alluviality differ, save perhaps in extravagance of example, from the
"types" and "ideas" which intellectualiste or metaphysical Æsthetic
had always considered as the proper content of art? Taine himself
clears away every doubt in the matter by explicitly stating that "this
character is what philosophers call the 'essence of things,' in virtue
of which they affirm that the aim and end of art is to make manifest
the essence of things"; he adds that, for his part, he "refuses to
make use of the word 'essence' as being a technical term":[10] of the
word itself, maybe; not of the concept for which it stands. There are
two ways (says Taine, for all the world as though he were a Schelling)
leading to the higher life of man, to contemplation: the way of
science and the way of art: "the former investigates the causes and
fundamental laws of reality, and expresses them in exact formulæ and
abstract terms: the latter makes manifest these causes and laws, not in
dry definitions inaccessible to the vulgar, and intelligible only to
the select few, but in a sensible manner, appealing not merely to the
reason but to the heart and senses of the most commonplace man; it has
the power of being both elevated and popular, of manifesting what is
most noble and elevated, and of manifesting it to every one."[11]
For Taine, as for the Hegelian æstheticians, works of art are arranged
in a scale of values; so that, having begun by condemning as absurd
every judgement of taste (every one to his taste[12]), he ends by
asserting that "personal taste has no value whatever," and that some
common measure should be abstracted and set up as a standard of
progress and retrogression, ornamentation and degeneracy; a standard
by which to approve and disapprove, praise and blame.[13] The scale of
values set up by him is twofold or threefold, in the first instance
it turns on the degree of importance of the character, _i.e._ the
greater or less generality in idea, and the degree of beneficent effect
(_degré de bienfaisance_), _i.e._ the greater or less moral value of
the representation (two grades which are aspects of one single quality,
viz. power, considered first for its own sake and then in its connexion
with others): in the second instance upon the degree of convergence of
effects, _i.e._ the fulness of expression, the harmony between idea
and form.[14] This intellectualistic, moralistic, rhetorical doctrine
is interrupted now and then by the usual naturalistic protests: "We
shall, according to our custom, study this question in the manner of
the natural scientist; that is to say methodically, by analysis; hoping
to raise not merely a song of praise, but a code of laws," etc.;[15] as
though that sufficed to alter the substance of the method adopted and
the doctrine expounded. Taine finally gave himself over to dialectical
treatments and solutions, and asserted that in the primitive period
of Italian art, in the pictures of Giotto, we have soul without body
(thesis); under the Renaissance, in Verrocchio's pictures, body without
soul (antithesis); in the sixteenth century, in Raphæl, there is
harmony of expression and anatomy, soul and body (synthesis).[16]
[Sidenote: _G. T. Feckner. Inductive Æsthetic._]
The same protests and similar methods are to be found in the works of
Gustav Theodor Fechner. In his _Introduction to Æsthetic_ (1876),
Fechner claims to "abandon the attempt at conceptual determination
of the objective essence of beauty," since he desires to compose not
a metaphysical Æsthetic from above (_von oben_), but an inductive
Æsthetic from below (_von unten)_ and to achieve clearness, not
sublimity; metaphysical Æsthetic should bear the same relation to
inductive, as the Philosophy of Nature to Physics.[17] Proceeding
on inductive lines, he discovers a long series of æsthetic laws or
principles: the æsthetic threshold; assistance or increment; unity in
variety; absence of contradictions; clarity; association; contrast;
consequence; conciliation; the correct mean; economic use; persistency;
change; measure; and so on without end. This chaos of concepts he
expounds with a chapter apiece, pleased and proud to show himself so
highly scientific and so wholly inconclusive.
[Sidenote: _Experiments._]
Next he describes the experiments he can recommend to his readers.
They are of this type. Take ten rectangular pieces of white cardboard
of fairly equal area (say ten square inches), but with sides variously
proportioned from a ratio of 1:1 to one of 2:5, including the ratio
of the golden section, 21:34; mix all these together on a black table
and collect persons of every kind and character, but all belonging
to the educated classes, and applying the method of choice ask these
people first to free their minds of all questions as to a particular
use and then to pick out the pieces of cardboard which give them the
highest sensation of pleasure and those which inspire them with the
strongest feelings of disgust; the answers to be most carefully noted,
keeping male and female subjects apart, and tabulated. Then see what
follows. Fechner admits that the chosen cardboard-pickers often made
reservations when questioned by himself, not knowing (very naturally)
how to tell whether they liked a shape or disliked it without referring
it to a definite use; sometimes they refused point-blank to make any
selection at all; and they almost always seemed vague and perplexed in
mind and generally, when submitted to a second test, answered in a way
totally different from the first. Still, we all know that errors cancel
out; and anyhow the tabulations showed that the highest sensations
of delight were aroused not by the square, but by rectangular forms
most nearly approaching the square, an enthusiastic rush being made
for the proportion 21:34.[18] This method of selection received an
extraordinarily felicitous definition; it was known as "an average of
arbitrary judgements by an arbitrary number of persons arbitrarily
selected."[19] Fechner also informs us (always in tabular form) of the
result of a statistical inquiry of his own, by means of countless heaps
of catalogues and gallery-guides, as to the dimensions and shapes of
pictures in relation to the subjects they depict.[20]
[Sidenote: _Trivial nature of his ideas on Beauty and Art._]
Nevertheless, when he tries to tell us what beauty is, he falls back
on using--whether well or ill--the old speculative method, which he
prefaces with the remark that for him the concept of beauty is "merely
an expedient in conformity with linguistic usage for indicating
briefly the link which unites the prevailing conditions of immediate
pleasure."[21] He distinguishes three meanings of the word "beauty":
first, in a broad sense, the pleasing in general: secondly, in a
narrow sense, a higher pleasure, but still sensuous: thirdly, in the
narrowest sense, true beauty, which "not only pleases, but has the
right of pleasing, possesses value in pleasing"; in it are united the
concepts of beauty (the pleasing) and of goodness.[22] Beauty, in fact,
is that which must please objectively and as such it corresponds with
the good of action. "The Good," says Fechner, "is like a serious man,
the capable organiser of his whole domestic life, sagaciously weighing
the present and future, setting himself to extract the greatest benefit
from both. Beauty is his florid spouse, careful of the present and
mindful of her husband's wishes. The Pleasing is the baby, all senses
and play: the Useful is the servant who puts his hands at his master's
disposal and is given bread solely in accordance with his deserts.
Truth, lastly, is the preacher and teacher to the household; preacher
in matters of faith, teacher in those of learning: he gives an eye to
the Good and a helping hand to the Useful, and holds up a looking-glass
to Beauty."[23] When speaking of art, he sums up all essential laws or
rules into the following: (1) art chooses a valuable or, at any rate,
an interesting, idea for representation: (2) it expresses the idea in
sensible material in the manner most suitable to its contents: (3) from
amongst the various means at its disposal, it selects those which in
themselves are more pleasing than the others: (4) the same procedure
is observed in all particulars: (5) in the event of conflict between
these rules, one is made to give way to another in such a way that the
greatest possible pleasure and that of highest value is attained (_das
grösstmögliche und werthvollste Gefallen_).[24] But why should Fechner,
who had this eudemonistic theory of beauty and art (as he calls it) all
ready made in advance,[25] take the trouble to enumerate principles
and laws and conduct experiments and tabulate statistics wholly
incapable of illustrating or proving it? One is tempted to believe
that these pseudo-scientific operations were to him, and still are to
his followers, a pastime or hobby neither more nor less important than
playing Patience or collecting stamps.
[Sidenote: _Ernst Grosse. Speculative Æsthetic and the science of art._]
Another example of the superstitious cult of the natural sciences is to
be found in Professor Ernst Grosse's _Origins of Art._[26] Contemner of
all philosophical research into art, which he dismisses under the title
of "Speculative Æsthetic," Grosse invokes a Science of art (_Kunst
wissenschaft)_ whose mission is to dig out all the laws lying hidden
in the mass of historical facts collected to date. It is his opinion
that all ethnographic and prehistoric material should be united to
historical matter proper, there being no possibility, according to him,
of framing general laws when study is restricted to the art of cultured
peoples "just as a theory of generation must necessarily be imperfect
if founded exclusively on the form of that function predominant among
mammals."[27] But immediately after his declaration of abhorrence for
philosophy, and of faith in scientific methods, Grosse finds himself
in the same difficulty as Taine and Fechner. Indeed, there is no
escape; in order to examine the artistic productions of primitive and
savage peoples, a start must be made from some sort of concept of
art. All the scientific metaphors, all the verbal emollients employed
by Grosse cannot hide the nature of the plan he is forced to adopt,
or its striking resemblance to the despised speculative Æsthetic.
"As a traveller who desires to explore an unknown land must provide
himself with a general outline of the country and have some knowledge
of the direction in which his path should lie, if he does not wish to
lose his way entirely; so we, before beginning our enquiry, need a
general preliminary orientation concerning the essence of the phenomena
(_über das Wesen der Erscheinungen_) about to engage our attention."
Most certainly "we may count upon having an exact and exhaustive
answer, at earliest, when our enquiry is finished; and it is not yet
begun. That characteristic which we seek to determine at the outset
... may be most radically modified by the time we reach the end:"
there is no question, fie on the suggestion! of imitating the old
æstheticians: the only question is how "to give a definition which may
serve as provisional scaffolding, to be broken away on completion of
the edifice."[28] Words, words, words: the mite of general ideas and
artistic laws to be found in his book has been quarried by Grosse not
from study of the reports brought back by travellers in savage lands,
but from speculation on the forms of the spirit; and (inevitably) his
interpretation of the former is reached by the light thrown on it by
the latter. In his final definition, Grosse concludes by considering
art as an activity which in its development or as its result, possesses
immediate feeling-value (_Gefühlswerth_), and is an end to itself;
practical and æsthetic activity are in direct mutual opposition between
which as a middle term lies the activity of play, which like the
practical activity has its end outside itself, but, like the æsthetic,
finds its enjoyment not in its external end, which is more or less
insignificant, but in its own activity.[29] At the end of his book he
remarks that the artistic activity of primitive peoples is hardly ever
unaccompanied by the practical; and that art began by being social and
became individual only in civilized times.[30]
The Æsthetics of Taine and Grosse have also been described by the
epithet sociological.
[Sidenote: _Sociological Æsthetic._]
But since no one knows what the science of Sociology is, we must deal
with the sociological superstition as we dealt with the naturalistic;
that is to say, by skipping the preface with its proposals that
can never be carried out, and seeing what it is that the objective
necessities of the case have forced the author to assert, and which of
the possible alternative views he accepts, or between what selection of
them his allegiance wavers. During this examination we shall ignore the
fairly common case of an author who while pretending to construct an
Æsthetic simply compiles a list of facts connected with the history of
art or civilization.
[Sidenote: _Proudhon._]
Some social reformers of our day, like Proudhon, have revived the
condemnations of Plato, or the mitigated moralism of antiquity and
the Middle Ages. Proudhon denied the formula Art for Art's sake; he
looked on art as a mere purveyor of sensuous pleasure, something which
must be subordinated to legal and economical ends; poetry, sculpture,
painting, music, romance, history, comedy, tragedy had for him no aim
save exhortation to virtue and dissuasion from vice.[31]
[Sidenote: _J. M. Guyau._]
Development of social sympathy is the whole duty of art in the
estimation of J. M. Guyau, who became famous as the founder of Social
Æsthetic and was, according to certain French critics, inaugurator
of the third epoch in the history of Æsthetic, the first being the
æsthetic of the ideal (Plato), the second that of perception (Kant),
and the third that of "Social Sympathy" (Guyau). In his _Problems
of Contemporary Æsthetic_ (1884) Guyau combats the theory of play,
and substitutes that of Life; in a posthumous publication _Art in
Its Sociological Aspect_ (1889) he explains more clearly that the
life of which he speaks is social life.[32] If the beautiful be the
intellectually pleasing, certainly it cannot be identified with the
useful which is only searching for what is pleasing; but the useful
(says Guyau, in the belief that he is correcting both Kant and
the evolutionists) does not always exclude the beautiful, of which
indeed it often forms the lowest degree. The study of art is embraced
partly,[33] not wholly, by Sociology: for art fulfils two ends, firstly
and primarily that of provoking pleasant sensations (of colour, sound,
etc.) and in this sense finds itself in the presence of practically
incontestable scientific laws which connect Æsthetic with the physics
(optics, acoustics, etc.), mathematics, physiology and psychophysics.
Sculpture, in fact, rests especially on anatomy and physiology:
painting on anatomy, physiology and optics: architecture on optics
(golden section, etc.): music on physiology and acoustics: poetry on
metrics, whose most general laws are acoustical and physiological. The
second function of art is to produce the phenomena of "psychological
induction," which bring to a head ideas and sentiments of most
complex nature (sympathy with personages represented, interest, pity,
indignation, etc.), in short all the social feelings, which constitute
it "the expression of life." Whence are derived the two tendencies
recognised in art; one inclining towards harmony, consonance, and
everything delightful to ear and eye: the other towards the transfusion
of life into the domain of art. Genius, true genius is destined to
preserve the balance of the two tendencies: decadents and degenerates
deprive art of its social sympathetic aim by setting æsthetic sympathy
at war against human sympathy.[34] Translating all this into familiar
terms, we may say that Guy au asserts one purely hedonistic art, above
which he superimposes another art, also hedonistic, but serviceable to
the cause of morality.
[Sidenote: _M. Nordau._]
The same polemic against decadents, degenerates and individualists
is carried on by another writer, Max Nordau, who gives art the task
of re-establishing the wholeness of life amongst the fragmentary
specialisation characteristic of industrial society; he asserts that
art for art's sake, art as the simple expression of internal states or
the objectification of the artist's feelings, no doubt exists, but is
merely "the art of Quaternary man, the art of the cave-dweller."[35]
[Sidenote: _Naturalism. C. Lombroso._]
Naturalistic is the best term with which to qualify the Æsthetic
derived from that identification of genius with degeneracy which made
the fortune of Lombroso and his school. This identification derives
its chief strength from the following piece of reasoning. Great mental
efforts, total absorption in one dominating thought, often bring about
physiological disorders in the bodily organism and weakness or atrophy
of various vital functions. But such derangements come under the
head of the pathological concept of illness, degeneration, madness.
Therefore genius is identical with illness, degeneration and madness.
A syllogism from particular to general, in which case, according to
traditional Logic, _non est consequentia._ But with sociologists such
as Nordau, Lombroso and company, we almost overstep the line separating
respectable error from that grosser form which we call a blunder.
A mere confusion between scientific analysis and historical inquiry
or description is visible in the works of certain sociologists and
anthropologists. Thus one of them, Carl Bücher, in studying the life of
primitive peoples, asserts that poetry, music and work were originally
fused in one single act; that poetry and music were used to regulate
the rhythms of labour.[36] This may be historically true or false,
important or no: it has nothing whatever to do with æsthetic science.
In the same way Andrew Lang maintains that the doctrine concerning the
origin of art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty finds
no confirmation from what we know of primitive art, which is decorative
rather than expressive:[37] as though primitive art, which is a mere
fact awaiting interpretation, could ever be converted into a criterion
for the interpretation of art in general.
[Sidenote: _Decline of Linguistic._]
The same vague naturalism exercised a baneful influence on Linguistic,
which of late years has been wholly lacking in such profound research
as that inaugurated by Humboldt and followed up by Steinthal. But
Steinthal never succeeded in founding a school. Max Müller, popular
and inaccurate, maintained the indivisibility of speech and thought,
confounding, or at least not distinguishing, æsthetic and logical
thought; although at one time he had noted that the formation of
names had a closer connexion with wit, in the sense of Locke, than
with judgement. He maintained, moreover, that the science of language
is not a historical but a natural science, because language is not
the invention of man: the dilemma of "historical" and "natural" was
canvassed and resolved over and over again with little result.[38]
Another philologist, Whitney, attacked the "miraculous" theory of
Müller and denied that thought is indivisible from speech: "The
deaf-mute does not speak, but he can think," he observes; "thought is
not function of the acoustic nerve." By this means Whitney relapsed
into the ancient doctrine that speech is a symbol or means of
expression, of human thought, subject to the will, the result of a
synthesis of faculties and of a capacity for intelligent adaptation of
means to end.[39]
[Sidenote: _Signs of revival. H. Paul._]
Philosophical spirit reappeared in Paul's _Principles of the History
of Language_ (1880),[40] though the author's efforts to defend himself
from the terrifying accusation of being a philosopher led him to hunt
out a fresh title to replace the scandalous "Philosophy of Language."
But if Paul is vague about the relation of Logic to Grammar, he must
be given every credit for identifying, as Humboldt had already done,
the question of the origin of language with that of its nature; and
reasserting that language is created afresh whenever we speak. He
must also be given credit for having conclusively criticized the
Ethnopsychology (_Völkerpsychologie_) of Steinthal and Lazarus, showing
that there is no such thing as collective psyche and that there can be
no language other than of the individual.
[Sidenote: _The linguistic of Wundt._]
Wundt[41] on the other hand attached the study of language, mythology
and customs to this non-existent science of Ethnopsychology; in his
latest work, on this very subject of language,[42] he foolishly echoes
Whitney's gibes and denounces as a "miracle theory" (_Wundertheorie_)
that glorious doctrine inaugurated by Herder and Humboldt, whom he
accuses of "mystical obscurity" (_mystiche Dunkel_): he observes that
this view may have had some justification before the principle of
evolution had reached its triumphant application to organic nature in
general and to man in particular. He has not the faintest notion of
the function of imagination, or of the true relation between thought
and expression; he finds no substantial difference between expression
in the naturalistic, and expression in the spiritual and linguistic
sense; he considers language as a special highly developed form of the
vital psychophysical manifestations and of the expressive movements
of animals. Out of these facts language is developed by imperceptible
gradations; so that, beyond the general concept of expressive movement
(_Ausdrucksbewegung_) "there is no specific mark by which language can
be distinguished in any but an arbitrary manner."[43] The philosophy
of Wundt betrays its own weakness by showing its inability to master
the problem of language and art. In his _Ethics_ æsthetic facts are
presented as a complex of logical and ethical elements; the existence
of æsthetic as a special normative science is denied, not for the good
and sufficient reason that there are no such things as "normative
sciences," but because this special science is said by him to be
absorbed by the two sciences of Logic and Ethics,[44] which amounts to
denying the existence of Æsthetic and the originality of art.
[1] _Essays, Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 1858-1862._
[2] _Principles of Psychology,_ 1855; 2nd ed. 1870, part viii. ch. 9,
§§ 533-540.
[3] J. Sully, _Outlines of Psychology,_ London, 1884; _Sensation
and Intuition, Studies in Psychology and Æsthetics,_ London, 1874;
cf. _Encycl. Britannica,_ ed. 9, art. "Æsthetics"; Alex. Bain, _The
Emotions and the Will,_ London, 1859, ch. 14.
[4] _Physiological Æsthetics,_ London, 1877; various arts, in _Mind,_
vols. iii. iv. v. (o. s.).
[5] Vernon Lee and C. Anstruther-Thomson, "Beauty and Ugliness," in
_Contemp. Review,_ October-November, 1897: (abstract in Arréat, _Dix
années de philosophie,_ pp. 80-85); same author's _Le Rôle de l'élément
moteur dans la perception esthétique visuelle, Mémoire et questionnaire
soumis au 4<sup>me</sup> Congrès de Psychologie,_ reprinted Imola, 1901.
[6] H. Helmholtz, _Die Lehre von der Tonempfindungen als physiologische
Grundlage für die Théorie der Musik,_ 1863, 4th ed., 1877;
Brücke-Helmholtz, _Principes scientifiques des beaux arts,_ Fr. ed.,
Paris, 1881; C. Stumpf, _Tonpsychologie,_ Leipzig, 1883.
[7] _Philosophie de l'art,_ 1866-1869 (4th ed. Paris, 1885).
[8] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 13-15.
[9] _Philosophie de l'art,_ i. pp. 17-54.
[10] _Op. cit._ i. p. 37.
[11] _Op. cit._ i. p. 54.
[12] _Op. cit._ i. p. 15.
[13] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 277.
[14] _Philos. de l'art,_ ii. pp. 257-400.
[15] _Op. cit._ ii. pp. 257-258.
[16] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 393.
[17] _Vorschule der Ästhetik,_ 1876 (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1897-1898).
[18] _Vorschule der Ästhetik,_ i. ch. 19.