school in Germany; he inspires terror by the mass of his literary
production, like many others of the school, who seem to accept it as
a dogma that art cannot be dealt with except in several volumes a
thousand pages long. Those who are not afraid of giants and are able
to attack this sort of Æsthetic, will find it a fat good-humoured
Magog full of vulgar prejudices, and so constituted that, despite his
apparent strength, a little blow will kill him.
In other countries metaphysical Æsthetic had few followers. In France
the celebrated competition of the Academy of Moral and Political
Sciences in 1857 crowned with their approval and presented to the
world the _Science of Beauty_ by Levêque;[20] of which nobody now
thinks or speaks, only remembering the author (who attitudinized
as a disciple of Plato) by his eight characteristics of Beauty,
derived by him from examination of a lily. The eight characteristics
were as follows:--sufficient size of form, unity, variety, harmony,
proportion, normal vivacity of colour, grace and propriety; ultimately
reducible to two, size and order. As supplementary proof of the truth
of his theory, Levêque applied it to three beautiful things: a child
playing with its mother, a symphony of Beethoven and the life of a
philosopher (Socrates). Really, it is somewhat difficult (says one of
his fellow-spiritualists, venturing to comment on this doctrine though
speaking with the utmost deference) to imagine what may be the normal
vivacity of colour in the life of a philosopher.[21] Translations and
explanatory articles by Charles Bénard[22] and books by various writers
belonging to French Switzerland (Töpffer, Pictet, Cherbuliez) were not
successful in popularizing the German systems of Æsthetic in France.
[Sidenote: _In England. J. Ruskin._]
England showed even less disposition to interest herself, although
John Ruskin may have some claim to be considered a metaphysical
æsthetician with a distinctive national stamp. But it is difficult
to treat of Ruskin in a history of science, for his temperament was
wholly opposed to the scientific. His disposition was that of the
artist, impressionable, excitable, voluble, rich in feeling; a dogmatic
tone and the appearance of theoretical form veil, in his exquisite
and enthusiastic pages, a texture of dreams and fancies. The reader
who recalls those pages will regard as irreverent any detailed and
prosaic review of Ruskin's æsthetic thought, which must inevitably
reveal its poverty and incoherence. Suffice it to say that, following
a finalistic, mystical intuition of nature, he considered beauty as a
revelation of divine intentions, the seal "God sets on his works, even
upon the smallest." For him the faculty which perceives the beautiful
is neither intellect nor sensibility, but a particular feeling which
he names the theoretic faculty. Natural beauty, which reveals itself
to a pure heart when contemplating any object untouched and unspoiled
by the hand of man, asserts itself for this reason as immeasurably
superior to any work of art. Ruskin was too hasty in analysis to
understand the complicated psychological and æsthetic process which
went on in his mind when he was moved to an artist's ecstasy by
contemplating some humble natural object such as a bird's nest or a
flowing rivulet.[23]
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic in Italy._]
In Italy the Abate Tornasi wrote a half-Hegelian, half-Catholic
Æsthetic, wherein the beautiful is identified with the second person of
the Trinity, the Word made man;[24] by this means he hoped to raise a
bank of opposition against the liberal criticism of De Sanctis, whom he
considered, from the sublime height of his own philosophy, as "a subtle
grammarian." Combined Giobertian and German, especially Hegelian,
influence produced several works of secondary importance; De Meis
developed at length the thesis of the death of Art in the historical
world.[25] Somewhat later Gallo also treated Æsthetic from the Hegelian
point of view,[26] and others repeated, nearly word for word, the
doctrines of Schasler and Hartmann on the overcoming of the Ugly.[27]
[Sidenote: _Antonio Tari and his lectures._]
The only genuine Italian teacher of metaphysical Æsthetic according
to the Germans was Antonio Tari, who lectured on this very subject
in Naples University from 1861 to 1884. He had a meticulous and
superstitiously minute knowledge of everything that issued from German
printing-presses, and was the author of an _Ideal Æsthetic_ as well
as essays on style, taste, serious work and play (_Spiel,_) music and
architecture, wherein he tried to keep the mean between the idealism
of Hegel and the formalism of Herbart:[28] his lectures on Æsthetic
attracted huge throngs and were one of the regular sights in the noisy,
crowded Neapolitan university. Tari divided his treatment under three
heads, Æsthesinomy, Æsthesigraphy and Æsthesipraxis, corresponding to
the Metaphysic of the beautiful, to the doctrine of beauty in nature,
and to that of beauty in art; like the German idealists, he defined the
æsthetic sphere as intermediate between the theoretical and practical:
he says emphatically that "in the world of spirit the temperate zone
is equidistant from the glacial, peopled by the Esquimaux of thought,
and from the torrid, peopled by the giants of action." He pulled Beauty
from her throne, substituting in her stead the Æsthetic, of which
Beauty is but an initial moment, the simple "beginning of æsthetic
life, eternal mortality, flower and fruit in one," whose successive
moments are represented by the Sublime, the Comic, the Humorous, and
the Dramatic.
[Sidenote: _Æsthesigraphy._]
But the most attractive part of Tari's lectures was that devoted
to Æsthesigraphy, subdivided into Cosmography, Physiography and
Psychography, in the course of which he frequently quoted Vischer with
great devotion; "the great Vischer" as he called him, in imitation of
whom he constructed his own "æsthetic physics," brightening it with
much varied erudition and enlivening it with quaint comparisons. Is
he speaking of beauty in inorganic nature--water, for example? He
says in his fanciful manner, "When water ripples in the sunshine, in
that act it has its smile; it has its frown in the breaking wave, its
caprice in the fountain, its majestic fury in the foam." Is he speaking
of geological configuration? "The vale, cradle perchance of the
human race, is idyllic; the plain, monotonous but fat, is didactic."
Of metals? "Gold is born great; iron, the apotheosis of human toil,
achieves greatness; the former boasts of its cradle when it does not
bring it to dishonour; the latter causes it to be forgotten." He looked
on vegetable life as a dream, repeating Herder's fine saying that the
plant is "the new-born babe that hangs sucking upon the breast of
mother nature." He divided vegetables into three types: foliaceous,
ramified and umbelliferous: "the foliaceous type," he says, "attains
gigantic proportions in the tropics, where the queen of monocotyledons,
the Palm-tree, represents despotism, the human scourge of those desert
regions. Of that solitary pinnacle, all crown, the negro may well be
identified as the reptile that crawls round its base." Amongst flowers,
the carnation is "symbol of betrayal, by reason of the variegation of
its colours and its deeply-dissected petals"; the celebrated comparison
by Ariosto of a rose with a young girl is permissible only when the
flower is still in bud, because "when it has unfolded its petals,
disdaining the protection of thorns, displaying itself in all the pomp
of its full colour, and boldly asking to be plucked by any hand, then
it is woman, all woman, to call it by no harsher name, giving pleasure
without feeling it, simulating love by its perfume and modesty by the
crimson of its petals." He searches for and comments upon analogies
between certain fruits and certain flowers; between the strawberry, for
instance, and the violet; between the orange and the rose; he admired
"the luxuriant spirals and the delicate architecture of a bunch of
grapes": the mandarin-orange reminded him of the nobleman _qui s'est
donné la peine de naître_; the fig, on the contrary, was the great
country bumpkin, "rough, rude, but profitable." In the animal kingdom,
the spider symbolized primitive isolation; the bee, monasticism; the
ant, republicanism. He noted, with Michelet, that the spider is a
living paralogism; it cannot feed itself without its web, and it cannot
spin its web without feeding. Fish he condemns as un-æsthetic: "they
are of stupid appearance with their wide--open eyes and incessant
gaping, which makes them look voraciously gluttonous." Not so with
amphibians, for which he entertains a sympathy: the frog and the
crocodile, "alpha and omega of the family, start from the comical, or
even the scurrilous, and attain the sublimity of the horrid." Birds
are especially æsthetic by nature, "possessing the three most genial
attributes of a living being: love, song, and flight"; moreover, they
present contrasts and antitheses: "opposite to the eagle, queen of the
skies, stands the swan, the mild king of the marshes; the libertine
vainglorious cock has its contrast in the humble uxorious turtle-dove;
the magnificent peacock is balanced by the rude and rustic turkey."
Amongst mammals, nature compensates for defects of pure beauty by
dramatic value; if they cannot throw their song into the air, they
have the rudiments of speech; if they have no variegated, myriad-hued
plumage, they have dark, heavily-marked colouring, instinct with life;
if they cannot fly, they have many other modes of powerful progression;
and, the higher they go, the more do they attain individuality in
appearance and life. "The epic of animal life is comedy in the donkey,
_iniquae mentis asellus_; idyl in the great wild beasts; downright
tragedy in the Kaffir bull, that cloven-hoofed Codrus, who gives
himself voluntarily to the lion in order to save the herd." As amongst
birds, so amongst beasts attractive contrasts are to be made:--the lamb
and the kid seem to typify Jesus and the devil; dog and cat, abnegation
and egoism; hare and fox, the foolish simpleton and crafty villain.
Many quaint and subtle observations does Tari let fall on human beauty
and the relative beauty of the sexes, allowing the female to have
charm, not beauty: "bodily beauty is poise, and woman's body is so
ill-poised that she falls easily when running; made for child-bearing,
she has knock-kneed legs, adapted to support the large pelvis; her
shoulders have a curve compensating the convexity of the chest." He
describes the various parts of the body: "curly hair expresses physical
force; straight hair, moral"; "blue, napoleonic eyes have sometimes
a depth like the sea; green eyes have a melancholy fascination; grey
eyes are wanting in individuality; black eyes are the most intensely
individual"; "a lovely mouth has been best described by Heine; two lips
evenly matched; to lovers the mouth will rather seem a shell whose
pearl is the kiss."[29]
How could we better take a smiling leave of metaphysical Æsthetic in
the German manner than by recording this quaint vernacular version
of it made by Tari, that kindly little old man, "the last jovial
high-priest of an arbitrary and confused Æsthetic"?[30]
[1] _Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft,_ Vienna, 1865; see
also Meyer's _Konversations-Lexikon_ (4th ed.), art. _Ästhetik,_ by
Zimmermann.
[2] _Kritische Gänge,_ vi., Stuttgart, 1873, pp. 6, 21, 32.
[3] _Geschichte d. Ästh. i. Deutschl., passim,_ esp. pp. 27, 97,
100, 125, 147, 232. 234, 265, 286, 293, 487; _Grundzüge der Ästh._
(posth., Leipzig, 1884), §§ 8-13; and two juvenile works, _Üb. d.
Begriff d. Schönheit,_ Göttingen, 1845, and _Üb. d. Bedingungen d.
Kunstschönheit,_ Göttingen, 1847.
[4] _Leibniz u. Baumgarten,_ Halle, 1875, pp. 76-102.
[5] G. Neudecker, _Studien z. Gesch. d. dtschn. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp.
54-55.
[6] Polemic in _Zeitschr. f. exacte Philos._ (Herbartian organ) for
1862-1863, ii. p. 309 _seqq.,_ ii. p. 384 _seqq,_ iv. pp. 26 _seqq.,_
199 _seqq.,_ 300 _seqq._
[7] Volkmann, _Lehrbuch der Psychologie,_ 3rd ed., Cöthen, 1884-1885.
Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele,_ 1856-1858.
[8] Moriz Carrière, _Ästhetik,_ 1889 (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1885).
[9] _Kritische Gänge,_ v., Stuttgart, 1866, p. 59.
[10] _Ästhetik,_ Tübingen, 1869.
[11] See above, pp. 348-349.
[12] _Ästhetik,_ Leipzig, 1886, i. pp. 1-16, 19-24, 70; ii. p. 52:
cf. _Kritische Gesch. der Ästhetik,_ pp. 795, 963, 1041-1044, 1028,
1036-1038.
[13] _Kritische Gänge,_ v. pp. 112-115.
[14] _Die dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ 1886 (Part i. of _Ästh._).
[15] _Philosophie des Schönen_ (Part ii. of _Ästh._), Leipzig, 1890,
pp. 463-464; cf. _Deutsche Ästh. s. K._ pp. 357-362.
[16] _Phil. d. Sch._ pp. 434-437.
[17] _Op. cit._ pp. 115-116.
[18] _Op. cit._ pp. 197-198.
[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 150-152.
[20] Ch. Levêque, _La Science du beau,_ Paris, 1862.
[21] E. Saisset, _L'Esthétique française_ (in app. to vol. _L'Âme et la
vie,_ Paris, 1864), pp. 118-120.
[22] In _Revue philosophique,_ vols. i. ii. x. xii. xvi.
[23] J. Ruskin, _Modern Painters_ (4th ed., London, 1891); cf. De la
Sizeranne, pp. 112-278.
[24] Vito Fornari, _Arte del dire,_ Naples, 1866--1872; cf. vol. iv.
[25] A. C. De Meis, _Dopo la laurea,_ Bologna, 1868-1869.
[26] Nic. Gallo, _L' idealismo e la letteratura,_ Rome, 1880; _La
scienza dell' arte,_ Turin, 1887.
[27] _E.g._ F. Masci, _Psicologia del comico,_ Naples, 1888.
[28] _Estetica ideale,_ Naples, 1863; _Saggi di critica_ (collected
posthumously), Trani, 1886.
[29] A. Tari, _Lezioni di estetica generale,_ collected by C.
Scamaccia-Luvara, Naples, 1884; _Elementi di estetica,_ compiled by G.
Tommasuolo, Naples, 1885.
[30] V. Pica, _L'Arte dell' Estremo Oriente,_ Turin, 1894, p. 13.
XVII
ÆSTHETIC POSITIVISM AND NATURALISM
[Sidenote: _Positivism and Evolutionism._]
The ground lost by idealistic metaphysic was conquered in the latter
half of the nineteenth century by positivistic and evolutionary
metaphysic, a confused substitution of natural for philosophical
sciences, and a hotch-potch of materialistic and idealistic, mechanical
and theological theories, the whole crowned with scepticism and
agnosticism. Characteristic of this trend of opinion was its contempt
of history, especially the history of philosophy; which prevented its
ever making that contact with the unbroken and age-long efforts of
thinkers without which it is idle to hope for fertile work and true
progress.
[Sidenote_Æsthetic of H. Spencer._]
Spencer (the greatest positivist of his day), whilst discussing
Æsthetic, actually did not know that he was dealing with problems for
all, or almost all, of which solutions had been already proposed and
discussed. At the beginning of his essay on the _Philosophy of Style,_
he remarks innocently: "I believe nobody has ever sketched a general
theory of the art of writing" (in 1852!); and in his _Principles of
Psychology_ (1855), touching the æsthetic feelings he remarks that
he has some recollection of observations concerning the relation of
art and play made "by some German author whose name I cannot recall"
(Schiller!). Had his pages on Æsthetic been written in the seventeenth
century, they would have won a low position amongst the early crude
attempts at æsthetic speculation; in the nineteenth century, one knows
not how to judge them. In his essay on _The Useful and the Beautiful_
(1852-1854), he shows how the useful becomes beautiful when it ceases
to be useful, illustrating this by a ruined castle useless for the
purposes of modern life, but a suitable scene for picnic parties and
a good subject for a picture to hang on a parlour wall; which leads
him to identify the principle of evolution from the useful to the
beautiful as contrast. In another essay on the _Beauty of the Human
Face_ (1852) he explains this beauty as a sign and effect of moral
goodness; in that on _Grace_ (1852) he considers the sentiment of the
graceful as sympathy for power in conjunction with agility. In the
_Origin of Architectural Styles_ (1852-1854) he discovers the beauty of
architecture as consisting in uniformity and symmetry, an idea which
is aroused in a man looking at the bodily equilibrium of the higher
animals or, as in Gothic architecture, by analogy with the vegetable
kingdom; in his essay on _Style,_ he places the cause of stylistic
beauty in economy of effort; in his _Origin and Function of Music_
(1857) he theorizes on music as the natural language of the passions,
adapted to increase sympathy between men.[1] In his _Principles of
Psychology,_ he maintains that the æsthetic feelings arise from the
overflow of exuberant energy in the organism, and distinguishes
various degrees of them, from simple sensation to that accompanied
by representative elements, and so on until perception is reached,
with more complex elements of representation, then emotion, and, last
of all, that state of consciousness which transcends sensation and
perception. The most perfect form of æsthetic feeling is attained
by the coincidence of the three orders of pleasures, a coincidence
produced by the full action of their respective faculties with the
least possible subtraction due to the painful effect of excessive
activity. But it is very rarely that we experience æsthetic excitement
of this kind and strength; almost all works of art are imperfect
because they contain a mixture of artistic with anti-artistic effects;
now the technique is unsatisfactory, now the emotion is of a low
order. These works of art which are universally admired, are found
when measured by this criterion to deserve a lower place than that
accorded them by popular taste. "Beginning with the Greek epic and
the representations of analogous legends given by their sculptors,
tending to excite egoistic or ego-altruistic sentiments, and passing
through the literature of the Middle Ages, equally impregnated with
inferior sentiments, then through the works of the old masters, whose
ideas and sentiments seldom compensate for the displeasing effect they
inflict on our senses overrefined in study of appearances; and coming
at last to the vaunted works of modern art, excellent for technical
execution in many cases but deplorable for the emotions they arouse
and express, such as Gérôme's battle-pieces, alternately sensual and
sanguinary;--they are all far off indeed from the qualities deemed
desirable, from the artistic forms corresponding to the highest forms
of æsthetic feeling."[2] These last critical denunciations, like the
theories noticed above, are mere substitutions of one word for another;
"facility" for "grace"; "economy" for "beauty," and so on. Indeed,
when one tries to define the exact philosophical position of Spencer,
one can only possibly say that he wavers between sensationalism and
moralism, and is never for a moment conscious of art as art.
[Sidenote: _Physiologists of Æsthetic. Grant Allen, Helmholtz, and
others._]
The same oscillation is noticeable in other English writers such as
Sully and Bain, in whom, however, we find more familiarity with works
of art.[3] In his numerous essays and in _Physiological Æsthetics_
(1877), Grant Allen collected a great many records of physiological
experiments, all of which may be of supreme value to physiology, for
aught we know to the contrary, but most assuredly are worthless from
the point of view of Æsthetic. He keeps to the distinction between
necessary or vital activity and the superfluous or that of play, and
defines æsthetic pleasure as "the subjective concomitant of the normal
sum of activity, not connected directly with the vital functions, in
the terminal peripheric organs of the cerebrospinal nervous system."[4]
Physiological processes considered as causes of pleasure in art are
presented under other aspects by later investigators, who assert that
such pleasure arises not only "from the activity of the visual organs
and the muscular systems associated with them, but also from the
participation of some of the more important functions of the organism,
as for instance breathing, circulation of the blood, equilibrium and
internal muscular accommodation." Art, then, indubitably originated
in "a prehistoric man who was habitually a deep-breather, having
no call to rearrange his natural habits when scratching lines on
bones or in mud and taking pains to draw them regularly spaced."[5]
Physical-Æsthetic researches were pursued in Germany by Helmholtz,
Brücke and Stumpf,[6] who generally confined themselves to the narrower
field of optics and acoustics, giving descriptions of the physical
processes of artistic technique and the conditions to which pleasurable
visual and auditive impressions must conform, without claiming to merge
Æsthetic in Physics, but even pointing out the divergences between
them. Degenerate Herbartians hastened to disguise in physiological
terms the metaphysical forms and relations of which their master had
spoken, and to coquet with the hedonism of the naturalists.
[Sidenote: _Method of the natural sciences in Æsthetic._]
The superstitious cult of natural sciences was often accompanied (as is
frequently the fate of superstition) by a sort of hypocrisy. Chemical,
physical and physiological laboratories became Sybilline grottoes,
resounding with the questions of credulous inquirers concerning the
profoundest problems of the human spirit; and many of those who were
really conducting their inquiries on inherently philosophic principles
pretended or deluded themselves into believing that they followed the
Method of Natural Science. A proof of this illusion or pretence is
Hippolyte Taine's _Philosophy of Art_[7]
[Sidenote: _H. Taine's Æsthetic._]
"If by studying the art of various peoples and various epochs," says
Taine, "we could define the nature and establish the conditions of
the existence of each art, we should have arrived at a complete
explanation of the fine arts and of art in general, _i.e._ at what
is called an Æsthetic." A historical Æsthetic, not a dogmatic, which
fixes characters and indicates laws "like Botany, and studies with
equal attention orange and ivy, pine and birch; indeed it is a sort of
botanical science applied to the works of man instead of to plants";
an Æsthetic which shall follow "the general movement which tends
daily more and more to join the moral to the natural sciences and by
extending to the former the principles, the safeguards and the rules of
the latter, enables both to attain the same security and maintain the
same progress."[8] The naturalistic prelude is followed by definitions
and doctrines indistinguishable from those offered by philosophers
whose infallibility is not guaranteed by scientific methods, indeed,
from those of the wildest of such philosophers. For, says Taine, art
is imitation, an imitation so carried out as to render sensible the
essential character of objects; the essential character being "a
quality from which all other qualities, or many others, are derived and
follow unalterably from it." The essential character of a lion, for
example, is to be "a great carnivore"; this determines the formation of
all its limbs; the essential character of Holland is to be "a country
formed by alluvial soil." This is why art is not restricted to objects
existing in reality, but is able, as in architecture or in music, to
represent essential characters without natural objects to correspond.[9]
[Sidenote: _Taine's metaphysic and moralism._]