Accordingly, if the aesthetic disposition of the mind must be looked
upon in one respect as nothing--that is, when we confine our view to
separate and determined operations--it must be looked upon in
another respect as a state of the highest reality, in as far as we
attend to the absence of all limits and the sum of powers which are
commonly active in it. Accordingly we cannot pronounce them, again,
to be wrong who describe the aesthetic state to be the most
productive in relation to knowledge and morality. They are perfectly
right, for a state of mind which comprises the whole of humanity in
itself must of necessity include in itself also--necessarily and
potentially--every separate expression of it. Again, a disposition
of mind that removes all limitation from the totality of human
nature must also remove it from every social expression of the same.
Exactly because its "aesthetic disposition" does not exclusively
shelter any separate function of humanity, it is favourable to all
without distinction, nor does it favour any particular functions,
precisely because it is the foundation of the possibility of all.
All other exercises give to the mind some special aptitude, but for
that very reason give it some definite limits; only the aesthetical
leads him to the unlimited. Every other condition, in which we can
live, refers us to a previous condition, and requires for its
solution a following condition; only the aesthetic is a complete
whole in itself, for it unites in itself all conditions of its
source and of its duration. Here alone we feel ourselves swept out
of time, and our humanity expresses itself with purity and integrity
as if it had not yet received any impression or interruption from
the operation of external powers.
That which flatters our senses in immediate sensation opens our weak
and volatile spirit to every impression, but makes us in the same
degree less apt for exertion. That which stretches our thinking
power and invites to abstract conceptions strengthens our mind for
every kind of resistance, but hardens it also in the same
proportion, and deprives us of susceptibility in the same ratio that
it helps us to greater mental activity. For this very reason, one as
well as the other brings us at length to exhaustion, because matter
cannot long do without the shaping, constructive force, and the
force cannot do without the constructible material. But on the other
hand, if we have resigned ourselves to the enjoyment of genuine
beauty, we are at such a moment of our passive and active powers in
the same degree master, and we shall turn with ease from grave to
gay, from rest to movement, from submission to resistance, to
abstract thinking and intuition.
This high indifference and freedom of mind, united with power and
elasticity, is the disposition in which a true work of art ought to
dismiss us, and there is no better test of true aesthetic
excellence. If after an enjoyment of this kind we find ourselves
specially impelled to a particular mode of feeling or action, and
unfit for other modes, this serves as an infallible proof that we
have not experienced any pure aesthetic effect, whether this is
owing to the object, to our own mode of feeling--as generally
happens--or to both together.
As in reality no purely aesthetical effect can be met with--for man
can never leave his dependence on material forces--the excellence of
a work of art can only consist in its greater approximation to its
ideal of aesthetic purity, and however high we may raise the freedom
of this effect, we shall always leave it with a particular
disposition and a particular bias. Any class of productions or
separate work in the world of art is noble and excellent in
proportion to the universality of the disposition and the unlimited
character of the bias thereby presented to our mind. This truth can
be applied to works in various branches of art, and also to
different works in the same branch. We leave a grand musical
performance with our feelings excited, the reading of a noble poem
with a quickened imagination, a beautiful statue or building with an
awakened understanding; but a man would not choose an opportune
moment who attempted to invite us to abstract thinking after a high
musical enjoyment, or to attend to a prosaic affair of common life
after a high poetical enjoyment, or to kindle our imagination and
astonish our feelings directly after inspecting a fine statue or
edifice. The reason of this is that music, BY ITS MATTER, even when
most spiritual, presents a greater affinity with the senses than is
permitted by aesthetic liberty; it is because even the most happy
poetry, having FOR TIS MEDIUM the arbitrary and contingent play of
the imagination, always shares in it more than the intimate
necessity of the really beautiful allows; it is because the best
sculpture touches on severe science BY WHAT IS DETERMINATE IN ITS
CONCEPTION. However, these particular affinities are lost in
proportion as the works of these three kinds of art rise to a
greater elevation, and it is a natural and necessary consequence of
their perfection, that, without confounding their objective limits,
the different arts come to resemble each other more and more, in the
action WHICH THEY EXERCISE ON THE MIND. At its highest degree of
ennobling, music ought to become a form, and act on us with the calm
power of an antique statue; in its most elevated perfection, the
plastic art ought to become music and move us by the immediate
action exercised on the mind by the senses; in its most complete
developmentment, poetry ought both to stir us powerfully like music
and like plastic art to surround us with a peaceful light. In each
art, the perfect style consists exactly in knowing how to remove
specific limits, while sacrificing at the same time the particular
advantages of the art, and to give it by a wise use of what belongs
to it specially a more general character.
Nor is it only the limits inherent in the specific character of each
kind of art that the artist ought to overstep in putting his hand to
the work; he must also triumph over those which are inherent in the
particular subject of which he treats. In a really beautiful work of
art, the substance ought to be inoperative, the form should do
everything; for by the form, the whole man is acted on; the
substance acts on nothing but isolated forces. Thus, however vast
and sublime it may be, the substance always exercises a restrictive
action on the mind, and true aesthetic liberty can only be expected
from the form. Consequently the true search of the master consists
in destroying matter by the form; and the triumph of art is great in
proportion as it overcomes matter and maintains its sway over those
who enjoy its work. It is great particularly in destroying matter
when most imposing, ambitious, and attractive, when therefore matter
has most power to produce the effect proper to it, or, again, when
it leads those who consider it more closely to enter directly into
relation with it. The mind of the spectator and of the hearer must
remain perfectly free and intact; it must issue pure and entire from
the magic circle of the artist, as from the hands of the Creator.
The most frivolous subject ought to be treated in such a way that we
preserve the faculty to exchange it immediately for the most serious
work. The arts which have passion for their object, as a tragedy for
example, do not present a difficulty here; for, in the first place
these arts are not entirely free, because they are in the service of
a particular end (the pathetic), and then no connoisseur will deny
that even in this class a work is perfect in proportion as amidst
the most violent storms of passion it respects the liberty of the
soul. There is a fine art of passion, but an impassioned fine art is
a contradiction in terms, for the infallible effect of the beautiful
is emancipation from the passions. The idea of an instructive fine
art (didactic art) or improving (moral) art is no less contradictory,
for nothing agrees less with the idea of the beautiful than to give
a determinate tendency to the mind.
However, from the fact that a work produces effects only by its
substance, it must not always be inferred that there is a want of
form in this work; this conclusion may quite as well testify to a
want of form in the observer. If his mind is too stretched or too
relaxed, if it is only accustomed to receive things either by the
senses or the intelligence, even in the most perfect combination, it
will only stop to look at the parts, and it will only see matter in
the most beautiful form. Only sensible of the coarse elements, he
must first destroy the aesthetic organisation of a work to find
enjoyment in it, and carefully disinter the details which genius has
caused to vanish, with infinite art, in the harmony of the whole.
The interest he takes in the work is either solely moral or
exclusively physical; the only thing wanting to it is to be exactly
what it ought to be--aesthetical. The readers of this class enjoy a
serious and pathetic poem as they do a sermon; a simple and playful
work, as an inebriating draught; and if on the one hand they have so
little taste as to demand edification from a tragedy or from an
epos, even such as the "Messias," on the other hand they will be
infallibly scandalised by a piece after the fashion of Anacreon and
Catullus.