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THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS
BY
DEWITT H. PARKER
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
PREFACE
This book has grown out of lectures to students at the University of
Michigan and embodies my effort to express to them the nature and
meaning of art. In writing it, I have sought to maintain scientific
accuracy, yet at the same time to preserve freedom of style and
something of the inspiration of the subject. While intended primarily
for students, the book will appeal generally, I hope, to people who
are interested in the intelligent appreciation of art.
My obligations are extensive,--most directly to those whom I have cited
in foot-notes to the text, but also to others whose influence is too
indirect or pervasive to make citation profitable, or too obvious to
make it necessary. For the broader philosophy of art, my debt is
heaviest, I believe, to the artists and philosophers during the period
from Herder to Hegel, who gave to the study its greatest development,
and, among contemporaries, to Croce and Lipps. In addition, I have
drawn freely upon the more special investigations of recent times, but
with the caution desirable in view of the very tentative character of
some of the results. To Mrs. Robert M. Wenley I wish to express my
thanks for her very careful and helpful reading of the page proof.
The appended bibliography is, of course, not intended to be in any
sense adequate, but is offered merely as a guide to further reading;
a complete bibliography would itself demand almost a volume.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. Introduction: Purpose and Method
CHAPTER II. The Definition of Art
CHAPTER III. The Intrinsic Value of Art
CHAPTER IV. The Analysis of the Aesthetic Experience: The Elements of
the Experience
CHAPTER V. The Analysis of the Aesthetic Experience: The Structure of
the Experience
CHAPTER VI. The Problem of Evil in Aesthetics, and Its Solution
through
the Tragic, Pathetic, and Comic
CHAPTER VII. The Standard of Taste
CHAPTER VIII. The Aesthetics of Music
CHAPTER IX. The Aesthetics of Poetry
CHAPTER X. Prose Literature
CHAPTER XI. The Dominion of Art over Nature: Painting
CHAPTER XII. The Dominion of Art over Nature: Sculpture
CHAPTER XIII. Beauty in the Industrial Arts: Architecture
CHAPTER XIV. The Function of Art: Art and Morality
CHAPTER XV. The Function of Art: Art and Religion
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE PRINCIPLES OF AESTHETICS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: PURPOSE AND METHOD
Although some feeling for beauty is perhaps universal among men, the
same cannot be said of the understanding of beauty. The average man,
who may exercise considerable taste in personal adornment, in the
decoration of the home, or in the choice of poetry and painting, is
at a loss when called upon to tell what art is or to explain why he
calls one thing "beautiful" and another "ugly." Even the artist and
the connoisseur, skilled to produce or accurate in judgment, are often
wanting in clear and consistent ideas about their own works or
appreciations. Here, as elsewhere, we meet the contrast between feeling
and doing, on the one hand, and knowing, on the other. Just as practical
men are frequently unable to describe or justify their most successful
methods or undertakings, just as many people who astonish us with their
fineness and freedom in the art of living are strangely wanting in
clear thoughts about themselves and the life which they lead so
admirably, so in the world of beauty, the men who do and appreciate
are not always the ones who understand.
Very often, moreover, the artist and the art lover justify their
inability to understand beauty on the ground that beauty is too subtle
a thing for thought. How, they say, can one hope to distill into clear
and stable ideas such a vaporous and fleeting matter as Aesthetic
feeling? Such men are not only unable to think about beauty, but
skeptical as to the possibility of doing so,--contented mystics, deeply
feeling, but dumb.
However, there have always been artists and connoisseurs who have
striven to reflect upon their appreciations and acts, unhappy until
they have understood and justified what they were doing; and one meets
with numerous art-loving people whose intellectual curiosity is rather
quickened than put to sleep by just that element of elusiveness in
beauty upon which the mystics dwell. Long acquaintance with any class
of objects leads naturally to the formation of some definition or
general idea of them, and the repeated performance of the same type
of act impels to the search for a principle that can be communicated
to other people in justification of what one is doing and in defense
of the value which one attaches to it. Thoughtful people cannot long
avoid trying to formulate the relation of their interest in beauty,
which absorbs so much energy and devotion, to other human interests,
to fix its place in the scheme of life. It would be surprising,
therefore, if there had been no Shelleys or Sidneys to define the
relation between poetry and science, or Tolstoys to speculate on the
nature of all art; and we should wonder if we did not everywhere hear
intelligent people discussing the relation of utility and goodness to
beauty, or asking what makes a poem or a picture great.
Now the science of aesthetics is an attempt to do in a systematic way
what thoughtful art lovers have thus always been doing haphazardly.
It is an effort to obtain a clear general idea of beautiful objects,
our judgments upon them, and the motives underlying the acts which
create them,--to raise the aesthetic life, otherwise a matter of
instinct and feeling, to the level of intelligence, of understanding.
To understand art means to find an idea or definition which applies
to it and to no other activity, and at the same time to determine its
relation to other elements of human nature; and our understanding will
be complete if our idea includes all the distinguishing characteristics
of art, not simply enumerated, but exhibited in their achieved
relations.
How shall we proceed in seeking such an idea of art? We must follow
a twofold method: first, the ordinary scientific method of observation,
analysis, and experiment; and second, another and very different method,
which people of the present day often profess to avoid, but which is
equally necessary, as I shall try to show, and actually employed by
those who reject it. In following the first method we treat beautiful
things as objects given to us for study, much as plants and animals
are given to the biologist. Just as the biologist watches the behavior
of his specimens, analyzes them into their various parts and functions,
and controls his studies through carefully devised experiments, arriving
at last at a clear notion of what a plant or an animal is--at a
definition of life; so the student of aesthetics observes works of art
and other well-recognized beautiful things, analyzes their elements
and the forms of connection of these, arranges experiments to facilitate
and guard his observations from error and, as a result, reaches the
general idea for which he is looking,--the idea of beauty.
A vast material presents itself for study of this kind: the artistic
attempts of children and primitive men; the well-developed art of
civilized nations, past and present, as creative process and as
completed work; and finally, the everyday aesthetic appreciations of
nature and human life, both by ourselves and by the people whom we
seek out for study. Each kind of material has its special value. The
first has the advantage of the perspicuity which comes from simplicity,
similar for our purposes to the value of the rudimentary forms of life
for the biologist. But this advantage of early art may be overestimated;
for the nature of beauty is better revealed in its maturer
manifestations, even as the purposes of an individual are more fully,
if not more clearly, embodied in maturity than in youth or childhood.
Yet a purely objective method will not suffice to give us an adequate
idea of beauty. For beautiful things are created by men, not passively
discovered, and are made, like other things which men make, in order
to realize a purpose. Just as a saw is a good saw only when it fulfills
the purpose of cutting wood, so works of art are beautiful only because
they embody a certain purpose. The beautiful things which we study by
the objective method are selected by us from among countless other
objects and called beautiful because they have a value for us, without
a feeling for which we should not know them to be beautiful at all.
They are not, like sun and moon, independent of mind and will and
capable of being understood in complete isolation from man. No world
of beauty exists apart from a purpose that finds realization there.
We are, to be sure, not always aware of the existence of this purpose
when we enjoy a picture or a poem or a bit of landscape; yet it is
present none the less. The child is equally unaware of the purpose of
the food which pleases him, yet the purpose is the ground of his
pleasure; and we can understand his hunger only through a knowledge
of it.
The dependence of beauty upon a relation to purpose is clear from the
fact that in our feelings and judgments about art we not only change
and disagree, but correct ourselves and each other. The history of
taste, both in the individual and the race, is not a mere process, but
a progress, an evolution. "We were wrong in calling that poem
beautiful," we say; "you are mistaken in thinking that picture a good
one"; "the eighteenth century held a false view of the nature of
poetry"; "the English Pre-Raphaelites confused the functions of poetry
and painting"; "to-day we understand what the truly pictorial is better
than Giotto did"; and so on. Now nothing can be of worth to us, one
thing cannot be better than another, nor can we be mistaken as to its
value except with reference to some purpose which it fulfills or does
not fulfill. There is no growth or evolution apart from a purpose in
terms of which we can read the direction of change as forward rather
than backward.
This purpose cannot be understood by the observation and analysis, no
matter how careful, of beautiful _things_; for it exists in the
mind primarily and only through mind becomes embodied in things; and
it cannot be understood by a mere inductive study of aesthetic
experiences--the mind plus the object--just as they come; because, as
we have just stated, they are changeful and subject to correction,
therefore uncertain and often misleading. The aesthetic impulse may
falter and go astray like any other impulse; a description of it in
this condition would lead to a very false conception. No, we must
employ a different method of investigation--the Socratic method of
self-scrutiny, the conscious attempt to become clear and consistent
about our own purposes, the probing and straightening of our aesthetic
consciences. Instead of accepting our immediate feelings and judgments,
we should become critical towards them and ask ourselves, What do we
really seek in art and in life which, when found, we call beautiful?
Of course, in order to answer this question we cannot rely on an
examination of our own preferences in isolation from those of our
fellow-men. Here, as everywhere, our purposes are an outgrowth of the
inherited past and are developed in imitation of, or in rivalry with,
those of other men. The problem is one of interpreting the meaning of
art in the system of culture of which our own minds are a part.
Nevertheless, the personal problem remains. Aesthetic value is
emphatically personal; it must be felt as one's own. If I accept the
standards of my race and age, I do so because I find them to be an
expression of my own aesthetic will. In the end, my own will to beauty
must be cleared up; its darkly functioning goals must be brought to
light.
Now, unless we have thought much about the matter or are gifted with
unusual native taste, we shall find that our aesthetic intentions are
confused, contradictory, and entangled with other purposes. To become
aware of this is the first step towards enlightenment. We must try to
distinguish what we want of art from what we want of other things,
such as science or morality; for something unique we must desire from
anything of permanent value in our life. In the next place we should
come to see that we cannot want incompatible things; that, for example,
we cannot want art to hold the mirror up to life and, at the same time,
to represent life as conforming to our private prejudices; or want a
picture to have expressive and harmonious colors and look exactly like
a real landscape; or long for a poetry that would be music or a
sculpture that would be pictorial. Finally, we must make sure that our
interpretation of the aesthetic purpose is representative of the actual
fullness and manysidedness of it; we should observe, for example, that
sensuous pleasure is not all that we seek from art; that truth of some
kind we seek besides; and yet that in some sort of union we want both.
This clearing up can be accomplished only in closest touch with the
actual experience of beauty; it must be performed upon our working
preferences and judgments. It must be an interpretation of the actual
history of art. There is no a priori method of establishing aesthetic
standards. Just as no one can discover his life purpose apart from the
process of living, or the purpose of another except through sympathy;
so no one can know the meaning of art except through creating and
enjoying and entering into the aesthetic life of other artists and art
lovers.
This so-called normative--perhaps better, critical--moment in aesthetics
introduces an inevitable personal element into every discussion of the
subject. Even as every artist seeks to convince his public that what
he offers is beautiful, so every philosopher of art undertakes to
persuade of the validity of his own preferences. I would not make any
secret of this with regard to the following pages of this book. Yet
this intrusion of personality need not be harmful, but may, on the
contrary, be valuable. It cannot be harmful if the writer proceeds
undogmatically, making constant appeals to the judgment of his readers
and claiming no authority for his statements except in so far as they
find favor there. Influence rather than authority is what he should
seek. In presenting his views, as he must, he should strive to stimulate
the reader to make a clear and consistent formulation of his own
preferences rather than to impose upon him standards ready made. And
the good of the personal element comes from the power which one strong
preference or conviction has of calling forth another, and compelling
it to the discovery and defense of its grounds.
In so far as aesthetics is studied by the objective method it is a
branch of psychology. Aesthetic facts are mental facts. A work of art,
no matter how material it may at first seem to be, exists only as
perceived and enjoyed. The marble statue is beautiful only when it
enters into and becomes alive in the experience of the beholder. Keys
and strings and vibrations of the air are but stimuli for the auditory
experience which is the real nocturne or etude. Ether vibrations and
the retina upon which they impinge are nothing more than instruments
for the production of the colors which, together with the interpretation
of them in terms of ideas and feelings, constitute the real picture
which we appreciate and judge. The physical stimuli and the
physiological reactions evoked by them are important for our purpose
only so far as they help us to understand the inner experiences with
which they are correlated. A large part of our work, therefore, will
consist in the psychological analysis of the experience of art and the
motives underlying its production. We shall have to distinguish the
elements of mind that enter into it, show their interrelations, and
differentiate the total experience from other types of experience.
Since, moreover, art is a social phenomenon, we shall have to draw
upon our knowledge of social psychology to illumine our analysis of
the individual's experience. Art is a historical, even a technical,
development; hence the personal enjoyment of beauty itself is
conditioned by factors that spring from the traditions of groups of
artists and art lovers. No one can understand his pleasure in beauty
apart from the pleasure of others.
In so far, on the other hand, as aesthetics is an attempt to define
the purpose of art and so to formulate the standards presupposed in
judgments of taste, it is closely related to criticism. The relation
is essentially that between theory and the application of theory. It
is the office of the critic to deepen and diffuse the appreciation of
particular works of art. For this purpose he must possess standards;
but he need not be, and in fact often is not, aware of them. A fine
taste may serve his ends. Not infrequently, however, the critic
endeavors to make clear to himself and his readers the principles he
is employing. Now, on its normative side, aesthetics is ideally the
complete rationale of criticism, the systematic achievement, for its
own sake, of what the thoughtful critic attempts with less exactness
and for the direct purpose of appreciation. It is beyond the province
of aesthetics to criticize any particular work of art, except by way
of illustration. The importance of illustration for the sake of
explaining and proving general principles is, however, fundamental;
for, as we have seen, a valuable aesthetic theory is impossible unless
developed out of the primary aesthetic life of enjoyment and estimation,
a life of contact with individual beautiful things. No amount of
psychological skill in analysis or philosophical aptitude for definition
can compensate for want of a real love of beauty,--of the possession
of something of the artistic temperament. People who do not love art,
yet study it from the outside, may contribute to our knowledge of it
through isolated bits of analysis, but their interpretations of its
more fundamental nature are always superficial. Hence, just as the
wise critic will not neglect aesthetics, so the philosopher of art
should be something of a critic. Yet the division of labor is clear
enough. The critic devotes himself to the appreciation of some special
contemporary or historical field of art--Shakespearean drama,
Renaissance sculpture, Italian painting, for example; while the
philosopher of art looks for general principles, and gives attention
to individual works of art and historical movements only for the purpose
of discovering and illustrating them. And, since the philosopher of
art seeks a universal idea of art rather than an understanding of this
or that particular work of art, an intimate acquaintance with a few
examples, through which this idea can be revealed to the loving eye,
is of more importance than a wide but superficial aesthetic culture.
In our discussion thus far, we have been assuming the possibility of
aesthetic theory. But what shall we say in answer to the mystic who
tells us that beauty is indefinable? First of all, I think, we should
remind him that his own thesis can be proved or refuted only through
an attempt at a scientific investigation of beauty. Every attempt to
master our experience through thought is an adventure; but the futility
of adventures can be shown only by courageously entering into them.
And, although the failure of previous efforts may lessen the
probabilities of success in a new enterprise, it cannot prove that
success is absolutely impossible. Through greater persistence and
better methods the new may succeed where the old have failed. Moreover,
although we are ready to grant that the pathway to our goal is full
of pitfalls, marked by the wreckage of old theories, yet we claim that
the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling
over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing
can be known by hearsay. If, then, he would really know that the road
to theoretical insight into beauty is impassable, let him travel with
us and see; or, if not with us, alone by himself or with some one wiser
than we as guide; let him compare fairly and sympathetically the results
of theoretical analysis and construction with the data of his firsthand
experience and observe whether the one is or is not adequate to the
other.
Again, the cleft between thought and feeling, even subtle and fleeting
aesthetic feeling, is not so great as the mystics suppose. For, after
all, there is a recognizable identity and permanence even in these
feelings; we should never call them by a common name or greet them as
the same despite their shiftings from moment to moment if this were
not true. Although whatever is unique in each individual experience
of beauty, its distinctive flavor or nuance, cannot be adequately
rendered in thought, but can only be felt; yet whatever each new
experience has in common with the old, whatever is universal in all
aesthetic experiences, can be formulated. The relations of beauty,
too, its place in the whole of life, can be discovered by thought
alone; for only by thought can we hold on to the various things whose
relations we are seeking to establish; without thought our experience
falls asunder into separate bits and never attains to unity. Finally,
the mystics forget that the life of thought and the life of feeling
have a common root; they are both parts of the one life of the mind
and so cannot be foreign to each other.
The motive impelling to any kind of undertaking is usually complex,
and that which leads to the development of aesthetic theory is no
exception to the general rule. A disinterested love of understanding
has certainly played a part. Every region of experience invites to the
play of intelligence upon it; the lover of knowledge, as Plato says,
loves the whole of his object. Yet even intelligence, insatiable and
impartial as it is, has its predilections. The desire to understand
a particular type of thing has its roots in an initial love of it. As
the born botanist is the man who finds joy in contact with tree and
moss and mushroom, so the student of aesthetics is commonly a lover
of beauty. And, although the interest which he takes in aesthetic
theory is largely just the pleasure in possessing clear ideas, one may
question whether he would pursue it with such ardor except for the
continual lover's touch with picture and statue and poem which it
demands. For the intelligent lover of beauty, aesthetic theory requires
no justification; it is as necessary and pleasurable for him to
understand art as it is compulsive for him to seek out beautiful things
to enjoy. To love without understanding is, to the thoughtful lover,
an infidelity to his object. That the interest in aesthetic theory is
partly rooted in feeling is shown from the fact that, when developed
by artists, it takes the form of a defense of the type of art which
they are producing. The aesthetic theory of the German Romanticists
is an illustration of this; Hebbel and Wagner are other striking
examples. These men could not rest until they had put into communicable
and persuasive form the aesthetic values which they felt in creation.
And we, too, who are not artists but only lovers of beauty, find in
theory a satisfaction for a similar need with reference to our
preferences.[Footnote: Compare Santayana: The Sense of Beauty, p. 11.]
More important to the average man is the help which aesthetic theory
may render to appreciation itself. If to the basal interest in beauty
be added an interest in understanding beauty, the former is quickened
and fortified and the total measure of enjoyment increased. Even the
love of beauty, strong as it commonly is, may well find support through
connection with an equally powerful and enduring affection. The
aesthetic interest is no exception to the general truth that each part
of the mind gains in stability and intensity if connected with the
others; isolated, it runs the risk of gradual decay in satiety or
through the crowding out of other competing interests, which if joined
with it, would have kept it alive instead. Moreover, the understanding
of art may increase the appreciation of particular works of art. For
the analysis and constant attention to the subtler details demanded
by theory may bring to notice aspects of a work of art which do not
exist for an unthinking appreciation. As a rule, the appreciations of
the average man are very inadequate to the total possibilities offered,
extending only to the more obvious features. Often enough besides,
through a mere lack of understanding of the purpose of art in general
and of the more special aims of the particular arts, people expect to
find what cannot be given, and hence are prejudiced against what they
might otherwise enjoy. The following pages will afford, I hope, abundant
illustrations of this truth.
Finally, aesthetic theory may have a favorable influence upon the
creation of art. Not that the student of aesthetics can prescribe to
the artist what he shall or shall not do; for the latter can obey, for
better or worse, only the inner imperative of his native genius. Yet,
inevitably, the man of genius receives direction and cultivation from
the aesthetic sentiment of the time into which he is born and grown;
even when he reacts against it, he nevertheless feels its influence;
a sound conception of the nature and purpose of art may save him from
many mistakes. The French classical tradition in sculpture and painting,
which is not merely academic, having become a part of public taste,
prevented the production of the frightful crudities which passed for
art in Germany and England during the present and past centuries. By
helping to create a freer and more intelligent atmosphere for the
artist to be born and educated in, and finer demands upon him when
once he has begun to produce and is seeking recognition, the student
of aesthetics may indirectly do not a little for him. And surely in our
own country, where an educated public taste does not exist and the
fiercest prejudices are rampant, there is abundant opportunity for
service.