theory of poetry and the arts was made by the Venetian A. Conti, who
left numerous sketches for essays on imagination, the faculties of the
soul, poetic imitation and similar subjects, designed for inclusion
in a large treatise on the Beautiful and Art. Conti had started by
professing ideas very like those of Du Bos, affirming that the poet
must "put everything in images"; that taste is as indefinable as
feeling, and that there are persons without taste just as there are
blind and deaf persons; he also wrote polemical tracts against the
Cartesians. Later he abandoned his sensationalistic or sentimentalist
theories,[4] and, inquiring into the nature of poetry, declared
himself ill-satisfied with Castelvetro, Patrizzi, and even Gravina.
"Had Castelvetro," he observes, "who writes so subtly of Aristotle's
_Poetics,_ given two or three chapters to a philosophical explanation
of the idea of imitation, he would have solved many questions raised
but not clearly answered by himself concerning poetic theories. In his
_Poetica_ and in his controversy against Torquato Tasso, Patrizzi never
succeeded in clearly defining the philosophical idea of imitation; he
collected much useful information about the history of poetry, but
wilfully lost the Platonic doctrine by allowing it to mingle with the
historical detail instead of gathering it up without sophistry into a
single point, when it would have appeared in a very different guise.
The _Ragion poetica_ of Gravina shadows forth a sort of philosophical
idea of imitation; but so wholly engrossed is he in deducing therefrom
rules for lyrical, dramatical and epic poetry, and illustrating each
with examples from the most celebrated poets, Greek, Latin and Italian,
that he is too busy to question the sufficiency of the fertile idea he
has propounded."[5] A close follower of contemporary European thought,
Conti was familiar with Hutcheson, whose theories he vigorously
repudiated, observing, "Why this multiplication of faculties?" The
soul is one, and for scholastic convenience only has been divided into
three faculties: sense, imagination, intellect; the first "concerns
herself with objects present before her; imagination with those afar
into which memory gradually merges: but the object of sense and
imagination is always particular; it is only the mind, the intellect,
the spirit, that by comparing particulars apprehends the universal."
"Before introducing a new sense for the pleasure of beauty" Hutcheson
should have "assigned limits to these three faculties of cognition and
demonstrated that the pleasure occasioned by beauty does not arise from
the three pleasures of these three faculties, or from intellectual
pleasure alone, to which they all reduce, if the functions of the
soul be carefully analysed." Thus it would appear that the mistake
of the Scotchman[6] arose from his habit of separating pleasure from
the cognitive faculties, placing the former apart in a special empty
"sense of beauty."[7] On the other hand, when rewriting the history of
the opinions of various critics upon the Aristotelian doctrine of the
universal in poetry, Conti gave much weight to the dialogue _Naugerius
seu De poëtica_ of Fracastoro;[8] for an instant he seems on the
point of grasping the essence of the poetic universal and identifying
it with the characteristic, which makes us call even horrible things
wholly beautiful. "In all his journeys Balzac never saw a beautiful
old woman: in the poetic or picturesque sense an old woman is highly
beautiful, if depicted as having suffered all the dilapidations of
age": immediately after, however, he identifies the characteristic with
Wolff's concept of perfection: "It does not differ from being, nor does
being differ from the truth which the schoolmen call transcendental
and which is the object of all arts and all sciences; we call it the
object of poetry when by means of imaginary presentations it ravishes
the intellect and moves the wall, transporting both these faculties
into the ideal and archetypal world of which, following S. Augustine,
Father Malebranche discourses at length in his _Recherche de la
vérité_."[9] In the same way Fracastoro's universal gives place to the
universal of science: "Owing to the infinity of their determinations
all we can know of particulars is their common properties, which
is merely another manner of saying that we have no science save of
universal. Thus it is precisely the same if we say the object of
poetry is science or the universal; which is the doctrine of Navagero,
following Aristotle."[10] The "imaginative universals of Signor Vico"
(with whom he had interchanged some letters) opened no new views for
him: he notes that Signor Vico "talks a great deal about them" and
"holds that the most uncivilized men, having framed them not from any
wish to please or serve others, but from the necessity of expressing
their feelings as nature taught them, spoke in poetical language the
elements of a theology, a physics, and an ethics wholly poetical."
Conti excuses himself from immediate examination of "this critical
question" and only opines that "it can be shown in many ways that
these imaginative universals are the material or object of poetry,
in so far as they contain within them sciences or things considered
in themselves"[11]--a conclusion diametrically opposed to that which
"Signor Vico" meant to express. Conti is next obliged to ask himself
how it is possible that poetry's object should be not the true but the
probable, when the universal of poetry is the same as that of science.
He answers by coming down to the commonplace level of a Baumgarten:
"When sciences receive a particular colouring, we pass from the true to
the probable." Imitation means giving the impression of truth; that is
done by selecting a few of its features only; and this is the procedure
in which the probable just consists. If you wish to describe the
rainbow poetically, a great part of the Newtonian optics must be thrown
overboard; thus "many circumstances of mathematical demonstration" will
be neglected in poetical descriptions, and the rest, which is utilized,
will form the probable or that particular "which awakens the universal
idea, slumbering in the minds of the learned." The great art of poetry
consists "in selection of the image containing the greatest number of
points of universal doctrine which, by being inserted in the example,
may so colour the precept that I may find it without seeking it, or
recognize it through its connexion with events described."[12] Hence
poetry cannot be content with imitation; allegory too is needed: "in
ancient poetry one thing is read and another is meant." Here follows
the inevitable instance of the Homeric poems, in which Conti certainly
finds elements which cannot be reduced to instruction and allegory and
therefore to some extent deserve the Platonic condemnation.[13] He
recognizes a species of imagination differing from passive sensibility,
"which Father Malebranche calls active imagination, and Plato the art
of imagery; it comprises all that is meant by wit, sagacity, judgement
and good taste, which teach a poet to use or not to use at a given time
or place the rules and licences of art, and to control the extravagance
of his imagery."[14] On the question of literary taste he follows
the opinion of Trevisano and decides that it consists in "setting in
mutual harmony, that is to say restraining within limits, the soul's
cognitive faculties, memory, imagination and intellect, allowing none
to overwhelm another."[15]

[Sidenote: _Quadrio and Zanotti._]

By assiduous travail of thought and perpetual search for the best,
Conti kept himself at the highest level of æsthetic speculation in
contemporary Europe (Vico always excepted); at the same level as
Baumgarten in Germany. We pass rapidly over other Italian writers
such as Quadrio (1739), author of the first great encyclopædia of
universal literature, in which he defines poetry as "the science of
things human and divine, presented in pictures to the populace, and
written in words connected by measure";[16] and Francesco Maria Zanotti
(1768), who describes poetry as "the art of versification in order to
give pleasure":[17] the first is worthy of a mediæval anthologist,
the second of a no less mediæval composer of handbooks on rhythm and
methods of composition. The only serious student of æsthetic was
Melchior Cesarotti.

[Sidenote: _Cesarotti_]

Cesarotti called attention to popular and primitive poetry: he
translated Ossian and illustrated the text with dissertations; he
unearthed antique Spanish poems and even the folk-songs of Mexico and
Lapland; he studied Hebrew poetry; he dedicated the greater part of
his life to the Homeric poems, examining all the theories of critics
past and present, encountering Vico in this connexion and discussing
his views. Besides this, he debated the origin of poetry, the pleasure
given by tragedy, taste, the beautiful, eloquence, style, in short
every problem belonging to æsthetics which had been raised up to his
time.[18] One seems to catch an echo of Vico as one listens to his
words on La Motte: "He had logic, but knew not that the logic of
poetry differs somewhat from ordinary logic: he was a man of great
talent, but he recognized talent only, and was incapable of feeling the
immeasurable distance between judicious prose and poetry: the real
Homer with his attractive faults will always be more beloved than his
reformed Homer with his cold, affected virtue."[19] Cesarotti purposed
(1762) bringing out a great theoretico-historical book in whose first
part "we shall suppose the non-existence of poetry and poetic art and
try to trace by what path a man of illuminated reason can have reached
the idea of the possibility of such an art and how he can have attained
perfection by these means: every one will be able to see poetry growing
up under his eyes, so to speak, and attest the truth of theory by
the testimony of his own personal feelings."[20] Although celebrated
throughout Italy in his day as one who "with the most pure torch of
philosophy has thrown beams of light into the darkest recesses of
poetry and eloquence,"[21] it does not appear that the distinguished
scholar, the pleasing and desultory philosopher, offered any profound
or original solutions. In 1797 he defined poetry as "the art of
representing and perfecting nature by means of picturesque, animated,
imaginative and harmonious discourse."[22]

[Sidenote: _Bettinelli and Pagano._]

The fashion of the day in philosophy made men impatient of the ideas
found in writers of treatises of former times. Arteaga praises
Cesarotti for "that fine tact, that impartial criticism, that
logical spirit derived not from the trickling streamlets of Sperone,
Castelvetro, Casa and Bembo, but from the profound and inexhaustible
springs of Montesquieu, Hume, Voltaire, d'Alembert, Sulzer, and
writers of like temper."[23] Writing to Saverio Bettinelli, who was
preparing a work on _Enthusiasm,_ Paradisi hoped it would prove "a
metaphysical history of enthusiasm which shall outweigh all those
Poetics which are only fit to be burned," and would "make waste paper
of Castelvetro, the 'Mintumo,' and that stupid creature, Quadrio."[24]
In spite of these aspirations Bettinelli's book (1769) contains little
beyond vivacious and eloquent empirical observations concerning the
psychology of poets, "poetic enthusiasm," to which he assigns six
degrees, namely, elevation, vision, rapidity, novelty and surprise,
passion and transfusion. Equally empirical was Mario Pagano in his two
fragments, _Gusto e le belle arti_ and _Origine e natura della poesia_
(1783-1785), in which he grotesquely combines some ideas from Vico with
the current sensationalism. Theoretico-imaginative form and sensuous
pleasure are presented by him as two historical periods of art. "In
their cradle the fine arts are directed towards making a true imitation
of nature rather than towards loveliness. Their first steps are towards
expression rather than charm.... In the most ancient poetry, even in
the ballads of barbarous ages, there lives a most compelling pathos:
passions are expressed naturally, even the sound of the words is
alive with the expression of the things described." But "the period
of perfection is reached at the moment when exact imitation of nature
is coupled with complete beauty, accord and harmony," when "the taste
is refined and society reaches its most complete form of culture."
Fine arts "precede by a short time the dawn of philosophy, that is
to say, the time of the most intense perfection of society"; indeed,
certain modes of art, such as tragedy, must necessarily come later
than philosophy whose aid must be invoked to further "the purgation of
manners."[25]

[Sidenote: _German disciples of Baumgarten. G. F. Meier._]

The compatriots and successors of Baumgarten, like those of Vico,
did little by way of understanding or improving upon his work. An
enthusiastic admirer and disciple of Baumgarten who had attended his
lectures at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Georg Friedrich Meier, came forward
in 1746 to defend the _Meditationes_ against the attacks of Quistorp to
whom the master had deigned no reply;[26] already in 1748, prior to
the publication of the _Æsthetic,_ he had published the first volume
of his _Principles of all the Beautiful Sciences_,[27] followed in
1749 and 1750 by the second and third volumes. This book, which is
a complete exposition of Baumgarten's theory, is divided, according
to the master's method, into three parts: invention of beautiful
thoughts (heuristic), æsthetic method (methodic), and the beautiful
signification of thoughts (semiotic); the first of these (occupying
two and a half volumes) is subdivided into three sections: beauty
of sense-apprehension (æsthetic richness, grandeur, verisimilitude,
vivacity, certainty, sensitive life and wit), sensitive faculties
(attention, abstraction, senses, imagination, subtlety, acumen,
memory, poetic power, taste, foresight, conjecture, signification and
the minor appetitive faculties), and the diverse kinds of beautiful
thought (æsthetic concepts, judgements, and syllogisms). Elsewhere
than in this book, which was reprinted many times (in 1757 an epitome
was issued[28]), Meier discusses Æsthetic in several of his numerous
works, especially in a little tract, _Considerations on the First
Principles of all Fine Arts and Sciences_.[29] Who was more tenderly
inclined than he towards the science so recently born and baptized? He
was ardent in her defence against those who denied both her possibility
and her utility, and against those who admitted these yet complained,
not unreasonably, that she was substantially the same as that which in
former days had been treated as Poetics and Rhetoric. He parried this
accusation, of which he recognized the partial truth, by asserting
that it was impossible for one writer to have perfect knowledge of all
the arts: another of his excuses was to the effect that Æsthetic was
a science too young to show the perfection reached by other sciences
after the cultivation of centuries; in one place he says he has no
intention of arguing "with those enemies of Æsthetic who will not or
cannot see the true nature and aim of this science, but have built for
themselves in its place a deformed and miserable image against which,
when they fight, they fight against themselves." With philosophic
resignation he concludes that the same fate is in store for Æsthetic as
for every science: "At first when almost unknown they encounter enemies
and detractors who ridicule them through ignorance and prejudice;
but later they meet persons of intellect who, by working at them
conjointly, carry them on to their proper perfection."[30]

[Sidenote: _Confusions of Meier._]

Students of the new science flocked to Halle University to hear Meier
lecture on Æsthetic whose "chief author" or "inventor" (_Haupturheber,
Erfinder_), as Meier never tired of repeating, was "Herr Professor
Baumgarten"; at the same time warning them that his own _Anfangsgründe_
were no mere transcription of Baumgarten's lectures.[31] Still, while
recognizing the great gifts of Meier as publicity-agent, the facility,
clarity and wealth of his eloquence, and his shrewdness in polemic,
one cannot altogether deny the justice of the remark upon "Professor
Baumgarten of Frankfort and his ape (_Affe)_ Professor Meier of
Halle."[32] Every defect of Baumgarten's Æsthetic reappears accentuated
in Meier; the limits of the inferior cognitive faculties, alleged as
the domain of poetry and the arts, are laid down by him most strangely.
It is curious to note how, for example, he interprets the difference
between the confused (æsthetical) and the distinct (logical), and the
proposition that beauty disappears when made the object of distinct
thought. "The cheeks of a beautiful girl whereon bloom the roses of
youth are lovely so long as they are looked at with the naked eye. But
let them be examined with a magnifying glass. Where is their beauty?
One can hardly believe that such a disgusting surface, scaly, all
mounts and hollows, the pores full of dirt, with hairs sprouting here
and there, can be the seat of that amorous attraction which subdues
the heart."[33] That is described as "æsthetically false" whose truth
the inferior faculty is unable to grasp: for example, the theory that
bodies are composed of monads.[34] Once they have become intelligible
to these faculties, general concepts possess great æsthetic richness,
since they include infinite consequences and particular cases.[35]
Æsthetic also comprehends those things which cannot be thought
distinctly or, if so thought, might be capable of upsetting philosophic
gravity: a kiss may be an excellent subject for a poet; but whatever
would be thought of a philosopher who sought to demonstrate its
necessity by the mathematical method?[36] Moreover, Meier includes the
whole theory of observation and experiment in Æsthetic, to which this
theory belongs, he says, by right of its connexion with the senses,[37]
and also the whole theory of the appetitive faculties, because
"æsthetic requires not only a fine wit but a noble heart as well."[38]
He comes near truth sometimes, when, for example, he observes that
the logical form presupposes the æsthetic and that our first concepts
are sensitive, later becoming distinct by the help of logic;[39]
and when he condemns allegory as "among the most decadent forms of
beautiful thinking."[40] But, on the other hand, he thinks that logical
distinctions and definitions, although not necessarily sought after
by genius, are very useful in poetry; they are even indispensable as
regulators of beautiful thinking and make up, as it were, the skeleton
of the body poetic: great care, however, must be taken not to judge
æsthetical general concepts, _notiones æstheticæ universales,_ with
the rigorous exactitude demanded by philosophical. And since such
concepts, taken singly, may be likened to unstrung jewels, they must be
connected by the string of æsthetic judgement and syllogism, the theory
of which is identical with that presented by Logic, setting aside that
part which is of little or no use to genius, but belongs exclusively
to the philosopher.[41] In his _Considerations_ of 1757 Meier, having
combated the principle of imitation (which appeared to him at once too
broad, since science and morals are also imitations of nature, and too
narrow, since art does not imitate natural objects solely nor should
it imitate them all, for the immoral must be excluded), reaffirmed the
thesis that the æsthetic principle consists in the "greatest possible
beauty of sense-perception."[42] He upheld this by condemning as
erroneous the belief that this sense-perception is wholly sensuous
and confused, without any gleam of distinctness or rationality. The
perception of sweet, bitter, red, etc., is wholly sensuous; but there
is another perception which is both sensuous and intellectual, confused
and distinct, in which both faculties, the higher and the lower,
collaborate. When intellectuality prevails in this consciousness,
then we have science: when sensibility, then we have poetry. "From
our explanation it will be gathered that the inferior cognitive
faculties must collect all the material of a poem, and all its parts.
Intellect and judgement, on the other hand, watch and ensure that these
materials are placed side by side in such a way that in their connexion
distinction and order may be observed."[43] Here a plunge into
sensationalism, there a fugitive glimpse of truth: most often, and in
conclusion, an adherence to the old mechanical, ornamental, pedagogic
theory of poetry: this is the impression left on us by the æsthetic
writings of Meier.

[Sidenote: _M. Mendelssohn and other followers of Baumgarten. Vogue of
Æsthetic._]

Another disciple of Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, conceiving beauty
as "indistinct image of a perfection," deduced that God can have
no perception of beauty, as this is merely a phenomenon of human
imperfection. According to him a primary form of pleasure is that
of the senses, arising from "the bettered state of our bodily
constitution"; a secondary form is the æsthetic fact of sensible
beauty, that is to say, unity in variety; a third form is perfection,
or harmony in variety.[44] He too repudiates Hutcheson's _deus ex
machina,_ the sense of beauty. Sensible beauty, perfection such as
can be apprehended by the senses, is independent of the fact that
the object represented is beautiful or ugly, good or bad by nature;
it suffices that it leaves us not indifferent: whence Mendelssohn
agrees with Baumgarten's definition, "a poem is a discourse sensibly
perfect."[45] Elias Schlegel (1742) conceived art as imitation, not
so servile as to seem a copy, but having similarity rather than
identity with nature: he considered the duty of poetry was first to
please and only afterwards to instruct.[46] Treatises on Æsthetic,
university lectures or slender volumes for use of the public, _Theories
of the Fine Arts and Letters, Manuals, Sketches, Texts, Principles,
Introductions, Lectures, Essays,_ and _Considerations on Taste_ poured
down thick and fast on Germany during the second half of the eighteenth
century. There are at least thirty full or complete treatises and many
dozens of minor tracts or fragments. After the Protestant universities,
the Catholic took up the new science, which was taught by Riedel at
Vienna, Herwigh at Würzburg, Ladrone at Mainz, Jacobi at Freiburg,
and by others at Ingolstadt after the expulsion of the Jesuits.[47] A
pretty little volume on the _First Principles of the Fine Arts_[48] was
written (1790) for Catholic schools by the notorious Franciscan friar
Eulogius Schneider, who, after being unfrocked, terrorised Strasburg in
the days of the Convention, and met his end under the guillotine. The
frenzied output of these German _Æsthetics_ resembles that of _Poetics_
in Italy in the sixteenth century, after the rise to popularity of
Aristotle's treatise. Between 1771 and 1774 the Swiss Sulzer brought
out his great æsthetic encyclopædia, _The General Theory of the Fine
Arts,_ in alphabetical order, with historical notes upon each article,
which were greatly enlarged in the second edition of 1792, edited by a
retired Prussian captain, von Blankenburg.[49] In 1799, one J. Roller
published a first _Sketch of the History of Æsthetic,_[50] in which he
observes not unjustly, "Patriotic youth will be pleased to recognize
that Germany has produced more literature on this subject than any
other country."[51]

[Sidenote: _Eberhard and Eschenburg._]

Confining ourselves to bare mention of the works of Riedel (1767),
Faber (1767), Schütz (1776-1778), Schubart (1777-1781), Westenrieder
(1777), Szerdahel (1779), König (1784), Gang (1785), Meiners (1787),
Schott (1789), Moritz (1788),[52] we will select from the crowd the
_Theory of Fine Arts and Letters_ (1783) of Johann August Eberhard,
successor to Meier in the Chair at Halle,[53] and the _Sketch of a
Theory and Literature of Letters_ (1783) by Johann Joachim Eschenburg,
one of the most popular books of the day for students.[54] Both
these authors are followers of Baumgarten, with inclinations towards
sensationalism; amongst other things Eberhard considered the beautiful
as "that which pleases the most distinct senses," that is to say, of
sight and hearing.

[Sidenote: _J. G. Sulzer._]

A word must be accorded to Sulzer, in whom we find the most curious
alternation of new and old, the romantic influence of the new Swiss
school and the utilitarianism and intellectualism of his day. He
asserts that beauty exists wherever unity, variety and order are found:
the work of an artist is strictly in the form, in lively expression
(_lebhafte Darstellung_): the material is irrelevant to art, but
the duty of every reasonable and sensible man is to make judicious
selection. The beauty which is used to clothe the good as well as the
bad is not the ineffable, celestial Beauty, offspring of the alliance
between the beautiful, the good and the perfect, which awakens more
than mere pleasure, a veritable joy which ravishes and beatifies our
soul. Such is the human face when, by filling the eye of the beholder
with the pleasure of form arising from the variety, proportion and
order of the features, it proceeds to arouse the imagination and
intellect by its suggestion of interior perfection; of the same
nature is the statue of a great man carved by Phidias, or a patriotic
oration by Cicero. If truth lie outside art and belong to philosophy,
the most noble use to which art may be put is to make us feel the
important truths which lend her strength and energy, not to mention
that truth itself enters into art in the shape of truthful imitation
or representation. Sulzer also repeats (and he is not the last) that
orators, historians and poets are intermediaries between speculative
philosophy and the people.[55]

[Sidenote: _K. H. Heydenreich._]

Karl Heinrich Heydenreich returns to a sounder tradition when he
defines art (1790) as "a representation of a determinate state of
sensibility," and observes that man, as a cognitive being, is impelled
to enlarge the sphere of his cognitions and impart his discoveries to
his fellows, while as a sensitive being he is impelled to represent
and communicate his sensations; whence arise science and art. But
Heydenreich does not clearly grasp the cognitive character of art; for
in his opinion sensations become objects of artistic representation
either because they are pleasing or, when not pleasing, because they
are useful to further the moral aims of man as a social being; the
objects of sensibility which enter into art must be possessed of
intrinsic excellence and value and bear reference not to a single
individual but to the individual as a rational being: hence the
objectivity and necessity of taste. Like Baumgarten and Meier, he
divides Æsthetic into three parts: a doctrine of _inventio,_ another of
_methodica,_ a third of the _ars significandi_.[56]

[Sidenote: J. G. Herder.]

Another disciple of Baumgarten is J. G. Herder, who had an unbounded
admiration for the old Berlin master, whom he calls "the Aristotle
of his day," and defends him warmly against those who think fit to
describe him as a "stupid and obtuse syllogizer" (1769). On the
other hand he had slight esteem for subsequent Æsthetic, for example
Meier's work, which he stigmatized accurately enough as "in part a
re-mastication of Logic, in part a patchwork of metaphorical terms,
comparisons and examples." "O Æsthetic!" he cries with emphasis,
"O Æsthetic! the most fertile, the most beautiful and by far the
most novel of all abstract sciences, in what cavern of the Muses is
sleeping the youth of my philosophic nation destined to bring thee
to perfection?"[57] He denied Baumgarten's claim to have established
an _Ars pulchre cogitandi_ instead of limiting himself to a simple
_Scientia de pulchro et pulchris philosophice cogitans,_ and ridiculed
the scruple which held Æsthetic to be unworthy of the dignity of
Philosophy.[58] To compensate for this, however, he accepted the
fundamental definition cf poetry as _oratio sensitiva perfecta_:
gem of definitions (says he), the best that has ever been invented,
that penetrates to the heart of the matter, touches the true poetic
principles and opens the most extended view over the entire philosophy
of the beautiful, "coupling poetry with her sisters, the fine
arts."[59] Like Cesarotti the Italian, but with much less vivacity and
brilliance, Herder the German had studied primitive poetry, Ossian and
the songs of ancient peoples, Shakespeare (1773), popular love-songs
(1778), the spirit of Hebrew poetry (1782), and oriental poetry; these
studies powerfully impressed upon his mind the sensitive nature of
poetry. His friend Hamann (1762) had written these memorable words,
which read like an extract from one of Vico's aphorisms: "Poetry is
the mother-tongue of mankind: in the same way that the garden is older
than the ploughed field, painting than writing, song than declamation,
barter than trade. The repose of our most ancient progenitors was a
slumber deeper than ours; their motion a tumultuous dance. They spent
seven days in the silence of thought or of stupor; and opened their
mouths to pronounce winged words. Their speech was sensation and
passion, and they understood nothing but images. Of images is composed
all the treasure of human knowledge and felicity."[60] Although
Herder, who knew and admired Vico,[61] does not mention him by name
when treating of language and poetry, one might suppose him to be
influenced by the great Neapolitan at least in the final consolidation
of his theories; but, on the contrary, the authors whom he chiefly
quotes in this connexion are Du Bos, Goguet and Condillac, and observes
"the first beginnings of human speech in tone, gesture, expression of
sensations and thoughts by means of images and signs, can only have
been a kind of crude poetry, and so it is among every savage nation
in the world." Not a speech with punctuation and a sense of syllable,
like ours, learning as we do to read and write, but an unsyllabled
melody which gave birth to the primitive epic. "Natural man depicts
what he sees and as he sees it, alive, powerful, monstrous; in order
or disorder, as he sees and hears, so he reproduces. Not alone did
barbarous tongues thus arrange their images, but Greek and Latin do
the same. As the senses offered material, so the poets utilized it;
especially in Homer we see how closely nature is followed in images
which glow and fade perpetually and inimitably. He describes things
and events line by line, scene by scene; and, in the same way, he
paints men in their very bodies, actually as they speak and move."
Later we distinguish epic from what we call history; because the former
"not only describes what has happened but describes the event in its
entirety, showing how it occurred in the only possible way, having
regard to surrounding circumstance of body and spirit": this is the
reason of the more philosophical character of poetry. As for pleasure,
no doubt we do find poetry pleasant; but the idea that the poet's
motive is merely to excite pleasure cannot be condemned too strongly.
"Homer's gods were as essential and indispensable to the poet's world
as the forces of motion are to the world of matter. Without the
deliberations and activities of Olympus, none of the necessary events
which happen on this earth could take place. Homer's magic island in
the western sea belongs to the map of his hero's wanderings by the same
necessity which placed it on the map of the world: it was necessary
to the plan of his poem. It is the same with the severe Dante and his
circles of Hell and Heaven." Art is formative: she disciplines, orders
and governs the imagination and every faculty of man: not only did she
generate history, "but, earlier yet, she created gods and heroes and
purified the uncouth imaginations and fables of peoples with their
Titans, monsters and Gorgons, reducing to limit and law the riotous
imagination of ignorant men which knows no bounds or rule."[62]

Notwithstanding these intuitions, so like those of Vico early in the
same century, Herder as a philosopher is inferior to his Italian
predecessor, and in point of fact does not rise superior to Baumgarten.
By application of Leibniz' law of continuity, he too arrived at the
opinion that the pleasing, the true, the beautiful and the good are
degrees of one single activity. For instance, sensible pleasure" is
a participation in the true and the good, so far as the senses may
comprehend them; the feeling of pleasure and pain is no other than the
feeling of the true and the good, that is to say, the consciousness
that the aim of our organism, the conservation of our well-being and
the avoidance of our hurt, has been attained."[63] Fine arts and
letters are all instructive (_bildend_): hence the terms _humaniora,_
the Greek _καλόν,_ the Latin _pulchrum,_ the _gentle_ arts of days
of chivalry, _les belles lettres et les beaux arts_ of the French. A
group of them (gymnastic, dance, etc.) educates the body; a second
group (painting, plastic, music) educates the nobler senses of man,
the eye, the ear, the hand and tongue; a third (poetry) touches the
intellect, the imagination and the reason: a fourth group governs human
tendencies and inclinations.[64] Herder disapproved of the facile
theorists of art who began straight away with a definition of beauty,
a complex and involved concept. He held that the theory of fine arts
should be subdivided into three theories, each to be built up from
the foundations, the theory of sight, of hearing and of touch, that
is to say of painting, music and sculpture, _i.e._ into æsthetical
Optics, æsthetical Acoustics and æsthetical Physiology. "Fairly well
elaborated in the psychological and subjective aspects, Æsthetic
is sadly undeveloped in all that belongs to the object and to the
sensation of beauty, without which there can never be a fertile theory
of the Beautiful capable of influencing all the arts."[65] Taste is not
"a fundamental faculty of the soul but a habitual application of our
judgement (intellectual judgement) to objects of beauty"; an acquired
facility of the intellect (of which Herder outlines the genesis).[66]
The poet is poet not only in his imagination but in his intellect.
In 1782 he writes: "The barbarous name Æsthetic of recent invention
indicates nothing beyond a section of Logic: that which we call taste
is neither more nor less than a quick and rapid judgement which does
not exclude truth and profundity, but rather presupposes and promotes
them. All didactic poetry is nothing more than philosophy rendered
sensible: the fable as exposition of a general doctrine is truth in
act, in activity.... When expounded and applied to human affairs,
Philosophy is not only a fine art in herself (_schöne Wissenschaft,_)
but the mother of Beauty: it is only through her that Rhetoric and
Poetry can ever be educational, useful, or in the truest sense
pleasant."[67]

[Sidenote: _Philosophy of language._]

Herder and Hamann deserve our gratitude for having brought a current of
fresh air into the study of the philosophy of language. The lead given
by the Port-Royal authors had been followed since the beginning of
the century by many writers of logical or general grammars. According
to the French Encyclopædia, "_La grammaire générale est la science
raisonnée des principes immuables et généraux de la parole prononcée
ou écrite dans toutes les langues_,"[68] and d'Alembert spoke of
grammarians of invention and grammarians of memory, assigning to the
former the duty of studying the metaphysics of grammar.[69] General
grammars had been written by Du Marsais, De Beauzée, and Condillac
in France; Harris in England; and many others.[70] But what was the
relation between general grammar and particular grammars? If logic be
one, how comes it that languages are many? Is the variety of tongues
but a deviation on their part from one single model? And, if there be
no such deviation or error, what is the explanation of the fact? What
is language, and how was it born? If language be external to thought,
how can thought exist if not in language? "_Si les hommes_," says
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "_ont eu besoin de la parole pour apprendre
à penser, ils ont eu bien plus besoin encore de savoir penser pour
trouver l'art de la parole_"; appalled at the difficulty, he declares
his conviction "_de l'impossibilité presque démontrée que les langues
aient pu naître et s'établir par des moyens purement humains._"[71]
Such questions became fashionable; books on the origin and formation
of language were written by de Brosses (1765) and Court de Gébelin
(1776) in France, by Monboddo (1774) in England, Süssmilch (1766) and
Tiedemann in Germany, and Cesarotti (1785) in Italy, and by others
who had some slight acquaintance with Vico, but profited little by
it.[72] None of the above-named writers was able to free himself of
the notion that speech was either natural and mechanical, or else a
symbol attached to thought: whereas in fact it was impossible to solve
the difficulties under which they were labouring except by dropping
the notion of a sign or symbol and attaining the conception of the
active and expressive imagination, verbal imagination, language as
the expression not of intellect but of intuition. An approach towards
this explanation was made by Herder in a brilliant and imaginative
thesis in 1770 upon this subject of the origin of language, chosen
for discussion by the Berlin Academy. In it he says that language is
the reflexion or consciousness (_Besonnenheit_) of man. "Man shows
reflexion when he puts forth freely such force of mind as enables him
to make selection from amongst the crowd of sensations by which he is
assailed: from the ocean of the senses, so to speak, to select a single
wave and consciously to watch it. He shows reflexion when, amidst the
thronging chaos of images which pass before him as in a dream, he can
in a waking moment collect himself and fasten his attention upon a
single image, examine it calmly and clearly, and separate it from its
neighbours. Once again, man shows reflexion when he is able not merely
to grasp vividly and clearly all the properties of an image, but also
to recognize one or more of its distinctive properties." The language
of man "does not depend on the organization of the mouth, for even he
who is dumb from birth has, if he reflects, a language; it is not a
cry of the senses, since it resides in a reflective creature, not in a
breathing machine; it is not an affair of imitation, since imitation
of nature is a means, and we are here trying to explain the end: much
less is it an arbitrary convention; a savage in the depths of the
forest would have had to create a language for himself even though he
never used it. Language is an understanding of the soul with herself,
necessary just in so far as man is man."[73] Here language begins to
show itself no longer as purely mechanical or as something derived
from arbitrary choice and invention, but as a creative activity and a
primary affirmation of the activity of the human mind. Herder's essay
may not state such a view unequivocally, but it points forward to such
a conclusion in a striking way for which its author has not received
the credit he deserves. Hamann, in reviewing his friend's theories,
agreed with him in denying the origin of language by invention or
arbitrary choice; while dwelling also on the liberty of man, he
regarded language as something which man could only have learned by
means of a mystical _communicatio idiomatum_ from God.[74] That, too,
was one way of recognizing that the mystery of language is not to be
solved except by placing it in the forefront of the problem of the
spirit.

[1] Vico, _Opere, ed. cit._ iv. p. 305.

[2] Herder, _Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität,_ 1793-1797, Letter
59; Goethe, _Italien. Reise,_ Mar. 5, 1787.

[3] Letters from Wolf to Cesarotti, June 5, 1802; in Cesarotti,
_Opere,_ vol. xxxviii. pp. 108-112; cf. _ibid._ pp. 43-44, and vol.
xxxvii. pp. 281, 284, 324; cf. on the question of the relations between
Wolf and Vico, Croce, _Bibliografia vichiana,_ pp. 51, 56-58, and
_Supplem._ pp. 12-14.

[4] Letter in French to Mme. Ferrant (1719), and to the Marquis Maffei
in _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. (1756), pp. lxxxv.-civ., cviii.-cix.

[5] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. i., 1739, pref.

[6] Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was an Irishman. Croce's mistake is
probably due to the fact that he studied and taught at Glasgow, or that
his family was ultimately of Scottish origin.--TR.

[7] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. clxxi.-clxxvii.

[8] See above, pp. 184-185.

[9] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. 242-246.

[10] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 249.

[11] _Op. cit._ ii. pp. 252-253.

[12] _Prose e poesie,_ vol. ii. pp. 233-234.

[13] _Op. cit._ i. pref.

[14] _Op. cit._ ii. p. 127.

[15] _Op. cit._ i. p. xliii.

[16] Fr. Sav. Quadrio, _Della storia e della ragione d' ogni poesia,_
Bologna, 1739, vol. i. part i. dist. i. ch. 1.

[17] Fr. M. Zanotti, _Dell' arte poetica, ragionamenti cinque,_
Bologna, 1768.

[18] On Ossian, _Opere,_ vols, ii.-v.; on Homer, vols, vi.-x.; _Saggio
copra il diletto della tragedia,_ vol. xxix. pp. 117-167; _Saggio sul
bello,_ vol. xxx. pp. 13-70; on _Filosofia del gusto,_ vol. i.; on
_Eloquenza,_ lecture, vol. xxxi.

[19] _Opere,_ vol. xl. p. 49.

[20] _Ibid._ p. 55.

[21] Letter from Corniani to Cesarotti, November 21, 1790, in _Opere,_
vol. xxxvii. p. 146.

[22] _Saggio sopra le istituzioni scolastiche, private e pubbliche,_ in
_Opere,_ vol. xxix. pp. 1-116.

[23] Letter of March 30, 1764, in _Opere,_ vol. xxxv. p. 202.

[24] Saverio Bettinelli, _Dell' entusiasmo nelle belle arti, 1769,_ in
_Opere,_ iii. pp. xi.-xiii.

[25] Fr. M. Pagano, _De' saggi politici,_ Naples, 1783-1785, vol. i.
Appendix to § 1, "Sull' origine e natura della poesia"; vol. ii. § 6,
"Del gusto e delle belle arti."

[26] See above, p. 217.

[27] _Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften,_ Halle, 1748-1750.

[28] _Auszug aus den Anfangsgründe,_ etc., _ibid._ 1758.

[29] _Betrachtungen über den ersten Grundsätzen aller schönen Künste u.
Wissenschaften, ibid._ 1757.

[30] Preface to 2nd ed. (1768) of vol. ii. of _Anfangsgründe,_ and
_Betrachtungen, cit.,_ esp. §§ 1, 2, 34.

[31] Preface to vol. i., and cf. § 5.

[32] In a letter to Gottsched, 1747, in Danzel, _Gottsched,_ p. 215.

[33] _Anfangsgründe,_ § 23.

[34] _Op. cit._ § 92.

[35] _Op. cit._ § 49.

[36] _Op. cit._ § 55.

[37] _Op. cit._ §§ 355-370.

[38] _Op. cit._ §§ 529-540.

[39] _Op. cit._ § 5.

[40] _Op. cit._ § 413.

[41] Anfangsgründe, §§ 541-670.

[42] Betrachtungen, § 20.

[43] Op. cit. § 21.

[44] _Briefe über die Empfindungen,_ 1755 (in _Opere filosofiche,_
Ital. trans., Parma, 1800, vol. ii.). Letters 2, 5, 11.

[45] _Betrachtungen üb. d. Quellen d. sch. Wiss. u. K.,_ 1757, later
entitled _Über die Hauptgrundsätze,_ etc., 1761, in _Opere, ed. cit._
ii. pp. 10, 12-15, 21-30.

[46] J. E. Schlegel, _Von der Nachahmung,_ 1742; cf. Braitmaier,
_Gesch. d. poet. Th._ i. p. 249 _sqq._

[47] Koller, _Entwurf,_ p. 103.

[48] _Die ersten Grundsätze der schönen Kunst überhaupt, und der
schönen Schreibart insbesondere,_ Bonn, 1790; cf. Sulzer, i. p. 55, and
Koller, pp. 55-56.

[49] See Bibliographical Appendix.

[50] _Entwurf zur Geschichte u. Literatur d. Ästhetik,_ etc.,
Regensburg. 1799; see Bibl. App.

[51] Koller, _op. cit._ p. 7.

[52] Notices and extracts in Sulzer and Koller, _opp. citt._

[53] Joh. Aug. Eberhard, _Theorie der schönen Künste u.
Wissenschaften,_ Halle, 1783; reprinted 1789, 1790.

[54] Joh. Joach. Eschenburg, _Entwurf einer Theorie u. Literatur d. s.
W.,_ Berlin, 1783; reprinted 1789.

[55] Allgem. Th. d. sch. Künste, on words Schön, Schönheit, Wahrheit,
Werke des Geschmacks, etc.

[56] Karl Heinrich Heydenreich, _System der Ästhetik,_ vol. i.,
Leipzig, 1790, esp. pp. 149-154. 367-385. 385-392.

[57] _Kritische Wälder oder Betrachtungen über die Wissenschaft und
Kunst des Schönen,_ Fourth Forest, 1769, in _Sämmtliche Werke,_ ed. B.
Suphan, Berlin, 1878, vol. iv. pp. 19, 21, 27.

[58] _Kritische Wälder, loc. cit._ pp. 22-27.

[59] Fragment, _Von Baumgarten Denkart_; and cf. _op. cit._ pp. 132-133.

[60] _Æsthetica in mice,_ in _Kreuzzüge des Philologen,_ Königsberg,
quoted in Herder, _Werke,_ xii. 145.

[61] See above, p. 235.

[62] _Kaligone,_ 1800, in _Werke, ed. cit.,_ xii. pp. 145-150.

[63] _Kaligone,_ pp. 34-55.

[64] _Ibid._ pp. 308-317.

[65] _Kritische Wälder, loc. cit._ iv. pp. 47-127.

[66] _Op. cit._ pp. 27-36.

[67] _Sophron,_ 1782, § 4.

[68] _Encyclopédie, ad verb._

[69] _Éloge de Du Marsais,_ 1756 (introd. to _Œuvres de Du Marsais,_
Paris, 1797, vol. i.).

[70] Du Marsais, _Méthode raisonnée,_ 1722; _Traité des tropes,_
1730; _Traité de grammaire générale_ (in _Encyclopédie_); De Beauzée,
_Grammaire générale pour servir de fondement à l'étude de toutes les
langues,_ 1767; Condillac, _Grammaire française,_ 1755; J. Harris,
_Hermes, or a Philosophical Enquiry concerning Language and Universal
Grammar,_ 1751.

[71] _Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes,_ 1754.

[72] De Brosses, _Traité de la formation mécanique des langues,_ 1765;
Court de Gébelin, _Histoire naturelle de la parole,_ 1776; Monboddo,
_Origin and Progress of Language,_ 1774; Süssmilch, _Beweis dass der
Ursprung der menschlichen Sprache göttlich sei,_ 1766; Tiedemann,
_Ursprung der Sprache;_ Cesarotti, _Saggio sulla filosofia delle
lingue,_ 1785 (in _Opere,_ vol. i.); D. Colao Agata, _Piano, ovvero
ricerche filosofiche sulle lingue,_ 1774; Soave, _Ricerche intorno all'
istituzione naturale d'una società e d'una lingua,_ 1774.

[73] _Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache,_ in a small book _Zwei
Preisschriften,_ etc. (2nd ed., Berlin, 1789), esp. pp. 60-65.

[74] Steinthal, _Ursprung der Sprache,_ 4th ed., pp. 39-58.

VII

OTHER ÆSTHETIC DOCTRINES OF THE SAME PERIOD

[Sidenote: _Other writers of the eighteenth century: Batteux._]

A great medley of heterogeneous ideas is noticeable among other writers
on Æsthetic during the same period. In 1746 appeared a little volume
by Abbé Batteux bearing the attractive title of _The Fine Arts reduced
to a Single Principle,_ in which the author attempted a unification
of all the different rules laid down by the writers of treatises. All
such rules (says Batteux) are branches emerging from one trunk; he who
possesses the simple principle will be able to deduce the rules one by
one without entangling himself in their mass, which can but involve him
in endless coils. The author had passed in review the _Ars Poetica_ of
Horace and that of Boileau, and the works of Rollin, Dacier, le Bossu
and d'Aubignac; but had found real help only in Aristotle's principle
of imitation, which he thought could be easily and strikingly applied
to poetry, painting, music and the art of gesture. But suddenly the
Aristotelian principle of imitation yields place to a wholly new
rendering, namely the "imitation of natural _beauty._" The business
of art is to "select the most beautiful parts of nature in order to
frame them into an exquisite whole which shall be more beautiful than
nature's self, without ceasing to be natural." Now, what may this
greater perfection, this beautiful nature, be? On one occasion Batteux
identifies it with truth: but "with the truth which may be; with
beauty-truth, which is represented as though it really existed with all
the perfections it could possibly receive," recalling one example from
the ancients in the Helen of Zeuxis, and one from the moderns in the
_Misanthrope_ of Molière. In another place he explains that beautiful
nature, _"tum ipsius (obiecti) naturæ, tum nostræ convenit," i.e._ that
it has the closest connexion with our own perfection, our advantage
and our interest, and is, at the same time, perfect in itself. The
aim of imitation is "to please, to move, to soften, in one word, to
delight"; so beautiful nature must be interesting and furnished with
unity, variety, symmetry and proportion. Embarrassed by the question
of artistic imitation of things naturally ugly or objectionable,
Batteux falls back on saying, as Castelvetro had said before him, that
displeasing objects please when imitated, since imitation, being always
imperfect, in comparison with the reality, cannot excite the horror and
disgust aroused by the latter. From pleasure he deduces the other aim
of utility: if the aim of poetry be to give pleasure, and "pleasure
by moving the passions, then in order to give a perfect and enduring
pleasure it ought to rouse such passions only as it is well to excite,
not those inimical to goodness."[1]

[Sidenote: _The English: W. Hogarth._]

It is difficult to string together a more insubstantial mass of
contradictions. But Batteux is rivalled and outdone by the English
philosophers or rather scribblers on Æsthetic or rather on things in
general which sometimes accidentally include æsthetic facts. Happening
to find in Lomazzo some words attributed to Michæl Angelo on the beauty
of shapes, Hogarth the artist took into his head the idea that the
figurative arts can be regulated by a special principle which can be
expressed in a particular fine.[2] Filled with this discovery, in 1745
he designed a frontispiece for a volume of his engravings; it depicted
a painter's palette scored across with an undulating line and the words
_The Line of Beauty._ Public curiosity was immediately aroused by this
hieroglyphic, to be satisfied a little later by the publication of
his book _The Analysis of Beauty_ (1753).[3] In this he combated the
mistake of judging pictures either by the subject or the excellence of
the imitation instead of by their form, which is the true essential
of art and is composed "of symmetry, variety, uniformity, simplicity,
intricacy and quantity; all things which co-operate in the production
of beauty, correcting and restraining each other as required."[4]
But immediately afterwards Hogarth proclaims that there must also be
correspondence and agreement with the thing copied; for "regularity,
uniformity and symmetry give pleasure in so far only as they serve
to give the illusion of faithful correspondence."[5] Further on, the
reader learns that "amongst the immense variety of undulating lines
which may be conceived, there is but one which truly merits the name of
the Line of Beauty, and this is a precisely serpentine line which may
be called the Line of Grace."[6] Again, we are told that intricacy of
lines is beautiful because "the active mind likes to be engaged," and
the eye delights in being "guided in a sort of hunt."[7] A straight
line has no beauty, and the pig, the bear, the spider and the toad are
ugly because devoid of undulating lines.[8] The ancients showed much
judgement in the management and grouping of lines, "varying from the
precise line of grace only on those occasions when the character or
action demanded."[9]

[Sidenote: _E. Burke._]

With similar indecision Edmund Burke wavers between the principle
of imitation and other heterogeneous or imaginary principles in his
book, _An Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful_ (1756). He observes, "Natural properties contained in an
object give pleasure or displeasure to the imagination: beyond this,
however, imagination may delight in the likeness of a copy to its
original"; he asserts that from "these two reasons" arises the whole
pleasure of imagination.[10]

Without dwelling further on the second, he proceeds to a lengthy
discussion of the natural qualities which should be found in an object
of sensible beauty: "Firstly, comparative smallness; secondly, smooth
surface; thirdly, variety in disposition of the parts; fourthly, that
it have no angularity, all lines fusing one in another; fifthly, a
structure of great delicacy betraying no signs of violence; sixthly,
vivid colouring without glare or harshness; seventhly, if it have any
glaring colour, let it be different from the background." These are the
properties of beauty working in harmony with nature and least liable to
suffer from caprice and differences of taste.[11]

[Sidenote: _H. Home._]

These books of Hogarth and Burke are generally described as classical;
if so, they belong to the type of classic that fails to convince. To
a somewhat higher type belongs the _Elements of Criticism_ (1761)
of Henry Home, Lord Kaimes, who seeks "the true principles of the
fine arts" with the object of converting criticism into "a rational
science," and to this end chooses "the upward path of facts and
experiments." Home confines himself to feelings derived from objects
of sight and hearing, which, in so far as unaccompanied by desires,
are more truly described as simple feelings (emotions, not passions).
These occupy a middle position between mere sense-impressions and
intellectual or moral ideas, and are therefore akin to both; and it is
from these that the pleasures of beauty are derived. Beauty is divided
into beauty of relation and intrinsic beauty.[12] Of the latter, Home's
only account is that regularity, simplicity, uniformity, proportion,
order and other pleasing qualities have been "so disposed by the Author
of nature in order to increase our happiness here on earth which, as
is clearly shown in numberless instances, is not foreign to his care."
This notion is confirmed when he reflects that "our taste for such
details is not accidental, but uniform and universal, being a very
part of our nature"; adding that "regularity, uniformity, order and
simplicity help to facilitate perception and make it possible for us
to form clearer conception of objects than it would be possible to
gain by the most earnest attention were such qualities not present."
Proportions are often combined with a view to utility, "as we see that
the best proportioned amongst animals are also the strongest; but there
are also many examples in which this conjunction does not hold good";
wherefore the wisest plan "is to rest content with the final cause just
mentioned: that of the increase of our happiness intended by the Author
of nature."[13] In his _Essay on Taste_ (1758) and on _Genius_ (1774)
Alexander Gérard employs by turns, according to the various forms of
art, the principles of association, of direct pleasure, of expression,
and even of moral sense: the same kind of explanation reappears in
another _Essay on Taste_ by Alison (1792).

[Sidenote: _Eclecticism and sensationalism. E. Platner._]

It is impossible to classify works of such calibre, almost wholly
lacking as they are in scientific method; on each page their writers
pass from physiological sensationalism to moralism; from the imitation
of nature to mysticism and transcendent finalism without the slightest
sense of incongruity. It would be absurd to take them seriously; in
comparison it is almost refreshing to come across a frank hedonist
in the German, Ernst Plainer, who interpreted Hogarth's inquiry into
lines after a fashion of his own and was unable to see anything in
æsthetic facts except a reverberation of sexual pleasure. Where can we
find a beauty, he asks, that is not derived from the female figure,
the centre of all beauty? Undulating lines are beautiful because
found in a woman's body; beautiful are all movements distinctively
feminine; beautiful the tones of music melting one into another;
beautiful the poem where one thought embraces another with tenderness
and facility.[14] Condillac's sensationalism had already shown
itself wholly incapable of understanding æsthetic productivity; the
associationism especially promoted by the work of Hume fared no better.

[Sidenote: _Fr. Hemsterhuis._]

The Dutchman Hemsterhuis considered beauty as a phenomenon born of
the meeting between sensibility, which gives multiplicity, and the
internal sense, which tends to unity; hence the beautiful is "that
which exhibits the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time." Man,
to whom it is not permitted to attain ultimate unity, finds in beauty
an approximate unity which gives him a pleasure somewhat analogous
with the joy of love. This theory of Hemsterhuis, in which elements of
mysticism and sensationalism mingle with glimpses of truth, developed
later into the sentimentalism of Jacobi, for whom the totality of Truth
and Goodness and even the Supersensible itself are sensibly present to
the soul in the form of beauty.[15]

[Sidenote: _Neo-Platonism and mysticism. Winckelmann._]

Platonism or, more accurately, neo-Platonism was revived by the creator
of the history of figurative art, Winckelmann (1764). Contemplation
of the masterpieces of antique plastic art, and the impression of
superhuman loftiness and divine indifference which they create all
the more irresistibly because we cannot reawaken the life they once
possessed or understand their real significance, led Winckelmann, and
others with him, to the conception of a Beauty which, descending from
the seventh heaven of the divine Idea, embodied itself in works of this
description. Baumgarten's follower Mendelssohn had denied the enjoyment
of beauty to God: the neo-Platonist Winckelmann gave it back to him and
lodged it in his bosom.

[Sidenote: _Beauty and lack of significance._]

"Wise men who have meditated upon the causes of universal Beauty,
seeking her amongst created things and trying to gain the contemplation
of Supreme Beauty, have placed it in the perfect harmony of creatures
with their ends and of their parts with one another. But as this is
equivalent to perfection, which man is incapable of attaining, our
concept of universal beauty remains indeterminate, and arises by means
of particular cognitions which, when accurately collected and fitted
together, give us the highest idea we can attain of human beauty,
which we elevate in proportion as we raise it above matter. But,
again, since the Creator deals out perfection to all his creatures
in the proportion that befits them, and since every concept rests
on some cause which must be sought outside the concept itself, the
cause of Beauty which is to be found in every created thing cannot
be sought in anything outside these created things. For this reason,
and because our cognitions are comparative concepts, whereas Beauty
cannot be compared with anything higher, it is difficult to attain a
distinct and universal cognition of Beauty."[16] The only way out of
this difficulty and others like it is the recognition that "supreme
beauty resides in God": "the concept of human beauty becomes the more
perfect in proportion as it can be thought more in conformity and
agreement with supreme Being, which is distinguished from matter by
its own unity and indivisibility. This conception of Beauty is as a
spirit which, freed by fire from the prison of matter, strives to
conjure up a creature in the likeness of the first reasonable creature
formed by the divine intelligence. The forms of such an image are
simple and continuous and within this unity they are varied and for
that very reason harmonious."[17] 2 To these characteristics is added
"lack of significance" (_Unbezeichnung_), since supreme beauty cannot
be described with points or fines different from those which alone
can constitute that beauty; its form "is not peculiar to this or that
determinate person, neither does it express any state of feeling or
sensation of passion, things which disturb unity and overcloud beauty."
Winckelmann concludes: "We look upon Beauty as a purest water drawn
from the centre of the spring; the less taste it has the higher it is
esteemed because free from all impurities."[18]

To perceive pure beauty, a special faculty is required, which certainly
is not sense, but may perhaps be intellect or even, as Winckelmann
says, "a fine internal sense" free from all intentions or passions
of instinct, inclination or pleasure. Having asserted beauty to be
something supersensible, it is not surprising that Winckelmann should
wish, if not wholly to exclude colour, at least to reduce it to a
minimum, and treat it not as a constitutive element in beauty but as
secondary and ancillary.[19] True beauty is given in form: by which he
means line and surface, forgetting that these are only apprehended by
the senses, and could not be seen without being in some way coloured.

[Sidenote: _Winckelmann's contradictions and compromises._]

When error refuses to retire, hermit-like, to the narrow cell of a
brief aphorism, it finds itself condemned to self-contradiction in
order to live at all in the world of concrete facts and problems.
Although composed with a view to stating a theory, the work of
Winckelmann always led him among concrete historical facts clamouring
to be brought into relation with his formally stated idea of supreme
beauty. In his admission of line-drawing and his further admission, on
a lower plane, of colour, we have two compromises already; to which
a third is added in his principle of Expression. "Since human nature
has no state intermediate between pain and pleasure" and as living
creature without such feelings is inconceivable, "the human figure must
be represented in a condition of action and passion, which artists
call expression." Hence Winckelmann, after dealing with Beauty, goes
on to treat of Expression.[20] He then found himself obliged to effect
a fourth compromise between the single constant supreme beauty and
individual beauties; for while he preferred the male to the female body
as a completer embodiment of perfect beauty, he could not shut his eyes
to the obvious fact that we know and admire beautiful women's bodies
and even beautiful animals' bodies.

[Sidenote: _A. R. Mengs._]

Friend and, in a sense, collaborator of Winckelmann was Raphæl Mengs
the artist, no less eager than his archæological fellow-countryman to
understand the nature of that beauty which the one studied as a critic
while the other produced it as a painter. Remarking, writes Mengs,
that of the two chief duties of a painter, the imitation of appearances
and the selection of the most beautiful objects, much has been written
on the former, while the latter "has scarcely been touched by the
modems, who would have been ignorant of the art of drawing were it
not for the statues of ancient Greece";[21] pondering this, "I read,
asked and looked at everything likely to throw light on the subject,
but never was I satisfied; either they spoke of beautiful things or
of qualities which are the attributes of beauty, or they pretended to
explain, as the saying is, the obscure by the more obscure, or even
confused the beautiful with the pleasing: so that finally I determined
to search for the nature of beauty on my own account."[22] One of his
works on this subject was published during his lifetime by the advice
and assistance of Winckelmann (1761); many others appeared posthumously
(1780), all were reprinted several times and translated into several
languages. In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he says, "I have been sailing
a long time on a vast sea seeking the understanding of beauty, and
still I am far from any shore and in great doubt how to shape my
course: gazing around, my sight is confounded by the immensity of the
subject."[23] In truth it seems as though Mengs never arrived at a
formula satisfactory to himself, although he conformed more or less to
Winckelmann's doctrine that "beauty consists in material perfection
according to our ideas; and since God alone is perfect, beauty is
divine"; it is the "visible idea of perfection" and stands in the same
relation to it as does a visible to a mathematical point. Our ideas
proceed from the purposes which the Creator has willed to fulfil in
various things; hence the multiplicity of beauties. In general, Mengs
finds the types of things in natural species: _e.g._ "a stone, of
which we have the idea that it should be uniform in colour"; which"
is called ugly if it happen to be spotted"; or a child "would be
ugly if he were like a man of mature age, just as a man is ugly when
shaped like a woman, and a woman when she is like a man." He adds
surprisingly, "As among stones there is but one perfect species, the
diamond; among metals, gold; and among animated creatures, man only; so
there is difference and distinction in every order, and very rarely is
there perfection."[24] In his _Dreams of Beauty_ he considers beauty
as "a middle disposition, including perfection on the one hand and
the pleasing on the other"; in reality it is a third thing, differing
from perfection and the pleasing, and deserving a special name for
itself.[25] The art of painting arises from four sources: beauty,
significant or expressive character, the pleasing united to harmony,
and colouring. Mengs finds the first amongst the ancients, the second
in Raphæl, the third in Correggio and the fourth in Titian.[26] From
this empirical studio-gossip he rouses himself to exclaim, "The force
of beauty so transports me that I will tell thee, reader, what I
feel. All nature is beautiful, and so is virtue; beautiful are forms
and proportions; beautiful are appearances and beautiful the causes
thereof; more beautiful is reason, most beautiful of all is the great
first cause."[27]

[Sidenote: _G. E. Lessing._]

An attenuated, that is to say, a less metaphysical, echo of
Winckelmann's theory is found in Lessing (1766), who infused a new
spirit into the literature and social life of the Germany of his time.
According to Lessing the aim of art is "delight"; and since delight is
a "superfluous thing" it seems reasonable that the legislator should
not allow to art that liberty which is indispensable to science in
her search for truth, the soul's necessity. For the Greeks painting
was what by its nature it ought to be, "the imitation of beautiful
bodies." "Its (Hellenic) cultivator represented nothing but the
beautiful: common beauty of a low grade served him as an accidental
subject, an exercise, a diversion. The attractiveness of his work
must depend simply and solely on the perfection of his subject: he
was far too true an artist to wish his audience to content itself
with the barren pleasure arising from mere resemblance or from the
inspection of skilful workmanship: nothing in his art was dearer to
him, nothing seemed more noble, than the end at which it aimed."[28]
Pictorial representation must exclude everything unpleasing or ugly;
"painting as imitation may express ugliness: painting as a fine art
will refuse to do so: all visible objects belong to art taken under
the former title: the latter may claim only such objects as awaken
pleasing sensations." If, on the contrary, ugliness may be represented
by the poet, the reason is this: poetic description "conveys a less
displeasing sense of bodily malformation which, in the end, almost
loses its character as such; unable to use it for itself, the poet
uses it as a means to provoke certain mixed feelings (the ridiculous,
the terrible), in which we are content to remain, in the absence of
any purely pleasant feelings."[29] In his _Dramaturgie_ (1767) Lessing
takes his stand upon the Aristotelian _Poetics_: it is well known that
not only did he approve of rules in general but he believed those
laid down by Aristotle to be as incontrovertible as the theorems of
Euclid. His polemic against French writers and critics is waged in the
name of probability, not to be confounded with historical accuracy.
He understood the universal as a sort of average of what appears in
individuals, and catharsis as a conversion of passions into virtuous
dispositions, asserting it as beyond doubt that the aim of all
poetry is to inspire a love for virtue.[30] He follows the example
of Winckelmann in introducing the concept of ideal beauty into the
doctrine of figurative art: "expression of corporeal beauty is the aim
of painting: therefore supreme beauty of body is the supreme aim of
art. But this supreme beauty of body is found in man only, and for
him it exists only through the ideal. This ideal may be found among
the brute creation in inferior degree; but is entirely absent from
vegetable or inanimate nature." Landscape and flower painters are not
really artists because "they imitate beauties possessed of no ideal:
whereby they work by eye and hand alone, genius having little or no
part in their compositions." Nevertheless, Lessing prefers a landscape
painter to "the painter of historic pieces who, instead of making
beauty his aim, merely depicts a crowd in order to show his cunning in
simple expression, not in expression subordinate to beauty."[31] The
ideal of bodily beauty then consists "chiefly in the ideal of form,
but also in that of texture of the flesh, and in that of permanent
expression. Mere colouring and transitory expression have no ideal
since nature herself has placed no indelible seal upon them."[32] At
the bottom of his heart Lessing dislikes colour; and when he finds
the pen-sketches of painters showing "a life, a freedom, a brilliancy
never to be found in their painted pictures," he asks himself "whether
the most marvellous colouring can compensate so heavy a loss," and
whether it is not to be wished "that painting in oils had never been
invented"?[33]

[Sidenote: _Theorists of ideal beauty._]

Ideal beauty, that curious alliance between God and the subtle outline
traced with pen or graver, that cold academical mysticism, came into
fashion. In Italy (the home of Winckelmann and Mengs, who published
many of their works in Italian) it was much discussed by artists,
antiquaries and connoisseurs. The architect Francesco Milizia professed
himself a follower of "the principles of Sulzer and Mengs";[34]
the Spaniard d'Azara, living in Italy, edited and annotated Mengs,
adding his own definition of beauty: "The union of the perfect and
the pleasing made visible";[35] another Spaniard, Arteaga, one of
the many Jesuit refugees in Italy, wrote a treatise on _Ideal Beauty_
(1789);[36] the Englishman Daniel Webb on coming to Rome and making
the acquaintance of Mengs seized upon the ideas he heard him express
on beauty, collected them and actually published them in a book
anticipating Mengs' own.[37]

[Sidenote: _G. Spalletti and the characteristic._]

The first voice of dissent from this doctrine of ideal beauty was
raised in 1764 by a small circle of Italians who asserted the
characteristic to be the principle of art. As such appears to
be the necessary interpretation of the little _Essay on Beauty_
written by Guiseppe Spalletti in the form of a letter to Mengs,
with whom Spalletti had discussed the subject "in the solitudes of
Grottaferrata," and who had urged him to put all his thoughts in
writing.[38] Its polemical character, though not openly asserted, is
discernible in every page. "Truth in general, conscientiously rendered
by the artist, is the object of Beauty in general. When the soul finds
those characteristics which wholly converge upon the matter which the
work of art claims to represent, it judges that work beautiful. The
same is true of the works of nature: if the soul perceives a man of
fine proportions having the face of a lovely woman, which causes it to
doubt whether the object before it be man or woman, it esteems that man
ugly rather than the reverse, through deficiency of the characteristic
of truth; if this can be said of natural Beauty, how much more can
it be said of the Beauty of art." The pleasure given by Beauty is
intellectual, that is to say, it is the pleasure of apprehending
truth: when confronted by ugly things represented characteristically,
man "delights in having increased his cognitions": Beauty, "with its
property of supplying to the soul likeness, order, proportion, harmony
and variety, provides it with an immense field for the construction
of innumerable syllogisms, and by reasoning in this manner it will
take pleasure in itself, in the object which arouses such pleasure, and
in the feeling of its own perfection." Finally, the beautiful may be
defined as "the inherent modification of the object under observation
which presents it in the inevitably characteristic manner in which it
is bound to appear."[39] In contrast to the fallacious profundity of
Winckelmann and Mengs we welcome the sound good sense of this obscure
Spalletti, upholder of the Aristotelian position against the revived
neo-Platonism of the æstheticians.

[Sidenote: _Beauty and the characteristic: Hirt, Meyer, Goethe._]

Many years went by before a similar rebellion arose in Germany; at
length in 1797 the art-historian Ludwig Hirt, basing his case on
ancient works of art which depicted all things, even things utterly
vulgar and ugly, ventured to deny the view that ideal beauty is the
principle of art, and that expression has only a secondary place, above
which it must not rise for fear of disturbing ideal beauty. For the
ideal he substituted the characteristic, as a principle to be applied
equally to gods, heroes or animals. Character is "that individuality by
which form, movement, signs, physiognomy and expression, local colour,
fight, shade and chiaroscuro are distinguished and represented in the
manner demanded by the object."[40] Another historian of art, Heinrich
Meyer, who started from the position of Winckelmann and went on by
adopting a series of compromises, finally asserting an ideal of trees
and landscape side by side with the ideal of man and various other
animals, tried to find an intermediate position between this doctrine
and Hirt's, in the course of controversy with the latter. And Wolfgang
von Goethe, forgetful of his youthful days when he chanted the praises
of Gothic architecture, returning home from an Italian tour impregnated
with Greece and Rome in 1798, also sought a middle term between Beauty
and Expression; dwelling on the thought of certain characteristic
contents which should supply the artist with forms of beauty to be by
him remodelled and developed into complete beauty. The characteristic
was thus the mere point of departure, and beauty was simply the result
of the artist's elaboration: "we must start from the characteristic"
(says he) "in order to attain the beautiful."[41]

[1] _Les Beaux Arts réduits à un même principe,_ Paris, 1746; see esp.
part i. ch. 3; part ii. chs. 4, 5; part iii. ch. 3.

[2] See above, p. 110.

[3] _Analysis of Beauty,_ London, 1753 (Ital. trans., Leghorn, 1761).

[4] _Op. cit._ p. 47.

[5] _Op. cit._ p. 57.

[6] _Op. cit._ p. 93.

[7] _Op. cit._ pp. 61, 65.

[8] _Analisi della bellezza,_ p. 91.

[9] _Op. cit._ p. 176.

[10] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful,_ 1756 (Ital. trans., Milan, 1804); cf. the preliminary
discourse on "Taste."

[11] _Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful,_ part iii. § 18.

[12] _Elements of Criticism,_ 1761, vol. i. introd. and chs. 1-3.

[13] _Elements of Criticism,_ i. ch. 3, pp. 201-202.

[14] _Neue Anthropologie,_ Leipzig, 1790, § 814, and the lectures on
Æsthetic published posthumously in 1836; cf. Zimmermann, _op. cit._ p.
204.

[15] Zimmermann, _op. cit._ pp. 302-309; v. Stein, _Entstehung d. n.
Ästh._ p. 113.

[16] _Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums,_ 1764 (in _Werke,_ Stuttgart,
1847, vol. i.), bk. iv. ch. 2, § 51, p. 131.

[17] _Op. cit._ § 22, pp. 131-132.

[18] _Op. cit._ § 23, p. 132.

[19] _Geschichte,_ § 19, pp. 130-131.

[20] _Op. cit._ bk. iv. ch. ii. § 24.

[21] _Geschichte,_ bk. v. chs. ii. and vi.

[22] Letter of January 2, 1778, _Opere,_ Rome, 1787 (reprinted Milan,
1836), ii. pp. 315-316.

[23] _Opere,_ i. p. 206.

[24] _Riflessioni sulla bellezza e sul gusto della pittura,_ in
_Opere,_ i. pp. 95, 100, 102-103.

[25] _Opere,_ i. p. 197.

[26] _Ibid._ p. 161.

[27] _Ibid._ p. 206.

[28] Laokoon, § 2.

[29] Op. cit. §§ 23, 24.

[30] Hamburg. Dramaturgie (ed. Göring, vols. xi. and xii.), passim,
esp. Nos. 11, 18, 24, 78, 89.

[31] _Laokoon,_ appendix, § 31.

[32] _Op. cit._ §§ 22, 23.

[33] _Op. cit. ad fin._ p. 268.

[34] _Dell' arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i
principi di Sulzer e di Mengs,_ Venice, 1871.

[35] D'Azara, in Mengs, _Opere,_ i. p. 168.

[36] _Investigaciones filosóficas sobre la belleza ideal, considerada
como objeto de todas las artes de imitación,_ Madrid, 1789.

[37] _Ricerche su le bellezze della pittura_ (Ital. trans., Parma,
1804); cf. D'Azara, _Vita del Mengs,_ in _Opere,_ i. p. 27.

[38] _Saggio sopra la bellezza,_ dated "Grottaferrata, July 14, 1764,"
and published at Rome, 1765, anonymously.

[39] _Saggio,_ esp. §§ 3, 12, 15, 17, 19, 34.

[40] _Über das Kunstschöne,_ in the review _Die Horen,_ 1797; cf.
Hegel, _Vorles. ii. Ästh._ i. p. 24; and Zimmermann, _Gesch. d. Ästh._
pp. 356-357.

[41] Goethe, _Der Sammler und die Seinigen_ (in _Werke,_ ed. Goedecke,
vol. xxx.)

VIII

IMMANUEL KANT

[Sidenote: _I. Kant._]

Of all these writers, Winckelmann and Mengs, Home and Hogarth, Lessing
and Goethe, none was a philosopher in the true sense of the word: not
even those who like Meier laid claim to the title, nor those who had
some gifts for philosophy like Herder or Hamann. After Vico, the next
European mind of real speculative genius is Immanuel Kant, who now
comes before us in his turn.

[Sidenote: _Kant and Vico._]

That Kant took up the problem of philosophy where Vico laid it down
(not, of course, in a directly historical, but in an ideal, sense) has
already been noted by others.[1] How far he made an advance upon his
predecessor and how far he failed to reach the same level it is not
here our business to inquire; we must confine ourselves strictly to the
consideration of Æsthetic questions.

Summarizing the results of such a consideration, we may say at once
that though Kant holds an immensely important place in the development
of German thought; though the book containing his examination of
æsthetic facts is among his most influential works; and though in
histories of Æsthetic written from the German point of view, which
ignore practically the whole development of European thought from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Kant can pose as the man who
discovered the problem of Æsthetic or solved it or brought it within
sight of solution; yet in an unprejudiced and complete history whose
aim is to take broad views and to consider not the popularity of a
book or the historical importance of a nation but the intrinsic value
of ideas, the judgement passed on Kant must be very different. Like
Vico in the serious tenacity with which he reflected upon æsthetic
facts, more fortunate than he in having a much larger stock of material
gathered from preceding discussion and argument, Kant was at once
unlike and less successful than Vico in that he was unable to attain a
doctrine substantially true, and unable also to give his thoughts the
necessary system and unity.

[Sidenote: _Identity of the concept of art in Kant and Baumgarten._]

In fact, what was Kant's idea of art? Strange as our reply may
seem to those who recollect the explicit and insistent war waged
by him against the school of Wolff, and the concept of beauty as a
perfection confusedly perceived, we must assert that Kant's idea of
art was fundamentally the same as that of Baumgarten and the Wolffian
school.[2] In that school his mind had been trained; he always had a
great respect for Baumgarten whom in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ he
calls "that excellent analyst"; he chose the text of Baumgarten for
two of his University lectures on Metaphysics, and that of Meier for
his lecture on Logic (_Vernunftlehre_). Kant, like them, therefore
considered Logic and Æsthetic (or theory of art) as conjoined sciences.
They were thus described by him in his _Scheme of Lectures_ in 1765,
when he proposed, while expounding the critique of reason, to "throw a
glance at that of taste, that is to say, at Æsthetic, since the rules
of one apply to the other and each throws light upon the other."

[Sidenote: _Kant's "Lectures."_]

In his University lectures he distinguished æsthetic truth from logical
truth in the style of Meier; even citing the example of the beautiful
rosy face of a girl which, when seen distinctly, _i.e._ through a
microscope, ceases to be beautiful.[3] It is æsthetically true (said
he) that a man once dead cannot come to life again, although this
is in opposition to logic and moral truth: it is æsthetically true
that the sun plunges into the sea, but it is false logically and
objectively. To what degree it is necessary to combine logical truth
with æsthetic the learned have never yet been able to decide; not even
the greatest æstheticians. In order to become accessible, logical
concepts must assume æsthetic forms; a garb to be abandoned only in
the rational sciences which seek profundity. Æsthetic certainty is
subjective: it is content with authority, _i.e._ the citation of the
opinions of great men. On account of our weakness, for we are strongly
attached to the sensible, æsthetic perfection often helps us to render
our thoughts distinct. In this, examples and images co-operate;
æsthetic perfection is the vehicle for logical perfection; taste is
the analogue of intellect. There are logical truths which are not
æsthetic truths: and on the other hand we must exclude from abstract
philosophy exclamations and other sentimental commotions proper to the
other truth. Poetry is a harmonious play of thoughts and sensations.
Poetry and eloquence differ in this: in the former, thoughts adapt
themselves to sensations; in the latter the contrary is the case.
In these lectures Kant sometimes taught that poetry is anterior to
eloquence because sensations come before thoughts; and he observed
(perhaps under Herder's influence) that the poetry of Eastern peoples,
lacking concepts, is wanting in unity and taste although rich in
imaginative detail. Poetry formed out of the pure play of sensibility
is doubtless a possibility, _e.g._ love-poems: but true poetry disdains
such productions, concerned as they are with sensations which every one
knows ought to be expelled from our breasts. True poetry must strive
to present virtue and intellectual truth in sensible form, as has been
done by Pope in his _Essay on Man,_ in which he attempts to vivify
poetry by means of reason. On other occasions Kant definitely says that
logical perfection is the basis of every other, æsthetic perfection
being merely an adornment of the logical; something of the latter may
be omitted in order to appeal to the audience, but it must never be
disguised or falsified.[4]

This is Baumgartenism pure and simple; unless we are prepared to look
on these Lectures as representing a pre-critical period of thought,
or an exoteric doctrine superseded eventually by Kant's own original
esoteric ideas in his _Critique of the Judgment_ (1790). Not to open
such a controversy, let us put these Lectures on one side (although
they often throw no little light on the signification of Kantian
phrases and formulæ), and refuse to raise the question what pages
of the _Critique of the Judgment_ are derived from Baumgarten and
Meier; he who reads the works of these disciples of Wolff and passes
immediately to the _Critique of Judgment_ often has the impression that
the atmosphere surrounding him is unchanged. But if the _Critique of
Judgment_ itself be examined without prejudice it will be seen that
Kant always adhered to Baumgarten's conception of art as the sensible
and imaginative vesture of an intellectual concept.

[Sidenote: _Art in the "Critique of Judgment."_]

According to Kant, art is not pure beauty wholly detached from the
concept, it is adherent beauty, which presupposes and attaches
itself to a concept.[5] This is the work of genius, the faculty of
representing æsthetic ideas. An æsthetic idea is "a representation of
the imagination which accompanies a given concept: a representation
conjoined with such truthful representation of particulars as to be
unable to find for it any expression that may mark a determinate
concept, thereby endowing the given concept with something of the
ineffable; a feeling which stimulates the cognitive faculties and
reinforcing the tongue, which is simply the letter, with the spirit."
Genius, then, has two constitutive elements, imagination and intellect;
it consists in "that happy disposition, which no science can teach or
diligence attain, to find ideas for a given concept and, also, to
select the expression by which the subjective commotion it excites
as accompaniment to a concept may be communicated to others." No
concept is adequate to the æsthetic idea, as no representation of the
imagination can ever possibly be adequate to the concept. Examples
of æsthetic attributes are found in the eagle of Jupiter with the
thunderbolt in its claws, and the peacock of the proud Queen of
Heaven: "they do not, like logical attributes, represent that which
is contained in our concepts of the sublimity or majesty of creation,
but something else which gives occasion to the imagination to run
riot over a multitude of kindred representations which make us think
more than we can express in a given concept by means of words, and
give us an æsthetic idea, which serves to this rational idea instead
of a logical representation, precisely with the aim of quickening our
feelings by throwing open to them a view over a vast field of kindred
representations." There are a _modus logicos_ and a _modus æstheticus_
of expressing our thoughts: the first consists in following determinate
principles: the other in the mere feeling of the unity of the
representation.[6] To imagination, to intellect and to spirit (_Geist_)
we must add taste, the link between imagination and intellect.[7] Art
may therefore represent natural ugliness: artistic beauty "is not a
beautiful _thing_ but a beautiful representation of a thing": although
the representation of ugliness has limits varying with the individual
arts (a reminiscence of Lessing and Winckelmann), and an absolute limit
at the disgusting and nauseating, which kill representation itself.[8]
In natural things, too, there is adherent beauty which cannot be judged
by the æsthetic judgement alone but demands a concept. Nature thus
appears as a work of art, though superhuman art: "the teleological
judgement is the basis and condition of the æsthetic." When we say
"this is a beautiful woman," we merely mean that "nature beautifully
represents in the form of this woman her purpose in the construction
of the female body": it is necessary therefore, besides noting simple
form, to aim at a concept, "so that the object may be apprehended
through an æsthetic judgement logically conditioned."[9] By this
means is formed the ideal of beauty in the human face, the expression
of moral life.[10] Kant admits that there may also be artistic
productions without a concept, comparable with the free beauties of
nature, flowers and some birds (parrot, humming-bird, bird of paradise,
etc.): ornamental drawings, cornice-mouldings, musical fantasies
without words, represent nothing, no object reducible to a determined
concept, and must be reckoned among free beauties.[11] But does not
this necessitate their exclusion from true and proper art, from the
operation of genius in which fancy and intellect must both, according
to Kant, have a place?

[Sidenote: _Imagination in Kant's system._]

This is Baumgartenism transposed into a higher key, more concentrated,
more elaborated, more suggestive, until from moment to moment it seems
about to burst into a wholly different conception of art. But it is
still Baumgartenism, from whose intellectualistic bonds it never
escapes. Nor was escape possible. A profound concept of imagination was
entirely lacking to Kant's system and his philosophy of the spirit.
Glancing over the table of faculties of the spirit which precedes
his _Critique of Judgment,_ we see that Kant co-ordinates with it
the cognitive faculty, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the
appetitive faculty; to the first corresponds intellect, to the second,
judgement (teleological and æsthetic), to the third, reason;[12] he
finds no place for imagination amongst powers of the spirit but places
it among the facts of sensation. He knows a reproductive imagination
and an associative, but he knows nothing of a genuinely productive
imagination, imagination in the proper sense.[13] We have seen that, in
his doctrine, genius is the co-operation of several faculties.

[Sidenote: _The forms of intuition and the Transcendental Æsthetic._]

Yet sometimes Kant had an inkling that intellectual activity is
preceded by something which is not mere sensational material, but
is an independent non-intellectual theoretical form. He obtained a
glimpse of this latter form not when he was reflecting on art in the
strict sense but when he was examining the process of knowledge: he
does not treat of it in his _Critique of Judgment,_ but in the first
section of his _Critique of Pure Reason,_ in the first part of the
_Transcendental Doctrine of Elements._ He says here that sensations
only enter the spirit when the latter itself gives them form; a form
not identical with that which intellect gives to sensations, but
much simpler, namely pure intuition, the totality of the _a priori_
principles of sensibility. There must therefore be "a science which
forms the first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements,
distinct from that which contains the principles of pure thought and is
named transcendental Logic." Now, what name does Kant confer upon this
science whose existence he has deduced? None other than Transcendental
Æsthetic (_die transcendentale Ästhetik_). In a note he even insists
that this is the right name for the new science of which he treats, and
censures the Germans for their habit of applying it to the Critique of
Taste, which, as he thought at that time, could never become a science.
Thus, he concludes, we approach more closely to the usage of the
ancients, among whom the distinction between _αἰσθητὰ καὶ νοητά_[14]
was well known.

Nevertheless, after having so rightly postulated the necessity
for a science of the forms of sensation or pure intuition, purely
intuitive knowledge, Kant went on, simply because he had no exact idea
of the nature of the æsthetic faculty and of art, to fall into an
intellectualistic error by reducing the form of sensibility or pure
intuition into the two categories or functions of space and time,
and by asserting that the spirit emerges from the chaos of sensation
by organizing its sensations in space and time.[15] But space and
time as such are very far from being primitive categories; they are
relatively late and complex formations.[16] As examples of the matter
of sensation Kant quoted hardness, impenetrability, colour and so
forth. But the mind only recognizes colour and hardness in so far as it
has already given form to its sensations; considered as brute matter,
sensations fall outside the cognitive spirit, they are a limit; colour,
hardness, impenetrability and so on, when recognized, are already
intuitions, spiritual elaborations, the æsthetic activity in its
rudimentary manifestation. The characterizing or qualifying imagination
which is æsthetic activity ought to have occupied in the _Critique of
Pure Reason_ the pages devoted to the discussion of space and time,
and would thus have constituted a real Transcendental Æsthetic, a real
prologue to the transcendental Logic. In this manner Kant would have
achieved the truth aimed at by Leibniz and Baumgarten and would have
joined hands with Vico.

[Sidenote: _Theory of Beauty distinguished by Kant from that of Art._]

His repeatedly announced opposition to the school of Wolff concerns not
the concept of art but that of Beauty; two concepts for Kant entirely
distinct. First of all, he did not admit that sensation could be
called "confused knowledge," a confused form, that is, of intellectual
cognition; rightly judging this to be a false account of sensibility,
since a concept, however confused, is always a concept or a rough
sketch of a concept, never an intuition.[17] But he further denied that
pure beauty contained a concept, and therefore denied that it was a
perfection sensibly apprehended. These reflexions have no doubt some
connexion with those concerning the nature of art in the _Critique of
Judgment;_ but the connexion is far from close, still less are they
actually fused into a single whole. That Kant was minutely familiar
with eighteenth-century writers who had discussed beauty and taste is
shown by his Lectures, wherein they are all quoted and used.[18] Of
these the greater part, especially the English, were sensationalists,
others intellectualists; some few, as we have noted, were inclined
towards mysticism. Kant began by tending towards sensationalism
in æsthetic problems, then became the adversary of sensationalists
and intellectualists alike. This development can be traced in his
_Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime,_ as well as in his
Lectures; its final expression is reached in the _Critique of Judgment._

Of the four moments, as he calls them, _i.e._ the four determinations,
he accords to Beauty, the two negative are directed, one against the
sensationalists, the other against the intellectualists. "That is
beautiful which pleases _without interest_": "That is beautiful which
pleases _without concepts_."[19] Here he asserts the existence of a
spiritual region, distinct on one side from the pleasurable, the useful
and the good, and on the other from truth. But this region, as we know
very well, is not that of art, which Kant attaches to the concept: it
is the region of a special activity of feeling which he calls judgement
or, more exactly, æsthetic judgement.

[Sidenote: _Mystical features in Kant's theory of Beauty._]

The other two moments give some kind of a definition of this region:
"That is beautiful which has the form of finality without the
representation of an end": "That is beautiful which is the object of
universal pleasure."[20] What is this mysterious sphere? What this
disinterested pleasure we experience in pure colours and tones, in
flowers, and even in adherent beauty when we make abstraction from the
concept to which it adheres?

Our answer is: there is no such sphere; it does not exist; the
examples given are instances either of pleasure in general or of
facts of artistic expression. Kant, who so emphatically criticizes
the sensationalists and the intellectualists, does not show the same
severity towards the neo-Platonic line of thought whose revival we
remarked in the eighteenth century. Winckelmann in particular exercised
strong influence over his mind. In one course of his Lectures we find
him making a curious distinction between form and matter: in music
melody is matter and harmony form: in a flower the scent is material
and the shape (_Gestalt)_ is form (_Form_).[21] This reappears
slightly modified in the _Critique of Judgment._ "In painting,
statuary and all the figurative arts in architecture and gardening,
so far as they are fine arts, the drawing is the essential; in which
the foundation of taste lies not in what gratifies (_vergnügt_) in
sensation, but in that which pleases (_gefällt_) by its form. The
colours which illuminate the drawing belong to sensuous stimulus
(_Reiz_) and may bring the object more vividly before the senses, but
do not render it worthy of contemplation as a thing of beauty; they
are, moreover, often limited by the exigencies of the beautiful form,
and even where their sensuous stimulus is legitimate, they are ennobled
only by the beautiful form."[22] Continuing in pursuit of this phantasm
of beauty which is not the beauty of art nor yet the pleasing, and is
equally detached from expressiveness and pleasure, Kant loses himself
in insoluble contradictions. Little inclined to submit himself to the
charm of imagination, abhorring "poetic philosophers" like Herder,[23]
he makes statements and refuses to commit himself to them, affirms
and immediately criticizes his affirmations, and wraps up Beauty in
a mystery which, at bottom, was nothing more than his own individual
incertitude and inability to see clearly the existence of an activity
of feeling which, in the spirit of his sane philosophy, represented a
logical contradiction. "Necessary and universal pleasure" and "finality
without the idea of an end" are the organized expression in words of
this contradiction.

By way of clearing up the contradiction he arrives at the following
thought: "The judgement of taste is founded on a concept (the concept
of a general foundation of the subjective teleology of nature through
judgement); but it is a concept by which it is impossible to know or
demonstrate anything of the object, because the object in itself is
indeterminable and unsuited to cognition; on the other hand, it has
validity for every one (for every one, I say, in so far as it is an
individual judgement, immediately accompanying intuition), since its
determining reason reposes, perhaps, in the concept of that which may
be regarded as the supersensible substrate of mankind." Beauty, then,
is a symbol of morality. "The subjective principle alone, that is the
indeterminate idea of the supersensible in us, can be considered the
only key able to unlock this faculty springing from a source we cannot
fathom: excepting by its aid, no comprehension of it can possibly
be reached."[24] These cautious words, and all others here used by
Kant to conceal his thoughts, do not hide his tendency to mysticism.
A mysticism without conviction or enthusiasm, almost in spite of
himself, but very evident nevertheless. His inadequate grasp of the
æsthetic activity led him to see double, even triple, and caused the
unnecessary multiplication of his explanatory principles. Although he
was always ignorant of the genuine nature of the æsthetic activity, he
was indebted to it for suggesting to him the pure categories of space
and time as the Transcendental Æsthetic; it caused him to develop the
theory of imaginative embellishment of intellectual concepts by the
work of genius; finally it forced him to acknowledge a mysterious
faculty of feeling, midway between theoretical and practical activity,
cognitive and yet not cognitive, moral and indifferent to morality,
pleasing yet wholly detached from the pleasure of the senses. Great
use of this power was made by Kant's immediate successors in Germany
who were delighted to find their daring speculations supported by that
severe critic of experience, the philosopher of Königsberg.

[1] B. Spaventa, _Prolus. ed introd. alle lezioni di filosofia,_
Naples, 1862 pp. 83-102; _Scritti filosofici,_ ed. Gentile, pp.
139-145, 303-307.

[2] _Kritik d. rein. Vernunft_ (ed. Kirchmann), i. 1, § 1, note.

[3] See above, p. 244.

[4] Extract from Kant's lectures of 1764 and later, in O. Schlapp,
_Kant's Lehre vom Genie, passim,_ esp. pp. 17, 58, 59, 79, 93, 96,
131-134, 136-137, 222, 225, 231-232, etc.

[5] _Kritik d. Urtheilskraft_ (ed. Kirchmann), § 16.

[6] _Kritik d. Urth._ § 49.

[7] _Op. cit._ § 50.

[8] _Op. cit._ § 48.

[9] _Krit. d. Urth._ § 48.

[10] _Op. cit._ § 17.

[11] _Op. cit._ § 16.

[12] For the historical genesis of this tripartition, cf. remarks in
Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp. 150-153.

[13] See also _Anthropol._ (ed. Kirchmann), §§ 26-31; cf. Schlapp, _op.
cit._ p. 296.

[14] _Kritik d. rein. Vernunft,_ i. I, § 1 and note.

[15] _Op. cit._ §§ 1-8.

[16] See above, pp. 4-5.

[17] _Krit. d. r. Vern._ § 8, and introd. to § ii.; cf. _Krit. d.
Urth._ § 15.

[18] See catalogue in Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp. 403-404, and _passim._

[19] _Krit. d. Urth._ §§ 1-9.

[20] _Op. cit._ §§ 10-22.

[21] Schlapp, _op. cit._ p. 78.

[22] _Krit. d. Urth._ § 14.

[23] For Kant's judgement of Herder, see Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp.
320-327, note.

[24] _Kritik d. Orth._ §§ 57-59.

IX

THE ÆSTHETIC OF IDEALISM: SCHILLER, SCHELLING, SOLGER, HEGEL

[Sidenote: _The "Critique of Judgment" and metaphysical idealism._]

It is well known that Schelling held the _Critique of Judgment_ to be
the most important of the three Kantian _Critiques,_ and that Hegel
together with the great majority of the followers of metaphysical
idealism had a special affection for the book. According to them the
third _Critique_ was the attempt to bridge the gulf, to resolve the
antitheses between liberty and necessity, teleology and mechanism,
spirit and nature: it was the correction Kant was preparing for
himself, the concrete vision which dispelled the last traces of his
abstract subjectivism.

[Sidenote: _F. Schiller._]

The same admiration and an opinion even more favourable were extended
by them to Friedrich Schiller, the first to elaborate that part
of Kant's philosophy and to study the third sphere which united
sensibility to reason. "It was the artistic sense dwelling in his
also profoundly philosophical mind," says Hegel, "which, against the
abstract infinity of Kant's thought, against his living for duty,
against his conception of nature and reality, and of sense and feeling
as utterly hostile to intellect, asserted the necessity and enunciated
the principle of totality and reconciliation, even before it had been
recognized by professed philosophers: to Schiller must be allowed the
great merit of having been the first to oppose the subjectivity of
Kant, and of having dared try to go beyond it."[1]

[Sidenote: _Relations between Schiller and Kant._]

Discussion has raged around the true relation between Schiller and
Kant, and it has lately been maintained that his Æsthetic was not, as
would seem to be the case, derived from Kant, but from the pandynamism
which, starting from Leibniz, had propagated itself in Germany through
Creuzens, Ploucket and Reimarus down to Herder, who had conceived
a wholly animated nature.[2] There can be no doubt that Schiller
shared Herder's conception, as may be seen from the theosophical tone
of the fragment of correspondence between Julius and Raphæl and in
other writings. It cannot be denied, however, that whatever personal
feelings Kant may have had towards Herder, or Herder towards his
former teacher (against whose _Critique of Judgment_ he published his
_Kaligone,_ as he had replied to the _Critique of Pure Reason_ with his
_Metacritica_), when Kant in a somewhat dubious manner made the first
step towards a reconciliation, the breach was at all events partially
healed. The dispute is therefore of small importance: we shall find it
more useful to observe that Schiller introduced an important correction
of Kant's views when he obliterated every trace of the double theory
of art and the beautiful, giving no weight to the distinction drawn
between pure and adherent beauty, and finally abandoning the mechanical
conception of art as consisting in beauty joined to the intellectual
concept. It was certainly his own experience of active artistic work
that led him to this simplification.

[Sidenote: _The æsthetic sphere as the sphere of Play._]

Schiller defined the æsthetic sphere as the sphere of play (_Spiel_);
the unfortunate term, suggested to him partly by some phrases of Kant,
partly, perhaps, by an article on card-games by one Weisshuhn which he
published in his review _The Hours_ (_Die Horen_),[3] has given rise
to the belief that he anticipated certain modern doctrines of artistic
activity as the overflow of exuberant spirits, analogous with the play
of children and animals. Schiller did not fail to warn his readers
against such a mistaken interpretation (to which, however, he lent
himself) when he begged them not to think of "games in real life,
which are usually concerned with wholly material things," nor yet of
the idle dreaming of the imagination left to itself.[4] The activity
of the play of which he treated held the mean between the material
activity of the senses, of nature, of animal instinct or passion as
it is called, and the formal activity of intellect and morality. The
man who plays, _i.e._ contemplates nature æsthetically and produces
art, sees all natural objects as animated; in such a phantasmagoria
mere natural necessity gives place to the free determination of the
faculties; spirit appears as spontaneously reconciled with nature,
form with matter. Beauty is life, the living form (_lebende Gestalt)_;
not life in the physiological sense, since beauty does not extend
throughout all physiological life, nor is it restricted to that alone:
marble when worked by an artist may have a living form; and a man,
although possessed of life and form, need not be a living form.[5]
Wherefore art must conquer nature with form: "in an artistic work of
true beauty the content ought to be nil, the form everything: by form
man is influenced in his entirety; by content in his separate faculties
only. The true secret of great artists is that they cancel matter
through form (_den Stoff durch die Form vertilgt)_; the more imposing,
overwhelming or seductive the matter is in itself, the greater its
obstinacy in striving to emphasize its own particular effect, the more
the spectator inclines to lose himself immediately in the matter, so
much the more triumphant is the art which brings it into subjection
and enforces its own sovereign power. The mind of hearer or spectator
should remain perfectly free and calm; from the magic circle of art
it should issue as pure and perfect as when it left the hands of the
Creator. The most frivolous object should be treated in such a manner
as to enable us to pass at once to the most serious matters; and the
most serious in such a way that we may pass from them to the lightest
game." There is a fine art of passion; a passionate fine art would be
a contradiction in terms.[6] "So long as man in his early physical
state passively absorbs the world of senses and simply feels it, he is
one with it; and precisely because he merely is a world there is for
him as yet no world at all. Only when in his æsthetic state he places
the world outside himself and contemplates it, does he detach his
personality from the rest; then a world appears to him, since he is no
longer one with the world."[7]

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic education._]

Schiller ascribed high educational value to art thus conceived as at
once sensible and rational, material and formal. Not that it teaches
moral precepts or excites to good actions; if it acted thus, or when
it acted thus, it would at once cease, as we have seen, to be art.
Determination in whatsoever direction, to the good or the bad, to
pleasure or to duty, destroys the character of the æsthetic sphere,
which is rather indeterminism. By means of art man frees himself from
the yoke of the senses; but before putting himself spontaneously under
that of reason and duty, he takes as it were a little breathing-space
by staying in a region of indifference and serene contemplation. "While
having no claim to promote exclusively any special human faculty, the
æsthetic condition is favourable to each and all without favouritism;
and the reason why it favours none in particular is that it is the
foundation of the possibility of all alike. Every other exercise gives
some inclination to the soul, and therefore presupposes a special
limit; æsthetic activity alone is unlimited." This indifference, which
if not yet pure form is not pure matter, confers its educational value
on art; it opens a way to morality, not by preaching and persuading,
that is to say, determining, but by making determination possible.
Such is the fundamental concept of his celebrated _Letters on the
Æsthetic Education of Man_ (1795), in which Schiller took his cue from
the conditions of his times and from the necessity of finding a middle
way between supine acquiescence in tyranny and savage rebellion as
exemplified by the revolution then raging in France.

[Sidenote: _Vagueness and lack of precision in Schiller's Æsthetic._]

The defects of Schiller's æsthetic doctrine are its lack of precision
and its generality. Who has given a better description of certain
aspects of art, the catharsis produced by artistic activity, the
serenity and calm resulting from the domination over natural
impressions? Equally just is his remark that art, although wholly
independent of morality, is in some way connected with it. But what
precisely this connexion may be, or what the exact nature of æsthetic
activity, Schiller does not succeed in explaining. Conceiving the
moral and intellectual as the only formal activities (_Formtrieb)_ and
denying as a convinced anti-sensationalist in opposition to Burke and
philosophers of his type that art can belong to the passionate and
sensuous nature (_Stofftrieb_), he cut himself off from the means of
recognizing the general category to which artistic activity belongs.
His own concept of the formal is too narrow: too narrow, also, his
concept of the cognitive activity, in which he is able to see the
logical or intellectual form, but not that of the imagination. What
for him was this art he describes as an activity neither formal nor
material, neither cognitive nor moral? Was it for him, as for Kant,
an activity of feeling, a play of several faculties at once? It would
seem so, since Schiller distinguishes four points of view or relations
of man with things: the physical, in which these affect our senses:
the logical, in which they excite knowledge: the moral, in which they
appear to us as an object of rational volition: and the æsthetic
"in which they refer to our powers in entirety without becoming the
determinate object of any one faculty." For example, a man is pleased
æsthetically when his feeling depends in no way on the pleasure of
the senses and when he is not conscious of thinking about any law or
end.[8] We look in vain for any more conclusive reply.

It must not be overlooked that Schiller delivered a course of lectures
on Æsthetic in Jena University in 1792, and that his writings on the
subject intended for reviews were couched in a popular style: no
less popular, in his own opinion, was the style of the book quoted
above, which grew out of a series of letters actually sent to his
patron the Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg. But the great work to be
entitled _Rallias,_ which he intended writing upon Æsthetic, was never
completed; the only fragments which have reached us are contained in
the correspondence with Körner (1793-1794). From the discussions between
the two friends we gather that Körner was not satisfied with Schiller's
formula and desired something objective, something more precise, a
positive characteristic of the beautiful: and one day Schiller told him
that he had definitely discovered such a characteristic. But what it
was that he had discovered we do not know; no mention of it occurs in
any further document, and we are left in doubt as to whether we have
lost an integral part of his thought or merely the momentary illusion
of a discovery.

[Sidenote: _Schiller's caution and the rashness of the Romanticists._]

The uncertainty and vagueness of Schiller's theory seem almost a merit
in contrast with that which followed. He had constituted himself
guardian of the teaching of Kant and refused to abandon the realm of
criticism; faithful disciple of his master, he conceived the third
sphere not as real but as an ideal, a concept not constitutive but
regulative, an imperative. "From transcendental motives, reason here
demands that communion be established between formal and material
activity; that is to say, there must be an activity of play, since the
concept of humanity can be complete only by the union of reality with
form, the accidental with the necessary, passivity with liberty. This
demand must be made because reason, in conformity with her essence,
aims at perfection and at sweeping away all obstacles; and every
exclusive operation of one or other activity leaves humanity incomplete
and confined within limits."[9] Schiller's thought, as it appears in
his correspondence with Körner, has been well represented as follows:"
The union of sensibility with liberty in the Beautiful, which does
not actually take place but is supposed to do so, suggests to man
an intuition of the union of these elements within himself: a union
which does not take place actually but ought to do so."[10] The times
which followed had no such nice scruples. Kant had given new vigour
to the production of works on æsthetic, and, as in the days following
Baumgarten, every new year saw a number of new treatises. It was the
fashion. "Nothing swarms like æstheticians" (wrote Jean Paul Richter
in 1804 when preparing his own book on the subject for publication):
"it is rare for a youth who has paid his fees for a course of lectures
on Æsthetic not to produce a book on some point of the science in the
hope that the public may refund him his expenses by buying his book:
some there are indeed who pay their professor's fees out of their
author's royalties."[11] It was hoped, not unreasonably, that the
exploration of the obscure region of æsthetic might throw some light
on metaphysics, and the procedure of artists seemed to offer a good
example to philosophers seeking to create a world for themselves:
so philosophy modelled itself upon art and, as though to render the
transition easier, the concept of art was brought as close as possible
to that of philosophy. Romanticism, gaining vogue daily, was a renewal
or continuation of that "age of genius" in which the youth of Goethe
and Schiller had been passed; and as the period of _Sturm und Drang_
had zealously worshipped the genius who breaks all rules and oversteps
all limitations, so did Romanticism hail the domination of a faculty
called Fancy, or more frequently Imagination, to which were attributed
the most diverse characteristics and the most miraculous effects.

[Sidenote: _Ideas on Art: J. P. Richter._]

The Romantic theorists, artists themselves for the most part, abounded
in truthful and subtle observations concerning artistic procedure. Jean
Paul Richter makes many excellent remarks about productive imagination,
which he distinguishes clearly from the reproductive and asserts to be
shared by all men as soon as they are able to say "This is beautiful";
for "how could a genius be acclaimed or even tolerated for a single
month, not to mention thousands of centuries, by the common herd, if
he had not a strong connecting-link of relationship with the herd?" He
also describes how imagination is variously divided among individuals:
as simple talent, as passive or feminine genius, and in the highest
degree as the active or masculine genius, formed by reflexion and
instinct, in which "all faculties flourish simultaneously and fancy
is no isolated flower, but the goddess Flora herself who, in order
to produce new combinations, crosses with each other those blossoms
whose conjunction is fertile, and is, so to speak, a faculty full of
faculties."[12] This latter sentence betrays a tendency on Richter's
part to exaggerate the functions of imagination and to construct upon
it a kind of mythology.

[Sidenote: _Romantic Æsthetic and idealistic Æsthetic._]

Contemporary systems of philosophy are partly impregnated with, and
partly the source of, such mythologies: the Romantic conception of
art may be said to have found its most complete expression in German
idealism, where this attained its most coherent and systematic form.

[Sidenote: _J. G. Fichte._]

It did not attain this form with Fichte, the first great pupil of Kant;
for though Fichte regarded imagination as the activity which creates
the universe, effects the synthesis of the ego and the non-ego, posits
the object and therefore precedes consciousness, he does not connect it
with art.[13] In his æsthetic notions Fichte is influenced by Schiller,
with the addition of a moralism imposed upon him by the general
character of his system; hence the ethical sphere, midway between the
cognitive and the æsthetic, becomes from his point of view a mere
appurtenance of morality, as being the representation of, and hence
reverence for, the moral ideal.[14] His subjective idealism eventually
produced an æsthetic doctrine through the work of Friedrich Schlegel
and Ludwig Tieck; the doctrine of Irony as the basis of art.

[Sidenote: _Irony: Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis._]

The ego which created the universe can also destroy it; the universe is
an empty appearance at which the only true reality, the ego, can smile,
holding itself aloof, like an artist or a creative god, from creatures
of its own which it does not take seriously.[15] Friedrich Schlegel
described art as a perpetual parody of itself and a "transcendental
farce." Tieck defined irony as "a power which allows the poet to
dominate the matter which he handles." Another Romantic Fichtian,
Novalis, dreamed of a magical idealism, an art of creation by the
instantaneous act of the ego and of realizing our dreams.

[Sidenote: _F. Schelling._]

But it is only to the _System of Transcendental Idealism_ (1800) of
Schelling, to his _Bruno_ (1802), to his celebrated course of lectures
on the _Philosophy of Art_ given at Jena in 1802-1803 (repeated at
Würzburg, and distributed subsequently in manuscript notes all over
Germany), to the no less celebrated lecture on the _Relation between
the Figurative Arts and Nature_ (1807), as well as to other works
of this eloquent and enthusiastic philosopher that we owe the first
great philosophical affirmation of Romanticism, and of a renewed and
conscious neo-Platonism in Æsthetic.

[Sidenote: _Beauty and character._]

Like all the other idealistic philosophers, Schelling held firmly to
the fusion of the theories of art and the beautiful already effected
by Schiller. From this point of view it is interesting to note his
explanation of the condemnation of art by Plato: this condemnation,
says Schelling, was directed against the art of his time, the natural
and realistic art of antiquity in general, with its character of
finitude: Plato could not have uttered such a condemnation (as we
moderns are unable to utter it) if he had known Christian art, whose
characteristic is infinity.[16] The pure abstract beauty of Winckelmann
is not enough; no less inadequate, false and negative is that concept
of the characteristic which would try to make art something dead, hard
and ugly by imposing upon it the limitations of the individual. Art is
beauty and characteristic in one; characteristic beauty, character from
which beauty is evolved, according to Goethe's saying; it is therefore
not the individual but the living concept of the individual. When the
artist's eye recognizes the creative idea of the individual and draws
it forth, he transforms the individual into a world in itself, into a
species (_Gattung_), an eternal idea (_Urbild_), and fears no more the
limitation or hardness which is the condition of life: characteristic
beauty is that plenitude of form which kills form; it does not inflame
passion, it regulates it, like the banks of a river which are filled
but not overflowed by the waters.[17] In all of this we feel the
influence of Schiller, with something added which Schiller could never
have expressed.

[Sidenote: _Art and Philosophy._]

Indeed, whilst gratefully acknowledging the excellent contributions to
the theory of art made by the writers who succeeded Kant, Schelling
laments that in none of them can he find exact scientific method
(_Wissenschaftlichkeit_),[18] The true point of departure in his
theory is in the philosophy of nature, _i.e._ in that criticism of
the teleological judgement which Kant places directly after that of
the æsthetic judgement in his third _Critique._ Teleology is the
union of theoretical and practical philosophy; but the system would
be incomplete but for the possibility of demonstrating in the subject
itself, in the ego, the identity of the two worlds, theoretical and
practical; an activity which has, and at the same time has not,
consciousness; unconscious as nature, conscious as spirit. This
activity is precisely the æsthetic activity: "the general organ of
philosophy, keystone of the whole edifice."[19] There are but two ways
open to one who is desirous of escaping from common realities: poetry,
which transports into the ideal world; and philosophy which annihilates
the real world.[20] Strictly speaking, "there is but one sole absolute
work of art; it may exist in various exemplars, but in itself it is
one, although it may not yet possess existence in its original form."
True art is not the impression of one moment, but the representation
of infinite life;[21] it is transcendental intuition become objective,
and is therefore not only the organ but the document of philosophy.
A time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, from which
she has detached herself; and from the new philosophy a new mythology
will arise.[22] The Absolute is thus the object of art as well as of
philosophy (as Schelling insists elsewhere in greater detail): the
first represents it in idea (_Urbild_), the second in its reflexion
(_Gegenbild)_: "philosophy portrays ideas, not realities: so is it with
art: those same ideas of which real things, as philosophy demonstrates,
are imperfect copies, themselves appear in the objective arts as
ideas, _i.e._ in all their perfection, and represent the intellectual
world in the world of reflexion."[23] Music is the "very ideal rhythm
of Nature and the Universe, which by means of this art makes itself
felt in the derivative world"; perfect creations of statuary are "the
very ideas of organic nature represented objectively"; the Homeric
epic, "the very identity constituting the foundation of history in the
Absolute."[24] But while philosophy gives an immediate representation
of the Divine, of absolute Identity, art can but give the immediate
representation of Indifference; and "since the degree of perfection
or reality in a thing becomes higher in proportion as it approaches
nearer to the absolute Idea and the fulness of infinite affirmation
and in proportion as it comprehends within itself other powers, it is
clear that art, above everything else, is in closest relation with
philosophy, from which it is distinguished merely by the character
of its specification: in everything else it may be considered as the
highest power in the ideal world."[25] To the three powers of the real
and ideal world correspond in a rising scale the three ideas of Truth,
Goodness and Beauty. Beauty is neither the mere universal (truth),
nor mere reality (action), but the perfect interpenetration of both:
"beauty exists when the particular (the real) is so adequate to its
concept that the latter, as infinite, enters the finite and presents
itself to our contemplation in concrete form. With the appearance of
the concept, the real becomes truly similar and equal to the idea,
wherein the universal and the particular find their absolute identity.
Without ceasing to be rational, the rational becomes at the same time
apparent and sensible."[26] But as above the three powers is poised
God, their point of union, so Philosophy stands supreme over the three
ideas; concerning itself not with truth or morality or even beauty
alone, but with that which belongs to all the three in common, deduced
from one common source. If philosophy assumes the character of science
and truth, while yet remaining superior to truth, this is made possible
by the fact that science and truth are its formal determination;
"philosophy is science in the sense that truth, goodness and beauty,
_i.e._ science, virtue and art, interpenetrate each other; therefore
it is also not science but is that which is common to science, virtue
and art." This interpenetration distinguishes philosophy from all other
sciences; for instance, if mathematics can dispense with morality and
beauty, philosophy cannot do so.[27]

[Sidenote: _Ideas and the gods. Art and mythology._]

In Beauty are contained truth and goodness, necessity and liberty. When
beauty appears to be in conflict with truth, the truth in question
is a finite truth with which beauty ought not to agree, because, as
we have seen, the art of naturalism and of the merely characteristic
is a false art.[28] The individual forms of art, being in themselves
representatives of the infinite and the universe, are called Ideas.[29]
Considered from the point of view of reality, Ideas are gods; their
essence, their "in-itself," is in fact equivalent to God; every idea
is an idea so far as it is God in a particular form; every idea,
therefore, is equal to God, but to a particular god. Characteristic of
all the gods is pure limitation and indivisible absoluteness: Minerva
is the idea of wisdom united with strength, but she is lacking in
womanly tenderness; Juno is power without wisdom and without the sweet
attraction of love, for which she is forced to borrow the cestus of
Venus; Venus again has not the weighty wisdom of Minerva. What would
become of these ideas if deprived of their limitations? They would
cease to be objects of Imagination.[30] Imagination is a faculty which
has no connexion with pure intellect or with reason (_Vernunft_) and is
distinct from fancy (_Einbildungskraft_) which collects and arranges
the products of art, whereas imagination intuits them, forms them out
of itself, represents them. Imagination is to fancy as intellectual
intuition is to reason: it is therefore the intellectual intuition of
art.[31] "Reason" no longer suffices in a philosophy such as this:
intellectual intuition, which for Kant was a limiting concept, is now
asserted as really existing: intellect sinks to a subordinate place:
even the genuine imagination which operates in art is overshadowed
by this new-fangled Imagination, twin with intellectual Intuition,
who sometimes changes places with this sister of hers. Mythology
is proclaimed a necessary condition of all art: mythology which is
not allegory, for in the latter the particular signifies only the
universal, while the former is already itself the universal; which
explains how easy it is to allegorize, and how fascinating are such
poems as those of Homer which lend themselves to such interpretations.
Christian, as well as Hellenic, art has its mythology: Christ; the
persons of the Trinity; the Virgin mother of God.[32] The fine between
mythology and art is as shadowy as that between art and philosophy.

[Sidenote: _K. W. Solger._]

The year 1815 saw the publication of Solger's principal work, _Erwin,_
a long philosophical dialogue on the beautiful; subsequently in
1819 he gave a course of lectures on Æsthetic which were published
posthumously. He was one of those who found but a glimpse of truth
in Kant and held the post-Kantians in very slight estimation,
particularly Fichte; in Schelling, who begins from the original unity
of the subjective and the objective, he detects for the first time a
speculative principle not adequately developed, since Schelling had
never triumphed dialectically over the difficulties of intellectual
intuition.[33]

[Sidenote: _Fancy and Imagination._]

Solger was one of those who conceived of Imagination as totally
distinct from Fancy: fancy (says he) belongs to common cognition
and is none other than "the human consciousness, in so far as it
continues, in temporal succession, infinitely reasserting an original
intuition"; it presupposes the distinctions between common cognition,
abstraction and judgement, concept and representation, amongst which
"it acts as mediator by giving to the general concept the form of
individual representation; and to the latter the form of a general
concept; in this manner it has its being among the antitheses of the
ordinary understanding." Imagination is totally different; proceeding
"from the original unity of the antitheses in the Idea, it acts so