that in order to judge works of art one must place oneself at the
artist's point of view at the moment of production, and that to judge
is to reproduce, gathered weight little by little from the beginning
of the eighteenth century, when its first appearance is seen in the
work of the Italian Francesco Montani already quoted (1705), and by
the English poet Alexander Pope in his _Essay on Criticism._ ("A
perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its
author writ."[32]) A few years later Antonio Conti recognized part of
the truth in the _règle du premier aspect_ advised by Terrasson as
a test for judging poetry, while noting it to be more applicable to
modern than to ancient works: "_quand on n'a pas l'esprit prévenu,
et que d'ailleurs on l'a assez pénétrant, on peut voir tout d'un
coup si un poète a bien imité son objet; car, comme on connaît
l'original, c'est-à-dire les hommes et les mœurs de son siècle,
on peut aisément lui confronter la copie, c'est-à-dire la poésie qui
les imite._" In judging ancient writers something more is necessary:
"_cette règle du premier aspect n'est presque d'aucun usage dans
l'examen de l'ancienne poésie, dont on ne peut pas juger qu'après
avoir longtemps réfléchi sur la religion des anciens, sur leurs lois,
leur mœurs, sur leurs manières de combattre et d'haranguer, etc.
Les beautés d'un poème, indépendantes de toutes ces circonstances
individuelles, sont très rares, et les grands peintres les ont toujours
évitées avec soin, car ils voulaient peindre la nature et non pas
leurs idées;_"[33] the necessary criterion, therefore, is to be found
in history. The end of the same century saw the concept of congenial
reproduction sufficiently defined by Heydenreich: "A philosophical
critic of art must himself be possessed of genius for art; reason
exacts this qualification and grants no dispensation, just as she will
refuse to appoint a blind man as judge of colours. The critic must
not pretend to be able to feel the attraction of beauty by means of
syllogisms (_Vernunftschlüsse_); beauty must manifest itself to feeling
with irresistible self-evidence and, attracted by its fascination,
reason must find no time to linger over the why and wherefore; the
effect, with its delightful and unexpected possession and domination
of the whole being, should suffocate at birth any inquiry into origins
or causes. But this state of fanatical admiration cannot last long;
reason must inevitably recover consciousness of itself and direct
its attention upon the state in which it was during the enjoyment
of beauty and upon its present memories of that state...."[34] This
was the wholesomely impressionistic theory which prevailed among the
Romanticists and was accepted even by De Sanctis.[35] Still there
was even then no definite theory of criticism, which demanded as its
condition of existence a precise concept of art and of the relations
of the work of art with its historical antecedents.[36] The very
possibility of æsthetic criticism was questioned in the second half
of the nineteenth century, when taste was relegated to a place amongst
the facts of individual caprice, and a so-called historical criticism
was proclaimed the sole scientific criticism and expounded in works of
irrelevant learning or buried beneath the preconceptions of positivists
and materialists. Those who reacted against such extremalism and
materialism generally made the mistake of supporting themselves by a
kind of intellectualistic dogmatism[37] or an empty æstheticism.[38]
[Sidenote: _Distinction between taste and genius._]
VI. We have seen that in the seventeenth century, when the words
"taste" and "genius" or "wit" were in fashion, the facts they
designated were sometimes interchanged amongst themselves and came to
be considered as one single fact, while sometimes each was conceived
as distinct in itself, genius being the faculty of production, and
taste the faculty of judgement, taste being further subdivided into
the sterile and the fertile: a terminology adopted by Muratori[39] in
Italy and Ulrich König[40] in Germany. Batteux said, "_le goût juge
des productions du génie_"[41]; and Kant speaks of defective works
having genius without taste or taste without genius, and of others in
which taste alone suffices;[42] now we find him distinguishing the two
concepts as the judging and producing faculties, now he speaks of them
as a single faculty existing in various degrees. An inherent difference
between taste and genius was accepted by later writers on Æsthetic and
assumed its most rigid form in the hands of Herbart and his followers.
[Sidenote: _Concept of artistic and literary history._]
VII. The evolutionary theory of art made its appearance towards the
end of the eighteenth century. This was the time when the distinction
between classical and romantic art was first made; a classification
later augmented by an introductory section on Oriental art, owing to
the increase of knowledge concerning the pre-Hellenic world. Towards
the end of his life Goethe told his friend Eckermann that the concepts
of classical and romantic had been formed by himself and Schiller, for
he himself had upheld the objective method in poetry, whilst Schiller,
in order to champion the subjective form to which he inclined, had
written the essay _On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry_, in which the word
naïve (_naiv_) expresses the style later called classical and the
word sentimental (_sentimentalisch)_ that later called romantic. "The
Schlegels," continues Goethe, "seized upon these ideas and disseminated
them, so that to-day everyone uses them and speaks of classical and
romantic, things perfectly unknown fifty years ago"[43] (Goethe was
speaking in 1831). Schiller's essay bears the imprint of Rousseau's
influence and is dated 1795-6.[44] It contains such statements as this:
"Poets are above all things the preservers of nature; and when they
cannot be so entirely, and have tried upon themselves the destructive
force of arbitrary and artificial forms or have fought against such
forms, they stand up to bear witness on her behalf. Poets, therefore,
either are nature or, having lost her, seek her. Hence arise two wholly
distinct kinds of poetic composition, exhausting between them the whole
field of poetry; all poets who are worthy of the name must belong,
according to the times and conditions in which they flourish, either
to the category of naïve or to that of sentimental poets." Schiller
recognized three kinds of sentimental poetry: satirical, elegiac and
idyllic; he defined a satirical poet as one "who takes as his object
the desertion of nature and the contrast of the real with the ideal."
The weak point of this division is the concept of two distinct kinds
of poetry, the reduction of the infinite forms in which poetry appears
to individuals, to two kinds. If one of these two kinds be taken the
perfect and the other as the imperfect kind, the mistake is made of
converting imperfection into a kind or species, the negative into a
positive. Wilhelm von Humboldt pointed out to his friend that if
form is the essence of art, there cannot be a kind of poetry, such
as the sentimental or romantic is supposed to be, in which matter
preponderates over form, for that would constitute a pseudo-art, not
a separate kind of art.[45] Schiller attached no historical meaning
to his classification, in fact he declared explicitly that in using
the words "ancient" and "modern" as equivalent to "ingenuous" and
"sentimental" he did not mean to deny that some "ancient" poets, in his
sense of the word, could be found among contemporary writers; the two
characters might even be united in the same poet or the same poetical
work, as (to give Schiller's own example) in _Werther_[46] The first to
assign a historical meaning to the division were Friedrich and Wilhelm
von Schlegel; the former in an early work of 1795, the latter in his
celebrated lectures on literary history given at Berlin in 1801-4. But
the two senses, systematic and historical, were variously alternated
and mixed by literary men and critics, and other distinctions were
added; "classical" was sometimes used to describe poetry of a frigid
and imitative style, while "romantic" poetry was the inspired; in some
countries the word "romantic" came to mean a political reactionary, in
Italy it stood for "liberal"; and so forth. In 1815, when Friedrich
Schlegel spoke of ancient Persian romantic poems, or when in our times
attention is called to the romanticism of the Greek, Latin or French
classics, the historical signification is lost in the theoretical, the
sense originally intended by Schiller.
But the historical sense was prevalent in German idealism, which
inclined towards the construction of a universal history, including
that of literature and art, upon a scheme of ideal evolution. Schelling
made a sharp division between pagan and Christian art; the second
being held an advance upon the former which was the lowest step.[47]
Hegel accepted this division and introduced a final regress by
dividing the history of art into three periods: symbolic (Oriental)
art, classical (Hellenic) and romantic (modern). Just as he conceived
Roman art (with its introduction of satire and other kinds indicative
of a failure to maintain harmony between form and content) as the
dissolution of classical art, a thought suggested by Schiller, so
he found in the subjective humour of Cervantes and Ariosto[48] the
dissolution of romantic art; and he regarded this series as completing
the possibilities of art, though some interpreters think that by a
self-contradiction he admitted the possibility of a fourth period, an
art of the modern or future world. Indeed amongst his disciples we
find Weiss rejecting the Oriental period in order to save the triadic
division, and placing as third the modern period, synthesis of the
ancient and the mediæval:[49] Vischer too inclines to recognize a
modern or progressive period.[50]
These arbitrary constructions reappear in the works of positivist
metaphysicians in the shape of an evolutionary or progressive history
of art. Spencer dreamed of writing some sort of treatise on the
subject, and in the published programme of his system (1860) we read
that the third volume of his _Principles of Sociology_ was to contain
amongst other things a chapter on æsthetic progress "with the gradual
differentiation of fine arts from primitive institutions and from each
other, with their increasing variety in development, their progress in
reality of expression and superiority of end." No grief need be felt
that the chapter was left unwritten when we remember the samples of it
preserved in the _Principles of Psychology_ and already reviewed in
these pages.[51]
The strong historical sense of our own day is leading us further and
further away from the evolutionary or abstractly progressive theories
which falsify the free and original movement of art. Fiedler remarked
not without justice that unity and progress cannot be introduced
into a history of art, and that the works of artists must be judged
discretely as so many fragments of the life of the universe.[52]
In recent times a remarkable student of the history of figurative
art, Venturi, has tried to bring evolutionism into fashion, and has
illustrated it in a _History of the Madonna,_ in which the presentment
of the Virgin is conceived as an organism which is born, grows, attains
perfection, grows old and dies! Others have claimed for artistic
history its true character, intolerant of outward curb and rule,
drawing her ever-varied productions from the well-head of the infinite
Spirit.[53]
_Conclusion._
These hurried notes may suffice to show in how narrow a circle has
hitherto moved the scientific criticism of the errors we have called
"particular." Æsthetic needs to be surrounded and nourished by a
watchful and vigorous critical literature drawing its life from her and
forming in turn her safeguard and strength.
[1] See above, pp. 98-99.
[2] _Das Naturgefühl nach Verschiedenheit der Zeiten und Volksstämme,_
in _Cosmos,_ ii.
[3] V. Laprade, _Le Sentiment de la nature avant le christianisme,_
1866; also _chez les modernes,_ 1867; Alfred Biese, _Die Entwicklung
des Naturgefühls den Griechen und Römern,_ Kiel, 1882-1884; _Die
Entwicklung des Naturgefühls im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit,_ 2nd
ed., Leipzig, 1892.
[4] _Kritische Gänge,_ v. pp. 5-23.
[5] _Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 217-218; cf. _Philos, d. Schönen,_ bk.
ii. ch. 7.
[6] See above, pp. 164-165.
[7] _Hippias maior, passim._
[8] _Elements of Criticism,_ introd., and cf. ch. 3.
[9] Herder, _Kritische Wälder_ (in _Werke, ed. cit._ iv.), pp. 47-53;
cf. _Kaligone (ibid._ vol. xxii.), _passim;_ and fragment on _Plastic._
[10] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ i. pp. 50-51.
[11] _Op. cit._ p. 92 _seqq._
[12] _Ästh._ i. p. 181.
[13] _Ästh._ pp. 80-83.
[14] _E.g._ Grant Allen, _Physiological Æsthetics_, chs. 4 and 5.
[15] Tolstoy, _What is Art?_ pp. 19-22. Kralik is the author of
_Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Ästhetik,_ Vienna, 1894.
[16] See above, pp. 18-20.
[17] Cf. Volkmann, _Rhet. d. G. u. Röm._ pp. 532-544.
[18] Comparetti, _Virgilio net M. E._ i. p. 172.
[19] _Nuove ricerche sul hello,_ ch. 10.
[20] See above, pp. 145-146.
[21] _Inst. Oral._ i. ch. 6.
[22] For all this cf. the works of Lersch and of Steinthal, which
contain the more important texts.
[23] Comparetti, _Virgilio nel M. E.,_ i. pp. 169-170.
[24] Pott, introd. to Humboldt, _cit._ Paul, _Principien d.
Sprachgeschichte,_ ch. 20.
[25] Batteux, _Les Beaux Arts,_ part ii. p. 54.
[26] _Elem. of Criticism,_ iii. ch. 25.
[27] _Essays, Moral, Political and Literary_ (London ed., 1862), ch.
23: _On the Standard of Taste._
[28] _Perfetta poesia,_ bk. v. ch. 5.
[29] _Essai sur le beau,_ dise. 3.
[30] _Essai sur le goût, cil._
[31] See above, pp. 280-282.
[32] _Essay on Criticism,_ 1711, part ii. 11. 233-234.
[33] Letter to Maffei, in _Prose e poesie,_ ii. pp. cxx-cxxi.
[34] _System d. Ästhetik,_ pref. pp. xxi-xxv.
[35] Amongst other places _Saggi critici,_ pp. 355-358.
[36] See above, pp. 123-127.
[37] _E.g._ A. Ricardou, _La Critique littéraire,_ Paris, 1896.
[38] _E.g._ A. Conti, _Sul fiume del tempo,_ Naples, 1907.
[39] _Perf. poesia,_ bk. v. ch. 5.
[40] _Untersuchung v. d. guten Geschmack,_ 1727.
[41] _Les Beaux Arts,_ part ii. ch. 1.
[42] _Krit. d. Urtheilskr._ § 48.
[43] Eckermann, _Gespräche mit Goethe,_ under date March 21, 1831.
[44] _Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung,_ 1795-1796 (in _Werke,_
ed. Goedecke, vol. xii.).
[45] Quoted in Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ pp. 21-22.
[46] _Üb. naive u. sentim. Dicht., ed. cit.,_ p. 155, note.
[47] See above, p. 291.
[48] _Vorles. üb. Ästh.,_ vols. ii. and iii.
[49] Cf. von Hartmann, _Dtsche. Ästh. s. Kant,_ pp. 99-101.
[50] _Ästh._ part iii.
[51] See above, pp. 388-390.
[52] C. Fiedler, _Ursprung d. künstl. Thätigkeit,_ p. 136 _seqq._
[53] Ad. Venturi, _La Madonna,_ Milan, 1899. Cf. B. Labanca, in
_Rivista polit, e lett._ (Rome), Oct. 1899, and in _Rivisla di filos.
e pedag._ (Bologna), 1900; and B. Croce, in _Nap. nobiliss., Rivista
di lopografia e storia dell' arte,_ viii. pp. 161-163, ix. pp. 13-14
(reprinted in _Probl. di estetica,_ pp. 265-272). On the theory of
method in artistic and literary history cf. above, pp. 128-139.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX
The first attempt at a history of Æsthetic is the work of J. Roller
(see above, p. 248) mentioned by Zimmermann (_Gesch. d. Ästh._ pref.,
p. v) as being so exceedingly rare that he had never been able to see
a copy of the book. We ourselves have had the good fortune to find the
book in the Royal Library of Munich in Bavaria, by the help of our
friend Dr. Arturo Farinelli of Innsbruck University, and to obtain the
loan of it. It bears the title _Entwurf_ | _zur_ | _Geschichte und
Literatur_ | _der Æsthetik_ | _von Baumgarten auf die_ | _neueste
Zeit._ | _Herausgegeben_ | _von_ | _J. Koller_. | _Regensburg_ | in
der Montag und Weissischen Buchhandlung | 1799 (pp. viii-107, small
8vo); in the preface the author declares his intention of supplying
young men attending Lectures on the Criticism of Taste and the Theory
of the Fine Arts in the German Universities with a "lucid summary of
the origin and later progress of these studies," premising that he will
treat of general theories only and that his judgements are frequently
derived from reviews in literary periodicals. The introduction (§§
1-7) treats of æsthetic theories from antiquity down to the beginning
of the eighteenth century; Koller observes that "the names and form
of a general Theory of Fine Art and Criticism of Taste were unknown
to the ancients, whose imperfect ethical theory prevented their
producing anything in this field." He dedicates § 5 to the Italians,
"who have produced little in theory"; indeed the only Italian books
mentioned are the _Entusiasmo_ of Bettinelli and the small work of
Jagemann, _Saggio di buon gusto nelle belle arti ove si spiegano gli
elementi dell' estetica,_ di Fr. Gaud. Jagemann, Regente agostiniano,
In Firenze, MDCCLXXI, Presso Luigi Bastianelli e compagni; 60 pp.
(concerning this, see B. Croce, _Problemi di estetica,_ pp. 387-390).
The section on the History and Literature of Æsthetic begins with the
oft-quoted passage from Bülffinger ("_Vellem existerent,_ etc.") and
passes at once to Baumgarten: "the theoretical epoch owes its existence
undeniably to Baumgarten; to him belongs the inalienable merit of
having first conceived an Æsthetic founded on principles of reason and
wholly developed, and of having tried to put it into practice by the
means offered him by his own philosophy." Immediately after this, Meier
is mentioned, followed by the titles, accompanied by brief extracts
and remarks--a sort of _catalogue raisonné_--of many German books on
Æsthetic from those of K. W. Müller (1759) to one by Ramier (1799),
mixed with various French and English writings under the dates of their
German translations. Special emphasis is laid on Kant (pp. 64-74), with
the remark that, prior to the appearance of the _Critique of Judgment,_
æstheticians were divided into sceptics, dogmatics and empiricists: the
most powerful intellects of the nation inclined towards empiricism, so
much so that had Kant himself "been asked by what literature he had
been most strongly influenced in the development of his own thought,
he would certainly have named the acute empirical writers of England,
France and Germany"; but "by no pre-Kantian method had it been possible
to establish an agreement (_eine Einhelligkeit_) between men upon
matters of taste." The last pages call attention to the revival of
interest in æsthetic studies, which nobody would now dare call a waste
of time as in former days. "May Jacobi, Schiller and Mehmel soon enrich
literature by publication of their theories!" (p. 104).
The rarity of Koller's book has led us to notice it at some length.
Apart from this the first general history of Æsthetic worthy the
name is that written by Robert Zimmermann, _Geschichte der Ästhetik
als philosophischer Wissenschaft,_ Vienna, 1858. It is divided into
four books: "the first of these contains the history of philosophical
concepts concerning the beautiful and art from the Greeks down to the
constitution of Æsthetic as a philosophical science through the labours
of Baumgarten"; the second runs from Baumgarten down to the reform of
Æsthetic brought about by the _Critique of Judgment_; the third, from
Kant to the Æsthetic of idealism; the fourth, from the beginnings of
idealistic Æsthetic down to the author's own day (1798-1858). The work
is on Herbartian lines, and is remarkable for solid research and lucid
exposition, although the erroneous point of view and neglect of all
æsthetic movement other than Græco-Roman or German are grave defects;
besides, it is now sixty years out of date.
Less solid and more compilatory in nature, whilst retaining all the
defects of the foregoing, is the history by Max Schasler, _Kritische
Geschichte der Ästhetik,_ Berlin, 1872, divided into three books
treating of ancient Æsthetic and that of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. The author belongs to the Hegelian school and conceives his
history as a propædeutic to theory, "in order, that is, to attain a
supreme principle for the construction of a new system"; he schematizes
the material of facts for each period into three grades of Æsthetic of
sensation (_Empfindungsurtheil,_) of intellect (_Verstandsurtheil_) and
of reason (_Vernunfturtheil._)
English literature has Bernard Bosanquet's _History of Æsthetics,_
London, 1892; a sober and well-arranged work, written from an eclectic
point of view between the Æsthetic of content and the Æsthetic of
form. The author, however, is wrong in believing he has passed over
"no writer of the first rank"; he has passed over not only writers but
some important movements of ideas, and in general he shows insufficient
knowledge of the literature of the Latin races. Another general
history of Æsthetic in English is the first volume of _The Philosophy
of the Beautiful, being Outlines of the History of Æsthetics,_ by
William Knight, London, Murray, 1895: it consists mainly of a rich
collection of extracts and abridgements of ancient and modern books
treating of Æsthetic. In this respect the most noteworthy chapters
are those on Holland, Great Britain and America (10-13); the second
volume, published in 1898, has in an appendix, pp. 251-281, notices
upon Æsthetic in Russia and Denmark. Another recent publication is
George Saintsbury's _A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in
Europe from the Earliest Times to the Present Day_; vol. i., Edinburgh
and London, 1900, concerning classical and mediæval criticism; vol.
ii., 1902, criticism from the Renaissance to end of the eighteenth
century: vol. iii., 1904, modern criticism. The writer of this History,
equally skilled in literature and innocent of philosophy, has thought
it possible to exclude æsthetic science in the strict sense, "the
more transcendental Æsthetic, those ambitious theories of Beauty and
artistic pleasure in general which seem so noble and fascinating until
we discover them to be but cloud-appearances of Juno," and to limit his
treatise to "lofty Rhetoric and Poetic, to the theory and practice of
Criticism and literary taste" (book i. ch. I). Thus is produced a book
instructive in many ways but wholly deficient in method and definite
object. What is lofty Rhetoric and Poetic, the theory of Criticism and
literary taste, if not Æsthetic pure and simple? how can the history of
these be composed without due notice of metaphysical Æsthetic and other
manifestations whose interaction and development are the fabric of
history itself? Perhaps Saintsbury hoped to be able to write a History
of Criticism as distinct from that of Æsthetic; if that be the case,
he has been unsuccessful in writing either one or the other. Cf. _La
Critica,_ ii. (1904), pp. 59-63.
The generosity of the Hungarian Academy of Science has enabled us to
handle the History of Æsthetic (_Az Æsthetika története_) of Bela
Janosi, Budapesth, 1899-1901, in three volumes; the first volume treats
the Æsthetic of Greece; the second, of Æsthetic from the Middle Ages to
Baumgarten; the third, from Baumgarten to the present day. For us it is
a book sealed with seven seals, save for reviews which have appeared in
the _Deutsche Litteraturzeitung_ of Berlin, August 25, 1900, July 12,
1902, and May 2, 1903.
Amongst Latin countries, France has no special history of Æsthetic,
for this title cannot be given to the portion of the second volume
(pp. 311-570) of the work by Ch. Levêque, _La Science du beau_
(Paris, 1862), under the heading _Examen des principaux systèmes
d'esthétique anciens et modernes,_ where eight chapters are devoted
to an exposition of the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and
St. Augustine, Hutcheson, André and Baumgarten, Reid, Kant, Schelling
and Hegel. Spain, on the other hand, possesses the work of Marcelino
Menendez y Pelayo, _Historia de las idéas estéticas en España,_ 2nd
ed., Madrid, 1890-1901 (5 vols., variously distributed amongst the
1st ed., 1883-1891, and the 2nd), which is not restricted, as the
title suggests, to Spain alone or to Æsthetic alone but, as the author
observes in his preface (i. pp. xx-xxi), includes the metaphysical
disquisitions on the beautiful, the speculations of mystics on the
beauty of God and on love; the theories of art scattered through
the pages of philosophers; the æsthetic considerations found in
treatises upon individual arts (Poetics and Rhetoric, works on
painting, architecture, etc.); and, finally, ideas enunciated by
artists concerning their own particular arts. This work is of capital
importance on everything to do with Spanish authors, and also in its
general part contains good treatments of matters generally passed over
by historians. Menendez y Pelayo inclines to metaphysical idealism,
yet seems not disinclined to welcome elements from other systems, even
empirical theories: in our opinion this vagueness has an unfortunate
effect on the work as a whole. Some years ago Professor V. Spinazzola
announced the forthcoming publication of a course of lectures given
by Francesco de Sanctis in Naples in 1845 on _Storia della critica da
Aristotele ad Hegel._ For the history of Æsthetic in Italy cf. Alfredo
Rolla, _Storia delle idee estetiche in Italia,_ Turin, 1904; on which
see Croce, _Problemi di estetica,_ pp. 401-415.