different from, but rather a partial anticipation of, the
"_distinctio_" of intellect. Undoubtedly this distinction of degree
marks a great advance: but careful analysis shows that Leibniz does
not differ fundamentally from those who, by inventing the new words
and empirical distinctions examined above, called attention to the
peculiarities of æsthetic facts.
[Sidenote: _Speculation on language._]
We find the same invincible intellectualism in the speculations on
language greatly in vogue at the time. When critics of the Renaissance
and sixteenth century tried to rise above merely empirical and
practical grammar and strove to reduce grammatical science to a
systematic form, they fell into logicism and described grammatical
forms by such terms as pleonastic, improper, metaphorical or elliptic.
Thus Julius Cæsar Scaliger (1540); thus, too, the most learned of
all, Francisco Sanchez (Sanctius or Sanzio), called Brocense, who, in
his _Minerva_ (1587), asserts that names are attached to things by
reason, exclusive of interjections which are not parts of speech but
merely sounds expressive of joy or sorrow; he denies the existence of
heterogeneous and heteroclitic words, and works out a system of syntax
by means of four figures of construction, proclaiming the principle
"_doctrinam supplendi esse valde necessarium,_" that is to say, that
grammatical diversities must be explained as ellipsis, abbreviation
or omission with reference to the typical logical form.[16] Gaspare
Scioppio follows him exactly, abusing the old grammar with his
accustomed violence and crying up the "Sanctian" method, at that time
still almost unknown, in his _Grammatica philosophica_ (1628).[17]
Amongst critics of the seventeenth century, Jacopo Perizonio must not
be forgotten; he wrote a commentary on Sanchez' book (1687). Amongst
recognized philosophers who studied the philosophy of grammar and
noted the merits and defects of various tongues, we find Bacon.[18] In
1660 Claude Lancelot and Arnauld brought out the _Grammaire générale
et raisonnée de Port-Royal,_ a work applying the intellectualism
of Descartes rigorously to grammatical forms, and dominated by the
doctrine of the artificial nature of language. Locke and Leibniz both
speculated about language,[19] but neither succeeded in creating a
fresh point of view, although the latter did much to provoke inquiry
into the historical origin of languages. All his life Leibniz cherished
the notion of a universal language and of an "_ars characteristica
universalis_" as a combination likely to result in great scientific
discoveries: prior to him, Wilkins had fostered the same hope, nor
indeed, in spite of its utter absurdity, is it even yet wholly extinct.
[Sidenote: _C. Wolff._]
In order to correct the æsthetic ideas of Leibniz it was necessary
to alter the very foundations of his system, the Cartesianism upon
which it rested. This could not be undertaken by disciples of
his own personal school, in whom we notice rather an increase of
intellectualism. Giving scholastic form to the brilliant observations
of the master, Johann Christian Wolff's system began with the theory
of knowledge conceived as an "organon" or instrument, followed by
systems of natural law, ethics and politics, together constituting
the "organon" of practical activity: the remainder was theology
and metaphysics, or pneumatology and physics (doctrine of the soul
and doctrine of phenomenal nature). Although Wolff distinguishes a
productive imagination, ruled by the principle of sufficient reason,
from the merely associative and chaotic,[20] yet a science of
imagination considered as a new theoretical value could find no niche
in his schematism. Knowledge of a lower order, as such, belonged to
Pneumatology and was incapable of possessing its own "organon": at most
it could be brought under the organon already existing, which corrected
and transcended it by means of logical knowledge in the same way in
which Ethics treats the "_facilitas appetitiva inferior._" As in France
the poetics of Boileau corresponded with the philosophy of Descartes,
so in Germany the rationalistic poetics of Gottsched[21] reflect the
Cartesian-Leibnitian theories of Wolff (1729).
[Sidenote: _Demand for an organon of inferior knowledge._]
It was no doubt dimly seen that even in the inferior faculties some
distinction was operative between perfect and imperfect, value and
non-value. A passage in a book (1725) by the Leibnitian Bülffinger
has often been quoted where he says: "_Vellem existerent qui circa
facultatem sentiendi, imaginandi, attendendi, abstrahendi et memoriam
praestarent quod bonus ille Aristoteles, adeo hodie omnibus sordens,
praestitit circa intellectum: hoc est ut in artis formant redigerent
quicquid ad illas in suo usu dirigendas et iuvandas pertinet et
conducid, quem ad modum Aristoteles in Organo logicam sive facultatem
demonstrandi redegit in ordinem._"[22] But on reading the extract in
its context one recognizes at once that the desired organon would have
been merely a series of recipes for strengthening the memory, educating
the attention, and so forth: a technique, in a word, not an æsthetic.
Similar ideas had been spread in Italy by Trevisano (1708), who, by
declaring that the senses might be educated through the mind, asserted
the possibility of an _art of feeling_ which should "endow manners
with prudence and judgement with good taste."[23] We notice, moreover,
that in his day Bülffinger was counted a depreciator of poetry, so
much so that a tract against him was written in order to show that
"poetry does not diminish the faculty of clear conception."[24] Bodmer
and Breitinger were ready "to deduce all the parts of eloquence with
mathematical precision" (1727), and the latter sketched a Logic of
the Imagination (1740) to which he would have assigned the study of
similitudes and metaphors; even had he carried out his project, it
is difficult to see how it could have differed materially, from a
philosophic point of view, from the treatises on the subject written by
the Italian rhetoricians of the seventeenth century.
[Sidenote: _Alexander Baumgarten: his "Æsthetic."_]
These discussions and experiments filled the boyhood and helped to
form the intellect of young Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten of Berlin,
a follower of the philosophy of Wolff and, at the same time, student
and teacher of Latin rhetoric and poetry; these studies led him to
reconsider the problem and search for some method by which the precepts
of rhetoricians could be reduced to a rigorous philosophical system.
On taking his doctor's degree in September 1735, when twenty-one years
old, he published a thesis _Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad
poēma pertinentibus_:[25] in which the word "Æsthetic" appears for the
first time as name of a special science.[26] Baumgarten always remained
much attached to his youthful discovery, and in 1742 when called to
teach at the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and again in 1749,
he gave by request a course of lectures on Æsthetic (_quaedam consilia
dirigendarum facultatum inferiorum novam per acroasin exposuit_).[27]
In 1750 he printed a voluminous treatise wherein the word "Æsthetic"
attained the honours of a title-page;[28] in 1758 he published a more
slender second part: illness and finally death in 1762 prevented him
from completing the work.
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic as science of sensory consciousness._]
What was Æsthetic to Baumgarten? Its objects are sensible facts
(ασθητά), carefully distinguished by the ancients from mental objects
(νοητά);[29] hence it becomes _scientia cognitionis sensitivae, theoria
liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars
analogi rationis_[30] Rhetoric and Poetry constitute two special
and interdependent disciplines which are entrusted by Æsthetic with
the distinction between the various styles in literature and other
small differences,[31] for the laws she herself investigates are
diffused throughout all the arts like guiding-stars for these various
subsidiary arts (_quasi cynosura quaedam specialium_)[32] and must be
extracted not from isolated cases only, or from incomplete induction
empirically, but from the totality of facts (_falsa regula peior est
quant nulla._)[33] Nor must Æsthetic be confounded with Psychology,
which furnishes its presuppositions only; an independent science, it
gives the norm of sensitive cognition (_sensitive quid cognoscendi_)
and deals with "_perfectio cognitionis sensitivae, qua talis,_" which is
beauty (_pulcritudo)_, just as the opposite, imperfection, is ugliness
(_deformitas_)[34] From the beauty of sensitive cognition (_pulcritudo
cognitionis_) we must exclude the beauty of objects and matter
(_pulcritudo obiectorum et materiae_) with which it is often confused
owing to habits of language, since it is easy to show that ugly things
may be thought of in a beautiful manner and beautiful things in an
ugly manner (_quacum ob receptam rei significationem saepe sed male
confunditur; possunt turpia pulcre cogitare ut talia, et pulcriora
turpiter_).[35] Poetical representations are confused or imaginative:
distinctness, that is intellect, is not poetical. The greater the
determination, the greater the poetry; individuals "_omnimode
determinata_" are highly poetical; poetical also are images or
phantasms as well as all that appertains to the senses.[36] That which
judges sensible or imaginary presentations is taste, or "_indicium
sensuum._" These, in brief, are the truths displayed by Baumgarten in
his _Meditationes_ and, with many distinctions and examples, in his
_Æsthetic._[37]
[Sidenote: _Cricisism of judgements based on Baumgarten._]
Nearly all German critics[38] are of opinion that from his own
conception of Æsthetic as the science of sensitive cognition Baumgarten
should have evolved a species of inductive Logic. But he can be cleared
of this accusation: a better philosopher, perhaps, than his critics,
he held that an inductive Logic must always be intellectual, since
it leads to abstractions and the formation of concepts. The relation
existing between "_cognitio confusa_" and the poetical and artistic
facts which belong to the realm of taste had been shown before his
day, by Leibniz: neither he nor Wolff nor any other of their school
ever dreamed of transforming a treatment of the "_cognitio confusa_"
or "_petites perceptions_" into an inductive Logic. On the other hand,
as a kind of compensation, these critics attribute to Baumgarten
a merit he cannot claim, at least to the extent implied by their
praises. According to them, he effected a revolution by converting[39]
Leibniz' differences of degree or quantitative distinctions into a
specific difference, and turning confused knowledge into something no
longer negative but positive[40] by attributing a "_perfectio_" to
sensitive cognition _qua talis_; and by thus destroying the unity of
the Leibnitian monad and breaking up the law of continuity, founded
the science of Æsthetic. Had he really accomplished such a giant
stride, his claim to the title of "father of Æsthetic" would have
been placed beyond question. But, in order to win this appellation,
Baumgarten ought to have been successful in unravelling all those
contradictions in which he was involved no less than Leibniz and all
intellectualists. It is not enough to posit a "_perfectio_"; even
Leibniz did that when he attributed _claritas_ to confused cognition,
which, when devoid of clearness, remains obscure, that is to say,
imperfect. It was imperative that this perfection "_qua talis_" should
be upheld against the "_lex continui,_" and kept uncontaminated by any
intellectualistic admixture. Otherwise he was bound to fall back into
the pathless labyrinth of the "probable" which is and is not false,
of the wit which is and is not intellect, of the taste which is and
is not intellectual judgement, of the imagination and feeling which
are and are not sensibility and material pleasure. And in that case,
notwithstanding the new name: notwithstanding (as we freely admit) the
greater insistence than that of Leibniz upon the sensible nature of
poetry, Æsthetic, as a science, would not have been born.
[Sidenote: _Intellectualism of Baumgarten._]
Now Baumgarten overcame none of the obstacles above mentioned.
Unprejudiced and continued study of his works forces one to this
conclusion. Already in his _Meditationes_ he does not seem able to
distinguish clearly between imagination and intellect, confused and
distinct cognition. The law of continuity leads him to set up a scale
of more and less: amongst cognitions, the obscure are less poetical
than the confused; the distinct are not poetical, but even those
of the higher kinds (that is the distinct and intellectual) are to
a certain extent poetical in proportion as they are lower in their
nature; compound concepts are more poetical than simple; those of
larger comprehension are "_extensive clariores._"[41] In the _Æsthetic_
Baumgarten expounds his thought more fully and thereby exposes its
defects. If the introduction of the book leads one to believe that he
sees æsthetic truth to consist in consciousness of the individual,
the belief is shattered by the explanations which follow. As a good
objectivist he asserts that truth in the metaphysical sense has its
counterpart in the soul, namely, subjective truth, logical truth in a
wide sense, or æsthetico-logical.[42] And the complete truth lies not
in the genus or species, but in the individual. The genus is true,
the species more true, the individual most true.[43] Formal logical
truth is acquired "_cum iactura,_" by jettisoning much great material
perfection: "_quid enim est abstractio, si iactura non est?_"[44]
So much being granted, logical truth differs from æsthetic in this:
metaphysical or objective truth is presented now to the intellect,
when it is logical truth in a narrow sense; now to the analogy of
reason and the lower cognitive faculties, when it is æsthetic;[45]
a lesser truth in exchange for the greater which man is not always
able to attain, thanks to the "_malum metaphysicum._"[46] Thus moral
truths are comprehended in one fashion by a comic poet, in another
by a moral philosopher; an eclipse is described in one way by an
astronomer and in another by a shepherd speaking to his friends or
his sweetheart.[47] Universals even are accessible, in part at least,
to the inferior faculty.[48] Take the case of two philosophers, a
dogmatic and a sceptic, arguing, with an æsthete listening to them. If
the arguments of either party are so balanced that the hearer cannot
determine which is true and which false, this appearance is to him
æsthetic truth: if one adversary succeed in overbearing the other
so that one argument is shown clearly to be wrong, the error just
revealed is likewise æsthetic[49] falsity. Truths strictly æsthetic are
(and this is the decisive point) those which appear neither entirely
true nor entirely false: probable truths. "_Talia autem de quibus
non complete quidem certi sumus, neque tamen falsitatem aliquam in
iisdem appercipimus, sunt verisimilia. Est ergo veritas æsthetica,
a potiori dicta verisimilitudo, ille veritatis gradus, qui, etiamsi
non evectus sit ad completam certitudinem, tamen nihil contineat
falsitatis observabilis._"[50] And especially the immediate sequel:
"_Cujus habent spectator es auditor esve intra animum quum vident
audiuntve, quasdam anticipationes, quod plerumque fit, quod fieri
solet, quod in opinione positum est, quod habet ad haec in se quandam
similitudinem, sive id falsum (logice et latissime), sive verum
sit (logice et strictissime), quod non sit facile a nostris sensibus
abhorrens: hoc illud_ est εἰκός _et verisimile quod, Aristotele et
Cicerone assentiente, sectetur æstheticus._"[51] The probable embraces
that which is true and certain to the intellect and the senses, that
which is certain to the senses but not to the intellect, that which
is probable logically and æsthetically, or logically improbable but
æsthetically probable, or, finally, æsthetically improbable but on the
whole probable or that whose improbability is not evident.[52] So we
reach the admission of the impossible and absurd, the _αδύνατον_ and
_ἄτοπον_ of Aristotle.
If after reading these paragraphs, highly important as revealing the
true thought of Baumgarten, we turn once more to the Introduction to
his work, we notice at once his commonplace and erroneous conception of
the poetic faculty. To a friend who suggested that there was no need
for him to concern himself with confused or inferior consciousness both
because "_confusio mater erroris_" and because "_facilitate inferior
es, caro, debellandae potius sunt quam excitandae et confirmandae,_"
Baumgarten replied that confusion is a condition wherein to find truth:
that nature makes no sudden leap from obscurity to clarity: that
noonday light is reached from night time through the dawn (_ex node per
auroram meridies_): that in the case of the inferior faculties a guide,
not a tyrant, is needed (_imperium in facilitates inferiores poscitur,
non tyrannis_).[53] This is still the attitude of Leibniz, Trevisano
and Bülffinger. Baumgarten is terrified lest he should be accused of
treating subjects unworthy a philosopher. "_Quousque tandem_" (says he
to himself), "dost thou, professor of theoretic and moral philosophy,
dare to praise lies and mixtures of true and false as though they were
noble works?"[54] And if there is one thing above all others from
which he is anxious to guard himself it is sensualism, unbridled and
non-moralized. The sensitive perfection of Cartesianism and Wolffianism
was liable to be confused with simple pleasure, with the feeling of
the perfection of our organism:[55] but Baumgarten falls into no such
confusion. When in 1745 one Quistorp combated his æsthetic theory by
saying that if poetry consisted in sensuous perfection it was a thing
hurtful to men, Baumgarten answered disdainfully that he did not expect
he should ever find time to reply to a critic of such calibre as to
mistake his "_oratio perfecta sensitiva_" for an "_oratio perfecte_
(that is _omnino) sensitiva._"[56]
[Sidenote: _New names and old meanings._]
Save in its title and its first definitions Baumgarten's _Æsthetic_ is
covered with the mould of antiquity and commonplace. We have seen that
he refers back to Aristotle and Cicero for the first principles of his
science; in another instance he attaches his Æsthetic to the Rhetoric
of antiquity, quoting the truth enunciated by Zeno the Stoic, "_esse
duo cogitandi genera, alterum perpetuum et latius, quod Rhetorices sit,
alterum concisum et contractius, quod Dialectices,_" and identifying
the former with the æsthetic horizon, the latter with the logical.[57]
In his _Meditationes_ he rests upon Scaliger and Vossius;[58] of
modern writers beside the philosophers (Leibniz, Wolff, Bülffinger)
he quotes Gottsched, Arnold,[59] Werenfels, Breitinger[60]; by means
of these latter he is able to make acquaintance with discussions upon
taste and imagination, even without direct acquaintance with Addison
and Du Bos, as well as the Italians, whose writings had immense vogue
in Germany in his day, and with whom his resemblances leap to the
eye. Baumgarten always feels himself to be in perfect accord with his
predecessors; never at variance with them. He never felt himself to
be a revolutionary; and though some have been revolutionaries without
knowing it, Baumgarten was not one of them. Baumgarten's works are but
another presentation of the problem of Æsthetic still clamouring for
solution in a voice so much the stronger as it uttered a commonplace:
he proclaims a new science and presents it in conventional scholastic
form; the babe about to be born receives the name of Æsthetic by
premature baptism at his hands: and the name remains. But the new name
is devoid of new matter; the philosophical armour covers no muscular
body. Our good Baumgarten, full of ardour and conviction, and often
curiously brisk and vivacious in his scholastic Latinism, is a most
sympathetic and attractive figure in the history of Æsthetic: of the
science in formation, that is to say, not of the science brought to
completion: of Æsthetic _condenda_ not _condita._
[1] Letters to Balzac and the Princess Elizabeth.
[2] _Art poétique_ (1669-1674).
[3] Letters to Marquis Maffei, about 1720, in _Prose e poesie,_ Venice,
1756, ii. p. cxx.
[4] Sulzer, _op. cit._ i. p. 50.
[5] _Traité du beau_ (2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1724; Paris ed., 1810).
[6] _Essai sur le beau,_ Paris, 1741.
[7] _An Essay concerning Human Understanding_ (French trans. in
_Œuvres,_ Paris, 1854), bk. ii. ch. 11, § 2.
[8] _Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,_ 1709-1711.
[9] _Enquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,_
London, 1723.
[10] See above, p. 179.
[11] _Opera philosophica_ (ed. Erdmann), p. 78.
[12] _Ibid,_ preface.
[13] _Nouveaux Essais,_ ii. ch. 22.
[14] _Op. cit._ ii. ch. 11.
[15] _Essais de Théodicée,_ part. ii. § 148.
[16] Francisci Sanctii, _Minerva seu de causis linguæ latinæ
commentarius,_ 1587 (ed. with add. by Gaspare Scioppio, Padua, 1663);
cf. bk. i. chs. 2, 9, and bk. iv.
[17] Gasperis Sciopii, _Grammatica philosophica,_ Milan, 1628 (Venice,
1728).
[18] _De dignitate,_ etc., bk. vi. ch. i.
[19] Locke, _Essay,_ etc., bk. lii.; Leibniz, _Nouveaux Essais,_ bk.
iii.
[20] _Psychol. empirica_ (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1738), §§ 138-172.
[21] Joh. Chr. Gottsched, _Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst,_
Leipzig, 1729.
[22] _Dilucidationes philosophicæ de Deo, anima humana et mundo,_ 1725
(Tübingen, 1768), § 268.
[23] Preface to _Rifless. sul gusto, ed. cit._ p. 75.
[24] Borinski, _Poetik d. Renaiss._ p. 380 note.
[25] Halæ Magdeburgicæ, 1735 (reprinted, ed. B. Croce, Naples, 1900).
[26] _Med._ § 116.
[27] _Æsthetica,_ i. pref.
[28] _Æsthetica. Scripsit_ Alex. Gottlieb Baumgarten, _Prof.
Philosoph., Traiecti eis Viadrum, Impens. Ioannis Christiani Kleyb,_
1750; 2nd part, 1758.
[29] _Med._ § 116.
[30] _Æsth._ § i.
[31] _Med.%_ 117.
[32] _Æsth._ § 71.
[33] _Ibid._ § 53.
[34] _Med._ § 115.
[35] _Æsth._ § 14.
[36] _Ibid._ § 18.
[37] _Med._ § 92.
[38] Ritter, _Gesch. d. Philos._ (Fr. trans., _Hist, de la phil. mod._
iii. p. 365); Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Æsth._ p. 168; J. Schmidt, _L. u.
B._ p. 48.
[39] Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 218; Meyer, _L. u. B._ pp. 35-38.
[40] Schmidt, _op. cit._ p. 44.
[41] _Med._ §§ 19, 20, 23.
[42] _Æsth._ § 424.
[43] _Op. cit._ § 441.
[44] _Op. cit._ § 560.
[45] _Æsth._ § 424.
[46] _Op. cit._ § 557.
[47] _Op. cit._ §§ 425, 429.
[48] _Op. cit._ § 443.
[49] _Op. cit._ § 448.
[50] _Op. cit._ § 483.
[51] _Op. cit._ § 484.
[52] _Æsth._ §§ 485, 486.
[53] _Op. cit._ §§ 7, 12.
[54] _Op. cit._ § 478.
[55] Cf. Wolff, Psych, empir. § 511, and the passage there quoted from
Descartes; also §§ 542, 550.
[56] Th. Joh. Quistorp, in _Neuen Bücher-Saal,_ 1745, fasc. 5; _Erweis
dass die Poesie schon für sie selbst ihre Liebhaber leichtlich
unglücklich machen könne_; and A. G. Baumgarten, _Metaphysica,_ 2nd
ed., 1748, preface; cf. Danzel, _Gottsched,_ pp. 215, 221.
[57] _Æsth._ § 122.
[58] _Med._ § 9.
[59] _Op. cit._ §§ 111, 113.
[60] _Æsth._ § 11.
V
GIAMBATTISTA VICO
[Sidenote: _Vico as inventor of æsthetic science._]
The real revolutionary who by putting aside the concept of probability
and conceiving imagination in a novel manner actually discovered the
true nature of poetry and art and, so to speak, invented the science of
Æsthetic, was the Italian Giambattista Vico.