The connection between science and art—The mendacious sciences; the
trivial sciences—Science should deal with the great problems of human
life, and serve as a basis for art 200
APPENDICES
Appendix I 215
Appendix II 218
Appendix III 226
Appendix IV 232
What is Art?
Take up any one of our ordinary newspapers, and you will find a part
devoted to the theatre and music. In almost every number you will find a
description of some art exhibition, or of some particular picture, and
you will always find reviews of new works of art that have appeared, of
volumes of poems, of short stories, or of novels.
Promptly, and in detail, as soon as it has occurred, an account is
published of how such and such an actress or actor played this or that
rôle in such and such a drama, comedy, or opera; and of the merits of
the performance, as well as of the contents of the new drama, comedy, or
opera, with its defects and merits. With as much care and detail, or
even more, we are told how such and such an artist has sung a certain
piece, or has played it on the piano or violin, and what were the merits
and defects of the piece and of the performance. In every large town
there is sure to be at least one, if not more than one, exhibition of
new pictures, the merits and defects of which are discussed in the
utmost detail by critics and connoisseurs.
New novels and poems, in separate volumes or in the magazines, appear
almost every day, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give
their readers detailed accounts of these artistic productions.
For the support of art in Russia (where for the education of the people
only a hundredth part is spent of what would be required to give
everyone the opportunity of instruction) the Government grants millions
of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatoires and theatres. In
France twenty million francs are assigned for art, and similar grants
are made in Germany and England.
In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums,
academies, conservatoires, dramatic schools, and for performances and
concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen,—carpenters, masons,
painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers,
moulders, type-setters,—spend their whole lives in hard labour to
satisfy the demands of art, so that hardly any other department of human
activity, except the military, consumes so much energy as this.
Not only is enormous labour spent on this activity, but in it, as in
war, the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of
people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their legs
rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly
(musicians), or to draw with paint and represent what they see
(artists), or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme to every
word. And these people, often very kind and clever, and capable of all
sorts of useful labour, grow savage over their specialised and
stupefying occupations, and become one-sided and self-complacent
specialists, dull to all the serious phenomena of life, and skilful only
at rapidly twisting their legs, their tongues, or their fingers.
But even this stunting of human life is not the worst. I remember being
once at the rehearsal of one of the most ordinary of the new operas
which are produced at all the opera houses of Europe and America.
I arrived when the first act had already commenced. To reach the
auditorium I had to pass through the stage entrance. By dark entrances
and passages, I was led through the vaults of an enormous building past
immense machines for changing the scenery and for illuminating; and
there in the gloom and dust I saw workmen busily engaged. One of these
men, pale, haggard, in a dirty blouse, with dirty, work-worn hands and
cramped fingers, evidently tired and out of humour, went past me,
angrily scolding another man. Ascending by a dark stair, I came out on
the boards behind the scenes. Amid various poles and rings and scattered
scenery, decorations and curtains, stood and moved dozens, if not
hundreds, of painted and dressed-up men, in costumes fitting tight to
their thighs and calves, and also women, as usual, as nearly nude as
might be. These were all singers, or members of the chorus, or
ballet-dancers, awaiting their turns. My guide led me across the stage
and, by means of a bridge of boards, across the orchestra (in which
perhaps a hundred musicians of all kinds, from kettle-drum to flute and
harp, were seated), to the dark pit-stalls.
On an elevation, between two lamps with reflectors, and in an arm-chair
placed before a music-stand, sat the director of the musical part,
_bâton_ in hand, managing the orchestra and singers, and, in general,
the production of the whole opera.
The performance had already commenced, and on the stage a procession of
Indians who had brought home a bride was being represented. Besides men
and women in costume, two other men in ordinary clothes bustled and ran
about on the stage; one was the director of the dramatic part, and the
other, who stepped about in soft shoes and ran from place to place with
unusual agility, was the dancing-master, whose salary per month exceeded
what ten labourers earn in a year.
These three directors arranged the singing, the orchestra, and the
procession. The procession, as usual, was enacted by couples, with
tinfoil halberds on their shoulders. They all came from one place, and
walked round and round again, and then stopped. The procession took a
long time to arrange: first the Indians with halberds came on too late;
then too soon; then at the right time, but crowded together at the exit;
then they did not crowd, but arranged themselves badly at the sides of
the stage; and each time the whole performance was stopped and
recommenced from the beginning. The procession was introduced by a
recitative, delivered by a man dressed up like some variety of Turk,
who, opening his mouth in a curious way, sang, “Home I bring the
bri-i-ide.” He sings and waves his arm (which is of course bare) from
under his mantle. The procession commences, but here the French horn, in
the accompaniment of the recitative, does something wrong; and the
director, with a shudder as if some catastrophe had occurred, raps with
his stick on the stand. All is stopped, and the director, turning to the
orchestra, attacks the French horn, scolding him in the rudest terms, as
cabmen abuse each other, for taking the wrong note. And again the whole
thing recommences. The Indians with their halberds again come on,
treading softly in their extraordinary boots; again the singer sings,
“Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” But here the pairs get too close together.
More raps with the stick, more scolding, and a recommencement. Again,
“Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” again the same gesticulation with the bare
arm from under the mantle, and again the couples, treading softly with
halberds on their shoulders, some with sad and serious faces, some
talking and smiling, arrange themselves in a circle and begin to sing.
All seems to be going well, but again the stick raps, and the director,
in a distressed and angry voice, begins to scold the men and women of
the chorus. It appears that when singing they had omitted to raise their
hands from time to time in sign of animation. “Are you all dead, or
what? Cows that you are! Are you corpses, that you can’t move?” Again
they re-commence, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” and again, with
sorrowful faces, the chorus women sing, first one and then another of
them raising their hands. But two chorus-girls speak to each
other,—again a more vehement rapping with the stick. “Have you come here
to talk? Can’t you gossip at home? You there in red breeches, come
nearer. Look towards me! Recommence!” Again, “Home I bring the
bri-i-ide.” And so it goes on for one, two, three hours. The whole of
such a rehearsal lasts six hours on end. Raps with the stick,
repetitions, placings, corrections of the singers, of the orchestra, of
the procession, of the dancers,—all seasoned with angry scolding. I
heard the words, “asses,” “fools,” “idiots,” “swine,” addressed to the
musicians and singers at least forty times in the course of one hour.
And the unhappy individual to whom the abuse is addressed,—flautist,
horn-blower, or singer,—physically and mentally demoralised, does not
reply, and does what is demanded of him. Twenty times is repeated the
one phrase, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide,” and twenty times the striding
about in yellow shoes with a halberd over the shoulder. The conductor
knows that these people are so demoralised that they are no longer fit
for anything but to blow trumpets and walk about with halberds and in
yellow shoes, and that they are also accustomed to dainty, easy living,
so that they will put up with anything rather than lose their luxurious
life. He therefore gives free vent to his churlishness, especially as he
has seen the same thing done in Paris and Vienna, and knows that this is
the way the best conductors behave, and that it is a musical tradition
of great artists to be so carried away by the great business of their
art that they cannot pause to consider the feelings of other artists.
It would be difficult to find a more repulsive sight. I have seen one
workman abuse another for not supporting the weight piled upon him when
goods were being unloaded, or, at hay-stacking, the village elder scold
a peasant for not making the rick right, and the man submitted in
silence. And, however unpleasant it was to witness the scene, the
unpleasantness was lessened by the consciousness that the business in
hand was needful and important, and that the fault for which the
head-man scolded the labourer was one which might spoil a needful
undertaking.
But what was being done here? For what, and for whom? Very likely the
conductor was tired out, like the workman I passed in the vaults; it was
even evident that he was; but who made him tire himself? And for what
was he tiring himself? The opera he was rehearsing was one of the most
ordinary of operas for people who are accustomed to them, but also one
of the most gigantic absurdities that could possibly be devised. An
Indian king wants to marry; they bring him a bride; he disguises himself
as a minstrel; the bride falls in love with the minstrel and is in
despair, but afterwards discovers that the minstrel is the king, and
everyone is highly delighted.
That there never were, or could be, such Indians, and that they were not
only unlike Indians, but that what they were doing was unlike anything
on earth except other operas, was beyond all manner of doubt; that
people do not converse in such a way as recitative, and do not place
themselves at fixed distances, in a quartet, waving their arms to
express their emotions; that nowhere, except in theatres, do people walk
about in such a manner, in pairs, with tinfoil halberds and in slippers;
that no one ever gets angry in such a way, or is affected in such a way,
or laughs in such a way, or cries in such a way; and that no one on
earth can be moved by such performances; all this is beyond the
possibility of doubt.
Instinctively the question presents itself—For whom is this being done?
Whom _can_ it please? If there are, occasionally, good melodies in the
opera, to which it is pleasant to listen, they could have been sung
simply, without these stupid costumes and all the processions and
recitatives and hand-wavings.
The ballet, in which half-naked women make voluptuous movements,
twisting themselves into various sensual wreathings, is simply a lewd
performance.
So one is quite at a loss as to whom these things are done for. The man
of culture is heartily sick of them, while to a real working man they
are utterly incomprehensible. If anyone can be pleased by these things
(which is doubtful), it can only be some young footman or depraved
artisan, who has contracted the spirit of the upper classes but is not
yet satiated with their amusements, and wishes to show his breeding.
And all this nasty folly is prepared, not simply, nor with kindly
merriment, but with anger and brutal cruelty.
It is said that it is all done for the sake of art, and that art is a
very important thing. But is it true that art is so important that such
sacrifices should be made for its sake? This question is especially
urgent, because art, for the sake of which the labour of millions, the
lives of men, and above all, love between man and man, are being
sacrificed,—this very art is becoming something more and more vague and
uncertain to human perception.
Criticism, in which the lovers of art used to find support for their
opinions, has latterly become so self-contradictory, that, if we exclude
from the domain of art all that to which the critics of various schools
themselves deny the title, there is scarcely any art left.
The artists of various sects, like the theologians of the various sects,
mutually exclude and destroy themselves. Listen to the artists of the
schools of our times, and you will find, in all branches, each set of
artists disowning others. In poetry the old romanticists deny the
parnassians and the decadents; the parnassians disown the romanticists
and the decadents; the decadents disown all their predecessors and the
symbolists; the symbolists disown all their predecessors and _les
mages_; and _les mages_ disown all, all their predecessors. Among
novelists we have naturalists, psychologists, and “nature-ists,” all
rejecting each other. And it is the same in dramatic art, in painting
and in music. So that art, which demands such tremendous
labour-sacrifices from the people, which stunts human lives and
transgresses against human love, is not only _not_ a thing clearly and
firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory ways by its own
devotees that it is difficult to say what is meant by art, and
especially what is good, useful art,—art for the sake of which we might
condone such sacrifices as are being offered at its shrine.
CHAPTER II
For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition,
picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and unwilling labour of
thousands and thousands of people is needed at what is often harmful and
humiliating work. It were well if artists made all they require for
themselves, but, as it is, they all need the help of workmen, not only
to produce art, but also for their own usually luxurious maintenance.
And, one way or other, they get it; either through payments from rich
people, or through subsidies given by Government (in Russia, for
instance, in grants of millions of roubles to theatres, conservatoires
and academies). This money is collected from the people, some of whom
have to sell their only cow to pay the tax, and who never get those
æsthetic pleasures which art gives.
It was all very well for a Greek or Roman artist, or even for a Russian
artist of the first half of our century (when there were still slaves,
and it was considered right that there should be), with a quiet mind to
make people serve him and his art; but in our day, when in all men there
is at least some dim perception of the equal rights of all, it is
impossible to constrain people to labour unwillingly for art, without
first deciding the question whether it is true that art is so good and
so important an affair as to redeem this evil.
If not, we have the terrible probability to consider, that while fearful
sacrifices of the labour and lives of men, and of morality itself, are
being made to art, that same art may be not only useless but even
harmful.
And therefore it is necessary for a society in which works of art arise
and are supported, to find out whether all that professes to be art is
really art; whether (as is presupposed in our society) all that which is
art is good; and whether it is important and worth those sacrifices
which it necessitates. It is still more necessary for every
conscientious artist to know this, that he may be sure that all he does
has a valid meaning; that it is not merely an infatuation of the small
circle of people among whom he lives which excites in him the false
assurance that he is doing a good work; and that what he takes from
others for the support of his often very luxurious life, will be
compensated for by those productions at which he works. And that is why
answers to the above questions are especially important in our time.
What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for
humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labour, of human life,
and even of goodness may be made?
“What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture, painting,
music, and poetry in all its forms,” usually replies the ordinary man,
the art amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining the matter about
which he is talking to be perfectly clear, and uniformly understood by
everybody. But in architecture, one inquires further, are there not
simple buildings which are not objects of art, and buildings with
artistic pretensions which are unsuccessful and ugly and therefore
cannot be considered as works of art? wherein lies the characteristic
sign of a work of art?
It is the same in sculpture, in music, and in poetry. Art, in all its
forms, is bounded on one side by the practically useful and on the other
by unsuccessful attempts at art. How is art to be marked off from each
of these? The ordinary educated man of our circle, and even the artist
who has not occupied himself especially with æsthetics, will not
hesitate at this question either. He thinks the solution has been found
long ago, and is well known to everyone.
“Art is such activity as produces beauty,” says such a man.
If art consists in that, then is a ballet or an operetta art? you
inquire.
“Yes,” says the ordinary man, though with some hesitation, “a good
ballet or a graceful operetta is also art, in so far as it manifests
beauty.”
But without even asking the ordinary man what differentiates the “good”
ballet and the “graceful” operetta from their opposites (a question he
would have much difficulty in answering), if you ask him whether the
activity of costumiers and hairdressers, who ornament the figures and
faces of the women for the ballet and the operetta, is art; or the
activity of Worth, the dressmaker; of scent-makers and men-cooks, then
he will, in most cases, deny that their activity belongs to the sphere
of art. But in this the ordinary man makes a mistake, just because he is
an ordinary man and not a specialist, and because he has not occupied
himself with æsthetic questions. Had he looked into these matters, he
would have seen in the great Renan’s book, _Marc Aurele_, a dissertation
showing that the tailor’s work is art, and that those who do not see in
the adornment of woman an affair of the highest art are very
small-minded and dull. “_C’est le grand art_” says Renan. Moreover, he
would have known that in many æsthetic systems—for instance, in the
æsthetics of the learned Professor Kralik, _Weltschönheit_, _Versuch
einer allgemeinen Æsthetik_, _von Richard Kralik_, and in _Les problèmes
de l’Esthétique Contemporaine_, by Guyau—the arts of costume, of taste,
and of touch are included.
“_Es Folgt nun ein Fünfblatt von Künsten, die der subjectiven
Sinnlichkeit entkeimen_” (There results then a pentafoliate of arts,
growing out of the subjective perceptions), says Kralik (p. 175). “_Sie
sind die ästhetische Behandlung der fünf Sinne._” (They are the æsthetic
treatment of the five senses.)
These five arts are the following:—
_Die Kunst des Geschmacksinns_—The art of the sense of taste (p. 175).
_Die Kunst des Geruchsinns_—The art of the sense of smell (p. 177).
_Die Kunst des Tastsinns_—The art of the sense of touch (p. 180).
_Die Kunst des Gehörsinns_—The art of the sense of hearing (p. 182).
_Die Kunst des Gesichtsinns_—The art of the sense of sight (p. 184).
Of the first of these—_die Kunst des Geschmacksinns_—he says: “_Man hält
zwar gewöhnlich nur zwei oder höchstens drei Sinne für würdig, den Stoff
künstlerischer Behandlung abzugeben, aber ich glaube nur mit bedingtem
Recht. Ich will kein allzugrosses Gewicht darauf legen, dass der gemeine
Sprachgebrauch manch andere Künste, wie zum Beispiel die Kochkunst
kennt._”[4]
And further: “_Und es ist doch gewiss eine ästhetische Leistung, wenn es
der Kochkunst gelingt aus einem thierischen Kadaver einen Gegenstand des
Geschmacks in jedem Sinne zu machen. Der Grundsatz der Kunst des
Geschmacksinns (die weiter ist als die sogenannte Kochkunst) ist also
dieser: Es soll alles Geniessbare als Sinnbild einer Idee behandelt
werden und in jedesmaligem Einklang zur auszudrückenden Idee._”[5]
This author, like Renan, acknowledges a _Kostümkunst_ (Art of Costume)
(p. 200), etc.
Such is also the opinion of the French writer, Guyau, who is highly
esteemed by some authors of our day. In his book, _Les problèmes de
l’esthétique contemporaine_, he speaks seriously of touch, taste, and
smell as giving, or being capable of giving, aesthetic impressions: “_Si
la couleur manque au toucher, il nous fournit en revanche une notion que
l’œil seul ne peut nous donner, et qui a une valeur esthétique
considérable, celle du doux, du soyeux du poli. Ce qui caractérise la
beauté du velours, c’est sa douceur au toucher non moins que son
brillant. Dans l’idée que nous nous faisons de la beauté d’une femme, le
velouté de sa peau entre comme élément essentiel._”
“_Chacun de nous probablement avec un peu d’attention se rappellera des
jouissances du goût, qui out été de véritables jouissances
esthétiques._”[6] And he recounts how a glass of milk drunk by him in
the mountains gave him æsthetic enjoyment.
So it turns out that the conception of art as consisting in making
beauty manifest is not at all so simple as it seemed, especially now,
when in this conception of beauty are included our sensations of touch
and taste and smell, as they are by the latest æsthetic writers.
But the ordinary man either does not know, or does not wish to know, all
this, and is firmly convinced that all questions about art may be simply
and clearly solved by acknowledging beauty to be the subject-matter of
art. To him it seems clear and comprehensible that art consists in
manifesting beauty, and that a reference to beauty will serve to explain
all questions about art.
But what is this beauty which forms the subject-matter of art? How is it
defined? What is it?
As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception
conveyed by a word, with the more _aplomb_ and self-assurance do people
use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so simple and
clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it actually means.
This is how matters of orthodox religion are usually dealt with, and
this is how people now deal with the conception of beauty. It is taken
for granted that what is meant by the word beauty is known and
understood by everyone. And yet not only is this not known, but, after
whole mountains of books have been written on the subject by the most
learned and profound thinkers during one hundred and fifty years (ever
since Baumgarten founded æsthetics in the year 1750), the question, What
is beauty? remains to this day quite unsolved, and in each new work on
æsthetics it is answered in a new way. One of the last books I read on
æsthetics is a not ill-written booklet by Julius Mithalter, called
_Rätsel des Schönen_ (The Enigma of the Beautiful). And that title
precisely expresses the position of the question, What is beauty? After
thousands of learned men have discussed it during one hundred and fifty
years, the meaning of the word beauty remains an enigma still. The
Germans answer the question in their manner, though in a hundred
different ways. The physiologist-æstheticians, especially the
Englishmen: Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen and his school, answer it, each
in his own way; the French eclectics, and the followers of Guyau and
Taine, also each in his own way; and all these people know all the
preceding solutions given by Baumgarten, and Kant, and Schelling, and
Schiller, and Fichte, and Winckelmann, and Lessing, and Hegel, and
Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, and Schasler, and Cousin, and Lévêque and
others.
What is this strange conception “beauty,” which seems so simple to those
who talk without thinking, but in defining which all the philosophers of
various tendencies and different nationalities can come to no agreement
during a century and a half? What is this conception of beauty, on which
the dominant doctrine of art rests?
In Russian, by the word _krasota_ (beauty) we mean only that which
pleases the sight. And though latterly people have begun to speak of “an
ugly deed,” or of “beautiful music,” it is not good Russian.
A Russian of the common folk, not knowing foreign languages, will not
understand you if you tell him that a man who has given his last coat to
another, or done anything similar, has acted “beautifully,” that a man
who has cheated another has done an “ugly” action, or that a song is
“beautiful.”
In Russian a deed may be kind and good, or unkind and bad. Music may be
pleasant and good, or unpleasant and bad; but there can be no such thing
as “beautiful” or “ugly” music.
Beautiful may relate to a man, a horse, a house, a view, or a movement.
Of actions, thoughts, character, or music, if they please us, we may say
that they are good, or, if they do not please us, that they are not
good. But beautiful can be used only concerning that which pleases the
sight. So that the word and conception “good” includes the conception of
“beautiful,” but the reverse is not the case; the conception “beauty”
does not include the conception “good.” If we say “good” of an article
which we value for its appearance, we thereby say that the article is
beautiful; but if we say it is “beautiful,” it does not at all mean that
the article is a good one.
Such is the meaning ascribed by the Russian language, and therefore by
the sense of the people, to the words and conceptions “good” and
“beautiful.”
In all the European languages, _i.e._ the languages of those nations
among whom the doctrine has spread that beauty is the essential thing in
art, the words “beau,” “schön,” “beautiful,” “bello,” etc., while
keeping their meaning of beautiful in form, have come to also express
“goodness,” “kindness,” _i.e._ have come to act as substitutes for the
word “good.”
So that it has become quite natural in those languages to use such
expressions as “belle ame,” “schöne Gedanken,” of “beautiful deed.”
Those languages no longer have a suitable word wherewith expressly to
indicate beauty of form, and have to use a combination of words such as
“beau par la forme,” “beautiful to look at,” etc., to convey that idea.
Observation of the divergent meanings which the words “beauty” and
“beautiful” have in Russian on the one hand, and in those European
languages now permeated by this æsthetic theory on the other hand, shows
us that the word “beauty” has, among the latter, acquired a special
meaning, namely, that of “good.”
What is remarkable, moreover, is that since we Russians have begun more
and more to adopt the European view of art, the same evolution has begun
to show itself in our language also, and some people speak and write
quite confidently, and without causing surprise, of beautiful music and
ugly actions, or even thoughts; whereas forty years ago, when I was
young, the expressions “beautiful music” and “ugly actions” were not
only unusual but incomprehensible. Evidently this new meaning given to
beauty by European thought begins to be assimilated by Russian society.
And what really is this meaning? What is this “beauty” as it is
understood by the European peoples?
In order to answer this question, I must here quote at least a small
selection of those definitions of beauty most generally adopted in
existing æsthetic systems. I especially beg the reader not to be
overcome by dulness, but to read these extracts through, or, still
better, to read some one of the erudite æsthetic authors. Not to mention
the voluminous German æstheticians, a very good book for this purpose
would be either the German book by Kralik, the English work by Knight,
or the French one by Lévêque. It is necessary to read one of the learned
æsthetic writers in order to form at first-hand a conception of the
variety in opinion and the frightful obscurity which reigns in this
region of speculation; not, in this important matter, trusting to
another’s report.
This, for instance, is what the German æsthetician Schasler says in the
preface to his famous, voluminous, and detailed work on æsthetics:—
“Hardly in any sphere of philosophic science can we find such divergent
methods of investigation and exposition, amounting even to
self-contradiction, as in the sphere of æsthetics. On the one hand we
have elegant phraseology without any substance, characterised in great
part by most one-sided superficiality; and on the other hand,
accompanying undeniable profundity of investigation and richness of
subject-matter, we get a revolting awkwardness of philosophic
terminology, enfolding the simplest thoughts in an apparel of abstract
science as though to render them worthy to enter the consecrated palace
of the system; and finally, between these two methods of investigation
and exposition, there is a third, forming, as it were, the transition
from one to the other, a method consisting of eclecticism, now flaunting
an elegant phraseology and now a pedantic erudition.... A style of
exposition that falls into none of these three defects but it is truly
concrete, and, having important matter, expresses it in clear and
popular philosophic language, can nowhere be found less frequently than
in the domain of æsthetics.”[7]
It is only necessary, for instance, to read Schasler’s own book to
convince oneself of the justice of this observation of his.
On the same subject the French writer Véron, in the preface to his very
good work on æsthetics, says, “_Il n’y a pas de science, qui ait été
plus que l’esthétique livrée aux rêveries des métaphysiciens. Depuis
Platon jusqu’ aux doctrines officielles de nos jours, on a fait de l’art
je ne sais quel amalgame de fantaisies quintessenciées, et de mystères
transcendantaux qui trouvent leur expression suprême dans la conception
absolue du Beau idéal, prototype immuable et divin des choses réelles_”
(_L’esthétique_, 1878, p. 5).[8]
If the reader will only be at the pains to peruse the following
extracts, defining beauty, taken from the chief writers on æsthetics, he
may convince himself that this censure is thoroughly deserved.
I shall not quote the definitions of beauty attributed to the
ancients,—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., down to Plotinus,—because,
in reality, the ancients had not that conception of beauty separated
from goodness which forms the basis and aim of æsthetics in our time. By
referring the judgments of the ancients on beauty to our conception of
it, as is usually done in æsthetics, we give the words of the ancients a
meaning which is not theirs.[9]
Footnote 4:
Only two, or at most three, senses are generally held worthy to supply
matter for artistic treatment, but I think this opinion is only
conditionally correct. I will not lay too much stress on the fact that
our common speech recognises many other arts, as, for instance, the
art of cookery.
Footnote 5:
And yet it is certainly an æsthetic achievement when the art of
cooking succeeds in making of an animal’s corpse an object in all
respects tasteful. The principle of the Art of Taste (which goes
beyond the so-called Art of Cookery) is therefore this: All that is
eatable should be treated as the symbol of some Idea, and always in
harmony with the Idea to be expressed.
Footnote 6:
If the sense of touch lacks colour, it gives us, on the other hand, a
notion which the eye alone cannot afford, and one of considerable
æsthetic value, namely, that of _softness_, _silkiness_, _polish_. The
beauty of velvet is characterised not less by its softness to the
touch than by its lustre. In the idea we form of a woman’s beauty, the
softness of her skin enters as an essential element.
Each of us probably, with a little attention, can recall pleasures of
taste which have been real æsthetic pleasures.
Footnote 7:
M. Schasler, _Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik_, 1872, vol. i. p.
13.
Footnote 8:
There is no science which more than æsthetics has been handed over to
the reveries of the metaphysicians. From Plato down to the received
doctrines of our day, people have made of art a strange amalgam of
quintessential fancies and transcendental mysteries, which find their
supreme expression in the conception of an absolute ideal Beauty,
immutable and divine prototype of actual things.
Footnote 9:
See on this matter Benard’s admirable book, _L’esthétique d’Aristote_,
also Walter’s _Geschichte der Aesthetik im Altertum_.
CHAPTER III
I begin with the founder of æsthetics, Baumgarten (1714-1762).
According to Baumgarten,[10] the object of logical knowledge is Truth,
the object of æsthetic (_i.e._ sensuous) knowledge is Beauty. Beauty is
the Perfect (the Absolute), recognised through the senses; Truth is the
Perfect perceived through reason; Goodness is the Perfect reached by
moral will.
Beauty is defined by Baumgarten as a correspondence, _i.e._ an order of
the parts in their mutual relations to each other and in their relation
to the whole. The aim of beauty itself is to please and excite a desire,
“_Wohlgefallen und Erregung eines Verlangens._” (A position precisely
the opposite of Kant’s definition of the nature and sign of beauty.)
With reference to the manifestations of beauty, Baumgarten considers
that the highest embodiment of beauty is seen by us in nature, and he
therefore thinks that the highest aim of art is to copy nature. (This
position also is directly contradicted by the conclusions of the latest
æstheticians.)
Passing over the unimportant followers of Baumgarten,—Maier, Eschenburg,
and Eberhard,—who only slightly modified the doctrine of their teacher
by dividing the pleasant from the beautiful, I will quote the
definitions given by writers who came immediately after Baumgarten, and
defined beauty quite in another way. These writers were Sulzer,
Mendelssohn, and Moritz. They, in contradiction to Baumgarten’s main
position, recognise as the aim of art, not beauty, but goodness. Thus
Sulzer (1720-1777) says that only that can be considered beautiful which
contains goodness. According to his theory, the aim of the whole life of
humanity is welfare in social life. This is attained by the education of
the moral feelings, to which end art should be subservient. Beauty is
that which evokes and educates this feeling.
Beauty is understood almost in the same way by Mendelssohn (1729-1786).
According to him, art is the carrying forward of the beautiful,
obscurely recognised by feeling, till it becomes the true and good. The
aim of art is moral perfection.[11]
For the æstheticians of this school, the ideal of beauty is a beautiful
soul in a beautiful body. So that these æstheticians completely wipe out
Baumgarten’s division of the Perfect (the Absolute), into the three
forms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; and Beauty is again united with
the Good and the True.
But this conception is not only not maintained by the later
æstheticians, but the æsthetic doctrine of Winckelmann arises, again in
complete opposition. This divides the mission of art from the aim of
goodness in the sharpest and most positive manner, makes external beauty
the aim of art, and even limits it to visible beauty.
According to the celebrated work of Winckelmann (1717-1767), the law and
aim of all art is beauty only, beauty quite separated from and
independent of goodness. There are three kinds of beauty:—(1) beauty of
form, (2) beauty of idea, expressing itself in the position of the
figure (in plastic art), (3) beauty of expression, attainable only when
the two first conditions are present. This beauty of expression is the
highest aim of art, and is attained in antique art; modern art should
therefore aim at imitating ancient art.[12]
Art is similarly understood by Lessing, Herder, and afterwards by Goethe
and by all the distinguished æstheticians of Germany till Kant, from
whose day, again, a different conception of art commences.
Native æsthetic theories arose during this period in England, France,
Italy, and Holland, and they, though not taken from the German, were
equally cloudy and contradictory. And all these writers, just like the
German æstheticians, founded their theories on a conception of the
Beautiful, understanding beauty in the sense of a something existing
absolutely, and more or less intermingled with Goodness or having one
and the same root. In England, almost simultaneously with Baumgarten,
even a little earlier, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Hogarth, and
others, wrote on art.
According to Shaftesbury (1670-1713), “That which is beautiful is
harmonious and proportionable, what is harmonious and proportionable is
true, and what is at once both beautiful and true is of consequence
agreeable and good.”[13] Beauty, he taught, is recognised by the mind
only. God is fundamental beauty; beauty and goodness proceed from the
same fount.
So that, although Shaftesbury regards beauty as being something separate
from goodness, they again merge into something inseparable.
According to Hutcheson (1694-1747—“Inquiry into the Original of our
Ideas of Beauty and Virtue”), the aim of art is beauty, the essence of
which consists in evoking in us the perception of uniformity amid
variety. In the recognition of what is art we are guided by “an internal
sense.” This internal sense may be in contradiction to the ethical one.
So that, according to Hutcheson, beauty does not always correspond with
goodness, but separates from it and is sometimes contrary to it.[14]
According to Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), beauty is that which is
pleasant. Therefore beauty is defined by taste alone. The standard of
true taste is that the maximum of richness, fulness, strength, and
variety of impression should be contained in the narrowest limits. That
is the ideal of a perfect work of art.
According to Burke (1729-1797—“Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of
our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”), the sublime and beautiful,
which are the aim of art, have their origin in the promptings of
self-preservation and of society. These feelings, examined in their
source, are means for the maintenance of the race through the
individual. The first (self-preservation) is attained by nourishment,
defence, and war; the second (society) by intercourse and propagation.
Therefore self-defence, and war, which is bound up with it, is the
source of the sublime; sociability, and the sex-instinct, which is bound
up with it, is the source of beauty.[15]
Such were the chief English definitions of art and beauty in the
eighteenth century.
During that period, in France, the writers on art were Père André and
Batteux, with Diderot, D’Alembert, and, to some extent, Voltaire,
following later.
According to Père André (“Essai sur le Beau,” 1741), there are three
kinds of beauty—divine beauty, natural beauty, and artificial
beauty.[16]
According to Batteux (1713-1780), art consists in imitating the beauty
of nature, its aim being enjoyment.[17] Such is also Diderot’s
definition of art.
The French writers, like the English, consider that it is taste that
decides what is beautiful. And the laws of taste are not only not laid
down, but it is granted that they cannot be settled. The same view was
held by D’Alembert and Voltaire.[18]
According to the Italian æsthetician of that period, Pagano, art
consists in uniting the beauties’ dispersed in nature. The capacity to
perceive these beauties is taste, the capacity to bring them into one
whole is artistic genius. Beauty commingles with goodness, so that
beauty is goodness made visible, and goodness is inner beauty.[19]
According to the opinion of other Italians: Muratori
(1672-1750),—“_Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto intorno le science e le
arti_,”—and especially Spaletti,[20]—“_Saggio sopra la bellezza_”
(1765),—art amounts to an egotistical sensation, founded (as with Burke)
on the desire for self-preservation and society.
Among Dutch writers, Hemsterhuis (1720-1790), who had an influence on
the German æstheticians and on Goethe, is remarkable. According to him,
beauty is that which gives most pleasure, and that gives most pleasure
which gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time.
Enjoyment of the beautiful, because it gives the greatest quantity of
perceptions in the shortest time, is the highest notion to which man can
attain.[21]
Such were the æsthetic theories outside Germany during the last century.
In Germany, after Winckelmann, there again arose a completely new
æsthetic theory, that of Kant (1724-1804), which more than all others
clears up what this conception of beauty, and consequently of art,
really amounts to.
The æsthetic teaching of Kant is founded as follows:—Man has a knowledge
of nature outside him and of himself in nature. In nature, outside
himself, he seeks for truth; in himself he seeks for goodness. The first
is an affair of pure reason, the other of practical reason (free-will).
Besides these two means of perception, there is yet the judging capacity
(_Urteilskraft_), which forms judgments without reasonings and produces
pleasure without desire (_Urtheil ohne Begriff und Vergnügen ohne
Begehren_). This capacity is the basis of æsthetic feeling. Beauty,
according to Kant, in its subjective meaning is that which, in general
and necessarily, without reasonings and without practical advantage,
pleases. In its objective meaning it is the form of a suitable object in
so far as that object is perceived without any conception of its
utility.[22]
Beauty is defined in the same way by the followers of Kant, among whom
was Schiller (1759-1805). According to Schiller, who wrote much on
æsthetics, the aim of art is, as with Kant, beauty, the source of which
is pleasure without practical advantage. So that art may be called a
game, not in the sense of an unimportant occupation, but in the sense of
a manifestation of the beauties of life itself without other aim than
that of beauty.[23]
Besides Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant’s followers in the sphere
of æsthetics was Wilhelm Humboldt, who, though he added nothing to the
definition of beauty, explained various forms of it,—the drama, music,
the comic, etc.[24]
After Kant, besides the second-rate philosophers, the writers on
æsthetics were Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their followers. Fichte
(1762-1814) says that perception of the beautiful proceeds from this:
the world—_i.e._ nature—has two sides: it is the sum of our limitations,
and it is the sum of our free idealistic activity. In the first aspect
the world is limited, in the second aspect it is free. In the first
aspect every object is limited, distorted, compressed, confined—and we
see deformity; in the second we perceive its inner completeness,
vitality, regeneration—and we see beauty. So that the deformity or
beauty of an object, according to Fichte, depends on the point of view
of the observer. Beauty therefore exists, not in the world, but in the
beautiful soul (_schöner Geist_). Art is the manifestation of this
beautiful soul, and its aim is the education, not only of the mind—that
is the business of the _savant_; not only of the heart—that is the
affair of the moral preacher; but of the whole man. And so the
characteristic of beauty lies, not in anything external, but in the
presence of a beautiful soul in the artist.[25]
Following Fichte, and in the same direction, Friedrich Schlegel and Adam
Müller also defined beauty. According to Schlegel (1772—1829), beauty in
art is understood too incompletely, one-sidedly, and disconnectedly.
Beauty exists not only in art, but also in nature and in love; so that
the truly beautiful is expressed by the union of art, nature, and love.
Therefore, as inseparably one with aesthetic art, Schlegel acknowledges
moral and philosophic art.[26]
According to Adam Muller (1779-1829), there are two kinds of beauty; the
one, general beauty, which attracts people as the sun attracts the
planet—this is found chiefly in antique art—and the other, individual
beauty, which results from the observer himself becoming a sun
attracting beauty,—this is the beauty of modern art. A world in which
all contradictions are harmonised is the highest beauty. Every work of
art is a reproduction of this universal harmony.[27] The highest art is
the art of life.[28]
Next after Fichte and his followers came a contemporary of his, the
philosopher Schelling (1775-1854), who has had a great influence on the
æsthetic conceptions of our times. According to Schelling’s philosophy,
art is the production or result of that conception of things by which
the subject becomes its own object, or the object its own subject.
Beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite. And the chief
characteristic of works of art is unconscious infinity. Art is the
uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of
the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest
means of knowledge. Beauty is the contemplation of things in themselves
as they exist in the prototype (_In den Urbildern_). It is not the
artist who by his knowledge or skill produces the beautiful, but the
idea of beauty in him itself produces it.[29]
Of Schelling’s followers the most noticeable was Solger
(1780-1819—_Vorlesungen über Aesthetik_). According to him, the idea of
beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only
distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift
itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to
creation.[30]
According to another follower of Schelling, Krause (1781-1832), true,
positive beauty is the manifestation of the Idea in an individual form;
art is the actualisation of the beauty existing in the sphere of man’s
free spirit. The highest stage of art is the art of life, which directs
its activity towards the adornment of life so that it may be a beautiful
abode for a beautiful man.[31]
After Schelling and his followers came the new æsthetic doctrine of
Hegel, which is held to this day, consciously by many, but by the
majority unconsciously. This teaching is not only no clearer or better
defined than the preceding ones, but is, if possible, even more cloudy
and mystical.
According to Hegel (1770-1831), God manifests himself in nature and in
art in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in two ways: in the
object and in the subject, in nature and in spirit. Beauty is the
shining of the Idea through matter. Only the soul, and what pertains to
it, is truly beautiful; and therefore the beauty of nature is only the
reflection of the natural beauty of the spirit—the beautiful has only a
spiritual content. But the spiritual must appear in sensuous form. The
sensuous manifestation of spirit is only appearance (_schein_), and this
appearance is the only reality of the beautiful. Art is thus the
production of this appearance of the Idea, and is a means, together with
religion and philosophy, of bringing to consciousness and of expressing
the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the spirit.
Truth and beauty, according to Hegel, are one and the same thing; the
difference being only that truth is the Idea itself as it exists in
itself, and is thinkable. The Idea, manifested externally, becomes to
the apprehension not only true but beautiful. The beautiful is the
manifestation of the Idea.[32]
Following Hegel came his many adherents, Weisse, Arnold Ruge,
Rosenkrantz, Theodor Vischer and others.
According to Weisse (1801-1867), art is the introduction (_Einbildung_)
of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into external, dead,
indifferent matter, the perception of which latter apart from the beauty
brought into it presents the negation of all existence in itself
(_Negation alles Fürsichseins_).
In the idea of truth, Weisse explains, lies a contradiction between the
subjective and the objective sides of knowledge, in that an individual
_I_ discerns the Universal. This contradiction can be removed by a
conception that should unite into one the universal and the individual,
which fall asunder in our conceptions of truth. Such a conception would
be reconciled (_aufgehoben_) truth. Beauty is such a reconciled
truth.[33]
According to Ruge (1802-1880), a strict follower of Hegel, beauty is the
Idea expressing itself. The spirit, contemplating itself, either finds
itself expressed completely, and then that full expression of itself is
beauty; or incompletely, and then it feels the need to alter this
imperfect expression of itself, and becomes creative art.[34]
According to Vischer (1807-1887), beauty is the Idea in the form of a
finite phenomenon. The Idea itself is not indivisible, but forms a
system of ideas, which may be represented by ascending and descending
lines. The higher the idea the more beauty it contains; but even the
lowest contains beauty, because it forms an essential link of the
system. The highest form of the Idea is personality, and therefore the
highest art is that which has for its subject-matter the highest
personality.[35]
Such were the theories of the German æstheticians in the Hegelian
direction, but they did not monopolise æsthetic dissertations. In
Germany, side by side and simultaneously with the Hegelian theories,
there appeared theories of beauty not only independent of Hegel’s
position (that beauty is the manifestation of the Idea), but directly
contrary to this view, denying and ridiculing it. Such was the line
taken by Herbart and, more particularly, by Schopenhauer.
According to Herbart (1776-1841), there is not, and cannot be, any such
thing as beauty existing in itself. What does exist is only our opinion,
and it is necessary to find the base of this opinion (_Ästhetisches
Elementarurtheil_). Such bases are connected with our impressions. There
are certain relations which we term beautiful; and art consists in
finding these relations, which are simultaneous in painting, the plastic
art, and architecture, successive and simultaneous in music, and purely
successive in poetry. In contradiction to the former æstheticians,
Herbart holds that objects are often beautiful which express nothing at
all, as, for instance, the rainbow, which is beautiful for its lines and
colours, and not for its mythological connection with Iris or Noah’s
rainbow.[36]
Another opponent of Hegel was Schopenhauer, who denied Hegel’s whole
system, his æsthetics included.
According to Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Will objectivizes itself in the
world on various planes; and although the higher the plane on which it
is objectivized the more beautiful it is, yet each plane has its own
beauty. Renunciation of one’s individuality and contemplation of one of
these planes of manifestation of Will gives us a perception of beauty.
All men, says Schopenhauer, possess the capacity to objectivize the Idea
on different planes. The genius of the artist has this capacity in a
higher degree, and therefore makes a higher beauty manifest.[37]
After these more eminent writers there followed, in Germany, less
original and less influential ones, such as Hartmann, Kirkmann,
Schnasse, and, to some extent, Helmholtz (as an æsthetician), Bergmann,
Jungmann, and an innumerable host of others.
According to Hartmann (1842), beauty lies, not in the external world,
nor in “the thing in itself,” neither does it reside in the soul of man,
but it lies in the “seeming” (_Schein_) produced by the artist. The
thing in itself is not beautiful, but is transformed into beauty by the
artist.[38]
According to Schnasse (1798-1875), there is no perfect beauty in the
world. In nature there is only an approach towards it. Art gives what
nature cannot give. In the energy of the free _ego_, conscious of
harmony not found in nature, beauty is disclosed.[39]
Kirkmann wrote on experimental aesthetics. All aspects of history in his
system are joined by pure chance. Thus, according to Kirkmann
(1802-1884), there are six realms of history:—The realm of Knowledge, of
Wealth, of Morality, of Faith, of Politics, and of Beauty; and activity
in the last-named realm is art.[40]
According to Helmholtz (1821), who wrote on beauty as it relates to
music, beauty in musical productions is attained only by following
unalterable laws. These laws are not known to the artist; so that beauty
is manifested by the artist unconsciously, and cannot be subjected to
analysis.[41]
According to Bergmann (1840) (_Ueber das Schöne_, 1887), to define
beauty objectively is impossible. Beauty is only perceived subjectively,
and therefore the problem of æsthetics is to define what pleases
whom.[42]
According to Jungmann (d. 1885), firstly, beauty is a suprasensible
quality of things; secondly, beauty produces in us pleasure by merely
being contemplated; and, thirdly, beauty is the foundation of love.[43]
The æsthetic theories of the chief representatives of France, England,
and other nations in recent times have been the following:—
In France, during this period, the prominent writers on æsthetics were
Cousin, Jouffroy, Pictet, Ravaisson, Lévêque.
Cousin (1792-1867) was an eclectic, and a follower of the German
idealists. According to his theory, beauty always has a moral
foundation. He disputes the doctrine that art is imitation and that the
beautiful is what pleases. He affirms that beauty may be defined
objectively, and that it essentially consists in variety in unity.[44]
After Cousin came Jouffroy (1796-1842), who was a pupil of Cousin’s and
also a follower of the German æstheticians. According to his definition,
beauty is the expression of the invisible by those natural signs which
manifest it. The visible world is the garment by means of which we see
beauty.[45]
The Swiss writer Pictet repeated Hegel and Plato, supposing beauty to
exist in the direct and free manifestation of the divine Idea revealing
itself in sense forms.[46]
Lévêque was a follower of Schelling and Hegel. He holds that beauty is
something invisible behind nature—a force or spirit revealing itself in
ordered energy.[47]
Similar vague opinions about the nature of beauty were expressed by the
French metaphysician Ravaisson, who considered beauty to be the ultimate
aim and purpose of the world. “_La beauté la plus divine et
principalement la plus parfaite contient le secret du monde._”[48] And
again:—_“Le monde entier est l’œuvre d’une beauté absolue, qui n’est la
cause des choses que par l’amour qu’elle met en elles_.”
I purposely abstain from translating these metaphysical expressions,
because, however cloudy the Germans may be, the French, once they absorb
the theories of the Germans and take to imitating them, far surpass them
in uniting heterogeneous conceptions into one expression, and putting
forward one meaning or another indiscriminately. For instance, the
French philosopher Renouvier, when discussing beauty, says:—“_Ne
craignons pas de dire qu’une vérité qui ne serait pas belle, ne serait
qu’un jeu logique de notre esprit et que la seule vérité solide et digne
de ce nom c’est la beauté._”[49]
Besides the æsthetic idealists who wrote and still write under the
influence of German philosophy, the following recent writers have also
influenced the comprehension of art and beauty in France: Taine, Guyau,
Cherbuliez, Coster, and Véron.
According to Taine (1828-1893), beauty is the manifestation of the
essential characteristic of any important idea more completely than it
is expressed in reality.[50]
Guyau (1854-1888) taught that beauty is not something exterior to the
object itself,—is not, as it were, a parasitic growth on it,—but is
itself the very blossoming forth of that on which it appears. Art is the
expression of reasonable and conscious life, evoking in us both the
deepest consciousness of existence and the highest feelings and loftiest
thoughts. Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life,
by means, not only of participation in the same ideas and beliefs, but
also by means of similarity in feeling.[51]
According to Cherbuliez, art is an activity, (1) satisfying our innate
love of forms (_apparences_), (2) endowing these forms with ideas, (3)
affording pleasure alike to our senses, heart, and reason. Beauty is not
inherent in objects, but is an act of our souls. Beauty is an illusion;
there is no absolute beauty. But what we consider characteristic and
harmonious appears beautiful to us.
Coster held that the ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true are
innate. These ideas illuminate our minds and are identical with God, who
is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. The idea of Beauty includes unity of
essence, variety of constitutive elements, and order, which brings unity
into the various manifestations of life.[52]
For the sake of completeness, I will further cite some of the very
latest writings upon art.
_La psychologie du Beau et de l’Art, par Mario Pilo_ (1895), says that
beauty is a product of our physical feelings. The aim of art is
pleasure, but this pleasure (for some reason) he considers to be
necessarily highly moral.
The _Essai sur l’art contemporain, par Fierens Gevaert_ (1897), says
that art rests on its connection with the past, and on the religious
ideal of the present which the artist holds when giving to his work the
form of his individuality.
Then again, Sar Peladan’s _L’art idéaliste et mystique_ (1894) says that
beauty is one of the manifestations of God. “_Il n’y a pas d’autre
Réalité que Dieu, n’y a pas d’autre Vérité que Dieu, il n’y a pas
d’autre Beauté, que Dieu_” (p. 33). This book is very fantastic and very
illiterate, but is characteristic in the positions it takes up, and
noticeable on account of a certain success it is having with the younger
generation in France.
All the æsthetics diffused in France up to the present time are similar
in kind, but among them Véron’s _L’esthétique_ (1878) forms an
exception, being reasonable and clear. That work, though it does not
give an exact definition of art, at least rids æsthetics of the cloudy
conception of an absolute beauty.
According to Véron (1825-1889), art is the manifestation of emotion
transmitted externally by a combination of lines, forms, colours, or by
a succession of movements, sounds, or words subjected to certain
rhythms.[53]
In England, during this period, the writers on æsthetics define beauty
more and more frequently, not by its own qualities, but by taste, and
the discussion about beauty is superseded by a discussion on taste.
After Reid (1704-1796), who acknowledged beauty as being entirely
dependent on the spectator, Alison, in his _Essay on the Nature and
Principles of Taste_ (1790), proved the same thing. From another side
this was also asserted by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of
the celebrated Charles Darwin.
He says that we consider beautiful that which is connected in our
conception with what we love. Richard Knight’s work, _An Analytical
Inquiry into the Principles of Taste_, also tends in the same direction.
Most of the English theories of æsthetics are on the same lines. The
prominent writers on æsthetics in England during the present century
have been Charles Darwin, (to some extent), Herbert Spencer, Grant
Allen, Ker, and Knight.
According to Charles Darwin (1809-1882—_Descent of Man_, 1871), beauty
is a feeling natural not only to man but also to animals, and
consequently to the ancestors of man. Birds adorn their nests and esteem
beauty in their mates. Beauty has an influence on marriages. Beauty
includes a variety of diverse conceptions. The origin of the art of
music is the call of the males to the females.[54]
According to Herbert Spencer (b. 1820), the origin of art is play, a
thought previously expressed by Schiller. In the lower animals all the
energy of life is expended in life-maintenance and race-maintenance; in
man, however, there remains, after these needs are satisfied, some
superfluous strength. This excess is used in play, which passes over
into art. Play is an imitation of real activity, so is art. The sources
of æsthetic pleasure are threefold:—(1) That “which exercises the
faculties affected in the most complete ways, with the fewest drawbacks
from excess of exercise,” (2) “the difference of a stimulus in large
amount, which awakens a glow of agreeable feeling,” (3) the partial
revival of the same, with special combinations.[55]
In Todhunter’s _Theory of the Beautiful_ (1872), beauty is infinite
loveliness, which we apprehend both by reason and by the enthusiasm of
love. The recognition of beauty as being such depends on taste; there
can be no criterion for it. The only approach to a definition is found
in culture. (What culture is, is not defined.) Intrinsically, art—that
which affects us through lines, colours, sounds, or words—is not the
product of blind forces, but of reasonable ones, working, with mutual
helpfulness, towards a reasonable aim. Beauty is the reconciliation of
contradictions.[56]
Grant Allen is a follower of Spencer, and in his _Physiological
Æsthetics_ (1877) he says that beauty has a physical origin. Æsthetic
pleasures come from the contemplation of the beautiful, but the
conception of beauty is obtained by a physiological process. The origin
of art is play; when there is a superfluity of physical strength man
gives himself to play; when there is a superfluity of receptive power
man gives himself to art. The beautiful is that which affords the
maximum of stimulation with the minimum of waste. Differences in the
estimation of beauty proceed from taste. Taste can be educated. We must
have faith in the judgments “of the finest-nurtured and most
discriminative” men. These people form the taste of the next
generation.[57]
According to Ker’s _Essay on the Philosophy of Art_ (1883), beauty
enables us to make part of the objective world intelligible to ourselves
without being troubled by reference to other parts of it, as is
inevitable for science. So that art destroys the opposition between the
one and the many, between the law and its manifestation, between the
subject and its object, by uniting them. Art is the revelation and
vindication of freedom, because it is free from the darkness and
incomprehensibility of finite things.[58]
According to Knight’s _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, Part II. (1893),
beauty is (as with Schelling) the union of object and subject, the
drawing forth from nature of that which is cognate to man, and the
recognition in oneself of that which is common to all nature.
The opinions on beauty and on Art here mentioned are far from exhausting
what has been written on the subject. And every day fresh writers on
æsthetics arise, in whose disquisitions appear the same enchanted
confusion and contradictoriness in defining beauty. Some, by inertia,
continue the mystical æsthetics of Baumgarten and Hegel with sundry
variations; others transfer the question to the region of subjectivity,
and seek for the foundation of the beautiful in questions of taste;
others—the æstheticians of the very latest formation—seek the origin of
beauty in the laws of physiology; and finally, others again investigate
the question quite independently of the conception of beauty. Thus,
Sully in his _Sensation and Intuition: Studies in Psychology and
Æsthetics_ (1874), dismisses the conception of beauty altogether, art,
by his definition, being the production of some permanent object or
passing action fitted to supply active enjoyment to the producer, and a
pleasurable impression to a number of spectators or listeners, quite
apart from any personal advantage derived from it.[59]
Footnote 10:
Schasler, p. 361.
Footnote 11:
Schasler, p. 369.
Footnote 12:
Schasler, pp. 388-390.
Footnote 13:
Knight, _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, i. pp. 165, 166.
Footnote 14:
Schasler, p. 289. Knight, pp. 168, 169.
Footnote 15:
R. Kralik, _Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Aesthetik_, pp.
304-306.
Footnote 16:
Knight, p. 101.
Footnote 17:
Schasler, p. 316.
Footnote 18:
Knight, pp. 102-104.
Footnote 19:
R. Kralik, p. 124.
Footnote 20:
Spaletti, Schasler, p. 328.
Footnote 21:
Schasler, pp. 331-333.
Footnote 22:
Schasler, pp. 525-528.
Footnote 23:
Knight, pp. 61-63.
Footnote 24:
Schasler, pp. 740-743.
Footnote 25:
Schasler, pp. 769-771.
Footnote 26:
Schasler, pp. 786, 787.
Footnote 27:
Kralik, p. 148.
Footnote 28:
Kralik, p. 820.
Footnote 29:
Schasler, pp. 828, 829, 834-841.
Footnote 30:
Schasler, p. 891.
Footnote 31:
Schasler, p. 917.
Footnote 32:
Schasler, pp. 946, 1085, 984, 985, 990.
Footnote 33:
Schasler, pp. 966, 655, 956.
Footnote 34:
Schasler, p. 1017.
Footnote 35:
Schasler, pp. 1065, 1066.
Footnote 36:
Schasler, pp. 1097-1100.
Footnote 37:
Schasler, pp. 1124, 1107.
Footnote 38:
Knight, pp. 81, 82.
Footnote 39:
Knight, p. 83.
Footnote 40:
Schasler, p. 1121.
Footnote 41:
Knight, pp. 85, 86.
Footnote 42:
Knight, p. 88.
Footnote 43:
Knight, p. 88.
Footnote 44:
Knight, p. 112.
Footnote 45:
Knight, p. 116.
Footnote 46:
Knight, pp. 118, 119.
Footnote 47:
Knight, pp. 123, 124.
Footnote 48:
_La philosophie en France_, p. 232.
Footnote 49:
_Du fondement de l’induction._
Footnote 50:
_Philosophie de l’art_, vol. i. 1893, p. 47.
Footnote 51:
Knight, p. 139-141.
Footnote 52:
Knight, pp. 134.
Footnote 53:
_L’esthétique_, p. 106.
Footnote 54:
Knight, p. 238.
Footnote 55:
Knight, pp. 239, 240.
Footnote 56:
Knight, pp. 240-243.
Footnote 57:
Knight, pp. 250-252.
Footnote 58:
Knight, pp. 258, 259.
Footnote 59:
Knight, p. 243.
CHAPTER IV
To what do these definitions of beauty amount? Not reckoning the
thoroughly inaccurate definitions of beauty which fail to cover the
conception of art, and which suppose beauty to consist either in
utility, or in adjustment to a purpose, or in symmetry, or in order, or
in proportion, or in smoothness, or in harmony of the parts, or in unity
amid variety, or in various combinations of these,—not reckoning these
unsatisfactory attempts at objective definition, all the æsthetic
definitions of beauty lead to two fundamental conceptions. The first is
that beauty is something having an independent existence (existing in
itself), that it is one of the manifestations of the absolutely Perfect,
of the Idea, of the Spirit, of Will, or of God; the other is that beauty
is a kind of pleasure received by us, not having personal advantage for
its object.
The first of these definitions was accepted by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, and the philosophising Frenchmen, Cousin, Jouffroy,
Ravaisson, and others, not to enumerate the second-rate æsthetic
philosophers. And this same objective-mystical definition of beauty is
held by a majority of the educated people of our day. It is a conception
very widely spread, especially among the elder generation.
The second view, that beauty is a certain kind of pleasure received by
us, not having personal advantage for its aim, finds favour chiefly
among the English æsthetic writers, and is shared by the other part of
our society, principally by the younger generation.
So there are (and it could not be otherwise) only two definitions of
beauty: the one objective, mystical, merging this conception into that
of the highest perfection, God—a fantastic definition, founded on
nothing; the other, on the contrary, a very simple and intelligible
subjective one, which considers beauty to be that which pleases (I do
not add to the word “pleases” the words “without the aim of advantage,”
because “pleases” naturally presupposes the absence of the idea of
profit).
On the one hand, beauty is viewed as something mystical and very
elevated, but unfortunately at the same time very indefinite, and
consequently embracing philosophy, religion, and life itself (as in the
theories of Schelling and Hegel, and their German and French followers);
or, on the other hand (as necessarily follows from the definition of
Kant and his adherents), beauty is simply a certain kind of
disinterested pleasure received by us. And this conception of beauty,
although it seems very clear, is, unfortunately, again inexact; for it
widens out on the other side, _i.e._ it includes the pleasure derived
from drink, from food, from touching a delicate skin, etc., as is
acknowledged by Guyau, Kralik, and others.
It is true that, following the development of the æsthetic doctrines on
beauty, we may notice that, though at first (in the times when the
foundations of the science of æsthetics were being laid) the
metaphysical definition of beauty prevailed, yet the nearer we get to
our own times the more does an experimental definition (recently
assuming a physiological form) come to the front, so that at last we
even meet with such æstheticians as Véron and Sully, who try to escape
entirely from the conception of beauty. But such æstheticians have very
little success, and with the majority of the public, as well as of
artists and the learned, a conception of beauty is firmly held which
agrees with the definitions contained in most of the æsthetic treatises,
_i.e._ which regards beauty either as something mystical or
metaphysical, or as a special kind of enjoyment.
What then is this conception of beauty, so stubbornly held to by people
of our circle and day as furnishing a definition of art?
In the subjective aspect, we call beauty that which supplies us with a
particular kind of pleasure.
In the objective aspect, we call beauty something absolutely perfect,
and we acknowledge it to be so only because we receive, from the
manifestation of this absolute perfection, a certain kind of pleasure;
so that this objective definition is nothing but the subjective
conception differently expressed. In reality both conceptions of beauty
amount to one and the same thing, namely, the reception by us of a
certain kind of pleasure, _i.e._ we call “beauty” that which pleases us
without evoking in us desire.
Such being the position of affairs, it would seem only natural that the
science of art should decline to content itself with a definition of art
based on beauty (_i.e._ on that which pleases), and seek a general
definition, which should apply to all artistic productions, and by
reference to which we might decide whether a certain article belonged to
the realm of art or not. But no such definition is supplied, as the
reader may see from those summaries of the æsthetic theories which I
have given, and as he may discover even more clearly from the original
æsthetic works, if he will be at the pains to read them. All attempts to
define absolute beauty in itself—whether as an imitation of nature, or
as suitability to its object, or as a correspondence of parts, or as
symmetry, or as harmony, or as unity in variety, etc.—either define
nothing at all, or define only some traits of some artistic productions,
and are far from including all that everybody has always held, and still
holds, to be art.
There is no objective definition of beauty. The existing definitions,
(both the metaphysical and the experimental), amount only to one and the
same subjective definition which (strange as it seems to say so) is,
that art is that which makes beauty manifest, and beauty is that which
pleases (without exciting desire). Many æstheticians have felt the
insufficiency and instability of such a definition, and, in order to
give it a firm basis, have asked themselves why a thing pleases. And
they have converted the discussion on beauty into a question concerning
taste, as did Hutcheson, Voltaire, Diderot, and others. But all attempts
to define what taste is must lead to nothing, as the reader may see both
from the history of æsthetics and experimentally. There is and can be no
explanation of why one thing pleases one man and displeases another, or
_vice versâ_. So that the whole existing science of æsthetics fails to
do what we might expect from it, being a mental activity calling itself
a science, namely, it does not define the qualities and laws of art, or
of the beautiful (if that be the content of art), or the nature of taste
(if taste decides the question of art and its merit), and then, on the
basis of such definitions, acknowledge as art those productions which
correspond to these laws, and reject those which do not come under them.
But this science of æsthetics consists in first acknowledging a certain
set of productions to be art (because they please us), and then framing
such a theory of art that all those productions which please a certain
circle of people should fit into it. There exists an art canon,
according to which certain productions favoured by our circle are
acknowledged as being art,—Phidias, Sophocles, Homer, Titian, Raphael,
Bach, Beethoven, Dante, Shakespear, Goethe, and others,—and the æsthetic
laws must be such as to embrace all these productions. In æsthetic
literature you will incessantly meet with opinions on the merit and
importance of art, founded not on any certain laws by which this or that
is held to be good or bad, but merely on the consideration whether this
art tallies with the art canon we have drawn up.
The other day I was reading a far from ill-written book by Folgeldt.
Discussing the demand for morality in works of art, the author plainly
says that we must not demand morality in art. And in proof of this he
advances the fact that if we admit such a demand, Shakespear’s _Romeo
and Juliet_ and Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_ would not fit into the
definition of good art; but since both these books are included in our
canon of art, he concludes that the demand is unjust. And therefore it
is necessary to find a definition of art which shall fit the works; and
instead of a demand for morality, Folgeldt postulates as the basis of
art a demand for the important (_Bedeutungsvolles_).
All the existing æsthetic standards are built on this plan. Instead of
giving a definition of true art, and then deciding what is and what is
not good art by judging whether a work conforms or does not conform to
the definition, a certain class of works, which for some reason please a
certain circle of people, is accepted as being art, and a definition of
art is then devised to cover all these productions. I recently came upon
a remarkable instance of this method in a very good German work, _The
History of Art in the Nineteenth Century_, by Muther. Describing the
pre-Raphaelites, the Decadents and the Symbolists (who are already
included in the canon of art), he not only does not venture to blame
their tendency, but earnestly endeavours to widen his standard so that
it may include them all, they appearing to him to represent a legitimate
reaction from the excesses of realism. No matter what insanities appear
in art, when once they find acceptance among the upper classes of our
society a theory is quickly invented to explain and sanction them; just
as if there had never been periods in history when certain special
circles of people recognised and approved false, deformed, and insensate
art which subsequently left no trace and has been utterly forgotten. And
to what lengths the insanity and deformity of art may go, especially
when, as in our days, it knows that it is considered infallible, may be
seen by what is being done in the art of our circle to-day.
So that the theory of art, founded on beauty, expounded by æsthetics,
and, in dim outline, professed by the public, is nothing but the setting
up as good, of that which has pleased and pleases us, _i.e._ pleases a
certain class of people.
In order to define any human activity, it is necessary to understand its
sense and importance. And, in order to do that, it is primarily
necessary to examine that activity in itself, in its dependence on its
causes, and in connection with its effects, and not merely in relation
to the pleasure we can get from it.
If we say that the aim of any activity is merely our pleasure, and
define it solely by that pleasure, our definition will evidently be a
false one. But this is precisely what has occurred in the efforts to
define art. Now, if we consider the food question, it will not occur to
anyone to affirm that the importance of food consists in the pleasure we
receive when eating it. Everyone understands that the satisfaction of
our taste cannot serve as a basis for our definition of the merits of
food, and that we have therefore no right to presuppose that the dinners
with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese, alcohol, etc., to which we are
accustomed and which please us, form the very best human food.
And in the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense
serve as the basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of
objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art should
be.
To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we get from it, is
like assuming (as is done by people of the lowest moral development,
_e.g._ by savages) that the purpose and aim of food is the pleasure
derived when consuming it.
Just as people who conceive the aim and purpose of food to be pleasure
cannot recognise the real meaning of eating, so people who consider the
aim of art to be pleasure cannot realise its true meaning and purpose,
because they attribute to an activity, the meaning of which lies in its
connection with other phenomena of life, the false and exceptional aim
of pleasure. People come to understand that the meaning of eating lies
in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the
object of that activity is pleasure. And it is the same with regard to
art. People will come to understand the meaning of art only when they
cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, _i.e._
pleasure. The acknowledgment of beauty (_i.e._ of a certain kind of
pleasure received from art) as being the aim of art, not only fails to
assist us in finding a definition of what art is, but, on the contrary,
by transferring the question into a region quite foreign to art (into
metaphysical, psychological, physiological, and even historical
discussions as to why such a production pleases one person, and such
another displeases or pleases someone else), it renders such definition
impossible. And since discussions as to why one man likes pears and
another prefers meat do not help towards finding a definition of what is
essential in nourishment, so the solution of questions of taste in art
(to which the discussions on art involuntarily come) not only does not
help to make clear what this particular human activity which we call art
really consists in, but renders such elucidation quite impossible, until
we rid ourselves of a conception which justifies every kind of art, at
the cost of confusing the whole matter.
To the question, What is this art, to which is offered up the labour of
millions, the very lives of men, and even morality itself? we have
extracted replies from the existing æsthetics, which all amount to this:
that the aim of art is beauty, that beauty is recognised by the
enjoyment it gives, and that artistic enjoyment is a good and important
thing, because it _is_ enjoyment. In a word, that enjoyment is good
because it is enjoyment. Thus, what is considered the definition of art
is no definition at all, but only a shuffle to justify existing art.
Therefore, however strange it may seem to say so, in spite of the
mountains of books written about art, no exact definition of art has
been constructed. And the reason of this is that the conception of art
has been based on the conception of beauty.
CHAPTER V
What is art, if we put aside the conception of beauty, which confuses
the whole matter? The latest and most comprehensible definitions of art,
apart from the conception of beauty, are the following:—(1 _a_) Art is
an activity arising even in the animal kingdom, and springing from
sexual desire and the propensity to play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer),
and (1 _b_) accompanied by a pleasurable excitement of the nervous
system (Grant Allen). This is the physiological-evolutionary definition.
(2) Art is the external manifestation, by means of lines, colours,
movements, sounds, or words, of emotions felt by man (Véron). This is
the experimental definition. According to the very latest definition
(Sully), (3) Art is “the production of some permanent object, or passing
action, which is fitted not only to supply an active enjoyment to the
producer, but to convey a pleasurable impression to a number of
spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage to be
derived from it.”
Notwithstanding the superiority of these definitions to the metaphysical
definitions which depended on the conception of beauty, they are yet far
from exact. (1 _a_) The first, the physiological-evolutionary
definition, is inexact, because, instead of speaking about the artistic
activity itself, which is the real matter in hand, it treats of the
derivation of art. The modification of it (1 _b_), based on the
physiological effects on the human organism, is inexact, because within
the limits of such definition many other human activities can be
included, as has occurred in the neo-æsthetic theories, which reckon as
art the preparation of handsome clothes, pleasant scents, and even of
victuals.
The experimental definition (2), which makes art consist in the
expression of emotions, is inexact, because a man may express his
emotions by means of lines, colours, sounds, or words, and yet may not
act on others by such expression; and then the manifestation of his
emotions is not art.
The third definition (that of Sully) is inexact, because in the
production of objects or actions affording pleasure to the producer and
a pleasant emotion to the spectators or hearers apart from personal
advantage, may be included the showing of conjuring tricks or gymnastic
exercises, and other activities which are not art. And, further, many
things, the production of which does not afford pleasure to the
producer, and the sensation received from which is unpleasant, such as
gloomy, heart-rending scenes in a poetic description or a play, may
nevertheless be undoubted works of art.
The inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact that in
them all (as also in the metaphysical definitions) the object considered
is the pleasure art may give, and not the purpose it may serve in the
life of man and of humanity.
In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to
cease to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it as one
of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way, we cannot fail
to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and
man.
Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of
relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and
with all those who, simultaneously, previously or subsequently, receive
the same artistic impression.
Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a
means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The
peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it from
intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a
man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his
feelings.
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through
his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is
capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed
it. To take the simplest example: one man laughs, and another, who
hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears, feels
sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man, seeing him,
comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements, or by the sounds of
his voice, a man expresses courage and determination, or sadness and
calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers,
expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering
transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of
admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects,
persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of
admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects,
persons, and phenomena.
And it is on this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of
feeling, and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art
is based.
If a man infects another or others, directly, immediately, by his
appearance, or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he
experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he
himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself is
obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is suffering—that
does not amount to art.
Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others
to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by
certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy,
having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates
that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has
experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the
surroundings, the wood, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf’s
appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf,
etc. All this, if only the boy when telling the story, again experiences
the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels
them to feel what the narrator had experienced, is art. If even the boy
had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if,
wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an
encounter with a wolf, and recounted it so as to make his hearers share
the feelings he experienced when he feared the wolf, that also would be
art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced
either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in
reality or in imagination), expresses these feelings on canvas or in
marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man
feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow,
despair, courage, or despondency, and the transition from one to another
of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds, so that the
hearers are infected by them, and experience them as they were
experienced by the composer.
The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most
various—very strong or very weak, very important or very insignificant,
very bad or very good: feelings of love for native land, self-devotion
and submission to fate or to God expressed in a drama, raptures of
lovers described in a novel, feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a
picture, courage expressed in a triumphal march, merriment evoked by a
dance, humour evoked by a funny story, the feeling of quietness
transmitted by an evening landscape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of
admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque—it is all art.
If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which
the author has felt, it is art.
_To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having
evoked it in oneself then, by means of movements, lines, colours,
sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that
others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art._
_Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously,
by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has
lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and
also experience them._
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some
mysterious Idea of beauty, or God; it is not, as the æsthetical
physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up
energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it
is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not
pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in
the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards
well-being of individuals and of humanity.
As, thanks to man’s capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may
know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all
humanity before his day, and can, in the present, thanks to this
capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their
activity, and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants
the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as those which have
arisen within himself; so, thanks to man’s capacity to be infected with
the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through
by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings
experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the
possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others.
If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the
men who preceded them, and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men
would be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Hauser.[60]
And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people
might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from,
and more hostile to, one another.
And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important
as the activity of speech itself, and as generally diffused.
We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in
theatres, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings, statues,
poems, novels.... But all this is but the smallest part of the art by
which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled
with works of art of every kind—from cradle-song, jest, mimicry, the
ornamentation of houses, dress and utensils, up to church services,
buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic
activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not
mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which
we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special
importance.
This special importance has always been given by all men to that part of
this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their religious
perception, and this small part of art they have specifically called
art, attaching to it the full meaning of the word.
That was how men of old—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—looked on art.
Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard art; thus
it was, and still is, understood by the Mahommedans, and thus is it
still understood by religious folk among our own peasantry.
Some teachers of mankind—as Plato in his _Republic_, and people such as
the primitive Christians, the strict Mahommedans, and the Buddhists—have
gone so far as to repudiate all art.
People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent view
of to-day, which regards any art as good if only it affords pleasure)
considered, and consider, that art (as contrasted with speech, which
need not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its power to infect
people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by banishing
all art than by tolerating each and every art.
Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied
that which cannot be denied—one of the indispensable means of
communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not less wrong
are the people of civilised European society of our class and day, in
favouring any art if it but serves beauty, _i.e._ gives people pleasure.
Formerly, people feared lest among the works of art there might chance
to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art altogether. Now,
they only fear lest they should be deprived of any enjoyment art can
afford, and patronise any art. And I think the last error is much
grosser than the first, and that its consequences are far more harmful.
Footnote 60:
“The foundling of Nuremberg,” found in the market-place of that town
on 26th May 1828, apparently some sixteen years old. He spoke little,
and was almost totally ignorant even of common objects. He
subsequently explained that he had been brought up in confinement
underground, and visited by only one man, whom he saw but
seldom.—Trans.
CHAPTER VI
But how could it happen that that very art, which in ancient times was
merely tolerated (if tolerated at all), should have come, in our times,
to be invariably considered a good thing if only it affords pleasure?
It has resulted from the following causes. The estimation of the value
of art (_i.e._ of the feelings it transmits) depends on men’s perception
of the meaning of life; depends on what they consider to be the good and
the evil of life. And what is good and what is evil is defined by what
are termed religions.
Humanity unceasingly moves forward from a lower, more partial, and
obscure understanding of life, to one more general and more lucid. And
in this, as in every movement, there are leaders,—those who have
understood the meaning of life more clearly than others,—and of these
advanced men there is always one who has, in his words and by his life,
expressed this meaning more clearly, accessibly, and strongly than
others. This man’s expression of the meaning of life, together with
those superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies which usually form
themselves round the memory of such a man, is what is called a religion.
Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life
accessible to the best and foremost men at a given time in a given
society; a comprehension towards which, inevitably and irresistibly, all
the rest of that society must advance. And therefore only religions have
always served, and still serve, as bases for the valuation of human
sentiments. If feelings bring men nearer the ideal their religion
indicates, if they are in harmony with it and do not contradict it, they
are good; if they estrange men from it and oppose it, they are bad.
If the religion places the meaning of life in worshipping one God and
fulfilling what is regarded as His will, as was the case among the Jews,
then the feelings flowing from love to that God, and to His law,
successfully transmitted through the art of poetry by the prophets, by
the psalms, or by the epic of the book of Genesis, is good, high art.
All opposing that, as for instance the transmission of feelings of
devotion to strange gods, or of feelings incompatible with the law of
God, would be considered bad art. Or if, as was the case among the
Greeks, the religion places the meaning of life in earthly happiness, in
beauty and in strength, then art successfully transmitting the joy and
energy of life would be considered good art, but art which transmitted
feelings of effeminacy or despondency would be bad art. If the meaning
of life is seen in the well-being of one’s nation, or in honouring one’s
ancestors and continuing the mode of life led by them, as was the case
among the Romans and the Chinese respectively, then art transmitting
feelings of joy at sacrificing one’s personal well-being for the common
weal, or at exalting one’s ancestors and maintaining their traditions,
would be considered good art; but art expressing feelings contrary to
this would be regarded as bad. If the meaning of life is seen in freeing
oneself from the yoke of animalism, as is the case among the Buddhists,
then art successfully transmitting feelings that elevate the soul and
humble the flesh will be good art, and all that transmits feelings
strengthening the bodily passions will be bad art.
In every age, and in every human society, there exists a religious
sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is bad,
and it is this religious conception that decides the value of the
feelings transmitted by art. And therefore, among all nations, art which
transmitted feelings considered to be good by this general religious
sense was recognised as being good and was encouraged; but art which
transmitted feelings considered to be bad by this general religious
conception, was recognised as being bad, and was rejected. All the rest
of the immense field of art by means of which people communicate one
with another, was not esteemed at all, and was only noticed when it ran
counter to the religious conception of its age, and then merely to be
repudiated. Thus it was among all nations,—Greeks, Jews, Indians,
Egyptians, and Chinese,—and so it was when Christianity appeared.
The Christianity of the first centuries recognised as productions of
good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers and
hymn-singing, evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to
follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love
of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment
they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected: for instance,
tolerating plastic representations only when they were symbolical, they
rejected all the pagan sculptures.
This was so among the Christians of the first centuries, who accepted
Christ’s teaching, if not quite in its true form, at least not in the
perverted, paganised form in which it was accepted subsequently.