essays on the figurative arts, the most important being his _Origin
of Artistic Activity_ (1887).[44] No one, perhaps, has better or
more eloquently emphasized the activistic character of art, which
he compares with language. "Art begins exactly where intuition
(perception) ends. The artist is not differentiated from other people
by any special perceptive attitude enabling him to perceive more or
with greater intensity, or endowing his eye with any special power
of selecting, collecting, transforming, ennobling or illuminating;
but rather by his peculiar gift of being able to pass immediately
from perception to intuitive expression; his relation with nature is
not perceptive, but expressive." "A man standing passively at gaze
may well imagine himself in possession of the visible world as an
immense, rich, varied whole: the entire absence of fatigue with which
he traverses the infinite mass of visual impressions, the rapidity
with which representations dart across his consciousness, convince
him that he stands in the midst of an immense visible world, although
he may quite well be unable at any one instant to represent it to
himself as a whole. But this world, so great, so rich, so immeasurable,
disappears the moment art seeks to become its master. The very first
effort to emerge from this twilight and arrive at clear vision
restricts the circle of things to be seen. Artistic activity may be
conceived as continuation of that concentration by which consciousness
makes the first step towards clear vision, which it reaches only by
self-limitation." Spiritual process and bodily process are here an
indivisible whole, which is expression.
[Sidenote: _Intuition and Expression._]
"This activity, simply because it is spiritual, must consist of forms
wholly determinate, tangible, sensibly demonstrative." Art is not in
a state of subjection to science. Like the man of science, the artist
desires to escape from the natural perceptive state and to make the
world his own; but there are regions to which we can penetrate not
by the forms of thought and science but only through art. Art is,
strictly speaking, not imitation of nature; for what is nature save
this confused mass of perceptions and representations, whose real
poverty has been demonstrated already? In another sense, however, art
may be called imitation of nature inasmuch as its aim is not to expound
concepts or to arouse emotions, that is to create values of intellect
and feeling. Art does create both these values, if you like to say so;
but only in one quite peculiar quality, which consists in complete
visibility (_Sichtbarkeit_). Here we have the same sane conception, the
same lively comprehension of the true nature of art which we found in
Hanslick, only expressed in a more rigorous and philosophical manner.
With Fiedler is connected his friend Adolf Hildebrand, who brought into
high relief the activistic, or architectonic as opposed to imitative,
character of art, illustrating his theoretical discussions especially
from sculpture, the art which he himself followed.[45]
[Sidenote: _Narrow limits of these theories._]
What we chiefly miss in Fiedler and others of the same tendency is the
conception of the æsthetic fact not as something exceptional, produced
by exceptionally gifted men, but as a ceaseless activity of man as
such; for man possesses the world, so far as he does possess it, only
in the form of representation-expressions, and only knows in so far as
he creates.[46] Nor are these writers justified in treating language
as parallel with art, or art with language; for comparisons are drawn
between things at least partially different, whereas art and language
are identical.
[Sidenote: _H. Bergson._]
The same criticism can be made in the case of the French philosopher
Bergson, who in his book on _Laughter_[47] states a theory of art very
similar to that of Fiedler and makes the same mistake of conceiving the
artistic faculty as something distinct and exceptional in comparison
with the language of everyday use. In ordinary life, says Bergson, the
individuality of things escapes us; we see only as much of them as
our practical needs demand. Language helps this simplification; since
all names, proper names excepted, are names of kinds or classes. Now
and then, however, nature, as if in a fit of absence of mind, creates
souls of a more divisible and detached kind (artists), who discover
and reveal the riches hidden under the colourless signs and labels
of everyday life, and help others (non-artists) to catch a glimpse of
what they themselves see, employing for this purpose colours, forms,
rhythmic connexions of words, and those rhythms of life and breath even
more intimate to man, the sounds and notes of music.
[Sidenote: _Attempts to return to Baumgarten. C. Hermann._]
A healthy return to Baumgarten, a revival and correction of the old
philosopher's theories in the light of later discoveries, might
perhaps have given Æsthetic some assistance, after the collapse of
the old idealistic metaphysic, towards thinking the concept of art
in its universality and discovering its identity with pure and true
intuitive knowledge. But Conrad Hermann, who preached the return to
Baumgarten[48] in 1876, did bad service to what might have been a good
cause. According to him Æsthetic and Logic are normative sciences;
but Logic does not contain, as does Æsthetic, "a definite category
of external objects exclusively and specifically adequate to the
faculty of thought"; and on the other hand "the products and results
of scientific thought are not so external and sensibly intuitive as
those of artistic invention." Logic and Æsthetic alike refer not to the
empirical thinking and feeling of the soul, but to pure and absolute
sensation and thought. Art constructs a representation standing midway
between the individual and the universal. Beauty expresses specific
perfection, the essential or, so to speak, the rightful (_seinsollend_)
character of things. Form is "the external sensible limit, or mode of
appearance of a thing, in opposition to the kernel of the thing itself
and to its essential and substantial content." Content and form are
both æsthetic, and the æsthetic interest concerns the entirety of the
beautiful object. The artistic activity has no special organ such as
thought possesses in speech. The æsthetician, like the lexicographer,
has the task of compiling a dictionary of tones and colours and of
the different meanings which may possibly be attached to them.[49]
We can see that Hermann accepted side by side the most inconsistent
propositions. He welcomes even the æsthetic law of the golden section,
and applies it to tragedy; the longer segment of the Une is the tragic
hero; the punishment which overtakes him (the entire line) exceeds his
crime in the same proportion in which he oversteps the common measure
(the shorter segment of the line).[50] It reads almost like a joke.
Without direct reference to Baumgarten, a proposal that Æsthetic be
reformed and treated as the "science of intuitive knowledge" was made
in a miserable little work by one Willy Nef (1898),[51] who makes the
dumb animals share his "intuitive knowledge," in which he distinguishes
a formal side (intuition) and a material side or content (knowledge),
and considers the everyday relations between men, their games and their
art, as belonging to intuitive knowledge.
[Sidenote: _Eclecticism. B. Bosanquet._]
The English historian of Æsthetic, Bosanquet (1892) tried to find
a reconciliation between content and form in unity of expression.
"Beauty," says Bosanquet in the Introduction to his _History,_ "is
that which has characteristic and individual expressiveness for
sensuous perception or imagination, subject to the conditions of
general or abstract expressiveness by the same means." In another
passage he observes: "The difficulty of real Æsthetic is to show how
the combination of decorative forms in characteristic representations,
by intensifying the essential character immanent in them from the
beginning, subordinates them to a central signification which stands
to their complex combination as their abstract signification stands to
each one of them taken singly."[52] But the problem, as propounded in a
way suggested by the antithesis between the two schools (contentism and
formalism) of German Æsthetic, is in our opinion insoluble.
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic of expression: present state._]
De Sanctis founded no school of æsthetic science in Italy. His thought
was quickly misunderstood and mutilated by those who presumed to
correct it, and, in fact, only returned to the outworn rhetorical
conception of art as consisting of a little content and a little
form. Only within the last ten years has there been a renewal of
philosophical studies, arising out of discussions concerning the nature
of history[53] and the relation in which it stands to art and science,
and nourished by the controversy excited by the publication of De
Sanctis' posthumous works.[54] The same problem of the relation between
history and science, and their difference or antithesis, reappeared
also in Germany, but without being put in its true connexion with the
problem of Æsthetic.[55] These inquiries and discussions, and the
revival of a Linguistic impregnated by philosophy in the work of Paul
and some others, appear to us to offer much more favourable ground for
the scientific development of Æsthetic than can be found on the summits
of mysticism or the low plains of positivism and sensationalism.
[1] A. F. Lange, _Geschichte des Materialismus, u. Kritik seiner
Bedeutung i. d. Gegenwart,_ 1866.
[2] J. F. v. Kirchmann, _Ästhetik auf realistischer Grundlage,_ Berlin,
1868.
[3] _Ästh. auf real. Grund._ vol. i. pp. 54-57; see above, pp. 80-81.
[4] _Kritische Gänge,_ vol. v. pp. 25-26, 131.
[5] R. Vischer, _Über das optische Formgefühl,_ Leipzig, 1873.
[6] _Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Ästh.,_ Jena, 1876.
[7] _Das Wesen d. ästh. Anschauung, Psychologische Untersuchungen z.
Theorie d. Schönen u. d. Kunst,_ Berlin, 1875.
[8] Max Diez, _Theorie des Gefühls z. Begründung d. Ästhetik,_
Stuttgart, 1892.
[9] Friedr. Jodi, _Lehrb. der Psychologie,_ Stuttgart, 1896, § 53, pp.
404-414.
[10] _Komik und Humor, eine psychol. ästhet. Untersuch.,_
Hamburg-Leipzig, pp. 223-227.
[11] Paul Stern, _Einfühling u. Association i. d. neueren Ästh.,_ 1898,
in _Beiträge z. Ästh.,_ ed. Lipps and R. M. Werner (Hamburg-Leipzig).
[12] Alfr. Biese, _Das Associationsprincip u. d. Anthropomorphismus i.
d. Ästh.,_ 1890; _Die Philosophie des Metaphorischen,_ Hamburg-Leipzig,
1893.
[13] Konrad Lange, _Die bewusste Selbsttäuschung als Kern des
künstlerischen Genusses,_ Leipzig, 1895.
[14] Karl Groos, _Einleitung i. d. Ästhetik,_ Giessen, 1892.
[15] _Op. cit._ pp. 6-46, 83-100.
[16] _Einleitung i. d. Ästh._ pp. 100-147.
[17] _Op. cit._ pp. 168-170.
[18] _Op. cit._ pp. 175-176.
[19] _Op. cit._ pp. 46-50, and all part iii.
[20] _Einleitung i. d. Ästh._ p. 292, note.
[21] See above, pp. 91-92.
[22] _Komik und Humor,_ p. 199 _seqq._
[23] Eug. Véron, _L'Esthétique,_ 2nd ed. Paris, 1883.
[24] _Op. cit._ p. 89.
[25] See above, pp. 399-400.
[26] _Esthétique,_ pp. 38, 109, 123 _seqq._
[27] _Correspondance,_ 1830-1880, 4 vols., new ed., Paris, 1902-1904.
[28] _What is Art?_ Eng. tr.
[29] _Op. cit._ pp. 171-172, 308.
[30] _Op. cit._ pp. 201-202.
[31] _Die Geburt der Tragödie oder Griechenthum und Pessimismus,_ 1872
(Ital. trans., Bari, 1907).
[32] See above, p. 114.
[33] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ Leipzig, 1854; 7th ed. 1885 (French
trans., _Du beau dans la musique,_ Paris, 1877).
[34] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ p. 20.
[35] _Op. cit._ p. 98.
[36] _Op. cit._ p. 101.
[37] _Op. cit._ p. 119, note.
[38] _Op. cit._ p. 50.
[39] _Op. cit._ p. 65.
[40] _Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,_ pp. 50-51.
[41] _Op. cit._ pp. 25-39.
[42] _Op. cit._ p. 122.
[43] _Op. cit._ pp. 52, 67, 113, etc.
[44] Conrad Fiedler, _Der Ursprung der künstlerischen Thätigkeit,_
Leipzig, 1887. Collected with others of same author in _Schriften tiber
die Kunst,_ ed. H. Marbach, Leipzig, 1896.
[45] _Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst,_ 2nd ed. 1898 (4th
ed., Strassburg, 1903).
[46] See above, pp. 12-18.
[47] H. Bergson, _Le Rire, essai sur la signification du comique,_
Paris, 1900, pp. 153-161 (Eng. tr., London).
[48] Conrad Hermann, _Die Ästhetik in ihrer Geschichte und ah
wissenschaftliches System,_ Leipzig, 1876.
[49] _Die Ästhetik,_ etc., _passim._
[50] _Die Ästhetik,_ § 56.
[51] Willy Nef, _Die Ästhetik als Wissenschaft der anschaulichen
Erkenntniss,_ Leipzig, 1898.
[52] _A History of Æsthetics,_ pp. 4-6, 372, 391, 447, 458, 466.
[53] B. Croce, _La storia ridotta sotto il concetto generale dell'
arte,_ 1893 (2nd ed. entitled _Il concetto della storia nelle sue
relazioni col concetto dell' arte,_ Rome, 1896); P. R. Trojano, _La
storia come scienza sociale,_ vol. i., Naples, 1897; G. Gentile, _Il
concetto della storia_ (in Crivellucci's _Studî storici,_ 1889); see
also F. de Sarlo, _Il problema estetico,_ in _Saggi di filosofia,_
vol. ii., Turin, 1897; and by same author, _I dati dell' esperienza
psichica,_ Florence, 1903, concluding chapter.
[54] _La letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX,_ edited by B. Croce,
Naples, 1896; also _Scritti varî,_ ed. Croce, Naples, 1898, 2 vols.
[55] H. Rickert, _Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen
Begriffsbildung,_ Freiburg i. B., 1896-1902.
XIX
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF SOME PARTICULAR DOCTRINES
[Sidenote: _Result of the history of Æsthetic._]
We have reached the end of our history. Having passed in review the
travail and doubt through which the discovery of the æsthetic concept
was achieved, the vicissitudes first of neglect, then of revival and
rediscovery to which it was exposed, the various oscillations and
failures in its exact determination, the resurrection, triumphant and
overwhelming, of ancient errors supposed to be dead and buried; we
may now conclude, without appearing to assert anything unproven, that
of Æsthetic in the proper sense of the word we have seen very little,
even including the last two centuries' active research. Exceptional
intellects have hit the mark and have supported their views with
energy, with logic, and with consciousness of what they were doing.
It would no doubt be possible to extract many true affirmations
leading to the same point of view from the works of non-philosophical
writers, art-critics and artists, from commonly received opinions and
proverbial sayings; such a collection would show that this handful
of philosophers does not stand alone, but is surrounded by a throng
of supporters and is in perfect agreement with the general mind and
universal common sense. But if Schiller was right in saying that the
rhythm of philosophy is to diverge from common opinion in order to
return with redoubled vigour, it is evident that such divergence is
necessary, and constitutes the growth of science, which is science
itself. During this tedious process Æsthetic made mistakes which were
at once deviations from the truth and attempts to reach it: such were
the hedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity and of the
sensationalists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenth
century; the moralistic hedonism of Aristophanes, of the Stoics, of
the Roman eclectics, of the mediæval and Renaissance writers; the
ascetic and logical hedonism of Plato and the Fathers of the Church,
of some mediæval and even some quite modern rigorists; and finally,
the æsthetic mysticism which first appeared in Plotinus and reappeared
again and again until its last and great triumph in the classical
period of German philosophy. In the midst of these variously erroneous
tendencies, ploughing the field of thought in every direction, a
tenuous golden rivulet seems to flow, formed by the acute empiricism
of Aristotle, the forceful penetration of Vico, the analytical work
of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, De Sanctis and others who echoed them
with weaker voice. This series of thinkers suffices to remind us that
æsthetic science no longer remains to be discovered; but at the same
time the fact that they are so few and so often despised, ignored or
controverted, proves that it is in its infancy.
[Sidenote: _History of science and history of the scientific criticism
of particular errors._]
The birth of a science is like that of a living being: its later
development consists, like every life, in fighting the difficulties
and errors, general and particular, which lurk in its path on every
side. The forms of error are numerous in the extreme and mingle with
each other and with the truth in complications equally numerous:
root out one, another appears in its stead; the uprooted ones also
reappear, though never in the same shape. Hence the necessity for
perpetual scientific criticism and the impossibility of repose or
finality in a science and of an end to further discussion. The errors
which may be described as general, negations of the concept of art
itself, have been touched on from time to time in the course of this
History; whence it may be gathered a simple affirmation of the truth
has not always been accompanied by any considerable recapture of enemy
territory. As to what we have called particular errors, it is clear
that when freed from confusing admixture of other forms and divested
of fanciful expression, they reduce themselves to three heads, under
which they have already been criticized in the first or theoretical
part of this work. That is to say, errors may be directed (_a_) against
the characteristic quality of the æsthetic fact; (_b_) against the
specific; (_c_) against the generic: they may involve denial of the
character of intuition, of theoretic contemplation, or of spiritual
activity, which together constitute the æsthetic fact. Among the errors
which fall into these three categories we are now to sketch in outline
the history of those which have had, or have to-day, the greatest
importance. Rather than a history it will be a historical essay,
sufficient to show that, even in the criticism of individual errors,
æsthetic science is in its infancy. If among these errors some appear
to be decadent and nearly forgotten, they are not dead; they have not
accomplished a legal demise at the hands of scientific criticism.
Oblivion or instinctive rejection is not the same thing as scientific
denial.
I
RHETORIC: OR THE THEORY OF ORNATE FORM
[Sidenote: _Rhetoric in the ancient sense._]
Proceeding according to rank in importance, we inevitably head the list
of theories for examination with the theory of Rhetoric, or Ornate Form.
It will not be superfluous to observe that the meaning given in
modern times to the word Rhetoric, namely, the doctrine of ornate
form, differs from that which it had for the ancients. Rhetoric in
the modern sense is above all a theory of elocution, while elocution
(λέξις, φράσις, ἑρμηνεία, elocutio) was but one portion, and not
the principal one, of ancient Rhetoric. Taken as a whole, it consisted
strictly of a manual or _vade-mecum_ for advocates and politicians;
it concerned itself with the two or the three "styles" (judicial,
deliberative, demonstrative), and gave advice or furnished models to
those striving to produce certain effects by means of speech.
No definition of the art is more accurate than that given by its
inventors the earliest Sicilian rhetoricians, scholars of Empedocles
(Corax, Tisias, Gorgias): Rhetoric is the creator of persuasion
(πειθος δημιουργός). It devoted itself to showing the method of
using language so as to create a certain belief, a certain state of
mind, in the hearer; hence the phrase "making the weaker case stronger"
(τὸ τὸν ἥττω λόgον κρείττω ποιεῖν); the "increase or diminution
according to circumstances" (_eloquentia in augendo minuendoque
consistit_); the advice of Gorgias to "turn a thing to a jest if the
adversary takes it seriously, or to a serious matter if he takes it as
a jest,"[1] and many similar well-known maxims.
[Sidenote: _Criticism from moral point of view._]
He who acts in this manner is not only æsthetically accomplished,
as saying beautifully that which he wishes to say; he is also and
especially a practical man with a practical end in view. As a practical
man, however, he cannot evade moral responsibility for his actions;
this point was fastened upon by Plato's polemic against Rhetoric, that
is to say against fluent political charlatans and unscrupulous lawyers
and journalists. Plato was quite right to condemn Rhetoric (when
dissociated from a good purpose) as blameworthy and discreditable,
directed to arouse the passions, a diet ruinous to health, a paint
disastrous to beauty. Even had Rhetoric allied herself to Ethics,
becoming a true guide of the soul (ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ τῶν λόγον);
had Plato's criticism been directed solely against her abusers
(everything being liable to abuse save virtue itself, says Aristotle);
had Rhetoric been purified, producing such an orator as Cicero desired,
_non ex rhetorum officinis sed ex academiae spatiis_[2] and imposing on
him, with Quintilian, the duty of being _vir bonus dicendi peritus_;[3]
yet the unalterable fact remains that Rhetoric can never be considered
a regular science, being formed of a congeries of widely dissimilar
cognitions.
[Sidenote: _Accumulation without system._]
It included descriptions of passions and affections, comparisons of
political and judicial institutions, theories of the abbreviated
syllogism or enthymeme and of proof leading to a probable conclusion,
pedagogic and popular exposition, literary elocution, declamation and
mimicry, mnemonic, and so forth.
[Sidenote: _Its fortunes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance._]
The rich and heterogeneous content of this ancient Rhetoric (which
reached its highest development in the hands of Hermagoras of Temnos
in the second century B.C.) gradually diminished in volume with the
decadence of the ancient world and the change in political conditions.
This is not the place to dwell on its fortunes in the Middle Ages or
its partial replacement by formularies and _Artes dictandi_ (and later
by treatises upon the art of preaching), or to quote the reasons given
by such writers as Patrizzi and Tassoni for its disappearance from the
world of their day;[4] such history would be well worth writing, but
would be out of place here. We will merely state that whilst conditions
were at work on every side corroding this complex of cognitions, Louis
Vives, Peter Ramus and Patrizzi himself were busy criticizing it from
the point of view of systematic science.
[Sidenote: _Criticisms by Vives, Ramus and Patrizzi._]
Vives emphasized the confused methods of the ancient treatise-writers,
who embraced _omnia,_ united eloquence with morality, and insisted that
the orator must be _vir bonus._ He rejected four-fifths of ancient
Rhetoric as extraneous: namely, memory, which is necessary in all arts;
invention, which is the matter of each individual art; recitation,
which is external; and disposition, which belongs to invention. He
retained elocution only, not that which treats of _quid dicendum,_ but
of _quem ad modum,_ extending it beyond the three styles or kinds to
include history, apologue, epistles, novels and poetry.[5] Antiquity
furnishes us with few and faint attempts at such extension; now and
then a Rhetorician ventures to suggest that the γένος ίστορικόν and
ἐπιστολικόν be included in Rhetoric, and even (in spite of opposition)
"infinite" questions, that is to say merely theoretical questions
with no practical application, which amounts to a scientific or
philosophical genus;[6] others agreed with Cicero[7] that when one had
mastered the most difficult of all arts, forensic eloquence, all else
seemed child's-play (_ludus est homini non hebeti_ ...). Ramus and
his pupil Omer Talon reproached Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian with
having confused Dialectic and Rhetoric; and they assigned invention
and disposition to the former, agreeing with Vives that "elocution"
alone should be allowed to Rhetoric.[8] Patrizzi, on the other hand,
refused the name of science to either, recognizing them as simple
faculties, containing no individual matter (not even the three genera),
and differentiating them only by attaching the term Dialectic to the
dialogue form and proof of the necessary, and Rhetoric to connected
discourse directed to persuasion in matters of opinion. Patrizzi
observes that "conjoined speech" is used by historians, poets and
philosophers, no less than by orators; and thus approaches the view of
Vives.[9]
[Sidenote: _Survival into modern times._]