrained by other more weighty perceptions.
If on the other hand such more weighty perceptions do not appear, if
the whole loss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight,
then the feeling of our psychic wealth that ensues affords ample
compensation for this very slight disappointment. Such, expressed in
a few words, is one of the most accurate modern definitions of the
comic. It boasts of containing in itself, justified or corrected and
verified, the manifold attempts to define the comic, from Hellenic
antiquity to our own day, from Plato's definition in the _Philebus,_
and from Aristotle's, which is more explicit, and looks upon the comic
as an _ugliness without pain,_ to that of Hobbes, who replaced it in
the feeling of _individual superiority_; of Kant, who saw in it the
_relaxation of a tension_; or from the other proposals of those for
whom it was _the conflict between great and small, between the finite
and the infinite_ and so on. But on close observation, the analysis
and definition above given, although in appearance most elaborate
and precise, yet enunciates characteristics which are applicable,
not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; such as the
succession of painful and pleasing moments and the satisfaction
arising from the consciousness of strength and of its free expansion.
The differentiation is here given by quantitative determinations
whose limits cannot be laid down. They therefore remain vague words,
possessing some degree of meaning from their reference to this or that
particular comic fact, and from the psychic disposition of qualities of
the speaker. If such definitions be taken too seriously, there happens
to them what Jean Paul Richter said of all the definitions of the
comic: namely, that their sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to
produce in reality the fact which they vainly try to fix logically. And
who will ever logically determine the dividing line between the comic
and the non-comic, between laughter and smiles, between smiling and
gravity, or cut the ever varying continuum into which life melts into
clearly divided parts?
[Sidenote: _Relation between these concepts and æsthetic concepts._]
The facts, classified as far as possible in these psychological
concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond the general
one, that all of them, in so far as they constitute the material of
life, can become the object of artistic representation; and the other,
an accidental relation, that æsthetic facts also may sometimes enter
the processes described, such as the impression of the sublime aroused
by the work of a Titanic artist, such as Dante or Shakespeare, and of
the comic produced by the attempts of a dauber or scribbler.
But here too the process is external to the æsthetic fact, to which
is linked only the feeling of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the
beautiful and of the ugly. Dante's Farinata is æsthetically beautiful
and nothing but beautiful: if the force of will of that personage seem
also sublime, or the expression that Dante gives him seem, by reason of
his great genius, sublime in comparison with that of a less energetic
poet, these are things altogether outside æsthetic consideration. We
repeat again that this last pays attention always and only to the
adequateness of the expression, that is to say, to beauty.
XIII
THE "PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL" IN NATURE AND IN ART
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic activity and physical concepts._]
Æsthetic activity, distinct from the practical activity, is always
accompanied by it in its manifestations. Hence its utilitarian or
hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain which are, as it were, the
practical echo of æsthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of
the ugly. But this practical side of the æsthetic activity has in its
turn a _physical_ or _psycho-physical_ accompaniment, which consists of
sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, and so on.
Does it _really_ possess this side, or does it only seem to possess it,
through the construction which we put on it in physical science, and
the useful and arbitrary methods which we have already several times
set in relief as proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? Our
reply cannot be doubtful, that is, it must affirm to the second of the
two hypotheses.
However, it will be better to leave this point in suspense, since it
is not at present necessary to press this line of inquiry further. The
mere mention suffices to secure our speaking (for reasons of simplicity
and adhesion to ordinary language) of the physical element as something
objective and existing, against leading to hasty conclusions as to the
concepts of spirit and nature and their relation.
[Sidenote: _Expression in the æsthetic sense, and expression in the
naturalistic sense._]
It is important, on the other hand, to make clear that as the existence
of the hedonistic side in every spiritual activity has given rise
to the confusion between the æsthetic activity and the useful or
pleasurable, so the existence of, or rather the possibility of
constructing, this physical side, has caused the confusion between
_æsthetic_ expression and expression _in a naturalistic sense_; that
is to say, between a spiritual fact and a mechanical and passive fact
(not to say, between a concrete reality and an abstraction or fiction).
In common speech, sometimes it is the words of the poet that are
called _expressions,_ the notes of the musician, or the figures of the
painter; sometimes the blush which generally accompanies the feeling of
shame, the pallor often due to fear, the grinding of the teeth proper
to violent anger, the shining of the eyes and certain movements of the
muscles of the mouth, which manifest cheerfulness. We also say that a
certain degree of heat is the _expression_ of fever, that the falling
of the barometer is the _expression_ of rain, and even that the height
of the exchange _expresses_ the depreciation of the paper currency of a
State, or social discontent the approach of a revolution. One can well
imagine what sort of scientific results would be attained by allowing
oneself to be governed by verbal usage and classing together facts so
widely different. But there is, in fact, an abyss between a man who
is the prey of anger with all its natural manifestations and another
man who expresses it æsthetically; between the appearance, the cries
and contortions of some one grieving at the loss of a dear one and the
words or song with which the same individual portrays his suffering
at another time; between the grimace of emotion and the gesture of
the actor. Darwin's book on the expression of the emotions in man and
animals does not belong to Æsthetic; because there is nothing in common
between the science of spiritual expression and a _Semiotic,_ whether
it be medical, meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic.
Expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks _expression in the
spiritual sense,_ that is to say, the very character of activity and
of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into the poles of
beauty and of ugliness. It is nothing but a relation between cause
and effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. The complete process
of æsthetic production can be symbolized in four stages, which are:
_a,_ impressions; _b,_ expression or spiritual æsthetic synthesis;
_c,_ hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (æsthetic
pleasure); _d,_ translation of the æsthetic fact into physical
phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours,
etc.). Any one can see that the capital point, the only one that
is properly speaking æsthetic and truly real, is in _b,_ which is
lacking to the merely naturalistic manifestation or construction also
metaphorically called expression.
The expressive process is exhausted when these four stages have been
passed through. It begins again with new impressions, a new æsthetic
synthesis, and the accompaniments that belong to it.
[Sidenote: _Representations and memory._]
Expressions or representations follow one another, the one drives out
the other. Certainly, this passing away, this being driven out, is
not a perishing, it is not total elimination: nothing that is born
dies with that complete death which would be identical with never
having been born. If all things pass away, nothing can die. Even the
representations that we have forgotten persist somehow in our spirit,
for without this we could not explain acquired habits and capacities.
Indeed the strength of life lies in this apparent forgetting: one
forgets what has been absorbed and what life has superseded.
But other representations are also powerful elements in the present
processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent upon us not to forget
them, or to be capable of recalling them when they are wanted. The
will is always vigilant in this work of preservation, which aims at
preserving (we may say) the greater, the more fundamental part of all
our riches. But its vigilance does not always suffice. Memory, as we
say, abandons or betrays us in different ways. For this very reason,
the human spirit devises expedients which succour the weakness of
memory and are its _aids._
[Sidenote: _The production of aids to memory._]
How these aids are possible we have been informed from what has been
said. Expressions or representations are _also_ practical facts, which
are also called physical in so far as physics classifies and reduces
them to types. Now it is clear that if we can succeed in making those
practical or physical facts somehow permanent, it will always be
possible (all other conditions remaining equal) on perceiving them to
reproduce in ourselves the already produced expression or intuition.
If that be called the object or physical stimulus in which the
practical concomitant acts, or (to use physical terms) in which the
movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent, and
if that object or stimulus be designated by the letter _e_; the
process of reproduction will take place in the following order: _e,_
the physical stimulus; _d-b,_ perception of physical facts (sounds,
tones, mimetic, combinations of lines and colours, etc.), which is
together the æsthetic synthesis, already produced; _c_, the hedonistic
accompaniment, which is also reproduced.
And what else are those combinations of words called poetry, prose,
poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical
stimulants of reproduction_ (the stage _e_); what else are those
combinations of sound called operas, symphonies, sonatas; or
those combinations of lines and colours called pictures, statues,
architecture? The spiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of
the physical facts above mentioned, makes possible the preservation and
the reproduction of the intuitions produced by man. The physiological
organism and with it the memory become weakened; the monuments of art
are destroyed, and lo, all that æsthetic wealth, the fruit of the
labours of many generations, diminishes and rapidly disappears.
[Sidenote: _Physical beauty._]
Monuments of art, the stimulants of æsthetic reproduction, are called
_beautiful things_ or _physical beauty._ This combination of words
constitutes a verbal paradox, for the beautiful is not a physical
fact; it does not belong to things, but to the activity of man, to
spiritual energy. But it is now clear through what transferences and
associations, physical things and facts which are simply aids to the
reproduction of the beautiful are finally called elliptically beautiful
things and physical beauty. And now that we have explained this
elliptical usage, we shall ourselves employ it without hesitation.
[Sidenote: _Content and form: another meaning._]
The intervention of "physical beauty" serves to explain another meaning
of the words "_content_" and "_form,_" as used by æstheticians. Some
call "content" the internal fact or expression (for us, on the other
hand, form), and "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm, the sounds
(for us the antithesis of form); thus looking upon the physical fact
as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. It also
serves to explain another aspect of what is called æsthetic "ugliness."
Somebody who has nothing definite to express may try to conceal his
internal emptiness in a flood of words, in sounding verse, in deafening
polyphony, in painting that dazzles the eye, or by heaping together
great architectural masses which arrest and astonish us without
conveying anything whatever. Ugliness, then, is the capricious, the
charlatanesque; and, in reality, if practical caprice did not intervene
in the theoretic function, there might be absence of beauty, but never
the real presence of something deserving the adjective "ugly."
[Sidenote: _Natural and artificial beauty._]
Physical beauty is usually divided into _natural_ and _artificial_
beauty. Thus we reach one of the facts which have given the greatest
trouble to thinkers: _natural beauty._ These words often designate
facts of merely practical pleasure. Any one who calls a landscape
beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where the body moves
briskly and the warm sun envelops and caresses the limbs, does not
speak of anything æsthetic. But it is nevertheless indubitable that
on other occasions the adjective "beautiful," applied to objects and
scenes existing in nature, has a completely æsthetic signification.
It has been observed that in order to enjoy natural objects
æsthetically, we must abstract from their external and historical
reality, and separate their simple semblance or appearance from
existence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between
our legs, so as to cancel our wonted relations with it, the landscape
appears to us to be an ideal spectacle; that nature is beautiful
only for him who contemplates her _with the eye of the artist_; that
zoologists and botanists do not recognize _beautiful_ animals and
flowers; that natural beauty is _discovered_ (and examples of discovery
are the points of view, pointed out by men of taste and imagination,
to which more or less æsthetic travellers and excursionists afterwards
have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a kind of collective _suggestion)_;
that, without the _aid of the imagination,_ no part of nature is
beautiful, and that with such aid the same natural object or fact
is, according to the disposition of the soul, now expressive, now
insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now of another,
sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that
a _natural beauty_ which an artist would not _to some extent correct,
does not exist._
All these observations are just, and fully confirm the fact that
natural beauty is simply a _stimulus_ to æsthetic reproduction,
which presupposes previous production. Without the previous æsthetic
intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot awaken any at all. As
regards natural beauty, man is like the mythical Narcissus at the
fountain. Leopardi said that natural beauty is "rare, scattered, and
fugitive": it is imperfect, equivocal, variable. Each refers the
natural fact to the expression in his mind. One artist is thrown into
transports by a smiling landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by
the pretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance
of an old rascal. Perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and
the ugly face of the old rascal are _repulsive_; the second, that the
smiling landscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid._ They
may dispute for ever; but they will never agree, save when they are
supplied with a sufficient dose of æsthetic knowledge to enable them to
recognize that both are right. _Artificial_ beauty, created by man,
supplies an aid that is far more ductile and efficacious.
[Sidenote: _Mixed beauty._]
In addition to these two classes, æstheticians also sometimes talk in
their treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. A mixture of what? Precisely of
natural and artificial. Whoever fixes and externalizes, operates with
natural data which he does not create but combines and transforms.
In this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and
artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty,
as of a special category. But it sometimes happens that combinations
already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others;
as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and include in our
design groups of trees or ponds already in place. On other occasions
externalization is limited by the impossibility of producing certain
effects artificially. Thus we can mix colouring matters, but we cannot
create a powerful voice or a face and figure appropriate to this or
that character in a play. We must therefore seek them among already
existing things, and make use of them when found. When, therefore, we
employ a great number of combinations already existing in nature, such
as we should not be able to produce artificially if they did not exist,
the resulting fact is called _mixed_ beauty.
[Sidenote: _Writings._]
We must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments of
reproduction called _writings,_ such as alphabets, musical notes,
hieroglyphics, and all pseudolanguages, from the language of flowers
and flags to the language of patches (so much in vogue in the society
of the eighteenth century). Writings are not physical facts which
arouse directly impressions answering to æsthetic expressions; they
are simple _indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such
physical facts. A series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the
movements which we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to
emit certain definite sounds. If, through practice, we become able
to hear the words without opening our mouths and (what is much more
difficult) to hear the sounds by running the eye along the stave, all
this does not alter in any way the nature of the writings, which are
altogether different from direct physical beauty. No one calls the
book which contains the _Divine Comedy,_ or the score which contains
_Don Giovanni,_ beautiful in the same sense in which the block of
marble which contains Michæl Angelo's _Moses,_ or the piece of coloured
wood which contains the _Transfiguration,_ is metaphorically called
beautiful. Both serve the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former
by a far longer and more indirect route than the latter.
[Sidenote: _Free and non-free beauty._]
Another division of the beautiful, still found in treatises, is that
into _free and not free._ By not-free beauties have been understood
those objects which have to serve a double purpose, extra-æsthetic
and æsthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since it seems that the
first purpose sets limits and barriers in the way of the second, the
resulting beautiful object has been considered as not-free beauty.
Architectural works are especially cited; and just for this reason,
architecture has often been excluded from the number of what are called
the fine arts. A temple must above all things be for the use of a
cult; a house must contain all the rooms needed for the convenience
of life, and they must be arranged with a view to this convenience; a
fortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks of
given armies and the blows of given instruments of war. It is therefore
concluded that the architect's field is restricted: he may _embellish_
to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but he is bound by
the _object_ of those edifices, and he can only manifest that part of
his vision of beauty which does not impair their extra-æsthetic but
fundamental objects.
Other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry.
Plates, glasses, knives, guns and combs can be made beautiful; but it
is held that their beauty must not be pushed so far as to prevent our
eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife,
firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. The same is
said of the art of typography: a book should be beautiful, but not to
the extent of being difficult or impossible to read.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of non-free beauty._]