THE PHILOSOPHY OF
FINE ART
BY
G. W. F. HEGEL
TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES, BY
F. P. B. OSMASTON, B.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE ART AND GENIUS OF TINTORET," "AN ESSAY
ON THE FUTURE OF POETRY," AND OTHER WORKS
VOL. I
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1920
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The translation of Hegel's "Aesthetik" or "Philosophy of Fine Art,"
which is contained in the four volumes of the present work, is the
first complete translation in English of the three volumes devoted to
this subject in the collected edition (Berlin, 1835). I know of four
partial translations in English of this work and one in French. These
are Mr. W. M. Bryant's translation of Part II[1], Mr. Kedney's short
analysis of the entire work[2], Mr. Hastie's translation of Michelet's
short "Philosophy of Art[3]," prefaced by Hegel's Introduction, partly
translated and partly summarized and lastly Professor B. Bosanquet's
complete translation of Hegel's first Introduction with notes[4].
The French translation of M. Bénard purports to be more or less
a reproduction of the entire work and runs into two large-sized
volumes. It also is, however, so far as Hegel's Introduction and the
first two Parts are concerned, merely a compressed summary, and only
in particular passages is the translation anything but a very free
rendering of the original, though there is a far closer approach to
this in Part III.
I have not seen Mr. Bryant's translation. As any approach to an
adequate reproduction of Hegel's writing Mr. Hastie's translation of
Michelet's work and Mr. Kedney's analysis are of very little value[5].
Professor Bosanquet's translation is admirable within the limits
imposed. To that extent I have merely followed, as I was able, in
my friend's footsteps; but this advance covers little more than one
sixteenth part of the entire work of 1,600 pages.
With regard to all such analyses I entirely concur with Professor
Bosanquet's view stated in his preface, that such merely mislead if
regarded as in any way a reflex of either Hegel himself or the German
text. It is true that this work is--as are in their degree other
volumes of the collected edition, the "Outlines of the Philosophy
of Right" for example--a heterogeneous product, in our own instance
not merely lacking the final revision of the author, but rather put
together as such a connected treatise by the editor responsible (i)
from several autograph MSS. of Hegel[6], some of which were little
more than fragmentary notes for lectures, (ii) supplemented further
from notes[7] taken by pupils who attended such lectures, the entire
conglomerate being (iii) finally dovetailed together with connecting
links by the editorial hand much as, to cite his own illustration, a
careful picture restorer might do in order to secure the impression of
a unified work, the unity aimed at by himself being rather that of a
connected literary treatise than a series of lectures.
It is obvious that a product of this nature will vary considerably
throughout in the degree that the personality and unique flavour of
Hegel himself, whether viewed as writer or thinker, asserts itself.
The introductions[8] have been, it would appear, taken almost
exclusively from Hegel's own MSS.; but even these remained unrevised
for the press, owing to the premature and sudden death of their author.
Of the greater portion of the work we can merely form our judgment of
the nature of its authenticity from the content itself. On the whole I
should myself say that the result was more favourable than might under
such conditions have been expected. The editor assures us expressly
that so far as all illustrations and the substantive content of the
work is concerned no attempt has been made whatever to supplement the
same. Hegel is throughout here entirely responsible. I think, further,
that the endeavour claimed by the editor to preserve the general
character and tone (_Kolorit_) of Hegel's own diction has attained a
degree of success that could only have been within the reach of devoted
pupils and friends of the man himself, who for many years both attended
his lectures and studied his published works. Whatever opinion,
however, we may arrive at on this head there can hardly be two opinions
as to the sources in which the main interest consists for a modern
reader.
First, I should lay particular stress on the forceful and
characteristic manner in which the fundamental philosophical
conceptions which underlie the entire fabric are worked into and
elaborated explicitly, throughout its detail. The very nature of this
unwearied and insistent interfusion (_Durchdringung_) of positive
fact, whether historical, scientific, or aesthetic, with the dialectic
movement of the Idea is here as essentially the method of Hegel as it
is elsewhere. And this is so despite the fact that it is here presented
for the most part in a form less repellent to the ordinary reader and
less provocative of hostile criticism. Translators therefore, who,
following the example of the French translator[9], deliberately seek
to lighten the burden of their cargo by throwing overboard what they
choose to call the "injurious dialectic," or the "dark labyrinth" of
this aspect of our work may reproduce much that is of instruction or
interest, but most certainly do not reproduce either the main strength
of Hegel as a thinker, or the most characteristic impression--to say
nothing of the repetitions--of such style or absence of literary style
that he possessed.
Secondly, if there is one feature more striking than any other in this
work, which is bound at least to surprise anyone who still harbours
the obsolete notion that this philosopher moved in an exclusively
abstract region of idea remote from the concrete experience of life and
scientific or artistic knowledge, it is the wealth and extraordinary
range of the illustrations in these volumes no less than the vigour and
freshness of their application. In this respect two translations which
merely amount to a summary of theoretical content simply omit the vital
or at least the most attractive heart of the interest.
As to the present claim of this laborious work to recognition and
study, its historical significance is, I think, admitted by the most
acknowledged authorities on the subject. As Schasler has called it,
it is the first complete system of a philosophy of Art. The nature
of its importance to our own most able and learned historian of the
Philosophy of Fine Art may not only be deduced from his own summary of
its contents and significance in his invaluable historical survey[10],
but is further illustrated by the fact that he has reproduced the
concluding portion of Hegel's Introduction _in extenso_ in an Appendix
to this work.
Other writers have been less judicious both as hostile critics and in
the degree of their praise or enthusiasm. One German authority has
called it Hegel's masterpiece. Such a title is, apart from any other
ground, sufficiently excluded by its history alone. Whether Hegel might
have made it his masterpiece had he lived is of course another question.
Other admirers, such as the late Professor Caird[11], have more
legitimately accepted such a distinction for the "Phenomenologie des
Geistes." Mr. Hastie will even have it that throughout "All is clear,
radiant, harmonious and dim with the things that are a joy for ever."
Such an effusive display of abstract _Vorstellung_ reminds one little
of either the dour temper of the Swabian philosopher, or the concrete
intelligence which most distinguishes him from his rivals now and in
his lifetime. I can promise no such garden of Hesperides, or even
Platonic banquet, to any of my readers. It is true that we have here,
the work being primarily built upon lectures intended to instruct
the ordinary student, no such parade of the dialectic method in its
formal structure such as constitutes the root of offence in some other
works of Hegel. But if we approach it with the belief that all is
therefore the plain sailing we meet with in the world of journalistic
art criticism and the commonsense conceptions of everyday life, or
with the assurance that the work is, or can be, intelligible without
some real attempt to grapple with the fundamental ideas of Hegelian
metaphysic, we may find our disappointment very considerable. As a
humble translator I am bound to say that in a very large number of
passages I have by no means discovered immediacy of intelligibility
or radiance to be a conspicuous feature of the original. Radiance is
indeed, I should say, not an attribute emphatically characteristic of
any kind of Teutonic literature, and least of all of its scientific and
philosophical literature. The present work is certainly no exception.
With its untiring, not to say remorseless, effort to press home in
repeated expression, often but slightly varied, the same fundamental
points, its dogged and endless persistence in the careful explication
through rational definition of every kind of positive material
that presents itself from the nature of the divine in man, or the
soul of living beast to the accurate determination in the terms of
expressed thought of a musical sound or an epigram or simile, with
its well-nigh total disregard of the beauty of literary style, and
its by no means unfrequent disregard of all principle of proportion
in the co-ordination of its varied subject-matter--whatever else
such a product may be it is most assuredly not, at least to English
apprehension, reminiscent of the radiance either of Homer or Apollo.
But though even sincere admiration may smile over such a description,
it does unquestionably reflect to a remarkable extent the thoroughness,
tenacity of purpose, the absence of superficial rhetoric, the wide
range, the extraordinary combination of constructive idea and detailed
knowledge and research we rightly associate with the most valued works
of German science and philosophy. It has never been more needful
than at this time of day to draw attention to such qualities, when
the national bias is to ignore or belittle their presence. It is,
moreover, not without passages which attain to a very real elevation of
eloquence, eloquence marked by the profoundest earnestness and entirely
free from the least flavour of bombast or sentimentalism. To the right
kind of reader it can hardly fail to convey a certain fascination
which is not merely due to the presence of a powerful and original
intellect, but is equally inseparable from the product of a human soul
intent upon getting at the heart of its subject, and keeping its vision
throughout fixed on that. Nor is the mere breadth of the canvas and the
depth of its content its only attraction. The work is indeed full of
digressions of exceptional interest to the general reader, and as such
bears the indelible stamp of Hegel's manner as a lecturer, which his
editor maintains stood out in such marked contrast to his more concise
style as an author, drawing as he did when lecturing so largely on his
encyclopaedic stores of knowledge.
To treat all the text as we now have it with the same respect may
very possibly betoken to some an excess of zeal on the part of the
translator; but after all the most important thing for an English
reader is to know what the volumes actually contain. In dealing with
Hegel the outlined sketch, whether secured through a process of
distillation or adulteration, is by no means any compensation for the
loss of the complete picture. If we are impatient over many aspects of
this philosopher's particularity, we had much better dispense with him
altogether.
Sympathetically studied it is hardly too much to say that this
monumental work is an education in itself. It is at any rate one which
cannot fail to enlarge our conceptions of the significance and dignity
of human art. Nor is this by any means impossible, even though we are
unable to concur in, or indeed remain insufficiently qualified to
express a judgment upon all or even a few of the most important of
its conclusions. But it is perhaps not wholly unnecessary to observe
that before venturing upon a verdict in our wisdom we must, as Robert
Browning submitted in reference to the criticism passed upon his
poetry, have awakened both our senses and intelligence "that they may
the better judge." It is the modest aim of the present translation to
make that preparatory process more easy for the English reader, to
assist that intelligent assimilation of the truth as it appears to a
great and world-famous thinker, which is the necessary condition of
any criticism meriting respectful attention at all. Such assimilation
is perhaps impossible in the case of Hegel without effort, and indeed
something of sympathy with his general outlook and temper, making as
he does little or no appeal whatever to the lover of literature as
such, who had consequently far better leave him austerely alone to the
consideration of others who are more attracted.
I do not propose in these prefatory remarks to enlarge further on the
actual content of the work, or on the nature of the criticism which has
been directed either to fundamental positions or matters of detail.
Some of these I have referred to in my notes on the text where they are
most obviously pertinent. The general reader will find a very useful
introduction to some of the more primary difficulties in the study of
Hegel in Professor Bosanquet's prefatory essay to his translation.
The more serious student can hardly dispense with the perusal of a
considerable portion of the same writer's history of Aesthetik, at
least that portion which directly deals with the writings of Kant,
Schiller, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel himself on the subject[12].
I hold my translation to be as literal as is possible consistently with
an endeavour to render or interpret German philosophical language in
the language or idiom of really expressive and intelligible English. It
is now generally admitted that all translation is in the nature of an
interpretation. However much I may have fallen short of my aim, that
aim has been throughout to express the actual ideal content of the
German, not merely with all the force and directness I could muster,
but with as near an approach to the formal structure of the German text
as was consistent with the like condition of really readable English.
Above all I have striven to avoid the lassitude of mere paraphrase,
that vague generalization of content which conceives itself to possess
the right to eliminate from the text pretty much what it pleases.
The Index attached to the final volume is limited in its reference
to proper names, and pre-eminently to illustrations in the text of
works either of general literature, or other products of art, which I
considered of use or interest to the general reader.
In the table of contents to the several volumes I have notified with
brackets my own contributions to the German original. In all other
respects I have retained the divisions of subject-matter as I found
them recorded by Hegel or his editor.
F. P. O.
[Footnote 1: New York, Appleton and Co.]
[Footnote 2: Chicago, Griggs and Co., 1885.]
[Footnote 3: Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1886. The translation is
literal and of good quality for a little over thirty pages. After that
it is a mere summary.]
[Footnote 4: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1886.]
[Footnote 5: Mr. Kedney's volume only amounts to about three hundred
small-sized pages altogether.]
[Footnote 6: The most important source were MSS. for lectures given
in 1820. This formed the basis of further lectures in 1823, 1826, and
1829.]
[Footnote 7: The notes to which our editor had access referred to the
lectures given in 1823 and 1826, with others of those in 1826 and 1829.]
[Footnote 8: The first Introduction is obviously taken from Hegel's
MS., the editor not even venturing in this case to obliterate its form
as an address in the lecture room. It represents perhaps the nearest
approach we possess to the revised MS.]
[Footnote 9: An almost inevitable defect of such a translation is that
criticism may be offered without supplying the material necessary for
any satisfactory verdict upon its sufficiency. Thus M. Bénard cites
with approval an adverse criticism passed upon what is called Hegel's
inadequate treatment of the Idea of Beauty as a partial manifestation
of the absolute Idea, but barely includes any of the passages which
refer to this in his translation (note, p. 36). Such can lead to no
conclusion whatever, though it obviously may entirely mislead his
readers.]
[Footnote 10: "History of Aesthetik," by Bernard Bosanquet
(Sonnenschein, 1892). See in particular pp. 333-362. With regard to the
comparative value of the work of Schelling and Hegel on this subject
the author says (p. 334): "It may be said that while we prefer Hegel
to Schelling this is partly because Schelling is best represented in
Hegel." I can claim but a very limited firsthand knowledge of modern
German works on Aesthetik. But I may observe that the section of
Lötze's history of German works on the subject devoted to Hegel's
"Philosophy of Fine Art" appears to me by no means equal in ability to
other portions of the work. The aim of the author appears rather that
of proving that his own researches occupy a ground wholly unoccupied
by Hegel than of defining with any completeness the ground actually
appropriated by Hegel.]
[Footnote 11: "Life of Hegel," p. 110.]
[Footnote 12: The most authoritative introduction to the study of
the Hegelian standpoint for English readers is, of course, the late
Professor Wallace's Prolegomena to his translation of the lesser Logic,
and the introduction to his translation of the Philosophy of Mind.]
CONTENTS OF VOL. I
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
I. The Limits of Aesthetic defined, and certain Objections
against the Philosophy of Art refuted
[(_a_) Aesthetic confined to Beauty of Art
(_b_) Is Art unworthy of scientific consideration?
(_c_) Or at least is it incapable of truly philosophical
exposition? Negative answer to both these questions]
II. Scientific Methods which apply to the Beautiful and Art
[1. The Empirical Method
2. Abstract Reflection
3. The Philosophical Idea of artistic Beauty, that is,
the notional concept thereof, provisionally defined]
III. The Notion of the Beauty of Art
Observations upon the ordinary ideas about Art
1. The art-work is a creation of human activity
[(_a_) Theory of imitation of Art by rule
(_b_) Art as direct inspiration
(_c_) The rank of Art relatively to Nature
(_d_) The nature of the human Art-impulse]
2. The art-work is addressed to human sense
[(_a_) Theory that its object is to excite feeling
(_b_) The nature of artistic taste
(_c_) The nature of art-scholarship as contrasted
with artistic taste
(_d_) The more philosophical consequences of the
fact that Art appeals to sense and requires
a sensuous medium for its expression]
3. The End or Interest of Art
[(_a_) Is it imitation of Nature?
(_b_) Is the end or content identical with the dictum,
"Humani nihil a me alienum," etc.
(_c_) How far it is a mitigation or purification of
the passions
(_d_) The higher object of Art which consists in
its revelation of truth in itself]
IV. Historical Deduction of the true Notion of Art
1. The philosophy of Kant
[(_a_) Feeling of aesthetic satisfaction not appetitive
(_b_) Beauty an object of universal satisfaction
(_c_) Teleological aspect of the Beautiful
(_d_) Pleasure in the Beautiful necessary, though
felt
2. Schiller, Winckelmann, and Schelling
3. Irony]
V. Division of the Subject
[1. Inquiry as to the mode under which the divisions
of the subject arise from the notional concept
of Beauty
2. Part I. The Ideal
3. Part II. The particular general types of Beauty
(_a_) The Symbolic type of Art
(_b_) The Classical type of Art
(_c_) The Romantic type of Art
4. Part III. The specific arts
(_a_) Architecture
(_b_) Sculpture
(_c_) Romantic art, which includes
(_α_) Painting
(_β_) Music
(_γ_) Poetry
5. Conclusion]
FIRST PART
THE IDEA OF THE BEAUTY OF ART OR THE IDEAL
The Position of Art relatively to finite Reality, Religion,
and Philosophy
[(_a_) Theory that the Beautiful is no intelligible object
of thought
(_b_) The relation of the human reason to Nature both
empirically and speculatively
(_c_) The realm of Fine Art that of the Absolute Spirit
(_d_) How far Art responds to a genuine spiritual want in
man
(_e_) The truth which forms the content of art, religion,
and philosophy differs only in the modes under
which it is presented]
CHAPTER I
THE NOTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL IN GENERAL
1. The Idea
[(_a_) The Idea is concrete, not abstract
(_b_) Objectivity is the real existence of the notion, and
the means whereby it is actualized
(_c_) The Idea is the harmonized totality of the two aspects]
2. The Determinate Existence of the Idea
3. The Idea of the Beautiful
[(_a_) Not apprehended alone by the faculty of the understanding,
or the finite categories
(_b_) The nature of finite or abstract apprehension and
practical volition considered
(_c_) The object of beauty resolves and the one-sidedness
of both standpoints in a free and infinite totality]
CHAPTER II
THE BEAUTY OF NATURE
A. The Beauty of Nature as such
1. The Idea as Life
[(_a_) The first mode under which the notion is in
Nature asserted as objectivity is that of physical
matter, the ideal unity whereof is not
found as ideality
(_b_) A further step is the integration of natural
objects under a unified system, as the solar system
(_c_) The third mode is that of organic Life. This
alone is a determinate existence of the Idea]
2. The animated life of Nature as Beauty
[(_a_) The motion of life considered in relation to the
conception of beauty
(_b_) The nature of organic unity, and the degree it
contributes to the beauty of an object
(_c_) The inward unity of soul-life and the degree it
contributes to the correlation of parts of an
organism, or is asserted in external form to
our senses rather than our reflection]
3. Modes under which the beauty of Nature is investigated
[(_a_) Where the form is immediately in the _materia_
as its essence or conformative energy, as in
crystals, or more concretely as the informing
soul through the living organism
(_b_) Mobility in animals as a test of their apparent
beauty
(_c_) Self-conscious life the culminating mode]
B. The external Beauty of abstract Form viewed as
Uniformity, Symmetry, Conformity to Rule, and
Harmony. Also Beauty regarded generally as
abstract unity of the Sensuous Material
C. The Defective Aspects of the Beauty of Nature
1. The Inward principle in its immediacy as merely
such inwardness
[(_a_) Immediate singularity as conserved in the purely
animal organism
(_b_) Of the nature of the contrast between the above
and the human body
(_c_) Social organizations viewed in such particularized
immediacy, and the defects they betray
as such external totalities]
2. The Dependence of particular existence as viewed
in its immediate singularity
[(_a_) The dependence of animal life upon its natural
environment
(_b_) The nature of a similar dependence in the case
of the human organism
(_c_) The dependence of human souls, or spiritual
interests, on the prose-life of ordinary existence]
3. The limitations implied by such conditions
[(_a_) The restriction of species in the animal world,
and of the social condition as it affects human
individuality
(_b_) The limitation of racial division, or of particular
families, or particular professions, and the
effect of such upon the aspect of beauty
(_c_) It is the very defects of this finite plane of reality,
which stimulates man to recover the vision of
his freedom in Art]
CHAPTER III
THE BEAUTY OF ART OR THE IDEAL
A. The Ideal as such
1. Individuality which partakes of Beauty.
[(_a_) The nature of the conditions under which Art
can express a profound and infinite spiritual
content
(_b_) What Art rejects from natural embodiment in
order to effect this revelation, which is also a
purification
(_c_) This "referring back" of external form to spirituality,
or inwardness, issuing in harmonious
individuality, is the very nature of the Ideal
(_α_) The blythe serenity of antique art
(_β_) The treatment of emotion by romantic art
(_γ_) Irony]
2. The Ideal relatively to Nature
[(_a_) The formal ideality of a work of art, _i.e._, the
element of poetry therein
(_b_) The creative faculty contrasted with Nature in
its power to grasp ideal significance, with
illustrations of this power
(_c_) The nature of this spiritual recreation of natural
fact by Art originating in the energy of mind.
Illustration with the example of Dutch art in
its genre painting, also with that of portraiture
and classical art]
B. The Determinate Character of the Ideal
I. Ideal determinacy as such
1. Thought apart from the plastic material can only
comprehend the Divine in its universality and
unity. Mohammedan and Hebrew art
2. The polytheistic aspect of Hellenic art considered,
as also Christian art
3. The relation of the arts of painting and sculpture
to the latter. The transition from the principle
of spiritual repose to that of development and
conflict
II. The Action
1. The universal World-condition
[(_a_)
(_α_) The self-subsistency of such a condition
as a necessary _prius_ of the embodiment of
the Ideal
(_β_) The nature of the reality adapted to artistic
treatment as contrasted with what is
not so adapted. The fixed order of the
State as contrasted with conditions most
favourable to free individuality
(_γ_) Further examination of contrast in relation
to judicial functions and the ideas of punishment
or revenge as we find it in the heroic
age. The reappearance of an analogous
condition in the Middle Ages
(_b_) Modern prosaic life the condition most favourable
to the private or personal life as an
object of interest
(_c_) Resistance by individual poets to this process
of social change. The permanent demand
for the heroic]
2. The Situation
[(_a_) The situation that is devoid of situation
(_b_) The situation as defined in its harmlessness
or absence of further conflict
(_α_) The movement from pure tranquillity to
movement or expression. Illustrations from
classical art
(_β_) Movement as related to externality. The
initial stage of action. Greek sculpture
(_γ_) Situation in movement presented as an
opportunity to further expression. Illustrations
from poetry]
(_c_) The Collision
[(_α_) Collisions which arise from wholly material
conditions. Only of artistic interest as a
consequence of natural misfortune. Illustrations
(_β_) Spiritual collisions dependent on natural
conditions. Classified and illustrated.
(_γ_) The above only form the starting-point of
the collision of the essential forces of
spiritual life. The third and most important
type is the collision caused by the disruption
of Spirit alone. Illustrations]
3. The Action
(_a_) The universal forces operative in the action.
[(_α_) These forces are the eternally paramount
religious and ethical modes of relationship,
such as family, fatherland, church, friendship,
status, honour, and love. They are
children of the one absolute Idea. Illustration
of their contention
(_β_) They must not act in discord with the main
action. The position of evil powers as confronting
them, and its treatment by classic
and modern poetry
(_γ_) Such forces must appear in Art as embodied
in particular personalities. Contrast
between ancient and modern art in this
respect]
(_b_) The individuals concerned in the action
[(_α_) The relations between gods and men in
classical art, and that between the Divine
and the human in Christian art
[_β_] Pathos considered in its relation to various
modes of art]
(_c_) Character
[(_α_) Viewed as co-extensive or self-coherent
individuality, relatively, that is, to the intrinsic
wealth it connotes. Illustrations
(_β_) Viewed relatively to the particular form
under which it is bound to appear
(_γ_) Viewed as a concrete unity coalescing
wholly with its determinate form and as
assured character. Illustrations classified
in their stability and lack of such]
III. The External Determination of the Ideal.
1. The abstract Externality as such.
[(_a_) Spatiality, Uniformity, Figure, Time, and
Colour.
(_α_) How far such contribute to artistic production
(_β_) The necessity of clear articulation of form
and tone considered]
2. The Coalescence of the concrete Ideal with its
external Reality
[(_α_) The bond of unity regarded as no positive
reality, but as a mysterious or secret connection.
The relation of external Nature to
the work of art. The Homeric poems contrasted
with the "Niebelungenlied" in this
respect
(_b_) Where the unity is expressly due to human
activity and human adaptation of means to ends
[(_α_) The use made by man of ornament or of
anything used for mere show, _e.g._, precious
metals for statuary
(_β_) The question how far objects used for
practical purposes are suited for art. The
idyllic, civilized and heroic condition compared
in the degree they are thus adapted
(_γ_) The spiritual environment itself in social
institutions, etc., regarded in its relation to
ideal character]
3. The Externality of a work of Art in relation to a
Public
(_a_) What is implied in the assertion by the artist
of the particular culture of his own times?
(_b_) What may be regarded as truth when the
reference is to a Past, either in an exclusive
or objective sense?
(_c_) What may still be regarded as valid in truth
though the matter be appropriated from a
time and nationality foreign to the artist?
All three questions discussed and illustrated]
C. The Artist
1. Imagination, Genius, and Inspiration
2. The objective character of the artistic presentation
3. Manner, Style, and Originality.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF FINE ART
INTRODUCTION
I
The present inquiry[1] has for its subject-matter _Aesthetic_. It is
a subject co-extensive with the entire _realm of the beautiful_; more
specifically described, its province is that of _Art_, or rather, we
should say, of _Fine Art._
For a subject-matter such as this the term "Aesthetic" is no doubt
not entirely appropriate, for "Aesthetic" denotes more accurately the
science of the senses or emotion. It came by its origins as a science,
or rather as something that to start with purported to be a branch of
philosophy, during the period of the school of Wolff, in other words
when works of art were generally regarded in Germany with reference
to the feelings they were calculated to evoke, as, for example, the
feelings of pleasure, admiration, fear, pity, and so forth. It is owing
to the unsuitability or, more strictly speaking, the superficiality
of this term that the attempt has been made by some to apply the name
"Callistic" to this science. Yet this also is clearly insufficient
inasmuch as the science here referred to does not investigate beauty in
its general signification, but the beauty of art pure and simple. For
this reason we shall accommodate ourselves to the term Aesthetic, all
the more so as the mere question of nomenclature is for ourselves a
matter of indifference. It has as such been provisionally accepted in
ordinary speech, and we cannot do better than retain it. The _term_,
however, which fully expresses our science is "Philosophy of Art," and,
with still more precision, "Philosophy of Fine Art."
(_a_) In virtue of this expression we at once exclude the beauty of
Nature from the scientific exposition of Fine Art. Such a limitation
of our subject may very well appear from a certain point of view as
an arbitrary boundary line, similar to that which every science is
entitled to fix in the demarcation of its subject-matter. We must not,
however, understand the limitation of "Aesthetic" to the beauty of art
in this sense. We are accustomed, no doubt, in ordinary life to speak
of a beautiful colour, a beautiful heaven, a beautiful stream, to say
nothing of beautiful flowers, animals, and, above all, of beautiful
human beings. Without entering now into the disputed question how far
the quality of beauty can justly be predicated of such objects, and
consequently the beauty of Nature comes generally into competition with
that of art, we are justified in maintaining categorically that the
beauty of art stands _higher_ than Nature. For the beauty of art is a
beauty begotten, a new birth of mind[2]; and to the extent that Spirit
and its creations stand higher than Nature and its phenomena, to that
extent the beauty of art is more exalted than the beauty of Nature.
Indeed, if we regard the matter in its formal aspect, that is to say,
according to the way it is there, any chance fancy that passes through
any one's head[3], is of higher rank than any product of Nature. For
in every case intellectual conception and freedom are inseparable
from such a conceit. In respect to _content_ the sun appears to us an
absolutely necessary constituent of actual fact, while the perverse
fancy passes away as something accidental and evanescent. None the
less in its own independent being a natural existence such as the sun
possesses no power of self-differentiation; it is neither essentially
free nor self-aware; and, if we regard it in its necessary cohesion
with other things, we do not regard it independently for its own sake,
and consequently not as beautiful.
Merely to maintain, in a general way, that mind and the beauty of art
which originates therefrom stand _higher_ than the beauty of Nature
is no doubt to establish next to nothing. The expression _higher_
is obviously entirely indefinite; it still indicates the beauty of
Nature and art as standing juxtaposed in the field of conception, and
emphasizes the difference as a quantitative and accordingly external
difference. But in predicating of mind and its artistic beauty a
higher place in contrast to Nature, we do not denote a distinction
which is merely relative. Mind, and mind alone, is pervious to truth,
comprehending all in itself, so that all which is beautiful can only
be veritably beautiful as partaking in this higher sphere and as
begotten of the same. Regarded under this point of view it is only a
reflection of the beauty appertinent to mind, that is, we have it under
an imperfect and incomplete mode, and one whose substantive being is
already contained in the mind itself.
And apart from this we shall find the restriction to the beauty of
art only natural, for in so far as the beauties of Nature may have
come under discussion--a rarer occurrence among ancient writers than
among ourselves--yet at least it has occurred to no one to insist
emphatically on the beauty of natural objects to the extent of
proposing a science, or systematic exposition of such beauties. It is
true that the point of view of _utility_ has been selected for such
exclusive treatment. We have, for example, the conception of a science
of natural objects in so far as they are useful in the conflict with
diseases, in other words a description of minerals, chemical products,
plants, animals, which subserve the art of healing. We do not find
any analogous exploitation and consideration of the realm of Nature
in its aspect of beauty. In the case of natural beauty we are too
keenly conscious that we are dealing with an indefinite subject-matter
destitute of any real criterion. It is for this reason that such an
effort of comparison would carry with it too little interest to justify
the attempt.
These preliminary observations over beauty in Nature and art, over the
relation of both, and the exclusion of the first-mentioned from the
province of our real subject-matter are intended to disabuse us of
the notion that the limitation of our science is simply a question of
capricious selection. We have, however, not reached the point where a
_demonstration_ of this fact is feasible for the reason that such an
investigation falls within the limits of our science itself, and it is
therefore only at a later stage that we can either discuss or prove the
same.
Assuming, however, that we have, by way of prelude, limited our inquiry
to the beauty of art, we are merely by this first step involved in
fresh difficulties.
(_b_) What must first of all occur to us is the question whether
Fine Art in itself is truly susceptible to a scientific treatment.
It is a simple fact that beauty and art pervade all the affairs of
life like some friendly genius, and embellish with their cheer all
our surroundings, mental no less than material. They alleviate the
strenuousness of such relations, the varied changes of actual life;
they banish the tedium of our existence with their entertainment; and
where nothing really worth having is actually achieved, it is at least
an advantage that they occupy the place of actual vice. Yet while
art prevails on all sides with its pleasing shapes, from the crude
decorations of savage tribes up to the splendours of the sacred shrine
adorned with every conceivable beauty of design, none the less such
shapes themselves appear to fall outside the real purposes of life,
and even where the imaginative work of art is not impervious to such
serious objects, nay, rather at times even appear to assist them, to
the extent at least of removing what is evil to a distance, yet for
all that art essentially belongs to the _relaxation_ and _recreation_
of spiritual life, whereas its substantive interests rather make a
call upon its strained energy. On such grounds an attempt to treat
that which on its own account is not of a serious character with all
the gravity of scientific exposition may very possibly appear to be
unsuitable and pedantic. In any case from such a point of view art
appears a _superfluity_ if contrasted with the essential needs and
interests of life, even assuming that the _softening_ of the soul which
a preoccupation with the beauty of objects is capable of producing,
does not actually prove injurious in its effeminate influence upon
the serious quality of those _practical_ interests. Owing to this
fundamental assumption that they are a luxury it has often appeared
necessary to undertake the defence of the fine arts relatively to
the necessities of practical life, and in particular relatively to
morality and piety; and inasmuch as this harmlessness is incapable of
demonstration, the idea has been at least to make it appear credible,
that this luxury of human experience contributes a larger proportion of
_advantages_ than _disadvantages_. In this respect serious aims have
been attributed to art, and in many quarters it has been commended as
a mediator between reason and sensuous associations, between private
inclinations and duty, personified in short as a reconciler of these
forces in the strenuous conflict and opposition which this antagonism
generates. But it is just conceivable[4] that, even assuming the
presence of such aims with all their indubitably greater seriousness,
neither reason nor duty come by much profit from such mediation, for
the simple reason that they are incapable by their very nature of
any such interfusion or compromise, demanding throughout the same
purity which they intrinsically possess. And we might add that art
does not become in any respect more worthy thereby of scientific
discussion, inasmuch as it remains still on two sides a menial, that
is, subservient to idleness and frivolity, if also to objects of more
elevated character. In such service, moreover, it can at most merely
appear as a means instead of being an object for its own sake. And, in
conclusion, assuming that art is a means, it still invariably labours
under the formal defect, that so far as it in fact is subservient to
more serious objects, and produces results of like nature, the means
which actually brings this about is _deception._ For beauty is made
vital in the _appearance_[5]. Now it can hardly be denied that aims
which are true and serious ought not to be achieved by deception; and
though such an effect is here and there secured by this means, such
ought only to be the case in a restricted degree; and even in the
exceptional case we are not justified in regarding deception as the
right means. For the means ought to correspond with the dignity of the
aim. Neither semblance nor deception, but only what is itself real and
true, possesses a title to create what is real and true. Just in the
same way science has to investigate the true interests of the mind in
accordance with the actual process of the real world and the manner of
conceiving it as we actually find it.
We may possibly conclude from the above grounds that the art of beauty
is unworthy of philosophical examination. It is after all, it may be
said, only a pleasant pastime, and, though we may admit more serious
aims are also in its purview, nevertheless it is essentially opposed to
such aims in their seriousness. It is at the most merely the servant of
specific amusements no less than the exceptional serious objects, and
for the medium of its existence as also for the means of its operations
can merely avail itself of deception and show.
But yet further in the _second_ place, it is a still more plausible
contention that even supposing fine art to be compatible generally
with philosophical disquisition, none the less it would form no really
adequate subject-matter for scientific enquiry in the strict sense.
For the beauty of art is presented to sense, feeling, perception, and
imagination: its field is not that of thought, and the comprehension of
its activity and its creations demands another faculty than that of the
scientific intelligence. Furthermore, what we enjoy in artistic beauty
is just the _freedom_ of its creative and plastic activity. In the
production and contemplation of these we appear to escape the principle
of rule and system. In the creations of art we seek for an atmosphere
of repose and animation as some counterpoise to the austerity of the
realm of law and the sombre self-concentration of thought; we seek for
blithe and powerful reality in exchange for the shadow-world of the
Idea. And, last of all, the free activity of the imagination is the
source of the fair works of art, which in this world of the mind are
even more free than Nature is herself. Not only has art at its service
the entire wealth of natural form in all their superabundant variety,
but the creative imagination is able inexhaustibly to extend the realm
of form by its _own_ productions and modifications. In the presence of
such an immeasurable depth of inspired creation and its free products,
it may not unreasonably be supposed that thought will lose the courage
to apprehend such in their apparent _range_, to pronounce its verdict
thereon, and to appropriate such beneath its universal formulae.
Science, on the other hand, everyone must admit, is formally bound
to occupy itself with thinking which abstracts from the mass of
particulars: and for this very reason, from one point of view, the
imagination and its contingency and caprice, in other words the organ
of artistic activity and enjoyment, is excluded from it. On the other
hand, when art gives joyous animation to just this gloomy and arid
dryness of the notion, bringing its abstractions and divisions into
reconciliation with concrete fact, supplementing with its detail
what is wanting to the notion in this respect, even in that case
a _purely_ contemplative reflection simply removes once more all
that has been added, does away with it, conducting the notion once
again to that simplicity denuded of positive reality which belongs
to it and its shadowland of abstraction. It is also a possible
contention that science in respect to content is concerned with what
is essentially _necessary._ If our science of Aesthetic places on one
side natural beauty, not merely have we apparently made no advance,
but rather separated ourselves yet further from what is necessary. The
expression _Nature_ implies from the first the ideas of _necessity_
and _uniformity_, that is to say a constitution which gives every
expectation of its proximity and adaptability to scientific inquiry.
In mental operations generally, and most of all in the imagination,
if contrasted in this respect with Nature, caprice and superiority
to every kind of formal restriction, caprice, it is here assumed, is
uniquely in its right place, and these at once put out of court the
basis of a scientific inquiry.
From each and all these points of view consequently, in its origin,
that is to say, in its effect and in its range, fine art, so far
from proving itself fitted for scientific effort, rather appears
fundamentally to resist the regulative principle of thought, and to be
ill-adapted for exact scientific discussion.
Difficulties of this kind, and others like them, which have been raised
in respect to a thoroughly scientific treatment of fine art have been
borrowed from current ideas, points of view, and reflection, the more
systematic expansion of which we may read _ad nauseam_ in previous
literature, in particular French literature, upon the subject of beauty
and the fine arts. Such contain to some extent facts which have their
justification; in fact, elaborate arguments[6] are deduced therefrom,
which also are not without their tincture of apparent plausibility.
In this way, for instance, there is the fact that the configuration
of beauty is as multifold as the phenomenon of beauty is of universal
extension; from which we may conclude, if we care to do so, that a
universal impulse towards beauty is enclosed in our common nature,
and may yet further conceivably infer, that because the conceptions
of beauty are so countless in their variety and withal are obviously
something _particular_, it is impossible to secure laws of _universal_
validity either relatively to beauty or our taste for it.
Before turning away from such theories to the subject, as we ourselves
conceive it, it will be a necessary and preliminary task to discuss the
questions and objections raised above.
First, as to the _worthiness_ of art to form the object of scientific
inquiry, it is no doubt the case that art can be utilized as a mere
pastime in the service of pleasure and entertainment, either in the
embellishment of our surroundings, the imprinting of a delight-giving
surface to the external conditions of life, or the emphasis placed by
decoration on other objects. In these respects it is unquestionably no
independent or free art, but an art subservient to certain objects.
The kind of art, however, which _we_ ourselves propose to examine is
one which is _free_ in its aim and its means. That art in general can
serve other objects, and even be merely a pastime, is a relation which
it possesses in common with thought itself. From one point of view
thought likewise, as science subservient to other ends, can be used in
just the same way for finite purposes and means as they chance to crop
up, and as such serviceable faculty of science is not self-determined,
but determined by something alien to it. But, further, as distinct
from such subservience to particular objects, science is raised of its
own essential resources in free independence to truth, and exclusively
united with its own aims in discovering the true fulfillment in that
truth.
Fine art is not art in the true sense of the term until it is also
thus free, and its _highest_ function is only then satisfied when it
has established itself in a sphere which it shares with religion,
and philosophy, becoming thereby merely one mode and form through
which the _Divine_, the profoundest interests of mankind, and
spiritual truths of widest range, art brought home to consciousness
and expressed. It is in works of art that nations have deposited the
richest intuitions and ideas they possess; and not infrequently fine
art supplies a key of interpretation to the wisdom and religion of
peoples; in the case of many it is the only one. This is an attribute
which art shares in common with religion and philosophy, the peculiar
distinction in the case of art being that its presentation of the
most exalted subject-matter is in sensuous form, thereby bringing
them nearer to Nature and her mode of envisagement, that is closer
to our sensitive and emotional life. The world, into the profundity
of which thought penetrates, is a supersensuous one, a world which
to start with is posited as a Beyond in contrast to the immediacy of
ordinary conscious life and present sensation. It is the freedom of
reflecting consciousness which disengages itself from this immersion in
the "_this side_," or immediacy, in other words sensuous reality and
finitude. But the mind is able, too, to heal the _fracture_ which is
thus created in its progression. From the wealth of its own resources
it brings into being the works of fine art as the primary bond of
mediation between that which is exclusively external, sensuous and
transitory, and the medium of pure thought, between Nature and its
finite reality, and the infinite freedom of a reason which comprehends.
Now it was objected that the _element_[7] _of art_ was, if we view it
as a whole, of an _unworthy_ character, inasmuch as it consisted of
appearance and deceptions inseparable from such. Such a contention
would of course be justifiable, if we were entitled to assume that
appearance had no _locus standi_[8] at all. An appearance or show
is, however, essential to actuality. There could be no such thing as
truth if it did not appear, or, rather, let itself appear[9], were it
not further true for some _one_ thing or person, _for_ itself as also
_for_ spirit. Consequently it cannot be appearance in general against
which such an objection can be raised, but the particular mode of its
manifestation under which art makes actual what is essentially real
and true. If, then, the appearance, in the medium of which art gives
determinate existence to its creations, be defined as _deception_, such
an objection is in the first instance intelligible if we compare it
with the _external world_ of a phenomena, and its _immediate_ relation
to ourselves as material substance, or view it relatively to our own
world of emotions, that is our inward sensuous life. Both these are
worlds to which in our everyday life, the life, that is, of visible
experience, we are accustomed to attach the worth and name of reality,
actuality and truth as contrasted with that of art, which fails to
possess such reality as we suppose. Now it is just this entire sphere
of the empirical world, whether on its personal side or its objective
side, which we ought rather to call in a stricter sense than when
we apply the term to the world of art, merely a show or appearance,
and an even more unyielding form of deception. It is only beyond the
immediacy of emotional life and that world of external objects that
we shall discover reality in any true sense of the term. Nothing
is actually real but that which is actual in its own independent
right and substance[10], that which is at once of the substance of
Nature and of mind, which, while it is actually _here_ in present and
determinate existence, yet retains under such limitation an essential
and self-concentred being, and only in virtue of such is truly real.
The predominance of these universal powers is precisely that which art
accentuates and manifests. In the external and soul-world of ordinary
experience we have also no doubt this essence of actuality, but in the
chaotic congeries of particular detail, encumbered by the immediacy of
sensuous envisagement, and every kind of caprice of condition, event,
character, and so forth. Now it is just the show and deception of this
false and evanescent world which art disengages from the veritable
significance of phenomena to which we have referred, implanting in
the same a reality of more exalted rank born of mind. The phenomena
of art therefore are not merely not appearance and nothing more; we
are justified in ascribing to them, as contrasted with the realities
of our ordinary life, an actually higher reality and more veritable
existence. To as little extent are the representations of art a
deceptive appearance as compared with the assumed truer delineations
of historical writing. For immediate existence also does not belong to
historical writing. It only possesses the intellectual appearance of
the same as the medium of its delineations, and its content remains
charged with the entire contingent _materia_ of ordinary reality and
its events, developments and personalities, whereas the work of art
brings us face to face with the eternal powers paramount in history
with this incidental association of the immediate sensuous present and
its unstable appearance expunged.
If, however, it is in contrast with philosophic thought and religious
and ethical principles, that the mode of appearance of the shapes of
art, is described as a deception, there is certainly this in support
of the view that the mode of revelation attained by a content in the
realm of thought is the truest reality. In comparison, nevertheless,
with the appearance of immediate sensuous existence and that of
historical narration, the show of art possesses the advantage that, in
its own virtue, it points beyond itself, directing us to a somewhat
spiritual, which it seeks to envisage to the conceptive mind. Immediate
appearance, on the contrary, does not give itself out to be thus
illusive, but rather to be the true and real, though as a matter of
fact such truth is contaminated and obstructed by the immediately
sensuous medium. The hard rind of Nature and the everyday world offer
more difficulty to the mind in breaking through to the Idea than do the
products of art.
But if from this particular point of view we place art thus highly, we
must not, on the other hand, fail to remember that neither in respect
to content or form is art either the highest or most absolute mode of
bringing the true interests of our spiritual life to consciousness.
The very form of art itself is sufficient to limit it to a definite
content. It is only a particular sphere and grade of truth which is
capable of being reproduced in the form of a work of art. Such truth
must have the power in its own determinate character to go out freely
into sensuous shape and remain adequate to itself therein, if it is
to be the genuine content of art, as is the case, for example, with
the gods of Greece. On the other hand there is a profounder grasp of
truth, in which the form is no longer on such easy and friendly terms
with the sensuous material as to be adequately accepted and expressed
by that medium. Of such a type is the Christian conception of truth;
and above all it is the prevailing spirit of our modern world, or,
more strictly, of our religion and our intellectual culture, which
have passed beyond the point at which art is the highest mode under
which the absolute is brought home to human consciousness. The type
peculiar to art-production and its products fails any longer to satisfy
man's highest need. We are beyond the stage of reverence for works of
art as divine and objects deserving our worship. The impression they
produce is one of a more reflective[11] kind, and the emotions which
they arouse require a higher test and a further verification. Thought
and reflection have taken their flight above fine art. To those who
are fond of complaint and grumbling such a condition of things may be
held as a form of decadence; it may be ascribed to the obsession of
passion and selfish interests, which scare away the seriousness of art
no less than its blithesomeness. Or we may find the fault to lie in
the exigencies of the present day, the complex conditions of social
and political life, which prevent the soul, entangled as it is in
microscopic interests, from securing its freedom in the nobler objects
of art, a condition, too, in which the intelligence itself becomes
a menial to such trifling wants and the interests they excite in
sciences, which subserve objects of a like nature, and are seduced into
the voluntary exile of such a wilderness.
But however we may explain the fact it certainly is the case that Art
is no longer able to discover that satisfaction of spiritual wants,
which previous epochs and nations have sought for in it and exclusively
found in it, a satisfaction which, at least on the religious side, was
associated with art in the most intimate way. The fair days of Greek
art, as also the golden time of the later middle ages, are over. The
reflective culture of our life of to-day makes it inevitable, both
relatively to our volitional power and our judgment, that we adhere
strictly to general points of view, and regulate particular matters in
consonance with them, so that universal forms, laws, duties, rights,
and maxims hold valid as the determining basis of our life and the
force within of main importance. What is demanded for artistic interest
as also for artistic creation is, speaking in general terms, a vital
energy, in which the universal is not present as law and maxim, but
is operative in union with the soul and emotions, just as also, in
the imagination, what is universal and rational is enclosed only as
brought into unity with a concrete sensuous phenomenon. For this reason
the present time is not, if we review its conditions in their widest
range, favourable to art. And with regard to the executive artist
himself it is not merely that reflection on every side, which _will_
insist on utterance, owing to the universal habit of critical opinion
and judgment, leads him astray from his art and infects his mind
with a like desire to accumulate abstract thought in his creations;
rather the entire spiritual culture of the times is of such a nature
that he himself stands within a world thus disposed to reflection
and the conditions it presupposes, and, do what he may, he cannot
release himself either by his wish or his power of decision from their
influence, neither can he by means of exceptional education, or a
removal from the ordinary conditions of life, conjure up for himself
and secure a solitude capable of replacing all that is lost.
In all these respects art is and remains for us, on the side, of its
highest possibilities, a thing of the past. Herein it has further lost
its genuine truth and life, and is rather transported to our world of
_ideas_ than is able to maintain its former necessity and its superior
place in reality. What is now stimulated in us by works of art is, in
addition to the fact of immediate enjoyment, our judgment. In other
words we subject the content, and the means of presentation of the
work of art, and the suitability and unsuitability of both, to the
contemplation of our thought. A _science_ of art is therefore a far
more urgent necessity in our own days than in times in which art as
art sufficed by itself alone to give complete satisfaction. We are
invited by art to contemplate it reflectively, not, that is to say,
with the object of recreating such art[12], but in order to ascertain
scientifically its nature.
In doing our best to accept such an invitation we are confronted with
the objection already adverted to, that even assuming that art is a
subject adapted for philosophical investigation in a general way, yet
it unquestionably is not so adapted to the systematic procedure of
science. Such an objection, however, implies to start with the false
notion that we can have a philosophical inquiry which is at the same
time unscientific. In reply to such a point I can only here state
summarily my opinion, that whatever ideas other people may have of
philosophy and philosophizing, I myself conceive philosophical inquiry
of any sort or kind to be inseparable from the methods of science. The
function of philosophy is to examine subject-matter in the light of the
principle of necessity, not, it is true, merely in accordance with its
subjective[13] necessity or external co-ordination, classification,
and so forth; it has rather to unfold and demonstrate the object under
review out of the necessity of its own intimate nature. Until this
essential process is made explicit the scientific quality of such an
inquiry is absent. In so far, however, as the objective necessity of
an object subsists essentially in its logical and metaphysical nature
the isolated examination of art may in such a case, at any rate, or
rather inevitably, must be carried forward with a certain relaxation
of scientific stringency. For art is based upon many assumptions, part
of which relate to its content, part to its material or conceptive[14]
medium, in virtue of which art is never far from the borders of
contingency and caprice. Consequently it is only relatively to the
essential and ideal progression of its content and its means of
expression that we are able to recall with advantage the formative
principle of its necessity[15].
The objection that works of fine art defy the examination of scientific
thought, because they originate in the unregulated world of imagination
and temperament, and assert their effect exclusively on the emotions
and the fancy with a complexity and variety which defies exact
analysis, raises a difficulty which still carries genuine weight behind
it[16]. As a matter of fact the beauty of art does appear in a form
which is expressly to be contrasted with abstract thought, a form which
it is compelled to disturb in order to exercise its own activity in
its own way. Such a result is simply a corollary of the thesis that
reality anywhere and everywhere, whether the life of Nature or mind,
is defaced and slain by its comprehension; that so far from being
brought more close to us by the comprehension of thinking, it is only
by this means that it is in the complete sense removed apart from us,
so that in his attempt to grasp through thought as a _means_ the nature
of life, man rather renders nugatory this very aim. An exhaustive
discussion of the subject is here impossible; we propose merely to
indicate the point of view from which the removal of this difficulty or
impossibility and incompatibility might be effected. It will at least
be readily admitted that mind is capable of self-contemplation, and
of possessing a consciousness, and indeed one that implies a power of
thought co-extensive with itself and everything which originates from
itself. It is, in fact, precisely _thought_, the process of thinking,
which constitutes the most intimate and essential nature of mind.
It is in this thinking-consciousness over itself and its products,
despite all the freedom and caprice such may otherwise and indeed
must invariably possess--assuming only mind or spirit to be veritably
pregnant therein--that mind exhibits the activity congenial to its
essential nature. Art and the creations of art, being works which
originate in and are begotten of the spirit, are themselves stamped
with the hall-mark of spirit, even though the mode of its presentation
accept for its own the phenomenal guise of sensuous reality, permeating
as it does the sensuous substance with intelligence. Viewed in this
light art is placed from the first nearer to spirit and its thought
than the purely external and unintelligent Nature. In the products
of art mind is exclusively dealing with that which is its own. And
although works of art are not thought and notion simply as such, but
an evolution of the notion out of itself, an alienation of the same
in the direction of sensuous being, yet for all that the might of the
thinking spirit is discovered _not merely_ in its ability to grasp
_itself_ in its most native form as pure thinking, but also, and as
completely, to recognize itself in its self-divestment in the medium
of emotion and the sensuous, to retain the grasp of itself in that
"other" which it transforms but is not, transmuting the alien factor
into thought-expression, and by so doing recovering it to itself. And
moreover in this active and frequent relation to that "other" than
itself the reflective mind is not in any way untrue to itself. We have
here no oblivion or surrender of itself; neither is it so impotent as
to be unable to comprehend what is differentiated from that other[17];
what it actually does is to grasp in the notion _both_ itself and its
opposite. For the notion is the universal, which maintains itself in
its particularizations, which covers in its grasp both itself and its
"other," and consequently contains the power and energy to cancel the
very alienation into which it passes. For this reason the work of
art, in which thought divests itself of itself[18], belongs to the
realm of comprehending thought; and mind, by subjecting it[19] to
scientific contemplation, thereby simply satisfies its most essential
nature. For inasmuch as thought is its essence and notion, it can only
ultimately find such a satisfaction after passing all the products of
its activity through the alembic of rational thought, and in this way
making them for the first time in very truth part of its own substance.
But though art, as we shall eventually see with yet more distinctness,
is far indeed from being the highest form of mind, it is only in the
philosophy of art that it comes into all that it may justly claim.
In the same way art is not debarred from a philosophical inquiry by
reason of its unregulated caprice. As already intimated, it is its
true function to bring to consciousness the highest interests of mind.
An immediate consequence of this is that, so far as the _content_ of
fine art is concerned, it cannot range about in all the wildness of an
unbridled fancy; these interests of spirit posit categorically for the
content that embodies them definite points of attachment[20], however
multifold and inexhaustible may be the forms and shapes they assume.
The same may be said of the forms themselves. They too do not remain
unaffected by constraining principles. It is not every chance form
which is capable of expressing and presenting these interests, capable
of assimilating them and reproducing them. It is only through one
determinate content that the form adequate to its embodiment is defined.
It is upon grounds such as these that we are also able to discover a
track adapted to critical reflection through the apparently endless
vistas of artistic creations and shapes.
We have now, I trust, by way of prelude, succeeded in restricting the
content of our science on the lines of definition proposed. We have
made it clear that neither is fine art unworthy of philosophical study,
nor is such a philosophical study incapable of accepting as an object
of its cognition the essence of fine art.
II
If we now investigate the required _mode_ of such scientific
investigation, we are here again face to face with two contradictory
modes of handling the subject, each of which appears to exclude the
other and to permit us to arrive at no satisfactory result.
On the one hand we _observe_ the science of art, merely so to speak,
from an external point of view busying itself with actual works of art,
cataloguing them in a history of art, drawing up a sort of commentary
upon extant works, or propounding theories which are intended to supply
the general points of view for artistic criticism no less than artistic
production.
On the other hand we find science wholly giving itself up in
its independence and self-assured to the contemplation of the
beautiful, offering generalizations which do not concern the specific
characteristics of a work of art, producing in short an abstract
philosophy of the beautiful.
1. With regard to the first mentioned method of study, the
starting-point of which is the _empirical_ study of definite _facts_,
such is the path everyone must tread who means to study art at all. And
just as everyone nowadays, even though he does not actually concern
himself with physical science, yet deems it indispensable to his
intellectual equipment to have some kind of knowledge of the principles
of that science[21], so too it is generally considered more or less
essential to any man of real cultivation, that he should possess some
general knowledge of art; and indeed the pretension to be ranked as
dilletante, or even as genuine _connoisseur_, meets with comparatively
few exceptions.
(_a_) If however knowledge of this kind is really to claim the rank
of _connoisseurship_ of the first class it must be both varied in its
character and of the widest range. It is an indispensable condition
to such that it should possess an accurate knowledge of the well-nigh
limitless field of particular works of art both of ancient and modern
times, some of which have already disappeared, while others are only to
be found in distant countries or portions of the globe, and which it is
the misfortune of our situation to be unable to inspect. Add to this
that every work of art belongs to _one_ age, _one_ nationality, and
depends upon particular historical or other ends and ideas. On account
of this it is indispensable that the finest type of art-scholarship
should have at its command not merely historical knowledge of a wide
range, but knowledge that is highly specialized. In other words, a
work of art is associated with particular[22] detail in a peculiar
sense, and a specific treatment, is imperative to the comprehension and
interpretation of it. And in conclusion this connoisseurship of the
finest class does not merely imply like every other a retentive memory,
but also a keen imaginative sense, in order to hold clearly before
the mind the images of such artistic representations in all their
characteristic lines, and above all, to have them ready for comparison
with other works of art.
(_b_) Within the limits of such a method of study which is primarily
historical[23], distinct points of view will soon assert themselves
which in the contemplation of such works we are not suffered to
lose sight of, inasmuch as they are indispensable to a critical
verdict. Such points of view, as is the case with other sciences the
commencement of which is empirical, are summarized, after their due
collection as separate units and comparison, in general criteria and
propositions, emerging in a yet further stage of formal generalization
in "_Theories_ of the arts." This is not the place to dwell at length
upon literature of this kind; we will merely recall a few specimens
of such work in the most general way. There is, for instance, the
"Poetics" of Aristotle, which contains a theory of tragedy still of
real interest. With still more pertinency among the ancients the
"Ars Poetica" of Horace and the Essay on the "Sublime" by Longinus
will exemplify generally the manner in which this type of theorizing
is carried out. The general theses which are therein formulated are
intended to stand as premises and rules, in accordance with which works
of art ought to be produced, their necessity being above all insisted
on in times of the decadence of poetry and art. They are, in short,
prescriptions to the practitioner. The prescriptions, however, of these
physicians of art were even less successful in their curative effect on
art than are the ordinary ones in the restoration of bodily health.
As to such theories I will merely remark that although in their
_detail_ they contain much that is instructive, yet what they have to
say is based on a very limited range of artistic production, which
passed no doubt for _the_ superlatively beautiful ones, but for all
that occupied but a very restricted portion of the entire field of
survey. From a further point of view such generalizations are in part
very trivial reflections, which in their generality led up to no secure
grasp of actual detail, though that is above all the matter of most
importance. The epistle of Horace already cited is full of such general
theses, and consequently a book for everyone, but one which for this
very reason contains much of no importance at all. Take the lines:
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci
Lectorum delectando pariterque monendo--
"He carries all votes who has interfused the useful and the pleasant,
by at the same time charming and instructing his reader." This is no
better than copybook headings such as "Stay where you are and earn
an honest sixpence"--which are good enough as generalization, but
are defective in the concrete determinacy upon which action depends.
An interest of another kind deducible from this type of artistic
study does not so much consist in the expressed object to promote
the production of genuine works of art: the intention appears to be
rather that of influencing the judgment of others upon artistic works
by such theories, creating, in short, a _standard of taste._ It is
for an object of this kind that Horne's "Elements of Criticism," the
writings of Batteux, and Ramler's "Introduction to the Fine Arts" have
found many readers in their day. Taste, in this sense, has to do with
co-ordination and artistic treatment, the thing in its right place,
and all that concerns the finish of that which belongs to the external
embodiment of a work of art. Add to this that to the principles of such
a taste views were attached which belonged to the psychology in fashion
at the time, views which had been discovered by empirical observations
of capacities and activities of the soul, or of passions and their
potential aggrandizement, succession, and so forth. It is, however,
an invariable fact that every one forms his opinion of works of art,
or characters, actions and events according to the measure of his
insight and his perceptive temperament; and inasmuch as the formation
of taste to which we have referred merely touched what was external
and therefore jejune, and apart from this deduced its prescriptions
entirely from a limited circle of artistic works and an intellectual
culture and emotional discipline equally restricted, its sphere of
influence was ineffective, and it had neither the power to comprehend
the profounder significance[24] and the true, nor to make the vision
more keen for their apprehension.
Such theories proceed through generalization as do the rest of the
non-philosophic sciences. The content which they submit to examination
is accepted from ordinary ideas as something final and received
as such. Questions are then asked about the constitution of such
a concept, the need for more distinct specification making itself
apparent, and this too is borrowed from current ideas, and forthwith
finally established from it in definitions. But in such a procedure we
at once find ourselves on an insecure basis exposed to controversy.
It might in the first instance no doubt appear that the beautiful was
quite a simple idea. But we soon discover it combines several aspects;
one writer will emphasize one of these, another some other one; or,
even assuming the same points of view are considered, the question for
dispute still remains which aspect is to be regarded as essential.
With regard to such questions it is generally reckoned as inseparable
from scientific completeness, that the various definitions of the
beautiful should be enumerated and criticized. For ourselves we do
not propose to attempt this with such historical _exhaustiveness_ as
would unfold all the many refinements of such essays at definition,
nor indeed on account of their _historical_ interest. We simply, by
way of illustration, shall offer a few specimens of the more recent
and more interesting ways of regarding the matter which do in fact
hit off pretty nearly what is actually implied in the idea of the
beautiful. With this in view it is of first importance to recall
Goethe's definition of the beautiful, which Meyer has incorporated
in his "History of the Creative Arts in Greece," in which work he
also brings forward the views of Hirt, though he does not actually
mention his name. Hirt, one of the greatest among connoisseurs of
the first class in our time, in his "Essay upon Fine Art" (_Horen_,
1797, seventh number), after considering the beautiful in the several
arts, summarizes his conclusions in the statement that the basis of a
just criticism of fine art and cultivation of taste is the idea of the
_Characteristic._ In other words he defines the beautiful ultimately
as the "Consummate[25] which is or can be an object of eye, ear, or
imagination." He then proceeds to define this "consummate" as "that
which is adequate to its aim, which nature or art aimed at producing
in the constitution of the object--after its generic kind and specific
type." For which reason it is necessary that, in order to instruct
our critical sense of beauty, we should direct our attention, so far
as possible, to the specific indications of the object's essential
constitution. It is, in fact, these _insignia_ of individuality which
are its characteristic. Consequently under the term _character_
as a principle of art he understands "that definite individual
characterization[26], whereby forms, movement and gesture, mien and
expression, local colouring, light and shadow, chiaroscuro and pose are
severally distinguished in due relation of course to the requirements
of the object previously selected." This formula is more significant
in its actual terms than other definitions in vogue. If we proceed
to ask what the "characteristic" is we find that it implies, first,
a _content_, as, for instance, a definite emotion, situation, event,
action, individual person or thing; secondly, the specific _manner_
in accordance with which such a content is represented. It is to this
mode or manner of presentation that the artistic principle of the
"characteristic" is related. It requires that every aspect of detail in
the mode of expression shall subserve the clearer definition of that
expression's content, and become a vital member of such expression.
The abstract determination of the characteristic emphasizes therefore
the pertinency with which particular detail ought to bring into
prominence the content which it is intended to reproduce. Attempting an
elucidation of this conception apart from technical phrase we may state
the limitation implied in it as follows: In the drama, for instance, it
is an action which constitutes the content. That is to say, the drama
has to represent how this or that action takes place. Now men do all
kinds of different things. They speak to each other, take their meals,
sleep, put on their clothes, say this and that, and all the rest of
it. But in all this business of life what does not lie in immediate
relation with the particular action selected as the real dramatic
content, must be excluded in order that relatively to it everything
shall be significant. In the same way in a picture which only includes
one moment of that action, and it is possible to accumulate--such are
the countless vistas into which the objective world draws us--a mass
of circumstances, persons, situations or other occurrences, which
stand in no relation to the specific action as it actually occurs,
nor subserve in any way the clearer characterization of the same. But
according to the definition given of the characteristic only that ought
to enter into a work of art, which is appertinent to the manifestation
and essential expression of precisely this one content and no other.
Nothing must declare itself as idle or superfluous.
This definition is no doubt of real importance, and from a certain
point of view admits of justification. Meyer, however, in the work
cited, is of opinion that the view propounded has vanished, every
vestige of it, and in his opinion only to the advantage of art. Such a
conception he thinks would in all probability lead to caricature. This
judgment is based on the previous idea that an attempt of this kind to
define the beautiful once and for all is associated with the notion of
_prescription._ The philosophy of art has absolutely nothing to do with
precepts for artists. The object is to unfold the essential nature of
the beautiful, and--apart from any intention to propound rules for the
executant--how it is illustrated in actual work, that is works of art.
To such a criticism we may observe that the definition of Hirt no doubt
includes what is capable of being caricature, for caricature may also
be characteristic. The obvious point to make, however, against it is
this, that in caricature character in its definition is emphasized to
the point of exaggeration and is, if we may say so, a superfluity of
the characteristic. But a surfeit of this kind is no longer appropriate
to the characteristic, but a burdensome reiteration whereby the
characteristic may itself be ousted from what it ought to be. Moreover,
what is of the nature of caricature is displayed as the characteristic
presentment of what is ugly, which is of course a mode of distortion.
_Ugliness_ is in its own right in this way more closely related to the
content[27], so that it may be actually asserted that the principle of
the characteristic includes also ugliness and the presentment of the
same as a part of its essential determination. The definition of Hirt,
of course, gives us no further account of the content of the beautiful.
It merely supplies us in this respect with a purely formal statement,
which, however, contains real truth in it although formulated in
abstract terms.
There is, however, the further question--what Meyer would substitute
for the artistic principle of Hirt, what he proposes himself? He deals
in the first instance exclusively with the principle as we have it
in ancient works of art, which, however, must contain in the widest
connotation of the term the essential determinant[28] of beauty[29].
In doing so he finds occasion to refer to Mengs and to Winckelmann's
definition of the Ideal, and expresses himself to the effect that he
does not wish either to reject or wholly to accept this principle
of beauty, but on the other hand that he feels no hesitation in
subscribing to the opinion of an enlightened judge of art (that is
Goethe), inasmuch as its meaning is distinct and it appears to solve
the problem with more accuracy. Now what Goethe says is this: "The
highest principle of the ancients was the _significant_; the highest
result of successful artistic _handling_ is the _beautiful._"
If we look more closely at what this dictum implies we have again once
more two aspects, that is to say a content or subject matter, and the
mode of its presentation. In our consideration of a work of art we
begin with that which is directly presented to us, and after seeing
it we proceed to inquire what its significance or content is. That
external husk possesses no value to us simply as such. We assume that
there is an inward, an ideality or a significance behind it, in virtue
of which the external appearance is made alive with mind or spirit. It
is to this, its soul, that the external appearance points and attests.
For an appearance which is significant of something does not present
itself to us, and merely that which it is _quâ_ externality, but
something other than this; as also does the symbol for example and with
yet more clarity the fable, the significance of which is simply the
moral and teaching of the same. In fact there is no word which does not
point to a meaning, possessing no value by itself. In the same way the
human eye, the face, flesh, skin, the entire presence are a revelation
of spirit, intelligence and soul; and in such a case the significance
is without exception something beyond that which is offered in
the bare appearance. In this way too the work of art must possess
significance; it must not appear to have told its tale simply in the
fact of particular lines, curves, surfaces, indentations, reliefs of
stone-work, in particular colours, tones, sounds of words, whatever
medium in fact art may employ. Its function is to unveil an inward or
ideal vitality, emotion, soul, a content and mind, which is precisely
what we mean by the significance of a work of art.
This demand, therefore, for significance in a work of art is to all
intents, and in its embrace much the same thing as Hirt's principle of
the characteristic.
According to this conception we find as characteristic constituents
of the beautiful an inward somewhat, a content, and an external rind
which possesses that content as its significance. The inner or ideal
constituent appears in the external and thus enables itself to be
recognized, that which is external pointing away from itself to the
inward.
We cannot, however, pursue the matter here into further detail.
(_c_) But the earlier fashion of this "theory-spinning," no less than
the laying down of rules for the executant already adverted to, has
already been thrust on one side despotically in Germany--mainly owing
to the appearance of genuine living poetry--and the right of genius,
its work and effects, have had their full independence insisted upon
as against the pretensions of such rules of thumb and the broad
water-ducts of theory. From this foundation of an art which is itself
of truly spiritual rank, as also of a sympathy and absorption of the
same, have arisen the receptivity and freedom which make it possible
for us to enjoy and appreciate great works of art which have long since
been within our reach, whether it be those of the modern world, of the
Middle Ages, or of wholly foreign peoples of the Past, the works of
India for example; works, which, in virtue of their antiquity or the
remoteness of their nationality, possess unquestionably for ourselves
a side alien to ourselves; but which, if we consider the way in which
their content passes over and beyond such national limits, and the
matter in it of common appeal to all mankind, can only be hallmarked
by the prejudice of theory among the products of a barbarous or corrupt
taste. This recognition of works of art anywhere and everywhere, works
which depart from the specific circle and forms of those upon which
in the main the abstractions of theory were based, has, as a primary
consequence, led to the recognition of a peculiar type of art—-_the
romantic art._ It became necessary to apprehend the notion and the
nature of the beautiful in a profounder way than these theories
attempted. With this fact another, too, cooperated, viz., that the
notions in its form of apperception, the mind as pure thought on its
part reached in philosophy a point of profounder self-cognition, and
was thereby compelled forthwith to grasp the essence of art too on
profounder lines. In this way, even in virtue of the point in the
process reached of this general evolution of human thought, the type
of theorizing upon art we have described, both relatively to its
principles no less than their elaboration, has become obsolete. It is
only the _scholarship_ of the history of art which retains an abiding
value, and must continue to retain it in proportion as the boundaries
of its survey have enlarged in every direction by means of the advance
made in man's powers of receptivity already noticed. Its business
and function consists in the aesthetic appreciation of particular
works of art and the knowledge of the historical, in other words the
external conditions from which the work of art originates. It is an
attitude of the mind, which, if assisted with sound sense and critical
insight, supported too with historical knowledge, is an indispensable
condition to the complete penetration into the individuality of a
given work of art. The many writings of Goethe upon art and works of
art are an excellent illustration. Theorizing, in the specific sense
noticed, is not the aim of this type of examination, although no doubt
it not unfrequently also busies itself with abstract principles and
categories, and may drop into such a style unconsciously. If, however,
without letting such deviations on our route detain us, we keep before
our vision those concrete illustrations of artistic works, such at
least, whatever else they may do, supply a philosophy of art with the
visible warrant and confirmation of actual work, into the historical
detail of which, in each particular case, philosophy is not permitted
to enter.
This then may be accepted as the first method of art study. It starts
from the particular work which we have before us.
2. The method or point of view to be contrasted with this, in other
words an entirely theoretical reflection, which is concerned to
cognize the beautiful as such from its own intrinsic wealth, and
to penetrate to the idea of it, is essentially distinct from the
first method. As is well known, Plato was the first to demand of
philosophical inquiry in a profounder sense, that objects should not
be cognized in their _particularity_, but in their _universality_,
in their generic type, their essential being and its explicit
manifestation. He maintained that this true essence[30] did not consist
in _particular_ actions which were good, in particular true opinions,
handsome men or beautiful works of art, but in _goodness_, _beauty_,
and _truth_ in their universality. Now if in fact the beautiful ought
to be cognized according to its essence and notion, this can only
be effected by means of the thinking notion[31], by means of which
the logical and metaphysical nature of the _Idea as such_, as also
of that of the particular _Idea of the beautiful_ enters into the
thinking consciousness. But the consideration of the beautiful in
its self-independence and its idea may readily once more become an
abstract metaphysic; and even though Plato is accepted as founder and
pioneer, the Platonic abstraction no longer supplies all we require,
not even for the logical Idea of the beautiful. We are bound to grasp
this idea more profoundly and more in the concrete. The emptiness of
content which clings to the Platonic Idea, no longer satisfies the
richer philosophical requirements of the mind to-day. It is no doubt
the case that we also in the philosophy of art must make the Idea of
the beautiful our starting point; but it is by no means inevitable that
we should adhere to the Platonic ideas in their abstraction, ideas from
which the philosophy of the beautiful merely dates its origins.
3. The philosophical idea of the beautiful to indicate at any rate
its true nature provisionally, must contain both extremes which
we have described mediated in itself. It must combine, that is to
say, metaphysical universality with the determinate content of real
particularity. It is only by this means that it is grasped in its
essential no less than explicit truth. For on the one hand it is then,
as contrasted with the sterility of one-sided reflection, fruit-bearing
out of its own wealth. It is its function, in consonance with its own
notion, to develop into a totality of definite qualities, and this
essential conception itself, no less than its detailed explication,
comprises the necessary coherence of its particular features as also
of the progress and transition of one phase thereof into another.
On the other hand, these particulars into which the passage is made
essentially carry the universality and essentiality of the fundamental
notion, as the particulars of which they appear. The modes of inquiry
hitherto discussed lack both these aspects, and for this reason it
is only the notion, as above formulated, in its completeness, which
conducts us to definitive principles which are substantive, necessary,
and self-contained in their completeness.
III
After these preliminaries we come to closer quarters with our actual
subject-matter, namely, the philosophy of Fine Art[32]; and for
the reason that we are undertaking to treat it scientifically, our
commencement must be with the notional concept of the same. It is
only after we have definitely ascertained this that we can map out
the division of its parts, and with it the plan of the science as a
whole. A division of this kind, if it is not to be, as is the case with
non-philosophical inquiry, undertaken in a purely external way, must
discover its principle in the notion of the subject treated itself.
Face to face with such a demand we are at once met by the question:
"Whence do we arrive at such a conception?" If we begin with the
notional concept of Fine Art itself the same at once becomes a
_pre-supposition_ and mere assumption. Mere assumptions, however,
are excluded from the philosophical method; whatever here is allowed
as valid must have its truth demonstrated, in other words must be
established in its necessity.
We will endeavour to arrive at an understanding in a few words in the
presence of this difficulty which invariably recurs in the introduction
to every course of philosophical study if treated independently. The
subject-matter of every science presents in the first instance two
aspects for consideration: first, the fact that a given object _is_;
secondly, the question _what_ it is.
Upon the question of fact in ordinary scientific inquiry little
difficulty is experienced. Indeed it might on a cursory view even
appear ridiculous if the demand were made that we had to prove in
geometry, for instance, that there were such objects as space, and
geometrical figures, or in astronomy and physics that there was a sun,
stars, and magnetic phenomena. In these sciences, which are concerned
with what is actually presented to sense perception, objects are
accepted from objective experience, and so far from it being regarded
necessary to demonstrate (_beweisen_) them, it is deemed sufficient
to point to (_weisen_) the bare facts. Yet even within the limits of
non-philosophical instruction doubts may arise as to the existence of
certain objects. In psychology, for example, the science of mind, the
doubt is possible whether there _is_ a soul, an intelligence, _i.e._,
something distinct from material conditions, something immaterial[33],
independent and self-substantive, or in the theology whether a God
actually _exists._ Moreover, assuming the objects of the science to be
thus immaterial, in other words, merely present in the mind, and not a
part of the objective world we perceive, we have to face the possible
conviction that there is nothing in the mind, but that which it has
evoked in virtue of its own activity. This brings up incidentally the
question whether men have produced this idea or intuition which is
inward to their minds or not, and even if we do actually accept the
first alternative, whether they have not made such an idea once more
to vanish, or depreciated, the same at any rate to an idea of wholly
_subjective_ validity, whose content possesses no independent or
self-contained existence[34]. In this way, for example, the beautiful
has been frequently regarded as possessing no necessarily essential and
independent stability in the world of our ideas; rather it is accepted
as a pleasure purely personal to ourselves, due to the caprice of our
senses[35]. Even our external intuitions, observations and perceptions
frequently deceive and lead us astray; but still more is this the case
with those ideas that do not arise from sense-perception, even though
they possess in themselves the greatest vitality, and are able to
transport us into passion, we are powerless to resist.
This doubt, then, whether an object of the inward world of our ideas
and intuitions actually exists as an independent fact or not, as also
that further incidental problem, whether the particular consciousness
in question has produced it in itself, and whether the particular
mode or process, in which it objectified it to itself, is also
adequate to the object thus envisaged in its essential and independent
nature--these are precisely the kind of questions which have awakened
in men the higher demand of philosophy, which is that, even if there
is every appearance that an object is, or that we have before us
such an object, yet none the less that object must be expounded or
demonstrated on the basis of its necessity. A demonstration of this
kind, if developed on truly philosophical lines, ought at the same time
to supply a sufficient answer to the question: _What_ a given object
is. To work this out fully would, however, carry us further than is
now possible. We propose to limit ourselves to the following general
remarks.
If we are to propound the necessity of our subject-matter, in other
words the beauty of art, we are bound to prove that art, or the
beautiful, is a result of antecedents such as, when regarded relatively
to their true notional concept, conduct us with scientific necessity
to the similar notion of fine art itself. Inasmuch as, however, we
propose to make art the point of departure, and its idea and the
objective presence of the same, and do _not_ propose to deal with the
antecedent conditions which are essential to the necessary exposition
of its notional concept, for this reason art, in our treatment of it as
a particular object of scientific inquiry, involves a pre-assumption,
which lies outside the boundary of our investigation; which, implying
as it does a different content, belongs, as scientifically treated,
to another course of philosophical inquiry. We have therefore now no
other alternative than frankly to accept the notional idea of art,
so to speak, provisionally[36], which is inevitable with every one
of the _particular_ philosophical sciences, if regarded in their
abstract isolation. For it is the entire body of philosophy, and that
alone, which either is or can be the comprehension of the universe
as one essentially _single_ organic totality; and which, as such a
totality, self-evolved from its own notional Idea, and returning into
itself so as to form a whole in virtue of the necessary principle
in which it is placed relatively to itself, encloses itself, and
all that is itself, into one single world of truth. In the coronal
of this scientific necessity is every particular member thereof a
self-complete circle which returns into itself, while, at the same
time, and as imperatively, it possesses a necessary bond of connection
with other parts. This bond of coherence is a backward from which it
is self-derived, no less than a forward to which it is self-impelled
onward, in so far as it fruitfully begets fresh material from its
own resources, and renders the same open and pervious to scientific
cognition. It is not therefore our purpose to demonstrate the Idea of
the beautiful, which is our point of departure, or, in other words,
to deduce it in all its necessity from the assumptions which are its
antecedents in philosophy, and from the womb of which it is born. This
is the object appropriate to an encyclopaedic development of philosophy
as a whole and in its specific branches. For ourselves the notional
concept of the beautiful and art is a pre-supposition supplied us by
the system of philosophy. Inasmuch, however, as we are not prepared
to discuss this system, and the association of art with it in the
present context[37], we have not as yet the idea of the beautiful
before us in a _scientific form_: what we have and are able to deal
with are simply the phases and aspects of the same as we find them in
the various conceptions of beauty and art of our everyday conscious
life, or as they have been conceived by previous writers. Having made
our start at this point we shall then at a later stage pass on to the
more fundamental investigation of those views, in order thereby to
secure the advantage of, in the first instance, working out a general
idea of our subject-matter no less than obtaining a provisional
acquaintance, as a result of our necessarily brief criticism, with its
higher principles, which will occupy our thoughts in the inquiry which
follows[38]. By this means our final introduction[39] will supply a
sort of overture to the exposition of the subject itself, and will aim
at being a general concatenation and direction of our reflection on the
real subject-matter before us. What in the first instance is known to
us under current conceptions of a work of art may be subsumed under the
three following determinations:
(1) A work of art is no product of Nature. It is brought into being
through the agency of man.
(2) It is created essentially _for_ man; and, what, is more, it is to a
greater-or less degree delivered from a sensuous medium, and addressed
to his _senses_[40].
(3) It contains an _end_ bound up with it.
1. With regard to the first point, that a work of art is a product of
human activity, an inference has been drawn from this (_a_) that such
an activity, being the conscious production of an external object can
also be _known_ and _divulged_, and learned and reproduced by others.
For that which one is able to effect, another--such is the notion--is
able to effect or to imitate[41], when he has once simply mastered the
way of doing it. In short we have merely to assume an acquaintance with
the rules of art-production universally shared, and anybody may then,
if he cares to do so, give effect to executive ability of the same
type, and produce works of art. It is out of reasoning of this kind
that the above-mentioned theories, with their provision of rules, and
their prescriptions formulated for practical acceptance, have arisen.
Unfortunately that which is capable of being brought into effect in
accordance with suggestions of this description can only be something
formally regular and mechanical. For only that which is mechanical is
of so exterior a type that only an entirely empty effort of will and
dexterity is required to accept it among our working conceptions, and
forthwith to carry it out; an effort, in fact, which is not under the
necessity to contribute out of its own resources anything concrete such
as is quite outside the prescriptive power of such general rules.
This is apparent with most vividness when precepts of this kind are not
limited to what is purely external and mechanical, but extend their
pretensions to the activity of the artist in the sense that implies
wealth of significance and intelligence. In this field our rules pass
off to purely indefinite generalities, such as "the theme ought to be
interesting, and each individual person must speak as is appropriate
to his status, age, sex and situation." But if rules are really to
suffice for such a purpose their directions ought to be formulated
with such directness of detail that, without any further co-operation
of mind, they could be executed precisely in the manner they are
prescribed. Such rules being, in respect to this content, abstract,
clearly and entirely fall short of their pretension of being able to
complete[42] the artistic consciousness. Artistic production is not a
formal activity in accordance with a series of definitions; it is, as
an activity of soul, constrained to work out of its own wealth, and
to bring before the mind's eye a wholly other and far richer content,
and a more embracing and unique[43] creation than ever can be thus
prescribed. In particular cases such rules may prove, of assistance,
in so far, that is, as they contain something really definite and
consequently useful for practice. But even here their guidance will
only apply to conditions wholly external.
(_b_) This above indicated tendency has consequently been wholly given
up; but writers in doing so have only fallen as unreservedly into
the opposite extreme. A work of art came to be looked upon, and so
far rightly, as no longer the product of an activity _shared by all
men_, but rather as a creation of a mind gifted in an extraordinary
degree. A mind of this type has in this view _merely_ to give free
vent to its peculiar endowment, regarded as a specific natural power.
It has to free itself absolutely from a pursuit of rules of universal
application, as also from any admixture of conscious reflection with
its creative and, as thus viewed, wholly instinctive powers, or rather
it should be on its guard therefrom, the assumption being that such
an exercise of conscious thought can only act on its creations as an
infection and a taint. Agreeably to such a view the work of art has
been heralded as the product of _talent_ and _genius_; and it is mainly
the aspect of natural gift inseparable from the ordinary conception of
talent and genius, which has been emphasized. There is to some extent
real truth in this. Talent is specific, genius universal capacity. With
neither[44] of these can a man endow himself _simply_ by the exercise
of his self-conscious activity. We shall consider this at greater
length in a subsequent chapter[45].
In the present context we would merely draw attention to the false
assumption in this view that in artistic production every kind of
self-reflection upon the artist's own activity was regarded as not
merely superfluous, but actually injurious. In such a view the
process of creation by talent or genius simply is taken to be a
general _state_; or we may define it more precisely as a condition of
inspiration. To such a condition, it is said, genius is in some measure
exalted by the subject-matter itself; it is also to some extent
voluntarily able to place itself under such a condition, a process of
self-inhibition in which the genial service of the champagne bottle
is not forgotten[46]. An idea of this kind was in vogue during the
so-called "Epoch of Genius," which originated with the early poetical
work of Goethe, receiving subsequent illustration in those of Schiller.
These poets by their rejection of all rules hitherto fabricated made
as it were an entirely new start; with deliberate intention they ran
counter to such rules, and while doing so distanced all competitors by
many lengths. I do not, however, propose to discuss with more detail
the confusions which have prevailed over the conception of inspiration
and genius, and the notion, which even at the present day finds
advocates, that inspiration simply by itself can effect anything and
everything. The real and indeed sole point to maintain as essential is
the thesis that although artistic talent and genius essentially implies
an element of natural power, yet it is equally indispensable that it
should be thoughtfully cultivated, that reflection should be brought
to bear on the particular way it is exercised, and that it should be
also kept alive with use and practice in actual work. The fact is
that an important aspect of the creating process is merely facility
in the use of a medium[47]; that is to say, a work of art possesses a
purely technical side, which extends to the borders of mere handicraft.
This is most obviously the case in architecture and sculpture, less
so in painting and music, least of all in poetry. A facility here
is not assisted at all by inspiration; what solely indispensable is
reflection, industry, and practice. Such technical skill an artist
simply _must_ possess in order that he may be master over the external
material, and not be thwarted by its obstinacy.
Add to this that the more exalted the rank of an artist the more
profoundly ought he to portray depths of soul and mind; and these are
not to be known by flashlight, but are exclusively to be sounded, if
at all, by the direction of the man's own intelligence on the world
of souls and the objective world. In this respect, therefore, once
more _study_ is the means whereby the artist brings to consciousness
such a content, and appropriates the material and structure of his
conceptions. At the same time no doubt one art will require such a
conscious reception and cognitive mastery of the content in question
more than another. Music, for example, which has exclusively to deal
with the entirely undefined motion of the soul within, with the musical
tones of that which is, relatively, feeling denuded of positive
thought, has little or no need to bring home to consciousness the
substance of intellectual conception[48]. For this very reason musical
talent declares itself as a rule in very early youth, when the head
is still empty and the emotions have barely had a flutter; it has, in
fact, attained real distinction at a time in the artist's life when
both intelligence and life are practically without experience. And
for the matter of that we often enough see very great accomplishment
in musical composition and execution hung together with considerable
indigence of mind and character. It is quite another matter in the
case of poetry. What is of main importance here is a presentation
of our humanity rich in subject-matter and reflective power, of its
profounder interests, and of the forces which move it. Here at least
mind and heart must themselves be richly and profoundly disciplined
by life, experience, and thought before genius itself can bring
into being the fruit that is ripe, the content that has substance,
and is essentially consummate. The early productions of Goethe and
Schiller are characterized by an immaturity, we may even call it a
rawness and barbarity, which really are appalling. This phenomenon,
that in the majority of those experiments we find a preponderating
mass of features which are absolutely prosaic, or at least uninspired
and commonplace, is a main objection to the ordinary notion that
inspiration is inseparable from youth and its sirocco season. These two
men of genius were the first beyond question to give our nation true
works of poetry, are, in fact, our national poets; but for all that it
was only their mature manhood, which made it a present of creations
profound, sterling of their kind, creations of genuine inspiration, and
no less technically complete in their artistic form[49]. We naturally
recall the case of the veteran Homer, who only composed and uttered his
immortal songs in his old age.
(_c_) A third view, held relatively to the idea of a work of art as a
product of human activity, concerns the position of such towards the
phenomena of Nature. The natural tendency of ordinary thinking in this
respect is to assume that the product of human art is of _subordinate_
rank to the works of Nature. The work of art possesses no feeling of
its own; it is not through and through a living thing, but, regarded as
an external object, is a dead thing. It is usual to regard that which
is alive of higher worth than what is dead. We may admit, of course,
that the work of art is not in itself capable of movement and alive.
The living, natural thing is, whether looked at within or without, an
organization with the life-purpose of such worked out into the minutest
detail. The work of art merely attains to the show of animation on
its surface. Below this it is ordinary stone, wood, or canvas[50],
or in the case of poetry idea, the medium of such being speech and
letters. But this element of external existence is not that which makes
a work a creation of fine art. A work of art is only truly such in
so far as originating in the human spirit, it continues to belong to
the soil from which it sprang, has received, in short, the baptism of
the mind and soul of man, and only presents that which is fashioned
in consonance with such a sacrament. An interest vital to man, the
spiritual values which the single event, one individual character, one
action possesses in its devolution and final issue, is seized in the
work of art and emphasized with greater purity[51] and clarity than
is possible on the ground of ordinary reality where human art is not.
And for this reason the work of art is of higher rank than any product
of Nature whatever, which has not submitted to this passage through
the mind. In virtue of the emotion and insight, for example, in the
atmosphere of which a landscape is portrayed by the art of painting,
this creation of the human spirit assumes a higher rank than the purely
natural landscape. Everything which partakes of spirit is better than
anything begotten of mere Nature. However this may be, the fact remains
that no purely natural existence is able, as art is, to represent
divine ideals.
And further, all that the mind borrows from its own ideal content
it is able, even in the direction of external existence, to endow
with _permanence._ The individual living thing on the contrary is
transitory; it vanishes and is unstable in its external aspect. The
work of art persists. At the same time it is not mere continuation, but
rather the form and pressure thereon of the mintage of soul-life which
constitutes its true pre-eminence as contrasted with Nature's reality.
But this higher position we have thus assigned to the work of art is
yet further contested by another prevalent conception of ordinary
ideas. It is contended that Nature and all that proceeds from her are
a work of God, created by His goodness and wisdom. The work of art
is on the contrary _merely_ a human product fashioned by human hands
according to human design. The fallacy implied in this contrast between
the products of Nature viewed as a divine creation and human activity
as of wholly finite energy consists in the apparent assumption that
God is not operative in and through man, but limits the sphere of His
activity to Nature alone. We must place this false conception entirely
on one side if we are desirous of penetrating to the true idea of art;
or rather, as opposed to such a conception we ought to accept the
extreme opposite thereto, namely, that God is more honoured by that
which mind makes and creates than by everything brought into being and
fashioned in the natural process. For not only is there a divinity in
man, but it is actually effective in him in a form which is adequate to
the essential nature of God in a far higher degree than in the work of
Nature. God is a Spirit, and it is only in man that the medium, through
which the Divine passes, possesses the form of spirit fully conscious
of the activity in which it manifests its ideal presence. In Nature
the medium correspondent to this is the unconscious sensuous[52] and
external _materia_, which is by many degrees inferior to consciousness
in its worth. In the products of art God works precisely as He works
through the phenomena of Nature. The divine substance, however, as it
is asserted in the work of art has secured, being begotten of spirit
life itself, a highway commensurable to its existence; determinate
existence in the unconscious sensuousness of Nature is not a mode of
appearance adequate to the Divine Being.
(_d_) Assuming, then, that the work of art is a creation of man in
the sense that it is the offspring of mind or spirit we have still
a further question in conclusion, which will help us to draw a more
profound inference still from our previous discussion. That question
is, "What is the human _need_ which stimulates art-production?" On the
one hand the artistic activity may be regarded as the mere play of
accident, or human conceits, which might just as well be left alone
as attempted. For, it may be urged, there are other and better means
for carrying into effect the aims of art, and man bears within himself
higher and more weighty interests, than art is capable of satisfying.
In contrast to such a view art appears to originate in a higher
impulse, and to satisfy more elevated needs, nay, at certain times the
highest and most absolute of all, being, as it has been, united to the
most embracing views of entire epochs and nations upon the constitution
of the world and the nature of their religion.
This inquiry, however, concerning a necessity for art which shall not
be merely contingent, but absolute, we are not as yet able to answer
with completeness; it demands, in fact, a concreter mode of exposition
than is compatible with the form of this introduction. We must
accordingly deem it sufficient for the present merely to establish the
following points.
The universal and absolute want from which art on its side of essential
form[53] arises originates in the fact that man is a _thinking_
consciousness, in other words that he renders explicit _to himself_ and
from his own substance[54], what he is and all in fact that exists.
The objects of Nature exist exclusively in immediacy and _once for
all._[55] Man, on the contrary, as mind _reduplicates_ himself. He is,
to start with, an object of Nature as other objects; but in addition to
this, and no less truly, he exists _for himself_; he observes himself,
makes himself present to his imagination and thought, and only in
virtue of this active power of self-realization is he actually mind
or spirit. This consciousness of himself man acquires in a twofold
way; in the _first_ instance _theoretically._ This is so in so far as
he is under a constraint to bring himself in his own inner life to
consciousness--all which moves in the human heart, all that surges up
and strives therein--and generally, so far as he is impelled to make
himself an object of perception and conception, to fix for himself
definitively that which thought discovers as essential being, and in
all that he summons out of himself, no less than in that which is
received from without, to recognize only himself. And _secondly_, this
realization is effected through a _practical_ activity. In other words
man possesses an impulse to assert himself in that which is presented
him in immediacy, in that which is at hand as an external something
to himself, and by doing so at the same time once more to recognize
himself therein. This purpose he achieved by the alteration he effects
in such external objects, upon which he imprints the seal of his inner
life, rediscovering in them thereby the features of his own determinate
nature. And man does all this, in order that he may as a free agent
divest the external world of its stubborn alienation from himself--and
in order that he may enjoy in the configuration of objective fact an
external reality simply of himself. The very first impulse of the child
implies in essentials this practical process of deliberate change in
external fact. A boy throws stones into the stream, and then looks
with wonder at the circles which follow in the water, regarding them
as a result in which he sees something of his own doing. This human
need runs through the most varied phenomena up to that particular
form of self-reproduction in the external fact which is presented us
in human art. And it is not merely in relation to external objects
that man acts thus. He treats himself, that is, his natural form, in
a similar manner: he will not permit it to remain as he finds it; he
alters it deliberately. This is the rational ground of all ornament
and decoration, though it may be as barbarous, tasteless, entirely
disfiguring, nay, as injurious as the crushing of the feet of Chinese
ladies, or the slitting of ears and lips. For it is among the really
cultured alone that a change of figure, behaviour, and every mode and
manner of self-expression will issue in harmony with the dictates of
mental elevation[56].
This universal demand for artistic expression[57] is based on the
rational impulse in man's nature to exalt both the world of his soul
experience and that of Nature for himself into the conscious embrace
of mind as an object in which he rediscovers himself. He satisfies
the demand of this spiritual freedom by making explicit to, his
_inner_ life all that exists, no less than from the further point of
view giving a realized _external_ embodiment to the self made thus
explicit. And by this reduplication of what is his own he places
before the vision and within the cognition of himself and others what
is within him. This is the free rationality of man, in which art as
also all action and knowledge originates. We shall investigate at
a later stage the specific need for art as compared with that for
other political and ethical action, or that for religious ideas and
scientific knowledge.
2. We have hitherto considered the work of art under the aspect that
it is fashioned by man; we will now pass over to the second part of
our definition, that it is produced for his _sense-apprehension_,
and consequently is to a more or less degree under obligations to a
sensuous medium.
(_a_) This reflection has been responsible for the inference that the
function of fine art is to arouse feeling, more precisely the feeling
which suits us--that is, pleasant feeling. From such a point of view
writers have converted the investigation of fine art into a treatise on
the emotions and asked what kind of feelings art ought to excite--take
fear, for example, and compassion--with the further question how such
can be regarded as pleasant, how, in short, the contemplation of a
misfortune can bring satisfaction. This tendency of reflection dates
for the most part from the times of Moses Mendelssohn, and many such
trains of reasoning may be found in his writings. A discussion of
this kind, however, did not carry the problem far. Feeling is the
undefined obscure region of spiritual life. What is felt, remains
cloaked in the form of the separate personal experience under its
most abstract persistence[58]; and for this reason the distinctions
of feeling are wholly abstract; they are not distinctions which apply
to the subject-matter itself. To take examples--fear, anxiety, care,
dread, are of course one type of emotion under various modifications;
but in part they are purely quantitative degrees of intensity, and in
part forms which reflect no light, on their content itself, but are
indifferent to it. In the case of fear, for instance, an existence is
assumed, for which the individual in question possesses an interest,
but sees at the same time the negative approach which threatens to
destroy this existence, and thereupon discovers in immediate fusion
within himself the above interest and the approach of that negative as
a contradictory affection of his personal life. A fear of this sort,
however, does not on its own account condition any particular content;
it may associate with itself subject-matter of the most opposed and
varied character. The feeling merely as such is in short a wholly empty
form of a subjective state. Such a form may no doubt in certain cases
itself be essentially complex, as we find it is with hope, pain, joy,
and pleasure; it may also in this very complexity appropriate various
modes of content, as, for example, we have a feeling of justice, an
ethical feeling, a sublime religious feeling, and so forth; but despite
the fact that a content of this kind is present in different modes of
feeling, no light whatever is thereby thrown on such content which will
disclose its essential and definite character. The feeling throughout
remains a purely subjective state which belongs to me, one in which
the concrete fact vanishes, as though contracted to a vanishing point
in the most abstract of all spheres[59]. For this reason an inquiry
over the nature of the emotions which art ought or ought not to arouse,
comes simply to a standstill in the undefined; it is an investigation
which deliberately abstracts from genuine content and its concrete
substance and notion. Reflection upon feeling is satisfied with the
observation of the personal emotional state and its singularity,
instead of penetrating and sounding the matter for study, in other
words the work of art, and in doing so bidding good-bye to the wholly
subjective state and its conditions. In feeling, however, it is just
this subjective state void of content which is not merely accepted,
but becomes the main thing; and that is precisely why people are so
proud of having emotions. And for no other reason that is why such an
investigation is tedious owing to its indefinite nature and emptiness,
and even repellent in its attention to trivial personal idiosyncrasies.
(_b_) Inasmuch, however, as the work of art is not merely concerned
with exciting some kind of emotion or other--for this is an object it
would share without any valid distinction with eloquence, historical
composition, religious edification and much else--but is only a work
of art in so far as it is beautiful, it occurred to reflective minds
to discover a _specific feeling for beauty_, and a distinct _sense
faculty_ correspondent with it. In such an inquiry it soon became
clear that a sense of this kind was no definite and mere[60] instinct
rigidly fixed by Nature, which was able by itself and independently
to distinguish the beautiful. As a consequence the demand was made
for _culture_ as a condition precedent to such a sense, and the sense
of beauty as thus cultivated was called _taste_, which, albeit an
instructed apprehension and discovery of the beautiful, was none the
less assumed to persist in the character of immediate feeling. We
have already discussed the way in which abstract theory attempted
to form such a sense of taste, and how external and one-sided that
sense remained. While the critical sense generally of the time when
such ideas were in currency was lacking in the _universality_ of its
principles, as a _specific_ critique of particular works of art it
was less concerned to substantiate a judgment _more decisive_ than
hitherto--indeed the material to effectuate this was not as yet
forthcoming--than to promote in a general way the _cultivation_ of such
a taste[61]. Consequently this educative process also came to a halt
in the region of the more indefinite, and merely busied itself by its
reflections in the fitting out of feeling as a sense of beauty in such
a way that beauty could immediately be discovered whenever and wherever
it might chance to appear. The real depth of the subject-matter
remained notwithstanding a closed book to such a taste. Profundity of
this kind demands not merely sensitive reception and abstract thought,
but the reason in its concrete grasp and the most sterling qualities
of soul-life. Taste on the contrary is merely directed to the outside
surfaces, which are the playground of the feelings, and upon which
one-sided principles may very well pass, as currency. But for this very
reason our so-called good taste is scared by every kind of profounder
artistic effect, and is dumb where the ideal significance[62] is in
question, and all mere externalities and accessories vanish. For when
great passions and the movements of a profound soul assert themselves,
we do not bother ourselves any more with the finer distinctions of
taste and its retail traffic in trifles. It is[63] conscious that
genius leaves such ground far behind it in its stride; and shrinking
before that power feels on its part far from comfortable, not knowing
very well which way to turn.
(_c_) Thus it is the further change has come about that critics of
art-production no longer have an eye simply to the education of taste,
or are intent upon the illustration of such a sense. The _connoisseur_,
or art-scholar, has taken the place of the man, or judge of artistic
taste. The positive side of art-scholarship, in so far as it implies
a sound and exhaustive acquaintance with the entire embrace of what
is distinctive and peculiar in a given work of art, we have already
maintained to be a necessary condition of artistic research. A work of
art, owing to its nature, which, if it is material from one point of
view, is also related to a particular person, originates from specific
conditions of the most varied kind, among which as exceptionally
important we may mention the date and place of its origins, the
characteristic personality of the artist, and, above all, the degree
of executive accomplishment secured by the art. All these points
of view have to be taken into consideration if we wish to obtain a
view and knowledge of such a work which is clear in its outlines, and
founded on a true basis, nay, even wish to enjoy it rightly. It is
with these that our art-scholarship is mainly occupied; and all that
it can do for us in this way should be gratefully accepted. Though it
is quite true such art-scholarship must be reckoned as of essential
importance, it ought not to be regarded as the sole, or indeed the
highest, constituent in the relation of the contemplative spirit to
a work of art and art generally. Such art-scholarship (this is the
defective tendency) may restrict itself wholly to a knowledge of purely
external characteristics, either on the side of technique or historical
condition, or in other directions; it may continue to possess the
barest inkling of the true nature of a given work, or simply no
knowledge at all. It may even form a depreciatory verdict on the
value of profounder inquiries as compared with purely matter of fact,
technical, and historical knowledge. Yet even so an art-scholarship,
assuming it to be really genuine and thorough, at least proceeds upon
grounds and knowledge which are definite, and an intelligent judgment;
and it is association with such that our more accurate review of the
distinct, if also to some extent exterior, aspects of a work of art,
and our estimate of their relative significance, is secured.
(_d_) Following the above observations upon the modes of inquiry which
were suggested by that aspect of a work of art in which, as itself an
object with a material medium, it possessed an essential relation to
man as himself receptive through sense, we will now examine this point
of view in its more essential connection with art itself. We propose to
do this partly (α) in respect to the art-product viewed as an object,
partly (β) as regards the personal characteristics of the artist, his
genius, talent, and so forth. We do not, however, propose to enter
into matter which can in this connection exclusively proceed from the
knowledge of art according to its universal concept[64]. The truth
is we are not as yet in the full sense on scientific ground; we have
merely reached the province of external reflection.
(α) There is no question, then, that a work of art is presented to
sensuous apprehension. It is submitted to the emotional sense, whether
outer or inner, to sensuous perception and the imaged sense, precisely
as the objective world is so presented around us, or as is our own
inward sensitive nature. Even a speech, for example, may be addressed
to the sensuous imagination and feeling. Notwithstanding this fact,
however, the work of art is not exclusively directed to the _sensuous_
apprehension, viewed, that is, as an object materially conditioned. Its
position is of the nature, that along with its sensuous presentation it
is fundamentally addressed to the _mind._ The mind is intended to be
affected by it and to receive some kind of satisfaction in it.
This function of the work of art at once makes it clear how it is that
it is in no way intended to be a natural product or, on the side where
it impinges on Nature, to possess the living principle of Nature. This,
at least, is a fact whether the natural product is ranked lower or
higher than a _mere_ work of art, as people are accustomed to express
themselves in the tone of depreciation.
In other words the sensuous aspect of a work of art has a right to
determinate existence only in so far as it exists for the human mind,
not, however, in so far as itself, as a material object, exists for
itself independently.
If we examine more closely in what way the sensuous _materia_ is
presented to man we find that what is so can be placed under various
relations to the mind.
(αα) The lowest in grade and that least compatible with relation to
intelligence is purely sensuous sensation. It consists primarily in
mere looking, listening, just as in times of mental overstrain it may
often be a relaxation to go about without thought, and merely listen
and have a look round. The mind, however, does not rest in the mere
apprehension of external objects through sight and hearing; it makes
them objective to its own inward nature, which thereupon, is impelled
itself to give effect to itself in these things as a further step
under a sensuous mode, in other words, it relates itself to them as
_desire._ In this appetitive relation to the external world man, as a
sensuous[65] particular thing, stands in a relation of opposition, to
things in general as in the same way particulars. He does not address
himself to them with open mind and the universal ideas of thought; he
retains an isolated position, with its personal impulses and interests,
relatively to objects as fixed in their obduracy as himself, and makes
himself at home in them by using them, or eating them up altogether,
and, in short, gives effect to his self-satisfaction by the sacrifice
he makes of them. In this negative relation desire requires for itself
not merely the superficial show of external objects, but the actual
things themselves in their material concrete existence. Mere pictures
of the wood, which it seeks to make use of, or of the animals, which it
hopes to eat up, would be of no service to desire. Just as little is it
possible for desire to suffer the object to remain in its freedom; its
craving is just this to force it to annihilate this self-subsistency
and freedom of external facts, and to demonstrate that these things
are only there to be destroyed and devoured. But at the same time
the particular person is neither himself free, begirt as he is by
the particular limited and transitory interests of his desires, for
his definite acts do not proceed from the essential universality and
rationality of his will, neither is he free relatively to the external
world, for desire[66] remains essentially determined by things and
related to them.
This relation, then, of desire is not that in which man is related to
the work of art. He suffers it to exist in its free independence as
an object; he associates himself with it without any craving of this
kind, rather as with an object reflective of himself[67], which exists
solely for the contemplative faculty of mind. For this reason, as we
have said, the work of art, although it possesses sensuous existence,
does not require sensuous concrete existence, nor yet the animated life
of such objects. Or, rather, we should add, it _ought_ not to remain
on such a level, in so far as its true function is exclusively to
satisfy spiritual interests, and to shut the door on all approach to
mere desire. Hence we can understand how it is that practical desire
rates the particular works of Nature in the organic or inorganic world,
which are at its service, more highly than works of art, which are
obviously useless in this sense, and only contribute enjoyment to other
capacities of man's spirit.
(ββ) A second mode under which the externally present comes before
the conscious subject is, as contrasted with the single sensuous
perception and active desire, the purely theoretical relation to
the _intelligence._ The theoretic contemplation of objects has no
interest in consuming the same in their particularity and satisfying
or maintaining itself through the sense by their means; its object
is to attain a knowledge of them in their _universality_, to seek
out their ideal nature and principle, to comprehend them according
to their notional idea. Consequently this contemplative interest is
content to leave the particular things as they are, and stands aloof
from them in their objective singularity, which is not the object of
such a faculty's investigation. For the rational intelligence is not
a property of the particular person in the sense that desire is so;
it appertains to his singularity as being itself likewise essentially
universal. So long as it persists in this relation of universality to
the objects in question, it is his reason in its universal potency
which is attempting to discover _itself_ in Nature, and thereby the
inward or essential being of the natural objects, which his sensuous
existence does not present under its mode of immediacy, although such
existence is founded therein. This interest of contemplation, the
satisfaction of which is the task of _science_, is, however, shared in
this scientific form just as little by art as it shared in the common
table of those impulses of the purely practical desire. Science can,
it is true, take as its point of departure the sensuous thing in its
singularity, and possess itself of some conception, how this individual
thing is present in its specific colour or form. But for all that this
isolated thing of sense as such possesses no further relation to mind,
inasmuch as the interest of intelligence makes for the universal,
the law, the thought and notion of the object, and consequently not
only does it forsake it in its immediate singularity, but it actually
transforms it within the region of idea[68], converting a concrete
object of sense into an abstract subject-matter of thought, that is
converting it into something other than the same object of its sensuous
perception actually was. The artistic interest does not follow such
a process, and is distinct from that of science for this reason.
The contemplation of art restricts its interest simply in the way
in which the work of art, as external object, in the directness of
its definition, and in the singularity wherein it appears to sense,
is manifested in all its features of colour, form, and sound, or as
a single isolated vision of the whole; it does not go so far beyond
the immediately received objective character as to propose, as is the
case with science, the ideal or conceptive thinking of this particular
objectivity under the terms of the rational and universal notion which
underlies it.
The interest of art, therefore, is distinguishable from the practical
interest of desire in virtue of the fact that it suffers its object to
remain in its free independence, whereas desire applies it, even to the
point of destruction, to its own uses. The contemplation of art, on
the other hand, differs from that of a scientific intelligence in an
analogous way[69] in virtue of the fact that it cherishes an interest
for the object in its isolated existence, and is not concerned to
transform the same into terms of universal thought and notion.
(γγ) It follows, then, that, though the sensuous _materia_ is
unquestionably present in a work of art, it is only as surface or
_show_ of the sensuous that it is under any necessity to appear. In
the sensuous appearance of the work of art it is neither the concrete
material stuff, the empirically perceived completeness and extension
of the internal organism which is the object of desire, nor is it the
universal thought of pure ideality, which in either case the mind
seeks for. Its aim is the sensuous presence, which, albeit suffered
to persist in its sensuousness, is equally entitled to be delivered
from the framework of its purely material substance. Consequently, as
compared with the immediately envisaged and incorporated object of
Nature, the sensuous presence in the work of art is transmuted to mere
semblance or _show_, and the work of art occupies a midway ground, with
the directly perceived objective world on one side and the ideality of
pure thought on the other. It is not as yet pure thought, but, despite
the element of sensuousness which adheres to it, it is no longer purely
material existence, in the sense at least that stones, plants, and
organic life are such. The sensuous element in a work of art is rather
itself somewhat of ideal intension[70], which, however, as not being
actually the ideal medium of thought, is still externally presented at
the same time as an object. This semblance of the sensuous presents
itself to the mind externally as the form, visible appearance, and
harmonious vibration of things. This is always assuming that it suffers
the objects to remain in their freedom as objective facts, and does not
seek to penetrate into their inward essence by abstract thought, for by
doing so they would (as above explained) entirely cease to exist for it
in their external singularity.
For this reason the sensuous aspect of art is only related to the two
_theoretical_[71] senses of _sight_ and _hearing_; smell, on the other
hand, taste, and the feeling of touch are excluded from the springs of
art's enjoyment. Smell, taste, and touch come into contact with matter
simply as such[72], and with the immediate sensuous qualities of the
same; smell with the material volatization through the air; taste with
the material dissolution of substance, and touch or mere bodily feeling
with qualities such as heat, coldness, smoothness, and so forth. On
this account these senses cannot have to do with the objects of art,
which ought to subsist in their actual and very independence, admitting
of no purely sensuous or rather physical relation. The pleasant for
such senses is not the beauty of art. Thus art on its sensuous side
brings before us deliberately merely a shadow-world of shapes, tones,
and imaged conceptions[73], and it is quite beside the point to
maintain that it is simply a proof of the impotence and limitations
of man that he can only present us with the surface of the physical
world, mere _schemata_, when he calls into being his creative works. In
art these sensuous shapes and tones are not offered as exclusively for
themselves and their form to our direct vision. They are presented with
the intent to secure in such shape satisfaction for higher and more
spiritual interests, inasmuch as they are mighty to summon an echo and
response in the human spirit evoked from all depths of its conscious
life. In this way the sensuous is _spiritualized_ in art, or, in other
words, the life of _spirit_ comes to dwell in it under sensuous guise.
(β) For this reason, however, a product of art is only possible in
so far as it has received its passage through the mind, and has
originated from the productive activity of mind. This brings us to
another question we have to answer, and it is this: "How is the
sensuous or material aspect, which is imperative as a condition of
art, operative in the artist as conjoined to his personal productive
activity[74]?" Now this mode or manner of artistic production contains,
as an activity personal to the artist, in essentials just the same
determinants which we found posited in the work of art. It must be
a spiritual activity, which, however, at the same time possesses in
itself the element of sensuousness and immediacy. It is neither, on
the one hand, purely mechanical work, such as is purely unconscious
facility in sleight of hand upon physical objects, or a stereotyped
activity according to teachable rule of thumb; nor, on the other
hand, is it a productive process of science, which tends to pass
from sensuous things to abstract ideas and thoughts, or is active
exclusively in the medium of pure thought. In contrast to these the
two aspects of mental idea and sensuous material must in the artistic
product be united. For example, it would be possible in the case of
poetical compositions to attempt to embody what was the subject-matter
in the form of prosaic thought in the first instance, and only after
doing so to attach to the same imaginative ideas rhymes and so on,
so that as a net result such imagery would be appendent to the
abstract reflections as so much ornament and decoration. An attempt
of this kind, however, could only lead us to a poor sort of poetry,
for in it we should have operative a twofold kind of activity in its
_separation_, which in the activity of genuine artistic work only
holds good in inseparable unity. It is this true kind of creative
activity which forms what is generally described as the artistic
_imagination_. It is the rational element, which in its import as
spirit only exists, in so far as it actively forces its way into the
presence of consciousness, yet likewise, and only subject to this
condition, displays all its content to itself under a sensuous form.
This activity possesses therefore a spiritual content, but it clothes
the same in sensuous image, and for this reason that it is only able
to come to a knowledge of the same under this sensuous garb. We may
compare such a process with that of a man of experience in life, a man,
shall we add, of real geniality and wit, who--while at the same time
being fully conscious in what the main importance of life consists,
what are the things which essentially bind men together, what moves
them and is the mainspring of their lives--nevertheless has neither
brought home this content in universal maxims, nor indeed is able to
unfold it to others in the generalities of the reflective process, but
makes these mature results of his intelligence without exception clear
to himself and others in particular cases, whether real or invented,
or by examples and such like which hit the mark. For in the ideas of
such a man everything shapes itself into the concrete image determinate
in its time and place, to which therefore the addition of names and
any other detail of external condition causes no difficulty. Yet such
a kind of imagination rather rests on the recollection of conditions,
he has lived through, actual experience, than it is a creative
power of itself. Memory preserves and renews the particularity and
external fashion of such previous events with all their more distinct
circumstances, but on the other hand does not suffer the universal
to appear independently. The creative imagination of an artist is
the imagination of a great mind and a big heart; it is the grasp and
excogitation of ideas and shapes, and, in fact, nothing less than
this grasp of the profoundest and most embracing human interests in
the wholly definite presentation of imagery borrowed from objective
experience. A consequence of this is, that imagination of this type[75]
is based in a certain sense on a natural gift, a general talent for
it, as we say, because its creative power essentially implies an
aspect of sense presentation. It is no doubt not unusual to speak in
the same way of scientific "talent." The sciences, however, merely
presuppose the general capacity for thought, which does not possess, as
imagination does, together with its intellectual activity, a reference
to the concrete testimony of Nature, but rather precisely abstracts
from the activity that form in which we find it in Nature. It would be,
therefore, truer to the mark if we said there is no specific scientific
talent in the sense of a purely natural endowment. Imagination[76],
on the other hand, combines within it a mode of instinct-like
creativeness. In other words the essential plasticity and material
element in a work of art is subjectively present in the artist as part
of his native disposition and impulse[77], and as his unconscious
activity belongs in part to that which man receives straight from
Nature. No doubt the entire talent and genius of an individual is
not wholly exhausted by that we describe as natural capability. The
creation of art is quite as much a spiritual and self-cognized process;
but for all that we affirm that its spirituality contains an element
of plastic or configurative facility which Nature[78] confers on it.
For this reason, though almost anybody can reach a certain point in
art, yet, in order to pass beyond this--and it is here that the art
in question really begins--a talent for art which is inborn and of a
higher order altogether is indispensable.
Considered simply as a natural basis a talent of this kind asserts
itself for the most part in early youth, and is manifested in the
restless persistency, ever intent with vivacity and alertness, to
create artistic shapes in some particular sensuous medium, and to make
this mode of expression and utterance the unique one or the one of
main importance and most suitable. And thus also a virtuosity up to a
certain point in the technique of art which is arrived at with ease is
a sign of inborn talent. A sculptor finds everything convertible into
plastic shape, and from early days takes to modelling clay; and so
on generally whatever men of such innate powers have in their minds,
whatever excites and moves their souls, becomes forthwith a plastic
figure, a drawing, a melody, or a poem.
(_γ_) Thirdly, and in conclusion: the _content_ of art is also in some
respects borrowed from the objective world perceived in sense, that
is Nature; or, in any case, if the content is also of a spiritual
character, it can only be grasped in such a way, that the spiritual
element therein, as human relations, for example, are displayed in the
form of phenomena which possess objective reality.
3. There is yet another question to solve, namely, what the interest
or the _End_ is, which man proposes to himself in the creation of the
content embodied by a work of art. This was, in fact, the third point
of view, which we propounded relatively to the art-product. Its more
detailed discussion will finally introduce us to the true notional
concept of art itself.
If we take a glance at our ordinary ideas on this subject, one of the
most prevalent is obviously
(_a_) The principle of the imitation of Nature. According to this view
the essential aim or object of art consists in imitation, by which is
understood a facility in copying natural forms as present to us in a
manner which shall most fully correspond to such facts. The success of
such an exact representation of Nature is assumed to afford us complete
satisfaction.
(_α_) Now in this definition there is to start with absolutely nothing
but the formal aim to bring about the bare repetition a second time
by man, so far as his means will permit of this, of all that was
already in the external world, precisely too in the way it is there. A
repetition of this sort may at once be set down as
(_αα_) A _superfluous_ task for the reason that everything
which pictures, theatrical performances represent by way of
imitation--animals, natural scenery, incidents of human life--we have
already elsewhere before us in our gardens or at home, or in other
examples of the more restricted or extended reaches of our personal
acquaintance. Looked at, moreover, more closely, such a superfluity of
energy can hardly appear otherwise than a presumptuous trifling; it is
so because
(_ββ_) It lags so far behind Nature. In other words art is limited in
its means of representation. It can only produce one-sided illusions,
a semblance, to take one example, of real fact addressed exclusively
to _one_ sense. And, moreover, if it does wholly rely on the bare
aim of _mere_ imitation, instead of Nature's life all it gives us
ever is the mere pretence of its substance. For some such reason the
Turks, who are Mohammedans, will not put up with any pictures or
copies of men and other objects. When James Bruce, in his travels
through Abyssinia, showed a painted fish to a Turk, that worthy was
at first astonished; but, quickly recovering himself, he made answer
as follows: "If this fish shall rise up against you at the last day,
and say, 'You have certainly given me a body, but no living soul,'
how are you going to justify yourself against such a complaint?" The
prophet himself, moreover, if we may believe the Sunna, said to the
two women Ommi Hubiba and Ommi Selma, who told him of certain pictures
in the Aethiopian churches: "These pictures will rise up in judgment
against their creators on the Last Day." There are, no doubt, no less
examples of completely deceptive imitation. The painted grapes of
Zeuxis, have been accepted from antiquity and long after as an instance
of art's triumph, and also of that of the principle of imitation,
because, we are told, actual doves pecked at them. We might add to
this ancient example that more modern one of Bültner's monkey, which
bit to pieces a painted cockchafer in Rösel's "Diversions of Insects,"
and was consequently forgiven by his master, although he destroyed by
this means a fine copy of the precious work, because he proved thus
the excellence of its illustrations. But if we will only reflect a
moment on such and other instances we can only come to the conclusion
that instead of praising works of art, because they have deceived
_even_ doves and monkeys, the foolish people ought to be condemned
who imagine that the quality of a work of art is enhanced if they are
able to proclaim an effect of the same so miserable as the supreme
and last word they can say for it. In short, to sum up, we may state
emphatically that in the mere business of imitation art cannot maintain
its rivalry with Nature, and if it makes the attempt it must look like
a worm which undertakes to crawl after an elephant.
(_γγ_) Having regard, then, to this invariable failure, that is,
relative failure of human imitation as contrasted with the natural
prototype, we have no end left us but the pleasure offered by sleight
of hand in its effort to produce something which resembles Nature. And
it is unquestionably a fact that mankind are able to derive enjoyment
from the attempt to reproduce with their individual labour, skill, and
industry what they find around them. But a delight and admiration of
this kind also becomes, if taken alone[79], indeed just in proportion
as the copy follows slavishly the thing copied, so much the more icily
null and cold, or brings its reaction of surfeit and repugnance.
There are portraits which, as has been drily remarked, are positively
shameless in their likeness[80]; and Kant brings forward a further
example of this pleasure in imitation pure and simple to the effect
that we are very soon tired of a man--and there really are such--who
is able to imitate the nightingale's song quite perfectly; for we
no sooner find that it is a man who is producing the strain than we
have had enough of it. We then take it to be nothing but a clever
trick, neither the free outpouring of Nature, nor yet a work of art.
We expect, in short, from the free creative power of men something
quite other than a music of this kind, which only retains our interest
when, as in the case of the nightingale's note, it breaks forth in
unpremeditated fashion, resembling in this respect the rhythmic flood
of human feeling, from the native springs of its life. And as a general
rule this delight we experience in the skill of imitation can only be
of a restricted character; it becomes a man better to derive enjoyment
from that which he brings to birth from himself. In this respect the
invention of every insignificant technical product is of higher rank;
and mankind may feel more proud at having invented the hammer, nail,
and so forth, than in making themselves adepts as imitators. For this
abstract zest in the pursuit of imitation is on the same lines as the
feat of the man who had taught himself to throw lentils through a
small aperture without missing. He made an exhibition of this feat to
Alexander, and Alexander merely made him a present as a reward for this
art, empty and useless as it was, of a bushel of lentils.
(_β_) Inasmuch as, moreover, the principle of imitation is purely
formal, _objective beauty_ itself disappears, if that principle is
accepted as the end. For the question is then no longer what is the
_constitution_ of that which is to be imitated, but simply whether the
copy is _correct_ or no. The object and the content of the beautiful
comes to be regarded as a matter of indifference. When, in other words,
putting the principle of mere imitation on one side, we speak, in
connection with animals, human beings, places, actions, and characters,
of a distinction between beauty and ugliness, it remains none the
less the fact that relatively to such a principle we are referring
to a distinction which does not properly belong to an art for which
we have appropriated this principle of imitation to the exclusion
of all others. In such a case, therefore, whenever we select objects
and attempt to distinguish between their beauty and ugliness, owing
to this absence of a standard we can apply to the infinite forms of
Nature, we have in the final resort only left us the _personal taste_,
which is fixed by no rule, and admits of no discussion. And, in truth,
if we start, in the selection of objects for representation, from
that which mankind _generally_ discover as beautiful and ugly, and
accept accordingly for artistic imitation, in other words, form their
particular taste, there is no province in the domain of the objective
world which is not open to us, and which is hardly likely to fail
to secure its admirer. At any rate, among men we may assume, that,
though the case of every husband and his wife may be disputed, yet at
least every bridegroom regards his bride as beautiful, very possibly
being the only person who does so; and that an individual taste for a
beauty of this kind admits of no fixed rules at all may be regarded
as a bit of luck for both parties. If, moreover, we cast a glance
wholly beyond mere individuals and their accidental taste to that of
nations, this again is full of diversity and opposition. How often we
hear it repeated that a European beauty would not please a Chinaman,
or even a Hottentot--a Chinaman having a totally distinct notion of
beauty from that of a black man, and the black man in his turn from
that of a European. Indeed, if we consider the works of art of those
extra-European peoples, their images of gods, for instance, which have
been imaginatively conceived as worthy of veneration and sublime, they
can only appear to us as frightful idols; their music will merely ring
in our ears as an abominable noise, while, from the opposite point of
view, such aliens will regard our sculptures, paintings, and musical
compositions as having no meaning or actually ugly.
(_γ_) But even assuming that we abstract from an objective principle
of art, and retain the beautiful as established on the subjective
and individual taste, we shall soon discover, from the point of view
of art itself, that the imitation of natural objects, which appeared
to be a universal principle, and indeed one secured by important
authorities, is not to be relied upon, at least under this general
and wholly abstract conception of it. If we look at the particular
arts we cannot fail to observe that, albeit painting and sculpture
portray objects which resemble those of Nature, or the type of which
is essentially borrowed from Nature, the works of architecture on the
contrary--and this, too, is one of the _fine_ arts--quite as little as
the compositions of poetry, to the extent at least that these latter
are not restricted to mere description, cannot justly be described as
imitations of Nature. At any rate, if we are desirous of maintaining
such a thesis with respect to the arts thus excluded, we should find
ourselves forced to make important deviations from the track, in order
to condition our proposition in various ways, and level down our
so-called truth at least to the plane of probability. But once accept
probability, and we should again be confronted with a great difficulty
in determining precisely what is and what is not probable; and in the
end no one could really think of or succeed, even if he did so, in
excluding from poetry all compositions of an entirely capricious and
completely imaginative[81] character.
The end or object of art must therefore consist in something other than
the purely formal[82] imitation of what is given to objective sense,
which invariably can merely call into being technical _legerdemain_
and not _works_ of art[83]. It is no doubt an essential constituent
of a work of art that it should have natural forms as a foundation,
because the mode of its representation is in external form, and thereby
along with it in that of natural phenomena. In painting it is obviously
an important study to learn to copy with accuracy colours in their
mutual relations, such as light effects and reflections, and so forth,
and, with no less accuracy, the forms and shapes of objects carried
into their most subtle gradations of line. It is in this respect that
in modern times more particularly the principle of the imitation of
Nature and naturalism generally has come into vogue. The object has
been to recall an art, which has deteriorated into weakness and
nebulosity, to the strength and determinate outlines of Nature, or,
in yet another direction, as against the purely arbitrary caprice and
convention of a studio, which is in truth as remote from Nature as it
is from art, and merely indicates the path of art's declension, to
assert the claim of the legitimate, direct, and independent, no less
than coherent stability of natural fact. But while admitting that from
a certain point of view such an effort is reasonable enough, yet for
all that the naturalism which it demands, taken by itself, is neither
the substantive thing, not yet of primary importance, in the true
basis of art; and although the external fact in its natural appearance
constitutes an element of essential value, yet the objective fact alone
does not supply the _standard_ of rightness, nor is the mere imitation
of external phenomena, in their external shape that is, the _end_ of
art.
(_b_) And as a consequence of this we have the further question--"What
is the true _content_ of art, and with what aim is that content brought
before us?" On this head we are confronted by the common opinion that
it is the task and object of art to bring before our sense, feeling,
and power of emulation[84] _every thing_ that the spirit of man can
perceive or conceive. Art has in short to realize for us the well-known
saying, "_Nihil humani a me alienum puto._" Its object is therefore
declared to be that of arousing and giving life to slumbering emotions,
inclinations, passions of _every_ description, of filling the heart up
to the brim; of compelling mankind, whether cultured or the reverse, to
pass through all that the human soul carries in its most intimate and
mysterious chambers, all that it is able to experience and reproduce,
all that the heart is able to stir and evoke in its depths and its
countlessly manifold possibilities; and yet further to deliver to the
domain of feeling and the delight of our vision all that the mind
may possess of essential and exalted being in its thought and the
Idea--that majestic hierarchy of the noble, eternal, and true; and no
less to interpret for us misfortune and misery, wickedness and crime;
to make the hearts of men realize through and through[85] all that
is atrocious and dreadful, no less than every kind of pleasure and
blessedness; and last of all to start the imagination like a rover
among the day-dream playing-fields of the fancy, there to revel in the
seductive mirage of visions and emotions which captivate the senses.
All this infinitely manifold content--so it is held--it is the function
of art to explore, in order that by this means the experience of our
external life may be repaired of its deficiencies, and yet from a
further point of view that the passions we share with all men[86] may
be excited, not merely that the experiences of life may not have us
unmoved, but that we ourselves may thereafter long to make ourselves
open channels of a universal experience. Such a stimulus is not
presented on the plane of actual experience itself[87], but can only
come through the semblance of it, that is to say through the illusions
which art, in its creations, substitutes for the actual world. And the
possibility of such a deception, by means of the semblances of art,
depends on the fact that all reality must for man pass through the
medium of the vision and imaginative idea; and it is only after such
a passage that it penetrates the emotional life and the will. In such
a process it is of no consequence whether it is immediate external
reality which claims his attention, or whether the result is effected
by some other way, in other words by means of images, symbols, and
ideas, which contain and display the content of such actuality. Men are
able to imagine things, which do not actually exist, as if they did
exist. Consequently it is precisely the same thing for our emotional
life, whether it is the objective world or merely the show of the same,
in virtue of which a situation, a relation, or any content of life, in
short, is brought home to us. Either mode is equally able to stir in
us an echo to the essential secret which it carries, whether it be in
grief or joy, in agitation or convulsion, and can cause to flow through
us the feelings and passions of anger, hate, pity, anxiety, fear, love,
reverence and admiration, honour and fame.
The awakening of every kind of emotion in us, the drawing our soul
through every content of life, the realization of all these movements
of soul-life by means of a presence which is only external as an
illusion--this it is which, in the opinion described, is pre-eminently
regarded as the peculiar and transcendent power of artistic creation.
We must not, however, overlook the fact that in this view of art as a
means to imprint on the soul and the mind what is good and evil alike,
to make man more strong in the pursuit of what is noblest, no less than
enervate his definite course[88], by transporting his emotional life
through the most sensuous and selfish desires, the task as yet proposed
to art remains throughout of an entirely formal character; without
possessing independently an assured aim all that art can offer is the
empty form for every possible kind of ideal and formative content.
(_c_) As a matter of fact art does not possess this formal side,
namely, that it is able to bring before our senses and feeling and
artistically adorn every possible kind of material, precisely as
the thoughts of ordinary reflection[89] elaborate every possible
subject-matter and modes of action, supplying the same with its
equipment of reasons and vindications. In the presence, however,
of such a variety of content we cannot fail to observe that these
diversified emotions and ideas, which it is assumed art has to
stimulate or enforce, intersect each other, contradict and mutually
cancel each other. Indeed, under this aspect, the more art inspires men
to emotions thus opposed, to that extent precisely it merely enlarges
the cleavage in their feelings and passions, and sets them staggering
about in Bacchantic riot, or passes over into sophistry and scepticism
precisely as your ordinary free thinkers do. This variety of the
material of art itself compels us, therefore, not to remain satisfied
with so formal a determination. Our rational nature forces its way into
this motley array of discord, and demands to see the resurrection of
a higher and more universal purpose from these elements despite their
opposition, and to be conscious of its attainment. Just in a similar
manner the social life of mankind and the State are no doubt credited
with the aim that in them _all_ human capacities and _all_ individual
potencies should meet with expansion and expression in _all_ their
features and tendencies. But in opposition to so formal a view there
very quickly crops up the question in what _unity_ these manifold
manifestations are to be concentrated, and what _single end_ they must
have for their fundamental concept and ultimate end. Just as in the
case of the notional concept of the human State so too there arises in
that of human art the need, as to a part thereof, for an end _common_
to the particular aspects, no less than in part for one which is more
exalted and _substantive_ in its character[90].
As such a substantive end the conclusion of reflection is readily
brought home to us that art possesses at once the power and function to
mitigate the savagery of mere desires.
(_α_) With regard to this first conception we have merely to ascertain
what characteristic peculiar to art implies this possibility of
eliminating this rawness of desire, and of fettering and instructing
the impulses and passions. Coarseness in general has its ground-root
in an unmitigated self-seeking of sensuous impulses, which take their
plunge off and are exclusively intent on the satisfaction of their
concupiscence. Sensual desire is, however, all the more brutal and
domineering, in proportion as, in its isolation and confinement, it
appropriates the _entire man_, so that he does not retain the power to
separate himself in his universal capacity from this determinacy and to
maintain the conscious presence of such universality[91]. Even if the
man in such a case exclaims, "the passion is mightier than myself,"
though it is true no doubt that for that man's mind the abstract ego is
separate from the particular passion, yet it is purely so in a formal
way. All that such a separation amounts to is that as against the force
of the passion the ego, in its universal form or competency, is of no
account at all. The savageness of passion consists therefore in the
fusion[92] of the ego as such a universal with the confined content
of its desire, so that a man no longer possesses volitional power
outside this single passion. Such savageness and untamed force of the
possibilities of passion art mitigates in the first instance to the
extent that it brings home to the mind and imagination of man what he
does actually feel and carry into effect in such a condition. And even
if art restricts itself to this that it places before the vision of
the mind pictures of passion, nay, even assuming such to be flattering
pictures, yet for all that a power of amelioration is contained
therein. At least we may say, that by this means is brought before a
man's intelligence what apart from such presentment he merely _is._ The
man in this way contemplates his impulses and inclinations; and whereas
apart from this they whirl him away without giving him time to reflect,
he now sees them outside himself and already, for the reason that they
come before him rather as objects than a part of himself, he begins
to be free from them as aliens. For this reason it may often happen
that an artist, under the weight of grief, mitigates and weakens the
intensity of his own emotions in their effect upon him by the artistic
representation of them. Comfort, too, is to be found even in tears. The
man who to start with is wholly given up to and concentrated in sorrow,
is able thus, at any rate, to express that which is merely felt within
in a direct way. Yet more alleviating is the utterance of such inner
life in words, images, musical sound, and shapes.
It was therefore a good old custom in the case of funerals and
layings-out to appoint wailing women, in order to give audible
expression to grief, or generally to create an external sympathy. For
manifestations of sympathy bring the content of human sorrow to the
sufferer in an objective form; he is by their repetition driven to
reflect upon it, and the burden is thereby made lighter. And so it has
from of old been considered that to weep or to speak oneself out are
equally means whereby freedom is secured from the oppressing burden, or
at least the heart is appreciably lifted. Consequently the mitigation
of the violence of passions admits of this general explanation that
man is released from his unmediated confinement[93] in an emotion,
becomes aware of it as a thing external to himself, to which he is
consequently obliged to place himself in an ideal relation. Art, while
still remaining within the sphere of the senses, faces man from the
might of his sensitive experience by means of its representations.
No doubt we frequently hear that pet phrase of many that it is man's
duty to remain in immediate union with Nature. Such union is in its
unmediated purity nothing more or less than savagery and wildness;
and art, precisely in the way that it dissolves this unity for human
beings, lifts them with gentle hands over this inclosure in Nature.
The way men are occupied with the objects of art's creation remains
throughout of a contemplative[94] character; and albeit in the first
instance it educates merely an attention to the actual facts portrayed,
yet over and beyond this, and with a power no less decisive, it draws
man's attention to their significance, it forces him to compare their
content with that of others, and to receive without reserve the general
conclusions of such a survey and all the ramifications[95] such imply.
(_β_) To the characteristic above discussed adheres in natural sequence
the second which has been predicated of art as its essential aim,
namely, the _purification_ of the passions, an instruction, that is,
and a building to _moral_ completeness. For the defining role that
art has to bridle savage nature and educate the passions remained one
wholly formal and general, so that the further question must arise as
to a _specific_ kind and an essential and _culminating_ point of such
an educative process.
(_αα_) The doctrine of the purification of the passions shares in the
defect previously noted as adhering to the mitigation of desires. It
does, however, emphasize more closely the fact that the representations
of art needed a standard, by means of which it would be possible to
estimate their comparative worth and unworth. This standard is just
their effectiveness to separate what is pure from that which is the
reverse in the passions. Art, therefore, requires a content which
is capable of expressing this purifying power, and in so far as the
power to assert such effectiveness is assumed to constitute the
substantive end of art, the purifying content will consist in asserting
that effective power before consciousness in its _universality_ and
_essentiality._[96]
(_ββ_) It is a deduction from the point of view just described that it
is the end of art to _instruct._ Thus, on the one hand, the peculiar
character of art consists in the movement of the emotions and in
the satisfaction which is found in this movement, even in fear,
compassion, in painful agitation and shock--that is to say, in the
satisfying concern of the feelings and passions, and to that extent in
a complacent, delighted, or enthusiastic attitude to the objects of
art and their presentation and effect: while, on the other hand, this
artistic object is held to discover its higher standard exclusively
in its power to instruct, in the _fabula docet_, and thereby in the
usefulness, which the work of art is able to exercise on the recipient.
In this respect the Horatian adage
Et prodesse volunt et delectare poetae[97]
contains, concentrated into a few words, all that in after times has
been drawn out as a doctrine of art through every conceivable grade of
dilution to the last extreme of insipidity.
In respect, then, to such instruction we have to ask whether the idea
is that the same ought to be direct or indirect in the work of art,
explicit or implicit.
Now if the question at issue is one of general importance to art about
a universal rather than contingent purpose, such an ultimate end, on
account of the essential spirituality of art, can only be itself of
spiritual import; in other words, so far from being of accidental
importance it must be true in virtue of its own nature and on its own
account. An end of this kind can only apply to instruction in so far as
a genuine and essentially explicit content is brought before the mind
by means of the work of art. From such a point of view we are entitled
to affirm that it is the function of art to accept so much the more
of a content of this nature within its compass in proportion to the
nobility of its rank, and that only in the verity of such a content
will it discover the standard according to which the pertinency of
or the reverse of what is expressed is adjudged. Art is in truth the
primary[98] _instructress_ of peoples.
But, on the other hand, if the object of instruction is so entirely
treated as an _end_ that the universal nature of the content presented
cannot fail to be asserted and rendered-bluntly and on its own account
explicit as abstract thesis, prosaic reflection or general maxim,
rather than merely in an indirect way contained by implication in the
concrete embodiment of art, then and in that case, by means of such a
separation, the sensuous, plastic configuration, which is precisely
that which makes the artistic product a _work of art_, is merely an
otiose accessory, a husk, a semblance, which are expressly posited
as nothing more than _shell_ and semblance. Thereby the very nature
of a work of art is abused. For the work of art ought not to bring
before the imaginative vision a content in its universality as such,
but rather this universality under the mode of individual concreteness
and distinctive sensuous particularity. If the work in question
does not conform to such a principle, but rather sets before us the
generalization of its content with the express object of instruction
pure and simple, then the imaginative no less than the material aspect
of it are merely an external and superfluous ornament, and the work
of art is itself a shattered thing within that ornament[99], a ruin
wherein form and content no longer appear as a mutually adherent
growth. For, in the case supposed, the particular object of the senses
and the ideal content apprehended by the mind[100] have become external
to one another.
Furthermore, if the object of art is assumed to consist in
utilitarian _instruction_ of this kind, that other aspect of delight,
entertainment, and diversion is simply abandoned on its own account
as _unessential_; it has now to look for its substance to the utility
of the matter of instruction, to which it is simply an accompaniment.
But this amounts to saying, that art does not carry its vocation and
purpose in itself, but that its fundamental conception is in something
else, to which it subserves as a _means._ Art becomes, in short, merely
one of the many means, which are either of use, or may be employed
to secure, the aim of instruction. This brings us to the boundary
line where art can only cease to be an end on its own independent
account; it is deliberately deposed either to the mere plaything of
entertainment, or a mere means of instruction.
(_γγ_) The line of this limit is most emphasized when the question
is raised as to the end or object of highest rank for the sake of
which the passions have to be purified or men have to be instructed.
This goal has frequently in modern times been identified with _moral
improvement_, and the end of art is assumed to consist in this that its
function is to prepare our inclinations and impulses, and generally
to conduct us to the supreme goal of moral perfection. In this view
we find instruction and purification combined. The notion is that art
by the insight it gives us of genuine moral goodness, in other words,
through its instruction, at the same time summons us to the process of
purification, and in this way alone can and ought to bring about the
improvement of mankind as the right use they can make of it and its
supreme object.
With reference to the relation in which art stands to the end of
improvement, we may practically say the same thing as we did about the
didactic end. It may readily be admitted that art as its principle
ought not to make the immoral and its advance its end. But it is one
thing deliberately to make immorality the aim of its presentation and
another not expressly to do so in the case of morality. It is possible
to deduce an excellent moral from any work of art whatever; but such
depends, of course, on a particular interpretation and consequently on
the individual who draws the moral. The defence is made of the most
immoral representations on the ground that people ought to become
acquainted with evil and sin in order to act morally. Conversely, it
has been maintained that the portrayal of Mary Magdalene, the fair
sinner, who afterwards repented, has seduced many into sin, because
art makes repentance look so beautiful, and you must first sin before
you can repent. The doctrine of moral improvement, however logically
carried out, is not merely satisfied that a moral should be conceivably
deducible from a work of art through interpretation; on the contrary,
it would have the moral instruction clearly made to emerge as the
substantive aim of the work[101]; nay, further, it would deliberately
exclude from art's products all subjects, characters, actions, and
events which fail to be moral in its own sense. For art, in distinction
from history and the sciences, which have their subject-matter
determined for them, has a choice in the selection of its subjects.
In order that we may be in a position to estimate this view of the
moral end of art on the basis of principle, we ought above all to raise
the question as to the precise standpoint of the morality which is
recommended for our reception by this view. If we examine more closely
the standpoint of morality such, as is submitted us to-day under an
enlightened interpretation[102], we soon discover that its conception
does not immediately coincide with that which we describe in a general
way as virtue, respectability[103], uprightness, and so forth. To be
a respectable honest man is not sufficient to make a man moral in the
sense under discussion, for morality in this sense implies _reflection_
and the definite consciousness of what is consonant with duty, and the
acts which issue from such a consciousness. Now duty is itself the law
of the will, which man, however, freely establishes out of himself,
and thereon is taken to determine himself to this duty for duty's
sake and its fulfilment's sake; in other words he only does good as
acting under the conviction already secured that it is the good. This
law--the duty which is selected and carried into effect for duty's
sake to be the rule of conduct out of free conviction and the inner
conscience--is, on its own account, the abstract universal of the will,
which is the absolute antithesis to Nature, the impulses of sense,
selfish interests, the passions and all that is commonly described
collectively as emotional life and heart. In this opposition the one
side is regarded as _negating_ the other; and for the reason that both
are present in the individual in their opposition, he is compelled,
as determining himself from his own identity, to adopt the choice of
one to the rejection of the other. Such a decision and the act carried
out in accordance with it merely become moral from the standpoint now
considered on the one hand in virtue of the free conviction of duty,
and on the other by reason of the victory secured not only over the
particular will, the natural motives, inclinations, passions and so on,
but also in virtue of the noble feelings and higher impulses. For the
modern ethic starts from the fixed opposition between the will in its
spiritual universality and its sensuous natural particularity; it does
not consist in the perfected mediation of these opposed aspects, but in
their mutual conflict as opposed to one another, which carries with
it the demand, that the impulses in their antagonism to duty ought to
yield to it.
An opposition of this nature is not merely present to mind in the
restricted confines of moral action; it asserts itself as a fundamental
severation and antithesis between that which is actual essentially,
and on its own account, and that which is external reality and
existence[104]. Apprehended in entirely formal terms it is the contrast
exposed by the universal, in so far as it is fixed in its substantive
independence over against the particular, as the latter is also on its
part rigidly exterior to it. In more concrete form it appears in Nature
as the opposition of the abstract law to the wealth of particular
phenomena, each of which possesses its specific characteristics. It
appears in mind as that between the sensuous and spiritual in man, as
the conflict of spirit with the flesh; it is that of duty for duty's
sake; of the cold imperative with particular impulses, the warm heart,
the sensuous inclinations and impulses, in a word with man simply as
individual. Or it appears as the harsh antagonism between the inward
freedom and the external necessity of natural condition, and, lastly,
as the contradiction of the dead, essentially emptied, concept, when
confronted with the fulness of concrete life, in other words, of theory
and subjective thought as contrasted with objective existence and
experience.
Such are antithetical points of view, the discovery of which is not
to be ascribed either to the ingenuity of reflective minds, or the
pedantry of a philosophical cult. They have in all ages, if in manifold
guise, occupied and disquieted the human consciousness, although it
is our more modern culture which has emphasized their opposition
most deliberately, and forced it in each case to the keenest edge of
contradiction. Intellectual culture, or rather the rapier edge of the
modern understanding, creates in man this contrast, which converts him
into some amphibious animal. He is compelled to live in two worlds
mutually contradictory; and in this divided house consciousness,
too, wanders aimlessly; tossed over from one side to the other it is
unable to discover permanent satisfaction[105] for itself in either
one side or the other. For, on the one hand, we see mankind confined
within common reality and earthly temporal condition, oppressed by
necessity and want, in Nature's toils, entangled in matter, in sensuous
aims and their enjoyment, dominated and whirled away by impulse and
passion. On the other hand he lifts himself up to eternal idea's, to
a realm of thought and freedom. As Will he legislates for himself
universal laws and destinations[106], he disrobes the world of the
life and blossom of its reality; he dissolves it in abstractions, that
the mind may vindicate its right and intrinsic worth by this very
dissolution of Nature's rights and such maltreatment, a process in
which he brings home to her again the necessity and violence he has
experienced at her hands. Such a cleavage of life and mind is, however,
accompanied for modern culture with the demand that a contradiction
so deep-seated should be dissolved. The mere understanding of
abstract reflection is unable to disengage itself from the obstinacy
of such contradictions. The solution consequently remains here for
consciousness a mere _ought_, and the present and reality is merely
moved within the continuous unrest of a to and fro, which seeks for
that reconciliation it is unable to find. The problem therefore arises
whether such a many-sided and fundamental antagonism, which is unable
to pass beyond the mere ought and postulate of its solution, can be
the essential and wholly expressed truth, and[107], indeed, the final
and supreme consummation. If the culture of the civilized world has
fallen into such a contradiction it becomes the task of philosophy to
dissolve the same, in other words to demonstrate that neither the one
side or the other, in its one sided abstractness, should be held to
possess truth, but that they contain within themselves the principle
of their dissolution. The truth only _then_ comes before us in the
reconciliation and mediation of both; and this mediation is no mere
postulate, but is, in its essential nature, and in its actual presence
the at the same time accomplished and self-accomplishing. And, in
fact, this view agrees directly with unwitting[108] faith and will,
which always has before its conscious life this contradiction in its
resolution, and in action accepts it as its aim and carries it into
effect. All that philosophy achieves is to contribute the insight of
thought into the essence of such cleavage. It demonstrates, or seeks to
demonstrate, how that which truth really is is simply the resolution of
the fracture, and, be it added, not in the sense that this antagonism
and its alternative aspects in any way _are not_, but in the sense that
they are _there_[109] in reconciliation.
(_d_) When discussing moral improvement as the ultimate end accepted
for art it was found that its principle pointed to a higher standpoint.
It will be necessary also to vindicate this standpoint for art.
Thereby the false position to which we have already directed attention
vanishes, namely, that art has to serve as a means for moral ends and
the moral end of the world generally by means of its didactive and
ameliorating influence, and by doing so has its essential aim not in
itself, but in something else. If we therefore continue still to speak
of an end or goal of art, we must at once remove the perverse idea,
which in the question, "What is the end?" will still make it include
the supplemental query, "What is the use?" The perverseness consists in
this that the work of art would then have to be regarded as related to
something else, which is presented us as what is essential and ought
to be. A work of art would in that case be merely a useful instrument
in the realization of an end which possessed real and independent
importance outside the realm of art. As opposed to this we must
maintain that it is art's function to reveal _truth_ under the mode of
art's sensuous or material configuration, to display the reconciled
antithesis previously described, and by this means to prove that it
possesses its final aim in itself, in this representation in short and
self-revelation. For other ends such as instruction, purification,
improvement, procuring of wealth, struggle after fame and honour have
nothing whatever to do with this work of art as such, still less do
they determine the fundamental idea[110] of it.
It is then from this point of view, into which the reflective
consideration of our subject-matter finally issues, that we have to
grasp the fundamental idea of art in terms of its ideal or inward
necessity, as it is also from this point of view that historically
regarded the true appreciation and acquaintance with art took its
origin. For that antithesis, to which we have drawn attention, did not
merely assert its presence within the general thought of educated men,
but equally in philosophy as such. It was only after philosophy was in
a position to overcome this opposition absolutely that it grasped the
fundamental notion of its own content, and, to the extent it did so,
the idea of Nature and of art.
For this reason, as this point of view implies the reawakening of
philosophy in the widest connotation of the term, so also it is the
re-awakening of the science of art. We may go further and affirm
that aesthetic as a science is in a real sense primarily indebted to
this re-awakening for its true origination, and art for its higher
estimation.
IV
From this point of transition, I will briefly summarize the historical
subject-matter that I have in my mind's eye, partly on account of the
historical importance itself, and in part because thereby the points
of view are more clearly indicated to which importance is attached,
and upon the basis of which we propose to continue the superstructure.
In its most general definition that basis consists in this, that the
beauty of art has become recognized as one of the means which resolve
and bring back to unity that antithesis and contradiction between the
mind and Nature as they repose in abstract alienation from each other
in themselves, whether this latter is regarded as external phenomena or
the inward world of individual feeling and emotion[111].
1. It was the philosophy of Kant which, in the first instance, not
merely experienced the want of such a point of union, but secured
definite knowledge of it and brought it clearly before the mind.
Speaking generally, Kant accepted as his basis for intelligence no
less than for the will the rationality which relates itself to itself
or freedom, the self-consciousness that discovers and knows itself
essentially as infinite. This knowledge of the absoluteness of reason
in its essential substance, which has proved in more modern times the
turning-point of philosophy, this absolute point of departure deserves
recognition, and does not admit of refutation, even though in other
respects the Kantian philosophy is inadequate. But at the same time it
was Kant who through falling back upon the fixed opposition between
subjective thought and objective things, between abstract universality
and the sensuous individuality of the will, in a pre-eminent degree
strained to the extremest limit the very antithesis of morality we
have previously adverted to, inasmuch as over and above this he
emphasized the practical operation of mind to the disadvantage of the
contemplative. In virtue of this fixity of the antithesis as cognized
by the faculty of the understanding he had no other alternative than
to express the unity exclusively in the form of subjective ideas for
which no adequate reality could be demonstrated as correspondent; or,
on its practical side, as postulates, which it was no doubt possible
to deduce from the practical reason, but whose essential being was
not within the cognition of thought, and the practical fulfilment
of which remained throughout a mere "ought" deferred to infinity.
And for this reason, though Kant did actually bring the reconciled
opposition within the compass of intelligible ideas, he was neither
able to develop its essential truth scientifically, nor to assert the
same as actual and exclusive reality. Unquestionably Kant did press
beyond this point, in the sense, that is to say, that he discovered the
unity demanded in what he called the _intuitive_ understanding; but
in this respect too he is held up by the opposition of subjectivity
and objectivity, so that, while he no doubt offers us a resolution in
an abstract sense of the antithesis between conception and reality,
universality and particularity, understanding and sense-perception,
and suggests the Idea, yet he once more conceives this resolution and
reconciliation itself in a wholly _subjective_ sense, not as being
true and real both essentially and on its own independent account. In
this respect the Critique of the power of the judgment, in which he
investigates the aesthetic and teleological power of the judgment is
both instructive and remarkable. The beautiful objects of Nature and
art, the products of Nature with their adaptations to ends, by means
of which he approaches more closely the notion of the organic and the
living, he considers wholly from the point of view of the reflection
which judges them subjectively. And indeed Kant himself generally
defines the power of judgment as "the capacity to think the particular
as comprised under the universal," and calls the power of judgment
_reflective_ "when it has only the particular submitted to it, and has
to discover the universal under which it is subsumed." To this end it
requires a law, a principle, which it has to contribute to itself; and
Kant affirms _teleology_ to be this law. With regard to the conception
of freedom which belongs to the practical reason the achievement of end
or purpose gets no further than a mere "ought"; and in the teleological
judgment, however, relatively to the living thing, Kant does manage to
regard the living organism in such a way that the notional concept, the
universal, succeeds in also including the particular, and as end does
not determine the particular and external, the structure of the members
from outside, but as an inward principle, and under the mode, that the
particular conforms to the end spontaneously. Yet with such a judgment
once more it is assumed that the objective nature of the thing is not
known, but that it is only a mode of subjective reflection which is
thereby expressed. In a similar way Kant so conceives the _aesthetic_
judgment that it neither proceeds from the understanding, as such,
in other words as the faculty of ideas, nor yet from the sensuous
perception as such, and its varied manifold, but from the free play of
the understanding and the imagination. In this common agreement of the
faculties of knowledge the object finds its relation to the individual
consciousness, and its feeling of pleasure and contentment.
(_a_) Now this general feeling of contentment is, in the first place,
without any interest, that is to say, it is _devoid of relation_ to
our _appetitive faculty._ If we have an interest of curiosity, shall
we say, or a sensuous interest excited for a physical want, a desire
for possession and use, then the objects are not important for their
own sake, but in virtue of our need of them. In a case such as this
what exists merely possesses a value in relation to such a need, and
the relation is of the kind, that the object is on the one side and on
the other is an attribute distinct from the object to which we relate
it none the less. As an illustration if I consume the object in order
to nourish myself therewith, this interest rests exclusively in me,
and remains alien to the object. Now, in Kant's view, our position
relatively to the beautiful is not of this description. The aesthetic
judgment suffers that which is externally presented to subsist in free
independence, proceeding as it does from the desire to permit the
object to persist on its own account and to retain its end unimpaired
within itself. This is, as we have already observed, an important
observation.
(_b_) In the second place, Kant maintains that the beautiful is
definable as that which without a conception, _i.e._, without a
category of the understanding, is placed before us as the object of a
_universal_ satisfaction. To estimate the beautiful an educated mind
is indispensable. The man in the street[112] has no judgment about
the beautiful; this judgment, in fact, claims universal validity.
The universal is no doubt in the first instance simply, _as such_,
an abstraction, one which, however, is in its essential and on its
independent account, true; and consequently carries essentially the
property and demand to pass also as universally valid. In this sense,
too, the beautiful ought to be universally recognized, although the
mere concepts of the understanding are compatible with no judgment
thereupon. The good--the right which enters into particular actions,
for example--is subsumed under universal concepts, and the action is
accepted as good, if it is conformable to such concepts. The beautiful,
on the contrary, ought, according to this view, to arouse a universal
satisfaction without any such mediation of concept. This simply means
that in the contemplation of the beautiful we are not conscious of the
notional concept or any subsumption under it, and do not permit the
independent passage of the separation between the particular object
and the universal concept, which is present in all other cases of the
judgment.
(_c_) Thirdly, in this view of Kant, the beautiful ought to have the
_teleological_ form to the extent that the teleological relation
is apprehended in the object without the idea of an end. This is
substantially a mere repetition of the view just discussed. Any natural
product--take, for instance, a plant or an animal--is organized as
adapted to an end, and is so immediately to us in this its teleological
purpose, that we have no conception of the end on its own account as
separate and distinct from the actual presence of the object. It is
in this way that the beautiful also is presented us teleologically.
In finite teleology end and means remain external to each other; the
end stands in no essential inner relation to the material means of
its execution[113]. In this case the idea of the end as recognized
in apartness[114] is distinguishable from the object in which the
end appears as realized. The beautiful, on the contrary, exists as
teleological in the essential sense, without means and end appearing
as disparate in aspects distinct from each other. For example, the
purpose of the members of the organism is the principle of life which
exists in the members as actual therein. In their separation[115] the
parts cease to be members of a whole. For in the living thing the end
and material medium of the end are so immediately united, that the
existing being only exists in so far as the end remains indwelling.
The beautiful, as thus regarded and in Kant's view, does not carry
its teleological purpose as an external form attached to it: but the
teleological correspondence of the inner and outer is to be regarded as
the immanent nature of the beautiful object.
(_d_) Fourthly and finally the view of Kant posits the beautiful under
the mode that it is recognized without a universal concept as object
of a _necessary_ feeling of satisfaction. Necessity is an abstract
category, and indicates an ideal and essential relation between two
aspects or sides: if the one is, and because the one is, then, and for
that reason, the other is also. The one likewise includes the other
within its determinate nature. Cause is meaningless without effect. The
pleasure which we obtain from beauty is necessary in this sense, and
it is so wholly without a relation to conceptions, that is to say the
categories of the understanding. Thus, no doubt, we derive pleasure
from what is symmetrical, for this is constructed in accord with an
idea of the understanding. Kant, however, demands more as a definition
of delight in art than the unity and uniformity of such an idea as this.
Now what we find in all these theses of Kant is the non-severation
of that which otherwise is assumed to be distinct in consciousness.
In the beautiful this separation is found to be abolished. The
universal and particular, purpose and means, idea and object completely
interpenetrate each other. Thus, too, Kant sees the beauty of _art_
as a concurrence, in which the particular itself is conformable to
the conception. Particulars, taken alone, are primarily, both as
against each other and the universal, of a contingent nature; and
this very contingent element, whether we find it in sense, feeling,
susceptibility, or impulse, is now in the beauty of art not merely
_subsumed_ under the categories of the understanding, and _dominated_
by the notion of freedom in its abstract universality, but united to
the universal in such a way that it appears inwardly and on its own
merits as realized fact adequate thereto. By this means thought is
incorporated in fine art, and the material is not externally defined
by such thought, but continues to exist in its own freedom. In other
words, what is natural--the senses, emotional temperament, and so
forth--possess in themselves measure, end, and agreement. Perception
and feeling, too, in the same way are raised to a power of spiritual
universality; and thought no less not merely renounces its hostility to
Nature, but is made blithe therein. Feeling, pleasure, and enjoyment
are thereby justified and sanctified, and thus it is that Nature and
freedom, sense and idea in _one_ presence discover their just place and
their satisfaction. Yet even this apparently complete reconciliation
is ultimately still assumed to be[116] merely subjective in respect
to our judgment no less than our productive activity, and not to be
essentially and on its own account either the true or real.
These may, I think, be taken to be the main results of the Critique
of Kant so far as they affect our present inquiry. It constitutes the
starting-point for the true conception of the beauty of art. Such a
conception could, however, only make itself effective as the higher
comprehension of the true union of necessity and freedom, particular
and universal, sensuous and rational, by its overcoming the defects
still latent in the previous standpoint.
It must in fact be admitted that the artistic sense of a profound
and, at the same time, philosophical spirit anticipated philosophy in
the stricter sense by its demand for and expression of the principle
of totality and reconciliation in its opposition to that abstract
finiteness of thought, that duty for duty's sake, that understanding
faculty devoid of any substantive content, which one and all apprehend
nature and reality, sense and feeling, merely as a _limits_ something
downright alien or hostile. It is Schiller who must be credited with
the important service of having broken through the Kantian subjectivity
and abstractness of thought, and of having ventured the attempt to
pass beyond the same by comprehending in thought the principles of
unity and reconciliation as the truth, and giving artistic realization
to that truth. For Schiller, in his aesthetic investigations, did not
merely adhere to art and its interest unaffected by their relation
to philosophy proper, but he compared his own interest in the beauty
of art in their due relation to philosophical principles; and it is
only from the starting-point of these latter and by their aid that
he penetrated the profounder nature and notional concept of Beauty.
Thus we are conscious that it was a feature of a certain period of
his productive activity that he was actively engaged with reflective
thought, more perhaps than was wholly favourable to the simple and
direct beauty of his work as an art product. The deliberate character
of abstract reflections, and even the interest of the philosophical
notion, arrest the attention in several of his poems. He has, in fact,
been made the subject of stricture on this account; and especially
his work has been blamed and depreciated in its contrast with the
equable serenity and straightforward simplicity of Goethe's ideas
and more objective naturalism. But in this respect Schiller as poet
did but pay the debt of his century. A real ideal evolution[117] was
responsible, the recognition of which only redounds to the honour
of this sublime soul and profound genius, as it has been no less of
signal profit to science and knowledge. This stimulating movement of
science during the same epoch also diverted Goethe from the sphere,
most distinctively his own, as poet. But just as Schiller was absorbed
in the study of the ideal depths of the _mind_, so the characteristic
predilection of Goethe inclined to the _physical_ aspect of art, to
external nature, such as animal and vegetable organization, crystals,
cloud-formation and colours. To such scientific inquiry Goethe applied
his extraordinary powers of intuition, which in these provinces have
driven off the field the theories of the mere understanding and their
errors, just as Schiller, on the other side, succeeded in demonstrating
the Idea of the free totality of Beauty as against the theory of the
analytical understanding relative to volition and thinking. An entire
series of Schiller's productions is devoted to this insight into
the nature of art. Above all in importance come the "Letters upon
aesthetic education." In these letters the main point of departure is
that every individual man contains within himself the natural capacity
of an ideal humanity. This genuine human being is represented by the
State, which, in his view, is the objective, universal, and, in short,
normal form, in which the separate individuals or subjects of such
human consciousness aim at making all coalesce and concentrate in
unity. There were then, in his view, two imaginable ways in which man
in the temporal process could thus coalesce with the human being in
the notional Idea[118]. On the one hand this could be effected in the
suppression of individuality by the State under its generic idea of
morality, law, and intelligence[119]: while, on the other, a similar
result could be effected by the individual himself raising himself to
the level of such a generic conception, in other words, by the man of
the particular temporal condition ennobling himself to the level of
the essential man of the Idea. Now, in this view, reason demands unity
as such, the generic attribution; Nature, however, asks for variety
and individuality, and both these legislatures make a simultaneous
claim upon man. Confronted with the conflict of these antagonistic
rivals, aesthetic education simply consists in giving actual effect
to the demand for their mediation and reconcilement. The aim of
such an education is, according to Schiller, to give vital form to
inclination, the senses, impulse and emotional life in such a way that
they become essentially permeated with mind; and, from the reverse
point of view, that reason, freedom, and spirituality come forth from
the grave-clothes of their abstractedness, are mated in union with the
natural element thus essentially rationalized, and thus receive the
substance of flesh and blood. Beauty is therefore affirmed to be the
conformative unification[120] of the rational and the sensuous, and
this union is pronounced the truly real.
This view of Schiller will in its general terms be all the more readily
recognized in "Anmuth und Würde[121]," as also in his poems for the
reason that the praise of women is in such works more particularly the
theme. It was pre-eminently in _their_ character that he recognized and
emphasized the spontaneously present conjunction of the spiritual and
natural.
This unity of the universal and particular, of freedom and necessity,
of spirituality and the natural element, which Schiller conceived
with scientific thoroughness as the principle and essence of art, and
endeavoured indefatigably to call into actual life by means of art
and aesthetic education, has received yet further recognition in _the
Idea itself_, cognized as the supreme principle of knowledge and of
existence, the Idea in this sense being apprehended as sole truth and
reality. By means of this acknowledgment science, in the philosophy
of Schelling, attained its absolute standpoint; and although art had
already begun to assert its peculiar rights and dignity in their
relation to the highest interests of man, it was only now that the
_notion_ itself and the scientific position of art were discovered.
It was then that art was--even if, from a certain point of view,
with a measure of perversity, which this is not the proper place to
discuss--accepted with due reference to its exalted and true vocation.
Even before this time and independently Winckelmann had been inspired
by his observation of the ideals of the ancients in a way which
prompted the creation of a new sense of artistic contemplation, the
disengagement of it from the association of vulgar aims and mere
imitation of Nature, and exercised a mighty influence in the discovery
of the idea of art in works of art and in its history. Winckelmann
ought, in fact, to be regarded as belonging to the type of men who have
been able in the field of art to supply the mind with a new organ and
wholly new methods of observation His views have, however, exercised
less influence on the theory and the scientific knowledge of art.
To summarize these historical antecedents further yet more briefly,
in association with the renaissance of our modern philosophy, A. W.
and Friedrich von Schlegel, impelled by their zest for novelty and all
that was either distinctive or arresting, assimilated just so much
of the philosophical ideas as was compatible with minds essentially
critical, though by no means really philosophical in any strict sense
of the term. Neither of these writers in fact can claim the reputation
of being speculative thinkers. They did, however, in virtue of their
critical sagacity, at least approach the standpoint of the Idea;
and with the aid of remarkable boldness of speech and audacity of
innovation--to which, however, but very few ingredients of genuine
philosophy contributed--directed a brilliant polemic against views
hitherto received, and by this means unquestionably introduced a novel
standard of criticism and new ways of looking at things which were
of superior value to those they attacked. For the reason, however,
that their criticism was not accompanied with a knowledge of the
nature of such a standard based on philosophical principles, a lack
of definition and continuity was inseparable from this standard; and
they at one time attempted too much and again at another too little.
Despite, therefore, of the fact that it may be reckoned to their
credit that they have once more drawn attention to and emphasized with
genuine enthusiasm much hitherto regarded as obsolete and too little
appreciated by their times, the works of the older Italian masters, for
example, and certain Flemish paintings, as also the "Niebelungen Lied"
among other things; despite the fact that they even endeavoured with
zeal to acquire knowledge of matter barely known at all, such as the
poetry and mythology of India, nevertheless they not only attached too
high an importance to the works of such a period, but also themselves
committed the mistake of admiring works of very average merit, such
as the comedies of Holberg, or of attaching an absolute value to what
possessed a purely relative worth, or even of boldly proving themselves
the enthusiasts of a perverse tendency and a subordinate standpoint as
though one of first-rate importance.
From this tendency, and particularly from the opinions[122] and
doctrines of Friedrich von Schlegel, issued in all its manifold forms
the so-called _Irony._ The idea had its profounder root, as to one of
its aspects, in the philosophy of Fichte, in so far as the principles
of that philosophy were applied to art. Friedrich von Schlegel, as also
Schelling, made the standpoint of Fichte their point of departure.
Schelling passed wholly beyond it; Fried, von Schlegel elaborated it
in his own peculiar fashion, and then flung himself free of it. With
reference to the more intimate connection of the doctrines of Fichte
with one tendency of this irony, it is only necessary to emphasize
the following point in our present context, namely this, that Fichte
posits the Ego as the absolute principle of all knowledge, reason, and
cognition, and in fact posits it as the Ego which persists throughout
in its abstraction of pure form. For this reason this Ego is, in the
second place, wholly and essentially simple, and, on the one hand, it
is the negation of every particularity, attribute--in short, every
content--for every positive subject-matter[123] is overwhelmed in this
abstract freedom and unity. On the other hand, every content, which is
to pass muster for the Ego, is posited and recognized as exclusively so
in virtue of the activity of the Ego. Whatever is, is only in virtue of
the Ego; whatever is through me (that is, my Ego) I am in turn able to
annihilate.
Now if we abide in these entirely vacant forms, which originate in the
absoluteness of the abstract Ego, nothing can then be regarded as of
value in itself, that is, essentially and on its own account[124]. It
is exclusively produced by the subjectivity of the Ego. But this being
so, it follows that the Ego remains lord and master over everything.
In no sphere of morals or law, of all that is human or divine, profane
or sacred, is there anything at all which would not in the first
instance have to be posited by the Ego, and which consequently could
not equally be nullified by the same agency. This is nothing less than
making all that exists on its own actual and independent warranty a
mere semblance, not true and a part of reality on account of itself
and by its own instrumentality, but a mere _show_ in virtue of the
Ego, within whose power and caprice it remains at the free disposition
of such. To suffer its presence and to destroy it stands purely in
the favour of the Ego, which has attained the absolute standpoint as
essentially the Ego, that and nothing more than that.
Thirdly, the Ego is a _living_, active individual, and its life
consists in bringing home its individuality to itself no less than
to others, in giving expression to itself and revealing itself among
phenomena[125]. For every man during his life endeavours to realize
himself and does realize himself. In relation to the beautiful and
art this means that he lives the life of an artist, and shapes his
life _artistically._ But, according to the principle now discussed,
I live as artist when all my action and expression whatever, in so
far as it has to do with a content, is for myself on the plane of
mere _semblance_, and assumes a formal content which is wholly at my
disposal. So I am not truly _serious_ either about this content or,
speaking generally, about its expression and realization. Genuine
seriousness only issues from a substantive interest, a subject-matter
which itself possesses a rich content, such as truth, morality, and
so on--in other words, from a content which as it stands I regard as
essential, so that I only become essential on my own account, in so
far as I have absorbed myself in such a content, and have come to
conform myself to it in the entire range of my thought and action.
At the standpoint at which the artist is the Ego, which both posits
and resolves everything through its own essential fiat[126], for
which no content of consciousness appears as absolute and essentially
independent, but only as itself a semblance created and destroyable,
such seriousness can find no place, nothing here receiving a right to
be save the formalism of the Ego.
No doubt for others my self-revealment, in which I appear to them,
may be taken seriously, inasmuch as they interpret me as though in
reality I was in earnest about the business; but therein they are
deluded, poor, _borné_ creatures, without the faculty or the power
to comprehend and attain to the height of my argument. And by this
it is brought home to me that _everyone_ is not so free (_e.g.,_
that is _formally_ free) as to see in all which is usually of value,
dignity and sanctity to mankind, merely a product of each man's own
possibilities of inclination, which is operative in permitting him to
determine and make rich the course of his life, or the reverse. It is
thus that this virtuosity of your ironical artist's life comes to be
credited as some _god-like geniality_, for which every conceivable
thing is a purely spectral creature, to which the free creator, knowing
himself to be absolutely unattached, does not yoke himself, for he can
ever annihilate the same no less than create it. Whoever has reached
such a standpoint of god-like geniality consequently looks down in his
superior fashion on all other mortals. They are ruled out as narrow
and dull, in so far, that is, as law, morals, and the rest retain for
them a validity that is assured, obligatory, and essential. And the
individual who thus lives this artist life, which he does no doubt
associate with others, whether friends or mistresses or I know not
what, yet as man of genius sets no real stock on such relations as they
stand to his individual personality and particular actions. All these
are as nothing in their contrast to the universal which is his in its
own and independent warranty, namely that genius which faces all such
with irony. This is the universal import of the genial god-like irony
as this concentration of the Ego in itself, for which all bands are
broken, and which can only live in the bliss of self-enjoyment. This
irony was the discovery of Herr Fried, von Schlegel, and many have
chattered about it after him, or it may be are giving us a fresh sample
of such chatter.
The proximate form of this negativity which has been called irony is,
then, on the one hand, the illusory nature[127] of all that is matter
of fact, or moral, or of substantive content, the nothingness of all
that is objective and of essential and independent worth. So long as
the Ego adheres to such, a standpoint as this, everything appears to be
null and void, the personal subjectivity alone excepted, which thereby
becomes hollow and empty, and nothing but conceit itself. Conversely,
however, from the opposite point of view, the Ego may also fail to
find satisfaction in this self-delight; it may prove an insufficient
supply to its craving, so that it now feels a thirst for what is secure
and substantive, definite and essential interests. From a situation
such as this there arises unhappiness and the contradiction, that
whereas, on the one hand, the individual seeks to penetrate into truth
and longs after objectivity, yet on the other he is unable to divest
himself of this isolation and self-seclusion, is unable to overcome
this unsatisfied and abstract soul-inwardness, and consequently is
seized with a fit of sentimental yearning, which we have also marked
as one of the emanations of the philosophy of Fichte. The discontent
of this quiescence and impotence, which is unable either to act or set
its hands to anything, lest it have to surrender the harmony within,
and which remains unreal and empty, even though it may be essentially
unflecked, despite all its craving for reality and the absolute--is
the source of morbid saintliness[128] and yearning. A soul that is
fair or saintly in a true sense acts and is a reality. But all that
yearning and heart burning is merely the feeling of the nothingness of
the empty and vain personage, who has it, and yet has not the power
to cast himself adrift of this empty void, and fill himself with that
which is solid and substantive. In so far, however, as the irony is
made an art type it did not restrict itself in giving artistic shape
to the life and particular individuality of the man who appropriated
the irony. Over and beyond the artistic content of his own actions,
etc., the artist had also to produce objective works of art as the
creations of his imagination. The principle of such productions,
which mainly are confined to the domain of poetry, is once more the
display of the god-like as Irony. The ironical here, however, as genial
individuality, consists in the self-annihilation of what is noble,
great, and excellent. Consequently the independent figures of art
will also have to illustrate the principle of absolute subjectivity,
and to do so by exhibiting all that is of human worth and dignity as
a mere naught in this process of self-annihilation. This implies not
merely that we are not to take seriously justice, morality and truth,
but that there is really nothing in what is highest and best. In short
it amounts to this, that irony contradicts and annihilates itself as
manifested in individuals, characters and actions, and consequently
is an irony which overreaches itself[129]. This mode or art-type,
abstractly considered, approaches closely to the principle of comedy.
At the same time we ought fundamentally to distinguish the comic from
the ironical as thus associated. For the comic must be limited to the
making null what is essentially itself of no worth, that is to say, a
false and contradictory appearance, a whim, for instance, a piece of
egotism, a particular caprice, as set over against a mighty passion; or
even some principle, _assumed_ to be efficacious, or rigid maxims may
be thus exposed in their nullity. But it is wholly a different matter,
when what is in fact moral and true, generally something with really
substantive core, is asserted in an individual and through the same
as essentially of no account. Such an individual is then nugatory and
despicable in his character, and the weakness and absence of character
are thus introduced into the representation. In this distinction,
therefore, between the ironical and the comic the point of real
importance is what is the nature of the _content_ which is destroyed.
They are in the case of irony evil, good for nothing subjects, persons
unable to hold staunchly to their fixed and important purposes, only
too ready to give it up and to permit its destruction within them.
Your "Irony" loves this irony of the characterless. For true character
implies on the one hand an essential substance in its purpose, and on
the other adherence to such a purpose, so that individuality would be
rifled of its veritable existence, if it was compelled to let it drop
and give it up. This doggedness and stability constitutes the keynote
of character. Cato can only live as Roman and republican. Now if
irony is made the keynote of the representation, we have the extreme
antithesis to art accepted as the true principle of the work of art.
For what we have here is in part insipid figures, in part figures
that have neither content nor defined position[130]. Seeing that what
is of substance in them is proved to be an illusion. And, last of
all, we have into the bargain those yearning floods and unresolved
contradictions of the soul. Compositions of this kind are not likely
to arouse real interest. And for this very reason it is precisely from
the advocates of this Irony that we have the continuous round of lament
over the public's want of critical sense, artistic insight and genius,
which of course cannot appreciate the lofty ways of such an Irony; in
other words what the public does not like is this very mediocrity,
which is the half of it mere trifling[131], and the other half without
distinctive character. And it is right that these spectre-like,
moon-shine gazing natures are no favourites; it is a comfort to think
that this insincerity and hypocrisy is not in fashion, and that what
men, on the contrary, demand imperatively are full and veritable
interests, and no less so characters which remain true to the weighty
substance at their core. We may add as a matter of historical interest
that it was Solger and Ludwig Tieck who above all accepted irony as the
highest principle of art.
This is not the place to speak of Solger at the length he really
merits; and I must content myself with a few general remarks. Solger
was not, as the others were, satisfied with a superficial philosophical
culture. A truly speculative impulse of his innermost nature made him
probe the very depths of the philosophical idea. And in doing so he
came upon the dialectical phase of the Idea, that transition point
which I call the infinite absolute negativity, the activity of the
idea in its negation of itself as infinite and universal, in order to
pass into finiteness and particularity, and with no less truth once
more in order to annul this negation, and in so doing to establish
again the universal and infinite within the finite and particular.
Solger did not get beyond this negativity; and unquestionably it is a
_phase_[132] in the speculative idea; but nevertheless, as exclusively
conceived in this dialectic unrest and dissolution of the infinite
no less than the finite, it is _only_ such a phase contributory, and
not, as Solger imagined, the _Entire Idea._ Unfortunately Solger's
life was too early broken off to permit him to grasp the concrete
evolvement of the philosophical Idea in all it implies. And so he never
got beyond this aspect of negativity, which possesses an affinity
with the dissolution by irony of all that is determinate no less than
essentially substantive, a negative movement which he identified with
the principle of artistic activity. Yet in the actual conditions of
his life, and with due reference to the stability, seriousness, and
sterling qualities of his character, he was neither himself an ironic
artist in the sense we have previously described, nor was his really
profound instinct for true works of art, a sense which a long course
of study of art had developed greatly, either of such an ironical
character. So much we will venture in the vindication of Solger, whose
life, philosophy, and actual contributions to art merit being wholly
kept separate from the apostles of irony previously named.
With regard to Ludwig Tieck, his culture, too, dates from that period
in which Jena was the literary centre. Tieck and others who belonged
to these superior people are on excellent terms with such modes of
expression, without being able to tell us much what they mean. Thus
Tieck always insists on the importance of Irony. But when it comes
to delivering judgment on great works of art, though his recognition
and description of their greatness is no doubt beyond reproach, yet
if one imagines that in any particular example--let us say "Romeo and
Juliet"--we have the opportunity put for an explanation of that in
which here the irony consists, we are wide of the mark. We hear nothing
more whatever about Irony.
V[133]
1. After the above introductory observations we may now pass on to the
consideration of our subject itself. We are, however, still within the
introduction; and being so I do not propose to attempt anything more
than indicate by way of sketch the main outlines of the general course
of the scientific inquiry which is to follow it. Inasmuch, however,
as we have referred to art as issuing from the absolute Idea itself,
and, indeed, have assigned as its end the sensuous presentation of the
Absolute itself, it will be incumbent on us to conduct this survey of
the entire field in such a way, as at least to disclose generally, how
the particular parts originate in the notional concept of the beauty of
art. We must therefore attempt to awaken some idea of this notion in
its broadest significance.
It has already been stated that the content of art is the Idea, and the
form of its display the configuration of the sensuous or plastic image.
It is further the function of art to mediate these two aspects under
the reconciled mode of free totality. The _first_ determinant implied
by this is the demand that the content, which has to secure artistic
representation, shall disclose an essential capacity for such display.
If this is not so all that we possess is a defective combination.
A content that, independently, is ill adapted to plastic form and
external presentment is compelled to accept this form, or a matter that
is of itself prosaic in its character is driven to make the best it can
of a mode of presentation which is antagonistic to its nature.
The _second_ requirement, which is deducible from the first, is the
demand that the content of art should be nothing essentially abstracts
This does not mean, however, that it should be merely concrete in
the sense that the sensuous object is such in its contrast to all
that is spiritual and the content of thought, regarding these as the
essentially simple and abstract. Everything that possesses truth for
Spirit; no less than, as part of Nature, is essentially concrete,
and, despite its universality, possesses both ideality[134] and
particularity essentially within it. When we state, for example, of
God that he is simple One, the Supreme Being as such, we have thereby
merely given utterance to a lifeless abstraction of the irrational
understanding. Such a God, as He is thus not conceived in His concrete
truth, can supply no content for art, least of all plastic art.
Consequently neither the Jews nor the Turks have been able to represent
their God, who is not even an abstraction of the understanding in
the above sense, under the positive mode in which Christians have
represented Him. For in Christianity God is conceived in His Truth, and
as such essentially concrete, as personality[135], as the subjective
focus of conscious life, or, more accurately defined, as Spirit. And
what He is as Spirit is made explicit to the religious apprehension
as a trinity of persons, which at the same time are, in their
independence, regarded as One. Here is essentiality, universality, and
particularity, no less than their reconciled unity, and it is only
a unity such as this which gives us the concrete. And inasmuch as a
content, in order to unveil truth at all, must be of this concrete
character, art makes the demand for a like concreteness, and, for this
reason, that a purely abstract universal does not in itself possess the
property to proceed to particularity and external manifestation, and to
unity with itself therein.
If, then, a sensuous form and configuration is to be correspondent
with a true and therefore concrete content, such must in the third
place likewise be as clearly individual, entirely concrete and a
self-enclosed unity. This character of concreteness, predicable of
both aspects of art, the content no less than the representation, is
just the point in which both coalesce and fall in with one another.
The natural form of the human body is, for example, such a sensuous
concrete capable of displaying Spirit in its essential concreteness and
of adapting itself wholly to such a presentment. For which reason we
must quit ourselves of the idea that it is a matter of mere accident
that an actual phenomenon of the objective world is accepted as the
mode in which to embody such a form coalescent with truth. Art does
not lay hold of this form either because it is simply there or because
there is no other. The concrete content itself implies the presence
of external and actual, we may even add the sensuous appearance. But
to make this possible this sensuous concrete, which is essentially
impressed with a content that is open to mind, is also essentially
addressed to the inward conscious life, and the external mode of its
configuration, whereby it is visible to perception and the world of
idea, has for its aim the being there exclusively for the soul and mind
of man. This is the sole reason that content and artistic conformation
are dovetailed one into the other. The _purely_ sensuous concrete, that
is external Nature as such, does not exclusively originate in such an
end. The variously coloured plumage of birds is resplendent unseen; the
notes of this song are unheard. The Cereus[136], which only blossoms
for a night, withers away without any admiration from another in the
wilderness of the southern forests; and these forests, receptacles
themselves of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the
richest and most aromatic perfumes, perish and collapse in like manner
unenjoyed. The work of art has no such naïve and independent being. It
is essentially a question, an address to the responding soul of man, an
appeal to affections and intelligence.
Although the endowment by art of sensuous shape is not in this
respect accidental, yet on the other hand it is not the highest mode
of grasping the spiritually concrete. Thought is a higher mode of
presentment than that of the sensuous concrete. Though abstract in a
relative sense; yet it must not be one-sided, but concrete thinking, in
order to be true and rational. The extent to which a definite content
possesses for its appropriate form sensuous artistic representation,
or essentially requires, in virtue of its nature, a higher and more
spiritual embodiment is a question of difference exemplified at once
if we compare the Greek gods with God as conceived under Christian
ideas. The Greek god is not abstract, but individual, and is in close
association with the natural human form. The Christian God is also, no
doubt, a concrete personality, but under the mode of pure spiritual
actuality, who is cognized as Spirit and in Spirit[137]. His medium of
determinate existence is therefore essentially knowledge of the mind
and not external natural shape, by means of which His representation
can only be imperfect, and not in the entire depths of His idea or
notional concept.
Inasmuch, however, as it is the function of art to represent the Idea
to immediate vision in sensuous shape and not in the form of thought
and pure spirituality in the strict sense, and inasmuch as the value
and intrinsic worth of this presentment consists in the correspondence
and unity of the two aspects, that is the Idea and its sensuous shape,
the supreme level and excellence of art and the reality, which is truly
consonant with its notion, will depend upon the degree of intimacy and
union with which idea and configuration appear together in elaborated
fusion. The higher truth consequently is spiritual content which has
received the shape adequate to the conception of its essence; and this
it is which supplies the principle of division for the philosophy of
art. For before the mind can attain to the true notion of its absolute
essence, it is constrained to traverse a series of stages rooted in
this very notional concept; and to this course of stages which it
unfolds to itself, corresponds a coalescent series, immediately related
therewith, of the plastic types of art, under the configuration whereof
mind as art-spirit presents to itself the consciousness of itself[138].
This evolution within the art-spirit has further itself two sides
in virtue of its intrinsic nature. _First_, that is to say, the
development is itself a spiritual and universal one; in other words
there are the definite and comprehensive views of the world[139] in
their series of gradations which give artistic embodiment to the
specific but widely embracing consciousness of Nature, man, and God.
_Secondly_, this ideal or _universal_ art-development has to provide
for itself immediate existence and sensuous configuration, and the
definite modes of this art-actualization in the sensuous medium are
themselves a totality of necessary distinctions in the realm of
art--that is to say, they are the _particular types_ of art. No doubt
the types of artistic configuration on the one hand are, in respect to
their spirituality, of a general character, and not restricted to any
one material, and the sensuous existence is similarly itself of varied
multiplicity of medium. Inasmuch, however, as this material potentially
possesses, precisely as the mind or spirit does, the Idea for its
inward soul or significance, it follows that a definite sensuous
involves with itself a closer relation and secret bond of association
with the spiritual-distinctions and specific types of artistic
embodiment[140].
Relatively to these points of view our philosophy will divided into
three fundamental parts.
_First_, we have a _general_ part. It has for its content object the
universal Idea of fine art, conceived here as the Ideal, together with
the more elaborated relation under which it is placed respectively to
Nature and human artistic production.
_Secondly_, we have evolved from the notional concept of the beauty of
art a _particular_ part, in so far as the essential distinctions, which
this idea contains in itself, are unfolded in a graduated series of
_particular_ modes of configuration[141].
_Thirdly_, there results a _final_ part which has to consider the
particularized content of fine art itself. It consists in the advance
of art to the sensuous realization of its shapes and its consummation
in a system of the several arts and their genera and species.
2. In respect to the first and second of these divisions it is
important to recollect, in order to make all that follows intelligible,
that the Idea, viewed as the beautiful in art, is not the Idea in the
strict sense, that is as a metaphysical Logic apprehends it as the
Absolute. It is rather the Idea as carried into concrete form in the
direction of express realization, and as having entered into immediate
and adequate unity with such reality. For the _Idea as such_, although
it is both potentially and explicitly true, is only truth in its
universality and not as yet presented in objective embodiment. The Idea
as fine art, however, is the Idea with the more specific property of
being essentially individual reality, in other words, an individual
configuration of reality whose express function it is to make manifest
the Idea--in its appearance. This amounts to the demand that the Idea
and its formative configuration as concrete realization must be brought
together under a mode of complete adequacy. The Idea as so conceived,
a reality, that is to-say, moulded in conformity with the notional
concept of the Idea, is the Ideal. The problem of such consonancy
might, in the first instance, be understood in the wholly formal sense
that the Idea might be any idea so long as the actual shape, it matters
not what the shape might be, represented this particular Idea and no
other. In that case, however, the required truth of the Ideal is a
fact simply interchangeable with mere correctness, a correctness which
consists in the expression of any significance in a manner adapted to
it, provided that its meaning is thereby directly discoverable in the
form. The Ideal, however, is not to be thus understood. According to
the standard or test of its own nature any content whatever can receive
adequate presentation, but it does not necessarily thereby possess a
claim to be the fine art of the Ideal. Nay, more, in comparison with
ideal beauty the presentation will even appear defective. And in this
connection we may once for all observe--though actual proof is reserved
to a later stage--that the defects of a work of art are not invariably
to be attributed to defects of executive skill. _Defectiveness of form_
arises also from _defectiveness of content_. The Chinese, Hindoos, and
Egyptians, for example, in their artistic images, sculptured deities
and idols, never passed beyond a formless condition, or a definition
of shape that was vicious and false, and were unable to master true
beauty. And this was so for the reason that their mythological
conceptions, the content and thought of their works of art, were still
essentially indeterminate, or only determinate in a false sense, did
not, in fact, attain to a content which was absolute in itself. Viewed
in this sense the excellence of works of art is so much the greater
in the degree that their content and thought is ideal and profound.
And in affirming this we have not merely in our mind the degree of
executive mastery displayed in the grasp and imitation of natural
form as we find it in the objective world. For in certain stages of
the artistic consciousness and its reproductive effects the desertion
and distortion of the conformations of Nature is not so much due to
unintentional technical inexperience or lack of ability, as it is to
deliberate alteration, which originates in the mental content itself,
and is demanded by the same. From this point of view there is therefore
imperfect art, which, both in technical and other respects, may be
quite consummate in its _own specific sphere_, yet if tested with the
true notion of art and the Ideal can only appear as defective. Only
in the highest art are the Idea and the artistic presentation truly
consonant with one another in the sense that the objective embodiment
of the Idea is in itself essentially and as realized the true
configuration, because the content of the Idea thus expressed is itself
in truth the genuine content. It is appertinent to this, as already
noted, that the Idea must be defined in and through itself as concrete
totality, thereby essentially possessing in itself the principle and
standard of its particularization and definition as thus manifested
objectively. For example, the Christian imagination will only be able
to represent God in human form and with man's means of spiritual
expression, because it is herein that God Himself is fully known in
Himself as mind or Spirit. Determinacy is, as it were, the bridge to
phenomenal presence. Where this determinacy is not totality derived
from the Idea itself, where the Idea is not conceived as that which
is self-definitive and self-differentiating, it remains abstract and
possesses its definition, and with it the principle for the particular
mode of embodiment adapted to itself not within itself but as something
outside it. And owing to this the Idea is also still abstract and the
configuration it assumes is not as yet posited by itself. The Idea,
however, which is essentially concrete, carries the principle of its
manifestation in itself, and is thereby the means of its own free
manifestation. Thus it is only the truly concrete Idea that is able to
evoke the true embodiment, and this appropriate coalescence of both is
the Ideal.
3. But inasmuch as in this way the Idea is concrete unity, this unity
can only enter the artistic consciousness by the expansion and further
mediation of the particular aspects of the Idea; and it is through this
evolution that the beauty of art receives a _totality of particular
stages and forms._ Therefore, after we have considered fine art in its
essence and on its own account, we must see how the beautiful in its
entirety breaks up into its particular determinations. This gives, as
our second part, the _doctrine of the types of art._ The origin of
these types is to be found in the varied ways under which the Idea is
conceived as the content of art; it is by this means that a distinction
in the mode of form under which it manifests itself is conditioned.
These types are therefore simply the different modes of relation which
obtain between the Idea and its configuration, relations which emanate
from the Idea itself, and thereby present us with the general basis of
division for this sphere. For the principle of division must always be
found in the notional concept, the particularization and division of
which it is.
We have here to consider _three_ relations of the Idea to its external
process of configuration.
(_a_) _First_, the origin of artistic creation proceeds from the
Idea when, being itself still involved in defective definition and
obscurity, or in vicious and untrue determinacy, it becomes embodied
in the shapes of art. As indeterminate it does not as yet possess
in itself that individuality which the Ideal demands. Its abstract
character and one-sidedness leaves its objective presentment still
defective and contingent. Consequently this first type of art is rather
a mere search after plastic configuration than a power of genuine
representation. The Idea has not as yet found the formative principle
within itself, and therefore still continues to be the mere effort and
strain to find it. We may in general terms describe this form as the
_symbolic_ type of art. The abstract Idea possesses in it its external
shape outside itself in the purely material substance of Nature, from
which the shaping process proceeds, and to which in its expression
it is entirely yoked. Natural objects are thus in the first instance
left just as they are, while, at the same time the substantive Idea
is imposed upon them as their significance, so that their function
is henceforth to express the same, and they claim to be interpreted,
as though the Idea itself was present in them. A rationale of this
is to be found in the fact that the external objects of reality do
essentially possess an aspect in which they are qualified to express
a universal import. But as a completely adequate coalescence is not
yet possible, all that can be the outcome of such a relation is an
_abstract attribute_, as when a lion is understood to symbolize
strength.
On the other hand this abstractness of the relation makes present
to consciousness no less markedly how the Idea stands relatively to
natural phenomena as an alien; and albeit it expatiates in all these
shapes, having no other means of expression among all that is real, and
seeks after itself in their unrest and defects of genuine proportion,
yet for all that it finds them inadequate to meet its needs. It
consequently exaggerates natural shapes and the phenomena of Nature in
every degree of indefinite and limitless extension; it flounders about
in them like a drunkard, and seethes and ferments, doing violence to
their truth with the distorted growth of unnatural shapes, and strives
vainly by the contrast, hugeness, and splendour of the forms accepted
to exalt the phenomena to the plane of the Idea. For the Idea is here
still more or less indeterminate, and unadaptable, while the objects of
Nature are wholly definite in their shape.
Hence, on account of the incompatibility of the two sides of ideality
and objective form to one another, the relation of the Idea to the
other becomes a _negative_ one. The former, being in its nature ideal,
is unsatisfied with such an embodiment, and posits itself as its inward
or ideally universal substance under a relation of _sublimity_ over and
above all this inadequate superfluity of natural form. In virtue of
this sublimity the natural phenomena, of course, and the human form and
event are accepted and left simply as they are, but at the same time,
recognized as unequal to their significance, which is exalted far above
all earthly content.
These features constitute in general terms the character of the
primitive artistic pantheism of the East, which, on the one hand,
charges the meanest objects with the significance of the absolute
Idea, or, on the other, compels natural form, by doing violence to its
structure, to express its world-ideas. And, in consequence, it becomes
bizarre, grotesque, and deficient in taste, or turns the infinite but
abstract freedom of the substantive Idea contemptuously against all
phenomenal existence as alike nugatory and evanescent. By such means
the significance cannot be completely presented in the expression, and
despite all straining and endeavour the final inadequacy of plastic
configuration to Idea remains insuperable. Such may be accepted as the
first type of art--symbolic art with its yearning, its fermentation,
its mystery, and sublimity.
(_b_) In the _second_ type of art, which we propose to call
"_Classical_," the twofold defect of symbolic art is annulled. Now
the symbolic configuration is imperfect, because, first, the Idea
here only enters into consciousness in _abstract_ determinacy or
indeterminateness: and, secondly, by reason of the fact that the
coalescence of import with embodiment can only throughout remain
defective, and in its turn also wholly abstract. The classical art-type
solves both these difficulties. It is, in fact, the free and adequate
embodiment of the Idea in the shape which, according to its notional
concept, is uniquely appropriate to the Idea itself. The Idea is
consequently able to unite in free and completely assonant concord with
it. For this reason the classical type of art is the first to present
us with the creation and vision of the complete Ideal, and to establish
the same as realized fact.
The conformability, however, of notion and reality in the classical
type ought not to be taken in the purely _formal_ sense of the
coalescence of a content with its external form, any more than this was
possible in the case of the Ideal. Otherwise every copy from Nature,
and every kind of portrait, every landscape, flower, scene, and so
forth, which form the aim of the presentment, would at once become
classical in virtue of the fact of the agreement it offers between such
content and form. In classical art, on the contrary, the characteristic
feature of the content consists in this, that it is itself concrete
Idea, and as such the concrete spiritual; for it is only that which
pertains to Spirit which is veritable ideality[142]. To secure such a
content we must find out that in Nature which on its own account is
that which is essentially and explicitly appropriate to the spiritual.
It must be the _original_ notion itself[143], which has invented the
form for concrete spirituality, and now the _subjective_ notion--in
the present case the spirit of art--has merely _discovered_ it, and
made it, as an existence possessed of natural shape, concordant with
free and individual spirituality. Such a configuration, which the
Idea essentially possesses as spiritual, and indeed as individually
determinate spirituality, when it must perforce appear as a temporal
phenomenon, is the _human form._ Personification and anthropomorphism
have frequently been abused as a degradation of the spiritual. But
art, in so far as its function is to bring to vision the spiritual
in sensuous guise, must advance to such anthropomorphism, inasmuch
as Spirit is only adequately presented to perception in its bodily
presence. The transmigration of souls in this respect an abstract
conception[144], and physiology ought to make it one of its fundamental
principles, that life has necessarily, in the course of its evolution,
to proceed to the human form, for the reason that it is alone the
visible phenomenon adequate to the expression of intelligence.
The human bodily form, then, is employed in the classical type of art
not as purely sensuous existence, but exclusively as the existence and
natural shape appropriate to mind. It has therefore to be relieved
of all the defective excrescences which adhere to it in its purely
physical aspect, and from the contingent finiteness of its phenomenal
appearance. The external shape must in this way be purified in order
to express in itself the content adequate for such a purpose; and,
furthermore, along with this, that the coalescence of import and
embodiment may be complete, the spirituality which constitutes the
content must be of such a character that it is completely able to
express itself in the natural form of man, without projecting beyond
the limits of such expression within the sensuous and purely physical
sphere of existence. Under such a condition Spirit is at the same
time defined as particular, the spirit or mind of man, not as simply
absolute and eternal. In this latter case it is only capable of
asserting and expressing itself as intellectual being[145].
Out of this latter distinction arises, in its turn, the defect which
brings about the dissolution of the classical type of art, and makes
the demand for a third and higher form, namely the _romantic_ type.
(_c_) The romantic type of art annuls the completed union of the Idea
and its reality, and occurs, if on a higher plane, to the difference
and opposition of both sides, which remained unovercome in symbolic
art. The classical type of art no doubt attained the highest excellence
of which the sensuous embodiment of art is capable. The defect, such
as it is, is due to the defect which obtains in art itself throughout,
the limitations of its entire province, that is to say. The limitation
consists in this, that art in general and, agreeably to its fundamental
idea, accepts for its object Spirit, the notion of which is infinite
concrete universality, under the guise of sensuously concrete form. In
the classical type it sets up the perfected coalescence of spiritual
and sensuous existence as adequate conformation of both. As a matter of
fact, however, in this fusion mind itself is not represented agreeably
to its _true notional concept._ Mind is the infinite subjectivity of
the Idea, which as absolute inwardness[146], is not capable of freely
expanding in its entire independence, so long as it remains within the
mould of the bodily shape, fused therein as in the existence wholly
congenial to it.
To escape from such a condition the romantic type of art once more
cancels that inseparable unity of the classical type, by securing
a content which passes beyond the classical stage and its mode
of expression. This content, if we may recall familiar ideas--is
coincident with what Christianity affirms to be true of God as Spirit,
in contrast to the Greek faith in gods which forms the essential and
most fitting content of classical art. In Greek art the concrete ideal
substance is potentially, but not as fully realized, the unity of the
human and divine nature; a unity which for the very reason that it
is purely _immediate_ and not wholly explicit, is manifested without
defect under an immediate and _sensuous_ mode. The Greek god is the
object of naïve intuition and sensuous imagination. His shape is
therefore the bodily form of man. The sphere of his power and his being
is individual and individually limited; and in his opposition to the
individual person[147] is an essence and a power with whom the inward
life of soul[148] is merely potentially in unity, but does not itself
possess this unity as inward subjective knowledge. The higher stage
is the _knowledge_ of this _implied_ unity, which in its latency the
classical art-type receives as its content and is able to perfectly
represent in bodily shape. This elevation of mere potentiality into
self-conscious knowledge constitutes an enormous difference. It is
nothing less than the infinite difference which, for example, separates
man generally from the animal creation. Man is animal; but even in
his animal functions he is not restricted within the potential sphere
as the animal is, but becomes conscious of them, learns to understand
them, and raises them--as, for instance, the process of digestion--into
self-conscious science. By this means man dissolves the boundaries of
his merely potential immediacy; in virtue of the very fact that he
knows himself to be animal he ceases to be merely animal, and as mind
is endowed with self-knowledge.
If, then, in this way the unity of the human and divine nature,
which in the previous stage was potential, is raised out of this
immediate into a self-conscious unity, it follows that the genuine
medium for the reality of this content is no longer the sensuous
and immediate existence of what is spiritual, that is, the physical
body of man, but the _self-aware_ inner life of _soul itself._ Now
it is Christianity--for the reason that it presents to mind God as
_Spirit_, and not as the particular individual spirit, but as absolute
in spirit and in truth--which steps back from the sensuousness of
imagination into the inward life of reason, and makes _this_ rather
than _bodily_ form the medium and determinate existence of its content.
So also, the unity of the human and divine nature is a conscious unity
exclusively capable of realization by means of _spiritual_ knowledge,
and in _Spirit._ The new content secured thereby is consequently not
indefeasibly bound up with the sensuous presentation, as the mode
completely adequate, but is rather delivered from this immediate
existence, which has to be hypostatized as a negative factor, overcome
and reflected back into the spiritual unity. In this way romantic art
must be regarded as art transcending itself, albeit within the boundary
of its own province, and in the form of art itself.
We may therefore briefly summarize our conclusion that in this third
stage the object of art consists in the free and concrete presence
of spiritual activity[149], whose vocation it is to appear as such a
presence or activity for the inner world of conscious intelligence. In
consonance with such an object art cannot merely work for sensuous
perception. It must deliver itself to the inward life, which coalesces
with its object simply as though this were none other than itself[150],
in other words, to the intimacy of soul, to the heart, the emotional
life, which as the medium of Spirit itself essentially strives after
freedom, and seeks and possesses its reconciliation only in the inner
chamber of spirit. It is this inward or ideal world which constitutes
the content of the romantic sphere: it will therefore necessarily
discover its representation as such inner idea or feeling, and in the
show or appearance of the same. The world of the soul and intelligence
celebrates its triumph over the external world, and, actually in the
medium of that outer world, makes that victory to appear, by reason of
which the sensuous appearance sinks into worthlessness.
On the other hand, this type of art, like every other, needs an
external vehicle of expression. As already stated, the spiritual
content has here withdrawn from the external world and its immediate
unity into its own world. The sensuous externality of form is
consequently accepted and represented, as in the symbolic type, as
unessential and transient; furthermore the subjective finite spirit
and volition is treated in a similar way; a treatment which even
includes the idiosyncrasies or caprice of individuals, character,
action, or the particular features of incident and plot. The aspect
of external existence is committed to contingency and handed over to
the adventurous action of imagination, whose caprice is just as able
to reflect the facts given _as_ they are[151], as it can change the
shapes of the external world into a medley of its own invention and
distort them to mere caricature. For this external element has no
longer its notion and significance in its own essential province, as in
classical art. It is now discovered in the emotional realm, and this
is manifested in the medium of that realm itself rather than in the
external and _its_ form of reality, and is able to secure or to recover
again the condition of reconciliation with itself in every accident,
in all the chance circumstance that falls into independent shape, in
all misfortune and sorrow, nay, in crime itself.
Hence it comes about that the characteristics of symbolic art, its
indifference, incompatibility and severance of Idea from configurative
expression, are here reproduced once more, if with essential
difference. And this difference consists in the fact that in romantic
art the Idea, whose defectiveness, in the case of the symbol, brought
with it the defect of external form, has to display itself as Spirit
and in the medium of soul-life as essentially self-complete. And it
is to complete fundamentally this higher perfection that it withdraws
itself from the external element, It can, in short, seek and consummate
its true reality and manifestation nowhere but in its own domain.
This we may take to be in general terms the character of the symbolic,
classical, and romantic types of art, which in fact constitute
the three relations of the Idea to its embodiment in the realm of
human art. They consist in the aspiration after, the attainment and
transcendency of the Ideal, viewed as the true concrete notion of
beauty.
4. In contrast to these two previous divisions of our subject the
_third_ part presupposes the notional concept of the Ideal, and the
universal art-types. It in other words consists in their realization
through specific sensuous media. We have consequently no longer to deal
with the inner or ideal evolution of the beauty of art in conformity
with its widest and most fundamental determinations. What we have
now before us to consider is how these ideal determinants pass into
actual existence, how they are distinguishable in their external
aspect, and how they give an independent and a realized shape to every
element implied in the evolution of this Idea of beauty as _a work of
art_, and not merely as a _universal type._ Now it is the peculiar
differences immanent in the Idea of beauty which are carried over by
it into external existence. For this reason in this third fundamental
division these general art-types must themselves supply the basic
principle for the articulation and definition of the _particular
arts._ Or, to put the same thing another way, the several species
of art possess in themselves the same essential differences, which
we have already become acquainted with as the universal art-types.
_External_ objectivity, however, to which these types are subjected
in a sensuous and consequently _specific_ material, necessitates the
differentiation of these types into diverse and independent modes of
realization, in other words, those of particular arts. Each general
type discovers its determinate character in one determinate external
material or medium, in which its adequate presentation is secured
under the manner it prescribes. But, from another point of view, these
types of art, inasmuch as their definition is none the less consistent
with the fact of the _universality_ of their typical import, break
through the boundaries of their _specific_ realization in some definite
art-species, and achieve an existence in other arts no less, although
their position in such is of subordinate importance. For this reason,
albeit the particular arts belong specifically to one of these general
art-types respectively, the _adequate_ external embodiment whereof
they severally constitute, yet this does not prevent them, each after
its own mode of external configuration, from representing the totality
of these art-types[152]. To summarize, then, in this third principal
division we are dealing with the beauty of art, as it unveils itself in
a world of realized beauty by means of the arts and their creations.
The content of this world is the beautiful, and the true beautiful,
as we have seen, is spiritual being in concrete form, the Ideal; or
apprehended with still more intimacy it is the absolute mind and truth
itself. This region of divine truth artistically presented to sensuous
vision and emotion forms the centre of the entire world of art. It
is the independent, free and divine Image[153], which has completely
appropriated the externality of form and medium, and now wears them
simply as the means of its self-manifestation. Inasmuch, however, as
the beautiful is unfolded here as _objective_ reality, and in this
process is differentiated into particular aspects and phases, this
centre posits its extremes, as realized in their peculiar actuality, in
antithetical relation to itself. Thus one of these extremes consists
of an objectivity as yet devoid of mind, which we may call the natural
environment of God. Here the external element, when it receives form,
remains as it was, and does not possess its spiritual aim and content
in itself, but in another[154]. The other extreme is the divine as
inward, something known, as the manifold particularized _subjective_
existence of Deity. It is the truth as operative and vital in sense,
soul, and intelligence of particular persons, which does not persist
as poured forth into its mould of external shape, but returns into the
inward life of individuals. The Divine is under such a mode at once
distinguishable from its pure manifestation as Godhead, and passes
itself thereby into the variety of particularization which belongs to
every kind of particular subjective knowledge, feeling, perception,
and emotion. In the analogous province of religion with which art, at
its highest elevation, is immediately connected, we conceive the same
distinction as follows. First, we imagine the natural life on Earth in
its finitude as standing on one side; but then, secondly, the human
consciousness accepts God for its object, in which the distinction
between objectivity and subjectivity falls away; then, finally, we
advance from God as such to the devotion of the _community_, that is to
God as He is alive and present in the subjective consciousness. These
three fundamental modifications present themselves in the world of art
in independent evolution.
(_a_) The _first_ of the particular arts with which, according to their
fundamental principle, we have to start is architecture considered
as a fine art. Its function consists in so elaborating the external
material of inorganic Nature that the same becomes intimately connected
with Spirit as an artistic and external environment. Its medium is
matter itself as an external object, a heavy mass that is subject
to mechanical laws; and its forms persist as the forms of inorganic
Nature co-ordinated with the relations of the abstract understanding
such as symmetry and so forth. In this material and in these forms the
Ideal is incapable of realization as concrete spirituality, and the
reality thus presented remains confronting the Idea as an external
fabric with which it enters into no fusion, or has only entered so
far as to establish an abstract relation. And it is in consequence
of this that the fundamental type of the art of building is that of
_symbolism._ Architecture is in fact the first pioneer on the highway
toward the adequate realization of Godhead. In this service it is put
to severe labour with objective nature, that it may disengage it by
its effort from the confused growth of finitude and the distortions of
contingency. By this means it levels a space for the God, informs His
external environment, and builds Him His temple, as a fit place for
the concentration of Spirit, and its direction to the absolute objects
of intelligent life. It raises an enclosure for the congregation of
those assembled, as a defence against the threatening of the tempest,
against rain, the hurricane, and savage animals. It in short reveals
the will thus to assemble, and although under an external relation, yet
in agreement with the principles of art. A significance such as this it
can to a greater or less extent import into its material and its forms,
in proportion as the determinate content of its fabric, which is the
object of its operations and effort, is more or less significant, is
more concrete or more abstract, more profound in penetrating its own
essential depth, or more obscure and superficial. Indeed architecture
may in this respect proceed so far in the execution of such a purpose
as to create an adequate artistic existence for such an ideal content
in its very forms and material. In doing so, however, it has already
passed beyond its peculiar province and is diverted into the stage
immediately above it of sculpture. For the boundary of sculpture
lies precisely, in this that it retains the spiritual as an inward
being which persists in direct contrast to the external embodiment
of architecture. It can consequently merely point to that which is
absorbed in soul-life as to something external to itself.
(_b_) Nevertheless, as above explained, the external and inorganic
world is purified by architecture, it is co-ordinated under symmetrical
laws, and made cognate with mind, and as a result the temple of God,
the house of his community, stands before us. Into this temple, in
the _second_ place, the God himself enters in the lightning-flash of
individuality which smites its way into the inert mass, permeating the
same with its presence. In other words the infinite[155] and no longer
purely symmetrical form belonging to intelligence brings as it were
to a focus and informs the shape in which it is most at home. This is
the task of _sculpture._ In so far as in it the inward life of Spirit,
to which the art of architecture can merely point away to, makes its
dwelling within the sensuous shape and its external material, and
to the extent that these two sides come into plastic communion with
one another in such a manner that neither is predominant, sculpture
receives as its fundamental type the _classical_ art-form.
For this reason the sensuous element on its own account admits of no
expression here which is not affected by spiritual affinities[156],
just as, conversely, sculpture can reproduce with completeness no
spiritual content, which does not maintain throughout adequate
presentation to perception in bodily form. What sculpture, in
short, has to do is to make the presence of Spirit stand before us
in its bodily shape and in immediate union therewith at rest and
in blessedness; and this form has to be made vital by means of the
content of spiritual individuality. The external sensuous material
is consequently no longer elaborated either in conformity with its
mechanical quality alone, as a mass of weight, nor in shapes of the
inorganic world simply, nor in entire indifference to colour, etc. It
is carried into the ideal forms of the human figure, and, we may add,
in the completeness of all three spatial dimensions. In other words and
relatively to such a process we must maintain for sculpture that in
it the inward or ideal content of Spirit are first revealed in their
eternal repose and essential self-stability. To such repose and unity
with itself there can only correspond that external shape which itself
persists in such unity and repose. And this condition is satisfied by
configuration viewed in its _abstract spatiality._[157] The spirit
which sculpture represents is that which is essentially sound, not
broken up in the play of chance conceits and passions; and for this
reason its external form also is not dissolved in the manifold variety
of appearance, but exhibits itself under this one presentment only as
the abstraction of space in the totality of its dimensions.
Assuming, then, that the art of architecture has executed its temple,
and the hand of sculpture has placed therein the image of the god, we
have in the _third_ place to assume the _community_ of the faithful
as confronting the god thus presented to vision in the wide chambers
of his dwelling-place. Now this community is the spiritual reflection
into its own world of that sensuous presence, the subjective and inward
animating life of soul, in its union with which, both for the artistic
content and the external material which manifests it, the determining
principle may be identified with particularization in varied shapes
and qualities, individualization and the life of soul[158] which they
imply. The downright and solid fact of unity the god possesses in
sculpture breaks up into the multiplicity of a world of particular
souls[159], whose union is no longer sensuous but wholly ideal.
Here for the first time God Himself is revealed as veritably
Spirit--viz., the Spirit revealed in His community. Here at last He
is seen apprehended as this moving to-and-fro, as this alternation
between His own essential unity and His realization in the knowledge
of individual persons and that separation which it involves, as also
in the universal spiritual, being[160] and union of the many. In such
a community God is disengaged from the abstraction of His unfolded
self-seclusion and self-identity, no less than from the immediate
absorption in bodily shape, in which He is presented by sculpture. He
is, in a word, lifted into the actual sphere of spiritual existence
and knowledge, into the reflected appearance, whose manifestation
is essentially inward and the life of heart and soul. Thereby the
higher content is now the nature of Spirit, and that in its ultimate
or absolute shape. But at the same time the separation to which
we have alluded displays this as _particular_ spiritual being, a
specific emotional life. Moreover, for the reason that the main
thing here is not the untroubled repose of the God in himself[161],
but his manifestation simply, the Being which is _for another_,
self-revealment in fact, it follows that, on the plane we have now
reached, all the varied content of human subjectivity in its vital
movement and activity, whether viewed as passion, action, or event,
or more generally the wide realm of human feeling, volition and its
discontinuance, become one and all for their own sake objects of
artistic representation.
Agreeably with such a content the sensuous element of art has likewise
to show itself potentially adapted to such particularization and the
display of such an inward content of heart and mind. Media of this
description are supplied by colour, musical tones, and finally in sound
as mere sign for ideal perceptions and conceptions; and we further
obtain the means of realizing with the use of such media a content
of this kind in the arts of painting, music, and poetry. Throughout
this sphere the sensuous medium is found to be essentially disparate
in itself and throughout posited[162] as ideal. In this way it
responds in the highest degree to the fundamentally spiritual content
of art, and the coalescence of spiritual significance and sensuous
material attains a more intimate union than was possible either in
architecture or sculpture. At the same time such a union is necessarily
more near to soul-life, leaning exclusively to the subjective side
of human experience; one which, in so far as form and content are
thus constrained to particularization and to posit their result as
ideal, can only be actually effected at the expense of the objective
universality of the content as also of the fusion with the immediately
sensuous medium[163].
The arts, then, which are lifted into a higher strain of ideality,
abandoning as they do the symbolism of architecture and the classical
Ideal of sculpture, accept their predominant type from the _romantic_
art-form; and these are the arts most fitted to express its mode of
configuration. They are, however, a totality of arts, because the
romantic type is itself essentially the most concrete.
(_c_) The articulation of this _third sphere_ of the particular arts
may be fixed as follows:
(_α_) The _first_ art which comes next to sculpture is that of
painting. It avails itself for a medium of its content and the plastic
configuration of the same of visibility as such, to the extent that
it is differentiated in its own nature, in other words is defined in
the continuity of colour. No doubt the material of architecture and
sculpture is likewise both visible and coloured. It is, however, not,
as in painting, visibility in its pure nature, not the essentially
simple light, which by its differentiating of itself in its opposition
to darkness, and in association with that darkness gives rise to
colour[164]. This quality of visibility made essentially ideal[165]
and treated as such no longer either requires, as in architecture, the
abstractly mechanical qualities of mass as appropriate to materials of
weight, nor, as is the case with sculpture, the complete dimensuration
of spatial condition, even when concentrated into organic forms. The
visibility and the making apparent, which belong to painting, possess
differences of quality under a more ideal mode--that is, in the
specific varieties of colour--which liberates art from the objective
totality of spatial condition, by being limited to a plane surface.
On the other hand the content also attains the widest compass of
particularity. Whatever can find a place in the human heart, as
emotion, idea, and purpose, whatever it is capable of actually
shaping--all such diversity may form part of the varied presentations
of painting. The entire world of particular existence, from the most
exalted embodiment of mind to the most insignificant natural fact,
finds a place here. For it is possible even for finite Nature, in its
particular scenes and phenomena, to form part of such artistic display,
provided only that we have some reference to conscious life which makes
it akin to human thought and emotion[166].
(_β_) The _second_ art which continues the further realization of the
romantic type and forms a distinct contrast to painting is that of
_music._ Its medium, albeit still sensuous, yet proceeds into still
profounder subjectivity and particularization. We have here, too, the
deliberate treatment of the sensuous medium as ideal, and it consists
in the negation and idealization into the isolated unity of a single
point[167], the indifferent external collocation of space[168], whose
complete appearance is retained by painting and deliberately feigned
in its completeness. This isolated point, viewed as this process of
negation, is an essentially concrete and active process of cancellation
within the determinate substance of the material medium, viewed, that
is, as motion and vibration of the material object within itself and in
its relation to itself. Such an inchoate ideality of matter, which no
longer appears under the form of space, but as temporal ideality[169],
is sound or tone. We have here the sensuous set down as negated, and
its abstract visibility converted into audibility. In other words sound
liberates the ideal content from its fetters in the material substance.
This earliest[170] secured inwardness of matter and impregnation of
it with soul-life supplies the medium for the intimacy and soul of
Spirit--itself as yet indefinite--permitting, as it does, the echo
and reverberation of man's emotional world through its entire range
of feelings and passions. In this way music forms the centre of the
romantic arts, just as sculpture represents the midway point of arrest
between architecture and the arts of the romantic subjectivity. Thus,
too, it forms the point of transition between the abstract, spatial
sensuousness of painting and the abstract spirituality of poetry.
Music carries within itself, like architecture, and in contrast to the
emotional world simply and its inward self-seclusion, a relation of
quantity conformable to the principles of the understanding and their
modes of co-ordinated configuration[171].
(_γ_) We must look for our _third_ and most spiritual type of artistic
presentation among the romantic arts in that of _poetry._ The supreme
characteristic of poetry consists in the power with which it brings
into vassalage of the mind and its conceptions the sensuous element
from which music and painting began to liberate art. For sound, the
only remaining external material retained by poetry, is in it no
longer the feeling of the sonorous itself, but is a mere sign without
independent significance. And it is, moreover, a sign of idea which has
become essentially concrete, and not merely[172] of indefinite feeling
and its subtle modes and gradations. And this is how sound develops
into the Word, as essentially articulate voice, whose intention it is
to indicate ideas and thoughts. The purely negative moment to which
music advanced now asserts itself as the wholly concrete point, the
point which is mind itself, the self-conscious individual, which
produces from itself the infinite expansion of its ideas and unites
the same with the temporal condition of sound. Yet this sensuous
element, which was still in music immediately united to emotion, is in
poetry separated from the content of consciousness. Mind, in short,
here determines this content for its own sake and apart from all else
into the content of idea; to express such idea it no doubt avails
itself of sound, but employs it merely as a sign without independent
worth or substance. Thus viewed, the sound here may be just as well
reproduced by the mere letter, for the audible, like the visible, is
here reduced to a mere indication of mind[173]. For this reason, the
true medium of poetical representation is the poetical imagination and
the intellectual presentation itself; and inasmuch as this element
is common to all types of art it follows that poetry is a common
thread through them all, and is developed independently in each.
Poetry is, in short, the universal art of the mind, which has become
essentially free, and which is not fettered in its realization to an
externally sensuous material, but which is creatively active in the
space, and time belonging to the inner world of ideas and emotion. Yet
it is precisely in this its highest phase, that art terminates, by
transcending itself; it is just here that it deserts the medium of a
harmonious presentation of mind in sensuous shape and passes from the
poetry of imaginative idea into the prose of thought.
Such we may accept as the articulate totality of the particular
arts; they are the external art of architecture, the objective art
of sculpture and the subjective arts of painting, music, and poetry.
Many other classifications than these have been attempted, for a work
of art presents such a wealth of aspects, that it is quite possible,
as has frequently been the case, to make first one and then another
the basis of division. For instance, you may take the sensuous medium
simply. Architecture may then be viewed as a kind of crystallization;
sculpture, as the organic configuration of material in its sensuous
and spatial totality; painting as the coloured surface and line, while
in music, space, as such, passes over into the point or moment of
time replete with content in itself, until we come finally to poetry,
where the external medium is wholly suppressed into insignificance.
Or, again, these differences have been viewed with reference to their
purely abstract conditions of space and time. Such abstract divisions
of works of art may, as their medium also may be consequentially traced
in their characteristic features. They cannot, however, be worked out
as the final and fundamental principle, because such aspects themselves
derive their origins from a higher principle, and must therefore fall
into subordination thereto.
This higher principle we have discovered in the types of art--symbolic,
classical, and romantic--which are the universal stages or phases of
the Idea of beauty itself.
Their relation to the individual arts in their concrete manifestation
as embodiment is of a kind that these arts constitute the real and
positive existence of these general art-types. For _symbolic_ art
attains its most adequate realization and most pertinent application
in _architecture_, in which it expatiates in the full import of its
notion, and is not as yet depreciated, as it were, into the merely
inorganic nature dealt with by some other art. The _classical_ type of
art finds its unfettered realization, on the other hand, in sculpture,
treating architecture merely as the enclosure which surrounds it,
and being unable to elaborate painting and music into the wholly
adequate[174] forms of its content. Finally, the _romantic_ art-type
is supreme in the products of painting and music, and likewise in
poetical composition, as their preeminent and unconditionally adequate
modes of expression. Poetry is, however, conformable to all types of
the beautiful, and its embrace reaches them all for the reason that
the poetic imagination is its own proper medium, and imagination is
essential to every creation of beauty, whatever its type may be.
To sum up, then, what the particular arts realize in particular works
of art, are according to their fundamental conception, simply the
universal types which constitute the self-unfolding Idea of beauty.
It is as the external realization of this Idea that the wide Pantheon
of art is being raised; and the architect and builder thereof is the
spirit of beauty as it gradually comes to self-cognition, and to
complete which the history of the world will require its evolution of
centuries.
[Footnote 1: The introduction begins as an introduction of lectures.
But as the work is merely based to a large extent on notes for
lectures, or on a manuscript which did not preserve the lectures as
they were delivered, it will be found most convenient to ignore this
fact, and in references to regard it simply as a written treatise.]
[Footnote 2: Hegel, alluding no doubt to the words of the Gospel, puts
it "born and born again from mind (spirit)."]
[Footnote 3: It is assumed that such a fancy is seized and defined as
such in separation from other experience.]
[Footnote 4: The sentence is slightly ironical.]
[Footnote 5: _Dem Scheine._]
[Footnote 6: _Raisonnements_: a disparaging expression.]
[Footnote 7: Hegel here means the formal character, not the material on
which it is imposed in the several arts.]
[Footnote 8: Hegel says, "as that which has no right to be," _das
Nichtseyn sollende._]
[Footnote 9: _Erscheine_ as contrasted with _scheine._]
[Footnote 10: _Das An-und-Fürsichseyende._ That which is explicitly to
itself self-determinate being, no less than essentially such in its
substantive right.]
[Footnote 11: _Besonnener Art._ Possibly Hegel means "one more
compatible with common sense."]
[Footnote 12: I think by the words _kunst wieder hervorzurufen_ Hegel
rather means to call up art as it was previously cultivated than merely
to "stimulate art production." The latter is, however, Professor
Bosanquet's translation.]
[Footnote 13: _Subjective_ apparently in the sense of being wholly
personal to the writer or philosopher in so far as the form of his
treatise deals in classification and arrangement peculiar to himself
and so _external_, if not entirely arbitrary.]
[Footnote 14: I agree with the note of Professor Bosanquet (Trans., p.
21) that the word _element_ refers here to the mental constituents of
art, as contrasted with the sensuous medium.]
[Footnote 15: That is to say, the essential formative process involved
in its necessity.]
[Footnote 16: There must be a misprint or oversight in Professor
Bosanquet's rendering of this passage (p. 21). As the sentence now
stands it does not appear to me to make sense.]
[Footnote 17: _Von ihm._ The pronoun, I take it, must refer here to
_das Andere_ rather than the subject of the verb.]
[Footnote 18: "Makes itself an alien to itself" perhaps expresses the
German better.]
[Footnote 19: That is, the work of art.]
[Footnote 20: _Haltpunkte._ Points of arrest in essential ideas
necessary which restrain this tendency to purely arbitrary caprice.]
[Footnote 21: I do not think the first part of this sentence ironical.
Hegel admits that a general knowledge is a legitimate feature of modern
culture. But he points out that people are only too ready to confuse
such a general knowledge with real art scholarship. To bring out this I
have translated rather freely.]
[Footnote 22: Detail of historical fact and artistic observation.]
[Footnote 23: It is historical, first, regarded as a survey of
historical condition, and, secondly, because facts are collected
whether in relation to ancient or modern art as a historian collects
his facts.]
[Footnote 24: Lit., the inmost or most ideal (meaning).]
[Footnote 25: _Vollkommen._ Complete or rather completely articulate
and rounded in itself. It is not easy to select the English word that
exactly corresponds.]
[Footnote 26: _Bestimmte Individualität._ The definition may, as Hegel
says, be more significant, but it is for all that not very clearly
expressed. Professor Bosanquet translates the words "determinate
individual modification."]
[Footnote 27: My view is that what Hegel means to say is that in
caricature ugliness is emphasized and made more (_näher_) a part of
the content than belongs to the true nature of the characteristic of
which it is (in Hegel's opinion) no essential determinant or property.
The view stated in the sentence is therefore a kind of _reductio ad
absurdum._ Professor Bosanquet's translation appears to me to leave it
doubtful whether the view stated is a just one or not. He translates
_näher_ by "closely," not the comparative. In my view Hegel agrees
that caricature may be characteristic, but he does not agree that it
is a genuine property of the characteristic where it is pressed to the
excess of ugliness.]
[Footnote 28: _Bestimmung._]
[Footnote 29: That is, in Hegel's view.]
[Footnote 30: _Das Wahre_.]
[Footnote 31: _Den denkenden Begriff._ It is possible that the "notion
of thought" would express Hegel's meaning, as it would be a less
strange expression. But I have retained the more literal translation
as the reference may be to the self-evolution of Thought in its own
dialectical process, thought or the Idea thinking out itself in the
Hegelian sense. Professor Bosanquet seems to assume this, as he
translates "the thinking Idea."]
[Footnote 32: _Kunstschönen._ I have translated this by the expression
"fine art" because Hegel in the opening of the introduction makes the
expression interchangeable with _schöne kunst._ At the same time it
must be recollected that the emphasis here is even more on "beauty"
than the fact that it is the beauty of human art. And it is for
this reason, I presume, that Professor Bosanquet translates it here
"artistic beauty." The only objection I have to make to this, apart
from Hegel's words I have referred to, is that the expression "artistic
beauty" is sometimes used to signify beauty that is capable of being
expressed by art. Of course that is excluded from Hegel's use of the
term; he means the beauty of artistic work.]
[Footnote 33: _Subjektiven._]
[Footnote 34: Independent, that is, of the consciousness of any
particular individual. Hegel does not necessarily mean independent of
consciousness altogether. He has, no doubt, generally in his mind the
kind of scepticism which received its most logical exposition in Hume.]
[Footnote 35: This appears to me the meaning of _zufälliger Sinn._
Professor Bosanquet translates it "accidental sense." By that I presume
he understands the meaning to be "a sense of beauty that is entirely
personal to the recipient," it may be possessed by one man, but not by
another. Hegel's illustration hardly supports this, so it seems to me.]
[Footnote 36: I do not know the exact translation of _lemmatisch_, and
by a curious slip the sentence is omitted from Professor Bosanquet's
translation. The general sense is plain enough. Every particular
science accepts its subject-matter as a _datum_. It starts from the
empirical fact. Whether it admits the assumption or not, it does assume
such facts. It is obvious that Hegel's adoption of this standpoint is
only relatively true.]
[Footnote 37: Hegel means, I presume, mainly in the introduction.
After that he does in a qualified degree discuss the profounder import
of the Idea of Fine Art. His statements are not perhaps wholly free
from inconsistency, because he has previously said that apart from an
encyclopaedic consideration of all the sciences, it was not possible to
do so, and also some of His statements seem to imply that he does not
intend to do so.]
[Footnote 38: That is, in the first Part of the entire treatise.]
[Footnote 39: What Hegel means by the _die letzte einleitende
Betrachtung_ I am not quite sure. I presume he means the introduction
to the first Part. The whole of this paragraph is not very clear.]
[Footnote 40: By man's sensitive life in its widest sense is, I think,
intended.]
[Footnote 41: The German words are _machen_ and _nachmachen._ We have
no exact equivalents.]
[Footnote 42: _Lit._, "to fill out (_ausfüllen_) in complete
equipment."]
[Footnote 43: _Individuelle._]
[Footnote 44: The German will admit of the interpretation that the
reference is merely to genius, but I think Hegel clearly means that
neither one nor the other can be thus conjured up.]
[Footnote 45: At the end of the first main division of the work.]
[Footnote 46: One of Meredith's correspondents has put the question
with all gravity whether he considered inspiration could be assisted
by wine drinking. With equal gravity our humourist replied that though
wine might be something of a restorative after mental effort it was
not his experience that it contributed to first-rate artistic work. He
actually mentions the case of Schiller. Though I have read somewhere
that this poet used to be inspired by the smell of rotten apples I do
not recollect reading that he favoured the champagne bottle. Meredith
also mentions the case of Hoffmann, and adds that the type of his work
does not increase our respect for the precedent.]
[Footnote 47: _Eine äusserliche Arbeit._ A craftsmanship which
has to deal with the outside surface. We may translate "external
craftsmanship"; but the translation in the text gives the meaning best,
I think.]
[Footnote 48: _Keinen geistigen Stoff._ Professor Bosanquet translates
"spiritual content." I imagine the emphasis to be mainly on the absence
of positive ideas available to knowledge. In any case Hegel appears
to press his point of contrast too far. Men of genius such as Mozart
(who was probably in his mind) and Schubert may bear him out. But on
the other hand we have a Keats, Shelley, and Raphael. Genius matures
rapidly, but the greatest works of musical art no less than any other
imply a real maturity of mind at least, and more than is here assumed
of, I should say, a rich experience. Mozart, of course, upsets any
theory, and it is questionable even whether Mozart is really an
exception. It depends on the point of view from which we are estimating
the intelligible content of music as an expression of soul-life.]
[Footnote 49: The "Iphigenie" was completed in Goethe's thirty-eighth
year, fourteen years later than "Götz." The bulk of his more important
works are of the same date or later. Schiller's "Wallenstein" was
completed after his thirty-fifth year.]
[Footnote 50: This is surely not quite accurate. The medium of painting
in the sense that speech or writing is the medium of poetry is not
canvas or panel but oil or other colour. Canvas would correspond with
the blank pages of a book.]
[Footnote 51: Free, that is, from accidental and irrelevant matter.]
[Footnote 52: Professor Bosanquet translates _sinnliche_ here as
"sensitive." I am inclined to think that Hegel here rather leaves out
of sight the fact that in the process of Nature we have sensitive
organic life no less than unconscious inorganic. His contrast is rather
between the conscious life of man and unconscious nature, the conscious
life that is not self-conscious being for the object of the contrast
treated as equivalent to unconscious. He would also apparently ignore
the fact that man himself and the higher beauty which attaches to him
is also from ope point of view a part of the natural process.]
[Footnote 53: That is, apart from purely personal ends in its pursuit,
which are accidental to its essential notion.]
[Footnote 54: That is, in the medium of conscious life.]
[Footnote 55: _Einmal._ They are there, but they do not know they are
there.]
[Footnote 56: _Aus geistiger Bildung, i.e._, a high level of mental
culture is necessary before the advent of civilized manners and
customs in which spiritual life is reflected with real refinement and
directness.]
[Footnote 57: _Bedürfniss zur Kunst._]
[Footnote 58: _Lit._, "In the form of the most abstract single
subjectivity." That is to say, that the main fact about it is that it
is felt; but, except in respect to intensity, it cannot be described
as an object of thought with defining attributes, It is abstract
individual sensation.]
[Footnote 59: By the expression _Kreis_ Hegel would mean rather an
indefinite sphere than a definite circle. The simile is perhaps not
very apt. The idea, apparently, is of a sphere of feeling, that is,
such as being self-complete, but is so abstract or indefinable that the
introduction into it of positive ideas such as justice, etc., are the
mere entrance of spectral forms which vanish in such an indefinable
medium, without disclosing their nature. They are felt but not cognized
for what they really are.]
[Footnote 60: _Blinder_, blind in the sense that it is not guided by
deliberate and self-conscious reason, _i.e._, mere animal instinct.]
[Footnote 61: A difficult sentence to translate. I have followed
Professor Bosanquet in assuming that the substantive with which
_mangelhaft_ agrees must be borrowed from the following sentence,
though it seems also to be carried on in a loose kind of way from the
previous sentence (_Gesckmacksinn._) The entire sentence is built,
as we have it, on the further confusion that there are two parallels
which before the sentence ends are regarded as one! That is to say, the
general critical sense is contrasted with the critique of particular
works of art and further the defect of that general sense in its
neglect of _universal_ principles is further contrasted with the way
the specific critique deals with _particular_ works. I hardly think,
however, that my admirable predecessor is justified in ignoring the
comparative degree of _bestimmteres_, or in his translation of _Zeug_
as "power." I take it to mean the material of actual works of art.
The sentence is a good example of, some of the difficulties of Hegel
translation.]
[Footnote 62: _Die Sache._ The subject-matter in its most real sense as
"content."]
[Footnote 63: That is, the so-called "good taste."]
[Footnote 64: _Begriff._ Concrete notional Idea.]
[Footnote 65: That is, in his physical form.]
[Footnote 66: Hegel is here considering desire abstractedly, that
is, on its own account (_als solche._) It may of course in its turn
subserve a rational purpose, such as the preservation of health or
life. But the contrast here is between the relation of appetite, and
that of the theoretic faculty to objects.]
[Footnote 67: _Sein Objekt._ The object in which he finds himself;
rather this, I think, than that which he has created.]
[Footnote 68: _Innerlich_, _i.e._, in the world of mind as contrasted
with that of the sensuous _vorhandene._]
[Footnote 69: Hegel or his editors have "in a converse way." This is
obviously a mistake. In both examples the point is that the object
is _preserved_ as against _desire_ with its destruction, and the
_contemplative intelligence_ with its ideal transformation.]
[Footnote 70: _Ein ideelles._ The meaning is, I think, that the
_materia_ is stamped with the hall-mark of deliberate artistic purpose.
The ideality, though relatively jejune on such a work as the pyramids,
in the higher reaches of art such as poetry and music affects of course
the medium itself, the musical chord being pure ideality. Professor
Bosanquet's translation omits this and the previous sentence, probably
by an oversight. But it is also possible that this thinker conceived
the statement _as here expressed_ to be misleading, or at least open to
misconception. In architecture and even painting it is obvious, from
a certain point of view, the sensuous _materia_, if directed to an
artistic end, remains none the less the material borrowed from natural
fact though the fact as natural may be modified in its form. Painting
may _represent_ the semblance, but it employs a medium simply sensuous.
Hegel has mainly before his attention here obviously the arts of
painting, poetry, and music.]
[Footnote 71: They are _theoretical_ because as applied to a work of
art they imply the presence of the contemplative faculty. In a later
section of the work Hegel makes a more complete analysis of what is
implied in the sense of hearing as applied to musical composition and
in the colour sense. In both cases it is obvious the mind contributes
to the facts cognized. Hearing is, however, from Hegel's point of view
the most _ideal_ of the two, and he conceives the position of the ears
itself points to this distinction.]
[Footnote 72: It may at least be questioned whether the ground given
here of this distinction, or part of it, is strictly accurate. It may
be said that our sense of sight and hearing are both in contact with
the waves of the medium, the vibration of which produces the impression
we call sound or light. The most obvious distinction then appears to be
that the natural object is left as it is by hearing and sight. This at
least holds good as against taste. But at least it may be questioned,
I think, whether the sense of touch may not be the source of artistic
enjoyment, certainly in the case of the blind. And the sense of smell
at least leaves objects as they are, and some may contend that it is
a source of enjoyment of the beauty of Nature. Hegel would reply, of
course, that no works of human art are enjoyed by such means. The main
ground is, however, that sight and hearing are the senses closest to
intelligence.]
[Footnote 73: By _Anschauungen_ Hegel apparently has in mind all the
ideas of poetry. We should certainly rather have expected the word
_Vorstellungen_, the word used being rather "visible perceptions." But
the three words here seem generally to denote the subject-matter of
painting, music, and poetry.]
[Footnote 74: Lit., "Operative in the artist viewed (_i.e._, the
artist) as the personal energy (_Subjektivität_) which creates."
Professor Bosanquet's translation "as a productive state of the person"
would appear to make "the sensuous side" a subjective state of the
artist. But apart from construction, can we speak of this as a "state"?
It is modified by his energy--but it can hardly be regarded as a part
of it.]
[Footnote 75: I find it impossible to fix any one English equivalent
to Hegel's use of the words _Einbildungskraft_, _Phantasie_, or
_Vorstellung_, in the sense at least that fancy, imagination, or
phantasy have been used and defined by famous English writers.
Generally speaking, I should say that _Phantasie_, or as it is called
sometimes "artistic" or "creative" _Phantasie_, stands for the most
intellectual faculty, though _Vorstellung_ is also used in much the
same sense. But it is impossible to arrive at any clear distinction
such as was originally made so profoundly by Ruskin between fancy, the
instrument of poetical talent, the surface gift, and imagination or,
as he called it, _penetrative_ imagination, which summarizes all the
powers of a genius and personality and enters into the heart of the
subject-matter by an illuminating flash which _reveals_ reality rather
than illustrates by means of image. The present passage appears to me
even more unsatisfactory than the more carefully digested analysis
at the end of Part I, when Hegel discusses the artist. It not merely
ignores the indispensable presence of imagination in the pioneers
of science, but appears to myself to confuse talent as the natural
gift of a man with the mode in which it is exercised in presenting
ideas in sensuous imagery, or at least makes the former depend on the
latter. Professor Bosanquet translates _Phantasie_ here by "fancy."
But "fancy" is, in our way of looking at it, precisely not the faculty
which _distinctively_ belongs to "the great mind and the big heart or
soul," though other parts of the description are more applicable. And
in short, as I say, to fix definite English equivalents to Hegel's
phraseology appears to me impossible.]
[Footnote 76: _Die Phantasie_.]
[Footnote 77: This is, I presume, Hegel's way of putting the simple
fact, that much of the process of artistic production is unconscious.
One man instinctively draws, or picks up his notes on the piano,
another cannot. I think Hegel rather refers to this _original_ talent
than the much more important one in which genius, right into maturity,
rides over difficulties without knowing how it does so. Such happy
or even miraculous effects--such as artists sometimes playfully call
them--are obviously in part, if only in part, the result of profound
artistic experience. He is dealing almost exclusively with the natural
bias, which makes one man naturally an artist, whether creative or
executant, and is absent from another. He hardly approaches the
question what constitutes the artist of genius as contrasted with the
man of natural talent.]
[Footnote 78: This confirms the conclusion above.]
[Footnote 79: _Für sich._ If merely admired as imitation and nothing
more.]
[Footnote 80: _Zur Ekelhaftigkeit._ "Sickeningly like" is Professor
Bosanquet's closer translation. The expression "damnably like" is not
unknown.]
[Footnote 81: I think with Professor Bosanquet that _phantastischen_
is here not "fantastic" but strictly derived from _Phantasie_ in its
sense of imagination. "Completely," of course, as involving no direct
imitation of Nature.]
[Footnote 82: Formal, _i.e._, implying no creative supplement from the
artist, purely mechanical.]
[Footnote 83: It would be both instructive and interesting to discuss
if, and how far, and by virtue of what, that distinct type of modern
art known as "still life," such as a few objects of the library, or
even a shell or two and so on up to more important organic life was
excluded from this condemnation. It is quite clear that Ruskin would
have a good deal to say that would imply important qualification.]
[Footnote 84: _Begeisterung._ I think this must be the meaning.
Inspiration hardly makes sense. It is art that is inspired, not those
who attend the celebration.]
[Footnote 85: _Im Innersten_ is I think here obviously to be taken with
the verb, not with the substantives.]
[Footnote 86: _Ueberhaupt._]
[Footnote 87: The meaning of _in diesem Gebiete_ is, I presume, the
actual world. But if so it is simply otiose, and I have left it out.]
[Footnote 88: _Bestimmung._ The translation given appears to be the
sense, though we should rather say weaken a _man_ from the pursuit of a
definite course. Professor Bosanquet, who translates the word "aim" a
little lower down, evades the word here.]
[Footnote 89: _Raisonnirende_ here and _raissonnement_ below have
a depreciatory sense--and signify ordinary reasoning in the first
instance and the methods of the popular secularist in the second.]
[Footnote 90: A sentence omitted by Professor Bosanquet, and it seems
to amount to little more than a more generalized statement of what has
gone before. The end of art both directly and indirectly concerns its
subject-matter, or rather, as Hegel puts it, the need of the notion or
Idea of it carries us to a further end beyond the end shared in common
by its particular content.]
[Footnote 91: I follow Professor Bosanquet in his translation of the
words _als Allgemeines für sich zu zuerden_; but I am not sure that the
more literal translation is not simply as the words stand, the sense
being not to be self-conscious of himself (_für sich_) as the universal
principle, to be aware of this property, but rather as universal
principle to become _for_ himself, _i.e._ "independent of desire."]
[Footnote 92: _Einheit_--unity to the point of fusion, identity.]
[Footnote 93: _Unmittelbaren Befangenheit._ "Sunkenness" is Professor
Bosanquet's translation.]
[Footnote 94: _Theoretic_ as a direct transcript of _θεώρια, θεωρειν._]
[Footnote 95: _Gesichtspunkte._ The various points of view necessary to
arrive at such a general conclusion.]
[Footnote 96: Though not entirely confident I am right in accepting
the words _zu bringen_ as a repetition of the _hervorzubringen_
just before, the alternative of Professor Bosanquet which takes the
words _wird zu bringen seyn_ as equivalent to _gebracht seyn sollte_
certainly appears to me no direct translation.]
[Footnote 97: "Poets aim at utility and entertainment alike."]
[Footnote 98: I think that Hegel in his use of _erste_ here rather
refers to the fact of past history than a fact in the individual
history of nations. "Art is, in the early days of history, the
instructress of nations," gives, I think, his meaning. It is the first
instructress in the history of nations.]
[Footnote 99: I venture to think if Professor Bosanquet's translation
were the right one the German would be _ein in sich selbst
gebrochenes._ I do not think _in ihm selbst_ can be a German rendering
of "in itself." But I admit the translation is tempting whether Hegel
had in his mind the "house divided against itself" or not.]
[Footnote 100: Lit., "the spiritual universal," _i.e._, the universal
substance of its ideal content.]
[Footnote 101: Precisely as Ruskin, for example, in his "Modern
Painters" condemns both Titian and Tintoret, not because they painted
the _Paradise_ or the _Assunta_, to produce fine paintings, or even
because they did not or did themselves believe in the truth of their
subject-matter, but because they did not paint _in order to make
converts_, an extraordinary lapse of judgment.]
[Footnote 102: _Im besten Sinne des Wortes._]
[Footnote 103: Professor Bosanquet points out in a note on this
passage (p. 101) that _Sittlichkeit_ here, which he translates, as I
have done, "respectability," is the _habit_ of virtue, without the
reflective aspiration after goodness as an ideal. Of course there is
no depreciation in the use of the term. It is simply the morality of
ordinary people, who do generally what their neighbours think the right
thing. The word _moralität_ and _moralisch_, which I have only been
able to translate by a paraphrase, is the morality of the standpoint
discussed, which is very much that of Kant or "Duty for duty's sake" in
Bradley's "Ethical Studies."]
[Footnote 104: That is the contingency of the world of Nature as
contrasted with the essential stability of mind or spirit.]
[Footnote 105: Lit., "To satisfy itself in its _real_ or independent
self (_für sich_)." It cannot identify itself with either side as its
wholly real self made therein explicit. It is neither fish nor fowl.]
[Footnote 106: _Bestimmüngen_ may here be a reference to man's broadest
spiritual characterizations as one of the human family, the race, the
nation, and so forth, or, as I think, a reference to his vocation,
future destiny, general welfare.]
[Footnote 107: _An und für sich Wahre._]
[Footnote 108: _Unbefangenen_, _i.e._, the naïve outlook of ordinary
life.]
[Footnote 109: Professor Bosanquet merely translates _are not_ and
_are_ in italic as in the text, which of course, except that he adds
a comma after _are_, is a literal translation. But the sense, as I
understand it, is that the writer says it is not in the sense that
these two contradictories do not exist _at all_ (_i.e._, as relative
reality), but rather in the sense that in _philosophical thought_
which grasps their essence they are not only present but present as
reconciled factors of one truth. Professor Bosanquet's translation
appears to me to amount to this: that all Hegel maintains is that
the sense he means is not that such contradictory elements are _not_
reconciled, but in the sense that they _are_ reconciled. Perhaps this
is his view. But if so, I fail to see the importance of the antithesis,
which appears to me between _gar nicht sind_ and _in Versöhnung sind._
Hegel before had expressly said that such contradictory sides were
reconciled in philosophy, so I do not see why he should so emphatically
repeat himself. The comma, of course, may be a misprint.]
[Footnote 110: _Begriff._ Notion, or concrete Idea of it.]
[Footnote 111: Of that world in its opposition to reason.]
[Footnote 112: _Der Mensch als er geht und steht._ The man in ordinary
conditions—-the _average_ man, however, rather than the _natural_ man,
which carries slightly different associations.]
[Footnote 113: The difference between a material instrument, which is
a mere means to an end conceived by the craftsman, such as a plough
for ploughing, a rake for raking, and a purpose inseparable from the
organic whole as a mouth for eating, for without life the organism
collapses.]
[Footnote 114: _Für sich._]
[Footnote 115: In his history of Aesthetic in Germany Lötze disputes
this. It seems to some extent a question of definition. In Hegel's view
a dead body is not a human body in the full sense, but the _corpse_ of
a man. A hand separated from the body, whether we call it a hand or
not, is no longer, whatever it may be, a living member, its essential
significance as a hand has disappeared. It was only a hand in its
coherence as part of a larger whole. It may still for a time preserve
the semblance of its life, but it is cut off as the withered leaf.
These are facts at least that are undeniable, and the objection appears
to me based on a misunderstanding. A hand is only _an und für sich_
human when it is part of a living man. What is the organic reality in
the complete sense is the man as a _whole._ The hand is merely the
extremity of one of his arms. You may call a dead hand a hand if you
like. The point is what was implied in the fact that you called it a
hand at all whether alive or dead.]
[Footnote 116: That is, by Kant, of course.]
[Footnote 117: By _Verwicklung_ I understand the general evolution of
ideal philosophy which the defects of the Kantian Critique stimulated.
Professor Bosanquet apparently limits it to a perplexity personal to
Schiller. I doubt whether the word will bear this.]
[Footnote 118: That is, the concrete idea of humanity as a collective
aggregate.]
[Footnote 119: That is, intelligence as asserted by a society of human
beings as public opinion, etc.]
[Footnote 120: _Die Ineinsbildung._]
[Footnote 121: "Grace and Dignity."]
[Footnote 122: _Gesinnungen._ "Sentimental views" is probably what is
implied.]
[Footnote 123: _Alle Sache._]
[Footnote 124: Professor Bosanquet is clearly right in his view that
the order of the words here should be reversed. The words _an und für
sich_ are obviously the wider explication of _in sick selbst_, the
auxiliary, as not unfrequently in Hegel, being almost equivalent to
_nämlich._ Whether a misprint or an oversight I have translated subject
to this correction.]
[Footnote 125: I presume the revelation is not merely that of visible
shape or even mainly.]
[Footnote 126: _Das alles aus sich setzende und auflösende Ich._ The
three points emphasized by Hegel in Fichte's "Philosophy" are: (_a_)
The Ego is abstract; (_b_) Everything is a _show_ for it; (_c_) Its own
acts are a semblance.]
[Footnote 127: Hegel uses the word _Eitelkeit_ and _eitle_ in their
double sense of empty-nothingness--futility and vain or conceited. This
cannot be readily reproduced in English.]
[Footnote 128: _Schönseligkeit._ Borrowed no doubt from Goethe's notion
of a "fair soul."]
[Footnote 129: Like the "vaulting ambition" of Shakespeare which falls
on the other side, is _über sich selbst._]
[Footnote 130: _Haltung._ Professor Bosanquet translates this
"conduct." I rather think it refers to "bearing, demeanour." They are,
as we say, "featureless, flaccid figures."]
[Footnote 131: _Läppische._ I am not quite sure what is exactly
meant. Professor Bosanquet translates it "grotesque." But the word
is a provincial form of _Schlaff_ apparently--loose, flaccid and so
childish, trifling.]
[Footnote 132: _Moment._ A phase in an evolutionary, or, as it is here,
a dialectical process. A momentary feature of it.]
[Footnote 133: This final section is called the Division of the
Subject.]
[Footnote 134: _Subjektivität._ That is, the ideality of consciousness,
or thought.]
[Footnote 135: Professor Bosanquet, in his note on this passage,
expresses the opinion that Hegel when he writes thus is referring "To
the self-consciousness of individual human beings as constituting,
and reflecting on, an ideal unity between them." This no doubt, as he
suggests, does put a somewhat unnatural meaning on the word "person"
or "subjekt." No doubt there is a sense in which we can ascribe
personality to a state, or nation, in the concrete unity of its life.
But while admitting that unity such as this, which is not sensuous but
ideal, can be "effective and actual," I find it difficult to conclude
that Hegel did himself hold that the unity of the Divine Being was
_merely_ identical with the unity or totality of concrete human life
as reflected upon by single individuals. How far is human life as a
whole on this Earth a unity or totality at all? That question has
been discussed by Professor Bradley and others with very different
conclusions. Nay, how far does human existence itself exhaust the
actually present realization or self-realization of self-conscious
Spirit or Intelligence? Whatever maybe the wisest answer to such and
other questions I can hardly think that Hegel would have accepted
Professor Bosanquet's interpretation as completely adequate.]
[Footnote 136: _Fackeldistel_. "Torch thistle," a plant of the genus
Cereus.]
[Footnote 137: Or, "as mind and in mind."]
[Footnote 138: That is to say, presents to itself to conscious grasp of
itself as such Art-spirit (_als künstlerischer._)]
[Footnote 139: The two evolutions here alluded to are (i) that of a
particular way of regarding Nature, man, and God in a particular age
and nation such as the Egyptian, Greek, and Christian viewed in express
relation to art; (ii) The several arts--sculpture, music, poetry,
etc., each on their own foundation and viewed relatively to the former
evolution.]
[Footnote 140: The point, of course, is that the different media of the
several arts are inherently, and in virtue of the fact that we have
not here _mere_ matter as opposed to that which is intellectual rather
than sensuous, but matter in which the notional concept is already
essentially present or pregnant (sound is, for instance, more ideal
than the spatial matter of architecture), adapted to the particular
arts in which they serve as the medium of expression.]
[Footnote 141: Professor Bosanquet explains these "plastic forms"
(_Gestaltungs formen_) as the various modifications of the
subject-matter of art (Trans., p. 140 note). I am not quite sure of
the meaning here intended. It would apparently identify the term with
the _Gebilde_ referred to in the third division. I should myself
rather incline to think that Hegel had mainly in his mind the specific
general types, that is, the three relations of the Idea itself to its
external configuration, viewed as a historical evolution, which Hegel
calls symbolic, classical, and romantic. Perhaps this is what Professor
Bosanquet means. But in that case it does not appear to me so much the
subject-matter as the generic forms in the shaping of that matter.]
[Footnote 142: _Das wahrhaft Innere._ That is, the inward of the truth
of conscious life.]
[Footnote 143: Means apparently the notion in its absolute sense.]
[Footnote 144: Because it represents spirit as independent of an
appropriate bodily form.]
[Footnote 145: What appears to be denoted by _Geistigkeit_ is the
generic term of intelligence--that activity of conscious life which
does not necessarily make us think of a single individual--the common
nature of all spirit.]
[Footnote 146: By _Innerlichkeit_, which might also be rendered as pure
ideality, what is signified is that in a mental state there are no
parts outside of each other.]
[Footnote 147: _Subjekt_, _i.e._, the individual Ego of
self-consciousness.]
[Footnote 148: _Das subjective Innere,_ lit., the subjective inner
state.]
[Footnote 149: _Geistigkeit._ Professor Bosanquet translates it here
"intellectual being."]
[Footnote 150: The distinction between a percipient and an external
object falls away. The content displayed is part of the soul-life
itself.]
[Footnote 151: Professor Bosanquet apparently assumes a negative has
slipped out. But the text probably is correct in the rather awkward
form in which it stands.]
[Footnote 152: Thus poetry is primarily a romantic art, but in the Epic
it is affiliated with the objective character of classical art, or we
may say that there is a romantic and classical type of architecture,
though the art is primarily symbolic.]
[Footnote 153: _Gestalt._ Plastic power is perhaps a better
translation.]
[Footnote 154: He means that in architecture the building is merely a
shrine or environment of the image of the god.]
[Footnote 155: Infinite, of course, in the concrete sense of rounded in
itself, as the circle, or, still more, the living organism.]
[Footnote 156: Lit., "which is not also that of the spiritual sphere."]
[Footnote 157: That is, an object limited only in space.]
[Footnote 158: _Subjektivität._ The particularization in romantic art
implies the presence of an ideal element imported by the soul of the
artist, which appeals directly to the soul in its emotional life.
Compare a picture by an Italian master with a Greek statue.]
[Footnote 159: Lit., "A multiplicity of isolated examples of
inwardness."]
[Footnote 160: That is, in the life shared by all as one community
actuated by a common purpose.]
[Footnote 161: As in sculpture.]
[Footnote 162: Professor Bosanquet's note is here (Trans., p. 166)
"Posited or laid down to be ideal. This almost is equal to made _to be_
in the sense of _not being._ In other words musical sound is "ideal"
as existing, _quâ_ work of art, in memory only, the moment in which it
is actually heard being fugitive. A picture is equally so in respect
of the third dimension, which has to be read into it. Poetry is almost
wholly ideal, uses hardly any sensuous element, and appeals almost
wholly to what exists in the _mind._"]
[Footnote 163: By particularization is meant the variety in the
material of colours, musical tones, and ideas, which latter are really
quite as much the medium of poetry as written language. The _sensuous_
medium is here an abstract sign and, as Hegel would contend, nothing
more than this.]
[Footnote 164: Reference, of course, to Hegel's unfortunate acceptance
of Goethe's theory of colour.]
[Footnote 165: The colour of art is not merely ideal as applied to
only two dimensions of space, but also is "subjective" in the artistic
treatment of it under a definite "scheme." It is not clear whether
Hegel alludes also to this; apparently not, though it is the most
important feature. In fact, even assuming his theory of light to be
correct, it is difficult entirely to follow his distinction between the
appearance of colour on a flat or a round surface. As _natural_ colour
the one would be as ideal as the other. Only regarded as a composition
would painting present distinction.]
[Footnote 166: It is obvious that the reference here is mainly to
an intentional appeal to the human soul through the content of the
composition. But the appeal may also be made through the technique and
artistic treatment of the medium itself.]
[Footnote 167: The parts of a chord are not in space, but are ideally
cognized. Hegel describes this by saying that music idealizes space and
concentrates it to a point. It would perhaps be more intelligible to
say that it transmutes the positive effects of a material substance in
motion into the positive and more ideal condition of time. The point
which is continually negated is at least _quâ_ music the point, or
rather, moment, of a temporal process.]
[Footnote 168: By the indifferent externality of space is signified the
fact that the parts of space, though external to each other, are not
qualitatively distinguishable.]
[Footnote 169: Succession in time is "more ideal" than coexistence in
space because it exists only as continuity in a conscious subject.]
[Footnote 170: Painting no doubt introduces ideal elements into the
artistic composition of colour, but the colour still remains the
appearance of a material thing or superficies.]
[Footnote 171: That is to say, music or harmony is based on a solid
conformity to law on the part of its tones in their conjunction and
succession, their structure and resolution.]
[Footnote 172: As in painting.]
[Footnote 173: The views here propounded suggest considerable
criticism. It appears to me that the stress here laid upon the
intelligible content of poetry as contrasted with the sensuous
qualities of its form as modulated speech is certainly untenable.
What we call the music of verse may unquestionably be most intimately
associated with the ideal content expressed; but apart from the
artistic collocation of language as sound no less than symbol we
certainly do not get the art of poetry. Even where Hegel deals directly
with rhythm and rhyme in the body of the treatise I think it is clear
he underrates all that is implied in the difference between the musical
expression of poetry as contrasted even with the sonorous language of
mere prose. A further question upon which more doubt is permissible is
how far the actual script in written or printed letters is not entitled
to be regarded as at least in part the sensuous medium. No doubt the
poem is not dependent upon it as a painting is upon colour, or the
canvas which supports it, for it may be recited. But at least it is
practically dependent upon it for its preservation. The point may very
possibly appear, however, as nugatory or entirely unimportant, beside
the question whether the medium of the art is not really imaginative
idea rather than articulate speech.]
[Footnote 174: _Absolute Formen._ Adequate in the sense of being
unconditionally so.]
FIRST PART
THE IDEA OF FINE ART, OR THE IDEAL
THE POSITION OF ART RELATIVELY TO FINITE REALITY, RELIGION, AND
PHILOSOPHY
The conclusion of the introduction brings within sight the more
methodical exposition of our subject. It will in the first place be
useful as a point of departure for a true philosophy of the beautiful
to sum up shortly the position of Fine Art in its general relation
to the Real, no less than to emphasize the salient features which
distinguish the philosophy of Fine Art from other philosophical
inquiries.
(_a_) With this object in view we will first enumerate the diverse
attempts which have been made to apprehend the beautiful in thought,
placing each in the order which will best assist a critical verdict.
We have already contributed something to this in our introduction.
And, moreover, we may add that the mere inquiry what others have
contributed either rightly or wrongly to our subject, at least with
the hope of ascertaining something really instructive to an exposition
which claims to be wholly scientific, will not assist us much. So far
from this being so we must preface our remarks with the admission that,
in the opinion of many, the beautiful, for the very reason that it
is the beautiful, does not admit of such intellectual apprehension,
is, in short, no object intelligible to human thought. To such a
thesis we must for the present--in our response to those who at this
time of day contend that all Truth is ultimately incomprehensible,
and only the finiteness of the phenomenal and the contingent matters
of temporal existence is within our mental grasp--reply that it is
precisely Truth, and Truth alone, which is to be thus _comprehended_,
and for this reason that it possesses the absolute _notion_, or, more
succinctly, the Idea for its basic support. Now beauty is no other
than a particular determination under which the True is expressed
and revealed to us; and it lies open to the fullest comprehension of
thought in so far as such can equip it with the armoury of the concrete
notion. It is quite true that no idea has suffered more severely in
our own time from misconceptions than this which we call the notion
in its fullest explication. One is only too often misunderstood to
mean a determination which is abstract and one sided, or at least a
conception of the analytical understanding. As thus understood neither
the totality of Truth nor the idea of beauty as a concrete whole can be
brought home to a thinking consciousness. But the idea of beauty, as we
have already observed, and shall seek to make more intelligible as we
proceed, is no such abstraction of the mind: rather it may be defined
as the absolute notion in its self-evolved concreteness, or still more
specifically defined, the absolute Idea.
(_b_) And, further, we cannot more succinctly define the _absolute
Idea_, in the above use of the expression, than by saying it is
mind (Spirit): and we may add that the mind thus referred to is not
mind regarded as finite, that is, subject to the conditions and
limitations of sense-perception, but the universal and _absolute_
Intelligence[175], which, out of its own free activity, determines
Truth in the profoundest signification of the term. To the ordinary
consciousness of everyday life the object of perception, no doubt,
breaks away from mind, as though our thought stood in opposition
to Nature, which receives from us a validity equal at least to the
consciousness which perceives it. But in this way of looking at Nature
and the conscious subject as two neighbours set over against one
another in territories equally self-subsistent it is only the finite
and limited mind, not that which it is as an infinite substance and
in its notional truth, which is apprehended. Nature is not thus to
be set over against absolute Mind, either as conjoint with a sphere
of the Real of equal worth, or as an independent boundary thereto.
Rather the aspect which Nature appears to hold in this respect is
that which mind or spirit itself sets up, and of which it becomes
the product as a Nature in which limit and boundary are themselves
determining constituents. In fact, Mind in its absolute or infinite
substance can only be apprehended as this free activity, which is
manifested in self-development through differentiation. This object,
this _other_, through which such differentiation proceeds, is regarded
in such opposition as Nature, but as the object of intelligence it is
quite as much indebted to Mind for the free gift and fulness of its
own essential substance. We must therefore conceive Nature as herself
containing in potency the absolute Idea. She is that Idea in _apparent
shape_, which mind, in its synthetic power, posits as the object
opposed to itself. She is so far a product, a creation. The truth
of Nature therefore is simply the determination by mind of its own
substance, its ideality and power of determination, through a process
which no doubt begins with a separation of itself into two factors
which apparently negate each other, but which, by the very activity
of such negation and separation, passes beyond the contradiction
it implies to a unity which heals the fracture. Instead of finding
our-elves opposed to a limit and a barrier we have a totality in which
the parts which opposed each other are fused together by the free
universality of mind. This ideality, in other words this infinite
power of determination[176], is that which constitutes the profound
notion of Mind's _subjectivity._ As subjectivity mind is, in the first
instance, merely Nature, Mind, or Spirit that is _not explicitly_
unfolded, mind which has not arrived at the grasp of its true notion.
Nature is here set up in opposition to Mind, not as an object which
itself has created, but as one whose limits it fails to overcome,
an object, moreover, which, as assumed to be already subsisting in
independence, Mind remains alongside of in the internal seclusion of
knowledge and volition, and is only able to constitute the other side
of Nature. The finiteness of scientific theory, no less than that of
practical life, is to be, found in this limited mode of consciousness,
where intelligence is restricted to the use of finite categories and
the formal "ought" in the realization of ethical perfection[177]. We
find here, as we have pointed out was the case with Nature, that
the phenomenal is not adequate to the essential truth of that which
appears; what we receive is still the confusing medley of abilities,
passions, intentions, opinions, and talents, which no sooner make
themselves felt than they are displaced, working at cross purposes
as often against as on the side of each other, in a strife between
volition, opinion, and reflection, which brings to the surface every
phase of fortuitous experience in all its confusing variety. It is
the standpoint of the entirely finite, temporal, contradictory, and
for that reason transitory, unsatisfied, and unreconciled spirit. For
the satisfactions which obtain in such a consciousness, through the
finiteness which inseparably clings to its entire outlook, itself so
limited and confused, are of a purely relative and isolated validity.
It is inevitable that consciousness, volition, and thought should make
an effort to rise above this condition and seek for the universality,
unity, and satisfaction which it eventually finds in the infinite
substance of Spirit and its Truth. This unity and satisfaction, to
which mind is carried forward by the impulse of its own ideal activity,
transmuting the raw material of its finite conditions, constitutes the
first revelation of that which the world of appearances is under a
more notional grasp of it. Mind grasps its finiteness as the negation
of its own essential substance, and is aware of its infinity. And this
essential truth of the finite mind is the absolute Mind or Spirit. In
this form of self-consciousness mind is merely actualized as absolute
negativity. The element of finitude which it confronts is apprehended
as such and annulled. In this, the highest sphere of its activity,
mind becomes the object of volition. The Absolute itself becomes the
_object_ of mind. Spirit, as self-consciousness, differentiates itself
as the _knowing subject_ from the absolute Spirit as the _object_
of knowledge. Mind in this latter sense, in contradistinction from
mind which has not overcome the conditions of finite perception, may
therefore be defined as a finite mind in possession of the principle
of differentiation from its true object. In the higher and more
speculative consideration of truth, however, it is the _absolute
mind itself_, which, in order to unfold explicitly the knowledge of
itself, essentially becomes a principle of differentiation to itself,
and thereby posits the finitude of mind, within which it becomes for
itself absolute object of the knowledge of itself. It is now absolute
mind within the ideal community[178] which belongs to it, the actual
Absolute of itself in the form of Mind and knowledge[179].
This is, in fact, the starting-point of the Philosophy of Fine Art.
For the idea of Fine Art is neither the _logical Idea_, absolute
Thought, that is, which develops itself in the medium of its freest
activity, nor is it the Idea of _Nature_ apprehended under more finite
categories. Its province is rather that of Mind untrammelled by either
the judgments or the actions of the _finite_ spirit.
(_c_) The realm of Fine Art is the realm of _absolute Spirit._ We can
but briefly indicate the reason why this is so. A fully philosophical
proof belongs rather to treatises which immediately deal with those
questions of philosophy we have noticed already, by which we mean those
which treat of Logic, whose content, as above explained, is that of the
absolute Idea, or the philosophy of Nature, or lastly, the philosophy
of Mind in its determinate spheres of finitude. For in these sciences
the object is to show not merely how the logical Idea presupposes the
objective particularity of Nature as a vehicle to its determinate
existence, but also how it is capable of passing from such externality
to mind, and, finally, of freeing itself from all the finitude that
clings to it and of attaining to Spirit in its eternal concreteness and
truth.
From such a point of view, which is also applicable to art when
regarded in all the fulness of worth it in truth implies, we are
justified in associating it with the self-same province which belongs
to religion and speculative philosophy. In every direction in which
Mind or Spirit becomes identical with the absolute Mind it frees itself
from the restricting limits of its positive existence, and, while
liberating itself from the contingent relations, which pertain to it
in its temporal existence, and the finite content of its objects and
interests, is made aware of and discloses the entire wealth of reality
it contains.
It may be of service here to expand more completely the position which
Art thus occupies in its relation respectively to the life of Nature
and Spirit.
A survey of the entire field of human existence presents to the
ordinary consciousness of mankind the widest variety of interests and
means of satisfaction. There is, in the first instance, the complex
system of purely physical necessities, to the satisfaction of which the
whole economy of industrial enterprise, through all its complicated
tissue of commerce, merchandize, and technical crafts, is actively
pursued. If we raise the level of our review to a more spiritual range,
we are confronted with the world where rights are established and
enforced, the world of legislative enactment, family life, division of
social classes, in a word, the concrete living organism of the State.
And more than this, there is the religious want, which asserts itself
in the hearts of particular men and women, and finds its satisfaction
in the life of a church. Finally, there is the many-sided and
intricately specialized activity of scientific research, the organized
effort to integrate all knowledge, and the comprehension which that
knowledge implies, in one all-embracing system. Within this latter
are comprised the activities of the fine arts, the interest, that is
to say, in beauty, and which derives its spiritual nutriment in the
realization of that beauty in plastic shapes.
(_d_) The question becomes inevitable how far a spiritual want of this
kind is bound up as a necessary element in the life of man and his
world-history. In the first instance these two spheres[180] appear
simply as immediate factors of our entire survey. It is, however, the
requirement of philosophy to probe more deeply into that which binds
them as essential and necessarily interacting constituents of one
organic whole. For on closer inspection it will be found that they do
not stand in relation to one another on the mere basis of utility;
rather we shall discover that only through the one we shall fully
comprehend the other. In other words, the one circle overlaps the
other, in the sense that the higher forms of its activity are found
to be a part of the other; and that which is of less value in its own
province is lifted into a finer atmosphere; and what had failed to free
itself from its original bounds is now enlarged to liberty through the
profounder satisfaction it receives in the widening of the range of its
interests[181]. And it is this which makes clear the necessity of the
ideal bond.
We will recall now for a moment the analysis we established of the
notion of the beautiful and that of art generally. Two opposed aspects
come under notice. In the first place we have a content, an end, a
significance; and in addition to that we get the artistic expression
of the same, the appearance and realization of such content; and,
thirdly, these two aspects of the artistic product so pass into each
other that the rationality or particularity is nothing short of the
expression of the artistic purpose, nothing more or less is given us
than the essential expression of the entire content. What we designate
as content, "significance," is just this simplicity of idea, the work
of art resolved into its simplest yet most comprehensive determinants,
as it exists for mind in contrast with the actual work executed. As
an example we may summarize the content of a book from a few words or
sentences the book contains, and nothing may be necessary to expound
the content of that book sufficiently in its general import. This
simple idea, the thesis or main problem of our book, which forms the
fundamental basis on which the entire structure is built, is the
abstract significance. It is only the detailed exposition which gives
us the concrete totality.
Both sides, however, of this opposition do not stand in an indifferent
or purely external relation one to the other, as, for instance,
is the case when we contrast with it the particular content of an
abstract mathematical figure, such as a triangle or an ellipse, to
which the external particularity of its size or figure is related
without affecting its significance. Rather in the former case we shall
find that the content of its form, taken in abstraction in itself,
possesses a determinate impulse in the direction of realization and
thereby concreteness. There is in it essentially the "_should_" of
purpose. However strongly form is here posited in independence, we are
unable to rest satisfied with such abstraction, and ask for something
more. This is at first apprehended merely as an unsatisfied want, a
desire in the conscious subject, which strives to annul itself and
secure satisfaction. From such a standpoint all we can say is that the
content is purely self-contained, or _subjective_, over against which
the objective other-than-itself is placed in opposition in such a way
as to emphasize the desire to make the subjective content _objective._
Such a conflict between the subjective content and the objective,
reality which confronts it, no less than the mere impulse to transcend
the opposition, is a universal characteristic of the determination of
all self-conscious life[182]. Even that aspect of human life which we
call physical, and still more that world of man's spiritual aims and
interests depends on this necessity to carry forward that which is at
first purely subjective and ideal into the objective world, that a
fuller satisfaction in its essential substance may be realized. But
so long as the content of aims and interests is merely and at first
apprehended in the one-sided form of subjective consciousness, and
that one-sidedness is apprehended as a mere limit, this loss makes
itself simply felt as unrest or pain. It is a negative something
which is bound to resolve itself as such negativity, and, in order to
remove the sense of defect, exerts an impulse to transcend the barrier
itself, already an object of consciousness and thought. And, moreover,
this transcendency does not merely amount to this, that the objective
"other" ceases to be an opposed factor to the general subjective
consciousness: rather in the more determinate connection, this defect
of _subjective_ thought is itself and _within_ itself a defect and
_negation_ which involves an impulse to negate and pass beyond. In
other words the conscious subject is implicitly and according to its
essential notion the _complete whole_[183], that is, not merely what
is inward, but the realization no less of that which is inward or
ideal in and through what is without. If we assume that it exists only
abstractly in one form we have to face the contradiction that whereas
it is, according to its concrete notion the whole, yet according to its
mode of existence it remains merely one side of that totality. It is
only through the entire resolution of such a contradiction that life
becomes affirmative. To pass through each phase of this opposition,
contradiction and its final abrogation is the higher and legitimate
demand of conscious life. That which remains always affirmative, is,
and remains, without life. Life is built upon negation and pain. It
is only by crushing out such contradictions in the crucible of fuller
life and knowledge that it remains in its affirmative substance. If it
anchor wholly on contradiction without such a possibility of resolution
it must be infallibly wrecked thereon.
Such, then, is the nature of these determinations of thought regarded
in their abstraction to which it was necessary to draw attention at the
present stage.
The most exalted content which lies within the grasp of self-conscious
life may be concisely called _freedom._ Freedom is the highest
determination of Spirit. In its formal aspect freedom, in its first
instance, consists in this, that the subject thereof ceases to find a
limit or barrier in the material which is set over against it; this
is no longer an element foreign to it, but one in which it finds
itself again. Even under this formal definition of it all necessity
and misfortune disappears; the individual consciousness is reconciled
with the world, finds satisfaction in such reconciliation, and all
opposition and contradiction is thereby dissolved.
But over and above this, on closer inspection, we find that it is
universally the rational--that is to say ethical relations in practical
life, truth in thought--which constitutes the content of freedom. But,
furthermore, inasmuch as freedom itself is in the first instance only
subjective, not wholly carried into effect, there must remain for
the individual an element of unfreedom, a somewhat purely objective
opposed to it as a necessity of Nature; and it is accompanied likewise
with the demand to secure a reconciliation of this opposition. From
the reverse point of view a similar contradiction is apparent in the
internal domain of the subjective consciousness itself. We have, on
the one hand, that which is universal and self-subsistent in its own
right, in other words the universal dictates or principles of justice,
goodness, and truth. On the other there are the various impulses of
mankind, all the emotions, preferences, and passions which exercise
their power over the heart of each man and woman individually. This
opposition no less than the other excites conflict and contradiction,
and in this strife man becomes subject to every conceivable longing,
the profoundest grief, and, in a word, to every kind of worry and
discontent. It is the prerogative of the spiritual life of mankind
to be a veil severed and broken asunder, tossed as it must be on the
waves of contradiction. The animal creation lives at peace with itself
and its environment. Man is unable to find a complete refuge in that
which is exclusively inward, the soul as such, pure thought, in the
world of legal obligation and its _universality._ He is dependent also
upon his sensuous existence, his emotions, and all that appeals to his
heart and soul. It is the part of philosophy to give expression to this
contradiction in thought, as it extends throughout its all-embracing
compass, and to overcome the same with a reconciliation equally
comprehensive.
In the immediacy of everyday life, however, man seeks to secure an
_immediate_ satisfaction. Perhaps the most obvious example of such
a resolution is to be found in the domain of animal wants and their
satisfaction.
The states of hunger, thirst, fatigue on the one hand, and feeding,
drinking, sleep on the other, with all such similar states, illustrate
the contradictions and resolutions to which we here refer.
In this sphere of human existence, which is fundamentally the same as
purely animal life, the content of such satisfaction is, however, of a
finite and limited range. Such satiety carries with it no permanence,
but moves forward without rest to a renewed sense of want. Men eat,
drink, and sleep, and on the morrow are as hungry and weary as before.
Man is compelled, therefore, to strive for a freedom more lasting in
that element of the spiritual life which he appropriates in knowledge
and volition, the sciences and his social activities. The ignorant
man is unfree because he faces a world which is foreign to himself, a
world which tosses hither and thither aimlessly, to which he is joined
as an appendage, unable to unite that foreign world to itself, and to
feel itself at home there as in its own demesne. The merest impulse of
curiosity, the awakening of the love of knowledge, the lowest phase
of animate unrest, and the highest grasp of philosophical insight are
ultimately derived from the same source, namely, the desire to overcome
every condition that is unfavourable to freedom, and to bring the
world of everyday life, and that of the subject which reflects upon
it, into one harmonious unity. If we consider the world of _action_
the result is the same; freedom in human action is the attempt to
make positive or real the reason of the Will. Reason is realized by
voluntary action through the life of the State. In a State that is
differentiated through itself on any rational principle, all the laws
and social institutions which belong to it are simply a realization of
freedom according to their own essential determinants. This being so,
the reason that belongs to any citizen discovers in such institutions
its own essential life: and, so long as such is not in revolt from
those laws, proceeds with them as with its own kith and kin rather than
a foreign adversary. We not infrequently find licence identified with
freedom. But the freedom of licence is irrational; it depends upon a
choice and self-determination which has nothing to do with a rational
will, but is rather the product of accidental impulses and their
dependence on the world of sense and physical Nature.
We may conclude, then, that the physical needs of man, no less than
his knowledge and power of volition, receive in fact, each in its
own sphere, a satisfaction in the world, and deliberately break up
the contradiction between the subjective and objective, that is to
say, between the freedom of consciousness and the external necessity
of things with which it is confronted. The content, however, of
such a freedom and the satisfaction which is therein experienced
is still subject to _limitations_, and for this reason both still
retain an element of _finitude._ And wherever we find such an element
supervening it is inevitable that the original contradiction should
again reassert itself, and the self-satisfaction only maintain a
relative significance. For example, in the sphere of jurisprudence and
its realization in the State it is true enough that the rationality
of each citizen, his will and his freedom are recognized; he is a
person and as such is respected; he is the owner of property, and
if that property is in danger the courts of law reassert his rights
in their integrity. This recognition, however, and the freedom it
establishes are confined to single relations and isolated objects,
such as a particular house, a sum of money, some particular right
or law, in fine some particular transaction in the practical world.
What the consciousness has at any one time before it are particular
things, which no doubt are related to one another, and in fact form a
nucleus of such relations; but, on the other hand, they are appropriate
to categories of purely relative validity, are subject to various
conditions of tenure, which make the satisfaction only immediately
experienced when their predominance is reasserted, or at any rate
fail to establish any degree of permanence. And further than this
the life of the State in its organic entirety, as a related whole of
monarch, government, courts of justice, military control, and general
grouping of all the various societies which compose it, no less than
the obligations and duties which such arrangements presuppose, the
aims and satisfaction to which they are directed, the entire scope of
its civic and commercial activities already referred to, in one word
the complete organism of a nation's life, is indeed in a genuine State
complete in itself, and in a sense rounded off as a real totality. At
the same time we must observe that the fundamental _principle_, for
the realization of which the State exists, and wherein the individual
man finds his satisfaction as a citizen, is, despite all the variety
of that life, all the manifold differentiation of class within itself
and as related to the world without, still a whole that is _one-sided_
and in a real sense abstract. It is only the rational freedom of the
_will_ made explicit in a particular totality. It is, in short, only
the national life, and further the life of a _particular_ nation;
a life, moreover, in which freedom is realized in a _particular_
sphere of existence as individualized reality. And on this account
it is that we are necessarily conscious, that rights and obligations
in the mere bounds of civic existence, on the plane, that is to say,
of merely this world's or temporal existence, do not discover the
absolute satisfaction we are seeking. We require as rational beings a
higher realization of their objective truth as private individuals,
a fuller sanction of their imperative validity than they themselves,
in such a sphere, can offer us. What mankind, pressed on all sides
by the boundaries of his purely terrestrial life, in fact requires
is that region of more essential reality, in which every opposition
and contradiction is overcome, and freedom can finally claim to be
wholly at peace with itself. And this is, of course, nothing other
than absolute Truth itself, no merely relative truth. In the Truth,
according to its highest notion, all must be brought home to one unity.
In it there can be no more opposition between freedom and necessity,
Spirit and Nature, knowledge and the object of knowledge, law and
impulse, between whatever form, in fact, the opposition of these
contradictory phenomena of human experience may assume.
It is in virtue of such truth that proof is possible that neither
a freedom which is essentially subjective and disparate from every
element of necessity is true in the absolute sense; nor, on the other
hand, is it admissible to predicate truth of a necessity conceived in
absolute isolation from consciousness. Our ordinary conscious life
fails to overcome this contradiction, and either plunges desperately
into the same, or thrusts it on one side and makes its escape from it
in some other way. Philosophy will, however, so address itself to the
two determinating factors of the contradiction as to show that they are
apprehended as isolate from each other in abstraction, not according
to their concrete notion; and by the grasp of this latter it will
demonstrate the one-sidedness in its relative character, placing these
opposing aspects in the fuller union and harmony which is truth. It is
the function of philosophy to grasp and formulate this notion of truth.
Unquestionably philosophy recognizes the concrete notion throughout;
and it is in virtue of this that it is Thought with full grasp of
truth. But what we call the notion is something other than this,
truth, that is, in its essential verity together with the existence
which is either adequate to it or is not so. In all finite reality the
determinations, which are essential to ideal truth, appear separable
from each other, dividing the veil of that which in its absolute Truth
is a complete totality. Take the case of a living being. Under such
finite categories we are forced to regard it as a subject in opposition
to the inorganic Nature which environs it. Both the points of view are
no doubt present in the notion, but they are there reconciled. Finite
existence, however, thrusts them apart. It is, in short, an existence
or reality which is unequal to the unity of the notion. We may
therefore say that the notion is valid in every sphere of actuality. At
the same time the main point to be determined is whether the notion in
its ideal concreteness is actually completed in the particular unity
presented, wherein the two aspects posited in opposition persist in
no ultimate self-subsistence and coherence over against each other,
but are rather ideal phases which tend to pass into a higher unity
which cancels such opposition. And the reality of this highest mode
of union is only reached when we enter the sphere of truth, freedom,
and the satisfaction which they create. The higher life which belongs
to this sphere, this supreme enjoyment of truth, which as feeling is
called "blessedness," and as conscious thought "contemplation," we may
describe generically as the life known to religion. For religion is
just this universal domain[184], in virtue of which the _one_ concrete
totality of the World comes to each man in union with himself, as his
essential substance, while it remains no less for consciousness the
essential truth of Nature. And it is this profounder truth of the Real
which alone proves itself invincible over all that is merely particular
and finite, being as it is the one absolute harmony wherein all that is
otherwise discordant and opposed is finally resolved. Now it is through
its direct concern in the true, regarded as the absolute object of
consciousness, that Art belongs to the supreme sphere of Spirit, and
it is to be placed, in respect to its content, if in a more specific
sense, on the same basis as religion and philosophy. I connect these
two last for the reason that philosophy has no other object than God.
In its substance it is in fact rational theology, and in its service of
the truth a continual service of God.
(_e_) Accepting, then, this fundamental similarity of content these
three spheres of absolute Spirit only differ in the _forms_ under
which they present their object, that is, the Absolute, to human
consciousness. The differences which are perceptible in these modes of
presentment are due to the notion of the absolute Spirit (Mind) itself.
Spirit, in its truth, is essential substance brought home to itself. It
is, therefore, no essence which lies outside and in abstract relation
to objectivity, but rather is, within the compass of that objectivity,
the re-collected presence[185] of the substance of all objects within
finite spirit. It is the finite which grasps its own essential
universality, and, in doing so, grasps essential Being in the absolute
sense. The _first_ mode of this comprehension is an _immediate_ one,
that is to say, it is a sensuous cognition, a cognition in the form and
semblance of the object of sense-perception, in which the Absolute is
presented directly to the understanding[186] and feeling. The _second_
form is that of the _conceptive_ or imaginative consciousness. _Last_
of all, we have the _free thought_ of absolute Spirit. The form of
_sensuous perception_ is appropriate to art in the sense that it is art
which presents truth to consciousness in its sensuous semblance; but
it is a semblance which, under the mode of its appearance, possesses
a higher and profounder meaning and significance, although it is
not its function to render the universality of the notion wholly
intelligible through the medium of sense. It is indeed rather the
_unity_ to which art attains with that of the particular appearance
which constitutes the essence of the beautiful, the essence of the
artistic product. This union is perfected in art not _entirely_
through sensuous objectification, but also through the medium of
_imaginative conception._ This is exceptionally so in the art of
poetry. At the same time, even in this, the most intellectual or
ideal art, the union between significance and the individual mode of
its presentation is present with the same, although it is displayed
to the imaginative consciousness, and every part of its content is
conceived in its immediacy and visualized for the imagination[187]. And
generally we must accept the fact that art, possessing as it does truth
or Spirit for its object, is unable to reproduce the same by merely
copying particular objects of Nature, such as the sun, moon, earth,
and stars. Such are, no doubt, objects of sensuous perception; but,
simply as such, they are isolated and can offer no reflection of what
is spiritual. In thus attributing to art this absolute significance
as a manifestation of Spirit we have expressly set on one side the
conception of art which finds its content of too various a nature, or
too much occupied with interests foreign to it, to merit such a view.
And at the other extreme religion, no doubt, frequently summons art
to her service, in order to bring the truths of religion more near
to the emotion, or to clothe the same in imaginative form. In both
cases unquestionably art is rendering a service to a province not,
in strictness, its own. At the same time where art is found in most
exalted perfection, in that case no doubt it unfolds in plastic guise
the mode of exposition most adequate and essentially necessary to the
content of the truth accepted. Among the Greeks, for example, Art was
the highest medium under which the community conceived its gods, and
became conscious of truth. For this reason we may justly say that the
poets and artists of Greece created the gods of their people. In other
words, they defined for the imagination of their people the active life
and energy of the Divine Presence, giving Them the definite content
of a religion. And this statement must not merely be taken to imply
that all Greek artists did was to clothe in imagery or embellish with
the beauty of poesy vague conceptions and hearsays which, as general
religious maxims or isolated determinations of conscious life, were
already present before the era of such poetic creations. The truth of
this artistic production is rather to be found in this, that art and
poetry were the exclusive forms in which these creative artists could
bring to life and expression the ideas which fermented in themselves.
In other phases of that consciousness, where we find the content less
completely represented by the plastic imagery of art, the scope of Art
as the handmaid of religion is of less importance.
We have thus indicated what was, at any rate, once the true position of
Art in its relation to the highest interests of man's spiritual life.
But inasmuch as art is preceded in Nature and the finite processes of
life by a kind of antenatal history, so too there is a history that
follows its culmination, which in other terms passes over and beyond
its purely conceptive or plastic grasp of the Infinite. For art carries
in the notion that gives it life a limit; and it is from this boundary
that the human consciousness passes beyond into forms more adequate
to its spiritual import. It is this inherent _shortness of the mark_
that fixes the subordinate position we are only too ready to assign to
art in our daily life nowadays. For us European art is no longer the
highest means in which the actuality of truth is possessed. Speaking
generally, thought has long ago pronounced a verdict upon art when it
defined it as the portrayal of the Divine by concepts which appeal to
sense-perception. This was the judgment passed on it by the Jews and
the followers of Mohammed. Nay, we find it present among the Greeks
themselves, as the strong opposition of Plato and Homer and Hesiod to
the popular conception of the gods proves clearly. There is a period in
the education of every civilized nation, when art becomes a sign-post,
as it were, to that which stands beyond her border. The evolution of
Christendom is itself an illustration. The historical features of
that religion, the resurrection of Christ, His life and death, have
doubtless offered to the art of painting a mighty field on which to
exercise its imaginative bounty; and the Church has either surrounded
such art with its magnificent protection, or suffered it simply to work
on unheeded. But as the love of knowledge and scientific research, and
yet more the felt want of a more intimate and personal spirituality
necessitated the Reformation, the religious imagination was called away
from the sensuous medium which enwrapped it, and centred once for all
upon the inward spirituality of emotional life and conscious thought.
In this way there grew up, so to speak, that posterior twilight of
Art's history I referred to, where the want has found a dwelling in
man to rest satisfied alone with the pure medium of the soul as the
ultimate form of truth. In the earliest beginnings of art we shall
find mystery still present, a secret strain and longing which persists
because Art's imaginative powers are unable to envisage to sense the
complete truth of its content. When once, however, the mind of man has
succeeded in endowing such content with perfect outward shape in art,
it is driven inevitably away from this objective realization to its own
free spiritual activity as from something repellent to it. A period
such as this is our own. We may, indeed, express the hope that art will
rise to yet higher grades of technical perfection; but in any case Art
in its specific form has ceased to meet the highest requirements of
spiritual life. We may still wonder at the unrivalled excellence of the
statues of the gods of Hellas, and imagine that God the Father, Christ,
and the Virgin Mary have received ideal representation at the hands of
more recent painters. But it is of no use. Our knees no longer bow to
them.
The sphere of conscious life nearest to that of art is that of
religion. The form which belongs to the religious consciousness is that
of the _imaginative concept._ The Absolute is here removed from the
externality of artistic production, and received in a more spiritual
way by the imagination, so that the heart and emotions, the inner life
of the individual that is to say, become its vehicle. This progress in
spiritual insight from art to religion may be further defined by the
statement that art is only one aspect of the religious consciousness.
In other words, when a work of art objectifies the truth or mind for
sense-perfection, and apprehends this form of the Absolute as the one
appropriate to its vision, religion blends with the same the devotional
attitude that flows from the inner life confronted with the absolute
reality as thus presented. Devotion is a type of emotional existence
which is, strictly speaking, outside the province of art. It originates
in the fact that the individual suffers that object which art has
rendered visible to sense to penetrate the arcana of his emotional
life, and so completely identifies himself with it that this inward
presence, which the imagination and the inherent might of feeling has
rendered possible, becomes an essential phase in the manifestation
of absolute reality. Devotion is this cultus of the community in its
purest, most intimate, and subjective form; a culture, in which the
principle of objectivity is at the same time consumed and absorbed, and
the content thereof is transmuted without such objectivity into the
possession of heart and soul.
The _third_ and last form or phase in the evolution of absolute mind
(spirit) is _philosophy._ In the boundaries of the religious sphere,
where God is apprehended in the first instance perforce as an external
object, and men are taught that there is a God, and how He has revealed
Himself and still is revealed to mankind, the subjective consciousness
is indeed made the vehicle of such knowledge, and the religious sense
imparted stirs and fills the heart of the community; but the inwardness
of devotion which is born of the emotions and the imagination is not
the highest form of inwardness. We are bound to recognize that the
purest form of knowledge is conscious _thought_ in its freest activity.
In this alone the content of knowledge is, adequate to the demands
of that which is consciously apprehended: here alone we are in the
presence of that most intelligent form of cultus, which seeks wholly
to appropriate to itself, and to grasp in concrete thought what is
otherwise only the evanescent content of feeling or the imagination.
In the purview of such a philosophy art and religion, as two aspects
of one truth, become related under a unifying conception. On the one
hand, though philosophy, by its surrender of all sensuous externality,
has lost the _objective_ presentation of art, yet it has exchanged
it for the highest form under which concrete reality is objectively
apprehended and redeemed, in other words, that of _speculative reason._
It has, on the other, lost the emotional subjectivity of the religious
consciousness in the same pure medium. For while human thought is
the most inward and appropriate vehicle of subjective life, such
thought, in its fullest grasp of truth, the Idea, is actuality in the
most objective and universal sense of the term, and is only to be
apprehended by pure thought in the medium native to itself.
With this adumbration of the difference between the spheres of art,
religion, and philosophy we must on the present occasion rest content.
The sensuous mode of consciousness is that which first appears in
the history of mankind. The earliest stages of religion are for this
reason indistinguishable from a religion of art and its sensuous manner
of presentation. In the religion of Spirit for the first time is God
as Spirit cognized also on a higher plane, and one more adequate
to thought, wherein it likewise follows as a corollary, that the
presentation of truth in sensuous shape is not truly adequate to Spirit.
Now that we know something of the position which art occupies in the
field of spiritual activity, and that which belongs to the philosophy
of art among the several philosophical sciences, we will proceed in
this introductory portion of our work in the first place to investigate
the general idea of the beauty of art.
SUBDIVISION OF SUBJECT
IDEA OF THE BEAUTY OF ART, OTHERWISE, FINE ART
To arrive at the Idea of Fine Art in all its concreteness it will be
necessary for us to consider it under three phases.
1. The _first_ is concerned with the _notion_ of the beautiful
generally.
2. The _second_ is that of _natural_ beauty, the defects of which will
demonstrate the necessity of the _Ideal_ as _Fine Art._
3. In the _third_ of these aspects the subject of our investigation
will be the _Ideal_ in its _positive realization_, in other words as
the artistic display of this Ideal in particular _works of art._
[Footnote 175: The German word here is _Geist._ I have translated it
as best seems to suit the particular context in which the German word
occurs.]
[Footnote 176: _Unendliche Negativität._]
[Footnote 177: This is the "Ought" of practical feeling. As such just
as in the case of the analytical sciences, what it lacks is objective
determination (see "Phil. of Mind," trans. of W. Wallace, p. 94).]
[Footnote 178: _In seiner Gemeinde._ We should rather expect _in seiner
Gebiete._]
[Footnote 179: The reference here appears to be to the three attitudes
of thought to the objective world which may be generally indicated
as that of ordinary consciousness, that of empiricism and that of
speculative Philosophy. In the paragraph which follows, however, Hegel
mainly refers to the logical process of dialectic and the Idea of
Nature (_die natürliche Idee._) The latter may, however, refer to both
the previous divisions, _i.e._, the commonsense point of view and the
scientific.]
[Footnote 180: The spheres of art and social life are first perceived
as merely independent circles of activity.]
[Footnote 181: That is to say, nations have not only found in Art the
best means of expressing their religious consciousness, but, even
where religion has been raised to a higher power, have found in it the
most adequate form in which to express the ideality of their general
spiritual life.]
[Footnote 182: _Welche sick durch alles hindurchzieht_, _i.e._, which
permeates all experience.]
[Footnote 183: In this metaphysical passage Hegel appears to be
contrasting his own philosophical standpoint, absolute idealism, with
that of critical or empirical philosophy, those at least who conceive
reality either as a thing-in-itself, or the _materia_ supplied to
sense-perception from a world outside the human consciousness. The
entire content of the Real is, on the contrary, all included under the
form of self-conscious thought.]
[Footnote 184: He means, I think, province of the universal, rather
than "universal expansion of horizon."]
[Footnote 185: The words of Hegel are "_innerhalb derselben im
endlichen Geiste die Erinnerung des Wesens aller Dinge_." He no doubt
has in his mind the derivation of the word _Erinnerung._ It is the
_inwardization_ or idealization of such substance.]
[Footnote 186: _Anschauung_, that is to say, it is the object of man's
receptive senses.]
[Footnote 187: The punctuation is clearly wrong. It is also very
possible that _derselben_ is a misprint for _dieselbe._ But in any case
there should be comma rather than semicolon.]
CHAPTER I
THE NOTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL IN ITS GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE
I
We have defined beauty to be the Idea of the beautiful.
By this definition is implied that we have to conceive the beautiful
as Idea, and, moreover, as Idea in a determinate shape, as _Ideal._
Idea, as thus posited, is just this, the conceptive notion, the
realization of the same, and the unity of both. The notion, as such, is
not yet the Idea, although the terms notion and idea are often loosely
interchanged. Idea is the notion only as presented in, and brought
into coalescence with, its objective reality. This unity, however, is
by no means to be regarded as the mere _neutralization_ of notion and
reality, so that the individual character and quality of either is
absorbed; as, for example, where we find that in a chemical compound
salt-potash and acid tend to neutralize each other in so far as they
have weakened their opposition. In this unity, on the contrary, the
notion is retained as the commanding factor. It is already implicitly,
in virtue of its own nature, this very identity. Out of its own wealth
it evolves the reality as part of itself, by means of a process which,
being no other than that of development, surrenders nothing of its
own nature, but brings into more concrete actuality the riches of the
notion, and for this reason continues in unity with itself and its
objective realization. Such a unity of the notional concept and its
realization is the Idea defined in abstract terms. The word idea is,
of course, frequently used by authors of works dealing with the theory
of art. It must, however, be admitted that many connoisseurs of high
standing are particularly severe upon its employment. The latest and
most interesting example of this polemical attitude is to be found
in Herr von Rumohr's "Italian investigations." This work is based on
the practical interest that the arts excite, and is wholly unconcerned
with that which for brevity we may call the Idea. The truth is that
this writer, who appears to have no knowledge of the development of
philosophy in modern times, freely confuses the expression as above
defined with the undetermined conceptions of the phantasy, or the
abstract and characterless Ideal of well-known art theories or schools
of art, ideas which present a lean contrast to the clearly defined and
richly caparisoned objects of Nature in their truth, and which this
writer opposes to the idea and empty Ideal, which the artist himself
evolves from his own consciousness. We have, of course, no more right
to suppose that creative work can be the result of such poverty, than
we can with justice assume that a thinker can think with conceptions
wholly indeterminate, and persist in his thought with a content
destitute of all defined relation. Such an objection, however, does not
apply in any respect to the Idea in the sense we use the expression.
This Idea is through and through concrete; a whole which consists of
relations and is simply beautiful from being in direct union with the
objective form adequate to its expression.
Herr von Rumohr has placed on record in this very book (Book I, pp.
145-46) the following assertion, that "beauty in the most comprehensive
meaning of the term, and as it is understood by intelligent people of
our day, includes every quality of an object, which may either stir the
sense of sight with satisfaction, or through that sense attune the soul
and delight the mind."
These qualities are then further subdivided into three classes
as follows: "First, there is all that is perceptible through the
eye; secondly, that which is apprehended by means of the peculiar,
presumably innate sense of mankind for spatial relations; and thirdly,
all that in the first instance works upon the understanding, and
only indirectly through cognition on the emotions." This third and
most important determination rests apparently on forms "which quite
independently of all pleasure to the sense and the beauty of extended
shape arouse in us a specific delight which is ethical or spiritual
in its quality, which in part to all appearance proceeds from the
enjoyment we derive from the images excited (I presume he means ethical
or spiritual ones)[188], and in part from the pleasure which the mere
activity of an intelligent appreciation infallibly brings with it."
Such are the principal factors according to which this undoubted
connoisseur of art defines his subject relatively to the beautiful. It
may very possibly pass muster with a certain type of uncritical reader.
It is, however, very unsatisfactory regarded from the philosophical
standpoint. For what does it at bottom amount to but this, namely, that
the sense of vision or spiritual sense, we may add the understanding
itself, are moved pleasurably, or excite a feeling which results in
awakened pleasure. The entire argument hinges on this one aspect of
awakened gratification. This reduction, however, of the activity of the
beautiful to terms of feeling--that which pleases and charms us--has
been disposed of once for all by Kant. His exposition has already left
far behind the feeling for the beautiful.
We will direct our attention now from this polemical tractate to a
further consideration of the Idea its hostility has failed to weaken.
In this, as already stated, is comprehended the concrete _unity_ of the
_notion_ and its objective realization.
(_a_) Now, first, we will observe, in directing our attention more
closely to the essential nature of the notion, that it is no purely
_abstract unity_ opposed to the _differences_ of _phenomenal reality_;
rather, as the notion, it is already the unity that integrates
those relations, and by doing so is concrete totality. The abstract
conceptions such as man, the quality blueness, and their like, are not
notions as such at all, but rather should be called abstract general
concepts, which are only raised to the dignity of the notion, when
we have demonstrated that they contain opposing factors in unity,
and, in such a way, that this self-related nexus of unity constitutes
their notional truth. For instance, the concept "blueness" as a colour
receives such a notional value when it is grasped as the unity, and,
indeed, the specific unity of light and darkness[189]. In the same way
the concept "man" contains within it the opposing factors of sense,
life, and reason, body and mind (spirit); but a particular man is not
to be regarded as a whole consisting in some way of these two aspects
of his personality placed in a relation of indifference side by side
as constituents of the same. Rather, in virtue of the notion, such
a whole contains these constituents in concrete and mediated[190]
union. Add to this that the notion is so completely the absolute bond
and unity of its differences, that independently they cease to exist,
they are unable to assert the particularity, in virtue of which they
might escape from such a union. For this reason the notion includes
all its determining constituents in the form of its own _ideal unity_
and universality, which constitute its _subjective_ character in
contradistinction from the real as the object of sense-perception. For
example, gold is, as a particular object, of specific weight, definite
colour, and placed in a certain relation to specific acids. Such are
varied characteristics of gold, and yet are invariably found in a
unified whole. The smallest speck contains them all in inseparable
union. By analysis or abstraction we indeed separate them, but in their
notion they are inseparably one. The inability of the differences,
which the notion in its truth essentially possesses, to stand alone
in their isolated self-identity is of a similar nature. A still more
apposite illustration is presented by the unique concept of the
self-conscious Ego in its universality. For that which we call soul, or
more appositely the Ego, is the notion itself in its free existence.
The Ego contains a congeries of most distinct concepts and thoughts
in itself; it is a world of ideas; yet none the less this infinitely
complex content, in so far as it lies within the Ego, remains without
a vestige of substantiality or materiality packed within this ideal
unity, as the pure and throughout fluid transparency of the Ego itself
reflected to itself. And this is precisely the way in which the notion
retains its varied determinations in ideal unity.
The determinants of the notion which are most cognate to the notion as
such are the _universal_, the _particular_, and the _single_. Every one
of these determinate qualities taken by itself is a mere abstraction.
As thus regarded, however, abstract, that is to say, from one another,
they are not present in the notion: that is rather their ideal _unity._
The notion is therefore the universal, which, on the one hand, negates
itself to a condition of relativity and _particularization_, but, on
the other, this riving asunder, in so far as it is negation of the
universal, is itself again _annulled._ For the universal as present
in the particular, which itself is only the particular aspects of the
_universal_ itself is present in no particular absolutely, but rather
in that very particular reaffirms once more its essential unity as
universal. In this return upon itself the notion is infinite negation;
negation, I mean, not as against another, but self-determination, in
which alone it subsists in its positive and correlative unity. In this
way it is _singularity_ in its truth; it is the universal nexus which
shuts itself up with itself in its particulars. As the highest example
of this property of the notion we would refer back to what we have
already, if in a summary way, said about the essential activity of
Spirit.
Through this infinite capacity of return upon itself the notion is
already, by virtue of its intrinsic wealth, totality. It finds the
unity of itself in the being of another, and for this reason possesses
a free activity, being, however, negation as self-determination, not
as the alien limitation of its own substance through something other
than itself. But regarded as such totality the notion is already in
potential possession of all phenomenal reality, and is that which
mediates and restores the unity of the Idea. And whoever ventures
to think that in the Idea we have presented to us something totally
different and apart from the notion, has as little knowledge of the
nature of the Idea as he has of the notion. At the same time there
is, no doubt, a difference between the notion and the Idea, and it
is this: in the former the particularization is only an abstract
particularization, for this reason that in the notion the determinate
relations are alone coherent in its transparent medium, that is to say,
in its unity and ideal universality. The notion, therefore, itself
remains subject to the one-sidedness of its particular material, and
is hampered with the defect that although in its own nature it is a
totality, yet it is only in the aspect of it as unity and universality
that it is entitled to free self-development. But inasmuch as this
defect in its completeness is foreign to its own essential form, the
process of its activity is to remove it. It negates itself as this very
ideal unity and universality and allows that which is enclosed in the
barren chamber of ideal subjectivity to flow forth freely into real and
substantive _objectivity._ In other words, the notion through its own
activity posits itself as objective reality.
(_b_) Objectivity is therefore, truly apprehended, the _real existence_
of the _notion._ It is, however, the notion under the mode of
self-substantive particularization and of a differentiation of all
_antithetical_ phases[191] of reality, whose ideal unity the notion in
its subjective capacity constituted.
But inasmuch as it is the _notion_, and only the notion, whose function
it is to endow objectivity with its determinate existence and reality,
so too it is only through objectivity that the _notion_ is unveiled in
its actuality. The notion is, however, the mediating and _ideal unity_
of all its particular antitheses. Within its differentiated reality
this ideal unity, effective throughout particularity in modes adequate
to the notion, has to establish itself in them, precisely in a way
similar to that in which the realized particularity of their unity, as
thus mediated to the point of ideality, has also to exist in them[192].
This is the might of the notion, which refuses to surrender or forfeit
its universality among the _disjecta membra_ of the objective world,
but rather reveals its essential unity through such reality and within
it. For it is nothing less than the very life of the notion to preserve
its unity in the material which is offered it. Only by so doing is it
real and veritable totality.
(_c_) This totality is the _Idea._ The Idea is not simply the ideal
unity and subjectivity of the notion. It is quite as much its true
and objective reality; it is, however, an objectivity which does not
confront the notion as an opposing factor, but is rather that in
which the notion itself is self-determined. In whichever aspect we
contemplate the notion, whether as subjective to our apprehension, or
as objectively real, the Idea it manifests is a totality. But it is
more than this. It is the unity which for ever is mediating between and
bringing into more perfected harmony the two totalities. Only as thus
apprehended is the Idea truth and indeed all truth.
2. All that exists, then, has only truth in so far as it is a definite
existence of the Idea. For the Idea is alone the truly real. The truth
of the phenomenal is not derived from the fact that its particular
existence is of an inward or external character, and as such is in
a general sense reality; it is so wholly in virtue of the fact that
such reality is adequate to the notion. Then alone is determinate
existence real and true. And the truth, to which we here refer, is
not a _subjective_ interpretation of it, namely, that a particular
existence is accordant with my own conception of it. It is truth in the
objective sense that the reality of the Ego, or of any external object,
action, or circumstance actually contributes to the realization of
the notion. If this identity is not established the existence remains
purely phenomenal. Instead of the objectification of the notion in its
completeness what obtains is purely a detached aspect of it; and with
regard to this, whatever self-subsistence it may appear to have in
opposition to the unity and universality of the notion, such can only
work to its final confusion by setting it in hostility to the true
notion itself. Our conclusion, therefore, is that only the reality
which adequately expresses the notion is truly reality, and the reason
it is so is that therein the Idea manifests itself as existence.
3. We have maintained that beauty is _Idea_. It follows that
_beauty_ and _truth_ are, in one aspect of them, _identical_. In
other words, beauty must itself in its intrinsic being be true. A
closer investigation will further show to us that truth must be
_distinguished_ from beauty.
The idea is true in the sense that it is so by virtue of its essential
being and according to its fundamental principle[193], and as such
truth it is thought[194]. It is not its sensuous and external
existence, but the _universal_ Idea of thought as present in this. At
the same time the Idea is driven to seek its realization in external
and objectively determined existence, both in the sphere of Nature
and that of Mind. The true, in the absolute sense, also exists. And
in so far as, in this its external existence, it is immediately
apprehended by consciousness, and the notion rests in immediate unity
with its external appearance, the Idea is not only true, but is also
_beautiful._ The _beautiful_ may therefore be defined as the _sensuous
semblance_[195] of the Idea. For the sensuous condition and the
objective world generally maintain no real self-subsistence in beauty,
but have merely to surrender the immediacy of their _being._ In beauty
such are posited simply as the determinate existence and externality
of the notion, and as a form of reality, which itself manifests the
_notion_ in unity with its external appearance in this its particular
objective existence. For this reason it can only pass as the semblance
of the notion.
(_a_) Accordantly with this it is impossible for the understanding[196]
alone to grasp the significance of beauty. For inasmuch as objective
reality is apprehended by this faculty as something at least quite
other than ideality, sensuous perception, as something very different
from the notion, the external object as something that is anywhere
rather than within world of the conscious self, to that extent it
cannot fail to emphasize the contradictions implied in such separation,
rather than penetrate to the ideal unity we have above described. The
understanding remains rooted in the finite, the incomplete and untrue
abstraction. The beautiful is on the contrary itself essentially
_infinite_ and free.
For although the content of beauty is stamped with particularity and
to that extent limited, such content is essentially in its mode of
environment a totality that is infinite[197] and a free existence; and
it is both for the reason that it is the notion, which does not pass
beyond this its objective semblance, and so fall into finite and one
sided abstraction with it, but rather is immersed as a blossom with
this its objectification and through the imminent unity and perfection
of such inclusion is revealed as essentially infinite. With equal
truth we may affirm that the notion in sealing, as it were, with a
soul the real existence, in which it is part of the objective world,
is itself by itself freely manifest in that world. For the notion will
not suffer that external existence in the sphere of beauty to follow,
as it would otherwise, the laws that therein are paramount: rather
it determines out of its own riches the articulation and form of its
appearance therein; and it is precisely this harmony of the notion with
the mode of its external existence which constitutes the essential
life of beauty. And the bond which braces all together, no less than
the power behind it, is self-conscious life, unity, soul, and artistic
personality.
(_b_) We conclude, then, that if we consider beauty in its relation to
conscious life, on the _subjective_ side that is, it is neither to be
adequately apprehended by an intelligence that persists in the unfree
medium of purely finite existence, nor is it the object of the finite
Will. We will enlarge a little on both points.
As finite intelligence we are aware in feeling of the inner no less
than the outer objects of consciousness; we observe them, perceive
them to be true to our senses, allow them to form part of the content
of our perceptions, concepts, and finally, no doubt, to become the
abstractions which our understanding presents to us, reflecting
on their appearance, and endowing them with the abstract form of
universality.
Now the finiteness and absence of freedom inseparable from this mental
attitude consists in the assumption that the things perceived are
self-subsistent. We direct our attention to these objects, suffer them
to impress us, form our ideas of them, possessed with the faith in
their material existence as objects, and convinced that all we have
to do is to perceive them as they appear to our passive reception,
to preserve, in short, the formal side of our attention intact,
holding such unfettered by our fancies, opinions, and prejudices.
In thus accepting this one-sided freedom of objects we posit at
the same time the want of freedom in their mental apprehension. To
such the content is one wholly _given_ from outside; and instead of
a true self-determination through difference we have nothing but
the reception and acceptance of what is presented as a part of the
objective thing. We would arrive at truth by the suppression of all
that belongs to ourselves[198].
A criticism of like nature, though the defect is here just at the
other extreme, may be applied to the finite _Will._ In this theory
interests, objects, intentions, and conclusions are all relegated to
the subject, whose will it is to enforce them as against the existence
and properties of the material thing. This it can only do by the
annihilation of the object itself, or at least, in so far as it can
modify or change its form and energies, by transmuting its qualities,
or permitting them to exercise such a change on each other, as water
may exercise on fire, fire on iron, iron on wood, and so forth. We now
find that it is the particular things, which the subject has enrolled
in its service, as things to be regarded and treated as _useful_,
which in their turn have been deprived of their self-subsistence.
In other words, they have come to be regarded as objects, whose
notion and meaning is not their own, but derived from the reflecting
consciousness, so that what is most essential to them is precisely this
relation of service in which they stand to the subjective purpose, that
is, our own intelligence. The values of either side of the relation
are thus completely reversed. The objective thing has lost freedom and
the conscious subject secured it. As a matter of fact, the freedom
on _both_ aspects of the relation is, owing to the finitude and
abstraction it implies under such a view, a purely supposititious one.
In the sphere of _theory_ here it is the assumed independence of the
objective world which creates the finitude and bondage of the conscious
Ego. In that of the practical world this dependence is due to its
one-sidedness, the conflict and contradiction of its aims within and
the impulses and passions which press from without, no less than to
the unreconciled opposition of a world of objects. For the separation
and opposition of these two aspects of one whole, that is, objects
and relating self-conscious life, is presupposed in, and indeed is an
accurate definition of, this point of view.
And, similarly, with reference to the lack of freedom in the object.
Here, too, in the sphere of intelligible conception, the independence
of the object is assumed, but the freedom assumed is only apparent. For
it is only posited as bare objectivity without securing the presence
of its notion, as the unity and universality of the conscious subject,
within such objectivity. It still remains outside it. Every object thus
placed external to the notion merely exists as particularity, which
comes back to us in external guise together with its manifold, and
is, in all the unlimited scope of its relations, through its contact
with other objects, subject to the conditions of its origin, change,
opposing force and final overthrow. In the _practical_ world the
dependence of the object is expressly, in this view, assumed, and the
opposition of the thing is posited in definite relation to volition
without possessing in itself the power of ultimate self-subsistency
permitted to the latter.
(_c_) The apprehension of the object as _beautiful_ unites these two
abstract points of view. It in fact annuls the one-sidedness of both
whether relatively to the subject of consciousness or its object, and
by doing so cancels the finitude and lack of freedom which characterize
them.
Philosophically regarded[199], the reason is this, that the object is
not apprehended in its existence as an isolated thing whose notion
as the object of human thought is removed from the objectivity which
belongs to it as something outside it, and which in its particular
reality extends and is dissipated in every conceivable direction
as a manifold content of intelligible relations. An object which
is beautiful suffers its own notion to appear as realized in its
objective presence, and reveals in that appearance the unity and life
inseparable from the conscious subject. For this reason the object may
be conceived as sweeping back into the curve of its unity that impulse
of continuous externality, cancelling its dependence on other objects,
and transmuting to our vision its unfree finitude into free infinity.
Furthermore, the Ego in its relation to the object of beauty ceases
to be merely the abstract attention or sensuous perception, and the
floating away of such perceptions into equally abstract reflections.
Rather, it is itself concretely realized in this object, being at once
the unity and reality of its notional idea, and uniting for itself
in its rounded concreteness that which has hitherto remained, as
abstractly perceived, apart in the Ego of the subject of perception and
the thing perceived.
Coming now to the practical import of this relation as it applies to
the object of beauty, we have already drawn attention to the fact at
some length, that in the contemplation of it the element of sensuous
passion drops away. All personal impulse that the individual may
feel toward the object is done away with through that very aesthetic
contemplation, which regards it as self-subsistent in itself, in other
words, its own object. For this reason, the purely finite relation
of the object also disappears, the relation, that is, in which it
subserved, as a means for their realization, aims which were foreign
to it, and towards the fulfilment of which it was either presented
as unfree or was compelled to take up, however strange, into its
own existence. At the same time that relation of the Ego in the
practical world which we found to be unfree disappears, inasmuch as it
differentiates itself no longer in subjective motives and their means
or material, remaining fixed in the finite relation of the formal
"ought" for the carrying out of its subjective ends in the object, but
is here confronted with the notion and its aim completely realized.
We may say, then, that the aesthetic contemplation of the beautiful is
a liberal education, a portrayal of the object in its free and infinite
being, with no detracting consideration of its use or employment
for finite wants and purposes. Further, the _object_ as a _thing of
beauty_ is neither under force or compulsion at our hands, nor is it
in conflict with and overcome by other things outside it. It is of the
essence of beauty that the notion, end and soul thereof, no less than
its existent form, and variety generally, manifest themselves out of
their own intrinsic wealth rather than through the energy of something
outside them. The reason of this lies in the fact, already insisted
upon, that their truth consists solely in the unity and harmony of
their notion with their objective existence. And inasmuch as the notion
is itself concrete totality, its objective reality also appears as
a manifestation of the same, homogeneous in all its parts, which,
as thus imbedded in the notion, appear to fall into such ideal unity
and animation. For this harmony of the notion and its envisagement is
nothing less than perfected suffusion[200]. Accordingly the exterior
form and shape is manifested, not as such by its separation from other
material, or as an impression mechanically related to aims which
are foreign to it, but as the form of reality wherein the notion
accommodates itself out of its own stuff and substance. Finally,
however much the particular aspects, parts or articulations of the
beautiful object are presented in the ideal unity of the notion and
its unified envisagement, that harmony must be so rendered visible to
sense, that in relation to one another they preserve the semblance of
self-subsistent freedom; in other words they must not only possess the
ideal unity of the _notion as such_, but must reflect back the side
of a reality which is substantially objective also. Both aspects, in
short, must be present in beautiful objects; for these are, on the
one hand, the _necessity_ posited through the notion and discovered
in the harmonious conclusion of these particular aspects, and on the
other, the envisagement of their freedom as essentially one with the
whole, and _not merely_ that of the _unity_ which exists between the
parts. Necessity in its full definition means the just relation of
the two aspects, which coalesce so completely that to posit one is to
posit the other. Such a necessity must unquestionably be present in
beautiful objects. It is not, however, under the mode of necessity that
it appears; rather it should conceal itself beneath the semblance of
unintentional accident. Otherwise the particular parts of such a real
presence lose the position they should occupy according to their own
real existence, and only appear in the service of their ideal unity, to
which they therefore remain in abstract subordination.
In virtue of the freedom and infinitude above analysed, which is
inherent in the notion of beauty, whether we view it in its objective
presence as a thing of beauty, or under its aesthetic contemplation, we
disengage the province of the beautiful from the relations of finite
condition, to exalt it into that of the Idea and its truth.
[Footnote 188: This is, of course, a note of Hegel himself.]
[Footnote 189: This, of course, has reference to Hegel's unfortunate
belief in Goethe's theory of colour.]
[Footnote 190: Mediated (_vermittelt_), because the concrete is first
apprehended through its differences, and only after reflection do we
arrive at the notional unity which transcends and unites them.]
[Footnote 191: _Momente._ Phases asserted and reconciled in the evolved
notional unity, organic or otherwise. The notion is subjective because
it is an ideal unity.]
[Footnote 192: The text is clearly corrupt. The full-stop after
_herzustellen_ should be a comma, and _auch_ would be preferably
changed to _als die._]
[Footnote 193: As essentially reason.]
[Footnote 194: Not the substantive, but past participle.]
[Footnote 195: _Das sinnliche Scheinen._]
[Footnote 196: _Verstand_ in the technical sense of Kant's philosophy;
that is, the faculty of scientific observation or ordinary
perception--analytical, in contrast to reason (_Vernunft_), the
synthetic faculty.]
[Footnote 197: Infinite, that is to say, as human freedom is infinite,
as mind is infinite, an ideal totality, a whole complete in itself, not
an endless progress, which is a contradiction.]
[Footnote 198: Or, as Hegel says, "by suppressing the subjective
principle altogether."]
[Footnote 199: _Theoretischen_ here used in sense of true philosophical
theory, not one-sided views as above.]
[Footnote 200: _Vollendete Durchdringung_, _i.e._, a penetration
through all parts.]