[25] _Ibid._ and cf. _Saggio sul Petrarca,_ p. 182; also _Scritti
varî,_ i. pp. 209-212, 226.
[26] _Lettres à George Sand,_ Paris, 1884 (Letter of Feb. 2, 1869), p.
81.
[27] See above, p. 363, the judgement of De S. on French criticism.
XVI
ÆSTHETIC OF THE EPIGONI
[Sidenote: _Revival of Herbartian Æsthetic._]
When the cry "Away with metaphysic!" was raised in Germany, and a
furious reaction began against the kind of Walpurgis-night to which
the later Hegelians had reduced the life of science and history, the
disciples of Herbart came to the front and seemed to ask, with an
insinuating air: "What is all this? a rebellion against Idealism and
Metaphysic? why, it is exactly what Herbart wished and undertook all by
himself half a century ago! Here we stand, his legitimate descendants,
and we offer you our services as allies. We shall not find it hard to
agree. Our Metaphysic accords with the atomic theory, our Psychology
with mechanism, and our Ethics and Æsthetic with hedonism." Herbart
himself (had he not died in 1841) would most likely have spumed these
disciples of his who pandered to popularity, cheapened metaphysics and
gave naturalistic interpretations to his reals, his representations,
his ideas, and all his highest conceptions.
With the school thus coming into fashion, the Herbartian Æsthetic
too tried to put on flesh and acquire a pleasing plumpness so as not
to cut too miserable a figure beside the well-nourished _corpora_ of
science launched upon the world by idealists. The feeding-up process
was accomplished by Robert Zimmermann, professor of philosophy at
Prague and later at Vienna, who, after years of laborious effort and
an introductory sample in the shape of an ample history of Æsthetic
(1858), at length produced his _General Æsthetic as Science of Form_
in 1865.[1]
[Sidenote: _Robert Zimmermann._]
This formalistic Æsthetic, born under bad auspices, is a curious example
of servile fidelity in externals combined with internal infidelity.
Starting from unity, or rather from subordination of Ethics and
Æsthetic to a general Æsthetic defined as "a science which treats of
the modes by which any given content may acquire the right to arouse
approval or disapproval" (thereby differing from Metaphysic, science
of the real, and from Logic, science of right thinking), Zimmermann
places such modes in form, that is to say, in the reciprocal relation
of elements. A simple mathematical point in space, a simple impression
of hearing or sight, a simple note, is in fact neither pleasing nor
displeasing: music shows that the judgement of beauty or ugliness
always depends on the relation between two notes at least. Now these
relations, _i.e._ forms universally pleasing, cannot be empirically
collected by induction; they must be developed by deduction. By
the deductive method it can be demonstrated that the elements of
an image, which in themselves are representations, may enter into
relations either according to their force (quantity), or according to
their nature (quality); whence we have two groups--æsthetic forms of
quantity, and æsthetic forms of quality. According to the first, the
strong (large) is pleasing in comparison with the weak (small), and
these latter are displeasing when set beside the former; according
to the other form, that pleases which is substantially identical in
quality (the harmonious), and that displeases which is on the whole
diverse (the discordant).
But the substantial identity must not be pushed to the point of
absolute identity, for in that case the harmony itself would cease to
be. From harmonious form is deduced the pleasure of the characteristic
or expression; for what is the characteristic but a relation of
prevalent identity between the thing itself and its model? But while
similarity prevailing in the distinction produces accord (_Einklang_),
qualitative disharmony is as such disagreeable, and demands a
resolution. (It is easy to detect the sleight of hand with which
Zimmermann first slips the characteristic into the relations of pure
form, thereby entirely altering Herbart's original thought; and how, by
a second trick, he here introduces into pure beauty the variations and
modifications of the beautiful, by the help of the despised Hegelian
dialectic.) If such resolution is effected by the skilful substitution
of something other than the unpleasant image, we shall certainly have
removed the cause of offence and established quietude (not accord:
_Eintracht, nicht Einklang_), but we shall have gained the mere form
of correctness: it is better, then, to supersede this by means of the
true image so as to reach the form of compensation (_Ausgleichung_);
and, when the true image is also pleasing in itself, the final form
of definitive compensation (_abschliessende Ausgleich,_) with which
we exhaust the series of possible forms. And, in conclusion, what is
Beauty? It is a conjunction of all these forms: a model (_Vorbild_)
which has grandeur, plenitude, order, accord, correctness, definitive
compensation; all this appears in a copy (_Nachbild_) in the form of
the characteristic.
Putting on one side the artificial connexion Zimmermann makes between
the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the ironic, the humorous and
the æsthetic forms, notice must be taken (so that we may recognize
into which of the seven heavens he is wafting us) that these general
æsthetic forms concern art equally with nature and morality, whose
individual spheres are differentiated solely by the application of the
general æsthetic forms to particular contents. These forms, applied to
nature, give us natural beauty, the cosmos; applied to representation,
beauty of wit (_Schöngeist_) or imagination; applied to feeling,
the beautiful soul (_schöne Seele_) or taste; applied to the will,
character or virtue. On one side, then, is natural beauty, on the other
human beauty, in which (latter), on one hand, we have the beauty of
representation, that is to say æsthetic fact in the strict sense (art);
on the other, we have the beauty of will, or morality; and between the
two, lastly, we have taste, common to Ethics and Æsthetic. Æsthetic in
the narrow sense, as the theory of beautiful representation, determines
the beauty of representations, divided into the three classes of
the beauty of temporal and spatial connexion (figurative arts); the
beauty of sensitive representation (music); and the beauty of thoughts
(poetry). This tripartition of beauty into figurative, musical and
poetical brings to a conclusion theoretical Æsthetic, the only section
developed by Zimmermann.
[Sidenote: _Vischer versus Zimmermann._]
Zimmermann's work was a polemic against the principal representative
of Hegelian Æsthetic, Vischer, who had little difficulty in defending
his own position and counter-attacking that of his assailant. He
held Zimmermann up to ridicule, for example, in connexion with his
view of symbolism. Zimmermann defined a symbol as the object "round
which beautiful forms adhere." A painter depicts a fox simply for the
sake of painting a part of animal nature. Nothing of the sort: this
is a symbol, because the painter "makes use of fines and colours to
express things other than fines and colours." "You think I'm a fox,"
says the animal in the picture, "but you make a great mistake: I'm a
clothes-peg: I'm an appearance created by the painter with gradations
of grey, white, yellow and red." Even easier was it to make game of
Zimmermann's enthusiastic praises of the æsthetic quality of the sense
of touch. It was a pity, the latter had written, that the pleasures of
this sense were so difficult to attain; since "to touch the back of the
Resting Hercules and the sinuous limbs of the Venus of Melos or the
Barberini Faun would give to the hand a delight comparable only with
that felt by the ear when listening to the majestic fugues of Bach or
the suave melodies of Mozart." Vischer does not seem to be far wrong in
declaring formalistic Æsthetic to be "a grotesque union of mysticism
and mathematics."[2]
[Sidenote: _Hermann Lotze._]
The works of Zimmermann seem to have given satisfaction to nobody
save himself. Even Lotze, by no means an adversary of Herbartianism,
blames him severely in his _History of Æsthetic in Germany_ (1868) and
other writings. Still, Lotze was unable to offer any better substitute
for æsthetic formalism than of a variant of the old idealism. "Can
any one persuade us," he wrote in criticism of the formalists,
"that a spiritual discord expressed by a corresponding discord in
external appearances may have a value equal to that of the harmonious
expression of a harmonious content solely because, in both cases,
the formal relation of accord is respected? Can any one persuade us
that the human form is pleasing solely for its formal stereometric
relations, irrespective of the spiritual life by which it is animated?
In empirical reality the three domains of laws, facts and values
invariably appear as divided; and although they are united in the
Highest Good, in Goodness in itself, in the living Love of a Personal
God, in the Ought which is the basis of Being, our reason is unable to
attain or to know such union. Beauty alone can reveal it to us: it is
in close connexion with the Good and the Holy and reproduces the rhythm
of the divine ordinance and the moral government of the universe.
Æsthetic fact is neither intuition nor concept; it is idea, which
presents the essential of an object in the form of an end referred to
the ultimate end. Art, like beauty, must include the world of values
in the world of forms."[3] The war between the Æsthetic of content and
that of form, having Zimmermann, Vischer and Lotze as protagonists,
reached its culminating point between 1860 and 1870.
[Sidenote: _Efforts to reconcile Æsthetic of form and Æsthetic of
content._]
Several people were in favour of a reconciliation. But the
reconciliations they offered were not the right one, which was at
least glimpsed by a certain young Johann Schmidt, who in his thesis
for doctorate observed (1875) that, with all respect for Zimmermann
and Lotze, it seemed to him they were both wrong in confusing the
various meanings of the word "beauty," and discussed such an absurdity
as a beauty or ugliness of natural objects, that is to say, of things
external to the spirit; that Lotze, following Hegel, added the second
absurdity of an intuitive concept or conceptual intuition: lastly,
that neither of them grasped the fact that the æsthetic problem does
not turn upon the beauty or ugliness of the abstract content or of
form understood as a system of mathematical relations, but with the
beauty or ugliness of representation. Form undoubtedly must exist, but
"concrete form, full of content."[4] These utterances of Schmidt met
with a hostile reception: it is easy (he was told in reply) to identify
beauty with artistic perfection, but the whole crux of the matter lies
in finding whether, beside this perfection, there exists another beauty
dependent on a supreme cosmic or metaphysical principle: otherwise one
is guilty of a naïve _petitio principii_.[5] It was thought better,
therefore, to seek other modes of reconciliation, which consisted
in cooking up an appetizing dish in which a little formalism and a
little contentism were mixed to taste, the latter as a rule giving the
predominant flavour.
Some Herbartians were found in the ranks of the mediating or
conciliatory party. Hardly had Zimmermann's rigid formalism appeared,
when Nahlowsky jumped up to protest that it had never entered the
master's head to exclude content from Æsthetic;[6] but even the ablest
of the school, men such as Volkmann and Lazarus, chose a middle
course.[7] In the opposite camp Carrière,[8] and even Vischer himself
(in a criticism of his own old _Æsthetic_), began to concede a larger
part to the consideration of form; thus for Vischer beauty became
"life appearing harmoniously," which when it appears in space is called
form, and must always possess form, _i.e._ limitation (_Begrenzung_ )
in space and time, measure, regularity, symmetry, proportion, propriety
(these characters constituting its quantitative moments) and harmony
(qualitative moment), which includes variety and contrast and is
therefore the most important characteristic.[9]
[Sidenote: _K. Köstlin._]
A conciliatory Æsthetic in which formalism prevailed was attempted
by Karl Köstlin, a professor at Tübingen and formerly collaborator in
the musical section of the works of Vischer. Köstlin[10] had been
influenced by Schleiermacher, Hegel, Vischer and Herbart, but, truth
to tell, does not seem to have perfectly understood the teaching
of any one of his predecessors. According to him, the æsthetic
object presented three requirements: richness and variety of imagery
(_anregende Gestaltenfülle_), interesting content and beautiful form.
Under the first we recognize, with no little difficulty, a distorted
reflexion of Schleiermacher's "inspiration" (_Begeisterung_).
Interesting content he defined as that which concerns man; that which
he knows or does not know; that which he loves or hates (it is thus
always relative to the individual and the conditions in which he
exists); and he asserted that interest of content is joined to value
of form, that is, he conceived content as a second value, the same
of which we have heard Herbart speak. He also agreed with Herbart
that form is absolute, and that its general character is determined
as being easily perceptible by intuition (_anschaulich_), and by its
power of giving satisfaction, pleasure and delight, in fact, as being
beautiful. Its particular characteristics for Köstlin were, according
to quantity, circumscription, simplicity (_Einheitlichkeit_), extensive
and intensive size, and equilibrium (_Gleichmass_); according to
quality, determination (_Bestimmtheit_), unity (_Einheit_), importance
(_Bedeutung_) extensive and intensive, and harmony. But when Köstlin
sets himself to the empirical verification of his categories, he falls
into hopeless confusion. Greatness is pleasing, but so is smallness;
unity is pleasing, but so is variety; regularity is pleasing, but so,
confound it, is irregularity: uncertainties and contradictions at every
step; he was aware of them and made no effort to conceal them; but they
should have convinced him that the abstraction of "beautiful form,"
whose qualities and quantities he had so laboriously collected, is a
ghostly shape without body, since that alone gives æsthetic pleasure
which fulfils an expressive function. But having illustrated the three
demands of the æsthetic object, Köstlin wasted all his remaining breath
in constructing a kingdom of intuitive imagination in the manner of
Vischer, _i.e._ beauty of organic and inorganic nature; of civil life;
of morality; of religion; of science; of games; of conversations; of
feasts and banquets; and lastly of history, reviewing and passing
æsthetic comment on its three periods, patriarchal, heroic and
historical.
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic of content. M. Schasler._]
Schasler, who had written as vast a history on Æsthetic as Zimmermann's
own, found a starting-point for a movement toward formalism in absolute
idealism, or realism-idealism, as he called it. He began by defining
Æsthetic as "the science of the beautiful and of art" (a single
science ill defined as having two different objects), and proceeded
to justify his unmethodical definition by saying that beauty does not
exist in art alone, nor does art concern itself solely with beauty. The
sphere of Æsthetic he defines as that of intuition (_Anschauung_) in
which knowledge assumes a practical character and will a theoretical:
the sphere of indivisible unity and absolute reconciliation of the
theoretical and practical spirit, in which in a certain sense the
highest human activities are developed. Beauty is the ideal, but the
concrete ideal; this is why there is no ideal of a human body in
abstraction from sex, no ideal of a mammal in general, but only of such
and such species, as of horse or dog, and then only of determinate
kind of horse or dog. Thus by descending from the more to the less
abstract genus Schasler vainly attempted to reach the concrete, which
inevitably escaped his grasp. In art we pass from the typical, which
is natural beauty, to the characteristic, which is the typical of
human feeling; hence we can frame the ideal of an old woman, a beggar
or a ruffian. The characteristic of art is in closer relationship
to the ugly than to the beautiful in nature. On this head (passing
over the remainder, which is on familiar lines) it is well to notice
that Schasler has a bias towards that version of the romaunt of Sir
Purebeauty which ascribes the birth of the "modifications of Beauty" to
the influence of the Ugly.[11] "Although," he writes, "the thought may
disturb our minds, it must not be forgotten that were there no world
of ugliness there could be no world of beauty; for it is only when
the Ugly stirs up empty abstract Beauty, that it begins to combat the
enemy and thus to produce concrete Beauty."[12] He even succeeded in
converting Vischer himself, the chief supporter of the other version:
"Formerly I had been accustomed to think in the old-fashioned Hegelian
style," Vischer confesses, "that unrest, fermentation and strife dwelt
in the essence of Beauty; that the Idea prevails and thrusts the
image forth into the infinite; so arises the Sublime; that the image,
offended in its finitude, makes war on the Idea; whence arises the
Comic; this finished the struggle; Beauty returned to itself from the
conflict of the two moments, and was created." But now, he continues,
"I must acknowledge that Schasler is right, and so are his predecessors
Weisse and Ruge: the Ugly has a hand in the matter; this is the
principle of movement, the ferment of differentiation: without such
leaven we never reach the special forms of Beauty, for each single one
presupposes' the Ugly."[13]
[Sidenote: _Ed. von Hartmann._]
Closely allied to that of Schasler is the Æsthetic of Eduard von
Hartmann (1890), preceded by a historical treatise on _German Æsthetic
since Kant_[14] wherein with meticulous, critical and polemical study
he upholds the definition of Beauty as "the appearance of the Idea"
(_das Scheinen der Idee_). Inasmuch as he insisted on appearance
(_Schein_) as the necessary characteristic of Beauty, Hartmann held
himself justified in naming his Æsthetic the "Æsthetic of Concrete
Idealism," and in ranging himself alongside Hegel, Trahndorff,
Schleiermacher, Deutinger, Oersted, Vischer, Meising, Carrière
and Schasler, against the abstract idealism of Schelling, Solger,
Schopenhauer, Krause, Weisse and Lotze, all of whom, by placing
beauty in the supersensible idea, overlooked the sensory element and
reduced it to the rank of a mere accessory.[15] By his insistence on
the idea as the other indispensable and determining element, Hartmann
proclaimed himself as opposed to the Herbartian formalism. Beauty is
truth; neither historical, scientific nor reflective, but metaphysical
or idealistic, the very truth of Philosophy: "in proportion as Beauty
is in opposition to every science and to realistic truth, so much
nearer is it to Philosophy and metaphysical truth": "Beauty, with its
own peculiar efficacy, remains the prophet of idealistic truth in an
unbelieving age that abhors Metaphysic and recognizes no value in
anything but realistic truth." Æsthetic truth, which leaps immediately
from subjective appearance to ideal essence, is lacking in the control
and method possessed by philosophical truth; in compensation, however,
she possesses the fascinating power of conviction, the sole property of
sensible intuition, and unattainable by gradual or reflected mediation.
The higher Philosophy soars, the less does it need the gradual passage
through the world of the senses and of science, and the slighter
becomes the distance separating Philosophy and Art. The latter, for
its part, will be well advised to start on its journey towards the
ideal world as Bædeker's handbooks counsel the intending traveller,
"with as little luggage as possible"; "not overloading herself with a
weight which paralyses the wings and is made up of unnecessary and
indifferent trifles,"[16] Logical character, the microcosmic idea,
the unconscious are immanent in beauty; by means of the unconscious,
intellectual intuition operates in it,[17] and, from its being rooted
in the unconscious, it is a Mystery.[18]
[Sidenote: _Hartmann and the theory of Modifications._]
In his employment of the exciting or reactionary influence of the
Ugly, Hartmann exceeded Schasler himself. Lowest among the degrees of
Beauty, indeed forming the lower limit of æsthetic fact, lies sensuous
pleasure, which is unconscious formal beauty; its first true degree
is formal beauty of the first order, or the mathematically pleasing
(unity, variety, symmetry, proportion, the golden section, etc.); its
second degree is formal beauty of the second order, the dynamically
pleasing; its third is formal beauty of the third order, the passive
teleological, as in the case of utensils or machinery. Indeed it may
here be noted that among machines and utensils, on a level with jars,
plates and cups, Hartmann placed language: it is a dead thing, said
he; receiving the appearances of life (_Scheinleben_)[19] only at the
very instant of utterance. Language a "dead thing," an "utensil" for
the philosopher of the Unconscious, in the land of Humboldt, with a
Steinthal still living! There follow, as formal beauty of the fourth
order, the active teleological or living, and as formal beauty of the
fifth order, conformity to species (_das Gattungsmässige)_: lastly
and above all, since the individual idea is superior to the specific,
is beauty concrete beauty or the microcosmic individual, which is no
longer formal, but beauty of content. As is to be expected, the passage
from lower to Higher degrees is made by means of the Ugly: nobody has
laboured like Hartmann to recount in detail the services rendered by
Ugliness to Beauty. From ugliness, in the form of the destruction of
the beauty of equality, arises symmetry: from ugliness in the case of
the circle arises the ellipse; the beauty of a waterfall tumbling over
rocks is caused by the mathematically ugly; destruction, that is to
say, of a fall in a parabolic curve; beauty of spiritual expression is
achieved through the introduction of an ugliness relative to fleshly
perfection. Beauty of a higher degree is founded on ugliness at a
lower degree. When the highest degree is reached, that of individual
beauty beyond which there can be nothing, even then elemental ugliness
continues its work of beneficent irritation. The later phases thus
produced are well known to us as the famous Modifications of the
Beautiful: in this section also, nobody is so copious or detailed as
Hartmann. He certainly does admit, side by side with simple or pure
beauty, certain modifications free from conflict, such as the sublime
or graceful; but the more important modifications can arise only
through conflict. There are four cases, because the resolution must
be either immanent, logical, transcendent or combined: immanent in
the idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, the cheerful, the moving, the
elegiac; logical in the comic in all its varieties; transcendent in the
tragic; combined in the humorous with the tragi-comic and its other
varieties. When none of these resolutions is possible, there arises
ugliness; when an ugliness of content is expressed by an ugliness of
form, we have the maximum of ugliness, the real æsthetic devil.
[Sidenote: _Metaphysical Æsthetic in France. C. Levêque._]