deduction the necessity of all its forms; and after finding two sides
to artistic activity, the objective consciousness (_gegenständliche)_
and the immediate consciousness (_unmittelbare)_, and observing that
art stands wholly neither in the one nor in the other and that the
immediate consciousness or representation (_Vorstellung)_ gives rise to
mimicry and music, while the objective consciousness or image (_Bild_)
gives rise to the figurative arts, he then, proceeding to analyse a
painting, found the two forms of consciousness to be in this case
inseparable, and remarks: "Here we arrive at the precise opposite:
searching for distinction, we find unity." Nor did the traditional
division of the arts into simultaneous and successive seem to him
very solid, for "when looked at attentively, it evaporates entirely";
in architecture or gardening, contemplation is successive, while in
the arts labelled as successive, such as poetry, the chief thing
is coexistence and grouping: "from whichever side we look at it,
the difference is but secondary and the antithesis between the two
orders of art merely means that every contemplation, like every act of
production, is always successive, but, in thinking out the relation of
the two sides in a work of art, both seem indispensable: coexistence
(_Zugleichsein_) and successive existence (_das Successivsein_)." In
another passage he observes: "The reality of art as external appearance
is conditioned by the mode, depending on our physical and corporeal
organism, in which the internal is externalised: movements, forms,
words.... That which is common to all arts is not the external, which
is rather the element of diversification." When these observations
are compared with the sharp distinction he himself drew between art
and technique, it would be easy to deduce that he held the partitions
of the arts and the concepts of the particular arts to be devoid
of æsthetic value. But Schleiermacher does not draw this logical
inference, he wavers and hesitates: he recognizes the inseparability
of the subjective and objective, musical and figurative, elements in
poetry, yet he struggles to discover the definitions and limits of
the individual arts; sometimes he dreams of a union of the various
arts from which a complete art would spring; and when composing the
syllabus of his lectures on Æsthetic, he arranged the arts into arts
of accompaniment (mimicry and music), figurative arts (architecture,
gardening, painting, sculpture) and poetry.[31] Nebulous, vague,
contradictory as this may be, Schleiermacher had the acumen to distrust
the soundness of Lessing's theory and to inquire by what right
particular arts are singled out from art in general.
[1] See above, pp. 113-115.
[2] D. Diderot, _Lettre sur les aveugles,_ 1749; _Lettre sur les sourds
et muets,_ 1751; _Essai sur la peinture,_ 1765.
[3] M. Mendelssohn, _Briefe über Empfind.,_ 1755; _Betrachtungen,
cit.,_ 1757.
[4] J. Chr. Wolff, _Psychol. empirica,_ §§ 272-312; Meier,
_Anfangsgründe,_ §§ 513-528, 708-735; _Betrachtungen,_ § 126.
[5] Letter to Lodovico Cardi da Cigoli, June 26, 1612.
[6] _Laokoon,_ §§ 16-20.
[8] _Laokoon,_ appendix, § 43.
[9] _Plastik einige Wahrnehmungen über Form und Gestalt aus Pygmalions
bildenden Träume,_ 1778 (Select Works of Herder in the collection
_Deutsche Nationlitteratur,_ vol. 76, part iii. § 2).
[10] _System der Ästhetik,_ pp. 154-236.
[11] _Kritik d. Urtheilskr._ § 51. 5 _Phil. d. Kunst,_ pp. 370-371.
[12] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 257-262.
[13] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 222.
[14] See above, pp. 305-306.
[15] _Einleitung,_ § 115, pp. 170-171.
[16] _Schriften z. prakt. Phil,_ in _Werke,_ viii. p. 2.
[17] _Einleitung,_ § 110, pp. 164-165.
[18] Cf. Hartmann, _Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 539-540.
[19] _Ästh. Forsch._ pp. 547-549.
[20] _Ästh._ §§ 404, 535, 537, 838, etc.
[21] Gustav Gerber, _Die Sprache als Kunst,_ Bromberg, 1871-1874.
[22] _Das System der Künste,_ 2nd ed., Leipzig-Berlin, 1881.
[23] _Phil. d. Sch._ chs. 9, 10.
[24] _E.g._ by Sulzer, _Allg. Theorie,_ on word _Oper._
[25] Rich. Wagner, _Oper und Drama,_ 1851.
[26] Gustav Engel, _Ästh. der Tonkunst,_ 1884, abstracted in Hartmann,
_Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 579-580.
[27] Lotze, _Geschichte d. Ästh._ pp. 458-460; cf. p. 445.
[28] _Essai critique sur l'Esth. de Kant,_ pp. 89-496.
[29] _Das System der Künste,_ p. 47.
[30] _Poet._ ch. i.
[31] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ pp. 11, 122-129, 137, 143, 151, 167, 172,
284-286, 487-488, 508, 635.
IV
OTHER PARTICULAR DOCTRINES
[Sidenote: _The æsthetic theory of Natural Beauty._]
I. Schleiermacher also rejected the concept of Natural Beauty, giving
Hegel greater praise than he deserved in the matter, because Hegel's
denial of this concept was, as we have seen, more verbal than real.
At all events, Schleiermacher's radical denial of the existence of a
natural beauty external to and independent of the human mind marked
a victory over a serious error, and appears to us imperfect and
one-sided only so far as it seems to exclude those æsthetic facts of
imagination which are attached to objects given in nature.[1] Important
contributions towards the correction of this imperfect and one-sided
element were supplied by the historical and psychological study of the
"feeling for nature," promoted successfully by Alexander Humboldt in
his dissertation to be found in the second volume of _Cosmos_,[2] and
continued by Laprade, Biese, and others in our own time.[3] In his
criticism of his own _Ästhetik,_ Vischer completes the passage from
the metaphysical construction of beauty in nature to the psychological
interpretation of it, and recognizes the necessity of suppressing
the section devoted to Natural Beauty in his first æsthetic system,
and incorporating it with the doctrine of imagination: he says that
such treatments do not belong to æsthetic science, being a medley
of zoology, sentiment, fantasy and humour, worthy of development in
monographs in the style of the poet G. G. Fischer's on the life of
birds, or Bratranek's on the æsthetic of the vegetable world.[4]
Hartmann, as heir of the old metaphysics, reproaches Vischer for
this exclusion, and maintains that, in addition to the beauty of
imagination introduced by man into natural things (_hineingelegte
Schönheit_), there exist a formal and a substantial beauty in nature,
coinciding with realisation of the immanent ends or ideas of nature.[5]
But the way chosen ultimately by Vischer is the only one by which
Schleiermacher's thesis can be successfully developed so as to show
the precise meaning which may be given to the assertion of (æsthetic)
beauty in nature.
[Sidenote: _The theory of æsthetic senses._]
II. That æsthetic senses or superior senses exist and that beauty
attaches to certain senses only, not to all, is a very old opinion. We
have seen already[6] that Socrates, in the _Hippias maior,_ mentions
the doctrine of beauty as "that which pleases hearing and sight" (τὸ
καlὸν eστὶ τὸ δι' ἀκοῆs τε καὶ ὃψεως ήδύ): and he adds, it seems
impossible to deny that we take pleasure in looking at handsome men
and fine ornaments, pictures and statues with our eyes, and hearing
beautiful songs or beautiful voices, music, speeches and conversations
with our ears. Nevertheless Socrates himself in the same dialogue
confutes this theory by perfectly valid arguments, amongst which is
that, besides the difficulty arising from the fact that beautiful
things may be found outside the range of the sensible impressions of
eye and ear, there is no reason for creating a special class for the
pleasure arising from impressions on these two senses, to the exclusion
of others. He also states the more subtle and philosophical objection
that that which is pleasing to the sight is not so to the hearing, and
_vice versa_; whence it follows that the ground of beauty must not be
sought in visibility or audibility, but in something differing from
either and common to both.[7]
The problem was never again, perhaps, attacked with such acumen and
seriousness as in this ancient dialogue. In the eighteenth century
Home remarked that beauty depended on sight, and that impressions
received by the other senses might be agreeable but were not
beautiful, and distinguished sight and hearing as superior to those
of touch, taste and smell, the latter being merely bodily in nature
and without the spiritual refinement of the other two. He held these
to produce pleasures superior to organic pleasures though inferior to
intellectual; decorous pleasures, that is to say; elevated, sweet,
moderately exhilarating; as far removed from the turbulence of the
passions as from the languor of indolence, and intended to refresh
and soothe the spirit.[8] Following suggestions of Diderot, Rousseau
and Berkeley, Herder drew attention to the importance of the sense of
touch (_Gefühl_) in plastic art: of this "third sense, which perhaps
deserves to be investigated first of all, and is unjustly relegated to
a place amongst the grosser senses." Certainly "touch knows nothing of
surface or colour," but "sight, for its part, knows nothing of forms
and configurations." Thus "touch cannot be so gross a sense as it is
reputed, if it is the very organ by which we sensate all other bodies,
and rules over a vast kingdom of subtle and complex concepts. As the
surface stands to the body, so does sight stand in respect of touch,
and it is merely a colloquial abbreviation to speak of seeing bodies as
surfaces and to suppose that we see with our eyes that which we have
gradually learnt in infancy simply by the sense of touch." Every beauty
of form or corporeity is a concept not visible, but palpable.[9] From
the triad of æsthetic senses thus established by Herder (sight for
painting; hearing for music; touch for sculpture), Hegel returned to
the customary dyad, saying that "the sensory part of art has reference
only to the two theoretic senses of sight and hearing"; that smell,
taste and touch must be excluded from artistic pleasures, since they
are connected with matter as such and the immediate sensible quality it
may possess (smell with material volatilization; taste with material
solution of objects; and touch with hot, cold, smooth and so forth);
and that hence they can claim no concern with the objects of art,
which are obliged to keep themselves in real independence, rejecting
all relation with the merely sensory. That which pleases these senses
is not the beautiful of art.[10]
It was Schleiermacher once more who recognized the impossibility of
disposing of the matter in this summary fashion. He refused to admit
the distinction between confused senses and clear senses, and asserted
that the superiority of sight and hearing over the other senses lay in
the fact that the others "are not capable of any free activity, and
indeed represent the maximum of passivity, whereas sight and hearing
are capable of an activity proceeding from within, and are able to
produce forms and notes without having received impressions from
outside"; were eye and ear merely means of perception, there would
be no visual or auditory arts, but they also operate as a function
of voluntary movements which supply a content to the dominion of the
senses. From another standpoint, however, Schleiermacher thinks that
"the difference seems to be one rather of degree or quantity, and a
minimum of independence must be recognized as existing in the other
senses as well."[11] Vischer remains faithful to the traditional "two
æsthetic senses," "free organs and no less spiritual than sensuous,"
which "have no reference to the material composition of the object,"
but allow this "to subsist as a whole and work upon them."[12] Köstlin
was of opinion that the inferior senses offer "nothing intuitible
separate from themselves, and are only modifications of ourselves, but
taste, smell and touch are not devoid of all æsthetic importance, since
they assist the superior senses; without touch an image could not be
recognized by the eye as being hard, resistant or rough; without smell
certain images could not be represented as sweet or scented."[13]
We cannot go into a detailed account of all doctrines connected with
sensationalistic principles,[14] for all the senses are naturally
accepted as æsthetic by the sensationalists, who use "æsthetic"
interchangeably with" hedonistic": it will suffice if we recall the
"learned" Kralik, who was ridiculed by Tolstoy for his theory of the
five arts of taste, smell, touch, hearing and sight.[15] The few
quotations already given show the embarrassing difficulty caused
by the use of the word "æsthetic" as a qualification of "sense,"
compelling writers to invent absurd distinctions between various groups
of senses, or to recognize all senses as being æsthetic, thus giving
æsthetic value to every sensory impression, as such. No way out of
this labyrinth can be found save by asserting the impossibility of
effecting a union between such wholly disparate orders of ideas as the
concept of the representative form of the spirit and that of particular
physiological organs or a particular matter of sense-impressions.[16]
[Sidenote: _The theory of kinds of style_.]
III. A variety of the error of literary kinds is to be found in
the theory of modes, forms or kinds of style (χαρακτῆρες τῆς
φράσεως), considered by the ancients as consisting of three forms,
the sublime, the medium and the tenuous, a tripartition due, it would
seem, to Antisthenes,[17] modified later into _subtile, robustum_
and _floridum,_ or amplified into a fourfold division, or designated
by adjectives of historic origin as in the Attic, Asiatic or Rhodian
styles. The Middle Ages preserved the tradition of a tripartite
division, sometimes giving it a curious interpretation, to the effect
that the sublime style treats of kings, princes and barons (_e.g._ the
_Aeneid_); the mediocre, of middle-class people (_e.g. Georgies)_; the
humble, of the lowest class (_e.g. Bucolics;_) and the three styles
were for this reason also called tragic, elegiac and comic.[18] It
is a well-known fact that kinds in style have never ceased to afford
matter for discussion in rhetorical text-books down to modern times;
for instance, we find Blair distinguishing styles by such epithets
as the diffuse, the concise, the nervous, the daring, the soft, the
elegant, the flowery, etc. In 1818 the Italian Melchiorre Delfico, in
his book on _The Beautiful,_ energetically criticized the "endless
division of styles," or the superstition "that there could be so many
kinds of style"; saying that "style is either good or bad," and adding
that it is not possible "it should exist as a preconceived idea in the
artist's mind," but that "it should be the consequence of the principal
idea, _i.e._ that conception which determines the invention and the
composition."[19]
[Sidenote: _The theory of grammatical forms or parts of speech._]
IV. The same error reappears in the philosophy of language, as the
theory of grammatical forms or parts of speech,[20] first created by
the sophists (Protagoras is credited with having first distinguished
the gender of nouns), adopted by the philosophers, notably by Aristotle
and the Stoics (the former was acquainted with two or three parts of
speech, the latter with four or five), developed and elaborated by the
Alexandrian grammarians in the famous and endless controversy between
the analogists and the anomalists. The analogists (Aristarchus) aimed
at introducing logical order and regularity into linguistic facts,
and described as deviations all such as seemed to them irreducible
to logical form. These they called pleonasm, ellipsis, enallage,
parallage, and metalepsis. The violence thus wrought by the analogists
upon spoken and written language was such that (as Quintilian tells
us) some one wittily (_non invenuste_) remarked that it appeared to
be one thing to talk Latin and quite another to talk grammar (_aliud
esse latine_, _aliud grammatice loqui_).[21] The anomalists must be
credited with restoring to language its free imaginative movement: the
Stoic Chrysippus composed a treatise to prove that one thing (one same
concept) may be expressed by different sounds, and one and the same
sound may express different concepts (_similes res dissimilibus verbis
et similibus dissimiles esse vocabulis notatas._) Another anomalist
was the celebrated grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus, who rejected
the metalepsis, the schemes, and the other artifices by which the
analogists tried to explain facts which did not fit their categories,
and pointed out that the use of one word for another, or one part of
speech for another, is not a grammatical figure, but a blunder, a thing
hardly to be attributed to a poet such as Homer. The upshot of the
dispute between anomalists and analogists was the science of Grammar
(τεχνη γραμματική), as handed down by the ancients to the modern
world, which is justly considered as a sort of compromise between the
two opposed parties because, if the schemes of inflection (κανόνες)
satisfy the demands of the analogists, their variety satisfies those
of the anomalists; hence the original definition of Grammar as theory
of analogy was changed subsequently to "theory of analogy and anomaly"
(ὁμοίον τε καὶ ἀνoμoίου θεωρία). The concept of correct usage, with
which Varro hoped to settle the controversy, fell into the trap (common
to compromises), merely stating the contradiction in set terms, like
the "convenient ornament" of Rhetoric or the kinds accorded a "certain
licence" in the literature of precept. If language follows usage (that
is to say, the imagination), it does not follow reason (or logic); if
it follows reason, it does not follow usage. When the analogists upheld
logic as supreme at least inside the individual kinds and sub-kinds,
the anomalists hastened to show that even this was not the case. Varro
himself was forced to confess that "this part of the subject really is
very difficult" (_hic locus maxime lubricus est_).[22]
In the Middle Ages grammar was cultivated to the point of superstition.
Divine inspiration was found lurking in the eight parts of speech
because "_octavus numerus frequenter in divinis scripturis sacratis
invenitur,_" and in the three persons of verbal conjugation, created
simply "_ut quod in Trinitatis fide credimus, in eloquiis inesse
videatur._"[23] Grammarians of the Renaissance and later recommenced
the study of linguistic problems and worked to death ellipsis,
pleonasm, licence, anomaly and exception; only in comparatively recent
times has Linguistic begun to question the very validity of the concept
of parts of speech (Pott, Paul and others).[24] If they still survive,
the reason may lie in the facts that empirical, practical grammar
cannot do without them; that their venerable antiquity disguises their
illegitimate and shady origin; and that energetic opposition has been
worn down by the fatigue of an endless war.
[Sidenote: _Theory of æsthetic criticism._]
V. The relativity of taste is a sensationalistic theory which denies
a spiritual value to art. But it is rarely maintained by writers in
the ingenuous categorical garb of the old adage: _De gustibus non
est disputandum_ (concerning which it would be useful to enquire
when the saying was born, and what it fust meant: whether, too, the
word _gustibus_ referred solely to impressions of the palate, and
was only later extended to include æsthetic impressions); as though
sensationalists, as if dimly conscious of the higher nature of art,
have never been able to resign themselves to the complete relativity
of taste. Their torments in the matter really move one to pity. "Is
there," Batteux asks, "such a thing as good taste, and is it the only
good taste? In what does it consist? Upon what depend? Does it depend
upon the object itself or the genius at work upon it? Are there, or are
there not, rules? Is wit alone, or heart alone, the organ of taste, or
both together? How many questions have been raised on this familiar
often-treated subject, how many obscure and involved answers have
been given!"[25] This perplexity is shared by Home. Tastes, he says,
must not be disputed; neither those of the palate nor those of other
senses. A remark which seems highly reasonable from one point of view;
but, from another, somewhat exaggerated. But yet how can one dispute
it? how can one maintain that what actually pleases a man ought not
to please him? The proposition then must be true. But now no man of
taste will assent to it. We speak of good taste and bad taste; are all
criticisms which turn upon this distinction to be considered absurd?
have these everyday expressions no meaning? Home ends by asserting
a common standard of taste, deduced from the necessity of a common
life for mankind or, as he says, from a "final cause"; for without
uniformity of taste, who would trouble to produce works of art, build
elegant and costly edifices, or lay out beautiful gardens and so forth?
He does not fail to draw attention to a second final cause; that of
the advisability of attracting citizens to public shows and uniting
those whom class-differences and diversity of occupation tend to keep
apart. But how shall a standard of taste be established? This is a new
perplexity, which one cannot think to be escaped by observing that, as
in framing moral rules we seek the counsel of the most honourable of
educated men, not of savages; so to determine the standard of taste
we should have recourse to the few who are not worn out by degrading
bodily labour, not corrupted in taste, and not rendered effeminate
by pleasure, who have received the gift of good taste from nature,
and have brought it to perfection by the education and practice of a
lifetime: if, notwithstanding, controversies arise, then reference
must be made to the principles of Criticism as set forth by Home
himself in his own book.[26] Similar contradictions and vicious circles
reappear in David Hume's _Essay on Taste,_ where Hume tries in vain
to define the distinctive characteristics of the man of taste whose
judgement must be law, and, while asserting the uniformity of the
general principles of taste as founded in human nature, and warning
the reader against giving undue weight to individual perversions and
ignorances, at the same time asserts that divergences in taste may be
irreconcilable, insuperable, and yet blameless.[27]
But a criticism of æsthetic relativism cannot be based upon the
opposite doctrine which, by its affirmation of absoluteness, resolves
taste into concepts and logical inferences. The eighteenth century
offers examples of this mistake in Muratori, one of the first to
maintain the existence of a rule of taste and a universal beauty
whose rules are furnished by Poetics;[28] in André, who said that
"the beauty in a work of art is not that which pleases at the first
glance of fancy through certain individual dispositions of the mental
faculties or bodily organs, but that which has a right to please the
reason and reflexion by its own inherent excellence or rightness and,
if the expression be allowed, by its intrinsic agreeableness";[29]
in Voltaire, who recognized a "universal taste" which was
"intellectual";[30] and in very many others. This intellectualistic
error, no less than the sensationalistic, was attacked by Kant; but
even Kant, by making beauty consist in a symbolism of morality, failed
to grasp the concept of an imaginative absoluteness of taste.[31]
Succeeding generations of philosophers met the difficulty by passing it
over in silence.