extrinsic purpose is not necessarily, precisely because it is such,
a limit or impediment to the other purpose of being a stimulus to
æsthetic reproduction. It is therefore quite false to maintain that
architecture, for example, is by its nature imperfect and not free,
since it must also obey other practical purposes; in fact, the mere
presence of fine works of architecture is enough to dispel any such
illusion.
In the second place, not only are the two purposes not necessarily
contradictory, but we must add that the artist always has the means
of preventing this contradiction from arising. How? by simply making
the _destination_ of the object which serves a practical end enter
as material into his æsthetic intuition and externalization. He will
not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the
instrument of æsthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted
to its practical purpose. Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and
barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are
embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express their end. A
garment is only beautiful because it is exactly suitable to a given
person in given conditions. The sword bound to the side of the warrior
Rinaldo by the amorous Armida was not beautiful: "so adorned that it
may seem a useless ornament, not the free instrument of war," or it
was beautiful, if you will, but to the eyes and imagination of the
sorceress, who liked to see her lover equipped in that effeminate way.
The æsthetic activity can always agree with the practical, because
expression is truth.
It cannot however be denied that æsthetic contemplation sometimes
hinders practical usage. For instance, it is a quite common experience
to find certain new objects seem so well adapted to their purpose,
and therefore so beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in
maltreating them by passing from their contemplation to their use. It
was for this reason that King Frederick William of Prussia showed
such repugnance to sending his magnificent grenadiers, so well adapted
to war, into the mud and fire of battle, while his less æsthetic son,
Frederick the Great, obtained from them excellent service.
[Sidenote: _Stimulants of production._]
It might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful
as a simple aid to the reproduction of the internally beautiful, or
expressions, that the artist creates his expressions by painting or
by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and that therefore the
physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimes precedes the
æsthetically beautiful. This would be a somewhat superficial mode of
understanding the procedure of the artist, who never in reality makes
a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with his
imagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke,
not in order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist),
but as a kind of experiment and in order to have a point of departure
for further meditation and internal concentration. The physical
point of departure is not the physically beautiful instrument of
reproduction, but a means that may be called _pedagogic,_ like retiring
into solitude, or the many other expedients frequently very strange,
adopted by artists and scientists, who vary in these according to their
various idiosyncrasies. The old æsthetician Baumgarten advised poets
seeking inspiration to ride on horseback, to drink wine in moderation,
and (provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women.
XIV
ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSICS AND ÆSTHETIC
We must mention a series of fallacious scientific doctrines which have
arisen from the failure to understand the purely external relation
between the æsthetic fact or artistic vision and the physical fact
or instrument which aids in its reproduction, together with brief
criticisms of them deduced from what has already been said.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic associationism._]
That form of associationism which identifies the æsthetic fact with the
_association_ of two images finds support in such lack of apprehension.
By what path has it been possible to arrive at such an error, so
repugnant to our æsthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of
perfect unity, never of duality? Precisely because the physical and
æsthetic facts have been considered separately, as two distinct images,
which enter the spirit, the one drawn in by the other, first one and
then the other. A picture has been divided into the image of the
_picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, into
the image of the _words_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the words.
But this dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not
enter the spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image
(the only image, which is the æsthetic fact), in so far as it blindly
stimulates the psychic organism and produces the impression which
answers to the æsthetic expression already produced.
The efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the field
of Æsthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some way
the unity which has been destroyed by their principle of association,
are highly instructive. Some maintain that the image recalled is
unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on the
contrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ of
the æsthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. But the dilemma is
inexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity
and give up association. No third way out of the difficulty exists.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of æsthetic physics._]
From the failure to analyse so-called natural beauty thoroughly and to
recognize that it is simply an incident of æsthetic reproduction, and
from having looked upon it, on the contrary, as given in nature, is
derived all that portion of treatises upon Æsthetic entitled _Beauty
of Nature_ or _Æsthetic Physics_; sometimes even subdivided, save
the mark, into æsthetic Mineralogy, Botany and Zoology. We do not
wish to deny that such treatises contain many just observations, and
are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as they represent
beautifully the imaginings and fancies or impressions of their authors.
But we must affirm it to be scientifically false to ask oneself if
the dog be beautiful and the ornithorhynchus ugly, the lily beautiful
and the artichoke ugly. Indeed, the error is here double. On the one
hand, æsthetic Physics falls back into the equivocation of the theory
of artistic and literary kinds, of attempting to attach æsthetic
determinations to the abstractions of our intellect; on the other, it
fails to recognize, as we said, the true formation of so-called natural
beauty, a formation which excludes even the possibility of the question
as to whether some given individual animal, flower or man be beautiful
or ugly. What is not produced by the æsthetic spirit, or cannot be
referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. The æsthetic process
arises from the ideal connexions in which natural objects are placed.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the beauty of the human body._]
The double error can be exemplified by the question as to the _Beauty
of the human body,_ upon which whole volumes have been written. Here
we must before everything turn those who discuss this subject from the
abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "What do you mean by the
human body, that of the male, the female, or the hermaphrodite?" Let
us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct
inquiries, as to male and female beauty (there really are writers
who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more beautiful);
and let us continue: "Masculine or feminine beauty; but of what race
of men--the white, the yellow or the black, or any others that may
exist, according to the division you prefer?" Let us assume that they
limit themselves to the white race, and drive home the argument: "To
what sub-species of the white race?" And when we have restricted them
gradually to one corner of the white world, going, let us say, from
the Italian to the Tuscan, the Siennese, the Porta Camollia quarter,
we will proceed: "Very good; but at what age of the human body, and in
what condition and stage--that of the newborn babe, of the child, of
the boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and of
him who is at rest or of him who is at work, or of him who is occupied
like Paul Potter's bull, or the Ganymede of Rembrandt?"
Having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual
_omnimode determinatum,_ or rather at "this man here," pointed out with
the finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling
what we have said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now
ugly, according to the point of view and to what is passing in the soul
of the artist. If even the Gulf of Naples have its detractors, and if
there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy
firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of northern seas; is it
really possible that such relativity does not exist for the human body,
source of the most varied suggestions?
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the beauty of geometrical figures._]
The question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected with
æsthetic Physics. But if by geometrical figures be understood the
concepts of geometry (the concepts of the triangle, the square, the
cone), these are neither beautiful nor ugly, just because they are
concepts. If, on the other hand, by such figures be understood bodies
which possess definite geometrical forms, they will be beautiful
or ugly, like every natural fact, according to the ideal connexions
in which they are placed. Some hold that those geometrical figures
are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion
of firmness and of power. We do not deny that this may be so. But
it must not be denied on the other hand that those also may possess
beauty which give the impression of instability and weakness, where
they represent just the insecure and the feeble; and that in these
last cases the firmness of the straight fine and the lightness of the
cone or of the equilateral triangle would seem to be on the contrary
elements of ugliness.
Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty
of geometry, like others analogous as to the historically beautiful
and human beauty, seem less absurd in the Æsthetic of the sympathetic,
which really means by the words "æsthetic beauty" the representation
of the pleasing. But the claim to determine scientifically what are
sympathetic contents and what are irremediably antipathetic is none the
less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after laying
down those premises. One can only answer such questions by repeating
with an infinitely long postscript the _Sunt quos_ of the first ode of
the first book of Horace, and the _Havvi chi_ of Leopardi's letter to
Carlo Pepoli. To each man his beautiful (= sympathetic), as to each man
his fair one. Philography is not science.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of another aspect of the imitation of nature._]
The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in
producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are
called his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers and so on. Let us run over
the sketches, studies and notes of artists: Leonardo noted down in his
pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper: "Giovannina, weird
face, is at St. Catherine's, at the Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione
is at the Pietà, he has a fine head; Christ, Giovan Conte, of Cardinal
Mortaro's suite." And so on. From this comes the illusion that the
artist _imitates nature,_ when it would perhaps be more exact to say
that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. The illusion that
_art imitates nature_ has sometimes found ground and support in this
illusion, as also in its variant, more easily maintained, which makes
of art the _idealizer of nature._ This last theory presents the process
out of its true order, which indeed is not merely upset but actually
inverted; for the artist does not proceed from external reality, in
order to modify it by approximating it to the ideal; he goes from
the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, his
ideal, and from this passes to the natural fact, which he employs as
instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the elementary forms of the
beautiful._]
Another consequence of the confusion between the æsthetic fact and the
physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful._
If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact on
the contrary, in which it externalizes itself, can easily be divided
and subdivided: for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours,
groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into
strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters,
paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words and so on. The parts
thus obtained are not æsthetic facts, but smaller physical facts,
arbitrarily divided. If this path were followed and the confusion
persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true elementary
forms of the beautiful are _atoms._
The æsthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must
have _bulk,_ could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the
imperceptibility of the too small, or the inapprehensibility of the
too large. But a greatness determined by perceptibility, not by
measurement, implies a concept widely different from the mathematical.
Indeed, what is called imperceptible and inapprehensible does not
produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept:
the demand for bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the actual
presence of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the
beautiful.
[Sidenote: _Criticism of the search for the objective conditions of the
beautiful._]
Continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective
conditions of the beautiful,_ it has been asked: To what physical facts
does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of
tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are
as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange
in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The persistent
fruitlessness of the attempt should have given rise before long to some
suspicion of its vanity. In our times, especially, necessity for an
_inductive_ Æsthetic has been often proclaimed, of an Æsthetic starting
_from below,_ proceeding like natural science and not jumping to its
conclusions. Inductive? But Æsthetic has always been both inductive and
deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction
cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize
a true science. But the word "induction" was not pronounced here by
chance. The intention was to imply that the æsthetic fact is really
nothing but a physical fact, to be studied by the methods proper to the
physical and natural sciences.
With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Æsthetic
or Æsthetic _from below_ (what pride in this modesty!) begin its
labours. It conscientiously began by making a collection of _beautiful
things,_ for example, a great number of envelopes of various shapes and
sizes, and asked which of these give the impression of beauty and which
of ugliness. As was to be expected, the inductive æstheticians speedily
found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared
ugly in one aspect appeared beautiful in another. A coarse yellow
envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing
a love-letter, is just what is wanted for a writ served by process on
stamped paper, which in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any
rate an irony, enclosed in a square envelope of English paper. Such
considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince
inductive æstheticians that the beautiful has no physical existence,
and cause them to desist from their vain and ridiculous quest. But no:
they had recourse to an expedient, as to which we should hardly like to
say how far it belongs to the strict method of natural science. They
sent their envelopes round and opened a _referendum,_ trying to settle
in what beauty or ugliness consists by the votes of the majority.
[Sidenote: _The Astrology of Æsthetic._]
We will not waste time over this subject, lest we should seem to be
turning ourselves into tellers of comic tales rather than expositors of
æsthetic science and of its problems. It is a matter of fact that the
inductive æstheticians have not yet discovered _one single law._
He who despairs of doctors is apt to abandon himself to charlatans.
This has befallen those who have believed in the naturalistic laws of
the beautiful. Artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that
of the proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that
is to say, of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the
less is to the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_be : ac
= ac : ab_). Such canons easily become their superstitions, and they
attribute to them the success of their works. Thus Michæl Angelo left
as a precept to his disciple Marco del Pino da Siena that "he should
always make a pyramidal serpentine figure multiplied by one two and
three," a precept which did not enable Marco da Siena to emerge from
that mediocrity which we can yet observe in many of his paintings that
exist here in Naples. Others took Michæl Angelo's words as authority
for the precept that serpentine undulating lines were the true _lines
of beauty._ Whole volumes have been composed on these laws of beauty,
on the golden section and on the undulating and serpentine lines. These
should in our opinion be looked upon as the _astrology of Æsthetic._
XV
THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS
[Sidenote: _The practical activity of externalization._]
The fact of the production of physical beauty implies, as has already
been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowing certain
visions, intuitions or representations to be lost. Such a will must be
able to act with the utmost rapidity and as it were instinctively, and
may also need long and laborious deliberations. In any case, thus and
thus only does the practical activity enter into relations with the
æsthetic, that is to say, no longer as its simple accompaniment, but as
a really distinct moment of it. We cannot will or not will our æsthetic
vision: we can however will or not will to externalize it, or rather,
to preserve and communicate to others, or not, the externalization
produced.
[Sidenote: _The technique of externalization._]
This volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex of
various kinds of knowledge. These are known as _technique,_ like all
knowledge which precedes a practical activity. Thus we talk of an
_artistic technique_ in the same metaphorical and elliptic manner that
we talk of the physically beautiful, that is to say (in more precise
language), _knowledge at the service of the practical activity directed
to producing stimuli to æsthetic reproduction._ In place of employing
so lengthy a phrase, we shall here avail ourselves of ordinary
terminology, whose meaning we now understand.
The possibility of this technical knowledge, at the service of artistic
reproduction, is what has led minds astray to imagine the existence
of an æsthetic technique of internal expression, which is tantamount
to saying, a doctrine of the _means of internal expression,_ a thing
that is altogether inconceivable. And we know well the reason of its
inconceivability; expression, considered in itself, is a primary
theoretic activity, and as such precedes practice and intellectual
knowledge which illumines practice and is independent alike of both.
It aids for its part to illumine practice, but is not illuminated by
it. Expression does not possess _means,_ because it has not an _end_;
it has intuitions of things, but it does not will and is therefore
unanalysable into the abstract components of volition, means and end.
Sometimes a certain writer is said to have invented a new technique
of fiction or of drama, or a painter is said to have discovered a new
technique of distributing light. The word is used here at hazard;
because the so-called _new technique_ is really _that romance itself,
or that new picture_ itself and nothing else. The distribution of
light belongs to the vision of the picture itself; as the technique
of a dramatist is his dramatic conception itself. On other occasions,
the word "technique" is used to designate certain merits or defects
in a work that is a failure; and it is euphemistically said that the
conception is bad but the technique good, or that the conception is
good but the technique bad.
On the other hand, when we talk of the different ways of painting
in oils, or of etching, or of sculpturing in alabaster, then the
word "technique" is in its place; but in such a case the adjective
"artistic" is used metaphorically. And if a dramatic technique in the
æsthetic sense be impossible, a theatrical technique of processes of
externalization of certain particular æsthetic works is not impossible.
When, for instance, women were introduced on the stage in Italy in the
second half of the sixteenth century, in place of men dressed as women,
this was a true and real discovery in theatrical technique; such too
was the perfecting in the following century of machines for the rapid
changing of scenery by the impresarios of Venice.
The collection of technical knowledge at the service of artists
desirous of externalizing their expressions, can be divided into
groups, which may be entitled _theories of the arts._ Thus arises
a theory of Architecture, comprising mechanical laws, information
relating to the weight or resistance of the materials of construction
or of fortification, manuals relating to the method of mixing lime or
stucco; a theory of Sculpture, containing advice as to the instruments
to be used for sculpturing the various sorts of stone, for obtaining
a successful mixture of bronze, for working with the chisel, for
the accurate casting of the clay or plaster model, for keeping clay
damp; a theory of Painting, on the various techniques of tempera,
of oil-painting, of water-colour, of pastel, on the proportions of
the human body, on the laws of perspective; a theory of Oratory,
with precepts as to the method of producing, of exercising and of
strengthening the voice, of attitude in impersonation and gesture; a
theory of Music, on the combinations and fusions of tones and sounds;
and so on. Such collections of precepts abound in all literatures.
And since it is impossible to say what is useful and what useless to
know, books of this sort become very often a sort of encyclopædias or
_catalogues of desiderata._ Vitruvius, in his treatise on Architecture,
claims for the architect a knowledge of letters, of drawing, of
geometry, of arithmetic, of optic, of history, of natural and moral
philosophy, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of astrology, of music, and
so on. Everything is worth knowing: learn the art and have done with it.
[Sidenote: _Technical theories of the different arts._]