the artist, no less eager than his archæological fellow-countryman to
understand the nature of that beauty which the one studied as a critic
while the other produced it as a painter. Remarking, writes Mengs,
that of the two chief duties of a painter, the imitation of appearances
and the selection of the most beautiful objects, much has been written
on the former, while the latter "has scarcely been touched by the
modems, who would have been ignorant of the art of drawing were it
not for the statues of ancient Greece";[21] pondering this, "I read,
asked and looked at everything likely to throw light on the subject,
but never was I satisfied; either they spoke of beautiful things or
of qualities which are the attributes of beauty, or they pretended to
explain, as the saying is, the obscure by the more obscure, or even
confused the beautiful with the pleasing: so that finally I determined
to search for the nature of beauty on my own account."[22] One of his
works on this subject was published during his lifetime by the advice
and assistance of Winckelmann (1761); many others appeared posthumously
(1780), all were reprinted several times and translated into several
languages. In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he says, "I have been sailing
a long time on a vast sea seeking the understanding of beauty, and
still I am far from any shore and in great doubt how to shape my
course: gazing around, my sight is confounded by the immensity of the
subject."[23] In truth it seems as though Mengs never arrived at a
formula satisfactory to himself, although he conformed more or less to
Winckelmann's doctrine that "beauty consists in material perfection
according to our ideas; and since God alone is perfect, beauty is
divine"; it is the "visible idea of perfection" and stands in the same
relation to it as does a visible to a mathematical point. Our ideas
proceed from the purposes which the Creator has willed to fulfil in
various things; hence the multiplicity of beauties. In general, Mengs
finds the types of things in natural species: _e.g._ "a stone, of
which we have the idea that it should be uniform in colour"; which"
is called ugly if it happen to be spotted"; or a child "would be
ugly if he were like a man of mature age, just as a man is ugly when
shaped like a woman, and a woman when she is like a man." He adds
surprisingly, "As among stones there is but one perfect species, the
diamond; among metals, gold; and among animated creatures, man only; so
there is difference and distinction in every order, and very rarely is
there perfection."[24] In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he considers beauty
as "a middle disposition, including perfection on the one hand and
the pleasing on the other"; in reality it is a third thing, differing
from perfection and the pleasing, and deserving a special name for
itself.[25] The art of painting arises from four sources: beauty,
significant or expressive character, the pleasing united to harmony,
and colouring. Mengs finds the first amongst the ancients, the second
in Raphæl, the third in Correggio and the fourth in Titian.[26] From
this empirical studio-gossip he rouses himself to exclaim, "The force
of beauty so transports me that I will tell thee, reader, what I
feel. All nature is beautiful, and so is virtue; beautiful are forms
and proportions; beautiful are appearances and beautiful the causes
thereof; more beautiful is reason, most beautiful of all is the great
first cause."[27]
[Sidenote: _G. E. Lessing._]
An attenuated, that is to say, a less metaphysical, echo of
Winckelmann's theory is found in Lessing (1766), who infused a new
spirit into the literature and social life of the Germany of his time.
According to Lessing the aim of art is "delight"; and since delight is
a "superfluous thing" it seems reasonable that the legislator should
not allow to art that liberty which is indispensable to science in
her search for truth, the soul's necessity. For the Greeks painting
was what by its nature it ought to be, "the imitation of beautiful
bodies." "Its (Hellenic) cultivator represented nothing but the
beautiful: common beauty of a low grade served him as an accidental
subject, an exercise, a diversion. The attractiveness of his work
must depend simply and solely on the perfection of his subject: he
was far too true an artist to wish his audience to content itself
with the barren pleasure arising from mere resemblance or from the
inspection of skilful workmanship: nothing in his art was dearer to
him, nothing seemed more noble, than the end at which it aimed."[28]
Pictorial representation must exclude everything unpleasing or ugly;
"painting as imitation may express ugliness: painting as a fine art
will refuse to do so: all visible objects belong to art taken under
the former title: the latter may claim only such objects as awaken
pleasing sensations." If, on the contrary, ugliness may be represented
by the poet, the reason is this: poetic description "conveys a less
displeasing sense of bodily malformation which, in the end, almost
loses its character as such; unable to use it for itself, the poet
uses it as a means to provoke certain mixed feelings (the ridiculous,
the terrible), in which we are content to remain, in the absence of
any purely pleasant feelings."[29] In his _Dramaturgie_ (1767) Lessing
takes his stand upon the Aristotelian _Poetics_: it is well known that
not only did he approve of rules in general but he believed those
laid down by Aristotle to be as incontrovertible as the theorems of
Euclid. His polemic against French writers and critics is waged in the
name of probability, not to be confounded with historical accuracy.
He understood the universal as a sort of average of what appears in
individuals, and catharsis as a conversion of passions into virtuous
dispositions, asserting it as beyond doubt that the aim of all
poetry is to inspire a love for virtue.[30] He follows the example
of Winckelmann in introducing the concept of ideal beauty into the
doctrine of figurative art: "expression of corporeal beauty is the aim
of painting: therefore supreme beauty of body is the supreme aim of
art. But this supreme beauty of body is found in man only, and for
him it exists only through the ideal. This ideal may be found among
the brute creation in inferior degree; but is entirely absent from
vegetable or inanimate nature." Landscape and flower painters are not
really artists because "they imitate beauties possessed of no ideal:
whereby they work by eye and hand alone, genius having little or no
part in their compositions." Nevertheless, Lessing prefers a landscape
painter to "the painter of historic pieces who, instead of making
beauty his aim, merely depicts a crowd in order to show his cunning in
simple expression, not in expression subordinate to beauty."[31] The
ideal of bodily beauty then consists "chiefly in the ideal of form,
but also in that of texture of the flesh, and in that of permanent
expression. Mere colouring and transitory expression have no ideal
since nature herself has placed no indelible seal upon them."[32] At
the bottom of his heart Lessing dislikes colour; and when he finds
the pen-sketches of painters showing "a life, a freedom, a brilliancy
never to be found in their painted pictures," he asks himself "whether
the most marvellous colouring can compensate so heavy a loss," and
whether it is not to be wished "that painting in oils had never been
invented"?[33]
[Sidenote: _Theorists of ideal beauty._]
Ideal beauty, that curious alliance between God and the subtle outline
traced with pen or graver, that cold academical mysticism, came into
fashion. In Italy (the home of Winckelmann and Mengs, who published
many of their works in Italian) it was much discussed by artists,
antiquaries and connoisseurs. The architect Francesco Milizia professed
himself a follower of "the principles of Sulzer and Mengs";[34]
the Spaniard d'Azara, living in Italy, edited and annotated Mengs,
adding his own definition of beauty: "The union of the perfect and
the pleasing made visible";[35] another Spaniard, Arteaga, one of
the many Jesuit refugees in Italy, wrote a treatise on _Ideal Beauty_
(1789);[36] the Englishman Daniel Webb on coming to Rome and making
the acquaintance of Mengs seized upon the ideas he heard him express
on beauty, collected them and actually published them in a book
anticipating Mengs' own.[37]
[Sidenote: _G. Spalletti and the characteristic._]
The first voice of dissent from this doctrine of ideal beauty was
raised in 1764 by a small circle of Italians who asserted the
characteristic to be the principle of art. As such appears to
be the necessary interpretation of the little _Essay on Beauty_
written by Guiseppe Spalletti in the form of a letter to Mengs,
with whom Spalletti had discussed the subject "in the solitudes of
Grottaferrata," and who had urged him to put all his thoughts in
writing.[38] Its polemical character, though not openly asserted, is
discernible in every page. "Truth in general, conscientiously rendered
by the artist, is the object of Beauty in general. When the soul finds
those characteristics which wholly converge upon the matter which the
work of art claims to represent, it judges that work beautiful. The
same is true of the works of nature: if the soul perceives a man of
fine proportions having the face of a lovely woman, which causes it to
doubt whether the object before it be man or woman, it esteems that man
ugly rather than the reverse, through deficiency of the characteristic
of truth; if this can be said of natural Beauty, how much more can
it be said of the Beauty of art." The pleasure given by Beauty is
intellectual, that is to say, it is the pleasure of apprehending
truth: when confronted by ugly things represented characteristically,
man "delights in having increased his cognitions": Beauty, "with its
property of supplying to the soul likeness, order, proportion, harmony
and variety, provides it with an immense field for the construction
of innumerable syllogisms, and by reasoning in this manner it will
take pleasure in itself, in the object which arouses such pleasure, and
in the feeling of its own perfection." Finally, the beautiful may be
defined as "the inherent modification of the object under observation
which presents it in the inevitably characteristic manner in which it
is bound to appear."[39] In contrast to the fallacious profundity of
Winckelmann and Mengs we welcome the sound good sense of this obscure
Spalletti, upholder of the Aristotelian position against the revived
neo-Platonism of the æstheticians.
[Sidenote: _Beauty and the characteristic: Hirt, Meyer, Goethe._]
Many years went by before a similar rebellion arose in Germany; at
length in 1797 the art-historian Ludwig Hirt, basing his case on
ancient works of art which depicted all things, even things utterly
vulgar and ugly, ventured to deny the view that ideal beauty is the
principle of art, and that expression has only a secondary place, above
which it must not rise for fear of disturbing ideal beauty. For the
ideal he substituted the characteristic, as a principle to be applied
equally to gods, heroes or animals. Character is "that individuality by
which form, movement, signs, physiognomy and expression, local colour,
fight, shade and chiaroscuro are distinguished and represented in the
manner demanded by the object."[40] Another historian of art, Heinrich
Meyer, who started from the position of Winckelmann and went on by
adopting a series of compromises, finally asserting an ideal of trees
and landscape side by side with the ideal of man and various other
animals, tried to find an intermediate position between this doctrine
and Hirt's, in the course of controversy with the latter. And Wolfgang
von Goethe, forgetful of his youthful days when he chanted the praises
of Gothic architecture, returning home from an Italian tour impregnated
with Greece and Rome in 1798, also sought a middle term between Beauty
and Expression; dwelling on the thought of certain characteristic
contents which should supply the artist with forms of beauty to be by
him remodelled and developed into complete beauty. The characteristic
was thus the mere point of departure, and beauty was simply the result
of the artist's elaboration: "we must start from the characteristic"
(says he) "in order to attain the beautiful."[41]
[1] _Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe,_ Paris, 1746; see esp.
part i. ch. 3; part ii. chs. 4, 5; part iii. ch. 3.
[2] See above, p. 110.
[3] _Analysis of Beauty,_ London, 1753 (Ital. trans., Leghorn, 1761).
[4] _Op. cit._ p. 47.
[5] _Op. cit._ p. 57.
[6] _Op. cit._ p. 93.
[7] _Op. cit._ pp. 61, 65.
[8] _Analisi della bellezza,_ p. 91.
[9] _Op. cit._ p. 176.
[10] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful,_ 1756 (Ital. trans., Milan, 1804); cf. the preliminary
discourse on "Taste."
[11] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful,_ part iii. § 18.
[12] _Elements of Criticism,_ 1761, vol. i. introd. and chs. 1-3.
[13] _Elements of Criticism,_ i. ch. 3, pp. 201-202.
[14] _Neue Anthropologie,_ Leipzig, 1790, § 814, and the lectures on
Æsthetic published posthumously in 1836; cf. Zimmermann, _op. cit._ p.
204.
[15] Zimmermann, _op. cit._ pp. 302-309; v. Stein, _Entstehung d. n.
Ästh._ p. 113.
[16] _Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums,_ 1764 (in _Werke,_ Stuttgart,
1847, vol. i.), bk. iv. ch. 2, § 51, p. 131.
[17] _Op. cit._ § 22, pp. 131-132.
[18] _Op. cit._ § 23, p. 132.
[19] _Geschichte,_ § 19, pp. 130-131.
[20] _Op. cit._ bk. iv. ch. ii. § 24.
[21] _Geschichte,_ bk. v. chs. ii. and vi.
[22] Letter of January 2, 1778, _Opere,_ Rome, 1787 (reprinted Milan,
1836), ii. pp. 315-316.
[23] _Opere,_ i. p. 206.
[24] _Riflessioni sulla bellezza e sul gusto della pittura,_ in
_Opere,_ i. pp. 95, 100, 102-103.
[25] _Opere,_ i. p. 197.
[26] _Ibid._ p. 161.
[27] _Ibid._ p. 206.
[28] Laokoon, § 2.
[29] Op. cit. §§ 23, 24.
[30] Hamburg. Dramaturgie (ed. Göring, vols. xi. and xii.), passim,
esp. Nos. 11, 18, 24, 78, 89.
[31] _Laokoon,_ appendix, § 31.
[32] _Op. cit._ §§ 22, 23.
[33] _Op. cit. ad fin._ p. 268.
[34] _Dell' arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i
principi di Sulzer e di Mengs,_ Venice, 1871.
[35] D'Azara, in Mengs, _Opere,_ i. p. 168.
[36] _Investigaciones filosóficas sobre la belleza ideal, considerada
como objeto de todas las artes de imitación,_ Madrid, 1789.
[37] _Ricerche su le bellezze della pittura_ (Ital. trans., Parma,
1804); cf. D'Azara, _Vita del Mengs,_ in _Opere,_ i. p. 27.
[38] _Saggio sopra la bellezza,_ dated "Grottaferrata, July 14, 1764,"
and published at Rome, 1765, anonymously.
[39] _Saggio,_ esp. §§ 3, 12, 15, 17, 19, 34.
[40] _Über das Kunstschöne,_ in the review _Die Horen,_ 1797; cf.
Hegel, _Vorles. ii. Ästh._ i. p. 24; and Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Ästh._
pp. 356-357.
[41] Goethe, _Der Sammler und die Seinigen_ (in _Werke,_ ed. Goedecke,
vol. xxx.)
VIII
IMMANUEL KANT
[Sidenote: _I. Kant._]
Of all these writers, Winckelmann and Mengs, Home and Hogarth, Lessing
and Goethe, none was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: not
even those who like Meier laid claim to the title, nor those who had
some gifts for philosophy like Herder or Hamann. After Vico, the next
European mind of real speculative genius is Immanuel Kant, who now
comes before us in his turn.
[Sidenote: _Kant and Vico._]
That Kant took up the problem of philosophy where Vico laid it down
(not, of course, in a directly historical, but in an ideal, sense) has
already been noted by others.[1] How far he made an advance upon his
predecessor and how far he failed to reach the same level it is not
here our business to inquire; we must confine ourselves strictly to the
consideration of Æsthetic questions.
Summarizing the results of such a consideration, we may say at once
that though Kant holds an immensely important place in the development
of German thought; though the book containing his examination of
æsthetic facts is among his most influential works; and though in
histories of Æsthetic written from the German point of view, which
ignore practically the whole development of European thought from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Kant can pose as the man who
discovered the problem of Æsthetic or solved it or brought it within
sight of solution; yet in an unprejudiced and complete history whose
aim is to take broad views and to consider not the popularity of a
book or the historical importance of a nation but the intrinsic value
of ideas, the judgement passed on Kant must be very different. Like
Vico in the serious tenacity with which he reflected upon æsthetic
facts, more fortunate than he in having a much larger stock of material
gathered from preceding discussion and argument, Kant was at once
unlike and less successful than Vico in that he was unable to attain a
doctrine substantially true, and unable also to give his thoughts the
necessary system and unity.
[Sidenote: _Identity of the concept of art in Kant and Baumgarten._]
In fact, what was Kant's idea of art? Strange as our reply may
seem to those who recollect the explicit and insistent war waged
by him against the school of Wolff, and the concept of beauty as a
perfection confusedly perceived, we must assert that Kant's idea of
art was fundamentally the same as that of Baumgarten and the Wolffian
school.[2] In that school his mind had been trained; he always had a
great respect for Baumgarten whom in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ he
calls "that excellent analyst"; he chose the text of Baumgarten for
two of his University lectures on Metaphysics, and that of Meier for
his lecture on Logic (_Vernunftlehre_). Kant, like them, therefore
considered Logic and Æsthetic (or theory of art) as conjoined sciences.
They were thus described by him in his _Scheme of Lectures_ in 1765,
when he proposed, while expounding the critique of reason, to "throw a
glance at that of taste, that is to say, at Æsthetic, since the rules
of one apply to the other and each throws light upon the other."
[Sidenote: _Kant's "Lectures."_]
In his University lectures he distinguished æsthetic truth from logical
truth in the style of Meier; even citing the example of the beautiful
rosy face of a girl which, when seen distinctly, _i.e._ through a
microscope, ceases to be beautiful.[3] It is æsthetically true (said
he) that a man once dead cannot come to life again, although this
is in opposition to logic and moral truth: it is æsthetically true
that the sun plunges into the sea, but it is false logically and
objectively. To what degree it is necessary to combine logical truth
with æsthetic the learned have never yet been able to decide; not even
the greatest æstheticians. In order to become accessible, logical
concepts must assume æsthetic forms; a garb to be abandoned only in
the rational sciences which seek profundity. Æsthetic certainty is
subjective: it is content with authority, _i.e._ the citation of the
opinions of great men. On account of our weakness, for we are strongly
attached to the sensible, æsthetic perfection often helps us to render
our thoughts distinct. In this, examples and images co-operate;
æsthetic perfection is the vehicle for logical perfection; taste is
the analogue of intellect. There are logical truths which are not
æsthetic truths: and on the other hand we must exclude from abstract
philosophy exclamations and other sentimental commotions proper to the
other truth. Poetry is a harmonious play of thoughts and sensations.
Poetry and eloquence differ in this: in the former, thoughts adapt
themselves to sensations; in the latter the contrary is the case.
In these lectures Kant sometimes taught that poetry is anterior to
eloquence because sensations come before thoughts; and he observed
(perhaps under Herder's influence) that the poetry of Eastern peoples,
lacking concepts, is wanting in unity and taste although rich in
imaginative detail. Poetry formed out of the pure play of sensibility
is doubtless a possibility, _e.g._ love-poems: but true poetry disdains
such productions, concerned as they are with sensations which every one
knows ought to be expelled from our breasts. True poetry must strive
to present virtue and intellectual truth in sensible form, as has been
done by Pope in his _Essay on Man,_ in which he attempts to vivify
poetry by means of reason. On other occasions Kant definitely says that
logical perfection is the basis of every other, æsthetic perfection
being merely an adornment of the logical; something of the latter may
be omitted in order to appeal to the audience, but it must never be
disguised or falsified.[4]
This is Baumgartenism pure and simple; unless we are prepared to look
on these Lectures as representing a pre-critical period of thought,
or an exoteric doctrine superseded eventually by Kant's own original
esoteric ideas in his _Critique of the Judgment_ (1790). Not to open
such a controversy, let us put these Lectures on one side (although
they often throw no little light on the signification of Kantian
phrases and formulæ), and refuse to raise the question what pages
of the _Critique of the Judgment_ are derived from Baumgarten and
Meier; he who reads the works of these disciples of Wolff and passes
immediately to the _Critique of Judgment_ often has the impression that
the atmosphere surrounding him is unchanged. But if the _Critique of
Judgment_ itself be examined without prejudice it will be seen that
Kant always adhered to Baumgarten's conception of art as the sensible
and imaginative vesture of an intellectual concept.
[Sidenote: _Art in the "Critique of Judgment."_]
According to Kant, art is not pure beauty wholly detached from the
concept, it is adherent beauty, which presupposes and attaches
itself to a concept.[5] This is the work of genius, the faculty of
representing æsthetic ideas. An æsthetic idea is "a representation of
the imagination which accompanies a given concept: a representation
conjoined with such truthful representation of particulars as to be
unable to find for it any expression that may mark a determinate
concept, thereby endowing the given concept with something of the
ineffable; a feeling which stimulates the cognitive faculties and
reinforcing the tongue, which is simply the letter, with the spirit."
Genius, then, has two constitutive elements, imagination and intellect;
it consists in "that happy disposition, which no science can teach or
diligence attain, to find ideas for a given concept and, also, to
select the expression by which the subjective commotion it excites
as accompaniment to a concept may be communicated to others." No
concept is adequate to the æsthetic idea, as no representation of the
imagination can ever possibly be adequate to the concept. Examples
of æsthetic attributes are found in the eagle of Jupiter with the
thunderbolt in its claws, and the peacock of the proud Queen of
Heaven: "they do not, like logical attributes, represent that which
is contained in our concepts of the sublimity or majesty of creation,
but something else which gives occasion to the imagination to run
riot over a multitude of kindred representations which make us think
more than we can express in a given concept by means of words, and
give us an æsthetic idea, which serves to this rational idea instead
of a logical representation, precisely with the aim of quickening our
feelings by throwing open to them a view over a vast field of kindred
representations." There are a _modus logicos_ and a _modus æstheticus_
of expressing our thoughts: the first consists in following determinate
principles: the other in the mere feeling of the unity of the
representation.[6] To imagination, to intellect and to spirit (_Geist_)
we must add taste, the link between imagination and intellect.[7] Art
may therefore represent natural ugliness: artistic beauty "is not a
beautiful _thing_ but a beautiful representation of a thing": although
the representation of ugliness has limits varying with the individual
arts (a reminiscence of Lessing and Winckelmann), and an absolute limit
at the disgusting and nauseating, which kill representation itself.[8]
In natural things, too, there is adherent beauty which cannot be judged
by the æsthetic judgement alone but demands a concept. Nature thus
appears as a work of art, though superhuman art: "the teleological
judgement is the basis and condition of the æsthetic." When we say
"this is a beautiful woman," we merely mean that "nature beautifully
represents in the form of this woman her purpose in the construction
of the female body": it is necessary therefore, besides noting simple
form, to aim at a concept, "so that the object may be apprehended
through an æsthetic judgement logically conditioned."[9] By this
means is formed the ideal of beauty in the human face, the expression
of moral life.[10] Kant admits that there may also be artistic
productions without a concept, comparable with the free beauties of
nature, flowers and some birds (parrot, humming-bird, bird of paradise,
etc.): ornamental drawings, cornice-mouldings, musical fantasies
without words, represent nothing, no object reducible to a determined
concept, and must be reckoned among free beauties.[11] But does not
this necessitate their exclusion from true and proper art, from the
operation of genius in which fancy and intellect must both, according
to Kant, have a place?
[Sidenote: _Imagination in Kant's system._]