search for the _elementary forms_ of the beautiful originates, is made
by those who go in search of _elementary linguistic facts,_ decorating
with that name the divisions of the longer series of physical sounds
into shorter series. Syllables, vowels and consonants, and the series
of syllables called words, all these elements of speech, which give
no definite sense when taken alone, must be called not _facts of
language,_ but mere sounds, or rather sounds abstracted and classified
physically.
Another error of the same sort is that of _roots,_ to which the most
distinguished philologists now accord but small value. Having confused
physical with linguistic or expressive facts, and considering that the
simple precedes the complex in the order of ideas, they necessarily
ended by thinking that the smallest physical facts indicated the
simplest linguistic facts. Hence the imaginary necessity that the most
ancient primitive languages had a monosyllabic character, and that
historical research must always lead to the discovery of monosyllabic
roots. But (to follow up the imaginary hypothesis) the first expression
that the first man conceived may have had not a phonetic but a mimetic
physical reflex; may have been externalized not in a sound but in
a gesture. And assuming that it was externalized in a sound, there
is no reason to suppose that sound to have been monosyllabic rather
than polysyllabic. Philologists readily blame their own ignorance and
impotence, when they do not always succeed in reducing polysyllabism to
monosyllabism, and rely upon the future to accomplish the reduction.
But their faith is without foundation, and their blame of themselves is
an act of humility arising from an erroneous presumption.
For the rest, the limits of syllables, as those of words, are
altogether arbitrary, and distinguished somehow or other by empirical
use. Primitive speech, or the speech of uneducated man, is a
_continuum,_ unaccompanied by any consciousness of divisions of the
discourse into words or syllables, imaginary beings created by schools.
No true law of Linguistic can be founded on such divisions. Proof of
this is to be found in the confession of linguists, that there are
no truly phonetic laws of the hiatus, of cacophony, of diæresis or
synæresis, but merely laws of taste and convenience; that is to say,
_æsthetic_ laws. And what are laws of _words_ which are not at the same
time laws of _style_?
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic judgement and the model language._]
Finally, the search for a _model language,_ or for a method of reducing
linguistic usage to _unity,_ arises from the superstition of a
rationalistic measure of the beautiful, from that concept which we have
called false æsthetic absoluteness. In Italy we call this the question
of the _unity of the language._
Language is perpetual creation. What has been linguistically expressed
is not repeated, save by reproduction of what has already been
produced. The ever-new impressions give rise to continuous changes
of sound and meaning, that is, to ever-new expressions. To seek the
model language, then, is to seek the immobility of motion. Everyone
speaks and should speak according to the echoes which things arouse
in his soul, that is, according to his impressions. It is not without
reason that the most convinced supporter of any one of the solutions of
the problem of the unity of language (whether by adopting a standard
Italian approximating to Latin, or to fourteenth-century usage, or
to the Florentine dialect) feels repugnance in applying his theory,
when he is speaking to communicate his thoughts and to make himself
understood. The reason is that he feels that in substituting the Latin,
fourteenth-century Italian, or Florentine word for that of different
origin, but which answers to his natural impressions, he would be
falsifying the genuine form of truth. He would become a vain listener
to himself instead of a speaker, a pedant in place of a serious man, an
actor instead of a sincere person. To write according to a theory is
not really to write: at the most, it is making _literature._
The question of the unity of language is always reappearing, because,
stated as it is, it is insoluble, being based upon a false conception
of what language is. Language is not an arsenal of arms already made,
and it is not a _vocabulary,_ a collection of abstractions, or a
cemetery of corpses more or less well embalmed.
Our dismissal of the question of the model language, or of the unity of
the language, may seem somewhat abrupt, and yet we would not wish to
appear otherwise than respectful towards the long line of literary men
who have debated this question in Italy for centuries. But those ardent
debates were fundamentally concerned with debates of æstheticity, not
of æsthetic science, of literature rather than of literary theory, of
effective speaking and writing, not of linguistic science. Their error
consisted in transforming the manifestation of a need into a scientific
thesis, the desirability, for example, of easier mutual understanding
among a people divided by dialects into the philosophic demand for
a single, ideal language. Such a search was as absurd as that other
search for a _universal language,_ a language possessing the immobility
of the concept and of abstraction. The social need for a better
understanding of one another cannot be satisfied save by the spread of
education becoming general, by the increase of communications, and by
the interchange of thought among men.
[Sidenote: _Conclusion._]
These scattered observations must suffice to show that all the
scientific problems of Linguistic are the same as those of Æsthetic,
and that the truths and errors of the one are the truths and errors
of the other. If Linguistic and Æsthetic appear to be two different
sciences, this arises from the fact that people think of the former
as grammar, or as a mixture between philosophy and grammar, that
is, an arbitrary mnemonic schematism or a pedagogic medley, and not
of a rational science and a pure philosophy of speaking. Grammar,
or something not unconnected with grammar, also introduces into the
mind the prejudice that the reality of language lies in isolated and
combinable words, not in living discourse, in the expressive organisms,
rationally indivisible.
Those linguists or philologists, philosophically endowed, who have
penetrated deepest into the problems of language, find themselves (to
employ a trite but effective simile) like workmen piercing a tunnel:
at a certain point they must hear the voices of their companions, the
philosophers of Æsthetic, who have been at work on the other side. At
a certain stage of scientific elaboration, Linguistic, in so far as it
is philosophy, must merge itself in Æsthetic: and this indeed it does
without leaving a residue.
II
HISTORY OF ÆSTHETIC
I
ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN GRÆCO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY
[Sidenote: _Point of view of this history of Æsthetic._]
The question whether Æsthetic is to be considered as an ancient or a
modern science has on several occasions been a matter of controversy;
whether, that is to say, it arose for the first time in the eighteenth
century, or had previously arisen in the Græco-Roman world. This is
a question, not only of facts, but of criteria, as is easily to be
understood: whether one answers it in this way or that depends upon
one's idea of that science, an idea afterwards adopted as a standard or
criterion.[1]
Our view is that Æsthetic is the _science of the expressive_
(representative or imaginative) _activity._ In our opinion, therefore,
it does not appear until a precise concept is formulated of
imagination, representation or expression, or in whatever other manner
we prefer to name that attitude of the spirit, which is theoretical but
not intellectual, a producer of knowledge, but of the individual, not
of the universal. Outside this point of view, we for our part are not
able to discover anything but deviations and errors.
These deviations can lead in various directions. Following the
distinctions and terminology of an eminent Italian philosopher[2] in
an analogous case, we shall be inclined to say that they arise either
from _excess_ or from _defect._ The deviation from defect would be
that which denies the existence of a special æsthetic and imaginative
activity, or, which amounts to the same thing, denies its autonomy,
and thus mutilates the reality of the spirit. Deviation by excess is
that which substitutes for it or imposes upon it another activity,
altogether undiscoverable in the experience of the interior life, a
mysterious activity which does not really exist. Both these deviations,
as can be deduced from the theoretical part of this work, take
various forms. The first, that due to defect, may be: (_a_) _purely
hedonistic,_ in so far as it considers and accepts art as a simple fact
of sensuous pleasure; (_b_) _rigoristic-hedonistic,_ in so far as,
looking upon it in the same way, it declares it to be irreconcilable
with the highest life of man; (_c_) _hedonistic-moralistic_ or
_pedagogic,_ in so far as it consents to a compromise, and while still
considering art to be a fact of sense, declares that it need not be
harmful, indeed that it may render some service to morality, provided
always that it is submissive and obedient.[3] The forms of the second
deviation (which we shall call "mystical") are not determinable _a
priori,_ for they belong to feeling and imagination in their infinite
variety and shades of meaning.[4]
[Sidenote: _Mistaken tendencies, and attempts towards an Æsthetic, in
Græco-Roman antiquity._]
The Græco-Roman world presents all these fundamental forms of
deviation: pure hedonism, moralism or pedagogism, mysticism, and
together with them the most solemn and celebrated rigoristic negation
of art which has ever been made. It also exhibits attempts at the
theory of expression or pure imagination; but nothing more than
approaches and attempts. Hence, since we must now take sides in the
controversy as to whether Æsthetic is an ancient or modern science,
we cannot but place ourselves upon the side of those who affirm its
modernity.
A rapid glance at the theories of antiquity will suffice to justify
what we have said. We say rapid, because to enter into minute
particulars, collecting all the scattered observations of ancient
writers upon art, would be to do again what has been done many times
and sometimes very well. Further, those ideas, propositions and
theories have passed into the common patrimony of knowledge, together
with what else remains of the classical world. It is therefore more
advisable here than in any other part of this history merely to
indicate the general lines of development.
[Sidenote: Origin of the æsthetic problem in Greece.]
Art, the artistic faculty, only became a philosophical problem in
Greece after the sophistical movement and as a consequence of the
Socratic dialectic. The historians of literature generally point to
the origins of Greek Æsthetic in the first appearance of criticism
and reflection upon poetical works, painting and sculpture; in the
judgements pronounced on the occasion of poetical competitions, in
the observations that were made as to the methods of the different
artists, in the analogies between painting and poetry as expressed in
the sayings attributed to Simonides and Sophocles; or, finally, in the
appearance of that word which served to group together the various
arts and to indicate in a certain way their relationship--the word
mimesis or mimetic (μίμησις)--which oscillates between the meaning of
"imitation" and that of "representation." Others make the origin of
Æsthetic go back to the polemics which were conducted by the first
naturalistic and moralistic philosophers against the tales, fantasies
and morals of poets, and to the interpretations of the hidden meaning
(υπόνοια), or, as the moderns call it, allegory, employed to defend the
good name of Homer and of the other poets; finally, to the _ancient
quarrel_ between philosophy and poetry, as Plato was afterwards to call
it.[5] But, to tell the truth, none of these reflections, observations
and arguments implied a true and proper philosophical discussion of
the nature of art. Nor was the sophistical movement favourable to its
appearance. For although attention was at that time certainly given to
internal psychical facts, yet these were conceived as mere phenomena
of opinion and feeling, of pleasure and pain, of illusion, whim or
caprice. And where there is no true and no false, no good and no evil,
there can be no question of beautiful and ugly, nor of a difference
between the true and the beautiful or between the beautiful and the
good. The most one has in that case is the general problem of the
irrational and the rational, but not that of the nature of art, which
assumes the difference between rational and irrational, material
and spiritual, mere fact and value, to have been already stated and
grasped. If, then, the sophistical period was the necessary antecedent
to the discoveries of Socrates, the æsthetic problem could only arise
after Socrates. And it did indeed arise with Plato, author of the
first, or indeed of the only really great negation of art of which
there remains documentary proof in the history of ideas.
[Sidenote: _Plato's rigoristic negation._]
Is art, mimesis, a rational or an irrational fact? Does it belong to
the noble region of the soul, where philosophy and virtue are found,
or does it dwell in that base lower sphere, with sensuality and crude
passionality? This is the question asked by Plato,[6] who thus states
the problem of Æsthetic for the first time. The sophist Gorgias was
able to note, with his sceptical acuteness, that tragic representation
is a deception, which (strangely enough) turns out to the honour
both of him who deceives and of him who is deceived, in which it is
shameful not to know how to deceive oneself and not to let oneself be
deceived.[7] With that remark he could rest content. That was for him
a fact like another. But Plato, the philosopher, was bound to solve
the problem: if it were a deception, then down with tragedy and the
rest of mimetic productions: down with them among the other things to
be despised, among the animal qualities of man. But if it were not
deception, what was it? What place did art occupy among the lofty
activities of philosophy and of good action?
The answer that he gave is well known. Mimetic does not realize the
ideas, that is to say the truth of things, but reproduces natural or
artificial things, which are pale shadows of them; it is a diminution
of a diminution, a third-hand work. Art, then, does not belong to the
lofty and rational region of the soul (του λογιστικοϋ ἐν ψυχή) but to
the sensual; it is not a strengthening but a corruption of the mind
(λώβη τής διάνοιας); it can serve only sensual pleasure, which troubles
and obscures. For this reason, mimetic, poetry and poets, must be
excluded from the perfect Republic.
Plato is the most consistent example of those who do not succeed in
discovering any other form of knowledge but the intellectual. It was
correctly observed by him that imitation stops at natural things,
at the image (το φάντασμα), and does not reach the concept, logical
truth (άλήθεια), of which poets and painters are altogether ignorant.
But his error consisted in believing that there is no other form of
truth below the intellectual; that there is nothing but sensuality and
passionality outside or prior to the intellect, that which discovers
the ideas. Certainly, the fine æsthetic sense of Plato did not echo
that depreciatory judgement of art; he himself declared that he would
have been very glad to have been shown how to justify art and to place
it among the forms of the spirit. But since none was able to give him
this assistance, and since art with its _appearance_ that yet lacks
_reality_ was repugnant to his ethical consciousness, and reason
compelled him (ό λόγος ήρει) to banish it and place it with its peers,
he resolutely obeyed his conscience and his reason.[8]
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic hedonism and moralism._]
Others were not troubled with these scruples, and although art was
always looked upon as a mere thing of pleasure among the later
hedonistic schools of various sorts, among rhetoricians and worldly
people the duty of combating or of abolishing it was not felt.
Nevertheless, this opposite extreme was also not calculated to meet
with the endorsement of public opinion, for the latter, if tender
towards art, is no less tender towards rationality and morality. For
this reason both rationalists and moralists, compelled to recognize
the force of such a condemnation as Plato's, sought for a compromise,
a half measure. Away with the sensual and with art: certainly. But
can we expel the sensual and the pleasurable without more ado? Can
fragile human nature nourish itself exclusively with the strong food of
philosophy and morality? Can we obtain observance of the true and of
the good from the young and from the people, without allowing them at
the same time some amusement? And has not man himself always something
of the child, has he not always something of the people in him, is
he not to be treated with the same precautions? Is there not a risk
that the over-bent bow will break?--These considerations prepared the
way for the justification of art, for they showed that if it were not
rational in itself, it could on the other hand serve a rational end.
Hence the search for the _external end_ of art, which takes the place
of the search for the essence or _internal end_. When art had been
lowered to the level of a simple pleasurable illusion, an inebriation
of the senses, it was necessary to subordinate the practical action
of producing such an illusion and inebriation, like any other action,
to the moral end. Art, being deprived of any dignity of its own,
was obliged to assume a reflected or secondhand dignity. Thus the
moralistic and pedagogic theory was constructed upon a hedonistic
basis. The artist, who, for the pure hedonist, was comparable to
a _hetaira,_ became for the moralist a _pedagogue._ Hetaira and
pedagogue, these are the symbols of the two conceptions of art that
were disseminated in antiquity, and the second was grafted upon the
first.
Even before Plato's peremptory negation had directed thought to this
way of issue, the literary criticism of Aristophanes was already full
of the pedagogic idea: "What schoolmasters are to children, poets
are to young men" (τοΐς ήβώσιν δὲ ποιηταί), he says in a celebrated
verse[9] But we can find traces of it in Plato himself (in the
dialogues in which he seems to withdraw from the too rigid conclusions
of the _Republic)_ and in Aristotle, both in the _Politics,_ where he
determines the use of music in education, and perhaps in the _Poetics,_
where he speaks obscurely of a tragical _catharsis_; although as
regards this latter, it is not to be altogether denied that he may
have had a sort of glimpse of the modern idea of the liberating power
of art.[10] Later on, the pedagogic theory takes a form that was much
affected by the Stoics. Strabo develops and defends this at great
length, in the introduction to his geographical work, where he combats
Eratosthenes, who has made poetry consist in mere pleasure without any
notion of teaching. Strabo, on the contrary, maintained the opinion of
the ancients, that it was "a first philosophy (φιλοσοφίαν τινα πρωτήν),
which educated young men for life, and created customs, affections and
actions, by means of pleasure." Therefore, he said, poetry has always
been a part of education; one cannot be a good poet unless one is a
good man (άνδρα άγαθόν). Legislators and founders of cities were the
first to employ fables to admonish and to terrify: then this duty,
which must be performed for women and children and even for adults,
passed to the poets. We caress and dominate the multitude with fiction
and with falsehood.[11] "The poets tell many lies" (πολλά ψεύδονται
άοιδοί) is a hemistich recorded by Plutarch, who describes minutely in
one of his lesser works how the poets should be read to youths.[12]
For him too poetry is a preparation for philosophy; it is a disguised
philosophy, and therefore delights us in the same way as do fish and
meat at feasts, so prepared as not to seem to be fish and meat; it is
philosophy softened with fables, like the vine that grows close to the
mandragora, and produces a wine that is the giver of sweet slumbers.
It is not possible to pass from dense darkness to sunlight; one should
first accustom the eyes to moderate light. Philosophers, in order to
exhort and instruct, take their examples from true things; poets aim
at a like result, when they create fictions and fables.[13] Lucretius,
in Roman literature, gives us the well-known comparison of the boys for
whom the doctors "_prius or as pocula circum Contingunt mellis dulci
flavoque liquore,_" in order to administer the bitter wormwood.[14]
Horace, in certain verses of the Epistle to the Pisones which have
become proverbial (perhaps his source for them was the Greek of
Neoptolemus of Paros?), offers both views (that of art as courtesan and
of art as pedagogue) in his "_Aut prodesse volunt aut deledare poetae
... omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci._"[15]
Thus looked at, the office of the poet was confounded with that of the
orator, for he too was a practical man aiming at practical effects;
hence there arose discussions as to whether Virgil was to be considered
as a poet or as an orator ("_Virgilius poeta an orator?_"). To both was
assigned the triple end of _delectare, movere, docere_; in any case
this tripartition was very empirical, for we clearly perceive that
the _delectare_ is here a means-and the _docere_ a simple part of the
_movere_: to move in the direction of the good, and therefore, among
other goods, towards that of instruction. In like manner, it was said
of the orator and poet (recording the meretricious basis of their task,
and with a metaphor significant in its _naïveté_) that they were bound
to avail themselves of the _allurements_ (_lenocinium_) of form.
[Sidenote: _Mystical æsthetic in antiquity._]
The mystical view, which considers art as a special mode of
self-beatification, of entering into relation with the Absolute, with
the Summum Bonum, with the ultimate root of things, appeared only
in late antiquity, almost at the entrance to the Middle Ages. Its
representative is the founder of the neo-Platonic school, Plotinus.
It is strange that Plato should be usually selected as the founder
and head of this æsthetic tendency, and that for this very reason to
him should be attributed the honour of being the father of Æsthetic.
But how could he, who had expounded with such great limpidity and
clearness the reasons for which he was not able to accord to art a
high place among the activities of the spirit, be credited with having
accorded to it one of the highest places, equal, if not superior, to
philosophy itself? This misunderstanding has evidently arisen out of
the enthusiastic effusions about the Beautiful that we read in the
_Gorgias,_ the _Philebus,_ the _Phædrus,_ the _Symposium,_ and other
Platonic dialogues. It is well to dissipate it by declaring that the
_Beauty_ of which Plato discourses has nothing to do with art or with
_artistic beauty._
[Sidenote: _Investigations as to the Beautiful._]