II

Yet, it is said, there is an aesthetic. There are several aesthetics,

even. But we shall suppose there is but one, and that--always in

principle--it has good reasons for opposing success, whatever it may

be. Acceptance of an aesthetic obliges us to admit that there is an

absolute beauty, and that works are deemed beautiful according to the

degree of their resemblance to this vague and complaisant ideal. It is

this aesthetic--admitting its existence for the moment--that is now to

be laid open and submitted to the scalpel.

The sensibility which yields to success, or which produces it, is very

interesting; but perhaps it will be permitted not to despise entirely,

and at very first sight, the sensibility which opposes success and

denies that the successful work is, as such, the beautiful work. These

two sensibilities, though equally spontaneous, are not equally pure.

The second is very mixed. The aesthetic which sums it up--an aesthetic

as fragile as morality--is a mixture of beliefs, of traditions, of

arguments, of habits, of conceptions. Respect enters into it--also fear

and an obscure appetite for novelty. "On new thoughts let us make old

verses." The new-old--that is what all aesthetics extol, for a caste

must be flattered in keeping with its nerves and its erudition. The

artist's judgment, in artistic matters, is an amalgam of sensations

and superstitions. The simple-minded crowd has merely sensations.

Its judgment is not aesthetic. It is not even a judgment. It is the

naïve avowal of a pleasure. It follows necessarily from this that the

aesthetic caste alone is qualified to judge the beauty of works, and to

accord them this quality. The crowd creates success, the caste creates

beauty. It is all the same, if you like, since there is a hierarchy

neither in acts nor in sensations, and all is but movement. It is the

same, but it is different. There, then, is one point established. In

art, the opinion of the intelligence is opposed to the opinion of

sensibility. Sensibility is concerned only with pleasure. If, to this

pleasure, an intellectual element be added, we have aesthetics. The

crowd can say: that pleases me, hence it is beautiful. It cannot say:

that pleases me, yet it is not beautiful, or: that displeases me,

yet it is beautiful. The crowd, as such, never lies; while aesthetic

judgment is one of the most complicated forms of falsehood.[3]

It is very evident that absolute beauty exists no more than truth,

justice, love. The beauty of the poets, the truth of the philosophers,

the justice of the sociologists, the love of the theologians, are

all so many abstractions which enter the realm of our senses--and

very clumsily--only when blocked out by the sculptor's chisel. Like

ideas conceived in the future or in the past, they express a certain

harmony between our present sensations and the general state of our

intelligence. This is especially felt in the case of truth, which is

indeed a sensation uncontradicted by our intelligence; but any other

intelligence may contradict it, or it may find itself contradicted by

sensations of a different order or intensity.

The idea of beauty has an emotional origin, connected with the idea

of generation. The female who is to be the mother must conform to the

racial type. That is, she must be beautiful.[4] Woman is less exacting,

perhaps because man transmits very little of himself to his offspring.

The first standard of beauty was, then, woman and, in general, the

human body. Beauty, in the case of an animal, an object, is possession

of something human in the form, in the character. A landscape can be

described in terms almost all of which would apply to the beauty of a

woman, and marble has her whiteness, sapphires are her eyes, coral is

her lips. We have here a whole vocabulary of poetic commonplaces. To be

sure, some of them should be corrected, and it should be noted that it

is ebony which is black as black hair, and the swan which has a woman's

neck. Beauty is so sexual that the only generally accepted works of art

are those which show, quite simply, the human body in its nakedness.

By his persistence in remaining purely sexual, the Greek sculptor has

placed himself above all discussion for eternity. It is beautiful,

because it is a beautiful human body, such as every man or every woman

would like to unite with for the perpetuation of the race.

But another fact, more obscure, though not less certain, permits us

to bring the idea of beauty back by another route to the very idea of

sexuality. This is, that all human emotions, whatever their order,

nature or intensity, awaken a more or less marked response in the

genital nervous system. Sexual pathology has thrown light upon this.

Perfumes, as well as the smell or sight of blood, noise and heat,

intellectual or muscular effort, repose and fatigue, drunkenness

and abstinence--the most contradictory sensations all favour the

sexual impulse. Others, like fear, cold, vexation, also react upon

a neighbouring and intricate centre in the genital system. Read the

first chapter of _En Ménage_, in which M. Huysmans describes the effect

produced upon a gentle, nervous being by the discovery of a lover in

his wife's arms. Among the emotions which reverberate most surely on

every somewhat sensitive organism, aesthetic emotions must be placed

in the first rank. And thus they return to their origin. That which

inclines to love seems beautiful. That which seems beautiful inclines

to love. There is between the two an undeniable relation. A man loves

a woman because she is beautiful, and he deems her beautiful because

he loves her. It is the same with everything that permits associations

of sexual ideas, and with every emotion which reacts upon the genital

system.

But it is not at all necessary for a work of art to present a sensual

picture in order to awaken ideas of love. It is enough for it to be

beautiful, captivating. It stirs passion. Where shall we seek the

seat of this passion? The brain is merely a centre of transmission.

It is not a terminus. It is a happy and praiseworthy error to have

made man's brain his absolute centre, but it is an error. The sole

natural end of man is reproduction. If his activity had another goal,

he would no longer be an animal, and we fall back into Christianity, to

be confronted again by the soul, demerit and all the jargon employed

by spiritualistic quacks. Emotion becomes conscious at the very

moment of its passing, but it merely passes, leaving its image, and

descends to the loins. This manner of speaking is perhaps figurative,

and, moreover, I am not speaking of intense and strongly localized

excitations. What is meant is merely that aesthetic emotion puts man in

a state favourable to the reception of erotic emotion. This state is

communicated to some by music, to others by painting, the drama. I have

known a man--of a certain age, it is true--who could cheat a sexual

desire by glancing at engravings. The reverse example would, doubtless,

be less paradoxical. Aesthetic emotion is that from which man lets

himself be most easily diverted by love, so easy, almost fatal, is the

passage from one to the other. This intimate union between art and love

is, moreover, the sole explanation of art. Without it--without this

genital repercussion--it would never have been born; and, without it,

it would not be perpetuated. Nothing is useless in deep-seated human

habits. Everything which has lasted is, for that reason, necessary. Art

is the accomplice of love. Take love away, and there is no longer art.

Take art away, and love becomes merely a physiological need.

But it is less here art itself that is concerned than its emotional

power, and there must therefore be grouped under the name of art

everything in the nature of spectacle or sport--every diversion enjoyed

in public, or with regard to which one communicates to himself his

impressions. Fireworks can thrill quite as much as a tragedy. The

sole hierarchy is that of intensity; but there is no doubt that the

success of a work of art greatly increases its emotional power upon

men in general. Hence, for the crowd, the quite natural belief that

every successful work is beautiful, and that failure and scorn are

always merited. In short, what the caste calls beauty, the people call

success; but they have learned from the aristocrats this word truly

devoid of meaning for them, and employ it to enhance the quality of

their pleasures. That is not entirely illegitimate, success and beauty

having a common origin in the emotions, their sole difference being the

difference of the nervous systems in which they have evolved.

But very few men are capable of an original aesthetic emotion. Most of

those who believe they experience it are like the people themselves,

merely obeying the suggestion of a master, the bidding of their

memories, the influence of their environment, the fashion. There is a

passing beauty as precarious as popular success. A work of art extolled

by the caste to-day will be despised by the caste to-morrow, and less

trace of it will perhaps remain than of the work rejected by the caste

and acclaimed by the people. For success is a fact whose importance

increases with the dust it raises, with the number of the faithful come

to accompany the cortège. The emotions of the caste and the emotions

of the people are destined to the same end. Nature, which makes no

leaps, makes no choice either. It is a question of making children.

The sense of smell (or an analogous sense) is so highly developed in

the emperor-moth, that a female egg of that rare butterfly attracts

a throng of males to the spot where not one was seen before. This

acuteness would be absurd if it merely served the emperor-moth to

select a more delicate repast in the flowery flock or, in one way or

another, to increase its pleasure and its spiritual advancement, the

culture of its intelligence. It is an aid to the emperor-moth in making

love. It is its aesthetic sense.

However, there are human natures, less diffuse or more refractory, in

which the emotions do not react upon the centre of major sensibility,

either because this centre is atrophied, or because the emotional

current has encountered in its course an obstacle, a dyke, an

impervious barrier. Let us, without examining too closely the aptness

of the analogy, avail ourselves of the commonest and most striking

comparisons. An electric current is thrown into a wire for the purpose

of creating motion. The wire falls supported by a bit of wood and,

instead of motion, heat is generated. The train which was to have

been propelled burns. So the emotion, on its way towards the genital

sense which it is meant to awaken, encounters a centre of resistance.

It is broken, twists back upon itself, but becomes installed; and all

the emotions of the same order, which pass by the same centre, will

share the same fate. A wheel was to be turned, and we have fireworks.

The species was to be preserved, and we have born the idea of beauty.

Aesthetic emotion, even in its purest, most disinterested form, is,

then, merely a deviation of the genital emotion. Aphrodite, who urged

us to her cult, no longer troubles us. The woman has vanished. Noble

forms are left, agreeable lines; but a horse also is beautiful, and

a lion, and an ox. Fortunate short-circuit which has permitted us to

reflect, to compare, to judge! The current hurled us on towards the

sister of the goddess. Now it turns us from her, for she is less fair!

It might be supposed that it is in the region of the intelligence

the emotional current has become diffused, thus forming that mixture

of emotion and intelligence which gives us the aesthetic sense.

Intelligence is an accident. Genius is a catastrophe. We must carefully

avoid even dreaming of a social state where health, equilibrium,

equity, moderation, order would reign uniformly, where catastrophes

would be impossible, and accidents very rare. Human intelligence is

certainly the consequence of what we naïvely call evil. If the threads

did not become cut and knotted, if emotion always attained its goal,

men would be stronger and handsomer, and their houses would be as

perfect as ant-hills. Only, the world would not exist.