an essay on the beautiful _(from the greek of plotinus)_ translated by thomas taylor london john m. watkins 21 cecil court, charing cross road 1917 introduction it may seem wonderful that language, which is the only method of conveying our conceptions, should, at the same time, be an hindrance to our advancement in philosophy; but the wonder ceases when we consider, that it is seldom studied as the vehicle of truth, but is too frequently esteemed for its own sake, independent of its connection with things. this observation is remarkably verified in the greek language; which, as it is the only repository of ancient wisdom, has, unfortunately for us, been the means of concealing, in shameful obscurity, the most profound researches and the sublimest truths. that words, indeed, are not otherwise valuable than as subservient to things, must surely be acknowledged by every liberal mind, and will alone be disputed by him who has spent the prime of his life, and consumed the vigour of his understanding, in verbal criticisms and grammatical trifles. and, if this is the case, every lover of truth will only study a language for the purpose of procuring the wisdom it contains; and will doubtless wish to make his native language the vehicle of it to others. for, since all truth is eternal, its nature can never be altered by transposition, though by this means its dress may be varied, and become less elegant and refined. perhaps even this inconvenience may be remedied by sedulous cultivation; at least, the particular inability of some, ought not to discourage the well-meant endeavours of others. whoever reads the lives of the ancient heroes of philosophy, must be convinced that they studied things more than words, and that truth alone was the ultimate object of their search; and he who wishes to emulate their glory and participate their wisdom, will study their doctrines more than their language, and value the depth of their understandings far beyond the elegance of their composition. the native charms of truth will ever be sufficient to allure the truly philosophic mind; and he who has once discovered her retreats will surely endeavour to fix a mark by which they may be detected by others. but, though the mischief arising from the study of words is prodigious, we must not consider it as the only cause of darkening the splendours of truth, and obstructing the free diffusion of her light. different manners and philosophies have equally contributed to banish the goddess from our realms, and to render our eyes offended with her celestial light. hence we must not wonder that, being indignant at the change, and perceiving the empire of ignorance rising to unbounded dominion, she has retired from the spreading darkness, and concealed herself in the tranquil and divinely lucid regions of mind. for we need but barely survey modern pursuits to be convinced how little they are connected with wisdom. since, to describe the nature of some particular place, the form, situation and magnitude of a certain city; to trace the windings of a river to its source, or delineate the aspect of a pleasant mountain; to calculate the fineness of the silkworm's threads, and arrange the gaudy colours of butterflies; in short, to pursue matter through its infinite divisions, and wander in its dark labyrinths, is the employment of the philosophy in vogue. but surely the energies of intellect are more worthy our concern than the operations of sense; and the science of universals, permanent and fixed, must be superior to the knowledge of particulars, fleeting and frail. where is a sensible object to be found, which abides for a moment the same; which is not either rising to perfection, or verging to decay; which is not mixed and confused with its contrary; whose flowing nature no resistance can stop, nor any art confine? where is the chemist who, by the most accurate analyzation can arrive at the principles of bodies; or who, though he might be so lucky in his search as to detect the atoms of democritus, could by this means give respite to mental investigation? for every atom, since endued with figure, must consist of parts, though indissolubly cemented together; and the immediate cause of this cement must be something incorporeal or knowledge can have no stability and enquiry no end. where, says mr harris, is the microscope which can discern what is smallest in nature? where the telescope which can see at what point in the universe wisdom first began? since, then, there is no portion of matter which may not be the subject of experiments without end, let us betake ourselves to the regions of mind, where all things are bounded in intellectual measure; where everything is permanent and beautiful, eternal and divine. let us quit the study of particulars, for that which is general and comprehensive, and through this, learn to see and recognize whatever exists. with a view to this desirable end, i have presented the reader with a specimen of that sublime wisdom which first arose in the colleges of the egyptian priests, and flourished afterwards in greece; which was there cultivated by pythagoras, under the mysterious veil of numbers; by plato, in the graceful dress of poetry; and was systematized by aristotle, as far as it could be reduced into scientific order; which, after becoming in a manner extinct, shone again with its pristine splendour among the philosophers of the alexandrian school; was learnedly illustrated with asiatic luxuriancy of style by proclus; was divinely explained by iamblichus: and profoundly delivered in the writings of plotinus. indeed, the works of this last philosopher are particularly valuable to all who desire to penetrate into the depths of this divine wisdom. from the exalted nature of his genius, he was called intellect by his contemporaries, and is said to have composed his books under the influence of divine illumination. porphyry relates, in his life, that he was four times united by an ineffable energy with the divinity; which, however such an account may be ridiculed in the present age, will be credited by everyone who has properly explored the profundity of his mind. the facility and vehemence of his composition was such, that when he had once conceived a subject, he wrote as from an internal pattern, without paying much attention to the orthography, or reviewing what he had written; for the celestial vigour of his intellect rendered him incapable of trifling concerns, and in this respect, inferior to common understandings, as the eagle, which in its bold flight pierces the clouds, skims the surface of the earth with less rapidity than the swallow. indeed a minute attention to trifles is inconsistent with great genius of every kind, and it is on this account that retirement is so absolutely necessary to the discovery of truths of the first dignity and importance; for how is it possible to mix much with the world, without imbibing the false and puerile conceptions of the multitude; and without losing that true elevation of soul which comparatively despises every mortal concern? plotinus, therefore, conscious of the incorrectness of his writings arising from the rapidity, exuberance and daring sublimity of his thoughts, committed their revision to his disciple porphyry; who, though inferior in depth of thought to his master, was, on account of his extraordinary abilities, called by way of eminence the philosopher. the design of the following discourse is to bring us to the perception of the beautiful itself, even while connected with a corporeal nature, which must be the great end of all true philosophy and which plotinus happily obtained. to a genius, indeed, truly modern, with whom the crucible and the air-pump are alone the standards of truth, such an attempt must appear ridiculous in the extreme. with these, nothing is real but what the hand can grasp or the corporeal eye perceives, and nothing useful but what pampers the appetite or fills the purse; but unfortunately, their perceptions, like homer's frail dreams, pass through the ivory gate; and are consequently empty and fallacious, and contain nothing belonging to the vigilant soul. to such as these a treatise on the beautiful cannot be addressed; since its object is too exalted to be approached by those engaged in the impurities of sense, and too bright to be seen by the eye accustomed to the obscurity of corporeal vision. but it is alone proper to him who is sensible that his soul is strongly marked with ruin by its union with body; who considers himself in the language of empedocles, as "heaven's exile, straying from the orb of light"; and who so ardently longs for a return to his true country, that to him, as to ulysses when fighting for ithaca, "slow seems the fun to move, the hours to roll; his native home deep-imag'd in his soul".[1] but here it is requisite to observe that our ascent to this region of beauty must be made by gradual advances, for, from our association with matter, it is impossible to pass directly, and without a medium, to such transcendent perfection; but we must proceed in a manner similar to those who pass from darkness to the brightest light, by advancing from places moderately enlightened, to such as are the most luminous of all. it is necessary therefore, that we should become very familiar with the most abstract contemplations; and that our intellectual eye should be strongly irradiated with the light of ideas which precedes the splendours of the beautiful itself, like the brightness which is seen on the summit of mountains previous to the rising of the sun. nor ought it to seem strange, if it should be some time before even the liberal soul can recognize the beautiful progeny of intellect as its kindred and allies; for, from its union with body, it has drunk deep of the cup of oblivion, and all its energetic powers are stupefied by the intoxicating draught; so that the intelligible world, on its first appearance, is utterly unknown by us, and our recollection of its inhabitants entirely lost; and we become familiar to ulysses on his first entrance into ithaca, of whom homer says, "yet had his mind, thro' tedious absence lost the dear remembrance of his native coast".[2] for, "now all the land another prospect bore, another port appeared, another shore, and long-continued ways, and winding floods and unknown mountains crowned with unknown woods": until the goddess of wisdom purges our eyes from the mists of sense and says to each of us, as she did to ulysses, "now lift thy longing eyes, while i restore the pleasing prospect of thy native shore." for then will " . . . . the prospect clear, the mists disperse, and all the coast appear." let us then, humbly supplicate the irradiations of wisdom, and follow plotinus as our divine guide to the beatific vision of the beautiful itself; for in this alone can we find perfect repose, and repair those destructive clefts and chinks of the soul which its departure from the light of good, and its lapse into a corporeal nature, have introduced. but before i conclude, i think it necessary to caution the reader not to mix any modern enthusiastic opinions with the doctrines contained in the following discourse; for there is not a greater difference between substance and shade than between ancient and modern enthusiasm. the object of the former was the highest good and supreme beauty; but that of the latter is nothing more than a phantom raised by bewildered imaginations, floating on the unstable ocean of opinion, the sport of the waves of prejudice and blown about by the breath of factious party. like substance and shade, indeed they possess a similitude in outward appearance, but in reality they are perfect contraries; for the one fills the mind with solid and durable good, but the other with empty delusions; which like the ever-running waters of the danaides, glide away as fast as they enter, and leave nothing behind but the ruinous passages through which they flowed. i only add, that the ensuing treatise is designed as a specimen (if it should meet with encouragement) of my intended mode of publishing all the works of plotinus. the undertaking is, i am sensible, arduous in the extreme; and the disciples of wisdom are unfortunately few; but, as i desire no other reward of my labour, than to have the expense of printing defrayed, and to see truth propagated in my native tongue; i hope those few will enable me to obtain the completion of my desires. for then, to adopt the words of ulysses, "that view vouchsaf'd, let instant death surprise with ever-during shade these happy eyes!"[3] concerning the beautiful beauty[4] for the most part, consists in objects of sight; but it is also received through the ears, by the skilful composition of words, and the consonant proportion of sounds; for in every species of harmony, beauty is to be found. and if we rise from sense into the regions of soul, we shall there perceive studies and offices, actions and habits, sciences and virtues, invested with a much larger portion of beauty. but whether there is above these, a still higher beauty, will appear as we advance in its investigation. what is it then, which causes bodies to appear fair to the sight, sounds beautiful to the ear, and science and virtue lovely to the mind? may we not enquire after what manner they all partake of beauty? whether beauty is one and the same in all? or, whether the beauty of bodies is of one kind, and the beauty of souls of another? and again, what these are, if they are two? or, what beauty is, if perfectly simple, and one? for some things, as bodies, are doubtless beautiful, not from the natures of the subjects in which they reside, but rather by some kind of participation; but others again appear to be essentially beautiful, or beauties themselves; and such is the nature of virtue. for, with respect, to the same bodies, they appear beautiful to one person, and the reverse of beauty to another; as if the essence of body were a thing different from the essence of beauty. in the first place then, what is that, which, by its presence, causes the beauty of bodies? let us reflect, what most powerfully attracts the eyes of beholders, and seizes the spectator with rapturous delight; for if we can find what this is, we may perhaps use it as a ladder, enabling us to ascend into the region of beauty, and survey its immeasurable extent. it is the general opinion that a certain commensuration of parts to each other, and to the whole, with the addition, of colour, generates that beauty which is the object of sight; and that in the commensurate and the moderate alone the beauty of everything consists. but from such an opinion the compound only, and not the simple, can be beautiful, the single parts will have no peculiar beauty; and will only merit that appellation by conferring to the beauty of the whole. but it is surely necessary that a lovely whole should consist of beautiful parts, for the fair can never rise out of the deformed. but from such a definition, it follows, that beautiful colours and the light of the sun, since they are simple and do not receive their beauty from commensuration, must be excluded the regions of beauty. besides, how, from such an hypothesis can gold be beautiful? or the glittering of night and the glorious spectacle of the stars? in like manner, the most simple musical sounds will be foreign from beauty, though in a song wholly beautiful every note must be beautiful, as necessary to the being of the whole. again, since the same proportion remaining, the same face is to one person beautiful and to another the reverse, is it not necessary to call the beauty of the commensurate one kind of beauty and the commensuration another kind, and that the commensurate is fair by means of something else? but if transferring themselves to beautiful studies and fair discourses, they shall assign as the cause of beauty in these the proportion of measure, what is that which in beautiful sciences, laws or disciplines, is called commensurate proportion? or in what manner can speculations themselves be called mutually commensurate? if it be said because of the inherent concord, we reply that there is a certain concord and consent in evil souls, a conformity of sentiment, in believing (as it is said) that temperance is folly and justice generous ignorance. it appears, therefore, that the beauty of the soul is every virtue, and this species of the beautiful possesses far greater reality than any of the superior we have mentioned. but after what manner in this is commensuration to be found? for it is neither like the symmetry in magnitude nor in numbers. and since the parts of the soul are many, in what proportion and synthesis, in what temperament of parts or concord of speculations, does beauty consist? lastly, of what kind is the beauty of intellect itself, abstracted from every corporeal concern, and intimately conversing with itself alone? we still, therefore, repeat the question, what is the beauty of bodies? it is something which at first view presents itself to sense, and which the soul familiarly apprehends and eagerly embraces, as if it were allied to itself. but when it meets with the deformed, it hastily starts from the view and retires abhorrent from its discordant nature. for since the soul in its proper state ranks according to the most excellent essence in the order of things, when it perceives any object related to itself, or the mere vestige of a relation, it congratulates itself on the pleasing event, and astonished with the striking resemblance[5] enters deep into its essence, and, by rousing its dormant powers, at length perfectly recollects its kindred and allies. what is the similitude then between the beauties of sense and that beauty which is divine? for if there be any similitude the respective objects must be similar. but after what manner are the two beautiful? for it is by participation of species that we call every sensible object beautiful. thus, since everything void of form is by nature fitted for its reception, as far as it is destitute of reason and form it is base and separate from the divine reason, the great fountain of forms; and whatever is entirely remote from this immortal source is perfectly base and deformed.[6] and such is matter, which by its nature is ever averse from the supervening irradiations of form. whenever, therefore, form accedes, it conciliates in amicable unity the parts which are about to compose a whole; for being itself one it is not wonderful that the subject of its power should tend to unity, as far as the nature of a compound will admit. hence beauty is established in multitude when the many is reduced into one, and in this case it communicates itself both to the parts and to the whole. but when a particular one, composed from similar parts, is received it gives itself to the whole, without departing from the sameness and integrity of its nature. thus at one and the same time it communicates itself to the whole building and its several parts; and at another time confines itself to a single stone, and then the first participation arises from the operations of art, but the second from the formation of nature. and hence body becomes beautiful through the communion supernally proceeding from divinity. but the soul, by her innate power, than which nothing more powerful, in judging its proper concerns, when another soul concurs in the decision, acknowledges the beauty of forms. and, perhaps, its knowledge in this case arises from its accommodating its internal ray of beauty to form, and trusting to this in its judgment; in the same manner as a rule is employed in the decision of what is straight. but how can that which is inherent in body, accord with that which is above body? let us reply by asking how the architect pronounces the building beautiful by accommodating the external structure the fabric of his soul? perhaps, because the outward building, when entirely deprived of the stones, is no other than the intrinsic form, divided by the external mass of matter, but indivisibly existing, though appearing in the many. when, therefore, sense beholds the form in bodies, at strife with matter, binding and vanquishing its contrary nature, and sees form gracefully shining forth in other forms, it collects together the scattered whole, and introduces it to itself, and to the indivisible form within; and renders it consonant, congruous and friendly to its own intimate form. thus, to the good man, virtue shining forth in youth is lovely because consonant to the true virtue which lies deep in the soul. but the simple beauty of colour arises, when light, which is something incorporeal, and reason and form entering the obscure involutions of matter, irradiates and forms its dark and formless nature. it is on this account that fire surpasses other bodies in beauty, because, compared with the other elements, it obtains the order of form; for it is more eminent than the rest, and is the most subtle of all, bordering, as it were, on an incorporeal nature. and too, that though impervious itself it is intimately received by others, for it imparts heat, but admits no cold. hence it is the first nature which is ornamented with colour, and is the source of it to others; and on this account it beams forth exalted like some immaterial form. but when it cannot vanquish its subject, as participating but a slender light, it is no longer beautiful, because it does not receive the whole form of colour. again, the music of the voice rouses the harmony latent in the soul, and opens her eye to the perception of beauty, existing in many the same. but it is the property of the harmony perceived by sense, to be measured by numbers, yet not in every proportion of number or voice; but in that alone which is obedient to the production, and conquest of its species. and this much for the beauties of sense, which, like images and shadows flowing into matter, adorn with spectacles of beauty its formless being, and strike the respective senses with wonder and delight. but it is now time, leaving every object of sense far behind, to contemplate, by a certain ascent, a beauty of a much higher order; a beauty not visible to the corporeal eye, but alone manifest to the brighter eye of the soul, independent of all corporeal aid. however, since, without some previous perception of beauty it is impossible to express by words the beauties of sense, but we must remain in the state of the blind, so neither can we ever speak of the beauty of offices and sciences, and whatever is allied to these, if deprived of their intimate possession. thus we shall never be able to tell of virtue's brightness, unless by looking inward we perceive the fair countenance of justice and temperance, and are convinced that neither the evening nor morning star are half so beautiful and bright. but it is requisite to perceive objects of this kind by that eye by which the soul beholds such real beauties. besides it is necessary that whoever perceives this species of beauty, should be seized with much greater delight, and more vehement admiration, than any corporeal beauty can excite; as now embracing beauty real and substantial. such affections, i say, ought to be excited about true beauty, as admiration and sweet astonishment; desire also and love and a pleasant trepidation. for all souls, as i may say, are affected in this manner about invisible objects, but those the most who have the strongest propensity to their love; as it likewise happens about corporeal beauty; for all equally perceive beautiful corporeal forms, yet all are not equally excited, but lovers in the greatest degree. but it may be allowable to interrogate those, who rise above sense, concerning the effects of love in this manner; of such we enquire, what do you suffer respecting fair studies, and beautiful manners, virtuous works, affections, and habits, and the beauty of souls? what do you experience on perceiving yourselves lovely within? after what manner are you roused as it were to a bacchalian fury; striving to converse with yourselves, and collecting yourselves separate from the impediments of body? for thus are true lovers enraptured. but what is the cause of these wonderful effects. it is neither figure, nor colour, nor magnitude; but soul herself, fair through temperance, and not with the false gloss of colour, and bright with the splendours of virtue herself. and this you experience as often as you turn your eye inwards; or contemplate the amplitude of another soul; the just manners, the pure temperance; fortitude venerable by her noble countenance; and modesty and honesty walking with an intrepid step, and a tranquil and steady aspect; and what crowns the beauty of them all, constantly receiving the irradiations of a divine intellect. in what respect then, shall we call these beautiful? for they are such as they appear, nor did ever anyone behold them, and not pronounce them realities. but as yet reason desires to know how they cause the loveliness of the soul; and what that grace is in every virtue which beams forth to view like light? are you then willing we should assume the contrary part, and consider what in the soul appears deformed? for perhaps it will facilitate our search, if we can thus find what is base in the soul, and from whence it derives its original. let us suppose a soul deformed, to be one intemperate and unjust, filled with a multitude of desires, a prey to foolish hopes and vexed with idle fears; through its diminutive and avaricious nature the subject of envy; employed solely in thought of what is immoral and low, bound in the fetters of impure delights, living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem the base pleasant, and the deformed beautiful and fair. but may we not say, that this baseness approaches the soul as an adventitious evil, under the pretext of adventitious beauty; which, with great detriment, renders it impure, and pollutes it with much depravity; so that it neither possesses true life, nor true sense, but is endued with a slender life through its mixture of evil, and this worn out by the continual depredations of death; no longer perceiving the objects of mental vision, nor permitted any more to dwell with itself, because ever hurried away to things obscure, external and low? hence, becoming impure, and being on all sides snatched in the unceasing whirl of sensible forms, it is covered with corporeal stains, and wholly given to matter, contracts deeply its nature, loses all its original splendour, and almost changes its own species into that of another; just as the pristine beauty of the most lovely form would be destroyed by its total immersion in mire and clay. but the deformity of the first arises from inward filth, of its own contracting; of the second, from the accession of some foreign nature. if such a one then desires to recover his former beauty, it is necessary to cleanse the infected parts, and thus by a thorough purgation to resume his original form. hence, then if we assert that the soul, by her mixture, confusion and commerce with body and matter, becomes thus base, our assertion will, i think, be right. for the baseness of the soul consists in not being pure and sincere. and as the gold is deformed by the adherence of earthly clods, which are no sooner removed than on a sudden the gold shines forth with its native purity; and then becomes beautiful when separated from natures foreign from its own, and when it is content with its own purity for the possession of beauty; so the soul, when separated from the sordid desires engendered by its too great immersion in body, and liberated from the dominion of every perturbation, can thus and thus only, blot out the base stains imbibed from its union with body; and thus becoming alone, will doubtless expel all the turpitude contracted from a nature so opposite to its own. indeed, as the ancient oracle declares, temperance and fortitude, prudence and every virtue, are certain purgatives of the soul; and hence the sacred mysteries prophesy obscurely, yet with truth, that the soul not purified lies in tartarus, immersed in filth. since the impure is, from his depravity, the friend of filth, as swine, from their sordid body, delight in mire alone. for what else is true temperance than not to indulge in corporeal delights, but to fly from their connection, as things which are neither pure, nor the offspring of purity? and true fortitude is not to fear death; for death is nothing more than a certain separation of soul from body, and this he will not fear, who desires to be alone. again, magnanimity is the contempt of every mortal concern; it is the wing by which we fly into the regions of intellect. and lastly, prudence is no other than intelligence, declining subordinate objects; and directing the eye of the soul to that which is immortal and divine. the soul, thus defined, becomes form and reason, is altogether incorporeal and intellectual, and wholly participates of that divine nature, which is the fountain of loveliness, and of whatever is allied to the beautiful and fair. hence the soul reduced to intellect becomes astonishingly beautiful; for as the lambent flame which appears detached from the burning wood, enlightens its dark and smoky parts, so intellect irradiates and adorns the inferior powers of the soul, which, without its aid, would be buried in the gloom of formless matter. but intellect, and whatever emanates from intellect, is not the foreign, but the proper ornament of the soul, for the being of the soul, when absorbed in intellect, is then alone real and true. it is, therefore, rightly said, that the beauty and good of the soul consists in her similitude to the deity_;_ for from hence flows all her beauty, and her allotment of a better being. but the beautiful itself is that which is called beings; and turpitude is of a different nature and participates more of non-entity than being. but, perhaps, the good and the beautiful are the same, and must be investigated by one and the same process; and in like manner the base and the evil. and in the first rank we must place the beautiful, and consider it as the same with the good; from which immediately emanates intellect as beautiful. next to this, we must consider the soul receiving its beauty from intellect, and every inferior beauty deriving its origin from the forming power of the soul, whether conversant in fair actions and offices, or sciences and arts. lastly, bodies themselves participate of beauty from the soul, which, as something divine, and a portion of the beautiful itself, renders whatever it supervenes and subdues, beautiful as far as its natural capacity will admit. let us, therefore, re-ascend to the good itself, which every soul desires; and in which it can alone find perfect repose. for if anyone shall become acquainted with this source of beauty he will then know what i say, and after what manner he is beautiful. indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. but they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments of matter, with which they become connected in their descent. just as those who penetrate into the holy retreats of sacred mysteries, are first purified and then divest themselves of their garments, until someone by such a process, having dismissed everything foreign from the god, by himself alone, beholds the solitary principle of the universe, sincere, simple and pure, from which all things depend, and to whose transcendent perfections the eyes of all intelligent natures are directed, as the proper cause of being, life and intelligence. with what ardent love, with what strong desire will he who enjoys this transporting vision be inflamed while vehemently affecting to become one with this supreme beauty! for this it is ordained, that he who does not yet perceive him, yet desires him as good, but he who enjoys the vision is enraptured with his beauty, and is equally filled with admiration and delight. hence, such a one is agitated with a salutary astonishment; is affected with the highest and truest love; derides vehement affections and inferior loves, and despises the beauty which he once approved. such, too, is the condition of those who, on perceiving the forms of gods or daemons, no longer esteem the fairest of corporeal forms. what, then, must be the condition of that being, who beholds the beautiful itself? in itself perfectly pure[7], not confined by any corporeal bond, neither existing in the heavens, nor in the earth, nor to be imaged by the most lovely form imagination can conceive; since these are all adventitious and mixed, and mere secondary beauties, proceeding from the beautiful itself. if, then, anyone should ever behold that which is the source of munificence to others, remaining in itself, while it communicates to all, and receiving nothing, because possessing an inexhaustible fulness; and should so abide in the intuition, as to become similar to his nature, what more of beauty can such a one desire? for such beauty, since it is supreme in dignity and excellence, cannot fail of rendering its votaries lovely and fair. add too, that since the object of contest to souls is the highest beauty, we should strive for its acquisition with unabated ardour, lest we should be deserted of that blissful contemplation, which, whoever pursues in the right way, becomes blessed from the happy vision; and which he who does not obtain is unavoidably unhappy. for the miserable man is not he who neglects to pursue fair colours, and beautiful corporeal forms; who is deprived of power, and falls from dominion and empire but he alone who is destitute of this divine possession, for which the ample dominion of the earth and sea and the still more extended empire of the heavens, must be relinquished and forgot, if, despising and leaving these far behind, we ever intend to arrive at substantial felicity, by beholding the beautiful itself. what measures, then, shall we adopt? what machine employ, or what reason consult by means of which we may contemplate this ineffable beauty; a beauty abiding in the most divine sanctuary without ever proceeding from its sacred retreats lest it should be beheld by the profane and vulgar eye? we must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense. for, it is necessary that whoever beholds this beauty, should withdraw his view from the fairest corporeal forms; and, convinced that these are nothing more than images, vestiges and shadows of beauty, should eagerly soar to the fair original from which they are derived. for he who rushes to these lower beauties, as if grasping realities, when they are only like beautiful images appearing in water, will, doubtless, like him in the fable, by stretching after the shadow, sink into the lake and disappear. for, by thus embracing and adhering to corporeal forms, he is precipitated, not so much in his body as in his soul, into profound and horrid darkness; and thus blind, like those in the infernal regions, converses only with phantoms, deprived of the perception of what is real and true. it is here, then, we may more truly exclaim, "let us depart from hence, and fly to our father's delightful land".[8] but, by what leading stars shall we direct our flight, and by what means avoid the magic power of circe, and the detaining charms of calypso?[9] for thus the fable of ulysses obscurely signifies, which feigns him abiding an unwilling exile, though pleasant spectacles were continually presented to his sight; and everything was promised to invite his stay which can delight the senses, and captivate the heart. but our true country, like that of ulysses, is from whence we came, and where our father lives. but where is the ship to be found by which we can accomplish our flight? for our feet are unequal to the task since they only take us from one part of the earth to another. may we not each of us say, "what ships have i, what sailors to convey, what oars to cut the long laborious way".[10] but it is in vain that we prepare horses to draw our ships to transport us to our native land. on the contrary, neglecting all these, as unequal to the task, and excluding them entirely from our view, having now closed the corporeal eye,[11] we must stir up and assume a purer eye within, which all men possess, but which is alone used by a few. what is it, then, this inward eye beholds? indeed, suddenly raised to intellectual vision, it cannot perceive an object exceeding bright. the soul must therefore be first accustomed to contemplate fair studies and then beautiful works, not such as arise from the operations of art, but such as are the offspring of worthy men; and next to this it is necessary to view the soul, which is the parent of this lovely race. but you will ask, after what manner is this beauty of a worthy soul to be perceived? it is thus. recall your thoughts inward, and if while contemplating yourself, you do not perceive yourself beautiful, imitate the statuary; who when he desires a beautiful statue cuts away what is superfluous, smooths and polishes what is rough, and never desists until he has given it all the beauty his art is able to effect. in this manner must you proceed, by lopping what is luxuriant, directing what is oblique, and, by purgation, illustrating what is obscure, and thus continue to polish and beautify your statue until the divine splendour of virtue shines upon you, and temperance seated in pure and holy majesty rises to your view. if you become thus purified residing in yourself, and having nothing any longer to impede this unity of mind, and no farther mixture to be found within, but perceiving your whole self to be a true light, and light alone; a light which though immense is not measured by any magnitude, nor limited by any circumscribing figure, but is everywhere immeasurable, as being greater than every measure, and more excellent than every quantity; if, perceiving yourself thus improved, and trusting solely to yourself, as no longer requiring a guide, fix now steadfastly your mental view, for with the intellectual eye alone can such immense beauty be perceived. but if your eye is yet infected with any sordid concern, and not thoroughly refined, while it is on the stretch to behold this most shining spectacle, it will be immediately darkened and incapable of intuition, though someone should declare the spectacle present, which it might be otherwise able to discern. for, it is here necessary that the perceiver and the thing perceived should be similar to each other before true vision can exist. thus the sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely off the vivid ray. everyone therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god and the beautiful itself. thus proceeding in the right way of beauty he will first ascend into the region of intellect, contemplating every fair species, the beauty of which he will perceive to be no other than ideas themselves; for all things are beautiful by the supervening irradiations of these, because they are the offspring and essence of intellect. but that which is superior to these is no other than the fountain of good, everywhere widely diffusing around the streams of beauty, and hence in discourse called the beautiful itself because beauty is its immediate offspring. but if you accurately distinguish the intelligible objects you will call the beautiful the receptacle of ideas; but the good itself, which is superior, the fountain and principle of the beautiful; or, you may place the first beautiful and the good in the same principle, independent of the beauty which there subsists.[12] notes 1 pope's homer's _odyssey,_ book xiii., ver. 37. 2 _odyssey,_ book xiii., ver. 223. 3 _odyssey,_ book vii., ver. 303. 4 it is necessary to inform the platonical reader, that the beautiful, in the present discourse, is considered according to its most general acceptation, as the same with the good: though, according to a more accurate distinction, as plotinus himself informs us, the good is considered as the fountain and principle of the beautiful. i think it likewise proper to observe, that as i have endeavoured, by my paraphrase, to render as much as possible the obscure parts evident, and to expand those sentences which are so very much contracted in the original, i shall be sparing of notes; for my design is not to accommodate the sublimest truths to the meanest understandings (as this would be a contemptible and useless prostitution), but to render them perspicuous to truly liberal and philosophic minds. my reasons for adopting this mode of paraphrase, may be seen in the preface to my translation of _orpheus's hymns._ 5 "enters deep into its essence," etc. the platonic philosophy insists much on the necessity of retiring into ourselves in order to the discovery of truth; and on this account socrates, in the first _alcibiades,_ says that the soul entering into herself will contemplate whatever exists and the divinity himself. upon which proclus thus comments, with his usual elegance and depth (in _theol. plat,_ p. 7): "for the soul," says he, "contracting herself wholly into a union with herself, and into the centre of universal life, and removing the multitude and variety of all-various powers, ascends into the highest place of speculation, from whence she will survey the nature of beings. for if she looks back upon things posterior to her essence, she will perceive nothing but the shadows and resemblances of beings; but if she returns into herself she will evolve her own essence, and the reasons she contains. and at first indeed she will, as it were, only behold herself; but when by her knowledge she penetrates more profoundly in her investigations she will find intellect seated in her essence and the universal orders of beings; but when she advances into the more interior recesses of herself, and as it were into the sanctuary of the soul, she will be enabled to contemplate, with her eyes closed to corporeal vision, the genus of the gods and the unities of beings. for all things reside in us, after a manner correspondent to the nature of the soul; and on this account we are naturally enabled to know all things, by exciting our inherent powers and images of whatever exists." 6 "and such is matter," etc. there is nothing affords more wonderful speculation than matter, which ranks as the last among the universality of things, and has the same relation to being as shade to substance. for, as in an ascending series of causes it is necessary to arrive at something, which is the first cause of all, and to which no perfection is wanting; so in a descending series of subjects, it is equally necessary we should stop at some general subject, the lowest in the order of things, and to which every perfection of being is denied. but let us hear the profound and admirable description which plotinus gives us of matter (lib. vi., ennead 3), and of which the following is a paraphrase: "since matter," says he, "is neither soul, nor intellect, nor life, nor form, nor reason, nor bound, but a certain indefiniteness; nor yet capacity, for what can it produce? since it is foreign from all these, it cannot merit the appellation of being, but is deservedly called non-entity. nor yet is it non-entity in the manner as motion or station; but it is true non-entity, the mere shadow and imagination of bulk and the desire of subsistence; abiding without station, of itself invisible, and avoiding the desire of him who wishes to perceive its nature. hence, when no one perceives it, it is then in a manner present, but cannot be viewed by him who strives intently to behold it. again, in itself contraries always appear, the small and the great, the less and the more, deficience and excess. so that it is a phantom, neither abiding nor yet able to fly away; capable of no one denomination and possessing no power from intellect, but constituted in the defect and shade, as it were, of all real being. hence, too, in each of its vanishing appellations it eludes our search; for if we think of it as something great, it is in the meantime small; if as something more, it becomes less; and the apparent being which we meet with in its image is non-being, and as it were a flying mockery. so that the forms which appear in matter are merely ludicrous, shadows falling upon shadow, as in a mirror, where the position of a thing is different from its real situation; and which, though apparently full of forms, possesses nothing real and true--but imitations of being and semblances flowing about a formless semblance. they appear, indeed, to affect something in the subject matter, but in reality produce nothing; from their debile and flowing nature being endued with no solidity and no rebounding power. and since matter, likewise, has no solidity they penetrate it without division, like images in water, or as if anyone should fill a vacuum with forms." 7 "in itself perfectly pure." this is analogous to the description of the beautiful in the latter part of diotima's speech in the _banquet_; a speech which is surely unequalled, both for elegance of composition and sublimity of sentiment. indeed, all the disciples of plato are remarkable for nothing so much as their profound and exalted conceptions of the deity; and he who can read the works of plotinus and proclus in particular, and afterwards pity the weakness and erroneousness of their opinions on this subject, may be fairly presumed to be himself equally an object of pity and contempt. 8 "let us depart," etc., _vide_ hom., _iliad,_ lib. ii., 140, et lib. ix., 27. 9 porphyry informs us in his excellent treatise, _de antro nymph,_ that it was the opinion of numenius, the pythagorean (to which he also assents), that the person of ulysses in the _odyssey,_ represents to us a man, who passes in a regular manner, over the dark and stormy sea of generation; and thus, at length, arrives at that region where tempests and seas are unknown, and finds a nation who "ne'er knew salt, or heard the billows roar." indeed, he who is conscious of the delusions of the present life and the enchantments of this material house, in which his soul is detained like ulysses in the irriguous cavern of calypso, will like him continually bewail his captivity, and inly pine for a return to his native country. of such a one it may be said as of ulysses (in the excellent and pathetic translation of mr pope): "but sad ulysses by himself apart pour'd the big sorrows of his swelling heart, all on the lonely shore he sate to weep and roll'd his eyes around the restless deep tow'rd the lov'd coast he roll'd his eyes in vain till, dimmed with rising grief, they stream'd again." _odyssey,_ book v., 103. such a one too, like ulysses, will not always wish in vain for a passage over the dark ocean of a corporeal life, but by the assistance of mercury, who may be considered as the emblem of reason, he will at length be enabled to quit the magic embraces of calypso, the goddess of imagination, and to return again into the arms of penelope, or philosophy, the long lost and proper object of his love. 10 see pope's homer's _odyssey,_ book v., 182. 11 "we must stir up and assume a purer eye within." this inward eye is no other than intellect, which contains in its most inward recesses a certain ray of light, participated from the sun of beauty and good, by which the soul is enabled to behold and become united with her divinely solitary original. this divine ray, or, as proclus calls it, mark or impression, is thus beautifully described by that philosopher _(theol. plat,_ p. 105): "the author of the universe," says he, "has planted in all beings impressions of his own perfect excellence, and through these he has placed all beings about himself, and is present with them in an ineffable manner, exempt from the universality of things. hence, every being entering into the ineffable sanctuary of its own nature finds there a symbol of the father of all. and by this mystical impression which corresponds to his nature they become united with their original, divesting themselves of their own essence and hastening to become his impression alone; and, through a desire of his unknown nature and of the fountain of good, to participate in him alone. and when they have ascended as far as to this cause they enjoy perfect tranquillity and are conversant in the perception of his divine progeny and of the love which all things naturally possess, and goodness, unknown, ineffable, without participation and transcendently full." 12 but before i take my leave of plotinus, i cannot refrain from addressing a few words to the platonical part of my readers. if such then is the wisdom contained in the works of this philosopher, as we may conclude from the present specimen, is it fit so divine a treasure should be concealed in shameful oblivion? with respect to true philosophy you must be sensible that all modern sects are in a state of barbarous ignorance; for materialism and its attendant sensuality have darkened the eyes of the _many_ with the mists of error, and are continually strengthening their corporeal tie. and can anything more effectually dissipate this increasing gloom than discourses composed by so sublime a genius, pregnant with the most profound conceptions, and everywhere full of intellectual light? can anything so thoroughly destroy the phantom of false enthusiasm as establishing the real object of the true? let us then boldly enlist ourselves under the banners of plotinus, and, by his assistance, vigorously repel the encroachments of error, plunge her dominions into the abyss of forgetfulness, and disperse the darkness of her baneful night. for indeed there never was a period which required so much philosophic exertion, or such vehement contention from the lovers of truth. on all sides nothing of philosophy remains but the name, and this is become the subject of the vilest prostitution; since it is not only engrossed by the naturalist, chemist, and anatomist, but is usurped by the mechanic in every trifling invention, and made subservient to the lucre of traffic and merchandise. there cannot surely be a greater proof of the degeneracy of the times than so unparalleled a degradation and so barbarous a perversion of terms. for the word philosophy, which implies the love of wisdom, is now become the ornament of folly. in the times of its inventor, and for many succeeding ages, it was expressive of modesty and worth; in our days it is the badge of impudence and vain pretensions. it was formerly the symbol of the profound contemplative genius, it is now the mark of the superficial and unthinking practitioner. it was once reverenced by kings and clothed in the robes of nobility; it is now (according to its true acceptation) abandoned and despised and ridiculed by the vilest plebeian. permit me, then, my friends, to address you in the words of achilles to hector: "rouse, then, your forces this important hour, collect your strength and call forth all your pow'r." since, to adopt the animated language of neptune to the greeks, " . . . on dastards, dead to fame, i waste no anger, for they feel no shame, but you, the pride, the flower of all our host, my heart weeps blood, to see your glory lost." nor deem the exhortation impertinent, and the danger groundless: "for lo! the fated time, th' appointed shore, hark, the gates burst, the brazen barriers roar." impetuous ignorance is thundering at the bulwarks of philosophy and her sacred retreats are in danger of being demolished, through our feeble resistance. rise then, my friends, and the victory will be ours. the foe is indeed numerous, but at the same time feeble; and the weapons of truth in the hands of vigorous union, descend with irresistible force, and are fatal wherever they fall. --[transcriber's notes: i have made minor changes to the punctuation and the format of the notes. i have also made the following spelling changes: "powerfully attacts" to "powerfully attracts" "converses only with plantoms" to "converses only with phantoms"] [note: for this online edition i have moved the table of contents to the beginning of the text and slightly modified it to conform with the online format. i have also made two spelling corrections: "chippendale" to "chippendale" and "closely interpendent" to "closely interdependent."] the beautiful an introduction to psychological aesthetics by vernon lee author of "beauty and ugliness" "laurus nobilis" etc. cambridge: at the university press new york: g.p. putnam's sons 1913 [illustration: title page] _with the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known cambridge printer, john siberch,_ 1521 contents preface and apology v i. the adjective "beautiful" 1 ii. contemplative satisfaction 8 iii. aspects versus things 14 iv. sensations 22 v. perception of relations 29 vi. elements of shape 35 vii. facility and difficulty of grasping 48 viii. subject and object, or, nominative and accusative 55 ix. empathy (einfühlung) 61 x. the movement of lines 70 xi. the character of shapes 78 xii. from the shape to the thing 84 xiii. from the thing to the shape 90 xiv. the aims of art 98 xv. attention to shapes 106 xvi. information about things 111 xvii. co-operation of things and shapes 117 xviii. aesthetic responsiveness 128 xix. the storage and transfer of emotion 139 xx. aesthetic irradiation and purification 147 xxi. conclusion (evolutional) 153 bibliography 156 index 157 preface and apology i have tried in this little volume to explain aesthetic preference, particularly as regards visible shapes, by the facts of mental science. but my explanation is addressed to readers in whom i have no right to expect a previous knowledge of psychology, particularly in its more modern developments. i have therefore based my explanation of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental facts familiar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader. now mental facts thus available are by no means the elementary processes with which analytical and, especially experimental, psychology has dealings. they are, on the contrary, the everyday, superficial and often extremely confused views which practical life and its wholly unscientific vocabulary present of those ascertained or hypothetical scientific facts. i have indeed endeavoured (for instance in the analysis of perception as distinguished from sensation) to impart some rudiments of psychology in the course of my aesthetical explanation, and i have avoided, as much as possible, misleading the reader about such fearful complexes and cruxes as _memory, association_ and _imagination._ but i have been obliged to speak in terms intelligible to the lay reader, and i am fully aware that these terms correspond only very approximately to what is, or at present passes as, psychological fact. i would therefore beg the psychologist (to whom i offer this little volume as a possible slight addition even to his stock of facts and hypotheses) to understand that in speaking, for instance, of empathy as involving a _thought_ of certain activities, i mean merely that whatever happens has the same result _as if we thought_; and that the processes, whatever they may be (also in the case of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating), translate themselves, _when they are detected,_ into _thoughts;_ but that i do not in the least pre-judge the question whether the processes, the "thoughts," the measuring, comparing etc. exist on subordinate planes of consciousness or whether they are mainly physiological and only occasionally abutting in conscious resultants. similarly, lack of space and the need for clearness have obliged me to write as if shape-preference invariably necessitated the detailed process of ocular perception, instead of being due, as is doubtless most often the case, to every kind of associative abbreviation and equivalence of processes. vernon lee maiano _near_ florence,_ easter_ 1913. chapter i the adjective "beautiful" this little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it is an introduction, makes no attempt to "form the taste" of the public and still less to direct the doings of the artist. it deals not with _ought_ but with _is,_ leaving to criticism the inference from the latter to the former. it does not pretend to tell how things can be made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things _are_ beautiful. it takes beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks to analyse and account for beauty's existence and enjoyment. more strictly speaking, it analyses and accounts for beauty not inasmuch as existing in certain objects and processes, but rather as calling forth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental activities and habits. it does not ask: what are the peculiarities of the things (and the proceedings) which we call _beautiful?_ but: what are the peculiarities of our thinking and feeling when in the presence of a thing to which we apply this adjective? the study of single beautiful things, and even more, the comparison of various categories thereof, is indeed one-half of all scientific aesthetics, but only inasmuch as it adds to our knowledge of the particular mental activities which such "beautiful" (and vice versa "ugly") things elicit in us. for it is on the nature of this active response on our own part that depends the application of those terms _beautiful_ and _ugly_ in every single instance; and indeed their application in any instances whatsoever, their very existence in the human vocabulary. in accordance with this programme i shall not start with a formal definition of the word _beautiful,_ but ask: on what sort of occasions we make use of it. evidently, on _occasions when we feel satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction,_ satisfaction meaning willingness either to prolong or to repeat the particular experience which has called forth that word; and meaning also that if it comes to a choice between two or several experiences, we _prefer_ the experience thus marked by the word _beautiful. beautiful,_ we may therefore formulate, _implies on our part an attitude of satisfaction and preference._ but there are other words which imply that much; first and foremost the words, in reality synonyms, useful and good. i call these synonyms because _good_ always implies _good for,_ or _good in,_ that is to say fitness for a purpose, even though that purpose may be masked under _conforming to a standard_ or _obeying a commandment,_ since the standard or commandment represents not the caprice of a community, a race or a divinity, but some (real or imaginary) utility of a less immediate kind. so much for the meaning of _good_ when implying standards and commandments; ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is, however, no such implication, and _good_ means nothing more than _satisfactory in the way of use and advantage._ thus a _good_ road is a road we prefer because it takes us to our destination quickly and easily. a _good_ speech is one we prefer because it succeeds in explaining or persuading. and a _good_ character (good friend, father, husband, citizen) is one that gives satisfaction by the fulfilment of moral obligations. but note the difference when we come to _beautiful._ a _beautiful_ road is one we prefer because it affords views we like to look at; its being devious and inconvenient will not prevent its being _beautiful._ a _beautiful_ speech is one we like to hear or remember, although it may convince or persuade neither us nor anybody. a _beautiful_ character is one we like to think about but which may never practically help anyone, if for instance, it exists not in real life but in a novel. thus the adjective _beautiful_ implies _an attitude of preference, but not an attitude of present or future turning to our purposes._ there is even a significant lack of symmetry in the words employed (at all events in english, french and german) to distinguish what we like from what we dislike in the way of weather. for weather which makes us uncomfortable and hampers our comings and goings by rain, wind or mud, is described as _bad;_ while the opposite kind of weather is called _beautiful, fine,_ or _fair,_ as if the greater comfort, convenience, usefulness of such days were forgotten in the lively satisfaction afforded to our mere contemplation. _our mere contemplation!_ here we have struck upon the main difference between our attitude when we use the word _good_ or _useful,_ and when we use the word _beautiful._ and we can add to our partial formula "beautiful implies satisfaction and preference"--the distinguishing predicate--"_of a contemplative kind._" this general statement will be confirmed by an everyday anomaly in our use of the word beautiful; and the examination of this seeming exception will not only exemplify what i have said about our attitude when employing that word, but add to this information the name of the emotion corresponding with that attitude: the emotion of _admiration._ for the selfsame object or proceeding may sometimes be called _good_ and sometimes _beautiful,_ according as the mental attitude is practical or contemplative. while we admonish the traveller to take a certain road because he will find it _good,_ we may hear that same road described by an enthusiastic coachman as _beautiful, anglicè fine_ or _splendid,_ because there is no question of immediate use, and the road's qualities are merely being contemplated with admiration. similarly, we have all of us heard an engineer apply to a piece of machinery, and even a surgeon to an operation, the apparently far-fetched adjective beautiful, or one of the various equivalents, fine, splendid, glorious (even occasionally _jolly!)_ by which englishmen express their admiration. the change of word represents a change of attitude. the engineer is no longer bent upon using the machine, nor the surgeon estimating the advantages of the operation. each of these highly practical persons has switched off his practicality, if but for an imperceptible fraction of time and in the very middle of a practical estimation or even of practice itself. the machine or operation, the skill, the inventiveness, the fitness for its purposes, are being considered _apart from action,_ and advantage, means and time, to-day or yesterday; _platonically_ we may call it from the first great teacher of aesthetics. they are being, in one word, contemplated with admiration. and _admiration_ is the rough and ready name for the mood, however transient, for the emotion, however faint, wherewith we greet whatever makes us contemplate, because contemplation happens to give satisfaction. the satisfaction may be a mere skeleton of the "i'd rather than not" description; or it may be a massive alteration in our being, radiating far beyond the present, evoking from the past similar conditions to corroborate it; storing itself up for the future; penetrating, like the joy of a fine day, into our animal spirits, altering pulse, breath, gait, glance and demeanour; and transfiguring our whole momentary outlook on life. but, superficial or overwhelming, _this hind of satisfaction connected with, the word beautiful is always of the contemplative order._ and upon the fact we have thus formulated depend, as we shall see, most of the other facts and formulae of our subject. this essentially unpractical attitude accompanying the use of the word _beautiful_ has led metaphysical aestheticians to two famous, and i think, quite misleading theories. the first of these defines aesthetic appreciation as _disinterested interest,_ gratuitously identifying self-interest with the practical pursuit of advantages we have not yet got; and overlooking the fact that such appreciation implies enjoyment and is so far the very reverse of disinterested. the second philosophical theory (originally schiller's, and revived by herbert spencer) takes advantage of the non-practical attitude connected with the word _beautiful_ to define art and its enjoyment as a kind of _play._ now although leisure and freedom from cares are necessary both for play and for aesthetic appreciation, the latter differs essentially from the former by its contemplative nature. for although it may be possible to watch _other people_ playing football or chess or bridge in a purely contemplative spirit and with the deepest admiration, even as the engineer or surgeon may contemplate the perfections of a machine or an operation, yet the concentration on the aim and the next moves constitutes on the part of the players _themselves_ an eminently practical state of mind, one diametrically opposed to contemplation, as i hope to make evident in the next section. chapter ii contemplative satisfaction we have thus defined the word _beautiful_ as implying an attitude of contemplative satisfaction, marked by a feeling, sometimes amounting to an _emotion,_ of admiration; and so far contrasted it with the practical attitude implied by the word _good._ but we require to know more about the distinctive peculiarities of contemplation as such, by which, moreover, it is distinguished not merely from the practical attitude, but also from the scientific one. let us get some rough and ready notions on this subject by watching the behaviour and listening to the remarks of three imaginary wayfarers in front of a view, which they severally consider in the practical, the scientific and the aesthetic manner. the view was from a hill-top in the neighbourhood of rome or of edinburgh, whichever the reader can best realise; and in its presence the three travellers halted and remained for a moment absorbed each in his thoughts. "it will take us a couple of hours to get home on foot"--began one of the three. "we might have been back for tea-time if only there had been a tram and a funicular. and that makes me think: why not start a joint-stock company to build them? there must be water-power in these hills; the hill people could keep cows and send milk and butter to town. also houses could be built for people whose work takes them to town, but who want good air for their children; the hire-purchase system, you know. it might prove a godsend and a capital investment, though i suppose some people would say it spoilt the view. the idea is quite a _good_ one. i shall get an expert--" "these hills," put in the second man--"are said to be part of an ancient volcano. i don't know whether that theory is _true!_ it would be _interesting_ to examine whether the summits have been ground down in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic action at different geological epochs; the plain, i suppose, has been under the sea at no very distant period. it is also _interesting_ to notice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural harbours; moreover, this has been the inevitable meeting-place of seafaring and pastoral populations. these investigations would prove, as i said, remarkably full of interest." "i wish"--complained the third wayfarer, but probably only to himself--"i wish these men would hold their tongues and let one enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to _what might be done_ or to _how it all came about._ they don't seem to feel how _beautiful_ it all is." and he concentrated himself on contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab of reluctance to leave. meanwhile one of his companions fell to wondering whether there really was sufficient pasture for dairy-farming and water-power for both tramway and funicular, and where the necessary capital could be borrowed; and the other one hunted about for marks of stratification and upheaval, and ransacked his memory for historical data about the various tribes originally inhabiting that country. "i suppose you're a painter and regretting you haven't brought your sketching materials?" said the scientific man, always interested in the causes of phenomena, even such trifling ones as a man remaining quiet before a landscape. "i reckon you are one of those literary fellows, and are planning out where you can use up a description of this place"--corrected the rapid insight of the practical man, accustomed to weigh people's motives in case they may be turned to use. "i am _not_ a painter, and i'm _not_ a writer"--exclaimed the third traveller, "and i thank heaven i'm not! for if i were i might be trying to engineer a picture or to match adjectives, instead of merely enjoying all this beauty. not but that i should like to have a sketch or a few words of description for when i've turned my back upon it. and heaven help me, i really believe that when we are all back in london i may be quite glad to hear you two talking about your tramway-funicular company and your volcanic and glacial action, because your talk will evoke in my mind the remembrance of this place and moment which you have done your best to spoil for me--" "that's what it is to be aesthetic"--said the two almost in the same breath. "and that, i suppose"--answered the third with some animosity--"is what you mean by being practical or scientific." now the attitude of mind of the practical man and of the man of science, though differing so obviously from one another (the first bent upon producing new and advantageous _results,_ the second examining, without thought of advantage, into possible _causes),_ both differed in the same way from the attitude of the man who was merely contemplating what he called the beauty of the scene. they were, as he complained, thinking of _what might be done_ and of _how it had all come about._ that is to say they were both thinking _away_ from that landscape. the scientific man actually turned his back to it in examining first one rock, then another. the practical man must have looked both at the plain in front and at the hill he was on, since he judged that there was pasture and water-power, and that the steepness required supplementing the tramway by a funicular. but besides the different items of landscape, and the same items under different angles, which were thus offered to these two men's bodily eyes, there was a far greater variety, and rapider succession of items and perspectives presented to the eyes of their spirit: the practical man's mental eye seeing not only the hills, plain, and town with details not co-existing in perspective or even in time, but tram-lines and funiculars in various stages of progress, dairy-products, pasture, houses, dynamos, waterfalls, offices, advertisements, cheques, etc., etc., and the scientific man's inner vision glancing with equal speed from volcanoes to ice-caps and seas in various stages of geological existence, besides minerals under the microscope, inhabitants in prehistoric or classic garb, let alone probably pages of books and interiors of libraries. moreover, most, if not all these mental images (blocking out from attention the really existing landscape) could be called images only by courtesy, swished over by the mental eye as by an express train, only just enough seen to know what it was, or perhaps nothing seen at all, mere words filling up gaps in the chain of thought. so that what satisfaction there might be in the case was not due to these rapidly scampered through items, but to the very fact of getting to the next one, and to a looming, dominating goal, an ultimate desired result, to wit, pounds, shillings, and pence in the one case, and a coherent explanation in the other. in both cases equally there was a kaleidoscopic and cinematographic succession of aspects, but of aspects of which only one detail perhaps was noticed. or, more strictly speaking, there was no interest whatever in aspects as such, but only in the possibilities of action which these aspects implied; whether actions future and personally profitable, like building tram-lines and floating joint-stock companies, or actions mainly past and quite impersonally interesting, like those of extinct volcanoes or prehistoric civilisations. now let us examine the mental attitude of the third man, whom the two others had first mistaken for an artist or writer, and then dismissed as an aesthetic person. chapter iii aspects _versus_ things having settled upon a particular point of view as the one he liked best, he remained there in contemplation of the aspect it afforded him. had he descended another twenty minutes, or looked through powerful glasses, he would have seen the plain below as a juxtaposition of emerald green, raw sienna, and pale yellow, whereas, at the distance where he chose to remain, its colours fused into indescribably lovely lilacs and russets. had he moved freely about he would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of sharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their various angles, must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges, and roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate. also that the foothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains behind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the attention by their aggressive projection. while, as if to spoil the aspect still more, he would have been forced to recognise (as ruskin explains by his drawing of the cottage roof and the matterhorn peak) that the exquisitely phrased skyline of the furthermost hills, picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests, dropping down merely to rush up again in long concave curves, was merely an illusion of perspective, nearer lines seeming higher and further ones lower, let alone that from a balloon you would see only flattened mounds. but to how things might look from a balloon, or under a microscope, that man did not give one thought, any more than to how they might look after a hundred years of tramways and funiculars or how they had looked before thousands of years of volcanic and glacial action. he was satisfied with the wonderfully harmonised scheme of light and colour, the pattern (more and more detailed, more and more co-ordinated with every additional exploring glance) of keenly thrusting, delicately yielding lines, meeting as purposefully as if they had all been alive and executing some great, intricate dance. he did not concern himself whether what he was looking at was an aggregate of things; still less what might be these things' other properties. he was not concerned with things at all, but only with a particular appearance (he did not care whether it answered to reality), only with one (he did not want to know whether there might be any other) _aspect._ for, odd as it may sound, a _thing_ is both much more and much less than an _aspect._ much more, because a _thing_ really means not only qualities of its own and reactions of ours which are actual and present, but a far greater number and variety thereof which are potential. much _less,_ on the other hand, because of these potential qualities and reactions constituting a thing only a minimum need be thought of at any given time; instead of which, an aspect is all there, its qualities closely interdependent, and our reactions entirely taken up in connecting them as whole and parts. a rose, for instance, is not merely a certain assemblage of curves and straight lines and colours, seen as the painter sees it, at a certain angle, petals masking part of stem, leaf protruding above bud: it is the possibility of other combinations of shapes, including those seen when the rose (or the person looking) is placed head downwards. similarly it is the possibility of certain sensations of resistance, softness, moisture, pricking if we attempt to grasp it, of a certain fragrance if we breathe in the air. it is the possibility of turning into a particular fruit, with the possibility of our finding that fruit bitter and non-edible; of being developed from cuttings, pressed in a book, made a present of or cultivated for lucre. only one of these groups of possibilities may occupy our thoughts, the rest not glanced at, or only glanced at subsequently; but if, on trial, any of these grouped possibilities disappoint us, we decide that this is not a real rose, but a paper rose, or a painted one, or no rose at all, but some _other thing._ for, so far as our consciousness is concerned, _things_ are merely groups of actual and potential reactions on our own part, that is to say of expectations which experience has linked together in more or less stable groups. the practical man and the man of science in my fable, were both of them dealing with _things_: passing from one group of potential reaction to another, hurrying here, dallying there, till of the actual _aspect_ of the landscape there remained nothing in their thoughts, trams and funiculars in the future, volcanoes and icecaps in the past, having entirely altered all that; only the material constituents and the geographical locality remaining as the unshifted item in those much pulled about bundles of thoughts of possibilities. every _thing_ may have a great number of very different _aspects;_ and some of these _aspects_ may invite contemplation, as that landscape invited the third man to contemplate it; while other _aspects_ (say the same place after a proper course of tramways and funiculars and semi-detached residences, or _before_ the needful volcanic and glacial action) may be such as are dismissed or slurred as fast as possible. indeed, with the exception of a very few cubes not in themselves especially attractive, i cannot remember any _things_ which do not present quite as many displeasing aspects as pleasing ones. the most beautiful building is not beautiful if stood on its head; the most beautiful picture is not beautiful looked at through a microscope or from too far off; the most beautiful melody is not beautiful if begun at the wrong end. . . . here the reader may interrupt: "what nonsense! of course the building _is_ a building only when right side up; the picture isn't a picture any longer under a microscope; the melody isn't a melody except begun at the beginning"--all which means that when we speak of a building, a picture, or a melody, we are already implicitly speaking, no longer of a _thing,_ but of one of the possible _aspects_ of a thing; _and that when we say that a thing is beautiful, we mean that it affords one or more aspects which we contemplate with satisfaction._ but if a beautiful mountain or a beautiful woman could only be _contemplated,_ if the mountain could not also be climbed or tunnelled, if the woman could not also get married, bear children and have (or not have!) a vote, we should say that the mountain and the woman were not _real things._ hence we come to the conclusion, paradoxical only as long as we fail to define what we are talking about, _that what we contemplate as beautiful is an aspect of a thing, but never a thing itself._ in other words: beautiful is an adjective applicable to aspects not to things, or to things only, inasmuch as we consider them as possessing (among other potentialities) beautiful aspects. so that we can now formulate: _the word beautiful implies the satisfaction derived from the contemplation not of things but of aspects._ this summing up has brought us to the very core of our subject; and i should wish the reader to get it by heart, until he grow familiarised therewith in the course of our further examinations. before proceeding upon these, i would, however, ask him to reflect how this last formula of ours bears upon the old, seemingly endless, squabble as to whether or not beauty has anything to do with truth, and whether art, as certain moralists contend, is a school of lying. for _true_ or _false_ is a judgment of existence; it refers to _things;_ it implies that besides the qualities and reactions shown or described, our further action or analysis will call forth certain other groups of qualities and reactions constituting the _thing which is said to exist._ but aspects, in the case in which i have used that word, _are_ what they are and do not necessarily imply anything beyond their own peculiarities. the words _true_ or _false_ can be applied to them only with the meaning of _aspects truly existing_ or _not truly existing;_ _i.e._ aspects of which it is true or not to _say that they exist._ but as to an aspect being true or false in the sense of _misleading,_ that question refers not to the _aspect_ itself, but to the thing of which the aspect is taken as a part and a sign. now the contemplation of the mere aspect, the beauty (or ugliness) of the aspect, does not itself necessitate or imply any such reference to a thing. our contemplation of the beauty of a statue representing a centaur may indeed be disturbed by the reflexion that a creature with two sets of lungs and digestive organs would be a monster and not likely to grow to the age of having a beard. but this disturbing thought need not take place. and when it takes place it is not part of our contemplation of the _aspect_ of that statue; it is, on the contrary, outside it, an excursion away from it due to our inveterate (and very necessary) habit of interrupting the contemplation of _aspects_ by the thinking and testing of _things._ the aspect never implied the existence of a thing beyond itself; it did not affirm that anything was true, _i.e._ that anything could or would happen besides the fact of our contemplation. in other words the formula that _beautiful is an adjective applying only to aspects,_ shows us that art can be truthful or untruthful only in so far as art (as is often the case) deliberately sets to making statements about the existence and nature of things. if art says "centaurs can be born and grow up to man's estate with two sets of respiratory and digestive organs"--then art is telling lies. only, before accusing it of being a liar, better make sure that the statement about the possibility of centaurs has been intended by the art, and not merely read into it by ourselves. but more of this when we come to the examination of subject and form. chapter iv sensations in the contemplation of the _aspect_ before him, what gave that aesthetic man the most immediate and undoubted pleasure was its colour, or, more correctly speaking, its colours. psycho-physiologists have not yet told us why colours, taken singly and apart from their juxtaposition, should possess so extraordinary a power over what used to be called our animal spirits, and through them over our moods; and we can only guess from analogy with what is observed in plants, as well as from the nature of the phenomenon itself, that various kinds of luminous stimulation must have some deep chemical repercussion throughout the human organism. the same applies, though in lesser degree, to sounds, quite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies. as there are colours which _feel, i.e._ make _us_ feel, more or less warm or cool, colours which are refreshing or stifling, depressing or exhilarating quite independent of any associations, so also there are qualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the trumpet, or harrow us like the quaver of the accordion. similarly with regard to immediacy of effect: the first chords of an organ will change our whole mode of being like the change of light and colour on first entering a church, although the music which that organ is playing may, after a few seconds of listening, bore us beyond endurance; and the architecture of that church, once we begin to take stock of it, entirely dispel that first impression made by the church's light and colour. it is on account of this doubtless physiological power of colour and sound, this way which they have of invading and subjugating us with or without our consent and long before our conscious co-operation, that the man-on-the-hill's pleasure in the aspect before him was, as i have said, first of all, pleasure in colour. also, because pleasure in colour, like pleasure in mere sound-quality or _timbre,_ is accessible to people who never go any further in their aesthetic preference. children, as every one knows, are sensitive to colours, long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes. and the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the subtle orchestral blendings of wagner entrance hearers incapable of distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of following a modulation. the man on the hill, therefore, received immediate pleasure from the colours of the landscape. _received_ pleasure, rather than _took_ it, since colours, like smells, seem, as i have said, to invade us, and insist upon pleasing whether we want to be pleased or not. in this meaning of the word we may be said to be _passive_ to sound and colour quality: our share in the effects of these sensations, as in the effect of agreeable temperatures, contacts and tastes, is a question of bodily and mental reflexes in which our conscious activity, our voluntary attention, play no part: we are not _doing,_ but _done to_ by those stimulations from without; and the pleasure or displeasure which they set up in us is therefore one which we _receive,_ as distinguished from one which _we take._ before passing on to the pleasure which the man on the hill _did take,_ as distinguished from thus passively _receiving,_ from the aspect before him, before investigating into the activities to which this other kind of pleasure, _pleasure taken, not received,_ is due, we must dwell a little longer on the colours which delighted him, and upon the importance or unimportance of those colours with regard to that _aspect_ he was contemplating. these colours--particularly a certain rain-washed blue, a pale lilac and a faded russet--gave him, as i said, immediate and massive pleasure like that of certain delicious tastes and smells, indeed anyone who had watched him attentively might have noticed that he was making rather the same face as a person rolling, as meredith says, a fine vintage against his palate, or drawing in deeper draughts of exquisitely scented air; he himself, if not too engaged in looking, might have noticed the accompanying sensations in his mouth, throat and nostrils; all of which, his only active response to the colour, was merely the attempt to _receive more_ of the already received sensation. but this pleasure which he received from the mere colours of the landscape was the same pleasure which they would have given him if he had met them in so many skeins of silk; the more complex pleasure due to their juxtaposition, was the pleasure he might have had if those skeins, instead of being on separate leaves of a pattern-book, had been lying tangled together in an untidy work-basket. he might then probably have said, "those are exactly the colours, and in much the same combination, as in that landscape we saw such and such a day, at such and such a season and hour, from the top of that hill." but he would never have said (or been crazy if he had) "those skeins of silk are the landscape we saw in that particular place and oh that particular occasion." now the odd thing is that he would have used that precise form of words, "that is the landscape," etc. etc., if you had shown him a pencil drawing or a photograph taken from that particular place and point of view. and similarly if you had made him look through stained glass which changed the pale blue, pale lilac and faded russet into emerald green and blood red. he would have exclaimed at the loss of those exquisite colours when you showed him the monochrome, and perhaps have sworn that all his pleasure was spoilt when you forced him to look through that atrocious glass. but he would have identified the aspect as the one he had seen before; just as even the least musical person would identify "god save the king" whether played with three sharps on the flute or with four flats on the trombone. there is therefore in an _aspect_ something over and above the quality of the colours (or in a piece of music, of the sounds) in which that aspect is, at any particular moment, embodied for your senses; something which can be detached from the particular colours or sounds and re-embodied in other colours or sounds, existing meanwhile in a curious potential schematic condition in our memory. that something is _shape._ it is shape which we contemplate; and it is only because they enter into shapes that colours and sounds, as distinguished from temperatures, textures, tastes and smells, can be said to be contemplated at all. indeed if we apply to single isolated colour or sound-qualities (that blue or russet, or the mere timbre of a voice or an orchestra) the adjective _beautiful_ while we express our liking for smells, tastes, temperatures and textures merely by the adjectives _agreeable, delicious_; this difference in our speech is doubtless due to the fact that colours or sounds are more often than not connected each with other colours or other sounds into a shape and thereby become subject to contemplation more frequently than temperatures, textures, smells and tastes which cannot themselves be grouped into shapes, and are therefore objects of contemplation only when associated with colours and sounds, as for instance, the smell of burning weeds in a description of autumnal sights, or the cool wetness of a grotto in the perception of its darkness and its murmur of waters. on dismissing the practical and the scientific man because they were _thinking away from aspects to things,_ i attempted to inventory the _aspect_ in whose contemplation their aesthetic companion had remained absorbed. there were the colours, that delicious recently-washed blue, that lilac and russet, which gave the man his immediate shock of passive and (as much as smell and taste) bodily pleasure. but besides these my inventory contained another kind of item: what i described as a fan-like arrangement of sharply convergent lines and an exquisitely phrased sky-line of hills, picked up at rhythmical intervals into sharp crests and dropping down merely to rush up again in long rapid concave curves. and besides all this, there was the outline of a distant mountain, rising flamelike against the sky. it was all these items made up of _lines_ (skyline, outline, and lines of perspective!) which remained unchanged when the colours were utterly changed by looking through stained glass, and unchanged also when the colouring was reduced to the barest monochrome of a photograph or a pencil drawing; nay remained the same despite all changes of scale in that almost colourless presentment of them. those items of the aspect were, as we all know, _shapes._ and with altered colours, and colours diminished to just enough for each line to detach itself from its ground, those shapes could be contemplated and called beautiful. chapter v perception of relations why should this be the case? briefly, because colours (and sounds) as such are forced upon us by external stimulation of our organs of sight and hearing, neither more nor less than various temperatures, textures, tastes and smells are forced upon us from without through the nervous and cerebral mechanism connected with our skin, muscle, palate and nose. whereas shapes instead of being thus nilly willy _seen_ or _heard,_ are, at least until we know them, _looked_ at or _listened_ to, that is to say _taken in_ or _grasped,_ by mental and bodily activities which meet, but may also refuse to meet, those sense stimulations. moreover, because these mental and bodily activities, being our own, can be rehearsed in what we call our memory without the repetition of the sensory stimulations which originally started them, and even in the presence of different ones. in terms of mental science, colour and sound, like temperature, texture, taste and smell, are _sensations_; while _shape_ is, in the most complete sense, a _perception._ this distinction between _sensation_ and _perception_ is a technicality of psychology; but upon it rests the whole question why shapes can be contemplated and afford the satisfaction connected with the word _beautiful,_ while colours and sounds, except as grouped or groupable into shapes, cannot. moreover this distinction will prepare us for understanding the main fact of all psychological aesthetics: namely that the satisfaction or the dissatisfaction which we get from shapes is satisfaction or dissatisfaction in what are, directly or indirectly, activities of our own. etymologically and literally, _perception_ means the act of _grasping_ or _taking_ in, and also the result of that action. but when we thus _perceive_ a shape, what is it precisely that we grasp or take in? at first it might seem to be the _sensations_ in which that form is embodied. but a moment's reflection will show that this cannot be the case, since the sensations are furnished us simply without our performing any act of perception, thrust on us from outside, and, unless our sensory apparatus and its correlated brain centre were out of order, received by us passively, nilly willy, the man on the hill being invaded by the sense of that blue, that lilac and that russet exactly as he might have been invaded by the smell of the hay in the fields below. no: what we grasp or take in thus actively are not the sensations themselves, but the _relations_ between these sensations, and it is of these relations, more truly than of the sensations themselves, that a shape is, in the most literal sense, _made up._ and it is this _making up of shapes,_ this grasping or taking in of their constituent relations, which is an active process on our part, and one which we can either perform or not perform. when, instead of merely _seeing_ a colour, we _look at_ a shape, our eye ceases to be merely passive to the action of the various light-waves, and becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way; turning its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the stimulus, adjusting its focus like that of an opera glass, and like an opera glass, turning it to the right or left, higher or lower. moreover, except in dealing with very small surfaces, our eye moves about in our head and moves our head, and sometimes our whole body, along with it. an analogous active process undoubtedly distinguishes _listening_ from mere _hearing;_ and although psycho-physiology seems still at a loss for the precise adjustments of the inner ear corresponding to the minute adjustments of the eye, it is generally recognised that auditive attention is accompanied by adjustments of the vocal parts, or preparations for such adjustments, which account for the impression of _following_ a sequence of notes as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do _not_ follow, in the sense of _connecting by our activity,_ consecutive sensations of taste or smell. besides such obvious or presumable bodily activities requisite for looking and listening as distinguished from mere seeing and hearing, there is moreover in all perception of shape, as in all _grasping of meaning,_ a mental activity involving what are called _attention_ and _memory._ a primer of aesthetics is no place for expounding any of the various psychological definitions of either of these, let us call them, faculties. besides i should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental facts as can be found in the reader's everyday (however unnoticed) experience, instead of requiring for their detection the artificial conditions of specialised introspection or laboratory experiment. so i shall give to those much fought over words _attention_ and _memory_ merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are familiar in everyday language, and only beg the reader to notice that, whatever psychologists may eventually prove or disprove _attention_ and _memory_ to be, these two, let us unscientifically call them _faculties,_ are what chiefly distinguishes _perception_ from _sensation._ for instance, in grasping or taking stock of a visible or an audible shape we are doing something with our attention, or our attention is doing something in us: a travelling about, a returning to starting points, a summing up. and a travelling about not merely between what is given simultaneously in the present, but, even more, between what has been given in an immediately proximate past, and what we expect to be given in an immediately proximate future; both of which, the past which is put behind us as past, and the past which is projected forwards as future, necessitate the activity of _memory._ there is an adjustment of our feelings as well as our muscles not merely to the present sensation, but to the future one, and a buzz of continuing adjustment to the past. there is a holding over and a holding on, a reacting backwards and forwards of our attention, and quite a little drama of expectation, fulfilment and disappointment, or as psychologists call them, of tensions and relaxations. and this little drama involved in all looking or listening, particularly in all taking stock of visible or audible (and i may add intellectual or _verbal_) shape, has its appropriate accompaniment of emotional changes: the ease or difficulty of understanding producing feelings of victory or defeat which we shall deal with later. and although the various perceptive activities remain unnoticed in themselves (so long as easy and uninterrupted), we become aware of a lapse, a gap, whenever our mind's eye (if not our bodily one!) neglects to sweep from side to side of a geometrical figure, or from centre to circumference, or again whenever our mind's ear omits following from some particular note to another, just as when we fall asleep for a second during a lecture or sermon: we have, in common parlance, _missed the hang_ of some detail or passage. what we have missed, in that lapse of attention, is a _relation,_ the length and direction of a line, or the span of a musical interval, or, in the case of words, the references of noun and verb, the co-ordination of tenses of a verb. and it is such relations, more or less intricate and hierarchic, which transform what would otherwise be meaningless juxtapositions or sequences of sensations into the significant entities which can be remembered and recognised even when their constituent sensations are completely altered, namely _shapes._ to our previous formula that _beautiful_ denotes satisfaction in contemplating an aspect, we can now add that an _aspect_ consists of sensations grouped together into _relations_ by our active, our remembering and foreseeing, perception. chapter vi elements of shape let us now examine some of these relations, not in the genealogical or hierarchic order assigned to them by experimental psychology, but in so far as they constitute the elements of _shape,_ and more especially as they illustrate the general principle which i want to impress on the reader, namely: that the perception of shape depends primarily upon movements which _we_ make, and the measurements and comparisons which _we_ institute. and first we must examine mere _extension_ as such, which distinguishes our active dealings with visual and audible sensations from our passive reception of the sensations of taste and smell. for while in the case of the latter a succession of similar stimulations affects us as "more taste of strawberry" or "more smell of rose" when intermittent, or as a vague "there _is_ a strong or faint taste of strawberry" and a "there is a smell of lemon flower"--when continuous; our organ of sight being mobile, reports not "more black on white" but "so many inches of black line on a white ground," that is to say reports a certain _extension_ answering to its own movement. this quality of extension exists also in our sound-perceptions, although the explanation is less evident. notes do not indeed exist (but only sounding bodies and air-vibrations) in the space which we call "real" because our eye and our locomotion coincide in their accounts of it; but notes are experienced, that is thought and felt, as existing in a sort of imitation space of their own. this "musical space," as m. dauriac has rightly called it, has limits corresponding with those of our power of hearing or reproducing notes, and a central region corresponding with our habitual experience of the human voice; and in this "musical space" notes are experienced as moving up and down and with a centrifugal and centripetal direction, and also as existing at definite spans or _intervals_ from one another; all of which probably on account of presumable muscular adjustments of the inner and auditive apparatus, as well as obvious sensations in the vocal parts when we ourselves produce, and often when we merely think of, them. in visual perception the sweep of the glance, that is the adjustment of the muscles of the inner eye, the outer eye and of the head, is susceptible of being either interrupted or continuous like any other muscular process; and its continuity is what unites the mere successive sensations of colour and light into a unity of extension, so that the same successive colour-and-light-sensations can be experienced either as _one_ extension, or as two or more, according as the glance is continuous or interrupted; the eye's sweep, when not excessive, tending to continuity _unless a new direction requires a new muscular adjustment._ and, except in the case of an _extension_ exceeding any single movement of eye and head, a new adjustment answers to what we call _a change of direction. extension_ therefore, as we have forestalled with regard to sound, has various modes, corresponding to something belonging to ourselves: a _middle,_ answering to the middle not of our field of vision, since that itself can be raised or lowered by a movement of the head, but to the middle of our body; and an _above_ and _below,_ a _right_ and a _left_ referable to our body also, or rather to the adjustments made by eye and head in the attempt to see our own extremities; for, as every primer of psychology will teach you, mere sight and its muscular adjustments account only for the dimensions of height (up and down) and of breadth (right and left) while the third or cubic dimension of _depth_ is a highly complex result of locomotion in which i include prehension. and inasmuch as we are dealing with _aspects_ and not with _things,_ we have as yet nothing to do with this _cubic_ or _third dimension,_ but are confining ourselves to the two dimensions of extension in height and breadth, which are sufficient for the existence, the identity, or more correctly the _quiddity,_ of visible shapes. such a shape is therefore, primarily, a series of longer or shorter _extensions,_ given by a separate glance towards, or away from, our own centre or extremities, and at some definite angle to our own axis and to the ground on which we stand. but these acts of extension and orientation cease to be thought of as measured and orientated, and indeed as accomplished, by ourselves, and are translated into objective terms whenever our attention is turned outwards: thus we say that each line is of a given length and direction, so or so much off the horizontal or vertical. so far we have established relations only to ourselves. we now compare the acts of extension one against the other, and we also measure the adjustment requisite to pass from one to another, continuing to refer them all to our own axis and centre; in everyday speech, we perceive that the various lines are _similar_ and _dissimilar_ in length, direction and orientation. we _compare;_ and comparing we _combine_ them in the unity of our intention: thought of together they are thought of as belonging together. meanwhile the process of such comparison of the relation of each line with us to the analogous relation to us of its fellows, produces yet further acts of measurement and comparison. for in going from one of our lines to another we become aware of the presence of--how shall i express it?--well of a _nothing_ between them, what we call _blank space,_ because we experience a _blank_ of the particular sensations, say red and black, with which we are engaged in those lines. between the red and black sensations of the lines we are looking at, there will be a possibility of other colour sensations, say the white of the paper, and these white sensations we shall duly receive, for, except by shutting our eyes, we could not avoid receiving them. but though received these white sensations will not be attended to, because they are not what we are busied with. we shall be _passive_ towards the white sensations while we are _active_ towards the black and red ones; we shall not measure the white; not sweep our glance along it as we do along the red and the black. and as _ceteris paribus_ our tense awareness of active states always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions, and their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the uninteresting white extensions as a _blank,_ a gap, as that which separates the objects of our active interest, and takes what existence it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those interesting actively measured and compared lines. thus the difference between our _active perception_ and our merely _passive sensation_ accounts for the fact that every visible shape is composed of lines (or bands) measured and compared with reference to our own ocular adjustments and our axis and centre; lines existing, as we express it, in _blank space,_ that is to say space not similarly measured; lines, moreover, _enclosing_ between each other more of this blank space, which is not measured in itself but subjected to the measurement of its enclosing lines. and similarly, every _audible_ shape consists not merely of sounds enclosing _silence,_ but of heard tones between which we are aware of the intervening _blank interval_ which _might have been_ occupied by the intermediary tones and semitones. in other words, visible and audible shape is composed of alternations between _active,_ that is _moving,_ measuring, referring, comparing, attention; and _passive,_ that is comparatively sluggish _reception_ of mere sensation. this fact implies another and very important one, which i have indeed already hinted at. if perceiving shape means comparing lines (they may _be bands,_ but we will call them _lines),_ and the lines are measured only by consecutive eye movements, then the act of comparison evidently includes the co-operation, however infinitesimally brief, of _memory._ the two halves of this chippendale chair-back exist simultaneously in front of my eyes, but i cannot take stock simultaneously of the lengths and orientation of the curves to the right and the curves of the left. i must hold over the image of one half, and unite it, somewhere in what we call "the mind"--with the other; nay, i must do this even with the separate curves constituting the patterns each of which is measured by a sweep of the glance, even as i should measure them successively by applying a tape and then remembering and comparing their various lengths, although the ocular process may stand to the tape-process as a minute of our time to several hundreds of years. this comes to saying that the perception of visible shapes, even like that of audible ones, takes place _in time,_ and requires therefore the co-operation of _memory._ now memory, paradoxical as it may sound, practically implies _expectation:_ the use of the past, to so speak, is to become that visionary thing we call the _future._ hence, while we are measuring the extension and direction of one line, we are not only _remembering_ the extent and direction of another previously measured line, but we are also _expecting_ a similar, or somewhat similar, act of measurement of the _next_ line; even as in "following a melody" we not only remember the preceding tone, but _expect_ the succeeding ones. such interplay of present, past and future is requisite for every kind of _meaning,_ for every _unit of thought_; and among others, of the meaning, the _thought,_ which we contemplate under the name of _shape._ it is on account of this interplay of present, past and future, that wundt counts feelings _of tension_ and _relaxation_ among the _elements_ of form-perception. and the mention of such _feelings,_ i.e. rudiments of _emotion,_ brings us to recognise that the remembering and foreseeing of our acts of measurement and orientation constitutes a microscopic psychological drama--shall we call it the drama of the soul molecules?--whose first familiar examples are those two peculiarities of visible and audible shape called _symmetry_ and _rythm._ both of these mean that a measurement has been made, and that the degree of its _span_ is kept in memory to the extent of our expecting that the next act of measurement will be similar. _symmetry_ exists quite as much in _time_ (hence in shapes made up of sound-relations) as in _space;_ and _rythm,_ which is commonly thought of as an especially musical relation, exists as much in _space_ as in _time_; because the perception of shape requires time and movement equally whether the relations are between objectively co-existent and durable marks on stone or paper, or between objectively successive and fleeting sound-waves. also because, while the single relations of lines and of sounds require to be ascertained successively, the combination of those various single relations, their relations with one another _as whole and parts,_ require to be grasped by an intellectual synthesis; as much in the case of notes as in the case of lines. if, in either case, we did not remember the first measurement when we obtained the second, there would be no perception of shape however elementary; which is the same as saying that for an utterly oblivious mind there could be no relationships, and therefore no meaning. in the case of symmetry the relations are not merely the lengths and directions of the single lines, that is to say their relations to ourselves, and the relation established by comparison between these single lines; there is now also the relation of both to a third, itself of course related to ourselves, indeed, as regards visible shape, usually answering to our own axis. the expectation which is liable to fulfilling or balking is therefore that of a repetition of this double relationship remembered between the lengths and directions on one side, by the lengths and directions on the other; and the repetition of a common relation to a central item. the case of rythm is more complex. for, although we usually think of rythm as a relation of _two_ items, it is in reality a relation of four (or more ); because what we remember and expect is a mixture of similarity with dissimilarity between lengths, directions or impacts. or impacts. for with rythm we come to another point illustrative of the fact that all shape-elements depend upon our own activity and its modes. a rythmical arrangement is not necessarily one between _objectively_ alternated elements like objectively longer or shorter lines of a pattern, or _objectively_ higher or lower or longer and shorter notes. rythm exists equally where the objective data, the sense stimulations, are uniform, as is the case with the ticks of a clock. these ticks would be registered as exactly similar by appropriate instruments. but our mind is not such an impassive instrument: our mind (whatever our mind may really be) is subject to an alternation of _more_ and _less,_ of _vivid_ and _less vivid, important_ and _less important,_ of _strong_ and _weak;_ and the objectively similar stimulations from outside, of sound or colour or light, are perceived as vivid or less vivid, important or less important, according to the beat of this mutual alternation with which they coincide: thus the uniform, ticking of the clock will be perceived by us as a succession in which the stress, that is the importance, is thrown upon the first or the second member of a group; and the recollection and expectation are therefore of a unity of dissimilar importance. we hear strong-weak; and remembering _strong-weak,_ we make a new _strong-weak_ out of that objective uniformity. here there is no objective reason for one rythm more than another; and we express this by saying that the tickings of a clock have no intrinsic form. for _form,_ or as i prefer to call it, _shape,_ although it exists only in the mind capable of establishing and correlating its constituent relationships, takes an objective existence when the material stimulations from the outer world are such as to force all normally constituted minds to the same series and combinations of perceptive acts; a fact which explains why the artist can transmit the shapes existing in his own mind to the mind of a beholder or hearer by combining certain objective stimulations, say those of pigments on paper or of sound vibrations in time, so as to provoke perceptive activities similar to those which would, _ceteris paribus,_ have been provoked in himself if that shape had not existed first of all _only_ in his mind. a further illustration of the principle that shape-perception is a combination of active measurements and comparisons, and of remembrance and expectations, is found in a fact which has very great importance in all artistic dealings with shapes. i have spoken, for simplicity's, sake, as if the patches of colour on a blank (i.e. uninteresting) ground along which the glance sweeps, were invariably contiguous and continuous. but these colour patches, and the sensations they afford us, are just as often, discontinuous in the highest degree; and the lines constituting a shape may, as for instance in constellations, be entirely imaginary. the fact is that what we feel as a line is not an objective continuity of colour-or-light-patches, but the continuity of our glance's sweep which may either accompany this objective continuity or replace it. indeed such imaginary lines thus established between isolated colour patches, are sometimes felt as more vividly existing than real ones, because the glance is not obliged to take stock of their parts, but can rush freely from extreme point to extreme point. moreover not only half the effectiveness of design, but more than half the efficiency of practical life, is due to our establishing such imaginary lines. we are inevitably and perpetually dividing visual space (and something of the sort happens also with "musical space") by objectively non-existent lines answering to our own bodily orientation. every course, every trajectory, is of this sort. and every drawing executed by an artist, every landscape, offered us by "nature," is felt, because it is measured, with reference to a set of imaginary horizontals or perpendiculars. while, as i remember the late mr g. f. watts showing me, every curve which we look at is _felt as being_ part of an imaginary circle into which it could be prolonged. our sum of measuring and comparing activities, and also our dramas of remembrance and expectation, are therefore multiplied by these imaginary lines, whether they connect, constellation-wise, a few isolated colour indications, or whether they are established as standards of reference (horizontals, verticals, etc.) for other really existing lines; or whether again they be thought of, like those circles, as _wholes_ of which objectively perceived series of colour patches might possibly be _parts._ in all these cases imaginary lines are _felt,_ as existing, inasmuch as we feel the movement by which we bring them into existence, and even feel that such a movement might be made by us when it is not. so far, however, i have dealt with these imaginary lines only as an additional proof that shape-perception is an establishment of two dimensional relationships, through our own activities, and an active remembering, foreseeing and combining thereof. chapter vii facility and difficulty of grasping of this we get further proof when we proceed to another and less elementary relationship implied in the perception of shape: the relation of whole and parts. in dealing with the _ground_ upon which we perceive our red and black patches to be extended, i have already pointed out that our operations of measuring and comparing are not applied to all the patches of colour which we actually see, but only to such as we _look at_; an observation equally applicable to sounds. in other words our attention selects certain sensations, and limits to these all that establishing of relations, all that measuring and comparing, all that remembering and expecting; the other sensations being excluded. now, while whatever is thus merely seen, but not looked at, is excluded as so much _blank_ or _otherness_; whatever is, on the contrary, _included_ is thereby credited with the quality of belonging, that is to say being included, together. and the more the attention alternates between the measuring of _included_ extensions and directions and the expectation of equivalent (symmetrical or rythmical) extensions or directions or stresses, the closer will become the relation of these items _included_ by our attention and the more foreign will become the _excluded otherness_ from which, as we feel, they _detach themselves._ but--by an amusing paradox--these lines measured and compared by our attention, are themselvesnot only _excluding_ so much _otherness or blank;_ they also tend, so soon as referred to one another, to _include_ some of this uninteresting blankness; and it is across this more or less completely included blankness that the eye (and the imagination!) draw such imaginary lines as i have pointed out with reference to the constellations. thus a circle, say of red patches, _excludes_ some of the white paper on which it is drawn; but it _includes_ or _encloses_ the rest. place a red patch somewhere on that _enclosed_ blank; our glance and attention will now play not merely along the red circumference, but to and fro between the red circumference and the red patch, thereby establishing imaginary but thoroughly measured and compared lines between the two. draw a red line from the red patch to the red circumference; you will begin expecting similar lengths on the other sides of the red patch, and you will become aware that these imaginary lines are, or are not, equal; in other words, that the red patch is, or is not, equidistant from every point of the red circumference. and if the red patch is not thus in the middle, you will expect, and imagine another patch which _is;_ and from this _imaginary centre_ you will draw imaginary lines, that is you will make by no means imaginary glance-sweeps, to the red circumference. thus you may go on adding real red lines and imaginary lines connecting them with the circumference; and the more you do so the more you will feel that all these real lines and imaginary lines and all the blank space which the latter measure, are connected, or susceptible of being connected, closer and closer, every occasional excursion beyond the boundary only bringing you back with an increased feeling of this interconnexion, and an increased expectation of realising it in further details. but if on one of these glance-flickings beyond the circumference, your attention is caught by some colour patch or series of colour patches outside of it, you will either cease being interested in the circle and wander away to the new colour patches; or more probably, try to connect that outlying colour with the circle and its radii; or again failing that, you will "overlook it," as, in a pattern of concentric circles you overlook a colour band which, as you express it "has nothing to do with it," that is with what you are looking at. or again listening to. for if a church-bell mixes its tones and rythm with that of a symphony you are listening to, you may try and bring them in, make a place for them, _expect_ them among the other tones or rythms. failing which you will, after a second or two, cease to notice those bells, cease to listen to them, giving all your attention once more to the sonorous whole whence you have expelled those intruders; or else, again, the intrusion will become an interruption, and the bells, once _listened to,_ will prevent your listening adequately to the symphony. moreover, if the number of extensions, directions, real or imaginary lines or musical intervals, alternations of _something_ and _nothing,_ prove too great for your powers of measurement and comparison, particularly if it all surpass your habitual interplay of recollection and expectation, you will say (as before an over intricate pattern or a piece of music of unfamiliar harmonies and rythm) that "you can't grasp it"--that you "miss the hang of it." and what you will feel is that you cannot keep the parts within the whole, that the boundary vanishes, that what has been included unites with the excluded, in fact that all _shape_ welters into chaos. and as if to prove once more the truth of our general principle, you will have a hateful feeling of having been trifled with. what has been balked and wasted are all your various activities of measuring, comparing and co-ordinating; what has been trifled with are your expectations. and so far from contemplating with satisfaction the objective cause of all this vexation and disappointment, you will avoid contemplating it at all, and explain your avoidance by calling that chaotic or futile assemblage of lines or of notes "ugly." we seem thus to have got a good way in our explanation; and indeed the older psychology, for instance of the late grant allen, did not get any further. but to explain why a shape difficult to perceive should be disliked and called "ugly," by no means amounts to explaining why some other shape should be liked and called "beautiful," particularly as some ugly shapes happen to be far easier to grasp than some beautiful ones. the reader will indeed remember that there is a special pleasure attached to all overcoming of difficulty, and to all understanding. but this double pleasure is shared with form-perception by every other successful grasping of meaning; and there is no reason why that pleasure should be repeated in the one case more than in the other; nor why we should repeat looking at (which is what we mean by contemplating) a shape once we have grasped it, any more than we continue to dwell on, to reiterate the mental processes by which we have worked out a geometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux. the sense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty overcome; the sense of illumination ends with the acquisition of a piece of information; and we pass on to some new obstacle and some new riddle. but it is different in the case of what we call _beautiful. beautiful_ means satisfactory for contemplation, _i.e._ for reiterated perception; and the very essence of contemplative satisfaction is its desire for such reiteration. the older psychology would perhaps have explained this reiterative tendency by the pleasurableness of the sensory elements, the mere colours and sounds of which the easily perceived shape is made up. but this does not explain why, given that other shapes are made up of equally agreeable sensory elements, we should not pass on from a once perceived shape or combination of shapes to a new one, thus obtaining, in addition to the sensory agreeableness of colour or sound, a constantly new output of that feeling of victory and illumination attendant on every successful intellectual effort. or, in other words, seeing that painting and music employ sensory elements already selected as agreeable, we ought never to wish to see the same picture twice, or to continue looking at it; we ought never to wish to repeat the same piece of music or its separate phrases; still less to cherish that picture or piece of music in our memory, going over and over again as much of its shape as had become our permanent possession. we return therefore to the fact that although balked perception is enough to make us reject a shape as _ugly, i.e._ such that we avoid entering into contemplation of it, easy perception is by no means sufficient to make us cherish a shape _as beautiful, i.e._ such that the reiteration of our drama of perception becomes desirable. and we shall have to examine whether there may not be some other factor of shape-perception wherewith to account for this preference of reiterated looking at the same to looking at something else. meanwhile we may add to our set of formulae: difficulty in shape-perception makes contemplation disagreeable and impossible, and hence earns for aspects the adjective _ugly._ but facility in perception, like agreeableness of sensation by no means suffices for satisfied contemplation, and hence for the use of the adjective beautiful. chapter viii subject and object but before proceeding to this additional factor in shape-perception, namely that of empathic interpretation, i require to forestall an objection which my reader has doubtless been making throughout my last chapters; more particularly that in clearing away the ground of this objection i shall be able to lay the foundations of my further edifice of explanation. the objection is this: if the man on the hill was aware of performing any, let alone all, of the various operations described as constituting shape-perception, neither that man nor any other human being would be able to enjoy the shapes thus perceived. my answer is: when did i say or imply that he was _aware_ of doing any of it? it is not only possible, but extremely common, to perform processes without being aware of performing them. the man was not _aware,_ for instance, of making eye adjustments and eye movements, unless indeed his sight was out of order. yet his eye movements could have been cinematographed, and his eye adjustments have been described minutely in a dozen treatises. he was no more aware of _doing_ any measuring or comparing than we are aware of _doing_ our digestion or circulation, except when we do them badly. but just as we are aware of our digestive and circulatory processes in the sense of being aware of the animal spirits resulting from their adequate performance, so he was aware of his measuring and comparing, inasmuch as he was aware that the line a--b was longer than the line c--d, or that the point e was half an inch to the left of the point f. for so long as we are neither examining into ourselves, nor called upon to make a choice between two possible proceedings, nor forced to do or suffer something difficult or distressing, in fact so long as we are attending to whatever absorbs our attention and not to our processes of attending, those processes are replaced in our awareness by the very facts--for instance the proportions and relations of lines--resulting from their activity. that these results should not resemble their cause, that mental elements (as they are called) should appear and disappear, and also combine into unaccountable compounds (browning's "not a third sound, but a star") according as we attend to them, is indeed the besetting difficulty of a science carried on by the very processes which it studies. but it is so because it is one of psychology's basic facts. and, so far as we are at present concerned, this difference between mental processes and their results is the fact upon which psychological aesthetics are based. and it is not in order to convert the man on the hill to belief in his own acts of shape-perception, nor even to explain why he was not aware of them, that i am insisting upon this point. the principle i have been expounding, let us call it that of the _merging of the perceptive activities of the subject in the qualities of the object of perception,_ explains another and quite as important mental process which was going on in that unsuspecting man. but before proceeding to that i must make it clearer how that man stood in the matter of _awareness of himself._ he was, indeed, aware of himself whenever, during his contemplation of that landscape, the thought arose, "well, i must be going away, and perhaps i shan't see this place again"--or some infinitely abbreviated form, perhaps a mere sketched out gesture of turning away, accompanied by a slight feeling of _clinging,_ he couldn't for the life of him say in what part of his body. he was at that moment acutely aware that he _did not want_ to do something which it was optional to do. or, if he acquiesced passively in the necessity of going away, aware that he _wanted to come back,_ or at all events wanted to carry off as much as possible of what he had seen. in short he was aware of himself either making the effort of tearing himself away, or, if some other person or mere habit, saved him this effort, he was aware of himself making another effort to impress that landscape on his memory, and aware of a future self making an effort to return to it. i call it _effort_; you may, if you prefer, call it will; at all events the man was aware of himself as nominative of a verb to _cling to,_ (in the future tense) _return to,_ to _choose as against some other alternative_; as nominative of a verb briefly, _to like_ or _love._ and the accusative of these verbs would be the landscape. but unless the man's contemplation was thus shot with similar ideas of some action or choice of his own, he would express the situation by saying "this landscape _is_ awfully beautiful." this is. i want you to notice the formula, by which the landscape, ceasing to be the accusative of the man's looking and thinking, becomes the nominative of a verb _to be so-and-so._ that grammatical transformation is the sign of what i have designated, in philosophical language, _as the merging of the activities of the subject in the object._ it takes place already in the domain of simple sensation whenever, instead of saying "_i_ taste or _i_ smell something nice or nasty" we say--"_this thing_ tastes or smells nice or nasty." and i have now shown you how this tendency to put the cart before the horse increases when we pass to the more complex and active processes called perception; turning "i measure this line"--"i compare these two angles" into "this line _extends_ from a to b"--"these two angles _are equal_ to two right angles." but before getting to the final inversion--"this landscape _is_ beautiful" instead of "_i_ like this landscape"--there is yet another, and far more curious merging of the subject's activities in the qualities of the object. this further putting of the cart before the horse (and, you will see, attributing to the cart what only the horse can be doing!) falls under the head of what german psychologists call _einfühlung,_ or "infeeling"--which prof. titchener has translated _empathy._ now this new, and comparatively newly discovered element in our perception of shape is the one to which, leaving out of account the pleasantness of mere colour and sound sensations as such, we probably owe the bulk of whatever satisfaction we connect with the word beautiful. and i have already given the reader an example of such empathy when i described the landscape seen by the man on the hill as consisting of a skyline "_dropping down merely to rush up again in rapid concave curves_"; to which i might have added that there was also a plain which _extended,_ a valley which _wound along,_ paths which _climbed_ and roads which _followed_ the _undulations_ of the land. but the best example was when i said that opposite to the man there was a distant mountain _rising_ against the sky. chapter ix empathy _the mountain rises._ what do we mean when we employ this form of words? some mountains, we are told, have originated in an _upheaval._ but even if this particular mountain did, we never saw it and geologists are still disputing about how and whether. so the _rising_ we are talking about is evidently not that probable or improbable _upheaval._ on the other hand all geologists tell us that every mountain is undergoing a steady _lowering_ through its particles being weathered away and washed down; and our knowledge of landslips and avalanches shows us that the mountain, so far from rising, is _descending._ of course we all know that, objects the reader, and of course nobody imagines that the rock and the earth of the mountain is rising, or that the mountain is getting up or growing taller! all we mean is that the mountain _looks_ as if it were rising. the mountain _looks!_ surely here is a case of putting the cart before the horse. no; we cannot explain the mountain _rising_ by the mountain _looking,_ for the only _looking_ in the business is _our_ looking _at_ the mountain. and if the reader objects again that these are all _figures of speech,_ i shall answer that _empathy_ is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and occasionally employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain, when we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. very well; then, (says the reader) we will avoid all figures of speech and say merely: when we look at the mountain _we somehow or other think of the action of rising._ is that sufficiently literal and indisputable? so literal and indisputable a statement of the case, i answer, that it explains, when we come to examine it, why we have said that the mountain rises. for if the reader remembers my chapter on shape-perception, he will have no difficulty in answering why we should have a thought of rising when we look at the mountain, since we cannot look at the mountain, nor at a tree, a tower or anything of which we similarly say that it _rises,_ without lifting our glance, raising our eye and probably raising our head and neck, all of which raising and lifting unites into a general awareness of something _rising._ the rising of which we are aware is going on in us. but, as the reader will remember also, when we are engrossed by something outside ourselves, as we are engrossed in looking at the shape (for we can _look_ at only the shape, not the _substance)_ of that mountain we cease thinking about ourselves, and cease thinking about ourselves exactly in proportion as we are thinking of the mountain's shape. what becomes therefore of our awareness of raising or lifting or _rising?_ what can become of it (so long as it continues to be there!) except that it coalesces with the shape we are looking at; in short that the _rising_ continuing to be thought, but no longer to be thought of with reference to ourselves (since we aren't thinking of ourselves), is thought of in reference to what we _are_ thinking about, namely the mountain, or rather the mountain's shape, which is, so to speak, responsible for any thought of rising, since it obliges us to lift, raise or rise ourselves in order to take stock of it. it is a case exactly analogous to our transferring the measuring done by our eye to the line of which we say that it _extends_ from a to b, when in reality the only _extending_ has been the extending of our glance. it is a case of what i have called the tendency to merge the _activities_ of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object. indeed if i insisted so much upon this tendency of our mind, i did so largely because of its being at the bottom of the phenomenon of _empathy,_ as we have just seen it exemplified in the _mountain which rises._ if this is empathy, says the reader (relieved and reassured), am i to understand that empathy is nothing beyond _attributing what goes on in us when we look at a shape to the shape itself?_ i am sorry that the matter is by no means so simple! if what we attributed to each single shape was only the precise action which we happen to be accomplishing in the process of looking at it, empathy would indeed be a simple business, but it would also be a comparatively poor one. no. the _rising_ of the mountain is an idea started by the awareness of our own lifting or raising of our eyes, head or neck, and it is an idea containing the awareness of that lifting or raising. but it is far more than the idea merely of that lifting or raising which we are doing at this particular present moment and in connexion with this particular mountain. that present and particular raising and lifting is merely the nucleus to which gravitates our remembrance of all similar acts of raising, or _rising._ which we have ever accomplished or seen accomplished, _raising_ or _rising_ not only of our eyes and head, but of every other part of our body, and of every part of every other body which we ever perceived to be rising. and not merely the thought of past _rising_ but the thought also of future rising. all these risings, done by ourselves or watched in others, actually experienced or merely imagined, have long since united together in our mind, constituting a sort of composite photograph whence all differences are eliminated and wherein all similarities are fused and intensified: the general idea of _rising,_ not "i rise, rose, will rise, it rises, has risen or will rise" but merely _rising as_ such, _rising_ as it is expressed not in any particular tense or person of the verb _to rise,_ but in that verb's infinitive. it is this universally applicable notion of rising, which is started in our mind by the awareness of the particular present acts of raising or rising involved in our looking at that mountain, and it is this general idea of rising, _i.e._ of _upward movement,_ which gets transferred to the mountain along with our own particular present activity of raising some part of us, and which thickens and enriches and marks that poor little thought of a definite raising with the interest, the emotional fullness gathered and stored up in its long manifold existence. in other words: what we are transferring (owing to that tendency to merge the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object) from ourselves to the looked at shape of the mountain, is not merely the thought of the rising which is really being done by us at that moment, but the thought and emotion, the _idea of rising as such_ which had been accumulating in our mind long before we ever came into the presence of that particular mountain. and it is this complex mental process, by which we (all unsuspectingly) invest that inert mountain, that bodiless shape, with the stored up and averaged and essential modes of our activity--it is this process whereby we make the mountain _raise itself,_ which constitutes what, accepting prof. titchener's translation[*] of the german word _einfühlung,_ i have called empathy. [*] from _en_ and _pascho, epathon_. the german word _einfühlung_ "feeling into"--derived from a _verb to feel oneself into something_ ("sich in etwas ein fühlen") was in current use even before lotze and viscber applied it to aesthetics, and some years before lipps (1897) and wundt (1903) adopted it into psychological terminology; and as it is now consecrated, and no better occurs to me, i have had to adopt it, although the literal connotations of the german word have surrounded its central meaning (as i have just defined it) with several mischievous misinterpretations. against two of these i think it worth while to warn the reader, especially as, while so doing, i can, in showing what it is not, make it even clearer what empathy really is. the first of these two main misinterpretations is based upon the reflexive form of the german verb "_sich einfühlen_" (to feel _oneself_ into) and it defines, or rather does not define, empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the ego into the object or shape under observation; a notion incompatible with the fact that empathy, being only another of those various mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already dealt, depends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought of an ego; if we became aware that it is _we_ who are thinking the rising, we who are _feeling_ the rising, we should not think or feel that the mountain did the rising. the other (and as we shall later see) more justifiable misinterpretation of the word empathy is based on its analogy with _sympathy,_ and turns it into a kind of sympathetic, or as it has been called, _inner, i.e._ merely _felt, mimicry_ of, for instance, the mountain's _rising._ such mimicry, not only _inner_ and _felt,_ but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result from very lively _empathic_ imagination. but as it is the mimicking, inner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the _rising_ of the mountain, take place only in our imagination, it presupposes such previous animation of the inanimate, and cannot therefore be taken either as constituting or explaining empathy itself. such as i have defined and exemplified it in our rising mountain, empathy is, together with mere sensation, probably the chief factor of preference, that is of an alternative of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, in aesthetic contemplation, the muscular adjustments and the measuring, comparing and coordinating activities by which empathy is started, being indeed occasionally difficult and distressing, but giving in themselves little more than a negative satisfaction, at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense relieved. but although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation of shapes, empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental life. it is, indeed, one of our simpler, though far from absolutely elementary, psychological processes, entering into what is called imagination, sympathy, and also into that inference from our own inner experience which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer world, and given to the intermittent and heterogeneous sensations received from without the framework of our constant and highly unified inner experience, that is to say, of our own activities and aims. empathy can be traced in all of modes of speech and thought, particularly in the universal attribution of _doing_ and _having_ and _tending_ where all we can really assert is successive and varied _being._ science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic implications of _force_ and _energy, attraction_ and _repulsion_; and philosophy has reduced _cause_ and _effect_ from implying intention and effort to meaning mere constant succession. but empathy still helps us to many valuable analogies; and it is possible that without its constantly checked but constantly renewed action, human thought would be without logical cogency, as it certainly would be without poetical charm. indeed if empathy is so recent a discovery, this may be due to its being part and parcel of our thinking; so that we are surprised to learn its existence, as molière's good man was to hear that be talked prose. chapter x the movement of lines any tendency to empathy is perpetually being checked by the need for practical thinking. we are made to think in the most summary fashion from one to another of those grouped possibilities, past, present and future, which we call a thing; and in such discursive thinking we not only leave far behind the _aspect,_ the shape, which has started a given scheme of empathy, a given _movement of lines,_ but we are often faced by facts which utterly contradict it. when, instead of looking at a particular _aspect_ of that mountain, we set to climbing it ourselves, the mountain ceases to "rise"; it becomes passive to the activity which our muscular sensations and our difficulty of breathing locate most unmistakably in ourselves. besides which, in thus dealing with the mountain as a _thing,_ we are presented with a series of totally different aspects or shapes, some of which suggest empathic activities totally different from that of rising. and the mountain in question, seen from one double its height, will suggest the empathic activity of _spreading itself out._ moreover practical life hustles us into a succession of more and more summary perceptions; we do not actually see more than is necessary for the bare recognition of whatever we are dealing with and the adjustment of our actions not so much to what it already is, as to what it is likely to become. and this which is true of seeing with the bodily eye, is even more so of seeing, or rather _not_ seeing but _recognising,_ with the eye of the spirit. the practical man on the hill, and his scientific companion, (who is merely, so to speak, a man _unpractically_ concerned with practical causes and changes) do not thoroughly see the shapes of the landscape before them; and still less do they see the precise shape of the funiculars, tramways, offices, cheques, volcanoes, ice-caps and prehistoric inhabitants of their thoughts. there is not much chance of empathy and empathy's pleasures and pains in their lightning-speed, touch-and-go visions! but now let us put ourselves in the place of their aesthetically contemplative fellow-traveller. and, for simplicity's sake, let us imagine him contemplating more especially one shape in that landscape, the shape of that distant mountain, the one whose "rising"--came to an end as soon as we set to climbing it. the mountain is so far off that its detail is entirely lost; all we can see is a narrow and pointed cone, perhaps a little _toppling_ to one side, of uniform hyacinth blue _detaching_ itself from the clear evening sky, into which, from the paler misty blue of the plain, it _rises,_ a mere bodiless shape. it _rises._ there is at present no doubt about its _rising._ it rises and keeps on rising, never stopping unless _we_ stop looking at it. it rises and never _has_ risen. its drama of two lines _striving_ (one with more suddenness of energy and purpose than the other) to _arrive_ at a particular imaginary point in the sky, _arresting_ each other's _progress_ as they _meet_ in their _endeavour,_ this simplest empathic action of an irregular and by no means rectilinear triangle, goes on repeating itself, like the parabola of a steadily spirting fountain: for ever accomplishing itself anew and for ever accompanied by the same effect on the feelings of the beholder. it is this reiterative nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness, gives empathy its extraordinary power over us. empathy, as i have tried to make clear to the reader, is due not only to the movements which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to present movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and facility and their accompanying intentions; it is due at least as much to our accumulated and averaged past experience of movements of the same kind, also with _their_ cognate various modes of speed, intensity, facility, and _their_ accompanying intentions. and being thus residual averaged, and essential, this empathic movement, this movement attributed to the lines of a shape, is not clogged and inhibited by whatever clogs and inhibits each separate concrete experience of the kind; still less is it overshadowed in our awareness by the _result_ which we foresee as goal of our real active proceedings. for unless they involve bodily or mental strain, our real and therefore transient movements do not affect us as pleasant or unpleasant, because our attention is always outrunning them to some momentary goal; and the faint awareness of them is usually mixed up with other items, sensations and perceptions, of wholly different characters. thus, in themselves and apart from their aims, our bodily movements are never interesting except inasmuch as requiring new and difficult adjustments, or again as producing perceptible repercussions in our circulatory, breathing and balancing apparatus: a waltz, or a dive or a gallop may indeed be highly exciting, thanks to its resultant organic perturbations and its concomitants of overcome difficulty and danger, but even a dancing dervish's intoxicating rotations cannot afford him much of the specific interest of movement as movement. yet every movement which we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of vital economy, a change in our balance of bodily and mental expenditure and replenishment; and this, if brought to our awareness, is not only interesting, but interesting in the sense either of pleasure or displeasure, since it implies the more or less furtherance or hindrance of our life-processes. now it is this complete awareness, this brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes, in our various and variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as _energy_ and _intention,_ it is this sense of the _values of movement_ which empathy, by its schematic simplicity and its reiteration, is able to reinstate. the contemplation, that is to say the _isolating and reiterating perception,_ of shapes and in so far of the qualities and relations of movement which empathy invests them with, therefore shields our dynamic sense from all competing interests, clears it from all varying and irrelevant concomitants, gives it, as faust would have done to the instant of happiness, a sufficient duration; and reinstating it in the centre of our consciousness, allows it to add the utmost it can to our satisfaction or dissatisfaction. hence the mysterious importance, the attraction or repulsion, possessed by shapes, audible as well as visible, according to their empathic character; movement and energy, all that we feel as being life, is furnished by them in its essence and allowed to fill our consciousness. this fact explains also another phenomenon, which in its turn greatly adds to the power of that very empathy of which it is a result. i am speaking once more of that phenomenon called _inner mimicry_ which certain observers, themselves highly subject to it, have indeed considered as empathy's explanation, rather than its result. in the light of all i have said about the latter, it becomes intelligible that when empathic imagination (itself varying from individual to individual) happens to be united to a high degree of (also individually very varying) muscular responsiveness, there may be set up reactions, actual or incipient, _e.g._ alterations of bodily attitude or muscular tension which (unless indeed they withdraw attention from the contemplated object to our own body) will necessarily add to the sum of activity empathically attributed to the contemplated object. there are moreover individuals in whom such "mimetic" accompaniment consists (as is so frequently the case in listening to music) in changes of the bodily balance, the breathing and heart-beats, in which cases additional doses of satisfaction or dissatisfaction result from the participation of bodily functions themselves so provocative of comfort or discomfort. now it is obvious that such mimetic accompaniments, and every other associative repercussion into the seat of what our fathers correctly called "animal spirits," would be impossible unless reiteration, the reiteration of repeated acts of attention, had allowed the various empathic significance, the various _dynamic values,_ of given shapes to sink so deeply into us, to become so habitual, that even a rapid glance (as when we perceive the upspringing lines of a mountain from the window of an express train) may suffice to evoke their familiar dynamic associations. thus contemplation explains, so to speak, why contemplation may be so brief as to seem no contemplation at all: past repetition has made present repetition unnecessary, and the empathic, the dynamic scheme of any particular shape may go on working long after the eye is fixed on something else, or be started by what is scarcely a perception at all; we feel joy at the mere foot-fall of some beloved person, but we do so because he is already beloved. thus does the reiterative character essential to empathy explain how our contemplative satisfaction in shapes, our pleasure in the variously combined _movements of lines,_ irradiates even the most practical, the apparently least contemplative, moments and occupations of our existence. but this is not all. this reiterative character of empathy, this fact that the mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or adding a single cubit to its stature, joined to the abstract (the _infinitive of the verb)_ nature of the suggested activity, together account for art's high impersonality and its existing, in a manner, _sub specie aeternitatis._ the drama of lines and curves presented by the humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the strange immortality of the youths and maidens on the _grecian urn,_ to whom keats, as you remember, says:-"fond lover, never, never canst thou kiss, though winning near the goal. yet, do not grieve; she cannot fade; though thou hast not thy bliss, for ever wilt thou love, and she be fair." and thus, in considering the process of aesthetic empathy, we find ourselves suddenly back at our original formula: beautiful means satisfactory in contemplation, and contemplation not of things but of shapes which are only aspects of them. chapter xi the character of shapes in my example of the rising mountain, i have been speaking as if empathy invested the shapes we look at with only one mode of activity at a time. this, which i have assumed for the simplicity of exposition, is undoubtedly true in the case either of extremely simple shapes requiring _few_ and homogeneous perceptive activities. it is true also in the case of shapes of which familiarity (as explained on p. 76) has made the actual perception very summary; for instance when, walking quickly among trees, we notice only what i may call their dominant empathic gesture of _thrusting_ or _drooping_ their branches, because habit allows us to pick out the most characteristic outlines. but, except in these and similar cases, the _movement_ with which empathy invests shapes is a great deal more complex, indeed we should speak more correctly of movements than of movement of lines. thus the mountain rises, and does nothing but rise so long as we are taking stock only of the relation of its top with the plain, referring its lines solely to real or imaginary horizontals. but if, instead of our glance making a single swish upwards, we look at the two sides of the mountain successively and compare each with the other as well as with the plain, our impression (and our verbal description) will be that _one slope goes up while the other goes down._ when the empathic scheme of the mountain thus ceases to be mere _rising_ and becomes _rising plus descending,_ the two _movements_ with which we have thus invested that shape will be felt as being interdependent; one side _goes down_ because the other has _gone up,_ or the movement rises _in order to_ descend. and if we look at a mountain chain we get a still more complex and co-ordinated empathic scheme, the peaks and valleys (as in my description of what the man saw from his hillside) appearing to us as a sequence of risings and sinkings with correlated intensities; a slope _springing up_ in proportion as the previously seen one _rushed down_; the movements of the eye, slight and sketchy in themselves, awakening the composite dynamic memory of all our experience of the impetus gained by switch-back descent. moreover this sequence, being a sequence, will awaken expectation of repetition, hence sense of rythm; the long chain of peaks will seem to perform a dance, they will furl and unfurl like waves. thus as soon as we get a combination of empathic _forces_ (for that is how they affect us) these will henceforth be in definite relation to one another. but the relation need not be that of mere give and take and rythmical cooperation. lines meeting one another may conflict, check, deflect one another; or again resist each other's effort as the steady determination of a circumference resists, opposes a "quos ego!" to the rushing impact of the spokes of a wheel-pattern. and, along with the empathic suggestion of the mechanical forces experienced in ourselves, will come the empathic suggestion of spiritual characteristics: the lines will have aims, intentions, desires, moods; their various little dramas of endeavour, victory, defeat or peacemaking, will, according to their dominant empathic suggestion, be lighthearted or languid, serious or futile, gentle or brutal; inexorable, forgiving, hopeful, despairing, plaintive or proud, vulgar or dignified; in fact patterns of visible lines will possess all the chief dynamic modes which determine the expressiveness of music. but on the other hand there will remain innumerable emphatic combinations whose poignant significance escapes verbal classification because, as must be clearly understood, empathy deals not directly with mood and emotion, but with dynamic conditions which enter into moods and emotions and take their names from them. be this as it may, and definable or not in terms of human feeling, these various and variously combined (into coordinate scenes and acts) dramas enacted by lines and curves and angles, take place not in the marble or pigment embodying those contemplated shapes, but solely in ourselves, in what we call our memory, imagination and feeling. ours are the energy, the effort, the victory or the peace and cooperation; and all the manifold modes of swiftness or gravity, arduousness or ease, with which their every minutest dynamic detail is fraught. and since we are their only real actors, these empathic dramas of lines are bound to affect us, either as corroborating or as thwarting our vital needs and habits; either as making our felt life easier or more difficult, that is to say as bringing us peace and joy, or depression and exasperation. quite apart therefore from the convenience or not of the adjustments requisite for their ocular measurement, and apart even from the facility or difficulty of comparing and coordinating these measurements, certain shapes and elements of shape are made welcome to us, and other ones made unwelcome, by the sole working of empathy, which identifies the modes of being and moving of lines with our own. for this reason meetings of lines which affect us as neither victory nor honourable submission nor willing cooperation are felt to be ineffectual and foolish. lines also (like those of insufficiently tapered doric columns) which do not _rise with enough impetus_ because they do not seem _to start with sufficient pressure at the base;_ oblique lines (as in certain imitation gothic) which _lose their balance_ for lack of a countervailing _thrust_ against them, all these, and alas many hundreds of other possible combinations, are detestable to our feelings. and similarly we are fussed and bored by the tentative lines, the uncoordinated directions and impacts, of inferior, even if technically expert and realistically learned draughtsmen, of artists whose work may charm at first glance by some vivid likeness or poetic suggestion, but reveal with every additional day their complete insignificance as movement, their utter empathic nullity. indeed, if we analyse the censure ostensibly based upon engineering considerations of material instability, or on wrong perspective or anatomical "out of drawing" we shall find that much of this hostile criticism is really that of empathic un-satisfactoriness, which escapes verbal detection but is revealed by the finger _following,_ as we say (and that is itself an instance of empathy) the movement, the development of, boring or fussing lines. empathy explains not only the universally existing preferences with regard to shape, but also those particular degrees of liking which are matters of personal temperament and even of momentary mood (_cf_. p. 131). thus mantegna, with his preponderance of horizontals and verticals will appeal to one beholder as grave and reassuring, but repel another beholder (or the same in a different mood) as dull and lifeless; while the unstable equilibrium and syncopated rythm of botticelli may either fascinate or repel as morbidly excited. and leonardo's systems of whirling interlaced circles will merely baffle (the "enigmatic" quality we hear so much of) the perfunctory beholder, while rewarding more adequate empathic imagination by allowing us to live, for a while, in the modes of the intensest and most purposeful and most harmonious energy. intensity and purposefulness and harmony. these are what everyday life affords but rarely to our longings. and this is what, thanks to this strange process of empathy, a few inches of painted canvas, will sometimes allow us to realise completely and uninterruptedly. and it is no poetical metaphor or metaphysical figment, but mere psychological fact, to say that if the interlacing circles and pentacles of a byzantine floor-pattern absorb us in satisfied contemplation, this is because the modes of being which we are obliged to invest them with are such as we vainly seek, or experience only to lose, in our scattered or hustled existence. chapter xii from the shape to the thing such are the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, impersonal and unpractical, we can receive, or in reality, give ourselves, in the contemplation of shape. but life has little leisure for contemplation; it demands _recognition,_ inference and readiness for active adaptation. or rather life forces us to deal with shapes mainly inasmuch as they indicate the actual or possible existence of other groups of qualities which may help or hurt us. life hurries us into recognising _things._ now the first peculiarity distinguishing _things_ from _shapes_ is _that they can occupy more or less cubic space:_ we can hit up against them, displace them or be displaced by them, and in such process of displacing or resisting displacement, we become aware of two other peculiarities distinguishing things from shapes: they have _weight_ in varying degrees and _texture_ of various sorts. otherwise expressed, things have _body,_ they exist in three dimensional space; while _shapes_ although they are often aspects of things (say statues or vases) having body and cubic existence, shapes _as_ shapes are two dimensional and bodiless. so many of the critical applications of aesthetic, as well as of the historical problems of art-evolution are connected with this fact or rather the continued misunderstanding of it, that it is well to remind the reader of what general psychology can teach us of the perception of the third dimension. a very slight knowledge of cubic existence, in the sense of _relief,_ is undoubtedly furnished as the stereoscope furnishes it, by the inevitable slight divergence between the two eyes; an even more infinitesimal dose of such knowledge is claimed for the surfaces of each eye separately. but whatever notions of three-dimensional space might have been developed from such rudiments, the perception of cubic existence which we actually possess and employ, is undeniably based upon the incomparably more important data afforded by locomotion, under which term i include even the tiny pressure of a finger against a surface, and the exploration of a hollow tooth by the tip of the tongue. the muscular adjustments made in such locomotion become associated by repetition with the two-dimensional arrangements of colour and light revealed by the eye, the two-dimensional being thus turned into the three-dimensional in our everyday experience. but the mistakes we occasionally make, for instance taking a road seen from above for a church-tower projecting out of the plain, or the perspective of a mountain range for its cubic shape, occasionally reveal that we do not really _see_ three-dimensional objects, but merely _infer_ them by connecting visual data with the result of locomotor experience. the truth of this commonplace of psychology can be tested by the experiment of making now one, now the other, colour of a floor pattern seem convex or concave according as we think of it as a light flower on a dark ground, or as a white cavity banked in by a dark ridge. and when the philistine (who may be you or me!) exclaims against the "out of drawing" and false perspective of unfamiliar styles of painting, he is, nine times out of ten, merely expressing his inability to identify two-dimensional shapes as "representing" three-dimensional things; so far proving that we do not decipher the cubic relations of a picture until we have guessed what that picture is supposed to stand for. and this is my reason for saying that visible shapes, though they may be aspects of cubic objects, have no body; and that the thought of their volume, their weight and their texture, is due to an interruption of our contemplation of shape by an excursion among the recollections of qualities which shapes, _as_ shapes, cannot possess. and here i would forestall the reader's objection that the feeling of effort and resistance, essential to all our empathic dealings with two-dimensional shapes, must, after all, be due to _weight,_ which we have just described as a quality shapes cannot possess. my answer is that empathy has extracted and schematised effort and resistance by the elimination of the thought of weight, as by the elimination of the awareness of our bodily tensions; and that it is just this elimination of all incompatible qualities which allows us to attribute activities to those two-dimensional shapes, and to feel these activities, with a vividness undiminished by the thought of any other circumstances. with cubic existence (and its correlative three-dimensional space), with weight and texture we have therefore got from the contemplated shape to a thought alien to that shape and its contemplation. the thought, to which life and its needs and dangers has given precedence over every other: what _thing_ is behind this shape, what qualities must be inferred from this _aspect?_ after the possibility of occupying so much space, the most important quality which things can have for our hopes and fears, is _the possibility of altering their occupation of space;_ not our locomotion, but _theirs._ i call it _locomotion_ rather than _movement,_ because we have _direct_ experience only of our own movements, and _infer_ similar movement in other beings and objects because of their change of place either across our motionless eye or across some other object whose relation to our motionless eye remains unchanged. i call it _locomotion_ also to accentuate its difference from the _movement_ attributed to the shape of the rising mountain, movement _felt_ by us to be going on but not expected to result in any change of the mountain's space relations, which are precisely what would be altered by the mountain's _locomotion._ the _practical_ question about a shape is therefore: does it warrant the inference of a _thing_ able to change its position in three-dimensional space? to advance or recede from us? and if so in what manner? will it, like a loose stone, fall upon us? like flame, rise towards us? like water, spread over us? or will it change its place only if _we_ supply the necessary _locomotion?_ briefly: is the thing of which we see the shape inert or active? and if this shape belongs to a thing possessing activity of its own, is its locomotion of that slow regular kind we call the growth and spreading of plants? or of the sudden, wilful kind we know in animals and men? what does this shape tell us of such more formidable locomotion? are these details of curve and colour to be interpreted into jointed limbs, can the _thing_ fling out laterally, run after us, can it catch and swallow us? or is it such that _we_ can do thus by it? does this shape suggest the thing's possession of desires and purposes which we can deal with? and if so, _why is it where it is?_ whence does it come? what is it going to do? what is it _thinking_ of (if it can think)? how will it _feel_ towards us (if it can feel)? what would it say (if it could speak)? what will be its future and what may have been its past? to sum all up: what does the presence of this shape lead us to think and do and feel? such are a few of the thoughts started by that shape and the possibility of its belonging to a thing. and even when, as we shall sometimes find, they continually return back to the shape and play round and round it in centrifugal and centripetal alternations, yet all these thoughts are excursions, however brief, from the world of definite unchanging shapes into that of various and ever varying things; interruptions, even if (as we shall later see) intensifying interruptions, of that concentrated and coordinated contemplation of shapes, with which we have hitherto dealt. and these excursions, and a great many more, from the world of shapes into that of things, are what we shall deal with, when we come to art, under the heading of _representation_ and _suggestion,_ or, as is usually said, of _subject_ and _expression_ as opposed to _form._ chapter xiii from the thing to the shape the necessities of analysis and exposition have led us from the shape to the thing, from aesthetic contemplation to discursive and practical thinking. but, as the foregoing chapter itself suggests, the real order of precedence, both for the individual and the race, is inevitably the reverse, since without a primary and dominant interest in things no creatures would have survived to develop an interest in shapes. indeed, considering the imperative need for an ever abbreviated and often automatic system of human reactions to sense data, it is by no means easy to understand (and the problem has therefore been utterly neglected) how mankind ever came to evolve any process as lengthy and complicated as that form-contemplation upon which all aesthetic preference depends. i will hazard the suggestion that familiarity with shapes took its original evolutional utility, as well as its origin, from the dangers of over rapid and uncritical inference concerning the qualities of things and man's proper reactions towards them. it was necessary, no doubt, that the roughest suggestion of a bear's growl and a bear's outline should send our earliest ancestors into their sheltering caves. but the occasional discovery that the bear was not a bear but some more harmless and edible animal must have brought about a comparison, a discrimination between the visible aspects of the two beasts, and a mental storage of their difference in shape, gait and colour. similarly the deluding resemblance between poisonous and nutritious fruits and roots, would result, as the resemblance between the nurse's finger and nipple results with the infant, in attention to visible details, until the acquisition of vivid mental images became the chief item of the savage man's education, as it still is of the self-education of the modern child. this evolution of interest in visible aspects would of course increase tenfold as soon as mankind took to making things whose usefulness (_i.e._ their still non-existent qualities) might be jeopardised by a mistake concerning their shape. for long after _over_ and _under, straight_ and _oblique, right_ and _left,_ had become habitual perceptions in dealing with food and fuel, the effective aim of a stone, the satisfactory flight of an arrow, would be discovered to depend upon more or less of what we call horizontals and perpendiculars, curves and angles; and the stability of a fibrous tissue upon the intervals of crossing and recrossing, the rythmical or symmetrical arrangements revealed by the hand or eye. in short, _making,_ being inevitably _shaping,_ would have developed a more and more accurate perception and recollection of every detail of shape. and not only would there arise a comparison between one shape and another shape, but between the shape actually under one's eyes and the shape no longer present, between the shape as it really was and the shape as it ought to be. thus in the very course of practical making of things there would come to be little interludes, recognised as useful, first of more and more careful looking and comparing, and then of real contemplation: contemplation of the arrow-head you were chipping, of the mat you were weaving, of the pot you were rubbing into shape; contemplation also of the _other_ arrow-head or mat or pot existing only in your wishes; of the shape you were trying to obtain with a premonitory emotion of the effect which its peculiarities would produce when once made visible to your eye! for the man cutting the arrow-head, the woman plaiting the mat, becoming familiar with the appropriate shapes of each and thinking of the various individual arrow-heads or mats of the same type, _would become aware of the different effect which such shapes had on the person who looked at them._ some of these shapes would be so dull, increasing the tediousness of chipping and filing or of laying strand over strand; others so alert, entertaining and likeable, as if they were helping in the work; others, although equally compatible with utility, fussing or distressing one, never doing what one expected their lines and curves to do. to these suppositions i would add a few more suggestions regarding the evolution of shape-contemplation out of man's perfunctory and semi-automatic seeing of "things." the handicraftsman, armourer, weaver, or potter, benefits by his own and his forerunners' practical experience of which shape is the more adapted for use and wear, and which way to set about producing it; his technical skill becomes half automatic, so that his eye and mind, acting as mere overseers to his muscles, have plenty of time for contemplation so long as everything goes right and no new moves have to be made. and once the handicraftsman contemplates the shape as it issues from his fingers, his mind will be gripped by that liking or disliking expressed by the words "beautiful" and "ugly." neither is this all. the owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of tissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its usefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill or strength required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn from a slave into a comrade. it is furbished or mended, displayed to others, boasted over, perhaps sung over as alan breck sang over his sword. the owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the owner!) caresses its shape; and its shape, all its well-known ins-and-outs and ups-and-downs, haunts the memory, ready to start into vividness whenever similar objects come under comparison. now what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and easily replaced properties. the shape of the things we make and use offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. and it is this normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects have acquired for our feelings an importance rivalling that of things. i therefore commend to the reader the now somewhat unfashionable hypothesis of semper and his school, according to which the first preference for beauty of shape must be sought for in those arts like stone and metal work, pottery and weaving, which give opportunities for repetition, reduplication, hence rythm and symmetry, and whose material and technique produce what are called geometric patterns, meaning such as exist in two dimensions and do not imitate the shapes of real objects. this theory has been discredited by the discovery that very primitive and savage mankind possessed a kind of art of totally different nature, and which analogy with that of children suggests as earlier than that of pattern: the art which the ingenious hypothesis of mr henry balfour derives from recognition of accidental resemblances between the shapes and stains of wood or stone and such creatures and objects as happen to be uppermost in the mind of the observer, who cuts or paints whatever may be needed to complete the likeness and enable others to perceive the suggestion. whether or not this was its origin, there seems to have existed in earliest times such an art of a strictly representative kind, serving (like the spontaneous art of children) to evoke the idea of whatever was interesting to the craftsman and his clients, and doubtless practically to have some desirable magic effect upon the realities of things. but (to return to the hypothesis of the aesthetic primacy of geometric and non-representative art) it is certain that although such early representations occasionally attain marvellous life-likeness and anatomical correctness, yet they do not at first show any corresponding care for symmetrical and rythmical arrangement. the bisons and wild boars, for instance, of the altamira cave frescoes, do indeed display vigour and beauty in the lines constituting them, proving that successful dealing with shape, even if appealing only to practical interest, inevitably calls forth the empathic imagination of the more gifted artists; but these marvellously drawn figures are all huddled together or scattered as out of a rag-bag; and, what is still more significant, they lack that insistence on the feet which not only suggests ground beneath them but, in so doing, furnishes a horizontal by which to start, measure and take the bearings of all other lines. these astonishing palaeolithic artists (and indeed the very earliest egyptian and greek ones) seem to have thought only of the living models and their present and future movements, and to have cared as little for lines and angles as the modern children whose drawings have been instructively compared with theirs by levinstein and others. i therefore venture to suggest that such aesthetically essential attention to direction and composition must have been applied to representative art when its realistic figures were gradually incorporated into the patterns of the weaver and the potter. such "stylisation" is still described by art historians as a "degeneration" due to unintelligent repetition; but it was on the contrary the integrating process by which the representative element was subjected to such aesthetic preferences as had been established in the manufacture of objects whose usefulness or whose production involved accurate measurement and equilibrium as in the case of pottery or weapons, or rythmical reduplication as in that of textiles. be this question as it may (and the increasing study of the origin and evolution of human faculties will some day settle it!) we already know enough to affirm that while in the very earliest art the shape-element and the element of representation are usually separate, the two get gradually combined as civilisation advances, and the shapes originally interesting only inasmuch as suggestions (hence as magical equivalents) or things, and employed for religious, recording, or self-expressive purposes, become subjected to selection and rearrangement by the habit of avoiding disagreeable perceptive and empathic activities and the desire of giving scope to agreeable ones. nay the whole subsequent history of painting and sculpture could be formulated as the perpetual starting up of new representative interests, new interests in _things,_ their spatial existence, locomotion, anatomy, their reaction to light, and also their psychological and dramatic possibilities; and the subordination of these ever-changing interests in things to the unchanging habit of arranging visible shapes so as to diminish opportunities for the contemplative dissatisfaction and increase opportunities for the contemplative satisfaction to which we attach the respective names of "ugly" and "beautiful." chapter xiv the aims of art we have thus at last got to art, which the reader may have expected to be dealt with at the outset of a primer on the beautiful. why this could not be the case, will be more and more apparent in my remaining chapters. and, in order to make those coming chapters easier to grasp, i may as well forestall and tabulate the views they embody upon the relation between the beautiful and art. these generalisations are as follows: although it is historically probable that the habit of avoiding ugliness and seeking beauty of shape may have been originally established by utilitarian attention to the non-imitative ("geometrical") shapes of weaving, pottery and implement-making, and transferred from these crafts to the shapes intended to represent or imitate natural objects, yet the distinction between _beautiful_ and _ugly_ does not belong either solely or necessarily to what we call _art._ therefore the satisfaction of the shape-perceptive or aesthetic preferences must not be confused with any of the many and various other aims and activities to which art is due and by which it is carried on. conversely: although in its more developed phases, and after the attainment of technical facility, art has been differentiated from other human employment by its foreseeing the possibility of shape-contemplation and therefore submitting itself to what i have elsewhere called the _aesthetic imperative,_ yet art has invariably started from some desire other than that of affording satisfactory shape-contemplation, with the one exception of cases where it has been used to keep or reproduce opportunities of such shape contemplation already accidentally afforded by natural shapes, say, those of flowers or animals or landscapes, or even occasionally of human beings, which had already been enjoyed as beautiful. all art therefore, except that of children, savages, ignoramuses and extreme innovators, invariably avoids ugly shapes and seeks for beautiful ones; _but art does this while pursuing all manner of different aims._ these non-aesthetic aims of art may be roughly divided into (a) the making of useful objects ranging from clothes to weapons and from a pitcher to a temple; (b) the registering or transmitting of facts and their visualising, as in portraits, historical pictures or literature, and book illustration; and (c) the awakening, intensifying or maintaining of definite emotional states, as especially by music and literature, but also by painting and architecture when employed as "aids to devotion." and these large classes may again be subdivided and connected, if the reader has a mind to, into utilitarian, social, ritual, sentimental, scientific and other aims, some of them not countenanced or not avowed by contemporary morality. how the aesthetic imperative, i.e. the necessities of satisfactory shape-contemplation, qualifies and deflects the pursuit of such non-aesthetic aims of art can be shown by comparing, for instance, the mere audible devices for conveying conventional meaning and producing and keeping up emotional conditions, viz. the hootings and screechings of modern industrialism no less than the ritual noises of savages, with the arrangements of well constituted pitch, rythm, tonality and harmony in which military, religious or dance music has disguised its non-aesthetic functions of conveying signals or acting on the nerves. whatever is unnecessary for either of these motives (or any others) for making a noise, can be put to the account of the desire to avoid ugliness and enjoy beauty. but the workings of the aesthetic imperative can best be studied in the art of the visual-representative group, and especially in painting, which allows us to follow the interplay of the desire to be told (or tell) _facts about things_ with the desire to _contemplate shapes,_ and to contemplate them (otherwise we should _not_ contemplate!) with sensuous, intellectual and empathic satisfaction. this brings us back to the third dimension, of which the possession is, as have we seen, the chief difference between _things,_ which can alter their aspect in the course of their own and our actions, and _shapes,_ which can only be contemplated by our bodily and mental eye, and neither altered nor thought of as altered without more or less jeopardising their identity. i daresay the reader may not have been satisfied with the reference to the locomotor nature of cubic perception as sufficient justification of my thus connecting cubic existence with things rather than with shapes, and my implying that aesthetic preference, due to the sensory, intellectual and empathic factors of perception, is applicable only to the two other dimensions. and the reader's incredulity and surprise will have been all the greater, because recent art-criticism has sedulously inculcated that the suggestion of cubic existence is the chief function of pictorial genius, and the realisation of such cubic existence the highest delight which pictures can afford to their worthy beholder. this particular notion, entirely opposed to the facts of visual perception and visual empathy, will repay discussion, inasmuch as it accidentally affords an easy entrance into a subject which has hitherto presented inextricable confusion, namely the relations of _form_ and _subject,_ or, as i have accustomed the reader to consider them, the _contemplated shape_ and the _thought-of thing._ let us therefore examine why art-criticism should lay so great a stress on the suggestion and the acceptance of that suggestion, of three-dimensional existence in paintings. _in paintings._ for this alleged aesthetic desideratum ceases to be a criterion of merit when we come to sculpture, about which critics are more and more persistently teaching (and with a degree of reason) that one of the greatest merits of the artist, and of the greatest desiderata of the beholder, is precisely the reduction of real cubic existence by avoiding all projection beyond a unified level, that is to say by making a solid block of stone look as if it were a representation on a flat surface. this contradiction explains the origin of the theory giving supreme pictorial importance to the third dimension. for art criticism though at length (thanks especially to the sculptor hildebrand) busying itself also with plastic art, has grown up mainly in connexion with painting. now in painting the greatest scientific problem, and technical difficulty, has been the suggestion of three-dimensional existences by pigments applied to a two-dimensional surface; and this problem has naturally been most successfully handled by the artists possessing most energy and imagination, and equally naturally shirked or bungled or treated parrot-wise by the artists of less energy and imagination. and, as energy and imagination also show themselves in finer perception, more vivid empathy and more complex dealings with shapes which are only two-dimensional, it has come about that the efficient and original solutions of the cubic problem have coincided, _ceteris paribus,_ with the production of pictures whose two-dimensional qualities have called forth the adjective _beautiful,_ and _beautiful_ in the most intense and complicated manner. hence successful treatment of cubic suggestion has become an habitual (and threatens to become a rule-of-thumb) criterion of pictorial merit; the more so that qualities of two-dimensional shape, being intrinsic and specific, are difficult to run to ground and describe; whereas the quality of three-dimensional suggestion is ascertainable by mere comparison between the shapes in the picture and the shapes afforded by real things when seen in the same perspective and lighting. most people can judge whether an apple in a picture "looks as if" it were solid, round, heavy and likely to roll off a sideboard in the same picture; and some people may even, when the picture has no other claims on their interest, experience incipient muscular contractions such as would eventually interfere with a real apple rolling off a real sideboard. apples and sideboards offer themselves to the meanest experience and can be dealt with adequately in everyday language, whereas the precise curves and angles, the precise relations of directions and impacts, of parts to whole, which together make up the identity of a two-dimensional shape, are indeed perceived and felt by the attentive beholder, but not habitually analysed or set forth in words. moreover the creation of two-dimensional shapes satisfying to contemplation depends upon two very different factors: on traditional experience with regard to the more general arrangements of lines, and on individual energy and sensitiveness, i.e. on genius in carrying out, and ringing changes on, such traditional arrangements. and the possession of tradition or genius, although no doubt the most important advantage of an artist, happens not to be one to which he can apply himself as to a problem. on the other hand a problem to be solved is eternally being pressed upon every artist; pressed on him by his clients, by the fashion of his time and also by his own self inasmuch as he is a man interested not only in _shapes_ but in _things._ and thus we are back at the fact that the problem given to the painter to solve by means of lines and colours on a flat surface, is the problem of telling us something new or something important about _things:_ what things are made of, how they will react to our doings, how they move, what they feel and think; and above all, i repeat it, what amount of space they occupy with reference to the space similarly occupied, in present or future, by other things including ourselves. our enquiry into the excessive importance attributed by critics to pictorial suggestion of cubic existence has thus led us back to the conclusion contained in previous chapters, namely that beauty depending negatively on ease of visual perception, and positively upon emphatic corroboration of our dynamic habits, is a quality of _aspects,_ independent of cubic existence and every other possible quality of _things_; except in so far as the thought of three-dimensional, and other, qualities of things may interfere with the freedom and readiness of mind requisite for such highly active and sensitive processes as those of empathic form interpretation. but the following chapter will, i trust, make it clear that such interference of the _thought about things_ with the _contemplation of shapes_ is essential to the rythm of our mental life, and therefore a chief factor in all artistic production and appreciation. chapter xv attention to shapes to explain how art in general, and any art in particular, succeeds in reconciling these contradictory demands, i must remind the reader of what i said (p. 93) about the satisfactory or unsatisfactory possibilities of shapes having begun to be noticed in the moments of slackened attention to the processes of manufacturing the objects embodying those shapes, and in the intervals between practical employment of these more or less _shapely_ objects. and i must ask him to connect with these remarks a previous passage (p. 44) concerning the intermittent nature of normal acts of attention, and their alternation as constituting _on-and-off beats._ the deduction from these two converging statements is that, contrary to the a-priori theories making aesthetic contemplation an exception, a kind of bank holiday, to daily life, it is in reality one-half of daily life's natural and healthy rythm. that the real state of affairs, as revealed by psychological experiment and observation, should have escaped the notice of so many aestheticians, is probably due to their theories starting from artistic production rather than from aesthetic appreciation, without which art would after all probably never have come into existence. the production of the simplest work of art cannot indeed be thought of as one of the alternations of everyday attention, because it is a long, complex and repeatedly resumed process, a whole piece of life, including in itself hundreds and thousands of alternations of _doing_ and _looking,_ of discursive thinking of aims and ways and means and of contemplation of aesthetic results. for even the humblest artist has to think of whatever objects or processes his work aims at representing, conveying or facilitating; and to think also of the objects, marble, wood, paints, voices, and of the processes, drawing, cutting, harmonic combining, by which he attempts to compass one of the above-mentioned results. the artist is not only an aesthetically appreciative person; he is, in his own way, a man of science and a man of practical devices, an expert, a craftsman and an engineer. to produce a work of art is not an interlude in his life, but his life's main business; and he therefore stands apart, as every busy specialist must, from the business of other specialists, of those ministering to mankind's scientific and practical interests. but while it takes days, months, sometimes years to produce a work of art, it may require (the process has been submitted to exact measurement by the stop-watch) not minutes but seconds, to take stock of that work of art in such manner as to carry away its every detail of shape, and to continue dealing with it in memory. the unsuspected part played by memory explains why aesthetic contemplation can be and normally is, an intermittent function alternating with practical doing and thinking. it is in memory, though memory dealing with what we call the present, that we gather up parts into wholes and turn consecutive measurements into simultaneous relations; and it is probably in memory that we deal empathically with shapes, investing their already perceived directions and relations with the remembered qualities of our own activities, aims and moods. and similarly it is thanks to memory that the brief and intermittent acts of aesthetic appreciation are combined into a network of contemplation which intermeshes with our other thoughts and doings, and yet remains different from them, as the restorative functions of life remain different from life's expenditure, although interwoven with them. every reader with any habit of self-observation knows how poignant an impression of beauty may be got, as through the window of an express train, in the intermittence of practical business or abstract thinking, nay even in what i have called the _off-beat_ of deepest personal emotion, the very stress of the practical, intellectual or personal instant (for the great happenings of life are measured in seconds!) apparently driving in by contrast, or conveying on its excitement, that irrelevant aesthetic contents of the _off-beat_ of attention. and while the practical or intellectual interest changes, while the personal emotion subsides, that aesthetic impression remains; remains or recurs, united, through every intermittence, by the feeling of identity, that identity which, like _the rising of the mountain,_ is due to the reiterative nature of shape-contemplation: the fragments of melody may be interrupted in our memory by all manner of other thoughts, but they will recur and coalesce, and recurring and coalescing, bring with them the particular mood which their rythms and intervals have awakened in us and awaken once more. that diagrammatic man on the hill in reality _thought away_ from the landscape quite as much as his practical and scientific companions; what he did, and they did not, was to think _back_ to it; and think back to it always with the same references of lines and angles, the same relations of directions and impacts, of parts and wholes. and perhaps the restorative, the healing quality of aesthetic contemplation is due, in large part, to the fact that, in the perpetual flux of action and thought, it represents reiteration and therefore stability. be that as it may, the intermittent but recurrent character of shape contemplation, the fact that it is inconceivably brief and amazingly repetitive, that it has the essential quality of identity because of reiteration, all this explains also two chief points of our subject. first: how an aesthetic impression, intentionally or accidentally conveyed in the course of wholly different interests, can become a constant accompaniment to the shifting preoccupations of existence, like the remembered songs which sing themselves silently in our mind and the remembered landscapes becoming an intangible background to our ever-varying thoughts. and, secondly, it explains how art can fulfil the behests of our changing and discursive interest in things while satisfying the imperious unchanging demands of the contemplated preference for beautiful aspects. and thus we return to my starting-point in dealing with art: that art is conditioned by the desire for beauty while pursuing entirely different aims, and executing any one of a variety of wholly independent non-aesthetic tasks. chapter xvi information about things among the facts which painting is set to tell us about things, the most important, after cubic existence, is locomotion. indeed in the development of the race as well as in that of the individual, pictorial attention to locomotion seems to precede attention to cubic existence. for when the palaeolithic, or the egyptian draughtsman, or even the sixth century greek, unites profile legs and head with a full-face chest; and when the modern child supplements the insufficiently projecting full-face nose by a profile nose tacked on where we expect the ear, we are apt to think that these mistakes are due to indifference to the cubic nature of things. the reverse is, however, the case. the primitive draughtsman and the child are recording impressions received in the course of the locomotion either of the thing looked at or of the spectator. when they unite whatever consecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest to copy, they are in the clutches of their cubic experience, and what they are indifferent about, perhaps unconscious of, is the _two-dimensional_ appearance which a body presents when its parts are seen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view. the progress of painting is always from representing the consecutive to representing the simultaneous; perspective, foreshortening, and later, light and shade, being the scientific and technical means towards this end. upon our knowledge of the precise stage of such pictorial development depends our correct recognition of what things, and particularly what spatial relations and locomotion, of things, the painter is intended to represent. thus when a byzantine draughtsman puts his figures in what look to us as superposed tiers, he is merely trying to convey their existence behind one another on a common level. and what we take for the elaborate contortions of athletes and athenas on sixth century vases turns out to be nothing but an archaic representation of ordinary walking and running. the suggestion of locomotion depends furthermore on anatomy. what the figures of a painting are intended to be doing, what they are intended to have just done and to be going to do, in fact all questions about their action and business, are answered by reference to their bodily structure and its real or supposed possibilities. the same applies to expression of mood. the impassiveness of archaic apollos is more likely to be due to anatomical difficulties in displacing arms and legs, than to lack of emotion on the part of artists who were, after all, contemporaries either of sappho or pindar. and it is more probable that the sculptors of aegina were still embarrassed about the modelling of lips and cheeks than that, having homer by heart, they imagined his heroes to die silently and with a smirk. i have entered into this question of perspective and anatomy, and given the above examples, because they will bring home to the reader one of the chief principles deduced from our previous examination into the psychology of our subject, namely that _all thinking about things is thinking away from the shapes suggesting those things, since it involves knowledge which the shapes in themselves do not afford._ and i have insisted particularly upon the dependence of representations of locomotion upon knowledge of three-dimensional existence, because, before proceeding to the relations of subject and form in painting, i want to impress once more upon the reader the distinction between the _locomotion of things_ (locomotion active or passive) and what, in my example of the _mountain which rises,_ i have called the _empathic movement of lines._ such _movement of lines_ we have seen to be a scheme of activity suggested by our own activity in taking stock of a two-dimensional-shape; an _idea,_ or _feeling_ of activity which we, being normally unaware of its origin in ourselves, project into the shape which has suggested it, precisely as we project our sensation of _red_ from our own eye and mind into the object which has deflected the rays of light in such a way as to give us that _red_ sensation. such _empathic,_ attributed, movements of lines are therefore intrinsic qualities of the shapes whose active perception has called them forth in our imagination and feeling; and being qualities of the shapes, they inevitably change with every alteration which a shape undergoes, every shape, actively perceived, having its own special _movement of lines;_ and every _movement of lines,_ or _combination of movements of lines_ existing in proportion as we go over and over again the particular shape of which it is a quality. the case is absolutely reversed when we perceive or think of, the _locomotion of things._ the thought of a thing's locomotion, whether locomotion done by itself or inflicted by something else, necessitates our thinking away from the particular shape before us to another shape more or less different. in other words locomotion necessarily alters what we are looking at or thinking of. if we think of michel angelo's seated moses as getting up, we think _away_ from the approximately pyramidal shape of the statue to the elongated oblong of a standing figure. if we think of the horse of marcus aurelius as taking the next step, we think of a straightened leg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended in the air. and if we think of the myronian discobolus as letting go his quoit and "recovering," we think of the matchless spiral composition as unwinding and straightening itself into a shape as different as that of a tree is different from that of a shell. the pictorial representation of locomotion affords therefore the extreme example of the difference between discursive thinking about things and contemplation of shape. bearing this example in mind we cannot fail to understand that, just as the thought of _locomotion_ is opposed to the thought of _movement of lines,_ so, in more or less degree, the thought of the objects and actions represented by a picture or statue, is likely to divert the mind from the pictorial and plastic shapes which do the representing. and we can also understand that the problem unconsciously dealt with by all art (though by no means consciously by every artist) is to execute the order of suggesting interesting facts about things in a manner such as to satisfy at the same time the aesthetic demand for shapes which shall be satisfactory to contemplate. unless this demand for sensorially, intellectually and empathically desirable shapes be complied with a work of art may be interesting as a diagram, a record or an illustration, but once the facts have been conveyed and assimilated with the rest of our knowledge, there will remain a shape which we shall never want to lay eyes upon. i cannot repeat too often that the differentiating characteristic of art is that it gives its works a value for contemplation independent of their value for fact-transmission, their value as nerve-and-emotion-excitant and of their value for immediate, for practical, utility. this aesthetic value, depending upon the unchanging processes of perception and empathy, asserts itself in answer to every act of contemplative attention, and is as enduring and intrinsic as the other values are apt to be momentary and relative. a greek vase with its bottom knocked out and with a scarce intelligible incident of obsolete mythology portrayed upon it, has claims upon our feelings which the most useful modern mechanism ceases to have even in the intervals of its use, and which the newspaper, crammed full of the most important tidings, loses as soon as we have taken in its contents. chapter xvii the co-operation of things and shapes during the middle ages and up to recent times the chief task of painting has been, ostensibly, the telling and re-telling of the same scripture stories; and, incidentally, the telling them with the addition of constantly new items of information about _things:_ their volume, position, structure, locomotion, light and shade and interactions of texture and atmosphere; to which items must be added others of psychological or (pseudo)-historical kind, how it all came about, in what surroundings and dresses, and accompanied by what feelings. this task, official and unofficial, is in no way different from those fulfilled by the man of science and the practical man, both of whom are perpetually dealing with additional items of information. but mark the difference in the artist's way of accomplishing this task: a scientific fact is embodied in the progressive mass of knowledge, assimilated, corrected; a practical fact is taken in consideration, built upon; but the treatise, the newspaper or letter, once it has conveyed these facts, is forgotten or discarded. the work of art on the contrary is remembered and cherished; or at all events it is made with the intention of being remembered and cherished. in other words and as i shall never tire of repeating, the differentiating characteristic of art is that it makes _you think back to the shape_ once that shape has conveyed its message or done its business of calling your attention or exciting your emotions. and the first and foremost problem, for instance of painting, is that of preventing the beholder's eye from being carried, by lines of perspective, outside the frame and even persistently out of the centre of the picture; the sculptor (and this is the real reason of the sculptor hildebrand's rules for plastic composition) obeying a similar necessity of keeping the beholder's eye upon the main masses of his statue, instead of diverting it, by projections at different distances, like the sticking out arms and hands of roman figures. so much for the eye of the body: the beholder's curiosity must similarly not be carried outside the work of art by, for instance, an incomplete figure (legs without a body!) or an unfinished gesture, this being, it seems to roe, the only real reason against the representation of extremely rapid action and transitory positions. but when the task of conveying information implies that the beholder's thoughts be deliberately led from what is represented to what is not, then this centrifugal action is dealt with so as to produce a centripetal one back to the work of art: the painter suggests questions of _how_ and _why_ which get their answers in some item obliging you to take fresh stock of the picture. what is the meaning of the angels and evidently supernatural horseman in the foreground of raphael's _heliodorus?_ your mind flies to the praying high priest in the central recess of the temple, and in going backwards and forwards between him, the main group and the scattered astonished bystanders, you are effectually enclosed within the arches of that marvellous composition, and induced to explore every detail of its lovely and noble constituent shapes. the methods employed thus to keep the beholder's attention inside the work of art while suggesting things beyond it, naturally vary with the exact nature of the non-aesthetic task which has been set to the artist; and with the artist's individual endowment and even more with the traditional artistic formulae of his country and time: raphael's devices in _heliodorus_ could not have been compassed by giotto; and, on the other hand, would have been rejected as "academic" by manet. but whatever the methods employed, and however obviously they reveal that satisfactory form-contemplation is the one and invariable _condition_ as distinguished from the innumerable varying _aims,_ of all works of art, the reader will find them discussed not as methods for securing attention to the shape, but as methods of employing that shape for some non-aesthetic purpose; whether that purpose be inducing you to drink out of a cup by making its shape convenient or suggestive; or inducing you to buy a particular commodity by branding its name and virtues on your mind; or fixing your thoughts on the madonna's sorrows; or awaking your sympathy for isolde's love tragedy. and yet it is evident that the artist who shaped the cup or designed the poster would be horribly disappointed if you thought only of drinking or of shopping and never gave another look to the cup or the poster; and that perugino or wagner would have died of despair if his suggestion of the madonna's sorrows or of isolde's love-agonies had been so efficacious as to prevent anybody from looking twice at the fresco or listening to the end of the opera. this inversion of the question is worth inquiring into, because, like the analogous paradox about the pictorial "realisation" of cubic existence, it affords an illustration of some of the psychological intricacies of the relation between art and the beautiful. this is how i propose to explain it. the task to which an artist is set varies from one work to another, while the shapes employed for the purpose are, as already said, limited by his powers and especially by the precise moment in artistic evolution. the artist therefore thinks of his available shapes as something given, as _means,_ and the subject he is ordered to represent (or the emotion he is commissioned to elicit) as the all-important _aim._ thus he thinks of himself (and makes the critic think of him) not as preventing the represented subject or expressed emotion from withdrawing the beholder from the artistic shapes, but, on the contrary, as employing these artistic shapes for the sole purpose of that representation or emotional expression. and this most explicable inversion of the real state of affairs ends by making the beholder believe that what _he_ cares for in a masterpiece is not the beauty of shape which only a masterpiece could have, but the efficacy of bringing home a subject or expressing an emotion which could be just as efficaciously represented or elicited by the vilest daub or the wretchedest barrel organ! this inevitable, and i believe, salutary illusion of the artist, is further in creased by the fact that while the artist's ingenuity must be bent on avoiding irrelevance and diminishing opportunities for ugliness, the actual beauty of the shapes he is creating arises from the depths of his unreasoned, traditional and organised consciousness, from activities which might be called automatic if they were not accompanied by a critical feeling that what is produced thus spontaneously and inevitably is either turning out as it must and should, or, contrariwise, insists upon turning out exactly as it _should not._ the particular system of curves and angles, of directions and impacts of lines, the particular "whole-and-part" scheme of, let us say, michelangelo, is due to his modes of aesthetic perceiving, feeling, living, added to those of all the other artists whose peculiarities have been averaged in what we call the school whence michelangelo issued. he can no more depart from these shapes than he can paint rembrandt's pilgrims of emmaus without rembrandt's science of light and shade and rembrandt's oil-and-canvas technique. there is no alternative, hence no choice, hence no feeling of a problem to resolve, in this question of shapes to employ. but there are dozens of alternatives and of acts of choice, there is a whole series of problems when michelangelo sets to employing these inevitable shapes to telling the parting of the light from the darkness, or the creation of adam on the vault of the sixtine, and to surrounding the stories from genesis with prophets and sibyls and ancestors of christ. is the ceiling to remain a unity, or be broken up into irrelevant compositions? here comes in, alongside of his almost automatic genius for shapes, the man's superhuman constructive ingenuity. see how he divides that ceiling in such a way that the frames of the separate compositions combine into a huge structure of painted rafters and brackets, nay the prophets and sibyls, the ancestors and ancestresses themselves, and the naked antique genii, turn into architectural members, holding that imaginary roof together, securing its seeming stability, increasing, by their gesture its upspring and its weightiness, and at the same time determining the tracks along which the eye is forced to travel. backwards and forwards the eye is driven by that living architecture, round and round in its search now for completion of visible pattern, now for symbolic and narrative meaning. and ever back to the tale of the creation, so that the remote historic incidents of the ancestors, the tremendous and tremendously present lyric excitement and despair of the prophetic men and women, the pagan suggestion of the athletic genii, all unite like the simultaneous and consecutive harmonies of a titanic symphony, round the recurrent and dominant phrases of those central stories of how the universe and man were made, so that the beholder has the emotion of hearing not one part of the old testament, but the whole of it. but meanwhile, and similarly interchanging and multiplying their imaginative and emotional appeal, the thought of those most memorable of all written stories unites with the perception and empathy of those marvellous systems of living lines and curves and angles, throbbing with their immortal impacts and speeds and directions in a great coordinated movement that always begins and never ends, until it seems to the beholder as if those painted shapes were themselves the crowning work of some eighth day of creation, gathering up in reposeful visible synthesis the whole of creation's ineffable energy and harmony and splendour. this example of michelangelo's ceiling shows how, thanks to the rythmical nature of perception, art fulfils the mission of making us think from shapes to things and from things back to shapes. and it allows us to see the workings of that psychological law, already manifest in the elementary relations of line to line and dot to dot, by which whatever can be thought and felt in continuous alternation tends to be turned into a whole by such reiteration of common activities. and this means that art adds to its processes of selection and exclusion a process of _inclusion,_ safeguarding aesthetic contemplation by drawing whatever is not wholly refractory into that contemplation's orbit. this turning of non-aesthetic interests from possible competitors and invaders into co-operating allies is an incomparable multiplying factor of aesthetic satisfaction, enlarging the sphere of aesthetic emotion and increasing that emotion's volume and stability by inclusion of just those elements which would have competed to diminish them. the typical instance of such a possible competitor turned into an ally, is that of the cubic element, which i have described (p. 85) as the first and most constant intruder from the thought of _things_ into the contemplation of _shapes._ for the introduction into a picture of a suggested third dimension is what prevents our _thinking away from_ a merely two-dimensional aspect by supplying subsidiary imaginary aspects susceptible of being co-ordinated to it. so perspective and modelling in light and shade satisfy our habit of locomotion by allowing us, as the phrase is, _to go into_ a picture; and _going into,_ we remain there and establish on its imaginary planes schemes of horizontals and verticals besides those already existing on the real two-dimensional surface. this addition of shapes due to perspective increases the already existing dramas of empathy, instead of interrupting them by our looking away from the picture, which we should infallibly do if our exploring and so to speak _cubic-locomotor_ tendencies were not thus employed inside the picture's limits. this alliance of aesthetic contemplation with our interest in cubic existence and our constant thought of locomotion, does more however than merely safeguard and multiply our chances of empathic activity. it also increases the sensory discrimination, and hence pleasureableness, of colour, inasmuch as colour becomes, considered as light and shade and _values,_ a suggestion of three-dimensional _things_ instead of merely a constituent of two-dimensional _shapes._ moreover, one easily tires of "following" verticals and horizontals and their intermediate directions; while empathic imagination, with its dynamic feelings and frequent semi-mimetic accompaniments, requires sufficient intervals of repose; and such repose, such alternation of different mental functions, isprecisely afforded by thinking in terms of cubic existence. art-critics have often pointed out what may be called the thinness, the lack of _staying power,_ of pictures deficient in the cubic element; they ought also to have drawn attention to the fatiguing, the almost hallucinatory excitement, resulting from uninterrupted attention to two-dimensional pattern and architectural outlines, which were, indeed, intended to be incidentally looked at in the course of taking stock of the cubic qualities of furniture and buildings. and since the limits of this volume have restricted me to painting as a type of aesthetic contemplation, i must ask the reader to accept on my authority and if possible verify for himself, the fact that what i have been saying applies, _mutatis mutandis,_ to the other arts. as we have already noticed, something analogous to a third dimension exists also in music; and even, as i have elsewhere shown,[*] in literature. the harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our tendency to think of other notes and particularly of other allied tonalities; while as to literature, the whole handling of words, indeed the whole of logical thinking, is but a cubic working backwards and forwards between _what_ and _how,_ a co-ordinating of items and themes, keeping the mind enclosed in one scheme of ideas by forestalling answers to the questions which would otherwise divert the attention. and if the realisation of the third dimension has come to be mistaken for the chief factor of aesthetic satisfaction, this error is due not merely to the already noticed coincidence between cubic imagination and artistic genius, but even more to the fact that cubic imagination is the type of the various multiplying factors by which the empathic, that is to say the essentially aesthetic, activity, can increase its sphere of operations, its staying power and its intensity. [*] _the handling of words,_ english review, 1911-12. chapter xviii aesthetic responsiveness our examination has thus proceeded from aesthetic contemplation to the work of art, which seeks to secure and satisfy it while furthering some of life's various other claims. we must now go back to aesthetic contemplation and find out how the beholder meets these efforts made to secure and satisfy his contemplative attention. for the reader will by this time have grasped that art can do nothing without the collaboration of the beholder or listener; and that this collaboration, so far from consisting in the passive "being impressed by beauty" which unscientific aestheticians imagined as analogous to "being impressed by sensuous qualities," by hot or cold or sweet or sour, is in reality a combination of higher activities, second in complexity and intensity only to that of the artist himself. we have seen in the immediately preceding chapter that the most deliberate, though not the essential, part of the artist's business is to provide against any possible disturbance of the beholder's responsive activity, and of course also to increase by every means that output of responsive activity. but the sources of it are in the beholder, and beyond the control of the most ingenious artistic devices and the most violent artistic appeals. there is indeed no better proof of the active nature of aesthetic appreciation than the fact that such appreciation is so often not forthcoming. even mere sensations, those impressions of single qualities to which we are most unresistingly passive, are not pleasurable without a favourable reaction of the body's chemistry: the same taste or smell will be attractive or repulsive according as we have recently eaten. and however indomitably colourand sound-sensations force themselves upon us, our submission to them will not be accompanied by even the most "passive" pleasure if we are bodily or mentally out of sorts. how much more frequent must be lack of receptiveness when, instead of dealing with _sensations_ whose intensity depends after all two thirds upon the strength of the outer stimulation, we deal with _perceptions_ which include the bodily and mental activities of exploring a shape and establishing among its constituent sensations relationships both to each other and to ourselves; activities without which there would be for the beholder no shape at all, but mere ragbag chaos!--and in calculating the likelihood of a perceptive empathic response we must remember that such active shape-perception, however instantaneous as compared with the cumbrous processes of locomotion, nevertheless requires a perfectly measurable time, and requires therefore that its constituent processes be held in memory for comparison and coordination, quite as much as the similar processes by which we take stock of the relations of sequence of sounds. all this mental activity, less explicit but not less intense or complex than that of logically "following" an argument, is therefore such that we are by no means always able or willing to furnish it. not able, because the need for practical decisions hurries us into that rapid inference from a minimum of perception to a minimum of associated experience which we call "recognising things," and thus out of the presence of the perfunctorily dealt with shapes. not willing, because our nervous condition may be unable for the strain of shape perception; and our emotional bias (what we call our _interest)_ may be favourable to some incompatible kind of activity. until quite recently (and despite fechner's famous introductory experiments) aesthetics have been little more than a branch of metaphysical speculation, and it is only nowadays that the bare fact of aesthetic responsiveness is beginning to be studied. so far as i have myself succeeded in doing so, i think i can assure the reader that if he will note down, day by day, the amount of pleasure he has been able to take in works of art, he will soon recognise the existence of aesthetic responsiveness and its highly variable nature. should the same reader develop an interest in such (often humiliating) examination into his own aesthetic experience, he will discover varieties of it which will illustrate some of the chief principles contained in this little book. his diary will report days when aesthetic appreciation has begun with the instant of entering a collection of pictures or statues, indeed sometimes pre-existed as he went through the streets noticing the unwonted charm of familiar objects; other days when enjoyment has come only after an effort of attention; others when, to paraphrase coleridge, _he saw, not felt, how beautiful things are;_ and finally, through other varieties of aesthetic experience, days upon which only shortcomings and absurdities have laid hold of his attention. in the course of such aesthetical self-examination and confession, the reader might also become acquainted with days whose experience confirmed my never sufficiently repeated distinction between _contemplating shapes and thinking about things_; or, in ordinary aesthetic terminology between _form_ and _subject._ for there are days when pictures or statues will indeed afford pleasurable interest, but interest in the things _represented,_ not in the _shapes;_ a picture appealing even forcibly to our dramatic or religious or romantic side; or contrariwise, to our scientific one. there are days when he may be deeply moved by a guido reni martyrdom, or absorbed in the "marriage à la mode"; days when even giorgione's pastoral may (as in rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure, there may be days when the diarist will be quite delighted with a hideous picture, because it affords some chronological clue, or new point of comparison. "this _dates_ such or such a style"--"_plein air_ already attempted by a giottesque! degas forestalled by a cave dweller!" etc. etc. and finally days when the diarist is haunted by the thought of what the represented person will do next: "would michelangelo's jeremiah knock his head if he got up?"--"how will the discobolus recover when he has let go the quoit?"--or haunted by thoughts even more frivolous (though not any less aesthetically irrelevant!) like "how wonderfully like mrs so and so!" "the living image of major blank!"--"how i detest auburn people with sealing-wax lips!" _ad lib._ such different _thinkings away from the shapes_ are often traceable to previous orientation of the thoughts or to special states of body and feelings. but explicable or not in the particular case, these varieties of one's own aesthetic responsiveness will persuade the reader who has verified their existence, that contemplative satisfaction in shapes and its specific emotion cannot be given by the greatest artist or the finest tradition, unless the beholder meets their efforts more than half way. the spontaneous collaboration of the beholder is especially indispensable for aesthetic empathy. as we have seen, empathic modes of movement and energy and intention are attributed to shapes and to shape elements, in consequence of the modes of movement and energy involved in mere shape perception; but shape perception does not necessarily call forth empathic imagination. and the larger or smaller dynamic dramas of effort, resistance, reconciliation, cooperation which constitute the most poignant interest of a pictorial or plastic composition, are inhibited by bodily or mental states of a contrary character. we cease to _feel_ (although we may continue, like coleridge, to _see_) that the lines of a mountain or a statue _are rising,_ if we ourselves happen to feel as if our feet were of lead and our joints turning to water. the coordinated interplay of empathic movement which makes certain mediaeval floor patterns, and also leonardo's compositions, into whirling harmonies as of a planetary system, cannot take place in our imagination on days of restlessness and lack of concentration. nay it may happen that arrangements of lines which would flutter and flurry us on days of quiet appreciativeness, will become in every sense "sympathetic" on days when we ourselves feel fluttered and flurried. but lack of responsiveness may be due to other causes. as there are combinations of lines which take longer to perceive because their elements or their coordinating principles are unfamiliar, so, and even more so, are there empathic schemes (or dramas) which baffle dynamic imagination when accustomed to something else and when it therefore meets the new demand with an unsuitable empathic response. empathy is, even more than mere perception, a question of our activities and therefore of our habits; and the aesthetic sensitiveness of a time and country (say the florentine fourteenth century) with a habit of round arch and horizontals like that of pisan architecture, could never take with enthusiasm to the pointed ogeeval ellipse, the oblique directions and unstable equilibrium, the drama of touch and go strain and resistance, of french gothic; whence a constant readmission of the round arched shapes into the imported style, and a speedy return to the familiar empathic schemes in the architecture of the early renaissance. on the other hand the persistence of gothic detail in northern architecture of the sixteenth and occasionally the seventeenth century, shows how insipid the round arch and straight entablature must have felt to people accustomed to the empathy of gothic shapes. nothing is so routinist as imagination and emotion; and empathy, which partakes of both, is therefore more dependent on familiarity than is the perception by which it is started: spohr, and the other professional contemporaries of beethoven, probably heard and technically understood all the peculiarities of his last quartets; but they liked them none the better. on the other hand continued repetition notoriously begets indifference. we cease to look at a shape which we "know by heart" and we cease to interpret in terms of our own activities and intentions when curiosity and expectation no longer let loose our dynamic imagination. hence while utter unfamiliarity baffles aesthetic responsiveness, excessive familiarity prevents its starting at all. indeed both perceptive clearness and empathic intensity reach their climax in the case of shapes which afford the excitement of tracking familiarity in novelty, the stimulation of acute comparison, the emotional ups and downs of expectation and partial recognition, or of recognition when unexpected, the latter having, as we know when we notice that a stranger has the trick of speech or gesture of an acquaintance, a very penetrating emotional warmth. such discovery of the novel in the familiar, and of the familiar in the new, will he frequent in proportion to the definiteness and complexity of the shapes, and in proportion also to the sensitiveness and steadiness of the beholder's attention; while on the contrary "obvious" qualities of shape and superficial attention both tend to exhaust interest and demand change. this exhaustion of interest and consequent demand for change unites with the changing non-aesthetic aims imposed on art, together producing innovation. and the more superficial the aesthetic attention given by the beholders, the quicker will style succeed style, and shapes and shape-schemes be done to death by exaggeration or left in the lurch before their maturity; a state of affairs especially noticeable in our own day. the above is a series of illustrations of the fact that aesthetic pleasure depends as much on the activities of the beholder as on those of the artist. unfamiliarity or over-familiarity explain a large part of the aesthetic non-responsiveness summed up in the saying _that there is no disputing of tastes._ and even within the circle of habitual responsiveness to some particular style, or master, there are, as we have just seen, days and hours when an individual beholder's perception and empathic imagination do not act in such manner as to afford the usual pleasure. but these occasional, even frequent, lapses must not diminish our belief either in the power of art or in the deeply organised and inevitable nature of aesthetic preference as a whole. what the knowledge of such fluctuations ought to bring home is that beauty of shape is most spontaneously and completely appreciated when the attention, instead of being called upon, as in galleries and concerts, for the mere purpose of aesthetic enjoyment, is on the contrary, directed to the artistic or "natural" beauty of shapes, in consequence of some other already existing interest. no one except an art-critic sees a new picture or statue without first asking "what does it represent?"; shape-perception and aesthetic empathy arising incidentally in the examination which this question leads to. the truth is that even the art-critic is oftenest brought into enforced contemplation of the artistic shape by some other question which arises from his particular bias: by whom? of what precise date? even such technical questions as "where and when restored or repainted?" will elicit the necessary output of attention. it is possible and legitimate to be interested in a work of art for a dozen reasons besides aesthetic appreciation; each of these interests has its own sentimental, scientific, dramatic or even moneymaking emotion; and there is no loss for art, but rather a gain, if we fall back upon one of them when the specific aesthetic response is slow or not forthcoming. art has other aims besides aesthetic satisfaction; and aesthetic satisfaction will not come any the quicker for turning our backs upon these non-aesthetic aims. the very worst attitude towards art is that of the holiday-maker who comes into its presence with no ulterior interest or business, and nothing but the hope of an aesthetic emotion which is most often denied him. indeed such seeking of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake would lead to even more of the blank despondency characteristic of so many gallery goers, were it not for another peculiarity of aesthetic responsiveness, which is responsible for very puzzling effects. this saving grace of the tourist, and (as we shall see) this pitfall of the art-expert, is what i propose to call the _transferability of aesthetic emotion._ chapter xix the storage and transfer of emotion in dealing with familiarity as a multiplying factor of aesthetic appreciation, i have laid stress on its effect in facilitating the perception and the empathic interpretation of shapes. but repetition directly affects the emotion which may result from these processes; and when any emotion has become habitual, it tends to be stored in what we call memory, and to be called forth not merely by the processes in which it originated, but also independently of the whole of them, or in answer to some common or equivalent factor. we are so accustomed to this psychological fact that we do not usually seem to recognise its existence. it is the explanation of the power of words, which, apart from any images they awaken, are often irresistibly evocative of emotion. and among other emotions words can evoke the one due to the easy perception and to the life-corroborating empathic interpretation of shapes. the word _beautiful,_ and its various quasi synonyms, are among the most emotionally suggestive in our vocabulary, carrying perhaps a vague but potent remembrance of our own bodily reaction to the emotion of admiration; nay even eliciting an incipient rehearsal of the half-parted lips and slightly thrown-back head, the drawn-in breath and wide-opened eyes, with which we are wont to meet opportunities of aesthetic satisfaction. be this last as it may, it is certain that the emotion connected with the word _beautiful_ can be evoked by that word alone, and without an accompanying act of visual or auditive perception. indeed beautiful shapes would lose much of their importance in our life, if they did not leave behind them such emotional traces, capable of revival under emotionally appropriate, though outwardly very dissimilar, circumstances; and thereby enormously increasing some of our safest, perhaps because our most purely subjective, happiness. instead therefore of despising the raptures which the presence of a venus of milo or a sixtine madonna can inspire in people manifestly incapable of appreciating a masterpiece, and sometimes barely glancing at it, we critical persons ought to recognise in this funny, but consoling, phenomenon an additional proof of the power of beauty, whose specific emotion can thus be evoked by a mere name and so transferred from some past experience of aesthetic admiration to a. present occasion which would otherwise be mere void and disappointment. putting aside these kind of cases, the transfer (usually accomplished by a word) of the aesthetic emotion, or at least of a willingness for aesthetic emotion, is probably one of the explanations of the spread of aesthetic interest from one art to another, as it is the explanation of some phases of aesthetic development in the individual. the present writer can vouch for the case of at least one real child in whom the possibility of aesthetic emotion, and subsequently of aesthetic appreciation, was extended from music and natural scenery to pictures and statues, by the application of the word _beautiful_ to each of these different categories. and something analogous probably helped on the primaeval recognition that the empathic pleasures hitherto attached to geometrical shapes might be got from realistic shapes, say of bisons and reindeer, which had hitherto been admired for their lifelikeness and skill, but not yet subjected to any aesthetic discrimination (_cf_. p. 96). similarly, in our own times, the delight in natural scenery is being furthered by the development of landscape painting, rather than furthering it. nay i venture to suggest that it was the habit of the aesthetic emotion such as mediaeval men received from the proportions, directions, and coordination of lines in their cathedrals of stone or brick which set their musicians to build up, like browning's _abt vogler,_ the soul's first balanced and coordinated dwellings made of sounds. be this last as it may, it is desirable that the reader should accept, and possibly verify for himself, the psychological fact of the _storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion._ besides, the points already mentioned, it helps to explain several of the cruxes and paradoxes of aesthetics. first and foremost that dictum _de gustibus non est disputandum_ which some philosophers and even aestheticians develop into an explicit denial of all intrinsic shape-preferences, and an assertion that _beautiful_ and _ugly_ are merely other names for _fashionable_ and _unfashionable, original_ and _unoriginal,_ or _suitable_ and _unsuitable._ as i have already pointed out, differences of taste are started by the perceptive and empathic habits, schematically various, of given times and places, and also by those, especially the empathic habits, connected with individual nervous condition: people accustomed to the round arch finding the gothic one unstable and eccentric; and, on the other hand, a person taking keen pleasure in the sudden and lurching lines of lotto finding those of titian tame and humdrum. but such intrinsically existing preferences and incompatibility are quite enormously increased by an emotional bias for or against a particular kind of art; by which i mean a bias not due to that art's peculiarities, but preventing our coming in real contact with them. aesthetic perception and especially aesthetic empathy, like other intellectual and emotional activities, are at the mercy of a hostile mental attitude, just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of the limbs. i do not hesitate to say that we are perpetually refusing to look at certain kinds of art because, for one reason or another, we are emotionally prepossessed against them. on the other hand, once the favourable emotional condition is supplied to us, often by means of words, our perceptive and empathic activities follow with twice the ease they would if the business had begun with them. it is quite probable that a good deal of the enhancement of aesthetic appreciation by fashion or sympathy should be put to the account, not merely of gregarious imitativeness, but of the knowledge that a favourable or unfavourable feeling is "in the air." the emotion precedes the appreciation, and both are genuine. a more personally humiliating aesthetic experience may be similarly explained. unless we are very unobservant or very self-deluded, we are all familiar with the sudden checking (often almost physically painful) of our aesthetic emotion by the hostile criticism of a neighbour or the superciliousness of an expert: "dreadfully old-fashioned," "_archi-connu,_""second-rate school work," "completely painted over," "utterly hashed in the performance" (of a piece of music), "mere prettiness"--etc. etc. how often has not a sentence like these turned the tide of honest incipient enjoyment; and transformed us, from enjoyers of some really enjoyable quality (even of such old-as-the-hills elements as clearness, symmetry, euphony or pleasant colour!) into shrivelled cavillers at everything save brand-new formulae and tip-top genius! indeed, while teaching a few privileged persons to taste the special "quality" which botticelli has and botticelli's pupils have not, and thus occasionally intensifying aesthetic enjoyment by distinguishing whatever differentiates the finer artistic products from the commoner, modern art-criticism has probably wasted much honest but shamefaced capacity for appreciating the qualities common, because indispensable, to, all good art. it is therefore not without a certain retributive malignity that i end these examples of the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, and of the consequent bias to artistic appreciation, with that of the nemesis dogging the steps of the connoisseur. we have all heard of some purchase, or all-but-purchase, of a wonderful masterpiece on the authority of some famous expert; and of the masterpiece proving to be a mere school imitation, and occasionally even a certified modern forgery. the foregoing remarks on the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion, joined with what we have learned about shape-perception and empathy, will enable the reader to reduce this paradoxical enormity to a natural phenomenon discreditable only when not honestly owned up to. for a school imitation, or a forgery, must possess enough elements in common with a masterpiece, otherwise it could never suggest any connexion with it. given a favourable emotional attitude and the absence of obvious _extrinsic_ (technical or historical) reasons for scepticism, these elements of resemblance must awaken the vague idea, especially the empathic scheme, of the particular master's work, and his name--shall we say leonardo's?--will rise to the lips. but _leonardo_ is a name to conjure with, and in this case to destroy the conjurer himself: the word _leonardo_ implies an emotion, distilled from a number of highly prized and purposely repeated experiences, kept to gather strength in respectful isolation, and further heightened by a thrill of initiate veneration whenever it is mentioned. this _leonardo-emotion,_ once set on foot, checks all unworthy doubts, sweeps out of consciousness all thoughts of inferior work (_inferiority_ and _leonardo_ being emotionally incompatible!), respectfully holds the candle while the elements common to the imitation and the masterpiece are gone over and over, and the differentiating elements exclusively belonging to leonardo evoked in the expert's memory, until at last the objective work of art comes to be embedded in recollected masterpieces which impart to it their emotionally communicable virtue. and when the poor expert is finally overwhelmed with ridicule, the philistine shrewdly decides that a sham leonardo is just as good as a genuine one, that these are all matters of fashion, and that there is really no disputing of tastes! chapter xx aesthetic irradiation and purification the storage and transfer of aesthetic emotion explain yet another fact, with which indeed i began this little book: namely that the word _beautiful_ has been extended from whatever is satisfactory in our contemplation of shapes, to a great number of cases where there can be no question of shapes at all, as in speaking of a "beautiful character" and a "fine moral attitude"; or else, as in the case of a "beautiful bit of machinery," a "fine scientific demonstration" or a "splendid surgical operation" where the shapes involved are not at all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. in such cases the word _beautiful_ has been brought over with the emotion of satisfied contemplation. and could we examine microscopically the minds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect, round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise _shapely_ thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic experience, and evoked by that word _beautiful_ whose application they partially justify. nor is this all. recent psychology teaches that, odd as it at first appears, our more or less definite images, auditive as well as visual, and whether actually perceived or merely remembered, are in reality the intermittent part of the mind's contents, coming and going and weaving themselves on to a constant woof of our own activities and feelings. it is precisely such activities and feelings which are mainly in question when we apply the words _beautiful_ and _ugly._ thus everything which has come in connexion with occasions for satisfactory shape-contemplation, will meet with somewhat of the same reception as that shape-contemplation originally elicited. and even the merest items of information which the painter conveys concerning the visible universe; the merest detail of human character conveyed by the poet; nay even the mere nervous intoxication furnished by the musician, will all be irradiated by the emotion due to the shapes they have been conveyed in, and will therefore be felt as beautiful. moreover, as the "beautiful character" and "splendid operation" have taught us, rare and desirable qualities are apt to be contemplated in a "platonic" way. and even objects of bodily desire, so long as that desire is not acute and pressing, may give rise to merely contemplative longings. all this, added to what has previously been said, sufficiently explains the many and heterogeneous items which are irradiated by the word _beautiful_ and the emotion originally arising from the satisfied contemplation of mere shapes. and that this contemplation of beautiful shapes should be at once so life-corroborating and so strangely impersonal, and that its special emotion should be so susceptible of radiation and transfer, is sufficient explanation of the elevating and purifying influence which, ever since plato, philosophers have usually ascribed to the beautiful. other moralists however have not failed to point out that art has, occasionally and even frequently, effects of the very opposite kind. the ever-recurrent discussion of this seeming contradiction is, however, made an end of, once we recognise that art has many aims besides its distinguishing one of increasing our contemplation of the beautiful. indeed some of art's many non-aesthetic aims may themselves be foreign to elevation and purification, or even, as for instance the lewd or brutal subjects of some painting and poetry, and the nervous intoxication of certain music, exert a debasing or enervating influence. but, as the whole of this book has tried to establish, the contemplation of beautiful shapes involves perceptive processes in themselves mentally invigorating and refining, and a play of empathic feelings which realise the greatest desiderata of spiritual life, viz. intensity, purposefulness and harmony; and such perceptive and empathic activities cannot fail to raise the present level of existence and to leave behind them a higher standard for future experience. this exclusively elevating effect of beautiful shape as such, is of course proportioned to the attention it receives and the exclusion of other, and possibly baser, interests connected with the work of art. on the other hand the purifying effects of beautiful shapes depend upon the attention oscillating to and fro between them and those other interests, e.g. _subject_ in the _representative_ arts, _fitness_ in the _applied_ ones, and _expression_ in music; all of which non-aesthetic interests benefit (enhanced if noble, redeemed if base) by irradiation of the nobler feelings wherewith they are thus associated. for we must not forget that where opposed groups of feeling are elicited, whichever happens to be more active and complex will neutralise its opponent. thus, while an even higher intensity and complexity of aesthetic feelings is obtained when the "subject" of a picture, the use of a building or a chattel, or the expression of a piece of music, is in itself noble; and a degas ballet girl can never have the dignity of a phidian goddess, nor a gambling _casino_ that of a cathedral, nor the music to wilde's salome that of brahms' _german requiem,_ yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion. we do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in correggio's _danaë,_ or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. similarly it is a common observation that while _unmusical_ bayreuth-goers often attribute demoralising effects to some of wagner's music, the genuinely musical listeners are unaware, and usually incredulous, of any such evil possibilities. this question of the purifying power of the beautiful has brought us back to our starting-point. it illustrates the distinction between _contemplating an aspect_ and _thinking about things,_ and this distinction's corollary that shape as such is yon-side of _real_ and _unreal,_ taking on the character of reality and unreality only inasmuch as it is thought of in connexion with a _thing._ as regards the possibility of being _good_ or _evil,_ it is evident from all the foregoing that _shape as shape,_ and without the suggestion of things, can be evil only in the sense of being ugly, ugliness diminishing its own drawbacks by being, _ipso facto,_ difficult to dwell upon, inasmuch as it goes against the grain of our perceptive and empathic activities. the contemplation of beautiful shape is, on the other hand, favoured by its pleasurableness, and such contemplation of beautiful shape lifts our perceptive and empathic activities, that is to say a large part of our intellectual and emotional life, on to a level which can only be spiritually, organically, and in so far, morally beneficial. chapter xxi conclusion (evolutional) some of my readers, not satisfied by the answer implicit in the last chapter and indeed in the whole of this little book, may ask a final question concerning our subject. not: what is the use of art? since, as we have seen, art has many and various uses both to the individual and to the community, each of which uses is independent of the attainment of beauty. the remaining question concerns the usefulness of the very demand for beauty, of that _aesthetic imperative_ by which the other uses of art are more or less qualified or dominated. in what way, the reader may ask, has sensitiveness to beauty contributed to the survival of mankind, that it should not only have been preserved and established by evolutional selection, but invested with the tremendous power of the pleasure and pain alternative? the late william james, as some readers may remember, placed musical pleasure between sentimental love and sea-sickness as phenomena unaccountable by any value for human survival, in fact masteries, if not paradoxes, of evolution. the riddle, though not necessarily the mystery, does not consist in the survival of the aesthetic instinct of which the musical one is a mere sub-category, but in the origin and selectional establishment of its elementary constituents, say for instance space-perception and empathy, both of which exist equally outside that instinct which is a mere compound of them and other primary tendencies. for given space-perception and empathy and their capacity of being felt as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, the aesthetic imperative is not only intelligible but inevitable. instead therefore of asking: why is there a preference for what we call beauty? we should have to ask: why has perception, feeling, logic, imagination, come to be just what it is? indeed why are our sense-organs, our bodily structure and chemical composition, what they are; and why do they exist at all in contradistinction to the ways of being of other living or other inanimate things? so long as these elementary facts continue shrouded in darkness or taken for granted, the genesis and evolutional reason of the particular compound which we call aesthetic preference must remain only one degree less mysterious than the genesis and evolutional reason of its psychological components. meanwhile all we can venture to say is that as satisfaction derived from shapes we call _beautiful,_ undoubtedly involves intense, complex, and reiterative mental activities, as it has an undeniable power for happiness and hence for spiritual refreshment, and as it moreover tends to inhibit most of the instincts whose superabundance can jeopardise individual and social existence, the capacity for such aesthetic satisfaction, once arisen, would be fostered in virtue of a mass of evolutional advantages which are as complex and difficult to analyse, but also as deep-seated and undeniable, as itself. bibliography i. _lipps._ raumaesthetik, leipzig, 1897. " aesthetik, vol. i. part ii., leipzig, 1906. ii. _karl groos._ aesthetik, giessen, 1892. " der aesthetische genuss, giessen, 1902. iii. _wundt._ physiologische psychologie (5th edition, 1903), vol. iii. pg. 107 to 209. but the whole volume is full of indirect suggestion on aesthetics. iv. _münsterberg._ the principles of art education, new york, 1905. (statement of lipps' theory in physiological terms.) v. _külpe._ der gegenwärtige stand der experimentellen aesthetik, 1907. vi. _vernon lee and anstruther-thomson._ beauty and ugliness, 1912 (contains abundant quotations from most of the above works and other sources). vii. _ribot._ le rôle latent des images motrices. revue philosophique, march 1912. viii. _witasek._ psychologie der raumwahrnehmung des auges (1910). these two last named are only indirectly connected with visual aesthetics. for art-evolutional questions consult: ix. _haddon._ evolution in art, 1895. x. _yrjö hirn._ origins of art, macmillan, 1900. xi. _levinstein._ kinderzeichnungen, leipzig, 1905. xii. _loewy._ nature in early greek art (translation), duckworth, 1907. xiii. _delia seta._ religione e arte figurata, rome, 1912. xiv. _spearing._ the childhood of art, 1913. xv. _jane harrison._ ancient art and ritual, 1913. index aesthetic: aridity, 136-7; imperative, 99-100; irradiation, 147-52; purification, 149-52; responsiveness, active nature of, 128-36; habit and familiarity affecting, 134-6 altamira cave frescoes, 95 art: differential characteristic of, 116-18; non-aesthetic aims of, 99-100, 137-8; utility of, 153-5 aspect: aesthetics concerned with, 15, 21, 105; shape the determining feature of, 26-8 attention, a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32 balfour, h., 95 beautiful: aesthetic irradiation proceeding from use of adjective, 147-8; attitude implied by use of adjective, 2-7, 18-19; empathy the chief factor of preference, 67-8; implies desire for reiterated perception, 53-4 botticelli, 83 brahms' _german requiem,_ 150 browning's _abt vogler,_ 141 coleridge's _ode to dejection,_ 131 colour, passive reception of, 23-4, 29 contemplative satisfaction marking aesthetic attitude, 8-15 correggio's _danae,_ 151 cubic existence: perception of, 85; pictorial suggestion of, importance attached to, discussed, 101-5 _discobolus,_ 115 einfühlung, 59; misinterpretations of, 66-7 emotion, storage and transfer of, 139-46 empathy, 61-69; complexity of movements of lines, 78-83; movements of lines, 70-77; second element of shape-perception, 59-60 extension existing in perception, 35-8 fechner, 130 hildebrand, 102, 118 inner mimicry, 74-5 james, w., 153 keats' _grecian urn,_ 77 levinstein, 96 lipps, 66 locomotion of things, distinction between, and empathic movement of lines, 111-16 lotze, 66 mantegna, 82 memory: a factor distinguishing perception from sensation, 32; in perception, 40-1 michel angelo, 114, 122 movement of lines, distinction between, and locomotion of things, 111-16; _see also_ empathy object of perception, subject's activities merged in, 57, 58 perception: active process involved in, 29-34, 128-9; distinguished from sensation, 32; subject and object of, 55-60 raphael's _heliodorus,_ 119 relaxation an element of form-perception, 42 rembrandt, 122 rythm, 42-5 semper, hypothesis regarding shape-preference, 94 sensations: distinguished from perceptions, 32; perception of relation between, 29-30 shape: character of, 78-83; contemplation of, its intermittent but recurrent character, 106-10; determines contemplation of an aspect, 26-8; elements of, 35-47; empathy an element of perception of, 59; facility and difficulty of grasping, 48-54; a perception, 29-34; practical causes regarding evolution of, 90-4; preference, its evolution, 94-7; and things, their co-operation, 117-27; thinking away from, to things, 131-2, 84-9 sound, passive reception of, 23-4, 29 subject of perception, extent of awareness of self, 57-9 symmetry, 42-3 tension, an element of form-perception, 42 things and shapes, their cooperation, 117-27; thoughts about, entering into shape-contemplation, 84-9 third dimension, locomotor nature of knowledge of, 85-6, 101 titchener, 59 vinci, leonardo da, 83, 145-6 vischer, 66 watts, g. f., 46 whole and parts, perception of relation of, 48-54 wilde's _salome,_ 150 wundt, 42, 66 http://www.freeliterature.org (images generously made available by the hathi trust) the analysis of beauty. written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of taste. by william hogarth. _so vary'd he, and of his tortuous train curl'd many a wanton wreath, in sight of eve, to lure her eye_.----milton. [illustration: variety] london: printed by j. reeves for the author, and sold by him at his house in leicester-fields. mdccliii. preface. if a preface was ever necessary, it may very likely be thought so to the following work; the title of which (in the proposals publish'd some time since) hath much amused, and raised the expectation of the curious, though not without a mixture of doubt, that its purport could ever be satisfactorily answered. for though beauty is seen and confessed by all, yet, from the many fruitless attempts to account for the cause of its being so, enquiries on this head have almost been given up; and the subject generally thought to be a matter of too high and too delicate a nature to admit of any true or intelligible discussion. something therefore introductory ought to be said at the presenting a work with a face so entirely new; especially as it will naturally encounter with, and perhaps may overthrow, several long received and thorough establish'd opinions: and since controversies may arise how far, and after what manner this subject hath hitherto been consider'd and treated, it will also be proper to lay before the reader, what may be gathered concerning it, from the works of the ancient and modern writers and painters. it is no wonder this subject should have so long been thought inexplicable, since the nature of many parts of it cannot possibly come within the reach of mere men of letters; otherwise those ingenious gentlemen who have lately published treatises upon it (and who have written much more learnedly than can be expected from one who never took up the pen before) would not so soon have been bewilder'd in their accounts of it, and obliged so suddenly to turn into the broad, and more beaten path of moral beauty; in order to extricate themselves out of the difficulties they seem to have met with in this: and withal forced for the same reasons to amuse their readers with amazing (but often misapplied) encomiums on deceased painters and their performances; wherein they are continually discoursing of effects instead of developing causes; and after many prettinesses, in very pleasing language, do fairly set you down just where they first took you up; honestly confessing that as to grace, the main point in question, they do not even pretend to know any thing of the matter. and indeed how should they? when it actually requires a practical knowledge of the whole art of painting (sculpture alone not being sufficient) and that too to some degree of eminence, in order to enable any one to pursue the chain of this enquiry through all its parts: which i hope will be made to appear in the following work. it will then naturally be asked, why the best painters within these two centuries, who by their works appear to have excelled in grace and beauty, should have been so silent in an affair of such seeming importance to the imitative arts and their own honour? to which i answer, that it is probable, they arrived at that excellence in their works, by the mere dint of imitating with great exactness the beauties of nature, and by often copying and retaining strong ideas of graceful antique statues; which might sufficiently serve their purposes as painters, without their troubling themselves with a farther enquiry into the particular causes of the effects before them. it is not indeed a little strange, that the great leonardo da vinci (amongst the many philosophical precepts which he hath at random laid down in his treatise on painting) should not have given the least hint of any thing tending to a system of this kind; especially, as he was cotemporary with michael angelo, who is said to have discover'd a certain principle in the trunk only of an antique statue, (well known from this circumstance by the name of michael angelo's torso, or back, fig. 54 p. i) which principle gave his works a grandeur of gusto equal to the best antiques. relative to which tradition, lomazzo who wrote about painting at the same time, hath this remarkable passage, vol. i. book i. [illustration: fig. 54] "and because in this place there falleth out a certaine precept of _michael angelo_ much for our purpose, i wil not conceale it, leaving the farther interpretation and vnderstanding thereof to the iudicious reader. it is reported then that _michael angelo_ vpon a time gaue this observation to the painter _marcus de sciena_ his scholler; _that he should alwaies make a figure pyramidall, serpentlike, and multiplied by one two and three_. in which precept (in mine opinion) the whole mysterie of the arte consisteth. for the greatest grace and life that a picture can haue, is, that it expresse _motion_: which the painters call the _spirite_ of a picture: nowe there is no forme so fitte to expresse this _motion_, as that of the flame of fire, which according to _aristotle_ and the other philosophers, is an elemente most actiue of all others: because the forme of the flame thereof is most apt for motion: for it hath a _conus_ or sharpe pointe wherewith it seemeth to divide the aire, that so it may ascende to his proper sphere. so that a picture having this forme will bee most beautifull."[1] [1] see haydock's translation printed at oxford, 1598. many writers since lomazzo have in the same words recommended the observing this rule also; without comprehending the meaning of it: for unless it were known systematically, the whole business of grace could not be understood. du fresnoy, in his art of painting, says "large flowing, gliding outlines which are in waves, give not only a grace to the part, but to the whole body; as we see in the antinous, and in many other of the antique figures: a fine figure and its parts ought always to have a serpent-like and flaming form: naturally those sort of lines have i know not what of life and seeming motion in them, which very much resembles the activity of the flame and of the serpent." now if he had understood what he had said, he could not, speaking of grace, have expressed himself in the following contradictory manner.--"but to say the truth, this is a difficult undertaking, and a rare present, which the artist rather receives from the hand of heaven than from his own industry and studies[2]." but de piles, in his lives of the painters, is still more contradictory, where he says, "that a painter can only have it (meaning grace) from nature, and doth not know that he hath it, nor in what degree, nor how he communicates it to his works: and that grace and beauty are two different things; beauty pleases by the rules, and grace without them." [2] see dryden's translation of his latin poem on painting, verse 28, and the remarks on these very lines, page 155, which run thus, "it is difficult to say what this grace of painting is, it is to be conceiv'd, and understood much more easy than to be expressed by words; it proceeds from the illuminations of an excellent mind, (but not to be acquired) by which we give a certain turn to things, which makes them pleasing." all the english writers on this subject have echo'd these passages; hence _je ne sçai quoi_, is become a fashionable phrase for grace. by this it is plain, that this precept which michael angelo deliver'd so long ago in an oracle-like manner, hath remain'd mysterious down to this time, for ought that has appear'd to the contrary. the wonder that it should do so will in some measure lessen when we come to consider that it must all along have appeared as full of contradiction as the most obscure quibble ever deliver'd at delphos, because, _winding lines are as often the cause of deformity as of grace_, the solution of which, in this place, would be an anticipation of what the reader will find at large in the body of the work. [illustration: fig. between figs. 22 and 105] there are also strong prejudices in favour of straight lines, as constituting true beauty in the human form, where they never should appear. a middling connoisseur thinks no profile has beauty without a very straight nose, and if the forehead be continued straight with it, he thinks it is still more sublime. i have seen miserable scratches with the pen, sell at a considerable rate for only having in them a side face or two, like that between fig. 22, and fig. 105, plate i, which was made, and any one might do the same, with the eyes shut. the common notion that a person should be straight as an arrow, and perfectly erect is of this kind. if a dancing-master were to see his scholar in the easy and gracefully-turned attitude of the antinous (fig. 6, plate i,) he would cry shame on him, and tell him he looked as crooked as a ram's horn, and bid him hold up his head as he himself did. see fig. 7, plate i. [illustration: figs. 6 and 7] the painters, in like manner, by their works, seem to be no less divided upon the subject than the authors. the french, except such as have imitated the antique, or the italian school, seem to have studiously avoided the serpentine line in all their pictures, especially anthony coypel, history painter, and rigaud, principal portrait painter to lewis the 14th. rubens, whose manner of designing was quite original, made use of a large flowing line as a principle, which runs through all his works, and gives a noble spirit to them; but he did not seem to be acquainted with what we call the _precise line_; which hereafter we shall be very particular upon, and which gives the delicacy we see in the best italian masters; but he rather charged his contours in general with too bold and s-like swellings. raphael, from a straight and stiff manner, on a sudden changed his taste of lines at sight of michael angelo's works, and the antique statues; and so fond was he of the serpentine line, that he carried it into a ridiculous excess, particularly in his draperies: though his great observance of nature suffer'd him not long to continue in this mistake. peter de cortone form'd a fine manner in his draperies of this line. we see this principle no where better understood than in some pictures of corregio, particularly his juno and ixion: yet the proportions of his figures are sometimes such as might be corrected by a common sign painter. whilst albert durer, who drew mathematically, never so much as deviated into grace, which he must sometimes have done in copying the life, if he had not been fetter'd with his own impracticable rules of proportion. but that which may have puzzled this matter most, may be, that vandyke, one of the best portrait painters in most respects ever known, plainly appears not to have had a thought of this kind. for there seems not to be the least grace in his pictures more than what the life chanced to bring before him. there is a print of the dutchess of wharton (fig. 52, plate ii,) engraved by van gunst, from a true picture by him, which is thoroughly divested of every elegance. now, had he known this line as a principle, he could no more have drawn all the parts of this picture so contrary to it, than mr. addison could have wrote a whole spectator in false grammar; unless it were done on purpose. however, on account of his other great excellencies, painters chuse to stile this want of grace in his attitudes, &c. _simplicity_, and indeed they do often very justly merit that epithet. [illustration: fig. 52] nor have the painters of the present times been less uncertain and contradictory to each other, than the masters already mentioned, whatever they may pretend to the contrary: of this i had a mind to be certain, and therefore, in the year 1745, published a frontispiece to my engraved works, in which i drew a serpentine line lying on a painter's pallet, with these words under it, the line of beauty. the bait soon took; and no egyptian hierogliphic ever amused more than it did for a time, painters and sculptors came to me to know the meaning of it, being as much puzzled with it as other people, till it came to have some explanation; then indeed, but not till then, some found it out to be an old acquaintance of theirs, tho' the account they could give of its properties was very near as satisfactory as that which a day-labourer who constantly uses the leaver, could give of that machine as a mechanical power. others, as common face painters and copiers of pictures, denied that there could be such a rule either in art or nature, and asserted it was all stuff and madness; but no wonder that these gentlemen should not be ready in comprehending a thing they have little or no business with. for though the _picture copier_ may sometimes to a common eye seem to vye with the original he copies, the artist himself requires no more ability, genius, or knowledge of nature, than a journeyman-weaver at the goblins, who in working after a piece of painting, bit by bit, scarcely knows what he is about, whether he is weaving a man or a horse, yet at last almost insensibly turns out of his loom a fine piece of tapestry, representing, it may be, one of alexander's battles painted by le brun. as the above-mention'd print thus involved me in frequent disputes by explaining the qualities of the line, i was extremely glad to find it (which i had conceiv'd as only part of a system in my mind) so well supported by the above precept of michael angelo: which was first pointed out to me by dr. kennedy, a learned antiquarian and connoisseur, of whom i afterwards purchased the translation, from which i have taken several passages to my purpose. let us now endeavour to discover what light antiquity throws upon the subject in question. egypt first, and afterward greece, have manifested by their works their great skill in arts and sciences, and among the rest painting, and sculpture, all which are thought to have issued from their great schools of philosophy. pythagoras, socrates, and aristotle, seem to have pointed out the right road in nature for the study of the painters and sculptors of those times (which they in all probability afterwards followed through those nicer paths that their particular professions required them to pursue) as may be reasonably collected from the answers given by socrates to aristippus his disciple, and parrhasius the painter, concerning fitness, the first fundamental law in nature with regard to beauty. i am in some measure saved the trouble of collecting an historical account of these arts among the ancients, by accidentally meeting with a preface to a tract, call'd the _beau ideal_: this treatise[3] was written by lambert hermanson ten kate, in french, and translated into english by james christopher le blon; who in that preface says, speaking of the author, "his superior knowledge that i am now publishing, is the product of the analogy of the ancient greeks; or the true key for finding all harmonious proportions in painting, sculpture, architecture, musick, &c. brought home to greece by pythagoras. for after this great philosopher had travell'd into phoenicia, egypt and chaldea, where he convers'd with the learned; he return'd into greece about anno mundi 3484. before the christian æra 520, and brought with him many excellent discoveries and improvements for the good of his countrymen, among which the analogy was one of the most considerable and useful. [3] publish'd in 1732, and sold by a. millar. "after him the grecians, by the help of this analogy, began (and not before) to excel other nations in sciences and arts; for whereas before this time they represented their _divinities_ in plain human figures, the grecians now began to enter into the beau ideal; and pamphilus, (who flourish'd a. m. 3641, before the christian æra 363, who taught, that no man could excel in painting without mathematicks) the scholar of pausias and master of apelles, was the first who artfully apply'd the said analogy to the art of painting; as much about the same time the sculpturers, the architects, &c. began to apply it to their several arts, without which science, the grecians had remain'd as ignorant as their forefathers. "they carried on their improvements in drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, &c. till they became the wonders of the world; especially after the asiaticks and egyptians (who had formerly been the teachers of the grecians) had, in process of time and by the havock of war, lost all the excellency in sciences and arts; for which all other nations were afterwards obliged to the grecians, without being able so much as to imitate them. "for when the romans had conquered greece and asia, and had brought to rome the best paintings and the finest artists, we don't find they discovered the great key of knowledge, the analogy i am now speaking of, but their best performances were conducted by grecian artists, who it seems cared not to communicate their secret of the analogy; because either they intended to be necessary at rome, by keeping the secret among themselves, or else the romans, who principally affected universal dominion, were not curious enough to search after the secret, not knowing the importance of it, nor understanding that, without it, they could never attain to the excellency of the grecians: though nevertheless it must be owned that the romans used well the proportions, which the grecians long before had reduced to certain fixed rules according to their ancient analogy; and the romans could arrive at the happy use of the proportions, without comprehending the analogy itself." this account agrees with what is constantly observed in italy, where the greek, and roman work, both in medals and statues, are as distinguishable as the characters of the two languages. as the preface had thus been of service to me, i was in hopes from the title of the book (and the assurance of the translator, that the author had by his great learning discovered the secret of the ancients) to have met with something there that might have assisted, or confirmed the scheme i had in hand; but was much disappointed in finding nothing of that sort, and no explanation, or even after-mention of what at first agreeably alarmed me, the word _analogy_. i have given the reader a specimen, in his own words, how far the author has discovered this grand secret of the ancients, or _great key of knowledge_, as the translator calls it. "the sublime part that i so much esteem, and of which i have begun to speak, is a real _je ne sçai quoi_, or an unaccountable something to most people, and it is the most important part to all the connoisseurs, i shall call it an harmonious propriety, which is a touching or moving unity, or a pathetick agreement or concord, not only of each member to its body, but also of each part to the member of which it is a part: _it is also an infinite variety of parts_, however conformable, with respect to each different subject, so that all the attitude, and all the adjustment of the draperies of each figure ought to answer or correspond to the subject chosen. briefly, it is a true decorum, a bienseance or a congruent disposition of ideas, as well for the face and stature, as for the attitudes. a bright genius, in my opinion, who aspires to excel in the ideal, should propose this to himself, as what has been the principal study of the most famous artists. 'tis in this part that the great masters cannot be imitated or copied but by themselves, or by those that are advanced in the knowledge of the ideal, and who are as knowing as those masters in the rules or laws of the pittoresque and poetical nature, altho' inferior to the masters in the high spirit of invention." the words in this quotation "_it is also an infinite variety of parts_," seem at first to have some meaning in them, but it is entirely destroy'd by the rest of the paragraph, and all the other pages are filled, according to custom, with descriptions of pictures. now, as every one has a right to conjecture what this discovery of the ancients might be, it shall be my business to shew it was a key to the thorough knowledge of variety both in form, and movement. shakespear, who had the deepest penetration into nature, has sum'd up all the charms of beauty in two words, infinite variety; where, speaking of cleopatra's power over anthony, he says, ----nor custom stale her infinite variety:----act 2. scene 3. it has been ever observed, that the ancients made their doctrines mysterious to the vulgar, and kept them secret from those who were not of their particular sects, and societies, by means of symbols, and hieroglyphics. lomazzo says, chap. 29, book 1. "the grecians in imitation of antiquity searched out the truly renowned proportion, wherein the exact perfection of most exquisite beauty and sweetness appeareth; dedicating the same in a triangular glass unto venus the goddess of divine beauty, from whence all the beauty of inferior things is derived." if we suppose this passage to be authentic, may we not also imagine it probable, that the symbol in the triangular glass, might be similar to the line michael angelo recommended; especially, if it can be proved, that the triangular form of the glass, and the serpentine line itself, are the two most expressive figures that can be thought of to signify not only beauty and grace, but the whole _order of form_. there is a circumstance in the account pliny gives of apelles's visit to protogenes, which strengthens this supposition. i hope i may have leave to repeat the story. apelles having heard of the fame of protogenes, went to rhodes to pay him a visit, but not finding him at home asked for a board, on which he drew a _line_, telling the servant maid, that line would signify to her master who had been to see him; we are not clearly told what sort of a line it was that could so particularly signify one of the first of his profession: if it was only a stroke (tho' as fine as a hair as pliny seems to think) it could not possibly, by any means, denote the abilities of a great painter. but if we suppose it to be a line of some extraordinary quality, such as the serpentine line will appear to be, apelles could not have left a more satisfactory signature of the complement he had paid him. protogenes when he came home took the hint, and drew a finer _or rather more expressive line_ within it, to shew apelles if he came again, that he understood his meaning. he, soon returning, was well-pleased with the answer protogenes had left for him, by which he was convinced that fame had done him justice, and so correcting the line again, perhaps by making it more precisely elegant, he took his leave. the story thus may be reconcil'd to common sense, which, as it has been generally receiv'd, could never be understood but as a ridiculous tale. [illustration: fig. over fig. 4] let us add to this, that there is scarce an egyptian, greek, or roman deity, but hath a twisted serpent, twisted cornucopia, or some symbol winding in this manner to accompany it. the two small heads (over the busto of the hercules, fig. 4, in plate i) of the goddess isis, one crowned with a globe between two horns, the other with a lily[4], are of this kind. harpocrates, the god of silence, is still more remarkably so, having a large twisted horn growing out of the side of his head, one cornucopia in his hand, and another at his feet, with his finger placed on his lips, indicating secrecy: (see montfaucon's antiquities) and it is as remarkable, that the deities of barbarous and gothic nations never had, nor have to this day, any of these elegant forms belonging to them. how absolutely void of these turns are the pagods of china, and what a mean taste runs through most of their attempts in painting and sculpture, notwithstanding they finish with such excessive neatness; the whole nation in these matters seem to have but one eye: this mischief naturally follows from the prejudices they imbibe by copying one anothers works, which the ancients seem seldom to have done. [4] the leaves of this flower as they grow, twist themselves various ways in a pleasing manner, as may be better seen by figure 43, in plate i, but there is a curious little flower called the autumn syclamen, fig. 47, the leaves of which elegantly twist one way only. [illustration: figs. 43 and 47] upon the whole, it is evident, that the ancients studied these arts very differently from the moderns: lomazzo seems to be partly aware of this, by what he says in the division of his work, page 9, "there is a two-folde proceeding in all artes and sciences: the one is called the order of nature, and the other of teaching. nature proceedeth ordinarily, beginning with the unperfect, as the particulars, and ending with the perfect, as the universals. now if in searching out the nature of things, our understanding shall proceede after that order, by which they are brought forth by nature, doubtlesse it will be the most absolute and ready method that can bee imagined. for we beginne to know things by their first and immediate principles, &c. and this is not only mine opinion but aristotles also," yet, mistaking aristotle's meaning, and absolutely deviating from his advice, he afterwards says, "all which if we could comprehend within our understanding, we should be most wise; but it is _impossible_," and after having given some dark reasons why he thinks so, he tells you "he resolves to follow the order of teaching," which all the writers on painting have in like manner since done. had i observed the foregoing passage, before i undertook this essay, it probably would have put me to a stand, and deterred me from venturing upon what lomazzo calls an impossible task: but observing in the foremention'd controversies that the torrent generally ran against me; and that several of my opponents had turn'd my arguments into ridicule, yet were daily availing themselves of their use, and venting them even to my face as their own; i began to wish the publication of something on this subject; and accordingly applied myself to several of my friends, whom i thought capable of taking up the pen for me, offering to furnish them with materials by word of mouth: but finding this method not practicable, from the difficulty of one man's expressing the ideas of another, especially on a subject which he was either unacquainted with, or was new in its kind, i was therefore reduced to an attempt of finding such words as would best answer my own ideas, being now too far engaged to drop the design. hereupon, having digested the matter as well as i could, and thrown it into the form of a book, i submitted it to the judgment of such friends whose sincerity and abilities i could best rely on, determining on their approbation or dislike to publish or destroy it: but their favourable opinion of the manuscript being publicly known, it gave such a credit to the undertaking, as soon changed the countenances of those, who had a better opinion of my pencil, than my pen, and turn'd their sneers into expectation: especially when the same friends had kindly made me an offer of conducting the work through the press. and here i must acknowledge myself particularly indebted to one gentleman for his corrections and amendment of at least a third part of the wording. through his absence and avocations, several sheets went to the press without any assistance, and the rest had the occasional inspection of one or two other friends. if any inaccuracies shall be found in the writing, i shall readily acknowledge them all my own, and am, i confess, under no great concern about them, provided the matter in general may be found useful and answerable in the application of it to truth and nature; in which material points, if the reader shall think fit to rectify any mistakes, it will give me a sensible pleasure, and be doing great honour to the work. advertisement. _for the more easy finding the figures referred to in the two prints belonging to this work, the references are for the most part placed in the margin. fig._ t p. i _signifies the top of plate_ i. l p. i _the left side_. r p. i _the right side_. b. p. i. _the bottom. and where a figure is referred to in the middle of either print, it is only mark'd thus, fig._ p. i _or fig._ p. ii. [transcriber's note: in this digital edition, these marginal references have been incorporated into the text within square brackets, e.g. [fig. 1 t p. i]. the two prints were not originally bound into the book; they are reproduced in their entirety below. reproductions of the individual figures have also been incorporated into the text at the appropriate points.] [illustration: plate i] [illustration: plate ii] contents. page preface. iii advertisement. _the plates and figures_. xxii introduction. _the use and advantage of considering solid objects as only thin shells composed of lines, like the outer-coat of an onion_. 1 chapter i. _of fitness_, 13 chapter ii. _of variety_, 16 chapter iii. _of uniformity, regularity, or symmetry_, 18 chapter iv. _of simplicity, or distinctness_, 21 chapter v. _of intricacy_, 24 chapter vi. _of quantity_, 29 chapter vii. _of lines_, 37 chapter viii. _of what sort of parts and how pleasing forms are composed_, 39 chapter ix. _of compositions with the waving line_, 48 chapter x. _of compositions with the serpentine line_, 50 chapter xi. _of proportion_, 67 chapter xii. _of light and shade, and the manner in which objects are explained to the eye by them_, 93 chapter xiii. _of composition with regard to light, shade, and colours_, 106 chapter xiv. _of colouring_. 113 chapter xv. _of the face_. 1. _in the highest taste, and the reverse_. 2. _as to character and expression_. 3. _of the manner in which the lines of the face alter from infancy upwards, and shew the different ages_, 122 chapter xvi. _of attitude_, 135 chapter xvii. _of action_. 1. _a new method of acquiring an easy and graceful movement of the hand and arms_. 2. _of the head, &c._ 3. _of dancing, particularly the minuet_. 4. _of country-dancing, and, lastly, of stage-action_. 138 _prints publish'd by_ w. hogarth. figures _referr'd to in the_ book. errata. [transcriber's note: hogarth's corrections are now incorporated within the text.] introduction. i now offer to the public a short essay, accompanied with two explanatory prints, in which i shall endeavour to shew what the principles are in nature, by which we are directed to call the forms of some bodies beautiful, others ugly; some graceful, and others the reverse; by considering more minutely than has hitherto been done, the nature of those lines, and their different combinations, which serve to raise in the mind the ideas of all the variety of forms imaginable. at first, perhaps, the whole design, as well as the prints, may seem rather intended to trifle and confound, than to entertain and inform: but i am persuaded that when the examples in nature, referr'd to in this essay, are duly consider'd and examined upon the principles laid down in it, it will be thought worthy of a careful and attentive perusal: and the prints themselves too will, i make no doubt, be examined as attentively, when it is found, that almost every figure in them (how odly soever they may seem to be group'd together) is referr'd to singly in the essay, in order to assist the reader's imagination, when the original examples in art, or nature, are not themselves before him. and in this light i hope my prints will be consider'd, and that the figures referr'd to in them will never be imagined to be placed there by me as examples themselves, of beauty or grace, but only to point out to the reader what sorts of objects he is to look for and examine in nature, or in the works of the greatest masters. my figures, therefore, are to be consider'd in the same light, with those a mathematician makes with his pen, which may convey the idea of his demonstration, tho' not a line in them is either perfectly straight, or of that peculiar curvature he is treating of. nay, so far was i from aiming at grace, that i purposely chose to be least accurate, where most beauty might be expected, that no stress might be laid on the figures to the prejudice of the work itself. for i must confess, i have but little hopes of having a favourable attention given to my design in general, by those who have already had a more fashionable introduction into the mysteries of the arts of painting, and sculpture. much less do i expect, or in truth desire, the countenance of that set of people, who have an interest in exploding any kind of doctrine, that may teach us to _see with our own eyes_. it may be needless to observe, that some of the last-mention'd, are not only the dependents on, but often the only instructors and leaders of the former; but in what light they are so consider'd abroad, may be partly seen by [fig. 1 t p. i] a burlesque representation of them, taken from a print publish'd by mr. pond, design'd by cavr. ghezzi at rome. [illustration: fig. 1] to those, then, whose judgments are unprejudiced, this little work is submitted with most pleasure; because it is from such that i have hitherto received the most obligations, and now have reason to expect most candour. therefore i would fain have such of my readers be assured, that however they may have been aw'd, and over-born by pompous terms of art, hard names, and the parade of seemingly magnificent collections of pictures and statues; they are in a much fairer way, ladies, as well as gentlemen, of gaining a perfect knowledge of the elegant and beautiful in artificial, as well as natural forms, by considering them in a systematical, but at the same time familiar way, than those who have been prepossess'd by dogmatic rules, taken from the performances of art only: nay, i will venture to say, sooner, and more rationally, than even a tolerable painter, who has imbibed the same prejudices. the more prevailing the notion may be, that painters and connoisseurs are the only competent judges of things of this sort; the more it becomes necessary to clear up and confirm, as much as possible, what has only been asserted in the foregoing paragraph: that no one may be deterr'd, by the want of such previous knowledge, from entring into this enquiry. the reason why gentlemen, who have been inquisitive after knowledge in pictures, have their eyes less qualified for our purpose, than others, is because their thoughts have been entirely and continually employ'd and incumber'd with considering and retaining the various _manners_ in which pictures are painted, the histories, names, and characters of the masters, together with many other little circumstances belonging to the mechanical part of the art; and little or no time has been given for perfecting the ideas they ought to have in their minds, of the objects themselves in nature: for by having thus espoused and adopted their first notions from nothing but _imitations_, and becoming too often as bigotted to their faults, as their beauties, they at length, in a manner, totally neglect, or at least disregard the works of nature, merely because they do not tally with what their minds are so strongly prepossess'd with. were not this a true state of the case, many a reputed capital picture, that now adorns the cabinets of the curious in all countries, would long ago have been committed to the flames: nor would it have been possible for the venus and cupid, represented by the figure [under fig. 49 t p. i], to have made its way into the principal apartment of a palace. [illustration: fig. under fig. 49] it is also evident that the painter's eye may not be a bit better fitted to receive these new impressions, who is in like manner too much captivated with the works of art; for he also is apt to pursue the shadow, and drop the substance. this mistake happens chiefly to those who go to rome for the accomplishment of their studies; as they naturally will, without the utmost care, take the infectious turn of the connoisseur, instead of the painter: and in proportion as they turn by those means bad proficients in their own arts, they become the more considerable in that of a connoisseur. as a confirmation of this seeming paradox, it has ever been observ'd at all auctions of pictures, that the very worst painters sit as the most profound judges, and are trusted only, i suppose, on account of their _disinterestedness_. i apprehend a good deal of this will look more like resentment, and a design to invalidate the objections of such as are not likely to set the faults of this work in the most favourable light; than merely for the encouragement, as was said above, of such of my readers, as are neither painters, nor connoisseurs: and i will be ingenuous enough to confess something of this may be true; but, at the same time, i cannot allow that this alone would have been a sufficient motive to have made me risk giving offence to any; had not another consideration, besides that already alledg'd, of more consequence to the purpose in hand, made it necessary. i mean the setting forth, in the strongest colours, the alterations objects seemingly undergo through the prepossessions and prejudices contracted by the mind.----fallacies, strongly to be guarded against by such as would learn to see objects truly! altho' the instances already given are pretty flagrant, yet it is certainly true, (as a farther confirmation of this, and for the consolation of those, who may be a little piqued at what has been said) that painters of every condition are stronger instances of the almost unavoidable power of prejudice, than any people whatever. what are all the _manners_, as they are call'd, of even the greatest masters, which are known to differ so much from one another, and all of them from nature, but so many strong proofs of their inviolable attachment to falshood, converted into establish'd truth in their own eyes, by self-opinion? rubens would, in all probability, have been as much disgusted at the dry manner of poussin, as poussin was at the extravagant of rubens. the prejudices of inferior proficients in favour of the imperfections of their own performances, is still more amazing.----their eyes are so quick in discerning the faults of others, at the same time they are so totally blind to their own! indeed it would be well for us all, if one of gulliver's flappers could be placed at our elbows to remind us at every stroke how much prejudice and self-opinion perverts our sight. from what has been said, i hope it appears that those, who have no bias of any kind, either from their own practice, or the lessons of others, are fittest to examine into the truth of the principles laid down in the following pages. but as every one may not have had an opportunity of being sufficiently acquainted with the instances, that have been given: i will offer one of a familiar kind, which may be a hint for their observing a thousand more. how gradually does the eye grow reconciled even to a disagreeable dress, as it becomes more and more the fashion, and how soon return to its dislike of it, when it is left off, and a new one has taken possession of the mind?--so vague is taste, when it has no solid principles for its foundation! notwithstanding i have told you my design of considering minutely the variety of lines, which serve to raise the ideas of bodies in the mind, and which are undoubtedly to be consider'd as drawn on the surfaces only of solid or opake bodies: yet the endeavouring to conceive, as accurate an idea as is possible, of the _inside_ of those surfaces, if i may be allow'd the expression, will be a great assistance to us in the pursuance of our present enquiry. in order to my being well understood, let every object under our consideration, be imagined to have its inward contents scoop'd out so nicely, as to have nothing of it left but a thin shell, exactly corresponding both in its inner and outer surface, to the shape of the object itself: and let us likewise suppose this thin shell to be made up of very fine threads, closely connected together, and equally perceptible, whether the eye is supposed to observe them from without, or within; and we shall find the ideas of the two surfaces of this shell will naturally coincide. the very word, shell, makes us seem to see both surfaces alike. the use of this conceit, as it may be call'd by some, will be seen to be very great, in the process of this work: and the oftner we think of objects in this shell-like manner, we shall facilitate and strengthen our conception of any particular part of the surface of an object we are viewing, by acquiring thereby a more perfect knowledge of the whole, to which it belongs: because the imagination will naturally enter into the vacant space within this shell, and there at once, as from a center, view the whole form within, and mark the opposite corresponding parts so strongly, as to retain the idea of the whole, and make us masters of the meaning of every view of the object, as we walk round it, and view it from without. thus the most perfect idea we can possibly acquire of a sphere, is by conceiving an infinite number of straight rays of equal lengths, issuing from the center, as from the eye, spreading every way alike; and circumscribed or wound about at their other extremities with close connected circular threads, or lines, forming a true spherical shell. but in the common way of taking the view of any opake object, that part of its surface, which fronts the eye, is apt to occupy the mind alone, and the opposite, nay even every other part of it whatever, is left unthought of at that time: and the least motion we make to reconnoitre any other side of the object, confounds our first idea, for want of the connexion of the two ideas, which the complete knowledge of the whole would naturally have given us, if we had considered it in the other way before. another advantage of considering objects thus merely as shells composed of lines, is, that by these means we obtain the true and full idea of what is call'd the _out-lines_ of a figure, which has been confin'd within too narrow limits, by taking it only from drawings on paper; for in the example of the sphere given above, every one of the imaginary circular threads has a right to be consider'd as an out-line of the sphere, as well as those which divide the half, that is seen, from that which is not seen; and if the eye be supposed to move regularly round it, these threads will each of them as regularly succeed one another in the office of out-lines, (in the narrow and limited sense of the word:) and the instant any one of these threads, during this motion of the eye, comes into sight on one side, its opposite thread is lost, and disappears on the other. he who will thus take the pains of acquiring perfect ideas of the distances, bearings, and oppositions of several material points and lines in the surfaces of even the most irregular figures, will gradually arrive at the knack of recalling them into his mind when the objects themselves are not before him: and they will be as strong and perfect as those of the most plain and regular forms, such as cubes and spheres; and will be of infinite service to those who invent and draw from fancy, as well as enable those to be more correct who draw from the life. in this manner, therefore, i would desire the reader to assist his imagination as much as possible, in considering every object, as if his eye were placed within it. as straight lines are easily conceiv'd, the difficulty of following this method in the most simple and regular forms will be less than may be first imagined; and its use in the more compounded will be greater: as will be more fully shewn when we come to speak of composition. but as [fig. 2 l p. i] may be of singular use to young designers in the study of the human form, the most complex and beautiful of all, in shewing them a mechanical way of gaining the opposite points in its surface, which never can be seen in one and the same view; it will be proper to explain the design of it in this place, as it may at the same time add some weight to what has been already said. [illustration: fig. 2] it represents the trunk of a figure cast in soft wax, with one wire pass'd perpendicularly through its center, another perpendicularly to the first, going in before and coming out in the middle of the back, and as many more as may be thought necessary, parallel to and at equal distances from these, and each other; as is mark'd by the several dots in the figure.--let these wires be so loose as to be taken out at pleasure, but not before all the parts of them, which appear out of the wax, are carefully painted close up to the wax, of a different colour from those, that lie within it. by these means the horizontal and perpendicular _contents_ of these parts of the body (by which i mean the distances of opposite points in the surface of these parts) through which the wires have pass'd, may be exactly known and compared with each other; and the little holes, where the wires have pierced the wax, remaining on its surface, will mark out the corresponding opposite points on the external muscles of the body; as well as assist and guide us to a readier conception of all the intervening parts. these points may be mark'd upon a marble figure with calibers properly used. the known method, many years made use of, for the more exactly and expeditiously reducing drawings from large pictures, for engravings; or for enlarging designs, for painting cielings and cupolas, (by striking lines perpendicular to each other, so as to make an equal number of squares on the paper design'd for the copy, that hath been first made on the original; by which means, the situation of every part of the picture is mechanically seen, and easily transferred) may truly be said to be somewhat of the same kind with what has been here proposed, but that one is done upon a flat surface, the other upon a solid; and that the new scheme differs in its application, and may be of a much more useful and extensive nature than the old one. but it is time now to have done with the introduction: and i shall proceed to consider the fundamental principles, which are generally allowed to give elegance and beauty, when duly blended together, to compositions of all kinds whatever; and point out to my readers, the particular force of each, in those compositions in nature and art, which seem most to _please and entertain the eye_, and give that grace and beauty, which is the subject of this enquiry. the principles i mean, are fitness, variety, uniformity, simplicity, intricacy and quantity;----_all which co-operate in the production of beauty, mutually correcting and restraining each other occasionally_. chapter i. _of fitness_. fitness of the parts to the design for which every individual thing is form'd, either by art or nature, is first to be consider'd, as it is of the greatest consequence to the beauty of the whole. this is so evident, that even the sense of seeing, the great inlet of beauty, is itself so strongly bias'd by it, that if the mind, on account of this kind of value in a form, esteem it beautiful, tho' on all other considerations it be not so; the eye grows insensible of its want of beauty, and even begins to be pleas'd, especially after it has been a considerable time acquainted with it. it is well known on the other hand, that forms of great elegance often disgust the eye by being improperly applied. thus, twisted columns are undoubtedly ornamental; but as they convey an idea of weakness, they always displease, when they are improperly made use of as supports to any thing that is bulky, or appears heavy. the bulks and proportions of objects are govern'd by fitness and propriety. it is this that has establish'd the size and proportion of chairs, tables, and all sorts of utensils and furniture. it is this that has fix'd the dimensions of pillars, arches, &c. for the support of great weight, and so regulated all the orders in architecture, as well as the sizes of windows and doors, &c. thus though a building were ever so large, the steps of the stairs, the seats in the windows must be continued of their usual heights, or they would lose their beauty with their fitness: and in ship-building the dimensions of every part are confin'd and regulated by fitness for sailing. when a vessel sails well, the sailors always call her a beauty; the two ideas have such a connexion! the general dimensions of the parts of the human body are adapted thus to the uses they are design'd for. the trunk is the most capacious on account of the quantity of its contents, and the thigh is larger than the leg, because it has both the leg and foot to move, the leg only the foot, &c. fitness of parts also constitutes and distinguishes in a great measure the characteristics of objects; as for example, the race-horse differs as much in quality, or character, from the war-horse, as to its figure, as the hercules from the mercury. the race-horse, having all its parts of such dimensions as best fit the purposes of speed, acquires on that account a consistent character of one sort of beauty. to illustrate this, suppose the beautiful head and gracefully-turn'd neck of the war-horse were placed on the shoulders of the race-horse, instead of his own aukward straight one: it would disgust, and deform, instead of adding beauty; because the judgment would condemn it as unfit. [illustration: fig. 3] the hercules, by glicon [fig. 3 p. i], hath all its parts finely fitted for the purposes of the utmost strength, the texture of the human form will bear. the back, breast and shoulders have huge bones, and muscles adequate to the supposed active strength of its upper parts; but as less strength was required for the lower parts, the judicious sculptor, contrary to all modern rule of enlarging every part in proportion, lessen'd the size of the muscles gradually down towards the feet; and for the same reason made the neck larger in circumference than any part of the head [fig. 4 p. i]; otherwise the figure would have been burden'd with an unnecessary weight, which would have been a draw-back from his strength, and in consequence of that, from its characteristic beauty. [illustration: fig. 4] these seeming faults, which shew the superior anatomical knowledge as well as judgment of the ancients, are not to be found in the leaden imitations of it near hyde-park. these saturnine genius's imagin'd they knew how to correct such apparent _disproportions_. these few examples may be sufficient to give an idea of what i mean (and would have understood) by the beauty of fitness, or propriety. chapter ii. _of variety_. how great a share variety has in producing beauty may be seen in the ornamental part of nature. the shapes and colours of plants, flowers, leaves, the paintings in butterflies wings, shells, &c. seem of little other intended use, than that of entertaining the eye with the pleasure of variety. all the senses delight in it, and equally are averse to sameness. the ear is as much offended with one even continued note, as the eye is with being fix'd to a point, or to the view of a dead wall. yet when the eye is glutted with a succession of variety, it finds relief in a certain degree of sameness; and even plain space becomes agreeable, and properly introduced, and contrasted with variety, adds to it more variety. i mean here, and every where indeed, a composed variety; for variety uncomposed, and without design, is confusion and deformity. observe, that a gradual lessening is a kind of varying that gives beauty. the pyramid diminishing from its basis to its point, and the scroll or voluta, gradually lessening to its center, are beautiful forms. so also objects that only seem to do so, though in fact they do not, have equal beauty: thus perspective views, and particularly those of buildings, are always pleasing to the eye. the little ship, between figure 47 and 88 [p. i], suppos'd moving along the shore even with the eye, might have its top and bottom bounded by two lines at equal distances all the way, as a; but if the ship puts out to sea, these lines at top and bottom would seem to vary and meet each other by degrees, as b, in the point c, which is in the line where the sky and water meets, call'd the horizon. thus much of the manner of perspectives adding beauty, by seemingly varying otherwise unvaried forms, i thought, might be acceptable to those, who have not learnt perspective. [illustration: fig. between figs. 47 and 88] chapter iii. _of uniformity, regularity, or symmetry_. it may be imagined that the greatest part of the effects of beauty results from the symmetry of parts in the object, which is beautiful: but i am very well persuaded, this prevailing notion will soon appear to have little or no foundation. it may indeed have properties of greater consequence, such as propriety, fitness, and use; and yet but little serve the purposes of pleasing the eye, merely on the score of beauty. we have, indeed, in our nature a love of imitation from our infancy, and the eye is often entertained, as well as surprised, with mimicry, and delighted with the exactness of counterparts: but then this always gives way to its superior love of variety, and soon grows tiresom. if the uniformity of figures, parts, or lines were truly the chief cause of beauty, the more exactly uniform their appearances were kept, the more pleasure the eye would receive: but this is so far from being the case, that when the mind has been once satisfied, that the parts answer one another, with so exact an uniformity, as to preserve to the whole the character of fitness to stand, to move, to sink, to swim, to fly, &c. without losing the balance: the eye is rejoiced to see the object turn'd, and shifted, so as to vary these uniform appearances. thus the profile of most objects, as well as faces, are rather more pleasing than their full fronts. whence it is clear, the pleasure does not arise from seeing the exact resemblance, which one side bears the other, but from the knowledge that they do so on account of fitness, with design, and for use. for when the head of a fine woman is turn'd a little to one side, which takes off from the exact similarity of the two halves of the face, and somewhat reclining, so varying still more from the straight and parallel lines of a formal front face: it is always look'd upon as most pleasing. this is accordingly said to be a graceful air of the head. it is a constant rule in composition in painting to avoid regularity. when we view a building, or any other object in life, we have it in our power, by shifting the ground, to take that view of it which pleases us best; and in consequence of this, the painter if he is left to his choice, takes it on the angle rather than in front, as most agreeable to the eye; because the regularity of the lines is taken away by their running into perspective, without losing the idea of fitness: and when he is of necessity obliged to give the front of a building, with all its equalities and parallelisms, he generally breaks (as it is term'd) such disagreeable appearances, by throwing a tree before it, or the shadow of an imaginary cloud, or some other object that may answer the same purpose of adding variety, which is the same with taking away uniformity. if uniform objects were agreeable, why is there such care taken to contrast, and vary all the limbs of a statue? [illustration: figs. 72, 6 and 7] the picture of henry the eighth [fig. 72 p. ii], would be preferable to the finely contrasted figures of guido or correggio; and the antinous's easy sway [fig. 6 p. i], must submit to the stiff and straight figure of the dancing-master [fig. 7 p. i]; and the uniform out-lines of the muscles in the figure [fig. 55 p. i] taken from albert durer's book of proportions, would have more taste in them than those in the famous part of an antique figure [fig. 54 p. i] from which michael angelo acquired so much of his skill in grace. [illustration: figs. 55 and 54] in short, whatever appears to be fit, and proper to answer great purposes, ever satisfies the mind, and pleases on that account. uniformity is of this kind. we find it necessary, in some degree, to give the idea of rest and motion, without the possibility of falling. but when any such purposes can be as well effected by more irregular parts, the eye is always better pleased on the account of variety. how pleasingly is the idea of firmness in standing convey'd to the eye by the three elegant claws of a table, the three feet of a tea-lamp, or the celebrated tripod of the ancients? thus you see regularity, uniformity, or symmetry, please only as they serve to give the idea of fitness. chapter iv. _of simplicity, or distinctness_. simplicity, without variety, is wholly insipid, and at best does only not displease; but when variety is join'd to it, then it pleases, because it enhances the pleasure of variety, by giving the eye the power of enjoying it with ease. there is no object composed of straight lines, that has so much variety, with so few parts, as the pyramid: and it is its constantly varying from its base gradually upwards in every situation of the eye, (without giving the idea of sameness, as the eye moves round it) that has made it been esteem'd in all ages, in preference to the cone, which in all views appears nearly the same, being varied only by light and shade. steeples, monuments, and most compositions in painting and sculpture, are kept within the form of the cone or pyramid, as the most eligible boundary on account of their simplicity and variety. for the same reason equestrian statues please more than the single figures. the authors (for there were three concern'd in the work) of as fine a group of figures in sculpture, as ever was made, either by ancients or moderns, (i mean laocoon and his two sons) chose to be guilty of the absurdity of making the sons of half the father's size, tho' they have every other mark of being design'd for men, rather than not bring their composition within the boundary of a pyramid [fig. 9 t p. i]. thus if a judicious workman were employ'd to make a case of wood, for preserving it from the injuries of the weather, or for the convenience of carriage; he would soon find by his eye, the whole composition would readily fit and be easily pack'd up, in one of a pyramidal form. [illustration: fig. 9] steeples, &c. have generally been varied from the cone, to take off from their too great simplicity, and instead of their circular bases, polygons of different, but even numbers of sides, have been substituted, i suppose for the sake of uniformity. these forms however may be said to have been chosen by the architect, with a view to the cone, as the whole compositions might be bounded by it. yet, in my mind, odd numbers have the advantage over the even ones, as variety is more pleasing than uniformity, where the same end is answer'd by both; as in this case, where both polygons may be circumscrib'd by the same circle, or in other words, both compositions bounded by the same cone. and i can't help observing, that nature in all her works of fancy, if i may be allow'd the expression, where it seems immaterial whether even or odd numbers of divisions were prefer'd, most frequently employs the odd; as for example, in the indenting of leaves, flowers, blossoms, &c. the oval also, on account of its variety with simplicity, is as much to be prefer'd to the circle, as the triangle to the square, or the pyramid to the cube; and this figure lessen'd at one end, like the egg, thereby being more varied, is singled out by the author of all variety, to bound the features of a beautiful face. [illustration: fig. 10] when the oval has a little more of the cone added to it than the egg has, it becomes more distinctly a compound of those two most simple varied figures. this is the shape of the pine-apple [fig. 10 t p. i], which nature has particularly distinguish'd by bestowing ornaments of rich mosaic upon it, composed of contrasted serpentine lines, and the pips [fig. 11 t p. i], as the gardiners call them, are still varied by two cavities and one round eminence in each. [illustration: fig. 11] could a more elegant simple form than this have been found; it is probable that judicious architect, sir christopher wren, would not have chosen the pine-apples for the two terminations of the sides of the front of st. paul's: and perhaps the globe and cross, tho' a finely varied figure, which terminates the dome, would not have had the preference of situation, if a religious motive had not been the occasion. thus we see simplicity gives beauty even to variety, as it makes it more easily understood, and should be ever studied in the works of art, as it serves to prevent perplexity in forms of elegance; as will be shewn in the next chapter. chapter v. _of intricacy_. the active mind is ever bent to be employ'd. pursuing is the business of our lives; and even abstracted from any other view, gives pleasure. every arising difficulty, that for a while attends and interrupts the pursuit, gives a sort of spring to the mind, enhances the pleasure, and makes what would else be toil and labour, become sport and recreation. wherein would consist the joys of hunting, shooting, fishing, and many other favourite diversions, without the frequent turns and difficulties, and disappointments, that are daily met with in the pursuit?--how joyless does the sportsman return when the hare has not had fair play? how lively, and in spirits, even when an old cunning one has baffled, and out-run the dogs! this love of pursuit, merely as pursuit, is implanted in our natures, and design'd, no doubt, for necessary, and useful purposes. animals have it evidently by instinct. the hound dislikes the game he so eagerly pursues; and even cats will risk the losing of their prey to chase it over again. it is a pleasing labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems; allegories and riddles, trifling as they are, afford the mind amusement: and with what delight does it follow the well-connected thread of a play, or novel, which ever increases as the plot thickens, and ends most pleas'd, when that is most distinctly unravell'd? the eye hath this sort of enjoyment in winding walks, and serpentine rivers, and all sorts of objects, whose forms, as we shall see hereafter, are composed principally of what, i call, the _waving_ and _serpentine_ lines. intricacy in form, therefore, i shall define to be that peculiarity in the lines, which compose it, that _leads the eye a wanton kind of chace_, and from the pleasure that gives the mind, intitles it to the name of beautiful: and it may be justly said, that the cause of the idea of grace more immediately resides in this principle, than in the other five, except variety; which indeed includes this, and all the others. that this observation may appear to have a real foundation in nature, every help will be requir'd, which the reader himself can call to his assistance, as well as what will here be suggested to him. to set this matter in somewhat a clearer light, the familiar instance of a common jack, with a circular fly, may serve our purpose better than a more elegant form: preparatory to which, let the figure [fig. 14 t p. i] be consider'd, which represents the eye, at a common reading distance viewing a row of letters, but fix'd with most attention to the middle letter a. [illustration: fig. 14] now as we read, a ray may be supposed to be drawn from the center of the eye to that letter it looks at first, and to move successively with it from letter to letter, the whole length of the line: but if the eye stops at any particular letter, a, to observe it more than the rest, these other letters will grow more and more imperfect to the sight, the farther they are situated on either side of a, as is express'd in the figure: and when we endeavour to see all the letters in a line equally perfect at one view, as it were, this imaginary ray must course it to and fro with great celerity. thus though the eye, strictly speaking, can only pay due attention to these letters in succession, yet the amazing ease and swiftness, with which it performs this task, enables us to see considerable spaces with sufficient satisfaction at one sudden view. hence, we shall always suppose some such principal ray moving along with the eye, and tracing out the parts of every form, we mean to examine in the most perfect manner: and when we would follow with exactness the course any body takes, that is in motion, this ray is always to be supposed to move with the body. in this manner of attending to forms, they will be found, whether _at rest_, or _in motion_, to give _movement_ to this imaginary ray; or, more properly speaking, to the eye itself, affecting it _thereby_ more or less _pleasingly_, according to their different _shapes_ and _motions_. thus, for example, in the instance of the jack, whether the eye (with this imaginary ray) moves slowly down the line, to which the weight is fix'd, or attends to the slow motion of the weight itself, the mind is equally fatigu'd: and whether it swiftly courses round the circular rim of the flyer, when the jack stands; or nimbly follows one point in its circularity whilst it is whirling about, we are almost equally made giddy by it. but our sensation differs much from either of these unpleasant ones, when we observe the curling worm, into which the worm-wheel is fixt [fig. 15 l p. i]: for this is always pleasing, either at rest or in motion, and whether that motion is slow or quick. [illustration: fig. 15] that it is accounted so, when it is _at rest_, appears by the ribbon, twisted round a stick (represented on one side of this figure) which has been a long-establish'd ornament in the carvings of frames, chimney-pieces, and door-cases; and call'd by the carvers, _the stick and ribbon ornament_: and when the stick, through the middle is omitted, it is call'd the _ribbon edge_; both to be seen in almost every house of fashion. but the pleasure it gives the eye is still more lively when _in motion_. i never can forget my frequent strong attention to it, when i was very young, and that its beguiling movement gave me the same kind of sensation then, which i since have felt at seeing a country-dance; tho' perhaps the latter might be somewhat more engaging; particularly when my eye eagerly pursued a favourite dancer, through all the windings of the figure, who then was bewitching to the sight, as the imaginary ray, we were speaking of, was dancing with her all the time. this single example might be sufficient to explain what i mean by _the beauty of a composed intricacy of form_; and how it may be said, with propriety, to _lead_ the eye a _kind of chace_. but the hair of the head is another very obvious instance, which, being design'd chiefly as an ornament, proves more or less so, according to the form it naturally takes, or is put into by art. the most amiable in itself is the flowing curl; and the many waving and contrasted turns of naturally intermingling locks ravish the eye with the pleasure of the pursuit, especially when they are put in motion by a gentle breeze. the poet knows it, as well as the painter, and has described the wanton ringlets waving in the wind. and yet to shew how excess ought to be avoided in intricacy, as well as in every other principle, the very same head of hair, wisp'd, and matted together, would make the most disagreeable figure; because the eye would be perplex'd, and at a fault, and unable to trace such a confused number of uncomposed and entangled lines; and yet notwithstanding this, the present fashion the ladies have gone into, of wearing a part of the hair of their heads braided together from behind, like intertwisted serpents, arising thickest from the bottom, lessening as it is brought forward, and naturally conforming to the shape of the rest of the hair it is pin'd over, is extremely picturesque. their thus interlacing the hair in distinct varied quantities is an artful way of preserving as much of intricacy, as is beautiful. chapter vi. _of quantity_. forms of magnitude, although ill-shaped, will however, on account of their vastness, draw our attention and raise our admiration. huge shapeless rocks have a pleasing kind of horror in them, and the wide ocean awes us with its vast contents; but when forms of beauty are presented to the eye in large quantities, the pleasure increases on the mind, and horror is soften'd into reverence. how solemn and pleasing are groves of high grown trees, great churches, and palaces? has not even a single spreading oak, grown to maturity, acquir'd the character of the venerable oak? windsor castle is a noble instance of the effect of quantity. the hugeness of its few distinct parts strikes the eye with uncommon grandeur at a distance, as well as nigh. it is quantity, with simplicity, which makes it one of the finest objects in the kingdom, tho' void of any regular order of architecture. the façade of the old louvre at paris is also remarkable for its quantity. this fragment is allow'd to be the finest piece of building in france, tho' there are many equal, if not superior, to it in all other respects, except that of quantity. who does not feel a pleasure when he pictures in his mind the immense buildings which once adorn'd the lower egypt, by imagining the whole complete, and ornamented with colossal statues? elephants and whales please us with their unwieldy greatness. even large personages, merely for being so, command respect: nay, quantity is an addition to the person which often supplies a deficiency in his figure. the robes of state are always made large and full, because they give a grandeur of appearance, suitable to the offices of the greatest distinction. the judge's robes have an awful dignity given them by the quantity of their contents, and when the train is held up, there is a noble waving line descending from the shoulders of the judge to the hand of his train-bearer. so when the train is gently thrown aside, it generally falls into a great variety of folds, which again employ the eye, and fix its attention. the grandeur of the eastern dress, which so far surpasses the european, depends as much on quantity as on costliness. in a word, it is quantity which adds greatness to grace. but then excess is to be avoided, or quantity will become clumsy, heavy, or ridiculous. [illustration: fig. 16] the full-bottom wig, like the lion's mane, hath something noble in it, and adds not only dignity, but sagacity to the countenance [fig. 16 p. i]: but were it to be worn as large again, it would become a burlesque; or were an improper person to put it on, it would then too be ridiculous. when improper, or _incompatible_ excesses meet, they always excite laughter; more especially when the forms of those excesses are inelegant, that is, when they are composed of unvaried lines. [illustration: figs. 17 and 18] for example, the figure refer'd to in the margin [fig. 17 p. i], represents a fat grown face of a man, with an infant's cap on, and the rest of the child's dress stuff'd, and so well placed under his chin, as to seem to belong to that face. this is a contrivance i have seen at bartholomew-fair, and always occasion'd a roar of laughter. the next [fig. 18 p. i] is of the same kind, a child with a man's wig and cap on. in these you see the ideas of youth and age jumbled together, in forms without beauty. [illustration: fig. 19] so a roman general [fig. 19 p. i], dress'd by a modern tailor and peruke-maker, for tragedy, is a comic figure.----the dresses of the times are mix'd, and the lines which compose them are straight or only round. dancing-masters, representing deities, in their grand ballets on the stage, are no less ridiculous. see the jupiter [fig. 20 p. i]. [illustration: fig. 20] nevertheless custom and fashion will, in length of time, reconcile almost every absurdity whatever, to the eye, or make it over-look'd. it is from the same joining of opposite ideas that makes us laugh at the owl and the ass, for under their aukward forms, they seem to be gravely musing and meditating, as if they had the sense of human beings. a monkey too whose figure, as well as most of his actions, so odly resembles the human, is also very comical; and he becomes more so when a coat is put on him, as he then becomes a greater burlesque on the man. there is something extremely odd and comical in the rough shock dog. the ideas here connected are the inelegant and inanimate figure of a thrum mop, or muff, and that of a sensible, friendly animal; which is as much a burlesque of the dog, as the monkey when his coat is on, is of the man. what can it be but this inelegance of the figure, join'd with impropriety, that makes a whole audience burst into laughter, when they see the miller's sack, in dr. faustus, jumping across the stage? was a well-shap'd vase to do the same, it would equally surprise, but not make every body laugh, because the elegance of the form would prevent it. for when the forms, thus join'd together, are each of them elegant, and composed of agreeable lines, they will be so far from making us laugh, that they will become entertaining to the imagination, as well as pleasing to the eye. the sphinx and siren have been admired and accounted ornamental in all ages. the former represents strength and beauty join'd; the latter, beauty and swiftness, in pleasing and graceful forms. the griffin, a modern hieroglyphic, signifying strength and swiftness, united in the two noble forms of the lion and eagle, is a grand object. so the antique centaur hath a savage greatness as well as beauty. these may be said to be monsters, it's true, but then they convey such noble ideas, and have such elegance in their forms as greatly compensates for their being unnaturally join'd together. i shall mention but one more instance of this sort, and that the most extraordinary of all, which is an infant's head of about two years old, with a pair of duck's-wings placed under its chin, supposed always to be flying about, and singing psalms [fig. 22 r p. i]. [illustration: fig. 22] a painter's representation of heaven would be nothing without swarms of these little inconsistent objects, flying about, or perching on the clouds; and yet there is something so agreeable in their form, that the eye is reconciled and overlooks the absurdity, and we find them in the carving and painting of almost every church. st. paul's is full of them. * * * * * as the foregoing principles are the very ground work of what is to follow; we will, in order to make them the more familiar to us, just speak of them in the way they are daily put in practice, and may be seen, in every dress that is worn; and we shall find not only that ladies of fashion, but that women of every rank, who are said to dress prettily, have known their force, without considering them as principles. * * * * * i. fitness is first considered by them, as knowing that their dresses should be useful, commodious, and fitted to their different ages; or rich, airy, and loose, agreeable to the character they would give out to the public by their dress. * * * * * ii. uniformity is chiefly complied with in dress on account of fitness, and seems to be extended not much farther than dressing both arms alike, and having the shoes of the same colour. for when any part of dress has not the excuse of fitness or propriety for its uniformity of parts, the ladies always call it _formal_. for which reason, when they are at liberty to make what shapes they please in ornamenting their persons, those of the best taste choose the irregular as the more engaging: for example, no two patches are ever chosen of the same size, or placed at the same height; nor a single one in the middle of a feature, unless it be to hide a blemish. so a single feather, flower, or jewel is generally placed on one side of the head; or if ever put in front, it is turn'd awry to avoid formality. it was once the fashion to have two curls of equal size, stuck at the same height close upon the forehead, which probably took its rise from seeing the pretty effect of curls falling loosely over the face. a lock of hair falling thus cross the temples, and by that means breaking the regularity of the oval, has an effect too alluring to be strictly decent, as is very well known to the loose and lowest class of women: but being pair'd in so stiff a manner, as they formerly were, they lost the desired effect, and ill deserv'd the name of favourites. * * * * * iii. variety in dress, both as to colour and form, is the constant study of the young and gay----but then, * * * * * iv. that taudriness may not destroy the proper effect of variety, simplicity is call'd in to restrain its superfluities, and is often very artfully made use of to set native beauty off to more advantage. i have not known any set of people, that have more excell'd in this principle of simplicity, or plainness, than the quakers. * * * * * v. quantity, or fulness in dress has ever been a darling principle; so that sometimes those parts of dress, which would properly admit of being extended to a great degree, have been carried into such strange excesses, that in the reign of queen elizabeth a law was made to put a stop to the growth of ruffs: nor is the enormous size of the hoops at present, a less sufficient proof of the extraordinary love of quantity in dress, beyond that of convenience or elegance. * * * * * vi. the beauty of intricacy lies in contriving winding shapes, such as the antique lappets belonging to the head of the sphinx [fig. 21 p. i], or as the modern lappet when it is brought before. every part of dress, that will admit of the application of this principle, has an air (as it is term'd) given to it thereby; and altho' it requires dexterity and a taste to execute these windings well, we find them daily practised with success. [illustration: fig. 21] this principle also recommends modesty in dress, to keep up our expectations, and not suffer them to be too soon gratified. therefore the body and limbs should all be cover'd, and little more than certain hints be given of them thro' the cloathing. the face indeed will bear a constant view, yet always entertain and keep our curiosity awake, without the assistance either of a mask, or veil; because vast variety of changing circumstances keeps the eye and the mind in constant play, in following the numberless turns of expression it is capable of. how soon does a face that wants expression grow insipid, tho' it be ever so pretty?--the rest of the body, not having these advantages in common with the face, would soon satiate the eye, were it to be as constantly exposed, nor would it have more effect than a marble statue. but when it is artfully cloath'd and decorated, the mind at every turn resumes its imaginary pursuits concerning it. thus, if i may be allow'd a simile, the angler chooses not to see the fish he angles for, until it is fairly caught. chapter vii. _of lines_. it may be remember'd that in the introduction, the reader is desired to consider the surfaces of objects as so many shells of lines, closely connected together, which idea of them it will now be proper to call to mind, for the better comprehending not only this, but all the following chapters on composition. the constant use made of lines by mathematicians, as well as painters, in describing things upon paper, hath establish'd a conception of them, as if actually existing on the real forms themselves. this likewise we suppose, and shall set out with saying in general--that _the straight line_, and _the circular line_, together with their different combinations, and variations, &c. bound, and circumscribe all visible objects whatsoever, thereby producing such endless variety of forms, as lays us under the necessity of dividing, and distinguishing them into general classes; leaving the intervening mixtures of appearances to the reader's own farther observation. first, [fig. 23 t p. i] objects composed of straight lines only, as the cube, or of circular lines, as the sphere, or of both together, as cylinders and cones, &c. [illustration: fig. 23] secondly, [fig. 24 t p. i] those composed of straight lines, circular lines, and of lines partly straight, and partly circular, as the capitals of columns, and vases, &c. [illustration: fig. 24] thirdly, [fig. 25 t p. i] those composed of all the former together with an addition of the waving line, which is a line more productive of beauty than any of the former, as in flowers, and other forms of the ornamental kind: for which reason we shall call it the line of beauty. [illustration: fig. 25] fourthly, [fig. 26 t p. i] those composed of all the former together with the serpentine line, as the human form, which line hath the power of super-adding grace to beauty. note, forms of most grace have least of the straight line in them. [illustration: fig. 26] it is to be observed, that straight lines vary only in length, and therefore are least ornamental. that curved lines as they can be varied in their degrees of curvature as well as in their lengths, begin on that account to be ornamental. that straight and curv'd lines join'd, being a compound line, vary more than curves alone, and so become somewhat more ornamental. that the waving line, or line of beauty, varying still more, being composed of two curves contrasted, becomes still more ornamental and pleasing, insomuch that the hand takes a lively movement in making it with pen or pencil. and that the serpentine line, by its waving and winding at the same time different ways, leads the eye in a pleasing manner along the continuity of its variety, if i may be allowed the expression; and which by its twisting so many different ways, may be said to inclose (tho' but a single line) varied contents; and therefore all its variety cannot be express'd on paper by one continued line, without the assistance of the imagination, or the help of a figure; see [fig. 26 t p. i] where that sort of proportion'd, winding line, which will hereafter be call'd the precise serpentine line, or _line of grace_, is represented by a fine wire, properly twisted round the elegant and varied figure of a cone. chapter viii. _of what sort of parts, and how pleasing forms are composed_. thus far having endeavoured to open as large an idea as possible of the power of variety, by having partly shewn that those lines which have most variety in themselves, contribute most towards the production of beauty; we will next shew how lines may be put together, so as to make pleasing figures or compositions. in order to be as clear as possible, we will give a few examples of the most familiar and easy sort, and let them serve as a clue to be pursued in the imagination: i say in the imagination chiefly, for the following method is not meant always to be put in practice, or follow'd in every case, for indeed that could hardly be, and in some it would be ridiculously losing time if it could----yet there may be cases where it may be necessary to follow this method minutely; as for example, in architecture. i am thoroughly convinc'd in myself, however it may startle some, that a completely new and harmonious order of architecture in all its parts, might be produced by the following method of composing, but hardly with certainty without it; and this i am the more apt to believe, as upon the strictest examination, those four orders of the ancients, which are so well established for beauty and true proportion, perfectly agree with the scheme we shall now lay down. this way of composing pleasing forms, is to be accomplished by making choice of variety of lines, as to their shapes and dimensions; and then again by varying their situations with each other, by all the different ways that can be conceived: and at the same time (if a solid figure be the subject of the composition) the contents or space that is to be inclosed within those lines, must be duly consider'd and vary'd too, as much as possible, with propriety. in a word, it may be said, the art of composing well is the art of varying well. it is not expected that this should at first be perfectly comprehended, yet i believe it will be made sufficiently clear by the help of the examples following. [illustration: fig. 29] the figure [fig. 29 t p. i], represents the simple and pleasing figure of a bell; this shell, as we may call it, is composed of waving lines, encompassing, or bounding within it, the varied space marked with dotted lines: here you see the variety of the space within is equal to the beauty of its form without, and if the space, or contents, were to be more varied, the outward form would have still more beauty. [illustration: figs. 30, 31 and 32] as a proof, see a composition of more parts, and a way by which those parts may be put together by a certain method of varying: i. e. how the one half of the socket of the candlestick a [fig. 30 t p. i], may be varied as the other half b. let a convenient and fit height be first given for a candlestick, as [fig. 31 t p. i], then let the necessary size of the socket be determined, as at (a) [fig. 32] after which, in order to give it a better form, let every _distance_ or length of divisions differ from the length of the socket, as also vary in their distances from each other, as is seen by the points on the line under the socket (a); that is let any two points, _signifying distance_, be plac'd farthest from any other two near points, observing always that there should be one distance or part larger than all the rest; and you will readily see that variety could not be so complete without it.--in like manner, let the horizontal distances (always keeping within the bounds of fitness) be varied both as to distances and situations, as on the opposite side of the same figure (b); then unite and join all the several distances into a complete shell, by applying several parts of curves and straight lines; varying them also by making them of different sizes, as (c): and apply them as at (d) in the same figure, and you have the candlestick [fig. 33 t p. i], and with still more variations on the other side. if you divide the candlestick into many more parts, it will appear crouded, as [fig. 34 t p. i] it will want distinctness of form on a near view, and lose the effect of variety at a distance: this the eye will easily distinguish on removing pretty far from it. [illustration: figs. 33 and 34] simplicity in composition, or distinctness of parts, is ever to be attended to, as it is one part of beauty, as has been already said: but that what i mean by distinctness of parts in this place, may be better understood, it will be proper to explain it by an example. when you would compose an object of a great variety of parts, let several of those parts be distinguish'd by themselves, by their remarkable difference from the next adjoining, so as to make each of them, as it were, one well-shap'd quantity or part, as is marked by the dotted lines in figure [35 t p. i] (these are like what they call passages in music, and in writing paragraphs) by which means, not only the whole, but even every part, will be better understood by the eye: for confusion will hereby be avoided when the object is seen near, and the shapes will seem well varied, tho' fewer in number, at a distance; as figure [36 p. i] supposed to be the same as the former, but removed so far off that the eye loses sight of the smaller members. [illustration: figs. 35 and 36] the parsley-leaf [fig. 37 t p. i], in like manner, from whence a beautiful foliage in ornament was originally taken, is divided into three distinct passages; which are again divided into other odd numbers; and this method is observ'd, for the generality, in the leaves of all plants and flowers, the most simple of which are the trefoil and cinquefoil. [illustration: fig. 37] light and shade, and colours, also must have their distinctness to make objects completely beautiful: but of these in their proper places----only i will give you a general idea of what is here meant by the beauty of distinctness of forms, lights, shades, and colours, by putting you in mind of the reverse effects in all them together. observe the well-composed nosegay how it loses all its distinctness when it dies; each leaf and flower then shrivels and loses its distinct shape; and the firm colours fade into a kind of sameness: so that the whole gradually becomes a confused heap. if the general parts of objects are preserv'd large at first, they will always admit of farther enrichments of a small kind, but then they must be so small as not to confound the general masses or quantities.--thus you see variety is a check upon itself when overdone, which of course begets what is call'd a _petit taste_ and a confusion to the eye. [illustration: figs. 38 and 39] it will not be amiss next to shew what effects an object or two will have that are put together without, or contrary to these rules of composing variety. figure [38 l p. i], is taken from one of those branches fixt to the sides of common old-fashion'd stove-grates by way of ornament, wherein you see how the parts have been varied by fancy only, and yet pretty well: close to which [fig. 39 l p. i] is another, with about the like number of parts; but as the shapes, neither are enough varied as to their contents, nor in their situations with each other, but one shape follows its exact likeness: it is therefore a disagreeable and tasteless figure, and for the same reason the candlestick, fig. [40 t p. i] is still worse, as there is less variety in it. nay, it would be better to be quite plain, as figure [41 t p. i], than with such poor attempts at ornament. [illustration: figs. 40, 41 and 42] these few examples, well understood, will, i imagine, be sufficient to put what was said at the beginning of this chapter out of all doubt, viz. that _the art of composing well_ is no more than the _art of varying well_; and to shew, that the method which has been here explain'd, must consequently produce a pleasing proportion amongst the parts; as well as that all deviations from it will produce the contrary. yet to strengthen this latter assertion, let the following figures, taken from the life, be examin'd by the above rules for composing, and it will be found that the indian-fig or torch-thistle, figure [42 t p. i], as well as all that tribe of uncouth shaped exotics, have the same reasons for being ugly, as the candlestick, fig. 40; as also that the beauties of the lily [fig. 43 t p. i] and the calcidonian iris [fig. 44 t p. i] proceeds from their being composed with great variety, and that the loss of variety, to a certain degree, in the imitations of those flowers underneath them (fig. 45 and 46) is the cause of the meanness of their shapes, tho' they retain enough to be call'd by the same names. [illustration: figs. 43 and 44] [illustration: figs. 45 and 46] hitherto, with regard to composition, little else but forms made up of straight and curv'd lines have been spoken of, and though these lines have but little variety in themselves, yet by reason of the great diversifications that they are capable of in being join'd with one another; great variety of beauty of the more useful sort is produced by them, as in necessary utensils and building: but in my opinion, buildings as i before hinted, might be much more varied than they are, for after _fitness_ hath been strictly and mechanically complied with, any additional ornamental members, or parts, may, by the foregoing rules, be varied with equal elegance; nor can i help thinking, but that churches, palaces, hospitals, prisons, common houses and summer houses, might be built more in distinct characters than they are, by contriving orders suitable to each; whereas were a modern architect to build a palace in lapland, or the west-indies, paladio must be his guide, nor would he dare to stir a step without his book. have not many gothic buildings a great deal of consistent beauty in them? perhaps acquired by a series of improvements made from time to time by the natural persuasion of the eye, which often very near answers the end of working by principles; and sometimes begets them. there is at present such a thirst after variety, that even paltry imitations of chinese buildings have a kind of vogue, chiefly on account of their novelty: but not only these, but any other new-invented characters of building might be regulated by proper principles. the mere ornaments of buildings, to be sure, at least might be allow'd a greater latitude than they are at present; as capitals, frizes, &c. in order to increase the beauty of variety. nature, in shells and flowers, &c. affords an infinite choice of elegant hints for this purpose; as the original of the corinthian capital was taken from nothing more, as is said, than some dock-leaves growing up against a basket. even a capital composed of the aukward and confin'd forms of hats and periwigs, as fig. [48 p. i] in a skilful hand might be made to have some beauty. [illustration: fig. 48] however, tho' the moderns have not made many additions to the art of building, with respect to mere beauty or ornament, yet it must be confess'd, they have carried simplicity, convenience, and neatness of workmanship, to a very great degree of perfection, particularly in england; where plain good sense hath prefer'd these more necessary parts of beauty, which every body can understand, to that richness of taste which is so much to be seen in other countries, and so often substituted in their room. st. paul's cathedral is one of the noblest instances that can be produced of the most judicious application of every principle that has been spoken of. there you may see the utmost variety without confusion, simplicity without nakedness, richness without taudriness, distinctness without hardness, and quantity without excess. whence the eye is entertain'd throughout with the charming variety of all its parts together; the noble projecting quantity of a certain number of them, which presents bold and distinct parts at a distance, when the lesser parts within them disappear; and the grand few, but remarkably well-varied parts that continue to please the eye as long as the object is discernable, are evident proofs of the superior skill of sir christopher wren, so justly esteem'd the prince of architects. it will scarcely admit of a dispute, that the outside of this building is much more perfect than that of st. peter's at rome: but the inside, though as fine and noble, as the space it stands on, and our religion will allow of, must give way to the splendor, shew, and magnificence of that of st. peter's, on account of the sculptures and paintings, as well as the greater magnitude of the whole, which makes it excel as to quantity. there are many other churches of great beauty, the work of the same architect, which are hid in the heart of the city, whose steeples and spires are raised higher than ordinary, that they may be seen at a distance above the other buildings; and the great number of them dispers'd about the whole city, adorn the prospect of it, and give it an air of opulence and magnificence: on which account their shapes will be found to be particularly beautiful. of these, and perhaps of any in europe, st. mary-le-bow is the most elegantly varied. st. bride's in fleet-street diminishes sweetly by elegant degrees, but its variations, tho' very curious when you are near them, not being quite so bold, and distinct, as those of bow, it too soon looses variety at a distance. some gothic spires are finely and artfully varied, particularly the famous steeple of strasburg. westminster-abbey is a good contrast to st. paul's, with regard to simplicity and distinctness, the great number of its filligrean ornaments, and small divided and subdivided parts appear confused when nigh, and are totally lost at a moderate distance; yet there is nevertheless such a consistency of parts altogether in a good gothic taste, and such propriety relative to the gloomy ideas, they were then calculated to convey, that they have at length acquir'd an establish'd and distinct character in building. it would be look'd upon as an impropriety and as a kind of profanation to build places for mirth and entertainment in the same taste. chapter ix. _of composition with the waving-line_. there is scarce a room in any house whatever, where one does not see the waving-line employ'd in some way or other. how inelegant would the shapes of all our moveables be without it? how very plain and unornamental the mouldings of cornices, and chimney-pieces, without the variety introduced by the _ogee_ member, which is entirely composed of waving-lines. [illustration: figs. 49 and 50] though all sorts of waving-lines are ornamental, when properly applied; yet, strictly speaking, there is but one precise line, properly to be called the line of _beauty_, which in the scale of them [fig. 49 t p. i] is number 4: the lines 5, 6, 7, by their bulging too much in their curvature becoming gross and clumsy; and, on the contrary, 3, 2, 1, as they straighten, becoming mean and poor; as will appear in the next figure [50 t p. i] where they are applied to the legs of chairs. [illustration: fig. 53] a still more perfect idea of the effects of the precise waving-line, and of those lines that deviate from it, may be conceived by the row of stays, figure [53 b p. i], where number 4 is composed of precise waving-lines, and is therefore the best shaped stay. every whale-bone of a good stay must be made to bend in this manner: for the whole stay, when put close together behind, is truly a shell of well-varied contents, and its surface of course a fine form; so that if a line, or the lace were to be drawn, or brought from the top of the lacing of the stay behind, round the body, and down to the bottom peak of the stomacher; it would form such a perfect, precise, serpentine-line, as has been shewn, round the cone, figure 26 in plate i.----for this reason all ornaments obliquely contrasting the body in this manner, as the ribbons worn by the knights of the garter, are both genteel and graceful. the numbers 5, 6, 7 and 3, 2, 1, are deviations into stiffness and meanness on one hand, and clumsiness and deformity on the other. the reasons for which disagreeable effects, after what has been already said, will be evident to the meanest capacity. [illustration: fig. 26] it may be worth our notice however, that the stay, number 2, would better fit a well-shaped man than number 4; and that number 4, would better fit a well-form'd woman, than number 2; and when on considering them, merely as to their forms, and comparing them together as you would two vases, it has been shewn by our principles, how much finer and more beautiful number 4 is, than number 2: does not this our determination enhance the merit of these principles, as it proves at the same time how much the form of a woman's body surpasses in beauty that of a man? from the examples that have been given, enough may be gathered to carry on our observations from them to any other objects that may chance to come in our way, either animate or inanimate; so that we may not only _lineally_ account for the ugliness of the toad, the hog, the bear, and the spider, which are totally void of this waving-line, but also for the different degrees of beauty belonging to those objects that possess it. chapter x. _of compositions with the serpentine-line_. the very great difficulty there is in describing this line, either in words, or by the pencil (as was hinted before, when i first mention'd it) will make it necessary for me to proceed very slowly in what i have to say in this chapter, and to beg the reader's patience whilst i lead him step by step into the knowledge of what i think the sublime in form, so remarkably display'd in the human body; in which, i believe, when he is once acquainted with the idea of them, he will find this species of lines to be principally concern'd. first, then, let him consider fig. [56 b p. ii], which represents a straight horn, with its contents, and he will find, as it varies like the cone, it is a form of some beauty, merely on that account. [illustration: fig. 56] next let him observe in what manner, and in what degree the beauty of this horn is increas'd, in fig. [57 b p. ii], where it is supposed to be bent two different ways. [illustration: fig. 57] and lastly, let him attend to the vast increase of beauty, even to grace and elegance, in the same horn, fig. [58 b p. ii], where it is supposed to have been twisted round, at the same time, that it was bent two different ways, (as in the last figure). [illustration: fig. 58] in the first of these figures, the dotted line down the middle expresses the straight lines of which it is composed; which, without the assistance of curve lines, or light and shade, would hardly shew it to have contents. the same is true of the second, tho' by the bending of the horn, the straight dotted line is changed into the beautiful waving-line. but in the last, this dotted line, by the twisting as well as the bending of the horn, is changed from the waving into the serpentine-line; which, as it dips out of sight behind the horn in the middle, and returns again at the smaller end, not only gives play to the imagination, and delights the eye, on that account; but informs it likewise of the quantity and variety of the contents. i have chosen this simple example, as the easiest way of giving a plain and general idea of the peculiar qualities of these serpentine-lines, and the advantages of bringing them into compositions, where the contents you are to express, admit of grace and elegance. and i beg the same things may be understood of these serpentine-lines, that i have said before of the waving-lines. for as among the vast variety of waving-lines that may be conceiv'd, there is but one that truly deserves the name of _the line of beauty_, so there is only one precise serpentine-line that i call _the line of grace_. yet, even when they are made too bulging, or too tapering, though they certainly lose of their beauty and grace, they do not become so wholly void of it, as not to be of excellent service in compositions, where beauty and grace are not particularly design'd to be express'd in their greatest perfection. though i have distinguish'd these lines so particularly as to give them the titles of _the lines of beauty and grace_, i mean that the use and application of them should still be confined by the principles i have laid down for composition in general; and that they should be judiciously mixt and combined with one another, and even with those i may term _plain_ lines, (in opposition to these) as the subject in hand requires. thus the cornu-copia, fig. [59 b p. ii], is twisted and bent after the same manner, as the last figure of the horn; but more ornamented, and with a greater number of other lines of the same twisted kind, winding round it with as quick returns as those of a screw. [illustration: fig. 59] this sort of form may be seen with yet more variations, (and therefore more beautiful) in the goat's horn, from which, in all probability, the ancients originally took the extremely elegant forms they have given their cornu-copias. there is another way of considering this last figure of the horn i would recommend to my reader, in order to give him a clearer idea of the use both of the waving and serpentine-lines in composition. this is to imagine the horn, thus bent and twisted, to be cut length-ways by a very fine saw into two equal parts; and to observe one of these in the same position the whole horn is represented in; and these two observations will naturally occur to him. first, that the edge of the saw must run from one end to the other of the horn in the line of beauty; so that the edges of this half of the horn will have a beautiful shape: and, secondly, that wherever the dotted serpentine-line on the surface of the whole horn dips behind, and is lost to the eye, it immediately comes into sight on the hollow surface of the divided horn. the use i shall make of these observations will appear very considerable in the application of them to the human form, which we are next to attempt. it will be sufficient, therefore, at present only to observe, first, that the whole horn acquires a beauty by its being thus genteely bent two different ways; secondly, that whatever lines are drawn on its external surface become graceful, as they must all of them, from the twist that is given the horn, partake in some degree or other, of the shape of the serpentine-line: and, lastly, when the horn is split, and the inner, as well as the outward surface of its shell-like form is exposed, the eye is peculiarly entertained and relieved in the pursuit of these serpentine-lines, as in their twistings their concavities and convexities are alternately offer'd to its view. hollow forms, therefore, composed of such lines are extremely beautiful and pleasing to the eye; in many cases more so, than those of solid bodies. almost all the muscles, and bones, of which the human form is composed, have more, or less of these kind of twists in them; and give in a less degree, the same kind of appearance to the parts which cover them, and are the immediate object of the eye: and for this reason it is that i have been so particular in describing these forms of the bent, and twisted, and ornamented horn. there is scarce a straight bone in the whole body. almost all of them are not only bent different ways, but have a kind of twist, which in some of them is very graceful; and the muscles annex'd to them, tho' they are of various shapes, appropriated to their particular uses, generally have their component fibres running in these serpentine-lines, surrounding and conforming themselves to the varied shape of the bones they belong to: more especially in the limbs. anatomists are so satisfied of this, that they take a pleasure in distinguishing their several beauties. i shall only instance in the thigh-bone, and those about the hips. [illustration: figs. 64 and 62] the thigh-bone fig. [62 r p. ii], has the waving and twisted turn of the horn, 58: but the beautiful bones adjoining, call'd the ossa innominata [fig. 60 b p. ii], have, with greater variety, the same turns and twists of that horn when it is cut; and its inner and outward surfaces are exposed to the eye. [illustration: figs. 60, 61 and 63] how ornamental these bones appear, when the prejudice we conceive against them, as being part of a skeleton, is taken off, by adding a little foliage to them, may be seen in fig. [61 b p. ii]----such shell-like winding forms, mixt with foliage, twisting about them, are made use of in all ornaments; a kind of composition calculated merely to please the eye. divest these of their serpentine twinings, and they immediately lose all grace, and return to the poor gothic taste they were in an hundred years ago [fig. 63 b p. ii]. [illustration: figs. 64 and 62] fig. [64 b p. ii] is meant to represent the manner, in which most of the muscles, (those of the limbs in particular) are twisted round the bones, and conform themselves to their length and shape; but with no anatomical exactness. as to the running of their fibres, some anatomists have compared them to skains of thread, loose in the middle, and tight at each end, which, when they are thus consider'd as twisted contrary ways round the bone, gives the strongest idea possible of a composition of serpentine-lines. [illustration: figs. 65, 66 and 67] of these fine winding forms then are the muscles and bones composed, and which, by their varied situations with each other, become more intricately pleasing, and form a continued waving of winding forms from one into the other, as may be best seen by examining a good anatomical figure, part of which you have here represented, in the muscular leg and thigh, fig. [65 p. i]: which shews the serpentine forms and varied situations of the muscles, as they appear when the skin is taken off. it was drawn from a plaster of paris figure cast off nature, the original of which was prepared for the mould by cowper, the famous anatomist. in this last figure, as the skin is taken off the parts are too distinctly traced by the eye, for that intricate delicacy which is necessary to the utmost beauty; yet the winding figures of the muscles, with the variety of their situations, must always be allow'd elegant forms: however, they lose in the imagination some of the beauty, which they really have, by the idea of their being flayed; nevertheless, by what has already been shewn both of them and the bones, the human frame hath more of its parts composed of serpentine-lines than any other object in nature; which is a proof both of its superior beauty to all others, and, at the same time, that its beauty proceeds from those lines: for although they may be required sometimes to be bulging in their twists, as in the thick swelling muscles of the hercules, yet elegance and greatness of taste is still preserved; but when these lines lose so much of their twists as to become almost straight, all elegance of taste vanishes. thus fig. [66 p. i], was also taken from nature, and drawn in the same position, but treated in a more dry, stiff, and what the painters call, _sticky manner_, than the nature of flesh is ever capable of appearing in, unless when its moisture is dryed away: it must be allowed, that the parts of this figure are of as right dimensions, and as truly situated, as in the former; it wants only the true twist of the lines to give it taste. to prove this further, and to put the mean effect of these plain or unvaried lines in a stronger light, see fig. [67 p. i], where, by the uniform, unvaried shapes and situation of the muscles, without so much as a waving-line in them, it becomes so wooden a form, that he that can fashion the leg of a joint-stool may carve this figure as well as the best sculptor. in the same manner, divest one of the best antique statues of all its serpentine winding parts, and it becomes from an exquisite piece of art, a figure of such ordinary lines and unvaried contents, that a common stone-mason or carpenter, with the help of his rule, calipers, and compasses, might carve out an exact imitation of it: and were it not for these lines a turner, in his lathe, might turn a much finer neck than that of the grecian venus, as according to the common notion of a beautiful neck, it would be more truly round. for the same reason, legs much swoln with disease, are as easy to imitate as a post, having lost their _drawing_, as the painters call it; that is, having their serpentine-lines all effaced, by the skin's being equally puffed up, as figure [68]. [illustration: fig. 68] if in comparing these three figures one with another, the reader, notwithstanding the prejudice his imagination may have conceiv'd against them, as anatomical figures, has been enabled only to perceive that one of them is not so disagreeable as the others; he will easily be led to see further, that this tendency to beauty in one, is not owing to any greater degree of exactness in the _proportions_ of its parts, but merely to the more _pleasing turns, and intertwistings of the lines,_ which compose its external form; for in all the three figures the same proportions have been observ'd, and, on that account, they have all an equal claim to beauty. and if he pursues this anatomical enquiry but a very little further, just to form a true idea of the elegant use that is made of the skin and fat beneath it, to conceal from the eye all that is hard and disagreeable, and at the same time to preserve to it whatever is necessary in the shapes of the parts beneath, to give grace and beauty to the whole limb: he will find himself insensibly led into the principles of that grace and beauty which is to be found in well-turn'd limbs, in fine, elegant, healthy life, or in those of the best antique statues; as well as into the reason why his eye has so often unknowingly been pleased and delighted with them. thus, in all other parts of the body, as well as these, wherever, for the sake of the necessary motion of the parts, with proper strength and agility, the insertions of the muscles are too hard and sudden, their swellings too bold, or the hollows between them too deep, for their out-lines to be beautiful; nature most judiciously softens these hardnesses, and plumps up these vacancies with a proper supply of fat, and covers the whole with the soft, smooth, springy, and, in delicate life, almost transparent skin, which, conforming itself to the external shape of all the parts beneath, expresses to the eye the idea of its contents with the utmost delicacy of beauty and grace. the skin, therefore, thus tenderly embracing, and gently conforming itself to the varied shapes of every one of the outward muscles of the body, soften'd underneath by the fat, where, otherwise, the same hard lines and furrows would appear, as we find come on with age in the face, and with labour, in the limbs, is evidently a shell-like surface (to keep up the idea i set out with) form'd with the utmost delicacy in nature; and therefore the most proper subject of the study of every one, who desires to imitate the works of nature, _as a master should do_, or to judge of the performances of others _as a real connoisseur ought_. i cannot be too long, i think, on this subject, as so much will be found to depend upon it; and therefore shall endeavour to give a clear idea of the different effect such anatomical figures have on the eye, from what the same parts have, when cover'd by the fat and skin; by supposing a small wire (that has lost its spring and so will retain every shape it is twisted into) to be held fast to the out-side of the hip (fig. 65. plate i) and thence brought down the other side of the thigh obliquely over the calf of the leg, down to the outward ancle (all the while press'd so close as to touch and conform itself to the shape of every muscle it passes over) and then to be taken off. if this wire be now examined it will be found that the general uninterrupted flowing twist, which the winding round the limbs would otherwise have given to it, is broken into little better than so many separate plain curves, by the sharp indentures it every where has receiv'd on being closely press'd in between the muscles. [illustration: figs. 65, 66 and 67] suppose, in the next place, such a wire was in the same manner twisted round a living well-shaped leg and thigh, or those of a fine statue; when you take it off you will find no such sharp indentures, nor any of those regular _engralings_ (as the heralds express it) which displeased the eye before. on the contrary, you will see how _gradually_ the changes in its shape are produced; how imperceptibly the different curvatures run into each other, and how easily the eye glides along the varied wavings of its sweep. to enforce this still further, if a line were to be drawn by a pencil exactly where these wires have been supposed to pass, the point of the pencil, in the muscular leg and thigh, would perpetually meet with stops and rubs, whilst in the others it would flow from muscle to muscle along the elastic skin, as pleasantly as the lightest skiff dances over the gentlest wave. this idea of the wire, retaining thus the shape of the parts it passes over, seems of so much consequence, that i would by no means have it forgot; as it may properly be consider'd as one of the threads (or outlines) of the shell (or external surface) of the human form: and the frequently recurring to it will assist the imagination in its conceptions of those parts of it, whose shapes are most intricately varied: for the same sort of observations may be made, with equal justice, on the shapes of ever so many such wires twisted in the same manner in ever so many directions over every part of a well made man, woman, or statue. and if the reader will follow in his imagination the most exquisite turns of the chisel in the hands of a master, when he is putting the finishing touches to a statue; he will soon be led to understand what it is the real judges expect from the hand of such a master, which the italians call, the little more, il poco piu, and which in reality distinguishes the original master-pieces at rome from even the best copies of them. an example or two will sufficiently explain what is here meant; for as these exquisite turns are to be found, in some degree of beauty or other, all over the whole surface of the body and limbs: we may by taking any one part of a fine figure (though so small a one that only a few muscles are express'd in it) explain the manner in which so much beauty and grace has been given to them, as to convince a skilful artist, almost at sight, that it must have been the work of a master. [illustration: fig. 76] i have chosen, for this purpose, a small piece of the body of a statue, fig. [76 t p. ii], representing part of the left side under the arm, together with a little of the breast, (including a very particular muscle, which, from the likeness its edges bear to the teeth of a saw, is, if consider'd by itself, void of beauty) as most proper to the point in hand, because this its regular shape more peculiarly requires the skill of the artist to give it a little more variety than it generally has, even in nature. [illustration: fig. 77] first, then, i will give you a representation of this part of the body, from an anatomical figure [fig. 77 t p. ii], to show what a sameness there is in the shapes of all the teeth-like insertions of this muscle; and how regularly the fibres, which compose it, follow the almost parallel out-lines of the ribs they partly cover. [illustration: fig. 78] from what has been said before of the use of the natural covering of the skin, &c. the next figure [78 t p. ii] will easily be understood to mean so tame a representation of the same part of the body, that tho' the hard and stiff appearance of the edges of this muscle is taken off by that covering, yet enough of its regularity and sameness remains to render it disagreeable. now as regularity and sameness, according to our doctrine, is want of elegance and true taste, we shall endeavour in the next place to show how this very part (in which the muscles take so very regular a form) may be brought to have as much variety as any other part of the body whatever. in order to this, though some alteration must be made in almost every part of it, yet it should be so inconsiderable in each, that no remarkable change may appear in the shape and situation of any. [illustration: figs. 79, 80 and 81] thus, let the parts mark'd 1, 2, 3, 4, (which appear so exactly similar in shape, and parallel in situation in the muscular figure 77) and not much mended in fig. 78, be first varied in their sizes, but not gradually from the uppermost to the lowest, as in fig. [79 t p. ii], nor alternately one long and one short, as in fig. [80 t p. ii], for in either of these cases there would still remain too great a formality. we should therefore endeavour, in the next place, to vary them every way in our power, without losing entirely the true idea of the parts themselves. suppose them then to have changed their situations a little, and slip'd beside each other irregularly, (some how as is represented in fig. [81 t p. ii], merely with regard to their situation) and the external appearance of the whole piece of the body, now under our consideration, will assume the more varied and pleasing form, represented in fig. 76, easily to be discern'd by comparing the three figures, 76, 77, 78, one with another; and it will as easily be seen, that were lines to be drawn, or wires to be bent, over these muscles, from one to the other, and so on to the adjoining parts; they would have a continued waving flow, let them pass in any direction whatever. the unskilful, in drawing these parts after the life, as their regularities are much more easily seen and copied than their fine variations, seldom fail of making them more regular and poor than they really appear even in a consumptive person. the difference will appear evident by comparing fig. 78, purposely drawn in this tasteless manner, with fig. 76. but will be more perfectly understood by examining this part in the torso of michael angelo [fig. 54 p. i], whence this figure was taken. [illustration: fig. 54] note, there are casts of a small copy of that famous trunk of a body to be had at almost every plaster-figure makers, wherein what has been here described may be sufficiently seen, not only in the part which figure 76 was taken from, but all over that curious piece of antiquity. i must here again press my reader to a particular attention to the windings of these superficial lines, even in their passing over every joint, what alterations soever may be made in the surface of the skin by the various bendings of the limbs: and tho' the space allow'd for it, just in the joints, be ever so small, and consequently the lines ever so short, the application of this principle of varying these lines, as far as their lengths will admit of, will be found to have its effect as gracefully as in the more lengthen'd muscles of the body. it should be observ'd in the fingers, where the joints are but short, and the tendons straight; and where beauty seems to submit, in some degree, to use, yet not so much but you trace in a full-grown taper finger, these little winding lines among the wrinkles, or in (what is more pretty because more simple) the dimples of the nuckles. as we always distinguish things best by seeing their reverse set in opposition with them; if fig. 82 t p. ii, by the straightness of its lines, shews fig. 83 t p. ii, to have some little taste in it, tho' it is so slightly sketch'd; the difference will more evidently appear when you in like manner compare a straight coarse finger in common life with the taper dimpled one of a fine lady. [illustration: figs. 82 and 83] there is an elegant degree of plumpness peculiar to the skin of the softer sex, that occasions these delicate dimplings in all their other joints, as well as these of the fingers; which so perfectly distinguishes them from those even of a graceful man; and which, assisted by the more soften'd shapes of the muscles underneath, presents to the eye all the varieties in the whole figure of the body, with gentler and fewer parts more sweetly connected together, and with such a fine simplicity as will always give the turn of the female frame, represented in the venus [fig. 13 p. i], the preference to that of the apollo [fig. 12 p. i]. [illustration: figs. 13 and 12] now whoever can conceive lines thus constantly flowing, and delicately varying over every part of the body even to the fingers ends, and will call to his remembrance what led us to this last description of what the italians call, il poco piu (_the little more_ that is expected from the hand of a master) will, in my mind, want very little more than what his own observation on the works of art and nature will lead him to, to acquire a true idea of the word _taste_, when applied to form; however inexplicable this word may hitherto have been imagined. we have all along had recourse chiefly to the works of the ancients, not because the moderns have not produced some as excellent; but because the works of the former are more generally known: nor would we have it thought, that either of them have ever yet come up to the utmost beauty of nature. who but a bigot, even to the antiques, will say that he has not seen faces and necks, hands and arms in living women, that even the grecian venus doth but coarsely imitate? and what sufficient reason can be given why the same may not be said of the rest of the body? chapter xi. _of proportion_. if anyone should ask, what it is that constitutes a fine-proportion'd human figure? how ready and seemingly decisive is the common answer: _a just symmetry and harmony of parts with respect to the whole_. but as probably this vague answer took its rise from doctrines not belonging to form, or idle schemes built on them, i apprehend it will cease to be thought much to the purpose after a proper enquiry has been made. preparatory to which, it becomes necessary in this place, to mention one reason more which may be added to those given in the introduction, for my having persuaded the reader to consider objects scoop'd out like thin shells; which is, that partly by this conception, he may be the better able to separate and keep asunder the two following _general ideas_, as we will call them, belonging to form; which are apt to coincide and mix with each other in the mind, and which it is necessary (for the sake of making each more fully and particularly clear) should be kept apart, and consider'd singly. first, the _general ideas_ of what hath already been discussed in the foregoing chapters, which only comprehends the surface of form, viewing it in no other light than merely as being ornamental or not. secondly, that _general idea_, now to be discussed, which we commonly have of form altogether, as arising chiefly from a fitness to some design'd purpose or use. hitherto our main drift hath been to establish and illustrate the first idea only, by shewing, first the nature of variety, and then its effects on the mind; with the manner how such impressions are made by means of the different feelings given to the eye, from its movements in tracing and coursing[5] over surfaces of all kinds. [5] see chapter v, page 25. the surface of a piece of ornament, that hath every turn in it that lines are capable of moving into, and at the same time no way applied, nor of any manner of use, but merely to entertain the eye, would be such an object as would answer to this first idea alone. the figure like a leaf, at the bottom of plate i, near to fig. 67, is something of this kind; it was taken from an ash-tree, and was a sort of lusus naturæ, growing only like an excressence, but so beautiful in the lines of its shell-like windings, as would have been above the power of a gibbons to have equalled, even in its own materials; nor could the graver of an edlinck, or drevet, have done it justice on copper. [illustration: fig. near fig. 67] note, the present taste of ornaments seems to have been partly taken from productions of this sort, which are to be found about autumn among plants, particularly asparagus, when it is running to seed. i shall now endeavour to explain what is included in what i have called for distinction sake, the second _general idea_ of form, in a much fuller manner than was done in chapter i, of fitness. and begin with observing, that though surfaces will unavoidably be still included, yet we must no longer confine ourselves to the particular notice of them as surfaces only, as we heretofore have done; we must now open our view to general, as well as particular bulk and solidity; and also look into what may have filled up, or given rise thereto, such as certain _given_ quantities and dimensions of parts, for inclosing any substance, or for performing of _motion, purchase, stedfastness,_ and other matters of use to living beings, which, i apprehend, at length, will bring us to a tolerable conception of the word _proportion_. as to these _joint-sensations_ of bulk and motion, do we not at first sight almost, even without making trial, seem to _feel_ when a leaver of any kind is too weak, or not long enough to make such or such a purchase? or when a spring is not sufficient? and don't we find by experience what weight, or dimension should be given, or taken away, on this or that account? if so, as the general as well as particular bulks of form, are made up of materials moulded together under mechanical directions, for some known purpose or other; how naturally, from these considerations, shall we fall into a judgment of _fit proportion_; which is one part of beauty to the mind tho' not always so to the eye. our necessities have taught us to mould matter into various shapes, and to give them fit proportions for particular uses, as bottles, glasses, knives, dishes, &c. hath not offence given rise to the form of the sword, and defence to that of the shield? and what else but proper fitness of parts hath fix'd the different dimensions of pistols, muskets, great guns, fowling-pieces and blunderbusses; which differences as to figure, may as properly be called the different characters of fire-arms, as the different shapes of men are called characters of men. we find also that the profuse variety of shapes, which present themselves from the whole animal creation, arise chiefly from the nice fitness of their parts, designed for accomplishing the peculiar movements of each. and here i think will be the proper place to speak of a most curious difference between the living machines of nature, in respect of fitness, and such poor ones, in comparison with them, as men are only capable of making; by means of which distinction, i am in hopes of shewing what particularly constitutes the utmost beauty of proportion in the human figure. a clock, by the government's order, has been made, and another now making, by mr. harrison, for the keeping of true time at sea; which perhaps is one of the most exquisite movements ever made. happy the ingenious contriver! although the form of the whole, or of every part of this curious machine, should be ever so confused, or displeasingly shaped to the eye; and although even its movements should be disagreeable to look at, provided it answers the end proposed. an ornamental composition was no part of his scheme, otherwise than as a pollish might be necessary. if ornaments are required to be added to mend its shape, care must be taken that they are no obstruction to the movement itself, and the more as they would be superfluous, as to the main design.--but in nature's machines, how wonderfully do we see beauty and use go hand in hand! had a machine for this purpose been nature's work, the whole and every individual part would have had exquisite beauty of form without danger of destroying the exquisiteness of its motion, even as if ornament had been the sole aim; its movements too would have been graceful, without one superfluous tittle added for either of these lovely purposes.--now this is that curious difference between the fitness of nature's machines (one of which is man) and those made by mortal hands: which distinction is to lead us to our main point proposed; i mean, to the shewing what constitutes the utmost beauty of proportion. there was brought from france some years ago, a little clock-work machine, with a duck's head and legs fixt to it, which was so contrived as to have some resemblance of that animal standing upon one foot, and stretching back its leg, turning its head, opening and shutting its bill, moving its wings, and shaking its tail; all of them the plainest and easiest directions in living movements: yet for the poorly performing of these few motions, this silly, but much extoll'd machine, being uncover'd, appeared a most complicated, confused, and disagreeable object: nor would its being covered with a skin closely adhering to its parts, as that of a real duck's doth, have much mended its figure; at best, a bag of hob-nails, broken hinges, and patten-rings, would have looked as well, unless by other means it had been stuffed out to bring it into form. thus again you see, the more variety we pretend to give to our trifling movements, the more confused and unornamental the forms become; nay chance but seldom helps them.--how much the reverse are nature's! the greater the variety her movements have, the more beautiful are the parts that cause them. the finny race of animals, as they have fewer motions than other creatures, so are their forms less remarkable for beauty. it is also to be noted of every species, that the handsomest of each move best: birds of a clumsy make seldom fly well, nor do lumpy fish glide so well through the water as those of a neater make; and beasts of the most elegant form, always excel in speed; of this, the horse and greyhound are beautiful examples: and even among themselves, the most elegantly made seldom fail of being the swiftest. the war-horse is more equally made for strength than the race-horse, which surplus of power in the former, if suppos'd added to the latter, as it would throw more weight into improper parts for the business of mere speed, so of course it would lessen, in some degree, that admirable quality, and partly destroy that delicate fitness of his make; but then a quality in movement, superior to that of speed, would be given to him by the addition, as he would be render'd thereby more fit to move with ease in such varied, or graceful directions, as are so delightful to the eye in the carriage of the fine manag'd war-horse; and as at the same time, something stately and graceful would be added to his figure, which before could only be said to have an elegant neatness. this noble creature stands foremost among brutes; and it is but consistent with nature's propriety, that the most useful animal in the brute-creation, should be thus signalized also for the most beauty. yet, properly speaking, no living creatures are capable of moving in such truly varied and graceful directions, as the human species; and it would be needless to say how much superior in beauty their forms and textures likewise are. and surely also after what has been said relating to figure and motion, it is plain and evident that nature has thought fit to make beauty of proportion, and beauty of movement, necessary to each other: so that the observation before made on animals, will hold equally good with regard to man: i. e. that he who is most exquisitely well-proportion'd is most capable of exquisite movements, such as ease and _grace in deportment_, or in dancing. it may be a sort of collateral confirmation of what has been said of this method of nature's working, as well as otherwise worth our notice, that when any parts belonging to the human body are conceal'd, and not immediately concern'd in movement, all such ornamental shapes, as evidently appear in the muscles and bones[6], are totally neglected as unnecessary, for nature doth nothing in vain! this is plainly the case of the intestines, none of them having the least beauty, as to form, except the _heart_; which noble part, and indeed kind of first mover, is a simple and well-varied figure; conformable to which, some of the most elegant roman urns and vases have been fashion'd. [6] see chapter ix on compositions with the serpentine-line. now, thus much being kept in remembrance, our next step will be to speak of, first, general measurements; such as the whole height of the body to its breadth, or the length of a limb to its thickness: and, secondly, of such appearances of dimensions as are too intricately varied to admit of a description by lines. the former will be confined to a very few straight lines, crossing each other, which will easily be understood by everyone; but the latter will require somewhat more attention, because it will extend to the precision of every modification, bound, or limit, of the human figure. to be somewhat more explicit. as to the first part, i shall begin with shewing what practicable sort of measuring may be used in order to produce the most proper variety in the proportions of the parts of any body. i say, _practicable_, because the vast variety of intricately situated parts, belonging to the human form, will not admit of measuring the distances of one part by another, by lines or points, beyond a certain degree or number, without great perplexity in the operation itself, or confusion to the imagination. for instance, say, a line representing one breadth and an half of the wrist, would be equal to the true breadth of the thickest part of the arm above the elbow; may it not then be ask'd, what part of the wrist is meant? for if you place a pair of calipers a little nearer or further from the hand, the distance of the points will differ, and so they will if they are moved close to the wrist all round, because it is flatter one way than the other; but suppose, for argument sake, one certain diameter should be fix'd upon; may it not again be ask'd, how is it to be apply'd, if to the flattest side of the arm or the roundest, and how far from the elbow, and must it be when the arm is extended or when it is bent? for this also will make a sensible difference, because in the latter position, the muscle, call'd the biceps, in the front of that part of the arm, swells up like a ball one way, and narrows itself another; nay all the muscles shift their appearances in different movements, so that whatever may have been pretended by some authors, no exact mathematical measurements by lines, can be given for the true proportion of a human body. [illustration: figs. 68 and 55] it comes then to this, that no longer than whilst we suppose all the lengths and breadths of the body, or limbs, to be as regular figures as cylinders, or as the leg, figure 68 in plate i, which is as round as a rolling-stone, are the measures of lengths to breadths practicable, or of any use to the knowledge of proportion: so that as all mathematical schemes are foreign to this purpose, we will endeavour to root them quite out of our way: therefore i must not omit taking notice, that albert durer, lomazzo, (see two tasteless figures taken from their books of proportion [fig. 55 p. i]) and some others, have not only puzzled mankind with a heap of minute unnecessary divisions, but also with a strange _notion_ that those divisions are govern'd by the laws of music; which mistake they seem to have been led into, by having seen certain uniform and consonant divisions upon one string produce harmony to the ear, and by persuading themselves, that similar distances in lines belonging to form, would, in like manner, delight the eye. the very reverse of which has been shewn to be true, in chapter iii, on uniformity. "the length of the foot," say they, "in respect to the breadth, makes a _double suprabipartient_, a _diapason_, and a _diatesseron_[7]:" which, in my opinion, would have been full as applicable to the ear, or to a plant, or to a tree, or any other form whatsoever; yet these sort of _notions_ have so far prevail'd by time, that the words, _harmony of parts_, seem as applicable to form, as to music. [7] note, these authors assure you, that this curious method of measuring, _will produce beauty far beyond any nature doth afford_. lomazzo, recommends also another scheme, with a triangle, to correct the _poverty of nature_, as they express themselves. these _nature-menders_ put one in mind of gulliver's tailor at laputa, who, having taken measure of him for a suit of clothes, with a rule, quadrant, and compasses, after a considerable time spent, brought them home ill-made. notwithstanding the absurdity of the above schemes, such measures as are to be taken from antique statues, may be of some service to painters and sculptors, especially to young beginners, but nothing nigh of such use to them, as the measures, taken the same way, from ancient buildings, have been, and are, to architects and builders; because the latter have to do with little else but plain geometrical figures: which measures, however, serve only in copying what has been done before. the few measures i shall speak of, for the setting out the general dimensions of a figure, shall be taken by straight lines only, for the more easy conception of what may indeed be properly call'd, _gaging the contents of the body_, supposing it solid like a marble statue, as the wires were described to do [fig. 2 p. i] in the introduction: by which plain method, clear ideas may be acquir'd of what _alone_ seem to me to require measuring, of what certain lengths to what breadths make the most eligible proportions in general. [illustration: fig. 2] the most general dimensions of a body, or limbs, are lengths, breadths, or thicknesses: now the whole gentility of a figure, according to its character, depends upon the first proportioning these lines or wires (which are its measures) properly one to another; and the more varied these lines are, with respect to each other, the more may the future divisions be varied likewise, that are to be made on them; and of course the less varied these lines are, the parts influenced by them, as they must conform themselves to them, must have less variety too. for example, the exact cross [fig. 69 r p. ii] of two equal lines, cutting each other in the middle, would confine the figure of a man, drawn conformable to them, to the disagreeable character of his being as broad as he is long. and the two lines crossing each other, to make the height and breadth of a figure, will want variety a contrary way, by one line being very short in proportion to the other, and therefore, also incapable of producing a figure of tolerable variety. to prove this, it will be very easy for the reader to make the experiment, by drawing a figure or two (tho' ever so imperfectly) confin'd within such limits. [illustration: fig. 69] there is a medium between these, proper for every character, which the eye will easily and accurately determine. [illustration: fig. 70] thus, if the lines, fig. [70 r p. ii], were to be the measure of the extreme length and breadth, set out either for the figure of a man or a vase, the eye soon sees the longest of these is not quite sufficiently so, in proportion to the other, for a genteel man; and yet it would make a vase too taper to be elegant; no rule or compasses would decide this matter either so quickly or so precisely as a good eye. it may be observed, that minute differences in great lengths, are of little or no consequence as to proportion, because they are not to be discerned; for a man is half an inch shorter when he goes to bed at night, than when he rises in the morning, without the possibility of its being perceived. in case of a wager the application of a rule or compasses may be necessary, but seldom on any other occasion. thus much i apprehend is sufficient for the consideration of general lengths to breadths. where, by the way, i apprehend i have plainly shewn, that there is no practicable rule, by lines, for minutely setting out proportions _for_ the human body, and if there were, the eye alone must determine us in our choice of what is most pleasing to itself. thus having dispatch'd general dimension, which we may say is almost as much of proportion, as is to be seen when we have our cloaths on: i shall in the second, and more extensive method proposed for considering it, set out in the familiar path of common observation, and appeal as i go on to our usual feeling, or joint-sensation, of figure and motion. perhaps by mentioning two or three known instances it will be found that almost every one is farther advanced in the knowledge of this speculative part of proportion than he imagines; especially he who hath been used to observe naked figures doing bodily exercise, and more especially if he be any way interested in the success of them; and the better he is acquainted with the nature of the exercise itself, still the better judge he becomes of the figure that is to perform it. for this reason, no sooner are two boxers stript to fight, but even a butcher, thus skill'd, shews himself a considerable critic in proportion; and on this sort of judgment, often gives, or takes the odds, at bare sight only of the combatants. i have heard a blacksmith harangue like an anatomist, or sculptor, on the beauty of a boxer's figure, tho' not perhaps in the same terms; and i firmly believe, that one of our common proficients in the athletic art, would be able to instruct and direct the best sculptor living, (who hath not seen, or is wholly ignorant of this exercise) in what would give the statue of an english-boxer, a much better proportion, as to character, than is to be seen, even in the famous group of antique boxers, (or as some call them, roman wrestlers) so much admired to this day. indeed, as many parts of the body are so constantly kept cover'd, the proportion of the whole cannot be equally known; but as stockings are so close and thin a covering, every one judges of the different shapes and proportions of legs with great accuracy. the ladies always speak skilfully of necks, hands, and arms; and often will point out such particular beauties or defects in their make, as might easily escape the observation of a man of science. surely, such determinations could not be made and pronounced with such critical truth, if the eye were not capable of measuring or judging of thicknesses by lengths, with great preciseness. nay more, in order to determine so nicely as they often do, it must also at the same time, trace with some skill those delicate windings upon the surface which have been described in page 64 and 65, which altogether may be observ'd to include the two general ideas mention'd at the beginning of this chapter. if so, certainly it is in the power of a man of science, with as observing an eye, to go still further, and conceive, with a very little turn of thought, many other necessary circumstances concerning proportion, as of what size and in what manner the bones help to make up the bulk, and support the other parts; as well as what certain weights or dimensions of muscles are proper (according to the principle of the steelyard) to move such or such a length of arm with this or that degree of swiftness or force. but though much of this matter, may be easily understood by common observation, assisted by science, still i fear it will be difficult to raise a very clear idea of what constitutes, or composes the _utmost beauty of proportion_; such as is seen in the antinous; which is allowed to be the most perfect in this respect, of any of the antique statues; and tho' the lovely likewise seems to have been as much the sculptor's aim, as in the venus; yet a manly strength in its proportion is equally express'd from head to foot in it. [illustration: fig. 6] let us try, however, and as this master-piece of art is so well known, we will set it up before us as a pattern, and endeavour to fabricate, or put together in the mind, such kind of parts as shall seem to build another figure like it. in doing which, we shall soon find that it is chiefly to be effected by means of the nice sensation we naturally have of what certain quantities or dimensions of parts, are fittest to produce the utmost strength for moving, or supporting great weights; and of what are most fit for the utmost light agility, as also for every degree, between these two extremes. he who hath best perfected his ideas of these matters by common observations, and by the assistance of arts relative thereto, will probably be most precisely just and clear, in conceiving the application of the various parts and dimensions, that will occur to him, in the following descriptive manner of disposing of them, in order to form the idea of a fine-proportion'd figure. having set up the antinous as our pattern, we will suppose there were placed on one side of it, the unwieldy elephant-like figure of an atlas, made up of such thick bones and muscles, as would best fit him for supporting a vast weight, according to his character of extreme heavy strength. and, on the other side, imagine the slim figure of a mercury, every where neatly formed for the utmost light agility, with slender bones and taper muscles fit for his nimble bounding from the ground.--both these figures must be supposed of equal height, and not exceeding six foot[8]. [8] if the scale of either of these proportions were to exceed six foot in the life, the quality of strength in one, and agility in the other, would gradually decrease, the larger the person grew. there are sufficient proofs of this, both from mechanical reasonings and common observation. our _extremes_ thus placed, now imagine the atlas throwing off by degrees, certain portions of bone and muscle, proper for the attainment of light agility, as if aiming at the mercury's airy form and quality, whilst on the other hand, see the mercury augmenting his taper figure by equal degrees, and growing towards an atlas in equal time, by receiving to the like places from whence they came, the very quantities that the other had been casting off, when, as they approach each other in weight, their forms of course may be imagined to grow more and more alike, till at a certain point of time, they meet in just similitude; which being an exact medium between the two extremes, we may thence conclude it to be the precise form of exact proportion, fittest for perfect active strength or graceful movement; such as the antinous we proposed to imitate and figure in the mind[9]. [9] the jocky who knows to an ounce what flesh or bone in a horse is fittest for speed or strength, will as easily conceive the like process between the strongest dray-horse and the fleetest racer, and soon conclude, that the fine war-horse must be the medium between the two extremes. i am apprehensive that this part of my scheme, for explaining exact proportion, may not be thought so sufficiently determinate as could be wished: be this as it will, i must submit it to the reader, as my best resource in so difficult a case: and shall therefore beg leave to try to illustrate it a little more, by observing, that, in like manner, any two opposite colours in the _rainbow_, form a third between them, by thus imparting to each other their peculiar qualities; as for example, the brightest yellow, and the lively blue that is placed at some distance from it, visibly approach, and blend by interchangable degrees, and, as above, _temper_ rather than destroy each other's vigour, till they meet in one firm compound; whence, at a certain point, the sight of what they were originally, is quite lost; but in their stead, a most pleasing green is found, which colour nature hath chose for the vestment of the earth, and with the beauty of which the eye is never tired. from the order of the ideas which the description of the above three figures may have raised in the mind, we may easily compose between them, various other proportions. and as the painter, by means of a certain order in the arrangement of the colours upon his pallet, readily mixes up what kind of tint he pleases, so may we mix up and compound in the imagination such fit parts as will be consistent with this or that particular character, or at least be able thereby to discover how such characters are composed, when we see them either in art or nature. but perhaps even the word _character, as it relates to form,_ may not be quite understood by every one, tho' it is so frequently used: nor do i remember to have seen it explained any where. therefore on this account--and also as it will further shew the use of thinking of form and motion together, it will not be improper to observe,--that notwithstanding a character, in this sense, chiefly depends on a figure being remarkable as to its form, either in some particular part, or altogether; yet surely no figure, be it ever so singular, can be perfectly conceived as a character, till we find it connected with some remarkable circumstance or cause, for such particularity of appearance; for instance, a fat bloted person doth not call to mind the character of a silenus, till we have joined the idea of voluptuousness with it; so likewise strength to support, and clumsiness of figure, are united, as well in the character of an atlas as in a porter. when we consider the great weight chairmen often have to carry, do we not readily consent that there is a propriety and fitness in the tuscan order of their legs, by which they properly become _characters_ as to figure? watermen too, are of a distinct cast, or character, whose legs are no less remarkable for their smallness: for as there is naturally the greatest call for nutriment to the parts that are most exercised, so of course these that lye so much stretched out, are apt to dwindle, or not grow to their full size. there is scarcely a waterman that rows upon the thames, whose figure doth not confirm this observation. therefore were i to paint the character of a charon, i would thus distinguish his make from that of a common man's; and, in spite of the word _low_, venture to give him a broad pair of shoulders, and spindle shanks, whether i had the authority of an antique statue, or basso-relievo, for it or not. may be, i cannot throw a stronger light on what has been hitherto said of proportion, than by animadverting on a remarkable beauty in the apollo-belvedere; which hath given it the preference even to the antinous: i mean a super-addition of _greatness_, to at least as much beauty and grace, as is found in the latter. these two master-pieces of art, are seen together in the same palace at rome, where the antinous fills the spectator with admiration only, whilst the apollo strikes him with surprise, and, as travellers express themselves, with an appearance of something _more than human_; which they _of course_ are always at a loss to describe: and this effect, they say, is the more astonishing, as upon examination its disproportion is evident even to a common eye. one of the best sculptors we have in england, who lately went to see them, confirm'd to me what has been now said, particularly as to the legs and thighs being too long, and too large for the upper parts. and andrea sacchi, one of the great italian painters, seems to have been of the same opinion, or he would hardly have given his apollo, crowning pasquilini the musician, the exact proportion of the antinous, (in a famous picture of his now in england) as otherwise it seems to be a direct copy from the apollo. although in very great works we often see an inferior part neglected, yet here it cannot be the case, because in a fine statue, just proportion is one of its essential beauties: therefore it stands to reason, that these limbs must have been lengthened on purpose, otherwise it might easily have been avoided. so that if we examine the beauties of this figure thoroughly, we may reasonably conclude, that what has been hitherto thought so unaccountably _excellent_ in its general appearance, hath been owing to what hath seem'd a _blemish_ in a part of it: but let us endeavour to make this matter as clear as possible, as it may add more force to what has been said. statues by being bigger than life, (as this is one, and larger than the antinous) always gain some nobleness in effect, according to the principle of quantity[10] but this alone is not sufficient to give what is properly to be called, _greatness_ in proportion; for were figures 17 and 18, in plate i, to be drawn or carved by a scale of ten feet high, they would still be but pigmy proportions, as, on the other hand, a figure of but two inches, may represent a gigantic height. [illustration: figs. 17 and 18] [10] see chapter vi. therefore _greatness_ of proportion must be considered, as depending on the application of _quantity_ to those parts of the body where it can give more scope to its grace in movement, as to the neck for the larger and swan-like turns of the head, and to the legs and thighs, for the more ample sway of all the upper parts together. by which we find that the antinous's being equally magnified to the apollo's height, would not sufficiently produce that superiority of effect, as to greatness, so evidently seen in the latter. the additions necessary to the production of this _greatness_ in proportion, as it there appears added to grace, must then be, by the proper application of them, to the parts mention'd only. i know not how further to prove this matter than by appealing to the reader's eye, and common observation, as before. the antinous being allowed to have the justest proportion possible, let us see what addition, upon the principle of quantity, can be made to it, without taking away any of its beauty. if we imagine an addition of dimensions to the head, we shall immediately conceive it would only deform--if to the hands or feet, we are sensible of something gross and ungenteel,--if to the whole lengths of the arms, we feel they would be dangling and aukward--if by an addition of length or breadth to the body, we know it would appear heavy and clumsy--there remains then only the _neck_, with the _legs_ and _thighs_ to speak of; but, to these we find, that not only certain additions may be admitted without causing any disagreeable effect, but that thereby _greatness_, the last perfection as to proportion, is given to the human form; as is evidently express'd in the apollo: and may still be further confirmed by examining the drawings of parmigiano, where these particulars are seen in excess; yet on this account his works are said, by all true connoisseurs, to have an inexpressible greatness of taste in them, though otherwise very incorrect. let us now return to the two general ideas we set out with at the beginning of this chapter, and recollect that under the first, on surface, i have shewn in what manner, and how far human proportion is measureable, by varying the contents of the body, conformable to the given proportion of two lines. and that under the second and more extensive general idea of form, as arising from fitness for movement, &c. i have endeavour'd to explain, by every means i could devise, that every particular and minute dimension of the body, should conform to such purposes of movement, &c. as have been first properly considered and determined: on which conjunctively, the true proportion of every character must depend; and is found so to do, by our joint-sensation of bulk and motion. which account of the proportion of the human body, however imperfect, may possibly stand its ground, till one more plausible shall be given. as the apollo [fig. 12 p. i] has been only mention'd on account of the greatness of its proportion, i think in justice to so fine a performance; and also as it is not foreign to the point we have been upon, we may subjoin an observation or two on its perfections. [illustration: fig. 12] besides, what is commonly allow'd, if we consider it by the rules here given for constituting or composing character, it will discover the author's great sagacity, in choosing a proportion for this deity, which has served two noble purposes at once; in that these very dimensions which appear to have given it so much dignity, are the same that are best fitted to produce the utmost speed. and what could characterise the god of day, either so strongly or elegantly, to be expressive in a statue, as superior swiftness, and beauty dignify'd? and how poetically doth the action it is put into, carry on the allusion to speed,[11] as he is lightly stepping forward, and seeming to shoot his arrows from him; if the arrows may be allowed to signify the sun's rays? this at least may as well be supposed as the common surmise, that he is killing the dragon, python; which certainly is very inconsistent with so erect an attitude, and benign an aspect[12]. [11]----the sun: which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course. psalm xix. 5. [12] the accounts given, in relation to this statue, make it so highly probable that it was the great apollo of delphos, that, for my own part, i make no manner of doubt of its being so. nor are the inferior parts neglected: the drapery also that depends from his shoulders, and folds over his extended arm, hath its treble office. as first, it assists in keeping the general appearance within the boundary of a pyramid, which being inverted, is, for a single figure, rather more natural and genteel than one upon its basis. secondly, it fills up the vacant angle under the arm, and takes off the straightness of the lines the arm necessarily makes with the body in such an action; and, lastly, spreading as it doth, in pleasing folds, it helps to satisfy the eye with a noble quantity in the composition altogether, without depriving the beholder of any part of the beauties of the naked: in short, this figure might serve, were a lecture to be read over it, to exemplify every principle that hath been hitherto advanced. we shall therefore close not only all we have to say on proportion with it, but our whole lineal account of form, except what we have particularly to offer as to the face; which it will be proper to defer, till we have spoken of _light_ and _shade_ and _colour_. as some of the ancient statues have been of such singular use to me, i shall beg leave to conclude this chapter with an observation or two on them in general. it is allowed by the most skilful in the imitative arts, that tho' there are many of the remains of antiquity, that have great excellencies about them; yet there are not, moderately speaking, above twenty that may be justly called _capital_. there is one reason, nevertheless, besides the blind veneration that generally is paid to antiquity, for holding even many very imperfect pieces in some degree of estimation: i mean that _peculiar taste of elegance_ which so visibly runs through them all, down to the most incorrect of their basso-relievos: which _taste_, i am persuaded, my reader will now conceive to have been entirely owing to the perfect knowledge the ancients must have had of the use of the precise serpentine-line. but this cause of _elegance_ not having been since sufficiently understood, no wonder such effects should have appear'd mysterious, and have drawn mankind into a sort of religious esteem, and even bigotry, to the works of antiquity. nor have there been wanting of artful people, who have made good profit of those whose unbounded admiration hath run them into enthusiasm. nay there are, i believe, some who still carry on a comfortable trade in such originals as have been so defaced and maimed by time, that it would be impossible, without a pair of _double-ground_ connoisseur-spectacles, to see whether they have ever been good or bad: they deal also in cook'd-up copies, which they are very apt to put off for originals. and whoever dares be bold enough to detect such impositions, finds himself immediately branded, and given out as one of low ideas, ignorant of the true sublime, self-conceited, envious, &c. but as there are a great part of mankind that delight most in what they least understand; for ought i know, the emolument may be equal between the _bubler_ and the _bubled_: at least this seems to have been butler's opinion: doubtless the pleasure is as great in being cheated, as to cheat. chapter xii. _of light and shade, and the manner in which objects are explained to the eye by them_. although both this and the next chapter may seem more particularly relative to the art of painting, than any of the foregoing; yet, as hitherto, i have endeavour'd to be understood by every reader, so here also i shall avoid, as much as the subject will permit, speaking of what would only be well-conceived by painters. there is such a subtile variety in the nature of appearances, that probably we shall not be able to gain much ground by this enquiry, unless we exert and apply the full use of every sense, that will convey to us any information concerning them. so far as we have already gone, the sense of feeling, as well as that of seeing, hath been apply'd to; so that perhaps a man born blind, may, by his better touch than is common to those who have their sight, together with the regular process that has been here given of lines, so feel out the nature of forms, as to make a tolerable judgment of what is beautiful to sight. here again our other senses must assist us, notwithstanding in this chapter we shall be more confined to what is communicated to the eye by rays of light; and tho' things must now be consider'd as appearances only; produced and made out merely by means of _lights, shades,_ and _colours_. by the various circumstances of which, every one knows we have represented on the flat surface of the looking-glass, pictures equal to the originals reflected by it. the painter too, by proper dispositions of lights, shades, and colours, on his canvas, will raise the like ideas. even prints, by means of lights and shades alone, will perfectly inform the eye of every shape and distance whatsoever, in which even lines must be consider'd as narrow parts of shade, a number of them, drawn or engrav'd neatly side by side, called _hatching_, serve as shades in prints, and when they are artfully managed, are a kind of pleasing _succedaneum_ to the delicacy of nature's. could mezzo-tinto prints be wrought as accurately as those with the graver, they would come nearest to nature, because they are done without strokes or lines. i have often thought that a landskip, in the process of this way of representing it, doth a little resemble the first coming on of day. the copper-plate it is done upon, when the artist first takes it into hand, is wrought all over with an edg'd-tool, so as to make it print one even black, like night: and his whole work after this, is merely introducing the lights into it; which he does by scraping off the rough grain according to his design, artfully smoothing it most where light is most required: but as he proceeds in burnishing the lights, and clearing up the shades, he is obliged to take off frequent impressions to prove the progress of the work, so that each proof appears like the different times of a foggy morning, till one becomes so finish'd as to be distinct and clear enough to imitate a day-light piece. i have given this description because i think the whole operation, in the simplest manner, shews what lights and shades alone will do. as light must always be supposed, i need only speak of such privations of it as are called shades or shadows, wherein i shall endeavour to point out and regularly describe a certain order and arrangement in their appearance, in which order we may conceive different kinds of softnings and modulations of the rays of light which are said to fall upon the eye from every object it sees, and to cause those more or less-pleasing vibrations of the optic nerves, which serve to inform the mind concerning every different shape or figure that presents itself. the best light for seeing the shadows of objects truly, is, that which comes in at a common sized window, where the sun doth not shine; i shall therefore speak of their order as seen by this kind of light: and shall take the liberty in the present and following chapter, to consider colours but as variegated shades, which together with common shades, will now be divided into two general parts or branches. the first we shall call prime tints, by which is meant any colour or colours on the surfaces of objects; and the use we shall make of these different hues will be to consider them as shades to one another. thus gold is a shade to silver, &c. exclusive of those additional shades which may be made in any degree by the privation of light. the second branch may be called retiring shades, which gradate or go off by degrees, as figs. [84 and 85 t p. ii]. these shades, as they vary more or less, produce beauty, whether they are occasioned by the privation of light, or made by the pencilings of art or nature. [illustration: figs. 84 and 85] when i come to treat of colouring, i shall particularly shew in what manner the gradating of prime tints serve to the making a beautiful complexion; in this place we shall only observe how nature hath by these gradating shades ornamented the surfaces of animals; fish generally have this kind of shade from their backs downward; birds have their feathers enriched with it; and many flowers, particularly the rose, shew it by the gradually-increasing colours of their leaves. the sky always gradates one way or other, and the rising or setting sun exhibits it in great perfection, the imitating of which was claud. de loraine's peculiar excellence, and is now mr. lambert's: there is so much of what is called harmony to the eye to be produced by this shade, that i believe we may venture to say, in art it is the painter's gamut, which nature has sweetly pointed out to us in what we call the eyes of a peacock's tail: and the nicest needle-workers are taught to weave it into every flower and leaf, right or wrong, as if it was as constantly to be observed as it is seen in flames of fire; because it is always found to entertain the eye. there is a sort of needle-work called irish-stitch, done in these shades only; which pleases still, tho' it has long been out of fashion. there is so strict an analogy between shade and sound, that they may well serve to illustrate each other's qualities: for as sounds gradually decreasing and increasing give the idea of progression from, or to the ear, just so do retiring shades shew progression, by figuring it to the eye. thus, as by objects growing still fainter, we judge of distances in prospects, so by the decreasing noise of thunder, we form the idea of its moving further from us. and with regard to their similitude in beauty, like as the gradating shade pleases the eye, so the increasing, or swelling note, delights the ear. i have call'd it the retiring shade, because by the successive, or continual change in its appearance, it is equally instrumental with converging lines[13], in shewing how much objects, or any parts of them, retire or recede from the eye; without which, a floor, or horizontal-plane, would often seem to stand upright like a wall. and notwithstanding all the other ways by which we learn to know at what distances things are from us, frequent deceptions happen to the eye on account of deficiencies in this shade: for if the light chances to be so disposed on objects as not to give this shade its true gradating appearance, not only spaces are confounded, but round things appear flat, and flat ones round. [13] see p. 17. the two converging lines from the ship, to the point c, under fig. 47, plate i. [illustration: fig. 94] but although the retiring shade hath this property, when seen with converging lines, yet if it describes no particular form, as none of those do in fig. 94, on top of plate ii, it can only appear as a flat-pencil'd shade; but being inclosed within some known boundary or out-line, such as may signify a wall, a road, a globe, or any other form in perspective where the parts retire, it will then shew its retiring quality: as for example, the retiring shade on the floor, in plate ii, which gradates from the dog's feet to those of the dancer's, shews, that by this means a level appearance is given to the ground: so when a cube is put into true perspective on paper, with lines only, which do but barely hint the directions every face of it is meant to take, these shades make them seem to retire just as the perspective lines direct; thus mutually compleating the idea of those recessions which neither of them alone could do. [illustration: gradated shade] moreover, the out-line of a globe is but a circle on the paper; yet, according to the manner of filling up the space within it, with this shade, it may be made to appear either flat, globular, or concave, in any of its positions with the eye; and as each manner of filling up the circle for those purposes must be very different, it evidently shews the necessity of distinguishing this shade into as many species or kinds, as there are classes or species of lines, with which they may have a correspondence. in doing which, it will be found, that, by their correspondency with, and conformity to objects, either composed of straight, curved, waving, or serpentine lines, they of course take such appearances of variety as are adequate to the variety made by those lines; and by this conformity of shades we have the same ideas of any of the objects composed of the above lines in their front aspects, as we have of them by their profiles; which otherwise could not be without feeling them. now instead of giving engraved examples of each species of shade, as i have done of lines, i have found that they may be more satisfactorily pointed out and described by having recourse to the life. but in order to the better and more precisely fixing upon what may be there seen, as the distinct species, of which all the shades of the retiring kind in nature partake, in some degree or other, the following scheme is offered, and intended as an additional means of making such simple impressions in the mind, as may be thought adequate to the four species of lines described in chapter vii. wherein we are to suppose imperceptible degrees of shade gradating from one figure to another. the first species to be represented by, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. the second by, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. and the third by, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. gradating from the dots underneath, repeated either way. as the first species varies or gradates but one way, it is therefore least ornamental, and equal only to straight lines. the second gradating contrary ways, doubling the others variety, is consequently twice as pleasing, and thereby equal to curved lines. the third species gradating doubly contrary ways, is thereby still more pleasing in proportion to that quadruple variety which makes it become capable of conveying to the mind an equivalent in shade, which expresses the beauty of the waving line, when it cannot be seen as a line. the retiring shade, adequate to the serpentine line, now should follow; but as the line itself could not be expressed on paper, without the figure of a cone [fig. 26 p. i], so neither can this shade be described without the assistance of a proper form, and therefore must be deferred a little longer. [illustration: fig. 26] when only the ornamental quality of shades is spoken of, for the sake of distinguishing them from retiring shades, let them be considered as pencilings only; whence another advantage will arise, which is, that then all the intervening mixtures, with their degrees of beauty between each species, may be as easily conceived, as those have been between each class of lines. and now let us have recourse to the experiments in life, for such examples as may explain the retiring power of each species; since, as has been before observed, they must be considered together with their proper forms, or else their properties cannot be well distinguished. all the degrees of obliquity that planes, or flat surfaces are capable of moving into, have their appearances of recession perfected by the first species of retiring shades, which may evidently be seen by setting opposite a door, as it is opening outwards from the eye, and fronting one light. but it will be proper to premise, that when it is quite shut, and flat or parallel to the eye and window, it will have only a penciling shade gradating upon it, and spreading all around from the middle, but which will not have the power of giving the idea of recession any way, as when it opens, and the lines run in perspective to a point; because the square figure or parallel lines of the door, do not correspond with such shade; but let a door be circular in the same situation, and all without side, or round about it, painted of any other colour, to make its figure more distinctly seen, and it will immediately appear concave like a bason, the shade continually retiring; because this circular species of shade would then be accompanied by its corresponding form, a circle[14]. [14] note, if the light were to come in at a very little hole not far from the door, so as to make the gradation sudden and strong, like what may be made with a small candle held near a wall or a wainscot, the bason would appear the deeper for it. note also, that when planes are seen parallel to the eye in open day-light, they have scarce any round gradating or penciling shade at all, but appear merely as uniform prime tints, because the rays of light are equally diffused upon them. nevertheless, give them but obliquity, they will more or less exhibit the retiring shade. but to return; we observ'd that all the degrees of obliquity in the moving of planes or flat surfaces, have the appearances of their recession perfected to the eye by the first species of retiring shade. for example, then; when the door opens, and goes from its parallel situation with the eye, the shade last spoken of, may be observed to alter and change its round gradating appearance, into that of gradating one way only; as when a standing water takes a current upon the least power given it to descend. note, if the light should come in at the door-way, instead of the window, the gradation then would be reversed but still the effect of recession would be just the same, as this shade ever complies with the perspective lines. in the next place, let us observe the _ovolo_, or quarter-round in a cornice, fronting the eye in like manner, by which may be seen an example of the second species; where, on its most projecting part, a line of light is seen, from whence these shades retire contrary ways, by which the curvature is understood. and, perhaps, in the very same cornice may be seen an example of the third species, in that ornamental member called by the architects _cyma recta_, or talon, which indeed is no more than a larger sort of waving or ogee moulding; wherein, by the convex parts gently gliding into the concave, you may see four contrasted gradating shades, shewing so many varied recessions from the eye; by which we are made as sensible of its waving form as if we saw the profile out-line of some corner of it, where it is miter'd, as the joiners term it. note, when these objects have a little gloss on them these appearances are most distinct. lastly, the serpentine shade may be seen (light and situation as before) by the help of the following figure, as thus; imagine the horn, figure 57, plate ii, to be of so soft a nature, that with the fingers only, it might be pressed into any shape; then beginning gently from the middle of the dotted line, but pressing harder and harder all the way up the lesser end, by such pressure there would be as much concave above, as would remain convex below, which would bring it equal in variety or beauty to the ogee moulding; but after this, by giving the whole a twist, like figure 58, these shades must unavoidably change their appearances, and in some measure, twist about as the concave and convex parts are twisted, and consequently thereby add that variety, which of course will give this species of shade, as much the preference to the foregoing, as forms composed of serpentine lines have, to those composed only of the waving. see chapter ix and chapter x. [illustration: figs. 57 and 58] i should not have given my reader the trouble of compleating, by the help of his imagination, the foregoing figure, but as it may contribute to the more ready and particular conception of that intricate variety which twisted figures give to this species of shade, and to facilitate his understanding the cause of its beauty, wherever it may be seen on surfaces of ornament, when it will be found no where more conspicuous than in a fine face, as will be seen upon further enquiry. the dotted line [fig. 97 b p. i], which begins from the concave part, under the arch of the brow, near the nose, and from thence winding down by the corner of the eye, and there turning obliquely with the round of the cheek, shews the course of that twist of shades in a face, which was before described by the horn; and which may be most perfectly seen in the life, or in a marble busto, together with the following additional circumstances still remaining to be described. [illustration: fig. 97] as a face is for the most part round, it is therefore apt to receive reflected light on its shadowy side[15], which not only adds more beauty by another pleasing tender gradation, but also serves to distinguish the roundness of the cheeks, &c. from such parts as sink and fall in: because concavities do not admit of reflections, as convex forms do[16]. [15] note, though i have advised the observing objects by a front light, for the sake of the better distinguishing our four fundamental species of shades, yet objects in general are more advantagiously, and agreeably seen by light coming side-ways upon them, and therefore generally chose in paintings; as it gives an additional reflected softness, not unlike the gentle tone of an echo in music. [16] as an instance that convex and concave would appear the same, if the former were to have no reflection thrown upon, observe the ovolo and cavetto, or channel, in a cornice, placed near together, and seen by a front light, when they will each of them, by turns, appear either concave, or convex, as fancy shall direct. i have now only to add, that as before observed, chapter iv, page 23, that the oval hath a noble simplicity in it, more equal to its variety than any other object in nature; and of which the general form of a face is composed; therefore, from what has been now shewn, the general gradation-shade belonging to it, must consequently be adequate thereto, and which evidently gives a delicate softness to the whole composition of a face; insomuch that every little dent, crack, or scratch, the form receives, its shadows also suffer with it, and help to shew the blemish. even the least roughness interrupts and damages that soft gradating play of shades which fall upon it. mr. dryden, describing the light and shades of a face, in his epistle to sir godfrey kneller the portrait painter, seems, by the penetration of his incomparable genius, to have understood that language in the works of nature, which the latter, by means of an exact eye and a strict obeying hand, could only faithfully transcribe; when he says, where light to shades descending, plays, not strives, dies by degrees, and by degrees revives. chapter xiii. _of composition with regard to light, shade and colours_. under this head i shall attempt shewing what it is that gives the appearance of that hollow or vacant space in which all things move so freely; and in what manner light, shade and colours, mark or point out the distances of one object from another, and occasion an agreeable play upon the eye, called by the painters a fine keeping, and pleasing composition of light and shade. herein my design is to consider this matter as a performance of nature _without_, or before the eye; i mean, as if the objects with their shades, &c. were in fact circumstanced as they appear, and as the unskill'd in optics take them to be. and let it be remarked throughout this chapter, that the pleasure arising from composition, as in a fine landskip, &c. is chiefly owing to the dispositions and assemblages of light and shades, which are so order'd by the principles called opposition, breadth and simplicity, as to produce a just and distinct perception of the objects before us. experience teaches us that the eye may be subdued and forced into forming and disposing of objects even quite contrary to what it would naturally see them, by the prejudgment of the mind from the better authority of feeling, or some other persuasive motive. but surely this extraordinary perversion of the sight would not have been suffer'd, did it not tend to great and necessary purposes, in rectifying some deficiencies which it would otherwise be subject to (tho' we must own at the same time, that the mind itself may be so imposed upon as to make the eye see falsely as well as truly) for example, were it not for this controul over the sight, it is well known, that we should not only see things double, but upside down, as they are painted upon the retina, and as each eye has a distinct sight. and then as to distances; a fly upon a pane of glass is sometimes imagined a crow, or larger bird afar off, till some circumstance hath rectified the mistake, and convinced us of its real size and place. hence i would infer, that the eye generally gives its assent to such space and distances as have been first measured by the feeling, or otherwise calculated in the mind: which measurements and calculations are equally, if not more, in the power of a blind man, as was fully experienced by that incomparable mathematician and wonder of his age, the late professor sanderson. by pursuing this observation on the faculties of the mind, an idea may be formed of the means by which we attain to the perception or appearance of an immense space surrounding us; which cavity, being subject to divisions and subdivisions in the mind, is afterwards fashioned by the limited power of the eye, first into a hemisphere, and then into the appearance of different distances, which are pictured to it by means of such dispositions of light and shade as shall next be described. and these i now desire may be looked upon, but as so many _marks_ or _types_ set upon these distances, and which are remember'd and learnt by degrees, and when learnt, are recurred to upon all occasions. if permitted then to consider light and shades as _types of distinction_, they become, as it were, our materials, of which _prime tints_ are the principal; by these, i mean the fixed and permanent colours of each object, as the green of trees, &c. which serve the purposes of separating and relieving the several objects by the different strengths or shades of them being opposed to each other [fig. 86 t p. ii]. [illustration: fig. 86] the other shades that have been before spoken of, serve and help to the like purposes when properly opposed; but as in nature they are continually fleeting and changing their appearances, either by our or their situations, they sometimes oppose and relieve, and sometimes not, as for instance; i once observed the tower-part of a steeple so exactly the colour of a light cloud behind it, that, at the distance i stood, there was not the least distinction to be made, so that the spire (of a lead-colour) seemed suspended in the air; but had a cloud of the like tint with the steeple, supplied the place of the white one, the tower would then have been relieved and distinct, when the spire would have been lost to the view. nor is it sufficient that objects are of different colours or shades, to shew their distances from the eye, if one does not in part hide or lay over the other, as in fig. 86. [illustration: fig. 90] for as fig. [90 t p. ii] the two equal balls, tho' one were black and the other white, placed on the separate walls, supposed distant from each other twenty or thirty feet, nevertheless, may seem both to rest upon one, if the tops of the walls are level with the eye; but when one ball hides part of the other, as in the same figure, we begin to apprehend they are upon different walls, which is determin'd by the perspective[17]: hence you will see the reason, why the steeple of bloomsbury-church, in coming from hampstead, seems to stand upon montague-house, tho' it is several hundred yards distant from it. [17] the knowledge of perspective is no small help to the seeing objects truly, for which purpose dr. brook taylor's linear perspective made easy to those who are unacquainted with geometry, proposed to be publish'd soon by mr. kirby of ipswich, may be of most service. since then the opposition of one prime tint or shade to another, hath so great a share in marking out the recessions, or distances in a prospect, by which the eye is led onward step by step, it becomes a principle of consequence enough to be further discussed, with regard to the management of it in compositions of nature, as well as art. as to the management of it, when seen only from one point, the artist hath the advantage over nature, because such fix'd dispositions of shades as he hath artfully put together, cannot be displaced by the alteration of light, for which reason, designs done in two prime tints only, will sufficiently represent all those recessions, and give a just keeping to the representation of a prospect, in a print; whereas, the oppositions in nature, depending, as has been before hinted, on accidental situations and uncertain incidents, do not always make such pleasing composition, and would therefore have been very often deficient, had nature worked in two colours only; for which reason she hath provided an infinite number of materials, not only by way of prevention, but to add lustre and beauty to her works. by an infinite number of materials, i mean colours and shades of all kinds and degrees; some notion of which variety may be formed by supposing a piece of white silk by several dippings gradually dyed to a black; and carrying it in like manner through the prime tints of yellow, red, and blue; and then again, by making the like progress through all the mixtures that are to be made of these three original colours. so that when we survey this infinite and immense variety, it is no wonder, that, let the light or objects be situated or changed how they will, oppositions seldom miss; nor that even every incident of shade should sometimes be so completely disposed as to admit of no further beauty, as to composition; and from whence the artist hath by observation taken his principles of imitation, as in the following respect. [illustration: fig. 89] those objects which are intended most to affect the eye, and come forwardest to the view, must have large, strong, and smart oppositions, like the fore-ground in fig. [89 p. ii], and what are designed to be thrown further off, must be made still weaker and weaker, as expressed in figures 86, 92, and 93, which receding in order make a kind of gradation of oppositions; to which, and all the other circumstances already described, both for recession, and beauty, nature hath added what is known by the name of aerial perspective; being that interposition of air, which throws a general soft retiring tint over the whole prospect; to be seen in excess at the rising of a fog. all which again receives still more distinctness, as well as a greater degree of variety, when the sun shines bright, and casts broad shadows of one object upon another; which gives the skilful designer such hints for shewing broad and fine oppositions of shades, as give life and spirit to his performances. [illustration: figs. 92 and 93] breadth of shade is a principle that assists in making distinction more conspicuous; thus fig. [87 p. i], is better distinguish'd by its breadth or quantity of shade, and view'd with more ease and pleasure at any distance, than fig. [88 p. i], which hath many, and these but narrow shades between the folds. and for one of the noblest instances of this, let windsor-castle be viewed at the rising or setting of the sun. [illustration: figs. 87 and 88] let breadth be introduced how it will, it always gives great repose to the eye; as on the contrary, when lights and shades in a composition are scattered about in little spots, the eye is constantly disturbed, and the mind is uneasy, especially if you are eager to understand every object in the composition, as it is painful to the ear when any one is anxious to know what is said in company, where many are talking at the same time. simplicity (which i am last to speak of) in the disposition of a great variety, is best accomplished by following nature's constant rule, of dividing composition into three or five parts, or parcels, see chapter iv on simplicity: the painters accordingly divide theirs into fore-ground, middle-ground, and distance or back-ground; which simple and distinct quantities _mass_ together that variety which entertains the eye; as the different parts of base, tenor, and treble, in a composition in music, entertain the ear. let these principles be reversed, or neglected, the the light and shade will appear as disagreeable as fig. [91 t p. ii], whereas, was this to be a composition of lights and shades only, properly disposed, tho' ranged under no particular figures, it might still have the pleasing effect of a picture. and here, as it would be endless to enter upon the different effects of lights and shades on lucid and transparent bodies, we shall leave them to the reader's observation, and so conclude this chapter. [illustration: fig. 91] chapter xiv. _of colouring_. by the beauty of colouring, the painters mean that disposition of colours on objects, together with their proper shades, which appear at the same time both distinctly varied and artfully united, in compositions of any kind; but, by way of pre-eminence, it is generally understood of flesh-colour, when no other composition is named. to avoid confusion, and having already said enough of retiring shades, i shall now only describe the nature and effect of the prime tint of flesh; for the composition of this, when rightly understood, comprehends every thing that can be said of the colouring of all other objects whatever. and herein (as has been shewn in chapter viii, of the manner of composing pleasing forms) the whole process will depend upon the art of varying; i. e. upon an artful manner of varying every colour belonging to flesh, under the direction of the six fundamental principles there spoken of. but before we proceed to shew in what manner these principles conduce to this design, we shall take a view of nature's curious ways of producing all sorts of complexions, which may help to further our conception of the principles of varying colours, so as to see why they cause the effect of beauty. it is well known, the fair young girl, the brown old man, and the negro; nay, all mankind, have the same appearance, and are alike disagreeable to the eye, when the upper skin is taken away: now to conceal so disagreeable an object, and to produce that variety of complexions seen in the world, nature hath contrived a transparent skin, called the cuticula, with a lining to it of a very extraordinary kind, called the cutis; both which are so thin any little scald will make them blister and peel off. these adhering skins are more or less transparent in some parts of the body than in others, and likewise different in different persons. the cuticula alone is like gold-beaters-skin, a little wet, but somewhat thinner, especially in fair young people, which would shew the fat, lean, and all the blood-vessels, just as they lie under it, as through isinglass, were it not for its lining the cutis, which is so curiously constructed, as to exhibit those things beneath it which are necessary to life and motion, in pleasing arrangements and dispositions of beauty. the cutis is composed of tender threads like network, fill'd with different colour'd juices. the white juice serves to make the very fair complexion;--yellow, makes the brunnet;--brownish yellow, the ruddy brown;--green yellow, the olive;--dark brown, the mulatto;--black, the negro;--these different colour'd juices, together with the different _meshes_ of the network, and the size of its threads in this or that part, causes the variety of complexions. a description of this manner of its shewing the rosy colour of the cheek, and, in like manner, the bluish tints about the temple, &c. see in the profile [fig. 95 t p. ii], where you are to suppose the black strokes of the print to be the white threads of the network, and where the strokes are thickest, and the part blackest, you are to suppose the flesh would be whitest; so that the lighter part of it stands for the vermilion-colour of the cheek, gradating every way. [illustration: fig. 95] some persons have the network so equally wove over the whole body, face and all, that the greatest heat or cold will hardly make them change their colour; and these are seldom seen to blush, tho' ever so bashful, whilst the texture is so fine in some young women, that they redden, or turn pale, on the least occasion. i am apt to think the texture of this network is of a very tender kind, subject to damage many ways, but able to recover itself again, especially in youth. the fair fat healthy child of 3 or 4 years old hath it in great perfection; most visible when it is moderately warm, but till that age somewhat imperfect. it is in this manner, then, that nature seems to do her work.--and now let us see how by art the like appearance may be made and penciled on the surface of a uniform coloured statue of wax or marble; by describing which operation we shall still more particularly point out what is to our present purpose: i mean the reason why the order nature hath thus made use of should strike us with the idea of beauty; which by the way, perhaps may be of more use to some painters than they will care to own. [illustration: fig. 94] there are but three original colours in painting besides black and white, viz. red, yellow and blue. green, and purple, are compounded; the first of blue and yellow, the latter of red and blue: however these compounds being so distinctly different from the original colours, we will rank them as such. fig. [94 t p. ii], represents mixt up, as on a painter's pallet, scales of these five original colours divided into seven classes--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.--4, is the medium, and most brillant class, being that which will appear a firm red, when those of 5, 6, 7, would deviate into white, and those of 1, 2, 3, would sink into black, either by twilight or at a moderate distance from the eye, which shews 4 to be brightest, and a more permanent colour than the rest. but as white is nearest to light it may be said to be equal if not superior in value as to beauty, with class 4. therefore the classes 5, 6, 7, have also, almost equal beauty with it too, because what they lose of their brillancy and permanency of colour, they gain from the white or light; whereas 3, 2, 1, absolutely lose their beauty by degrees as they approach nearer to black, the representative of darkness. let us then, for distinction and pre-eminence sake, call class 4 of each colour, _bloom tints_, or if you please, virgin tints, as the painters call them; and once more recollect, that in the disposition of colours as well as of forms, variety, simplicity, distinctness, intricacy, uniformity and quantity, direct in giving beauty to the colouring of the human frame, especially if we include the face, where uniformity and strong opposition of tints are required, as in the eyes and mouth, which call most for our attention. but for the general hue of flesh now to be described, variety, intricacy and simplicity, are chiefly required. the value of the degrees of colour being thus consider'd and ranged in order upon the pallet, figure 94, let us next apply them to a busto, fig. [96 r p. ii], of white marble, which may be supposed to let every tint sink into it, like as a drop of ink sinks in and spreads itself upon course paper, whereby each tint will gradate all around. [illustration: fig. 96] if you would have the neck of the busto tinged of a very florid and lively complexion, the pencil must be dipt in the bloom tints of each colour as they stand one above another at no. 4.--if for a less florid, in those of no. 5--if for a very fair, from no. 6--and so on till the marble would scarce be ting'd at all: let therefore no. 6, be our present choice, and begin with penciling on the red, as at r, the yellow tint at y, the blue tint at b, and the purple or lake tint at p. these four tints thus laid on, proceed to covering the whole neck and breast, but still changing and varying the situations of the tints with one another, also causing their shapes and sizes to differ as much as possible; red must be oftenest repeated, yellow next often, purple red next, and blue but seldom, except in particular parts as the temples, backs of the hands, &c. where the larger veins shew their branching shapes (sometimes too distinctly) still varying those appearances. but there are no doubt infinite variations in nature, from what may be called the most beautiful order and disposition of the colours in flesh, not only in different persons, but in different parts of the same, all subject to the same principles in some degree or other. now if we imagine this whole process to be made with the tender tints of class 7, as they are supposed to stand, red, yellow, blue, green and purple, underneath each other; the general hue of the performance will be a seeming uniform prime tint, at any little distance, that is a very fair, transparent and pearl-like complexion; but never quite uniform as snow, ivory, marble or wax, like a poet's mistress, for either of these in living-flesh, would in truth be hideous. as in nature, by the general yellowish hue of the cuticula, the gradating of one colour into another appears to be more delicately soften'd and united together; so will the colours we are supposed to have been laying upon the busto, appear to be more united and mellowed by the oils they are ground in, which takes a yellowish cast after a little time, but is apt to do more mischief hereby than good; for which reason care is taken to procure such oil as is clearest, and will best keep its colour[18] in oil painting. [18] notwithstanding the deep-rooted notion, even among the majority of painters themselves, that time is a great improver of good pictures, i will undertake to shew, that nothing can be more absurd. having mention'd above the whole effect of the oil, let us now see in what manner time operates on colours themselves; in order to discover if any changes in them can give a picture more union and harmony than has been in the power of a skilful master, with all his rules of art, to do. when colours change at all it must be somewhat in the manner following, for as they are made some of metal, some of earth, some of stone, and others of more perishable materials, time cannot operate on them otherwise than as by daily experience we find it doth, which is, that one changes darker, another lighter, one quite to a different colour, whilst another, as ultramarine, will keep its natural brightness even in the fire. therefore how is it possible that such different materials, ever variously changing (visibly after a certain time) should accidentally coincide with the artist's intention, and bring about the greater harmony of the piece, when it is manifestly contrary to their nature, for do we not see in most collections that much time disunites, untunes, blackens, and by degrees destroys even the best preserved pictures. but if for argument sake we suppose, that the colours were to fall equally together, let us see what advantage this would give to any sort of composition. we will begin with a flower-piece: when a master hath painted a rose, a lily, an african, a gentianella, or violet, with his best art, and brightest colours, how far short do they fall of the freshness and rich brillancy of nature; and shall we wish to see them fall still lower, more faint, sullied, and dirtied by the hand of time, and then admire them as having gained an additional beauty, and call them mended and heightened, rather than fouled, and in a manner destroy'd; how absurd! instead of mellow and softened therefore, always read yellow and sullied, for this is doing time the destroyer, but common justice. or shall we desire to see complexions, which in life are often, literally, as brillant as the flowers above-mention'd, served in the like ungrateful manner. in a landskip, will the water be more transparent, or the sky shine with a greater lustre when embrown'd and darken'd by decay? surely no. i own it would be a pity that mr. addison's beautiful description of time at work in the gallery of pictures, and the following lines of mr. dryden, should want a sufficient foundation;- for time shall with his ready pencil stand, retouch your figures with his ripening hand; mellow your colours, and imbrown the tint; add every grace which time alone can grant; to future ages shall your fame convey, and give more beauties than he takes away. dryden to kneller. were it not that the error they are built upon, hath been a continual blight to the growth of the art, by misguiding both the proficient, and the encourager; and often compelling the former, contrary to his judgment, to imitate the damaged hue of decayed pictures; so that when his works undergo the like injuries, they must have a double remove from nature; which puts it in the power of the meanest observer to see his deficiencies. whence another absurd notion hath taken rise, viz. that the colours now-a-days do not stand so well as formerly; whereas colours well prepared, in which there is but little art or expence, have, and will always have, the same properties in every age, and without accidents, as damps, bad varnish, and the like (being laid separate and pure,) will stand and keep together for many years in defiance of time itself. in proof of this, let any one take a view of the cieling at greenwich-hospital, painted by sir james thornhil, forty years ago, which still remains fresh, strong and clear as if it had been finished but yesterday: and altho' several french writers have so learnedly, and philosophically proved, that the air of this island is too thick, or--too something, for the genius of a painter; yet france in all her palaces can hardly boast of a nobler, more judicious, or richer performance of its kind. note, the upper end of the hall where the royal family is painted, was left chiefly to the pencil of mr. andrea a foreigner, after the payment originally agreed upon for the work was so much reduced, as made it not worth sir james's while to finish the whole with his own more masterly hand. upon the whole of this account we find, that the utmost beauty of colouring depends on the great principle of varying by all the means of varying, and on the proper and artful union of that variety; which may be farther proved by supposing the rules here laid down, all or any part of them reversed. i am apt to believe, that the not knowing nature's artful, and intricate method of uniting colours for the production of the variegated composition, or prime tint of flesh, hath made colouring, in the art of painting, a kind of mystery in all ages; insomuch, that it may fairly be said, out of the many thousands who have labour'd to attain it, not above ten or twelve painters have happily succeeded therein, corregio (who lived in a country-village, and had nothing but the life to study after) is said almost to have stood alone for this particular excellence. guido, who made beauty his chief aim, was always at a loss about it. poussin scarce ever obtained a glimpse of it, as is manifest by his many different attempts: indeed france hath not produced one remarkably good colourist[19]. [19] the lame excuse writers on painting have made for the many great masters that have fail'd in this particular, is, that they purposely deaden'd their colours, and kept them, what they affectedly call'd _chaste_, that the correctness of their outlines might be seen to greater advantage. whereas colours cannot be too brillant if properly disposed, because the distinction of the parts are thereby made more perfect; as may be seen by comparing a marble busto with the variegated colours of the face either in the life, or well painted: it is true, uncomposed variety, either in the features or the limbs, as being daubed with many, or one colour, will so confound the parts as to render them unintelligible. rubens boldly, and in a masterly manner, kept his bloom tints bright, separate, and distinct, but sometimes too much so for easel or cabinet pictures; however, his manner was admirably well calculated for great works, to be seen at a considerable distance, such as his celebrated cieling at whitehall-chapel[20]: which upon a nearer view, will illustrate what i have advanc'd with regard to the separate brightness of the tints; and shew, what indeed is known to every painter, that had the colours there seen so bright and separate, been all smooth'd and absolutely blended together, they would have produced a dirty grey instead of flesh-colour. the difficulty then lies in bringing _blue_ the third original colour, into flesh, on account of the vast variety introduced thereby; and this omitted, all the difficulty ceases; and a common sign-painter that lays his colours smooth, instantly becomes, in point of colouring, a rubens, a titian, or a corregio. [20] the front of this building by inigo jones, is an additional exemplification of the principles for varying the parts in building; (explained by the candlesticks, &c. chapter viii) which would appear to be a stronger proof still, were a building formed of squares, on squares; with squares uniformly cut in each square to be opposed to it, to shew the reverse. chapter xv. _of the face_. having thus spoken briefly of light, shade, and colour, we now return to our lineal account of form, as proposed (page 91) with regard to the face. it is an observation, that, out of the great number of faces that have been form'd since the creation of the world, no two have been so exactly alike, but that the usual and common discernment of the eye would discover a difference between them: therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose, that this discernment is still capable of further improvements by instructions from a methodical enquiry; which the ingenious mr. richardson, in his treatise on painting, terms _the art of seeing_. [illustration: fig. 97] 1. i shall begin with a description of such lines as compose the features of a face of the highest taste, and the reverse. see fig. [97, b p. i], taken from an antique head, which stands in the first rank of estimation: in proof of this, raphael urbin, and other great painters and sculptors, have imitated it for the characters of their heroes and other great men; and the old man's head, fig. [98, l p. i] was model'd in clay, by fiamingo (and not inferior in its taste of lines, to the best antique) for the use of andrea sacchi, after which model he painted all the heads in his famous picture of st. romoaldo's dream; and this picture hath the reputation of being one of the best pictures in the world[21]. [21] note, i must refer the reader to the casts of both these pieces of sculpture, which are to be found in the hands of the curious; because it is impossible to express all that i intend, with sufficient accuracy, in a print of this size, whatever pains might have been taken with it; or indeed in any print were it ever so large. [illustration: fig. 98] these examples are here chosen to exemplify and confirm the force of serpentine lines in a face; and let it also be observed, that in these master-pieces of art, all the parts are otherwise consistent with the rules heretofore laid down: i shall therefore only shew the effects and use of the line of beauty. one way of proving in what manner the serpentine line appears to operate in this respect, may be by pressing several pieces of wire close up and down the different parts of the face and features of those casts; which wires will all come off so many serpentine lines, as is partly marked in figure 97, by the dotted lines. the beard and hair of the head, fig. 98, being a set of loose lines naturally, and therefore disposable at the painter's or sculptor's pleasure, are remarkably composed in this head of nothing else but a varied play of serpentine lines, twisting together in a flame-like manner. but as imperfections are easier to be imitated than perfections, we shall now have it in our power to explain the latter more fully; by shewing the reverse in several degrees, down to the most contemptible meanness that lines can be form'd into. [illustration: figs. 99-105] figure 99, is the first degree of deviation from figure 97; where the lines are made straighter, and reduced in quantity; deviating still more in figure 100, more yet in figure 101, and yet more visibly in 102; figure 103, still more so; figure 104 is totally divested of all lines of elegance, like a barber's block; and 105 is composed merely of such plain lines as children make, when of themselves they begin to imitate in drawing a human face. it is evident, the inimitable butler was sensible of the mean and ridiculous effect of such kind of lines, by the description he gives of the shape of hudibras's beard, fig. [106 l p. i], in cut and dye so like a tile, a sudden view it would beguile. [illustration: fig. 106] 2. with regard to character and expression; we have daily many instances which confirm the common received opinion, that the face is the index of the mind; and this maxim is so rooted in us, we can scarce help (if our attention is a little raised) forming some particular conception of the person's mind whose face we are observing, even before we receive information by any other means. how often is it said, on the slightest view, that such a one looks like a good-natur'd man, that he hath an honest open countenance, or looks like a cunning rogue; a man of sense, or a fool, &c. and how are our eyes riveted to the aspects of kings and heroes, murderers and saints; and as we contemplate their deeds, seldom fail making application to their looks. it is reasonable to believe that aspect to be a true and legible representation of the mind, which gives everyone the same idea at first sight; and is afterwards confirm'd in fact: for instance, all concur in the same opinion, at first sight, of a down-right idiot. there is but little to be seen by childrens faces, more than that they are heavy or lively; and scarcely that unless they are in motion. very handsom faces of almost any age, will hide a foolish or a wicked mind till they betray themselves by their actions or their words: yet the frequent aukward movements of the muscles of the fool's face, tho' ever so handsom, is apt in time to leave such traces up and down it, as will distinguish a defect of mind upon examination: but the bad man, if he be a hypocrite, may so manage his muscles, by teaching them to contradict his heart, that little of his mind can be gather'd from his countenance, so that the character of an hypocrite is entirely out of the power of the pencil, without some adjoining circumstance to discover him, as smiling and stabbing at the same time, or the like. it is by the natural and unaffected movements of the muscles, caused by the passions of the mind, that every man's character would in some measure be written in his face, by the time he arrives at forty years of age, were it not for certain accidents which often, tho' not always prevent it. for the ill-natur'd man, by frequently frowning, and pouting out the muscles of his mouth, doth in time bring those parts to a constant state of the appearance of ill-nature, which might have been prevented by the constant affectation of a smile; and so of the other passions: tho' there are some that do not affect the muscles at all simply of themselves, as love and hope. but least i should be thought to lay too great a stress on outward shew, like a physiognomist, take this with you, that it is acknowledg'd there are so many different causes which produce the same kind of movements and appearances of the features, and so many thwartings by accidental shapes in the make of faces, that the old adage, fronti nulla fides, will ever stand its ground upon the whole; and for very wise reasons nature hath thought fit it should. but, on the other hand, as in many particular cases, we receive information from the expressions of the countenance, what follows is meant to give a lineal description of the language written therein. it may not be amiss just to look over the passions of the mind, from tranquillity to extreme despair; as they are in order described in the common drawing-book, called, le brun's passions of the mind; selected from that great master's works for the use of learners; where you may have a compendious view of all the common expressions at once. and altho' these are but imperfect copies, they will answer our purpose in this place better than any other thing i can refer you to; because the passions are there ranged in succession, and distinctly marked with lines only, the shadows being omitted. some features are formed so as to make this or that expression of a passion more or less legible; for example, the little narrow chinese eye suits a loving or laughing expression best, as a large full eye doth those of fierceness and astonishment; and round-rising muscles will appear with some degree of chearfulness even in sorrow: the features thus suiting with the expressions that have been often repeated in the face, at length mark it with such lines as sufficiently distinguish the character of the mind. the ancients in their lowest characters have shewn as much judgment, and as great a degree of taste in the management and twisting of the lines of them, as in their statues of a sublimer kind; in the former varying only from the precise line of grace in some parts where the character or action required it. the dying gladiator and the dancing fawn, the former a slave, the latter a wild clown, are sculptored in as high a taste of lines as the antinous or the apollo; with this difference, that the precise line of grace abounds more in the two last: notwithstanding which it is generally allow'd there is equal merit in the former, as there is near as much judgment required for the execution of them. human nature can hardly be represented more debased than in the character of the silenus, fig. [107 p. i], where the bulging-line figure 49, no. 7, runs through all the features of the face, as well as the other parts of his swinish body: whereas in the satyr of the wood, tho' the ancients have joined the brute with the man, we still see preserved an elegant display of serpentine lines, that make it a graceful figure. [illustration: figs. 107 and 49] indeed the works of art have need of the whole advantage of this line to make up for its other deficiencies: for tho' in nature's works the line of beauty is often neglected, or mixt with plain lines, yet so far are they from being defective on this account, that by this means there is exhibited that infinite variety of human forms which always distinguishes the hand of nature from the limited and insufficient one of art; and as thus she for the sake of variety upon the whole, deviates sometimes into plain and inelegant lines, if the poor artist is but able now and then to correct and give a better taste to some particular part of what he imitates, by having learnt so to do from her more perfect works, or copying from those that have, ten to one he grows vain upon it, and fancies himself a nature-mender; not considering, that even in these, the meanest of her works, she is never wholly destitute of such lines of beauty and other delicacies, as are not only beyond his narrow reach, but are seen wanting even in the most celebrated attempts to rival her. but to return, as to what we call plain lines, there is this remarkable effect constantly produced by them, that being more or less conspicuous in any kind of character or expression of the face, they bring along with them certain degrees of a foolish or ridiculous aspect. it is the inelegance of these lines which more properly belonging to inanimate bodies, and being seen where lines of more beauty and taste are expected, that renders the face silly and ridiculous. see chapter vi, p. 31. children in infancy have movements in the muscles of their faces peculiar to their age, as an uninformed and unmeaning stare, an open mouth, and simple grin: all which expressions are chiefly formed of plain curves, and these movements and expressions ideots are apt to retain; so that in time they mark their faces with these uncouth lines; and when the lines coincide and agree with the natural forms of the features, it becomes a more apparent and confirmed character of an ideot. these plain shapes last mentioned, sometimes happen to people of the best sense, to some when the features are at rest, to others when they are put into motion; which a variety of constant regular movements proceeding from a good understanding, and fashioned by a genteel education, will often by degrees correct into lines of more elegance. that particular expression likewise of the face, or movement of a feature which becomes one person, shall be disagreeable in another, just as such expressions or turns chance to fall in with lines of beauty, or the reverse; for this reason there are pretty frowns and disagreeable smiles: the lines that form a pleasing smile about the corners of the mouth have gentle windings, as fig. [108 l p. ii], but lose their beauty in the full laugh, as fig. [109 l p. ii], the expression of excessive laughter, oftener than any other, gives a sensible face a silly or disagreeable look, as it is apt to form regular plain lines about the mouth, like a parenthesis, which sometimes appears like crying; as, on the contrary, i remember to have seen a beggar who had clouted up his head very artfully, and whose visage was thin and pale enough to excite pity, but his features were otherwise so unfortunately form'd for his purpose, that what he intended for a grin of pain and misery, was rather a joyous laugh. [illustration: figs. 108 and 109] it is strange that nature hath afforded us so many lines and shapes to indicate the deficiencies and blemishes of the mind, whilst there are none at all that point out the perfections of it beyond the appearance of common sense and placidity. deportment, words, and actions, must speak the good, the wise, the witty, the humane, the generous, the merciful, and the brave. nor are gravity and solemn looks always signs of wisdom: the mind much occupied with trifles will occasion as grave and sagacious an aspect, as if it were charged with matters of the utmost moment; the balance-master's attention to a single point, in order to preserve his balance, may look as wise at that time as the greatest philosopher in the depth of his studies. all that the ancient sculptors could do, notwithstanding their enthusiastic endeavours to raise the characters of their deities to aspects of sagacity above human, was to give them features of beauty. their god of wisdom hath no more in his look than a handsom manliness; the jupiter is carried somewhat higher, by giving it a little more severity than the apollo, by a larger prominency of brow gently bending in seeming thoughtfulness, with an ample beard, which being added to the noble quantity of its other lines, invests that capital piece of sculpture with uncommon dignity, which, in the mysterious language of a profound connoisseur, is stiled a divine idea, inconceivably great, and above nature. 3dly and lastly, i shall shew in what manner the lines of the face alter from infancy upwards, and specify the different ages. we are now to pay most attention to _simplicity_, as the difference of ages we are about to speak of, turn chiefly upon the use made of this principle in a greater or less degree, in the form of the lines. from infancy till the body has done growing, the contents both of the body and the face, and every part of their surface, are daily changing into more variety, till they obtain a certain medium (see page 78 on proportion) from which medium, as fig. [113 b p. ii], if we return back to infancy, we shall see the variety decreasing, till by degrees that simplicity in the form, which gave variety its due limits, deviates into sameness; so that all the parts of the face may be circumscribed in several circles, as fig. [116 l p. ii]. [illustration: figs. 113 and 116] but there is another very extraordinary circumstance, (perhaps never taken notice of before in this light) which nature hath given us to distinguish one age from another by; which is, that tho' every feature grows larger and longer, till the whole person has done growing, the sight of the eye still keeps its original size; i mean the pupil, with its iris or ring; for the diameter of this circle continues still the same, and so becomes a fixt measure by which we, as it were, insensibly compare the daily perceiv'd growings of the other parts of the face, and thereby determine a young person's age. you may sometimes find this part of the eye in a new-born infant, full as large as in a man of six foot; nay, sometimes larger, see fig. [110 b p. ii], [114 b p. ii] and [115 t p. i] which represents three different sizes of the pupil of the eye; the least, was exactly taken from the eye of a large-featur'd man, aged 105, the biggest, from one of twenty, who had this part larger than ordinary, and the other is the common size. if this part of the eye in the pictures of charles ii. and james ii. painted by vandyke at kensington, were to be measured with a pair of compasses, and compared with their pictures painted by lilly when they were men, the diameters would be found in both pictures respectively the same. [illustration: figs. 110, 114 and 115] in infancy the faces of boys and girls have no visible difference, but as they grow up the features of the boy get the start, and grow faster in proportion to the ring of the eye, than those of the girl, which shews the distinction of the sex in the face. boys who have larger features than ordinary, in proportion to the rings of their eyes, are what we call manly-featured children; as those who have the contrary, look more childish and younger than they really are. it is this proportion of the features with the eyes, that makes women, when they are dressed in mens-cloaths, look so young and boyish: but as nature doth not always stick close to these particulars, we may be mistaken both in sexes and ages. by these obvious appearances, and the differences of the whole size, we easily judge of ages till twenty, but not with such certainty afterwards; for the alterations from that age are of a different kind, subject to other changes by growing fatter or leaner, which it is well known, often give a different turn to the look of the person, with regard to his age. the hair of the head, which encompasses a face as a frame doth a picture, and contrasts with its uniform colour, the variegated inclosed composition, adding more or less beauty thereto, according as it is disposed by the rules of art, is another indication of advanced age. what remains to be said on the different appearances of ages, being less pleasing than what has gone before, shall be described with more brevity. in the age from twenty to thirty, barring accidents, there appears but little change, either in the colours or the lines of the face; for tho' the bloom tints may go off a little, yet on the other hand, the make of the features often attain a sort of settled firmness in them, aided by an air of acquired sensibility; which makes ample amends for that loss, and keeps beauty till thirty pretty much upon a par; after this time, as the alterations grow more and more visible, we perceive the sweet simplicity of many rounding parts of the face, begin to break into dented shapes, with more sudden turns about the muscles, occasioned by their many repeated movements; as also by dividing the broad parts, and thereby taking off the large sweeps of the serpentine lines; the shades of beauty also consequently suffering in their softnesses. something of what is here meant between the two ages of thirty and fifty, see in figures [117 and 118 b p. ii], and what further havock time continues to make after the age of fifty, is too remarkable to need describing: the strokes and cuts he then lays on are plain enough; however, in spite of all his malice, those lineaments that have once been elegant, retain their flowing turns in venerable age, leaving to the last a comely piece of ruins. [illustration: figs. 117 and 118] chapter xvi. _of attitude_. such dispositions of the body and limbs as appear most graceful when seen at rest, depend upon gentle winding contrasts, mostly govern'd by the precise serpentine line, which in attitudes of authority, are more extended and spreading than ordinary, but reduced somewhat below the medium of grace, in those of negligence and ease: and as much exaggerated in insolent and proud carriage, or in distortions of pain (see figure 9, plate i) as lessen'd and contracted into plain and parallel lines, to express meanness, aukwardness, and submission. [illustration: fig. 9] the general idea of an action, as well as of an attitude, may be given with a pencil in very few lines. it is easy to conceive that the attitude of a person upon the cross, may be fully signified by the two straight lines of the cross; so the extended manner of st. andrew's crucifixion is wholly understood by the x-like cross. thus, as two or three lines at first are sufficient to shew the intention of an attitude, i will take this opportunity of presenting my reader (who may have been at the trouble of following me thus far) with the sketch of a country-dance, in the manner i began to set out the design; in order to shew how few lines are necessary to express the first thoughts, as to different attitudes; see fig. [71 t p. ii], which describe in some measure, the several figures and actions, mostly of the ridiculous kind, that are represented in the chief part of plate ii. [illustration: fig. 71] the most amiable person may deform his general appearance by throwing his body and limbs into plain lines, but such lines appear still in a more disagreeable light in people of a particular make, i have therefore chose such figures as i thought would agree best with my first score of lines, fig. 71. [illustration: the dancers] the two parts of curves next to 71, served for the figures of the old woman and her partner at the farther end of the room. the curve and two straight lines at right angles, gave the hint for the fat man's sprawling posture. i next resolved to keep a figure within the bounds of a circle, which produced the upper part of the fat woman, between the fat man and the aukward one in the bag wig, for whom i had made a sort of an x. the prim lady, his partner, in the riding-habit, by pecking back her elbows, as they call it, from the waste upwards, made a tolerable d, with a straight line under it, to signify the scanty stiffness of her peticoat; and a z stood for the angular position the body makes with the legs and thighs of the affected fellow in the tye-wig; the upper part of his plump partner was confin'd to an o, and this chang'd into a p, served as a hint for the straight lines behind. the uniform diamond of a card, was filled up by the flying dress, &c. of the little capering figure in the spencer-wig; whilst a double l mark'd the parallel position of his poking partner's hands and arms: and lastly, the two waving lines were drawn for the more genteel turns of the two figures at the hither end. the best representation in a picture, of even the most elegant dancing, as every figure is rather a suspended action in it than an attitude, must be always somewhat unnatural and ridiculous; for were it possible in a real dance to fix every person at one instant of time, as in a picture, not one in twenty would appear to be graceful, tho' each were ever so much so in their movements; nor could the figure of the dance itself be at all understood. [illustration: the statues and pictures] the dancing-room is also ornamented purposely with such statues and pictures as may serve to a farther illustration. henry viii. fig. [72 p. ii], makes a perfect x with his legs and arms; and the position of charles the first, fig. [51 p. ii], is composed of less-varied lines than the statue of edward the sixth, fig. [73 p. ii]; and the medal over his head is in the like kind of lines; but that over q. elizabeth, as well as her figure, is in the contrary; so are also the two other wooden figures at the end. likewise the comical posture of astonishment (expressed by following the direction of one plain curve, as the dotted line in a french print of sancho, where don quixote demolishes the puppet shew, fig. [75 r p. ii])is a good contrast to the effect of the serpentine lines in the fine turn of the samaritan woman, fig. [74 l p. ii], taken from one of the best pictures annibal carrache ever painted. [illustration: figs. 75 and 74] chapter xvii. _of action_. to the amazing variety of forms made still infinitely more various in appearance by light, shade and colour, nature hath added another way of increasing that variety, still more to enhance the value of all her compositions. this is accomplished by means of action; the fullest display of which is put into the power of the human species, and which is equally subject to the same principles with regard to the effects of beauty, or the reverse, as govern all the former compositions; as is partly seen in chapter xi on proportion. my business here shall be, in as concise a manner as possible, to particularise the application of these principles to the movement of the body, and therewith finish this _system_ of variety in forms and actions. there is no one but would wish to have it in his power to be genteel and graceful in the carriage of his person, could it be attained with little trouble and expence of time. the usual methods relied on for this purpose among well-bred people, takes up a considerable part of their time: nay even those of the first rank have no other resource in these matters, than to dancing-masters, and fencing-masters: dancing and fencing are undoubtedly proper, and very necessary accomplishments; yet are they frequently very imperfect in bringing about the business of graceful deportment. for altho' the muscles of the body may attain a pliancy by these exercises, and the limbs, by the elegant movement in dancing, acquire a facility in moving gracefully, yet for want of knowing the meaning of every grace, and whereon it depends, affectations and misapplications often follow. action is a sort of language which perhaps one time or other, may come to be taught by a kind of grammar-rules; but, at present, is only got by rote and imitation: and contrary to most other copyings or imitations, people of rank and fortune generally excel their originals, the dancing-masters, in easy behaviour and unaffected grace; as a sense of superiority makes them act without constraint; especially when their persons are well turn'd. if so, what can be more conducive to that freedom and necessary courage which make acquired grace seem easy and natural, than the being able to demonstrate _when_ we are actually just and proper in the least movement we perform; whereas, for want of such certainty in the mind, if one of the most finish'd gentlemen at court was to appear as an actor on the public stage, he would find himself at a loss how to move properly, and be stiff, narrow, and aukward, in representing even his own character: the uncertainty of being right would naturally give him some of that restraint which the uneducated common people generally have when they appear before their betters. it is known that bodies in motion always describe some line or other in the air, as the whirling round of a fire-brand apparently makes a circle, the water-fall part of a curve, the arrow and bullet, by the swiftness of their motions, nearly a straight line; waving lines are formed by the pleasing movement of a ship on the waves. now in order to obtain a just idea of action at the same time to be judiciously satisfied of being in the right in what we do, let us begin with imagining a line formed in the air by any supposed point at the end of a limb or part that is moved, or made by the whole part, or limb; or by the whole body together. and that thus much of movements may be conceived at once is evident, on the least recollection, for whoever has seen a fine arabian war-horse, unback'd and at liberty, and in a wanton trot, cannot but remember what a large waving line his rising, and at the same time pressing forward, cuts through the air; the equal continuation of which, is varied by his curveting from side to side; whilst his long mane and tail play about in serpentine movements. after thus having form'd the idea of all movements being as lines, it will not be difficult to conceive, that grace in action depends upon the same principles as have been shewn to produce it in forms. the next thing that offers itself to our consideration is the force of _habit_ and custom in action; for a great deal depends thereon. the peculiar movements of each person, as the gate in walking, are particularised in such lines as each part describes by the habits they have contracted. the nature and power of habit may be fully conceived by the following familiar instance, as the motions of one part of the body may serve to explain those of the whole. observe that whatever habit the fingers get in the use of the pen, you see exactly delineated to the eye by the shapes of the letters. were the movements of every writer's fingers to be precisely the same, one hand-writing would not be known from another, but as the fingers naturally fall into, or acquire different habits of moving, every hand-writing is visibly different. which movements must tally with the letters, tho' they are too quick and too small to be as perfectly traced by the eye; but this shews what nice differences are caused, and constantly retained by habitual movements. it may be remark'd, that all useful habitual motions, such as are readiest to serve the necessary purposes of life, are those made up of plain lines, i. e. straight and circular lines, which most animals have in common with mankind, tho' not in so extensive a degree: the monkey from his make hath it sufficiently in his power to be graceful, but as reason is required for this purpose, it would be impossible to bring him to move genteelly. though i have said that the ordinary actions of the body are performed in plain lines, i mean only comparatively so with those of studied movements in the serpentine line, for as all our muscles are ever ready to act, when one part is moved, (as an hand, or arm, by its proper movers, for raising up or drawing down) the adjacent muscles act in some degree in correspondence with them: therefore our most common movements are but seldom performed in such absolutely mean lines, as those of jointed dolls and puppets. a man must have a good deal of practice to be able to mimic such very straight or round motions, which being incompatible with the human form, are therefore ridiculous. let it be observed, that graceful movements in serpentine lines, are used but occasionally, and rather at times of leisure, than constantly applied to every action we make. the whole business of life may be carried on without them, they being properly speaking, only the ornamental part of gesture; and therefore not being naturally familiarised by necessity, must be acquired by precept or imitation, and reduced to habit by frequent repetitions. _precept_ is the means i should recommend as the most expeditious and effectual way. but before we proceed to the method i have to propose, for the more ready and sure way of accustoming the limbs to a facility in the ornamental way of moving; i should observe, that quick time gives it spirit and vivacity, as slow time, gravity, and solemnity, and further, that the latter of these allows the eye an opportunity of seeing the line of grace to advantage, as in the address of heroes on the stage, or in any solemn act of ceremony; and that although time in movement is reduced to certain rules for dancing, it is left more at large and at discretion for deportment. we come now to offer an odd, but perhaps efficacious method of acquiring a habit of moving in the lines of grace and beauty. [illustration: figs. 119 and 120] 1. let any one chalk the line fig. [119 l p. ii], on a flat surface, beginning at either end, and he will move his hand and arm in a beautiful direction, but if he chalks the same sort of line on an ogee-moulding of a foot or two in breadth, as the dotted line on figure [120 l p. ii], his hand must move in that more beautiful direction, which is distinguished by the name of grace; and according to the quantity given to those lines, greatness will be added to grace, and the movement will be more or less noble. gentle movements of this sort thus understood, may be made at any time and any where, which by frequent repetitions will become so familiar to the parts so exercised, that on proper occasion they make them as it were of their own accord. the pleasing effect of this manner of moving the hand, is seen when a snuff-box, or fan is presented gracefully or genteely to a lady, both in the hand moving forward and in its return, but care must be taken that the line of movement be but gentle, as no. 3, fig. 49, plate i, and not too s-like and twirling, as no. 7 in the same figure: which excess would be affected and ridiculous. [illustration: fig. 49] daily practising these movements with the hands and arms, as also with such other parts of the body as are capable of them, will in a short time render the whole person graceful and easy at pleasure. 2. as to the motions of the _head_; the awe most children are in before strangers, till they come to a certain age, is the cause of their dropping and drawing their chins down into their breasts, and looking under their foreheads, as if conscious of their weakness, or of something wrong about them. to prevent this aukward shyness, parents and tutors are continually teasing them to hold up their heads, which if they get them to do it is with difficulty, and of course in so constrain'd a manner that it gives the children pain, so that they naturally take all opportunities of easing themselves by holding down their heads; which posture would be full as uneasy to them were it not a relief from restraint: and there is another misfortune in holding down the head, that it is apt to make them bend too much in the back; when this happens to be the case, they then have recourse to steel-collars, and other iron-machines; all which shacklings are repugnant to nature, and may make the body grow crooked. this daily fatigue both to the children and the parents may be avoided, and an ugly habit prevented, by only (at a proper age) fastening a ribbon to a quantity of platted hair, or to the cap, so as it may be kept fast in its place, and the other end to the back of the coat, as fig. [121 l p. ii], of such a length as may prevent them drawing their chins into their necks; which ribbon will always leave the head at liberty to move in any direction but this aukward one they are so apt to fall into. [illustration: fig. 121] but till children arrive at a reasoning age it will be difficult by any means to teach them more grace than what is natural to every well made child at liberty. the grace of the upper parts of the body is most engaging, and sensible well made people in any station naturally have it in a great degree, therefore rules unless they are simple and easily retain'd and practis'd, are of little use; nay, rather are of disservice. holding the head erect is but occasionally right, a proper recline of it may be as graceful, but true elegance is mostly seen in the moving it from one position to another. and this may be attain'd by a sensibility within yourself, tho' you have not a sight of what you do by looking in the glass, when with your head assisted by a sway of the body in order to give it more scope, you endeavour to make that very serpentine line in the air, which the hands have been before taught to do by the help of the ogee-moulding: and i will venture to say, a few careful repetitions at first setting out will make this movement as easy to the head as to the hands and arms. the most graceful bow is got by the head's moving in this direction, as it goes downward and rises up again. some aukward imitators of this elegant way of bowing, for want of knowing what they were about, have seem'd to bow with wry necks. the low solemn bow to majesty should have but a very little twist, if any, as more becoming gravity and submission. the clownish nod in a sudden straight line is quite the reverse of these spoken of. the most elegant and respectful curtesy hath a gentle, or small degree of the above graceful bowing of the head as the person sinks, and rises, and retreats. if it should be said, that a fine curtesy consists in no more than in being erect in person at the time of sinking and rising; madam catherine in clock-work, or the dancing bears led about the streets for a shew, must be allow'd to make as good a curtesy as anybody. n. b. it is necessary in bowing and curtesying to shun an exact sameness at all times; for however graceful it may be on some occasions, at other times it may seem formal and improper. shakespear seems to have meant the above spoken of ornamental manner of bowing, in enobarbus's description of cleopatra's waiting-women.--- ----and made their bends adornings. act 2. 3. of _dancing_. the minuet is allowed by the dancing-masters themselves to be the perfection of all dancing. i once heard an eminent dancing-master say, that the minuet had been the study of his whole life, and that he had been indefatigable in the pursuit of its beauties, yet at last he could only say with socrates, _he knew nothing_: adding, that i was happy in my profession as a painter, in that some bounds might be set to the study of it. no doubt, as the minuet contains in it a composed variety of as many movements in the serpentine lines as can well be put together in distinct quantities, it is a fine composition of movements. [illustration: fig. 122] the ordinary undulating motion of the body in common walking (as may be plainly seen by the waving line, which the shadow a man's head makes against a wall as he is walking between it and the afternoon sun) is augmented in dancing into a larger quantity of _waving_ by means of the minuet-step, which is so contrived as to raise the body by gentle degrees somewhat higher than ordinary, and sink it again in the same manner lower in the going on of the dance. the figure of the minuet-path on the floor is also composed of serpentine lines, as fig. [122 t p. ii], varying a little with the fashion: when the parties by means of this step rise and fall most smoothly in time, and free from sudden starting and dropping, they come nearest to shakespear's idea of the beauty of dancing, in the following lines, ----what you do, still betters what is done,--- ----when you do dance, i wish you a wave o' th' sea, that you might ever do nothing but that; move still, still so, and own no other function. winter's tale. the other beauties belonging to this dance, are the turns of the head, and twist of the body in passing each other, as also gentle bowing and presenting hands in the manner before described, all which together, displays the greatest variety of movements in serpentine lines imaginable, keeping equal pace with musical time. there are other dances that entertain merely because they are composed of variety of movements and performed in proper time, but the less they consist of serpentine or waving lines, the lower they are in the estimation of dancing-masters: for, as has been shewn, when the form of the body is divested of its serpentine lines it becomes ridiculous as a human figure, so likewise when all movements in such lines are excluded in a dance, it becomes low, grotesque and comical; but however, being as was said composed of variety, made consistent with some character, and executed with agility, it nevertheless is very entertaining. such are italian peasant-dances, &c. but such uncouth contortions of the body as are allowable in a man would disgust in a woman; as the extreme graceful, so very alluring in this sex, is nauseous in the other; even the minuet-grace in a man would hardly be approved, but as the main drift of it represents repeated addresses to the lady. there is a much greater consistency in the dances of the italian theatre than of the french, notwithstanding dancing seems to be the genius of that nation; the following distinctly marked characters were originally from italy; and if we consider them lineally as to their particular movements, we shall see wherein their humour consists. the attitudes of the harlequin are ingeniously composed of certain little, quick movements of the head, hands, and feet, some of which shoot out as it were from the body in straight lines, or are twirled about in little circles. scaramouch is gravely absurd as the character is intended, in over-stretch'd tedious movements of unnatural lengths of lines: these two characters seem to have been contrived by conceiving a direct opposition of movements. pierrott's movements and attitudes, are chiefly in perpendiculars and parallels, so is his figure and dress. punchinello is droll by being the reverse of all elegance, both as to movement, and figure, the beauty of variety is totally, and comically excluded from this character in every respect; his limbs are raised and let fall almost altogether at one time, in parallel directions, as if his seeming fewer joints than ordinary, were no better than the hinges of a door. dances that represent provincial characters, as these above do, or very low people, such as gardeners, sailors, &c. in merriment, are generally most entertaining on the stage: the italians have lately added great pleasantry and humour to several french dances, particularly the wooden-shoe dance, in which there is a continual shifting from one attitude in plain lines to another; both the man and the woman often comically fix themselves in uniform positions, and frequently start in equal time, into angular forms, one of which remarkably represents two w's in a line, as over figure 122, plate ii, these sort of dances a little raised, especially on the woman's side, in expressing elegant wantonness (which is the true spirit of dancing) have of late years been most delightfully done, and seem at present to have got the better of pompous unmeaning grand ballets; serious dancing being even a contradiction in terms. [illustration: fig. over fig. 122] 4thly, of _country dancing_. the lines which a number of people together form in country or figure dancing, make a delightful play upon the eye, especially when the whole figure is to be seen at one view, as at the playhouse from the gallery; the beauty of this kind of mystic dancing, as the poets term it, depends upon moving in a composed variety of lines, chiefly serpentine, govern'd by the principles of intricacy, &c. the dances of barbarians are always represented without these movements, being only composed of wild skiping, jumping, and turning round, or running backward and forward, with convulsive shrugs, and distorted gestures. one of the most pleasing movements in country dancing, and which answers to all the principles of varying at once, is what they call the hay; the figure of it altogether, is a cypher of s's, or a number of serpentine lines interlacing, or intervolving each other, which suppose traced on the floor, the lines would appear as fig. [123 t p. ii]. milton in his paradise lost, describing the angels dancing about the sacred hill, pictures the whole idea in words; mystical dance!--- ----mazes intricate, eccentric, intervolv'd, yet regular then most, when most irregular they seem. [illustration: fig. 123] i shall venture, lastly, to say a word or two of stage-action. from what has been said of habitually moving in waving lines, it may possibly be found that if stage-action, particularly the graceful, were to be studied lineally, it might be more speedily and accurately acquired by the help of the foregoing principles than the methods hitherto taken. it is known that common deportment, such as may pass for elegant and proper off the stage, would no more be thought sufficient upon it than the dialogue of common polite conversation, would be accurate or spirited enough for the language of a play. so that trusting to chance only will not do. the actions of every scene ought to be as much as possible a compleat composition of well varied movements, considered as such abstractedly, and apart from what may be merely relative to the sense of the words. action consider'd with regard to assisting the authors meaning, by enforcing the sentiments or raising the passions, must be left entirely to the judgment of the performer, we only pretend to shew how the limbs may be made to have an equal readiness to move in all such directions as may be acquired. what i would have understood by action, abstractedly and apart from its giving force to the meaning of the words, may be better conceived by supposing a foreigner, who is a thorough master of all the effects of action, at one of our theatres, but quite ignorant of the language of the play; it is evident his sentiments under such limitations, would chiefly arise from what he might distinguish by the lines of the movements belonging to each character; the actions of an old man, if proper, or not, would be visible to him at once, and he would judge of low and odd characters, by the inelegant lines which we have already shewn to belong to the characters of punch, harlequin, pierrott, or the clown; so he would also form his judgment of the graceful acting of a fine gentleman, or hero, by the elegance of their movements in such lines of grace and beauty as have been sufficiently described. see chapters v, vi, vii, viii, on the composition of forms. where note, that as the whole of beauty depends upon _continually varying_ the same must be observed with regard to genteel and elegant acting: and as plain space makes a considerable part of beauty in form, so cessation of movement in acting is as absolutely necessary; and in my opinion much wanted on most stages, to relieve the eye from what shakespear calls, _continually sawing the air_. the actress hath sufficient grace with fewer actions, and those in less extended lines than the actor; for as the lines that compose the venus are simpler and more gently flowing, than those that compose the apollo, so must her movements be in like proportion. and here it may not be improper to take notice of a mischief that attends copied actions on the stage; they are often confin'd to certain sets and numbers, which being repeated, and growing stale to the audience, become at last subject to mimickry and ridicule, which would hardly be the case, if an actor were possest of such general principles as include a knowledge of the effects of all the movements that the body is capable of. the comedian, whose business it is to imitate the actions belonging to particular characters in nature, may also find his account in the knowledge of lines; for whatever he copies from the life, by these principles may be strengthened, altered, and adjusted as his judgment shall direct, and the part the author has given him shall require. finis. _prints publish'd by_ w. hogarth, _and are to be had at his house in_ leicester fields. l. s. d. marriage a-la-mode, in six prints 1 11 6 harlot's progress, in six prints 1 1 0 rake's progress, in eight prints 2 2 0 four times of the day, in four prints 1 0 0 strolling actresses dressing in a barn. 0 5 0 midnight conversation 0 5 0 southwark fair 0 5 0 bishop of winchester 0 3 0 calais, or the roast beef of old england 0 5 0 before and after, two prints 0 5 0 distress'd poet 0 3 0 enraged musician 0 3 0 various characters of heads, in five groups 0 2 6 beer street and gin lane, two prints 0 3 0 four stages of cruelty, four prints 0 6 0 moses brought to pharoah's daughter 0 7 6 paul before felix 0 7 6 paul before felix in the manner of rembrant 0 0 0 the effects of idleness and industry, exemplified in the conduct of two fellow-prentices, in twelve prints 0 12 0 lord lovat 0 1 0 country-inn yard 0 1 0 sleeping congregation 0 1 0 march to finchley 0 10 6 mr. garrick in the character of king richard the third 0 7 6 columbus breaking the egg 0 1 0 frontispiece 0 3 0 n. b. if any one purchases the whole together, they will have them deliver'd bound, at the price of ten guineas, and a sufficient margin will be left for framing. figures _referr'd to in the_ book. plate i. figure page 1, 3 2, 10, 77 3-4, 15 fig. over fig. 4, xix 6, vi, viii, 20, 81, 82, 83, 86, 88, 128 7, viii, 20 9, 22, 135 10-11, 23 12, 66, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 128, 153 13, 66, 152 14, 25, 26 15, 27 16, 31 17-18, 31, 87 19-20, 31 21, 36 22, 33 fig. bet'n 22 & 105 viii 23, 37 24-25, 38 26, 38, 39, 100 29, 40 30-32, 41 33-37, 42 38, 43 39-42 44 43, xix, 44 44-46 44 47, xix, 19 fig. bet'n 47 & 88, 17, 97 48, 46 49, 49, 128, 143 fig. under 49, 4 50, 49 53, 49, 50 54, v, 20, 64 55, 20, 76 65, 56, 60 66-67, 57 fig. near 67, 68 68, 58, 76 87-88, 111 97, 104, 123, 124 98, 123, 124 99-105, 124 106, 125 107, 128 115, 133 plate ii. figure page 51, 137 52, x 56, 51 57, 51, 103 58, 51, 55, 103 59, 53 60-63, 55 64, 56 69-70, 78 71, 136 72, 20, 137 73, 137 74, 138 75, 137 76, 62, 64 77, 62, 63, 64 78, 63, 64 79-80, 63 81, 64 82-83, 65 84-85, 96 86, 108, 109, 111 89, 111 90, 109 91, 112 92, 111 93, 111 94, 98, 116, 117, 118 95, 115 96, 117 108-109, 130 110, 133 113, 132 114, 133 116, 132 117-118, 134 119-120, 143 121, 144 122, 147 123, 151 essays æsthetical by george h. calvert 1875 contents. i. the beautiful ii. what is poetry? iii. style iv. dante and his latest translators v. sainte-beuve, the critic vi. thomas carlyle vii. errata viii. national drama ix. usefulness of art essays æsthetical. i. the beautiful. the beautiful is one of the immortal themes. it cannot die; it grows not old. on the same day with the sun was beauty born, and its life runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. as a subject for exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, from the affluence of its resources; difficult, from the exactions which its own spirit makes in the use of them. beauty--what is it? to answer this question were to solve more than one problem. shall we attempt what has been so often attempted and never fully achieved? such attempts are profitable. what though we reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get near enough to hearken to the throb of its power, and our minds will be nerved by the approximation. to him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems with beauty. whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles, wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is beauty. it expects us at the dawn; it is about us, "an hourly neighbor," through the day; at night it looks down on us from star-peopled immensities. glittering on green lawns, glowing in sunsets, flashing through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, irradiating sleep, it is ever around, within us, eager to sweeten our labors, to purify our thoughts. nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty, whereof the key is in the human heart. but many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose the precious key enfolded in their depths. whole peoples are at this moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. as with them now, so in the remote primitive times of our own race, before history was, nature was almost speechless to man. the earth was a waste, or but a wide hunting ground or pasturage; and human life a round of petty animal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond the field of the senses; until there gradually grew up the big-eyed greek and the deep-souled hebrew. then, through creative thought,--that is, thought quickened and exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful,--one little corner of europe became radiant, and the valley of tempe and the wooded glens of parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their eyes--opened from long sleep by inward stirring--were become as mirrors, and gave back the light of nature: "auxiliar light came from their minds, which on the setting sun bestowed new splendor."[1] [1] wordsworth. and man, heated by the throbs of his swelling heart, made gods after his own image,--forms of such life and power and harmony that the fragments of them, spared by time, are still guarded as faultless models of manhood. and the vales and groves and streams were peopled with beauteous shapes. and the high places were crowned with temples which, in their majestic purity, look as though they had been posited there from above by heavenly hands. and by the teemful might of sculptors and painters and poets the dim past was made resurgent and present in glorious transfiguration. and the moral law was grasped at by far-reaching philosophies. in this affluence of genial activity so much truth was embodied in so much beauty, that by the products of the greek mind even the newer, the deeper, the wiser christian spirit is still instructed, still exalted. in asia, too, a chosen people early made a revelation of the beautiful. the hebrews were introspective. at once ardent and thoughtful, passionate and spiritual, their vigorous natures were charged with fiery materials for inward conflicts. out of the secret chambers of troubled souls their poets and prophets sent forth cries of despair and of exultation, of expostulation and self-reproach, that ever find an echo in the conscience-smitten, sorrow-laden bosom of man. the power and wisdom of god they saw as no other ancient people had seen them. in the grandeurs and wonders of creation they could behold the being and the might and the goodness of the creator. the strong, rich hearts of their seers yearned for a diviner life, in the deep, true consciousness they felt that there can be peace and joy to man only through reconcilement with god. and feeling their own unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic wail through the bars of a dungeon. gloomy, wrathful, and intense, their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests do the billows of a black, tempestuous sea. save these two, no other nations of antiquity, except the hindoos, seem to have had more than a superficial susceptibility to the beautiful. the romans learnt the arts from the greeks, whom they imitated, at a wide distance, in poetry as well as in sculpture and architecture. the remnants of art found in the valley of the nile prove the egyptians to have had the germ without the vitality to unfold it. in the literature of the hindoos there are currents of pure poetry and of biblical depth. in passing down from ancient to modern times the persians and the arabians light the long way with scintillations from the beautiful. the ugly semi-barbarian darkness of the middle ages in europe was first broken by the light that shone from the spires of gothic cathedrals in the eleventh century. about the twelfth century the german mind was further illuminated by that mysterious, visionary, titanic, teutonic epic, the niebelungen lied; and a little later appeared the troubadours in the south of europe and the minnesingers (love-singers) in germany. next came dante and giotto in italy, then chaucer in england; so that by the end of the fourteenth century, poetry and the arts, the offspring of the beautiful,--and who can have no other parentage,--had established themselves in the modern european mind, and have since, with varying vigor of life, upheld themselves among christian nations. to these they are now confined. in the most advanced of mahometan and heathen peoples sensibility to beauty is hardly awakened, and among savages it seems scarcely to exist, so deeply is it dormant. thus to indicate when and by whom the beautiful has been recognized will further us in the endeavor to learn wherein consists that which, enriching the world of man so widely and plenteously, is deeply enjoyed by so few. were the beautiful, like size and shape and strength and nimbleness, cognizable by intellectual perception, even the hottentot would get to know something of it in the forest, along with the grosser qualities of trees and valleys. were it liable to be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the spartan would not have been so barren where the athenian was so prolific. but beauty is _felt_, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. its presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. when we exclaim, how beautiful! there is always emotion, and delightful, expansive, purifying emotion. whence this mysterious cleansing thrill? thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes, ever springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all things have their being. the beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. we cannot demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it. further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. the apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its individuality and are its various physical qualities, size, shape, etc., apprehended. and now the intellect itself becomes a conductor, transmitting still deeper inward to the seat of emotion the image of the object; and not until it reaches that depth is its beauty recognized. in all her structures and arrangements nature is definite, precise, and economical. in subdivision of labor she is minute and absolute, providing for every duty its special exclusive agent. in the mind there is as severe a sundering of functions as in the body, and the intellect can no more encroach upon or act for the mental sensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the office of the heart, or the liver that of the lungs. true, no ripe results in the higher provinces of human life can be without intimate alliance between the mental sensibilities and the intellect; nevertheless they are in essence as distinct from one another as are the solar heat and the moisture of the earth, without whose constant coöperation no grain or fruit or flower can sprout or ripen. we live not merely in a world of material facts, and of objects and things cognizable through the senses, but also in a spiritual world. we live not only in presence of visible creation, but in presence of the invisible creator. with the creation we are in contact through the intellect. knowledge of all objects and the qualities of objects that are within reach of the senses; distance and other material relations; the bonds of cause and effect and of analogy, that bind all created things in countless multiplicity of subtle relations,--these the intellect gathers in its grasp. but with the creator we are in communication only through feeling. the presence, the existence of god cannot by pure intellect be demonstrated: it must be felt in order to be proved. the mass of objects and relations presented to us in nature the intellect can learn, count, and arrange; but the life that incessantly permeates the whole and every part, the spirit that looks out from every object and every fact,--of the range and pitch of whose power we have a faint token in the tornado and the earthquake,--of this divine essence we should not have even an intimation through the intellect alone. not chemists, astronomers, mechanicians have uttered the deepest thoughts about god, but prophets and poets: not davys, but coleridges; not herschels, but wordsworths. it is a common belief, indeed, that men addicted to the exact sciences are rather wanting than otherwise in power to appreciate the invisible, a belief pungently embodied by wordsworth in the lines,- "physician art thou? one all eyes, philosopher! a fingering slave, one that would peep and botanize upon his mother's grave?" this is as much under the mark as is above it that saying of some one, "an undevout astronomer is mad." a man's being endowed with rare mathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout. his gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual; and nature being seldom profuse upon one individual,--as she was upon pascal and newton,--the presumption as to an astronomer, of whom we know nothing, would be that what may be termed his emotive appreciation of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as his intellectual. and no amount or quality of intellectual insight can supply or compensate a want of sensibility. no matter how many hundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space, he has still to do with the visible and calculable. but religion is the putting of the human mind in relation with the invisible, the incalculable. a man gets no nearer to god through a telescope than through a microscope, and no nearer through either than through the naked eye. who cannot recognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of his own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus, or any magnitude or arrangement of telescopic lenses. that we ever live not only in a material, but also in a spiritual world, can be easily apprehended without at all entangling ourselves in the web-work of metaphysics. the least of our acts or motions, is it not always preceded by a thought, a volition, a something intangible, invisible? all that we voluntarily do is, must be, an offspring of mind. the waving of the hand is never a simple, it is a compound process: mind and body, spirit and matter, concur in it. the visible, corporeal movement is but the outward expression of an inward, incorporeal movement. and so in all our acts and motions, from birth till death; they issue out of the invisible within us; they are feelings actualized, thoughts embodied. the embodiment is perishable, the source of it imperishable. it is not a recondite, super-subtle, metaphysical or psychological postulate, it is a palpable, and may be and ought to be a familiar fact, that each one of us is ruled by the eternal and invisible within us. now, just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our mind, as being the utterance and embodiment of that, so do we stand towards deity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and will. as all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds, so ourselves are manifestations of god. through all things shines the eternal soul. the more perfect the embodiment, the more translucent is the soul; and when this is most transparent, making the body luminous with the fullness of its presence, there is beauty, which may be said to be the most intense and refined incarnation and exhibition of the divine spirit. behind and within every form of being is immanent the creative power; and thence, in proportion as this power discloses itself, is object, act, or emotion beautiful. thus is beauty always spiritual, a revelation more or less clear of the creative spirit. hence our emotion in presence of the truly beautiful, which calms and exalts us. hence evil never is, cannot be, beautiful: the bad is, must be, ugly. evil consists in the deficiency of the divine creative spirit, whose fullness gives, is, beauty. evil is imperfection, unripeness, shapelessness, weakness in, or opposition to, the creative spirit. evil is life that is unhealthy, short-coming. wherever there is full, unperverted life, there is, there must be, beauty. the beautiful blossoms on every stem of unpoisoned power. the sap of sound life ever molds itself into forms of beauty. but however rich the exhibition of the divine soul, however glowing with perfection the form, however noble the act and pure the feeling, the richness, the perfection, the nobleness, the purity will be lost on us, unless within us there be sympathy with the spirit whence they flow. only by spirit can spirit be greeted. thus beauty only becomes visible--i might say only becomes actual--by the fire kindled through the meeting of a perfection out of us and an inward appetite therefor. and it is the flaming of this fire, thus kindled, that lights up to us the whole world wherein we live, the inward and the outward. this fire unlighted, and on the face of nature there is darkness, in our own minds there is darkness. for though all nature teems with the essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the unkindled mind beauty is no more present then was banquo's ghost to the guests of macbeth. macbeth's individual conscience made him see the ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is beauty created there where, without what i may call the æsthetic conscience, it no more exists than do the glories of titian and claude to the affectionate spaniel who follows his master into a picture-gallery. to the quadruped, by the organic limitation of his nature, dead forever is this painted life. by the organic boundlessness of _his_ nature, man can grasp the life of creation in its highest, its finest, its grandest manifestations; and from these beauty is indivisible. wherever the divine energy is most subtle and expressive, there glows ever, in its celestial freshness, the beautiful. beauty is the happiest marriage between the invisible and the visible. it may be termed the joyfullest look of god. blessed is he who can watch and reflect this radiant look. the faculties of such a one become fortified by creative influx. through the exquisite shock of the beautiful he reaps an accession of mental magnetism. thus through the beautiful we commune the most directly with the divine; and, other things being equal, to the degree that men respond to, are thrilled by, this vivacity of divine presence, as announced by the beautiful, to that degree are they elevated in the scale of being. nature being minute and absolute in subdivision of function, the law of severalty and independence--than which there is no law more important and instructive--pervades creation. thence the intellectual, the religious, the true, the good, cannot interchange functions. a man may be sincerely religious and do little for others, as is seen in anchorites, and in many one-sided people, of christian as well as of mahometan parentage, who are not anchorites. a man may be immensely intellectual and not value truth. but neither a man's intellect, nor his preference for truth, nor his benevolent nor his religious sentiment, can yield its best fruit without the sunshine of the beautiful. sensibility to the beautiful--itself, like the others, an independent inward power--stands to each one of them in a relation different from that which they hold one to the other. the above and other faculties _indirectly_ aid one the other, and to the complete man their united action is needed; but feeling for the beautiful _directly_ aids each one, aids by stimulating it, by expanding, by purifying. to the action of every other faculty this one gives vividness and grace. it indues each with privilege of insight into the _soul_ of the object which it is its special office to master. by help of sensibility to the beautiful we have inklings of the essence of things, we sympathize with the inward life that molds the outward form. hence men highly gifted with this sensibility become creative, in whatever province of work they strive; and no man in any province is truly creative except through the subtle energy imparted to him by this sensibility, this competence to feel the invisible in the visible. the idea is the invisible; the embodiment thereof is the visible. hence the beautiful is always ideal; that is, it enfolds, embraces, represents, with more or less success, the idea out of which springs the object it illuminates: it brilliantly enrobes a germinal essence. it is thus a sparkling emanation out of the infinite, and it leads us thither whence it has come. sensibility to the beautiful is thus the light of the whole mind, illuminating its labors. without it we work in the dark, and therefore feebly, defectively. infer thence the immensity of its function. hereby it becomes the chief educator of men and of man; and where its teaching has not been conspicuous, there no elevation has been reached. the greeks and the hebrews would not have been so deeply, so greatly, so feelingly known to us, would not have been the pioneers and inspirers of european civilization, would not have lived on through thousands of years in the minds of the highest men, had they not, along with their other rare endowments, possessed, in superior, in unique quality, this priceless gift of sensibility to the beautiful. through this gift shakespeare is the foremost man of england, and through it has done more than any other man to educate and elevate england. because the italians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were so rich in this gift, therefore it is that italy is still a shrine to which the civilized world makes annual pilgrimage. the supreme function of this sensibility is to develop, to educate, to chasten the highest faculties, our vast discourse of reason, our unselfish aspiration, our deep instinct of truth, our capacious love. to educate these is its cardinal duty, and lacking this they remain uneducated. but its beneficent influence is felt likewise in the less elevated of our efforts. the man who makes shoes, as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the builder of houses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; the engineer, as well as the artist, all work under the rays of this illuminator; and, other things being equal, he excels all others on whose work those rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force. "'t is the eternal law, that first in beauty shall be first in might."[2] [2] keats. in short, whatever the mental gift, in order to get from that gift its best fruit, the possessor must be incited, upborne, enlightened, inspired by the ideal, which burns as a transfiguring flame in his mind, and throws thence its joyful light with every blow of his hand. all good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working with the eternal mind; and work is good and productive in proportion to the intensity of this coöperation. why is it that we so prize a fragment of phidias, a few lines traced by raphael? because the minds of those workers were, more than the minds of most others, in sympathy with the infinite mind. while at work their hands were more distinctly guided by the almighty hand; they felt and embodied more of the spirit which makes, which is, life. here is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, a vocabulary. of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling with the pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with the vocabulary you write an essay. and in each case you work well and creatively, if your work be in harmony with god's laws, if your screen be light, sightly, and protective, your dwelling healthful and commodious, your sill lie solid and square, your essay be judicious and sound. but if on the canvas you have a christ's head by leonardo, out of the pile of stones a strasburg cathedral, from the block of marble a venus of milo, with the vocabulary a tragedy of hamlet, you have works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the vivid, impressive, instructive, never-wearying delight of the works of nature. the men who wrought them were strong to do so through the vigor of their sympathy with what plato calls the formative principle of the universe, they thereby becoming themselves creators, that is, poets. and we sacredly guard their creations among our best treasures of human gift, because they are so spiritually alive that whenever we put ourselves in relation with them they animate us, they spiritualize our thoughts; and this they do because the minds whence they issued were radiant centers of ideal power, that is, power to conceive the beautiful. but what is ideal power? the reader may ask. he might likewise ask, what is moral power? and unless he has in his own mind some faculty of moral estimation, no answer will help him. that which comes to us through feeling cannot be intellectually defined, can only be appreciated through feeling. by describing its effects and accompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is. by means of a foot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what is the height of the apollo belvedere, and the exact length of the statue's face; and each one can for himself verify the accuracy of your statement. but not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can you get the crowd to go along with you as to the apollo's beauty. acknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and a native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering. full and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very beautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty pre-attained idea of what is manly beauty. but after all, the want of unanimity of assent to a moral or an æsthetic position, does it not come from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained? assent even to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose an ideal in the mind of him who assents? when you show by visible measurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot is; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. no tittle of information, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you derive from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic contents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind an idea, an ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot. attempts to give a notion of what the beautiful is, by enumerating some of the physical conditions that are found to be present in artistic figures or persons distinguished for beauty, or attempts to produce what shall be beautiful, by complying with these conditions, come no nearer to the aim than do compounded mineral waters to the briskness and flavor of a fresh draught from the original spring. in the analysis there may be no flaw; the ingredients are chemically identical in quality and proportion; but the nameless, inimitable, inscrutable life is wanting: the mixing has been done by a mechanical, not by a creative hand. haydon says, "the curve of the circle is excess, the straight line is deficiency, the ellipsis is the degree between, and that curve, added to or united with proportion, regulates the form and features of a perfect woman." mr. d.r. hay, in a series of books, professes to have discovered the principles of beauty in the law of harmonic ratio, without, however, "pretending," as he modestly and wisely declares, "to give rules for that kind of beauty which genius alone can produce in high art." the discovery of mr. hay is curious and fascinating, and, like the announcement of haydon, may give practical hints to artists and others. but no intellectual process or ingenuity can make up for the absence of emotional warmth and refined selection. "beauty, the foe of excess and vacuity, blooms, like genius, in the equilibrium of all the forces," says jean paul. "beauty," says hemsterhuis, "is the product of the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time," which is like the italian definition, _il piu nel uno_, unity in multiplicity, believed by coleridge to contain the principle of beauty. on another page of the "table talk" coleridge is made to say, "you are wrong in resolving beauty into expression or interest; it is quite distinct; indeed, it is opposite, although not contrary. beauty is an immediate presence, between which and the beholder _nihil est_. it is always one and tranquil; whereas the interesting always disturbs and is disturbed." hegel, in his "æsthetic," defines natural beauty to be "the idea as immediate unity, in so far as this unity is visible in sensuous reality." and a few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct, calling the beautiful "the sensuous shining forth of the idea." and schelling, in his profound treatise on "the relation of the plastic arts to nature," says, "the beautiful is beyond form; it is substance, the universal; it is the look and expression of the spirit of nature." were it not better and more precise to say that it is to us the look and expression of the spiritual when this is peering through choicest embodiments? but we will stop with definitions. after endeavoring, by means of sentences and definitions to get a notion of the beautiful, one is tempted to say, as goethe did when "the idea of the divinity" was venturously mentioned to him by eckermann, "dear child, what know we of the idea of the divinity? and what can our narrow ideas tell of the highest being? should i, like a turk, name it with a hundred names, i should still fall short, and, in comparison with the infinite attributes, have said nothing." we have called the beautiful the light of the mind; but there must be mind to be illuminated. if your torch be waved in a chamber set round with bits of granite and slate and pudding-stone, you will get no luminous reverberation. but brandish it before rubies and emeralds and diamonds! the qualities in the mind must be precious, in order that the mind become radiant through beauty. to take a broad example. the hindoos in their organization have a fine sense of the beautiful, but they lack mental breadth and bottom; and hence their life and literature are not strong and manifold, although in both there are exhibitions of that refinement which only comes of sensibility to the beautiful. the chinese, on the other hand, are wanting in this sensibility; hence their prosaic, finite civilization. but most noteworthy is the contrast between them in religious development. in that of the hindoos there was expansion, vastness, self-merging in infinitude; the chinese are religiously contracted, petty, idolatrous; a contrast which i venture to ascribe, in large measure, to the presence in the one case, and the absence in the other, of the inspiration of the beautiful. to the same effect individual examples might be cited innumerable. look at wordsworth and byron, both preeminent for sensibility to the beautiful; but, from deep diverseness in other leading mental gifts, the one, through the light of this vivifying power, became a poet of the propensities and the understanding, a poet of passion and wit; the other, a poet of the reason, a poet of nature and meditative emotion. to do their best the moral feelings, too, need the light and inward stimulus of the beautiful; but if these feelings are by nature weak, no strength or intensity of the sense of beauty will have power to get from a mind thus deficient high moral thought or action. if there be present the accomplishment of verse, we shall have a byron; or, the other poetic gifts in full measure, with lack of this accomplishment, and we may get a beckford, who builds fonthill abbeys, and with purity and richness of diction describes palaces, actual or feigned, and natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow; or, the intellectual endowments being mediocre, we shall have merely a man of superficial taste; or, the moral regents being ineffective, an intellectual sybarite, or a refined voluptuary. like the sun, the beautiful shines on healthful field and poisonous fen; and her warmth will even make flowers to bloom in the fen, but it is not in her to make them bear refreshing odors or nourishing fruit. as men have body, intellect, and moral natures, so is there physical, intellectual, and spiritual beauty, and each distinct from the others. take first a few examples from the domain of art. the body and limbs of the gladiator in the louvre may be cited as the exponent of corporeal beauty; the face of the apollo belvedere as that of intellectual and physical; and the santo sisto madonna of raphael, and the christ of the last supper by leonardo da vinci, for spiritual. through these radiant creations we look into the transcendent minds of their artists with a chastened, exalting joy, not unmingled with pride in our brotherhood with such beauty-lifted co-workers with god. among the higher races, life is affluent in examples of the three kinds of beauty, two of them, and even all three, at times united in one subject. children and youth offer the most frequent instances of physical beauty. napoleon's face combined in high degree both physical and intellectual, without a trace of moral beauty. discoveries in science, and the higher scientific processes, as likewise broad and intense intellectual action, exemplify often intellectual beauty. of moral beauty history preserves examples which are the brightest jewels, and the most precious, in the casket of mankind's memory; among the most brilliant of which are the trust of alexander, when he drank the draught from the hand of his physician, though warned that it was poisoned; the fidelity of the paroled regulus, returning from rome to the enemy into the jaws of a certain and cruel death; sir philip sidney, wounded unto death, taking the cup of water untasted from his parched lips, to give it to a dying soldier; luther at the diet of worms; the public life of washington; the life and death of socrates, and especially that last act of washing his body to save the women the trouble of washing it a few hours later, when it would be a corpse; and, lastly, that most beautiful of lives and most sublime of deaths, which live in the heart of christendom as its exemplar and ever fresh ideal. there is no province of honorable human endeavor, no clean inlet opened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings, into which from that vast, deep, oceanic spring, the human soul, the beautiful does not send its fructifying tides. there is no height in history but is illuminated by its gleam. only through the beautiful can truth attain its full stature; only through the beautiful can the heart be perfectly purified; only with vision purged by the beautiful can anything be seen in its totality. all other faculties it makes prolific; it is the mental generator. it helps to unveil, and then welds, the link between the visible and the invisible. it inspires feeling (which is ever the source of deepest insight) to discover excellence; it quickens the mind to creative activity; it is forever striving upward. without the spiritual fervor of the beautiful, your religion is narrow and superstitious, your science cramped and mortal, your life unripened. in the mind it kindles a flame that discloses the divinity there is in all things. lightning bares to the awed vision the night-shrouded earth; more vivid than lightning, the flash of the beautiful reveals to the soul the presence of god. ii. what is poetry? the better to meet the question, _what_ is poetry? we begin by putting before it another, and ask, _where_ is poetry? poetry is in the mind. landscapes, rainbows, sunsets, constellations, these exist not to the stag, the hare, the elephant. to them nature has no aspects, no appearances modified by feeling. furnished with neither combining intellect nor transmuting sensibility, they have no vision for aught but the proximate and immediate and the animally necessary. corporeal life is all their life. within the life of mind poetry is born, and in the best and deepest part of that life. the whole world outside of man, and, added to this, the wider world of his inward motions, whether these motions interact on one another or be started and modified by what is without them, all this--that is, all human life, in its endless forms, varieties, degrees, all that can come within the scope of man--is the domain of poetry; only, to enjoy, to behold, to move about in, even to enter this domain, the individual man must bear within him a light that shall transfigure whatever it falls on, a light of such subtle quality, of such spiritual virtue, that wherever it strikes it reveals something of the very mystery of being. in many men, in whole tribes, this light is so feebly nourished that it gives no illumination. to them the two vast worlds, the inner and the outer, are made up of opaque facts, cognizable, available, by the understanding, and by it handled grossly and directly. things, conditions, impressions, feelings, are not taken lovingly into the mind, to be made there prolific through higher contacts. they are not dandled joyfully in the arms of the imagination. imagination! before proceeding a step further,--nay, in order that we be able to proceed safely,--we must make clear to ourselves what means this great word, imagination. the simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects. having perceived an object several times, the intellect lifts itself to a higher process, and knows it when it sees it again, remembers it. _perception_ is the first, the simplest, the initiatory intellectual process, _memory_ is the second. higher than they, and rising out of them, is a third process, the one whereby are modified and transmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered. a mother, just parted from her child, recalls his form and face, summons before _her mind's eye_ an image of him; and this image is modified by her feelings, she seeing him in attitudes and relations in which she had never seen him before, cheerful or sad according to her mood. this she could not do by aid of memory alone; she could not vary the impress of her boy left on the brain; she could not vividly reproduce it in shifting, rapidly successive conditions; she could not modify and diversify that impress; in a word, she could not liberate it. memory could only re-give her, with single, passive fidelity, what she had seen, unmodified, motionless, unenlivened, like a picture of her boy on canvas. urge intellectual activity to the phase above memory, and the mental image steps out from its immobility, becomes a changeful, elastic figure, brightened or darkened by the lights and shadows cast by the feelings; the intellect, quick now with plastic power, varying the image in position and expression, obedient to the demands of the feelings, of which it is ever the ready instrument. this third process is _imagination_. through this mode of intellectual action the materials gathered in the mind are endlessly combined and modified. in all intellectual activity, beyond bare perception and memory, imagination in some degree is and must be present. it is in fact the mind handling its materials, and in no sphere, above the simplest, can the mind move without this power of firmly holding and molding facts and relations, phenomena and interior promptings and suggestions. to the forensic reasoner, to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere, such a power is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver of fictions. imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the most intense action, of the intellect. when i run over in my mind, and in the order of their service, the first seven presidents of the united states, washington, adams, jefferson, madison, monroe, adams, jackson, i exert only memory. the moment i begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to give the character of any of them, i put into play the higher, the imaginative action; for, to draw an historical character, the facts collected by memory must be shaped and colored and organized, the details gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, which being a mere tool, the success of the result (the tool being of a temper to do the work laid on it) will depend on the quality of the powers that handle it, that is, on the writer's gifts of sympathy. the degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is that the word _imagination_ has come to be appropriated to the highest exercise of the power, that, namely, which is accomplished by those few who, having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with sensibility to the beautiful, are hereby stimulated to mold and shape into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness. in strictness, this exaltation of intellectual action should be called _poetic_ imagination. to imagine is, etymologically speaking, _with_ the mind to form _in_ the mind an image; that is, by inward power to produce an interior form, a something substantial made out of what we term the unsubstantial. to imagine is thus always, in a certain sense, to create; and even men of dullest mentality have this power in _kind_. the _degree_ in which men have it makes one of the chief differences among them. the power is inherent, is implied in the very existence of the human mind. when it is most lively the mind creates out of all it feels and hears and sees, taking a simple sight or hint or impression or incident, and working out images, making much out of little, a world out of an atom. akin herein to the supreme creative might, the man of highest imagination, the poet, unrolls out of his brain, through vivid energy, new worlds, peopled with thought, throbbing with humanity. when we imagine, therefore, we hold an image in the mind, grasping it with spiritual fingers, just as by our corporeal fingers a physical substance is grasped. now the poetic mind in handling the image tosses it with what might be called a sportive earnest delight, and through this power and freedom of _play_ elicits by sympathetic fervor, from its very core, electric rays, wherein the subject glows like the sculpture on an inwardly illuminated urn; rare insights being thus vouchsafed to clearest imaginative vision,--insights gained never but through sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations after, and gleaming glimpses of, the absolute and ideal, the intellect being used as an obedient cheerful servant. the sensibility that is so finely strung as to have these glimpses, revels in them as its fullest happiness, and with its whole might seeks and courts them. hence the mind thus privileged to live nearer than others to the absolutely true, the spiritual ideal, is ever plying its privilege: conceiving, heightening, spiritualizing, according to the vision vouchsafed it; through this vision beholding everywhere a better and fairer than outwardly appears; painting nature and humanity, not in colors fictitious or fanciful, but in those richer, more lucent ones which such minds, through the penetrating insight of the higher imagination, see more truly as they are than minds less creatively endowed. thus is imagination a power inherent in, essential to, all intellectual action that ranges above simple perception and memory; a power without which the daily business of life even could not go on, being that power whereby the mind manipulates, so to speak, its materials. in its higher phasis it may be defined as the intellect stimulated by feeling to multiply its efforts for the ends of feeling; and in its highest it may be said to be intellect winged by emotion to go forth and gather honey from the bloom of creation. imagination, then, being intellect in keenest chase, and the intellectual part of the mind being, when moved in concert with the effective part, but a tool of this, what are the feelings or conditions of feeling of which intellect becomes the instrument in the production of poetry? cast your look on a page filled with the titles of shakespeare's plays. what worlds of throbbing life lie behind that roll! then run over the persons of a single drama: that one bounded inclosure, how rich in variety and intensity, and truth of feeling! and when you shall have thus cursorily sent your mind through each and all, tragic, comic, historic, lyric, you will have traversed in thought, accompanied by hundreds of infinitely diversified characters, wide provinces of human sorrow and joy. why are these pictures of passion so uniquely prized, passed on from generation to generation, the most precious heir-loom of the english tongue, to-day as fresh as on the morning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were first written? because they have in them more fullness and fineness and fidelity than any others. the poet has more life in him than other men, and shakespeare has in him more life than any other poet, life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union with power of sympathy, the embodiments whereof are rounded, enlarged, refined, made translucent by that gift of _sensibility to the fair and perfect_[3] whereby, according to its degree, we are put in more loving relation to the work of god, and gain the clearest insights into his doings and purposes; a gift without which in richest measure shakespeare might have been a notable historian or novelist or philosopher, but never the supreme poet he is. [3] see preceding essay. when coriolanus, having led the volscians to rome, encamps under its walls, and the romans, in their peril and terror, send to him a deputation to move him from his vengeful purpose, the deputies,--the foremost citizens of rome and the relations and former friends of coriolanus,--having "declared their business in a very modest and humble manner," he is described by plutarch as stern and austere, answering them with "much bitterness and high resentment of the injuries done him." what was the temper as well as the power of coriolanus, we learn distinctly enough from these few words of plutarch. but the task of the poet is more than this. to our imagination, that is, to the abstracting intellect roused by sympathy to a semi-creative state, he must present the haughty roman so as to fill us with an image of him that shall in itself embody that momentous hour in the being of the young republic. he must dilate us to the dimensions of the man and the moment; he must so enlarge and warm our feeling that it shall take in, and delight in, the grandeur of the time and the actors. the life of rome, of rome yet to be so mighty, is threatened by one of her own sons. this vast history, to be for future centuries that of the world, a roman seemed about to quench, about to rase the walls that were to embrace the imperial metropolis of europe, asia, and africa. of what gigantic dimensions must he be, this roman! now hear menenius, a former friend and admirer of coriolanus, depict him. having described, in those compressed sinewy phrases which shakespeare has at command, the change in his nature, he adds, "when he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading. he is able to pierce a corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. he sits in his state, as a thing made for alexander. what he bids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in." hear how a mother's heart, about to break, from the loss of her son, utters its grief when it has the privilege of using a voice quivering with poetic fervor. the french king bids lady constance be comforted: she answers,- "no, i defy all counsel, all redress, but that which ends all counsel, true redress, death, death. o amiable lovely death! thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness! arise forth from the couch of lasting night, thou hate and terror to prosperity, and i will kiss thy detestable bones; and put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows; and ring these fingers with thy household worms; and stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, and be a carrion monster like thyself: come, grin on me; and i will think thou smil'st: and buss thee as thy wife! misery's love, o, come to me!" in these two passages from "coriolanus" and "king john" what magnificence of hyperbole! the imagination of the reader, swept on from image to image, is strained to follow that of the poet. and yet, to the capable, how the pile of amplification lifts out the naked truth. read these passages to a score of well-clad auditors, taken by chance from the thoroughfare of a wealthy city, or from the benches of a popular lecture-room. to the expanded mold wherein the passages are wrought, a few--five or six, perhaps, of the twenty--would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing the poet's climax. to some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by, the poetically imaginative light. and to some they would be grossly unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to them unnatural or affected. now, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source? by these passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and are pitched to a high key. a very comprehensive word is feelings. what is the nature of those feelings thus wrought upon? the elementary feelings of our nature, when in healthful function, are capable of emitting spiritual light; and, when exalted to their purest action, do and must emit such, the inward fire sending forth clear flame unmixed with smoke. to perceive this light, and, still more, to have your path illuminated thereby, implies the present activity of some of the higher human sensibilities; and to be so organized as to be able to embody in words, after having imagined, personages, conditions, and conjunctions whence this light shall flash on and ignite the sensibilities of others, implies, besides vivid sympathies and delight in the beautiful, a susceptibility to the manifestations of moral and intellectual life which is enjoyed only by him in whom the nobler elements of being are present in such intensity, proportions, and quality, and are so commingled, that he can reproduce life itself with translucent truthfulness, he becoming, through this exalting susceptibility, poet or maker. what constitutes the wealth of human life? is it not fullness and richness of feeling? to refine this fullness, to purify this richness, to distill the essence out of this wealth, to educate the feelings by revealing their subtle possibilities, by bringing to light the divinity there is within and behind them, this is the poet's part; and this, his great part, he can only do by being blest with more than common sympathy with the spirit of the almighty creator, and thence clearer insight into his work and will. merely to embody in verse the feelings, thoughts, deeds, scenes of human life, is not the poet's office; but to exhibit these as having attained, or as capable of attaining, the power and beauty and spirituality possible to each. the glorifier of humanity the poet is, not its mere reporter; that is the historian's function. the poet's business is not with facts as such, or with inferences, but with truth of feeling, and the very spirit of truth. his function is ideal; that is, from the prosaic, the individual, the limited, he is to lift us up to the universal, the generic, the boundless. in compassing this noble end he may, if such be his bent, use the facts and feelings and individualities of daily life; and, by illuminating and ennobling them he will approve his human insight, as well as his poetic gift. the generic in sentiment, the universal, the infinite, can only be reached and recognized through the higher feelings, through those whose activity causes emotion. the simple impulses, the elementary loves, are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct; but growing round the very fountain of life, having their roots in the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond their individual limits, and this they do with power when under their sway the whole being is roused and expanded. when by their movement the better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, as in the story of damon and pythias, the reader or beholder is lifted into the atmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse has reached its acme of function, and playing in the noonday of the beautiful, the contemplation of it purges and dilates us. we are upraised to the disinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood there is ever imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. it is not extravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful, it resounds through the whole being, tuning it like a high strain of sweetest music. thus in the poetical (and there is no poetry until the sphere of the beautiful is entered) there is always a reverberation from the emotional nature. reverberation implies space, an ample vault of roof or of heaven. in a tight, small chamber there can be none. if feeling is shut within itself, there is no reëcho. its explosion must rebound from the roomy dome of sentiment, in order that it become musical. the moment you enter the circle of the beautiful, into which you can only be ushered by a light within yourself, a light kindled through livelier recognition of the divine spirit,--the moment you draw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged, spiritualized, buoyed above the self. no matter how surrounded, or implicated, or enthralled, while you are there, be it but for a few moments, you are liberated. "no more--no more--oh! never more on me the freshness of the heart can fall like dew, which out of all the lovely things we see extracts emotions beautiful and new, hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee. think'st thou the honey with those objects grew? alas! 't was not in them, but in thy power to double even the sweetness of a flower." "all who joy would win must share it; happiness was born a twin." "he entered in the house,--his home no more, for without hearts there is no home--and felt the solitude of passing his own door without a welcome; _there_ he long had dwelt, there his few peaceful days time had swept o'er, there his worn, bosom and keen eye would melt over the innocence of that sweet child, his only shrine of feelings undefiled." these three passages are from a poem in which there is more wit than poetry, and more cynicism than either; a poem in spirit unsanctified, mephistophelian, written by a man of the world, a terrible egotist, _blasé_ already in early manhood, in whose life, through organization, inherited temperament, and miseducation, humanity was so cramped, distorted, envenomed, that the best of it was in the fiery sway of the more urgent passions, his inmost life being, as it must always be with poets, inwoven into his verse. from the expiring volcano in his bosom his genius, in this poem, casts upon the world a lurid flame, making life look pale or fever-flushed. with unslumbering vivacity, human nature is exhibited in that misleading light made by the bursting of half-truths that relate to its lower side, a light the more deceptions from the sparkling accompaniment of satire and wit. above the pungent secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute the successive cantos of "don juan," the passages just quoted and similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the discontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd self-seekings of a heated, noisy city rises a gothic spire, aspiring, beautiful, drawing most of its beauty from its aspiration, on whose pinnacle, calmly glistening in the upper air, plays the coming and the parting day, while shadows fill the streets below, and whose beauty throws over the town a halo that beckons men from afar. the spire, in its steadfast tranquillity and its beauty, so unlike the restless wrangling dissonance below it, grew nevertheless out of the same hearts that make the dissonance, and, typifying what is spiritual and eternal in them, tends by its ideal presence to enlarge and uplift those by whose eyes it is sought. these upshootings in "don juan" irradiate the cantos, giving an attractiveness which draws to them eyes that otherwise would not have known them; and if too pure in their light and too remote to mingle directly with the flare and flash that dazzle without illuminating, silently they shine and steadily, an unconscious heavenly influence, above these coruscations of earthly thoughts,--thoughts telling from their lively numerousness, but neither grand nor deep. from the same solar center fall frequently single rays that make lines and stanzas glisten, and but for which this poem, lacking their perfusive light, would soon pass into oblivion; for from the beautiful it is that the satire, the wit, the voluptuousness get their sparkle and their sheen. if passages morally censurable are hereby made more captivating, we are not content with saying that god's sun fructifies and beautifies poison-oak and hemlock; but we affirm that the beautiful, being by its nature necessarily pure, communicates of its quality to whoever becomes aware of it, and thus in some measure counterweighs the lowering tendency. moreover, the morally bad, deriving its character of evil from incompleteness, from the arresting or the perversion of good, like fruit plucked unripe, and being therefore outside the pale of the beautiful (the nature of which is completeness, fullness, perfection of life) cannot by itself be made captivating through the beautiful. iago and edmund are poetical as parts of a whole; and when in speech they approach the upper region of thought, it is because the details allotted to them have to be highly wrought for the sake of the general plot and effect, and further, because humanity and truth speak at times through strange organs. besides, the ideal may be used to show more glaringly the hideousness of evil, and thence iago and edmund, as ideal villains, through the very darkness in which only poetic art could have enveloped them, help us by indirection to see and value the lights that surround the noble and the good. in healthy function all the feelings are pure and moral, those whose action is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at their highest with the spiritual, for performance whose compass reaches beyond an individual, momentary good. a burglar or a murderer may exhibit courage; but here, a manly quality backing baseness and brutality for selfish, short-sighted ends, there is an introverted and bounded action, no expansive upward tendency, and thence no poetry. but courage, when it is the servant of principle for large, unselfish ends, becomes poetical, exhibiting the moral beautiful, as in the fable of curtius and the fact (or fable) of winkelried. in the poetical there is always enlargement, exaltation, purification; animal feeling, self-seeking propensity, becoming so combined with the higher nature as to rise above themselves, above the self. the lioness, pursuing the robber of her cub, if in her rage she scarcely heed that he (to stay her steps) has dropped the cub in her path, but, casting at it a glance of recognition, bounds with a wilder howl after the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an exhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most unpoetical. but let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the robber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine tenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards her. through the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream of white light, gushing from one of the purest fountains: wrathful fury is suddenly subdued by love. a moment before she was possessed with savage fierceness, her blood boiling with hate and revenge; now it glows with a mother's joy. her nature rises to the highest whereof it is capable. it is the poetry of animalism. in the poetical, thought is amplified and ripened, while purified, in the calm warmth of emotion. from being emotive, poetry draws in more of the man, and higher, finer powers, than prose. the poetical has, must have, rotundity. no poet ever had a square head. prose, in its naked quality, is to poetry what a skeleton is to a moving, flesh-and-spirit-endowed body. from the skeleton you can learn osteology, but neither æsthetics nor human nature. imaginative prose partakes of the spiritual character of poetry. when a page is changed from poetry into prose it is flattened, deadened; when from prose into poetry it is uplifted, enlivened. you get a something else and a something more. reduced to plain prose, the famous passage from the mouth of viola in "twelfth night" would read somewhat thus: "my father had a daughter who loved a man and would let no one know of her love, but concealed it, until her cheek grew pale with grief, patiently bearing within her bosom the misery of an untold attachment." now hear the poet:- "she never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought: and with a green and yellow melancholy she sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief." what has been done with the prose statement? instead of a bare fact we have a picture, a twofold picture; and this, in its compact, fresh, rose-tinted vividness, carries the whole into our hearts with a tenfold success. through emotional joy we apprehend, as by the light of an instantaneous ignition, the state of the sufferer. the prose-report is a smoldering fire on the hearth, through whose sleepy smoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic is the flame in full fervor, springing upward, illuminating, warming the heart, delighting the intellect. the imagination of the reader, quickened by illustrations so apt and original, is by their beauty tuned to its most melodious key, while by the rare play of intellectual vitality his mind is dilated. he has become mentally a richer man, enriched through the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities, and the activity imparted to his intellect. to say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is an idiot; that is, one lacking the inward force and the inward instruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from without by perception and memory, and from within by consciousness. to say of a poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say he is no poet. what is poetic imagination? this, for our theme, is a vital question. can there be given to it an approximate answer? figure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a september sunset near the sea, the eye taking in at once ocean and a variegated landscape. the company must not be a score of tawny american aborigines, nor of european peasants, nor of individuals whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture; but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the wonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may be thrown upon it; in short, a score of cultivated adults. the impression made by such a scene on such a company is heightened by a rare atmospheric calm. the heart of each gazer fills with emotion, at first unutterable except by indefinite exclamation; when one of the company says,- "a fairer face of evening cannot be." these words, making a smooth iambic line, give some utterance, and therefore some relief, to the feeling of all. then another adds,- "the holy time is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration." instantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking sun, is flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a spiritual light. the scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens had opened, and inundated all its features with a celestial subtilizing aura. how has this been accomplished? the first line has little of the quality of poetic imagination. "a fairer face of evening cannot be." is simple and appropriate, but in it there is no fresh glow, no mysterious throb. above the level of this line rise suddenly the first three words of the second, "the holy time." the presence of a scene where sky, earth, and ocean combine for the delight of the beholders puts them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo. that the time is holy they all feel; and now, to make its tranquillity appreciable by filling the heart with it, the poet adds--"is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration." by this master-stroke of poetic power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed into, super-earthly calm. by a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is set æsthetically aglow, as by the beams of the setting sun the landscape is physically. by an exceptionally empowered hand the soul is strung to a high key. fullness and range of sensibility open to the poet[4] a wide field of illustration; its exacting fineness reveals the one that carries his thought into the depths of the reader's mind, bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen intellectual power in the service of pure emotion. [4] wordsworth. take now other samples from the treasury of choicest poetry. here is one from coleridge:- "and winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on his smiling face a dream of spring." here again the intellect is urged to its highest action, the abstract or imaginative action, to do the hests of a sensibility so finely wrought by the inward impulsion to seek for the most exquisite that nature can furnish, that it yields similitudes most delicate, most apt, most expressive. milton thus opens the fifth book of "paradise lost:"- "now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl." shakespeare makes romeo describe daybreak:- "and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." keats begins "hyperion" with these lines: "deep in the shady sadness of a vale, far sunken from the healthy breath of morn." in the monody on keats, shelley, describing the lamentation of nature at his death, concludes a stanza as follows:- "morning sought her eastern watch-tower, and, her hair unbound, wet with the tears that should adorn the ground, dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; afar the melancholy thunder moaned, pale ocean in unquiet slumber lay, and the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay." such passages are the very flower of poetry, thought exquisitely dyed in sentiment, laying suddenly bare a picture with so much light in it that each passage irradiates its page and the reader's mind. by their happiness the similitudes emphasize and enforce the thought; and they do a higher service than this; for, being a breath from the inner life of genius, they blow power into the reader. to translate these passages into prose were like trying to translate a lily into the mold out of which it springs, or a bar of beethoven into the sounds of the forum, or the sparkle of stars into the warmth of a coal fire. the best poetry has a far background; it comes out of deeps within the poet, unfathomed by himself, unfathomable. he feels more than he can express. hence the imaginative poet always suggests, revealing enough to inspirit the reader's higher faculties to strive for more; not because, with artistic design, he leaves much untold, which he often does, but because through imaginative susceptibility he at times grasps at and partly apprehends much that cannot be embodied. he feels his subject more largely and deeply than he can see or represent it. to you his work is suggestive because to him the subject suggested more than he could give utterance to. every subject, especially every subject of poetic capability, having infinite relations, he who most apprehends this boundlessness--and indeed because he does apprehend it--can do or say what will open it to you or me; and the degree of his genius is measured by the extent to which he can present or expose it. the unimaginative gives surface-work, and, suggesting nothing, is at once exhausted. the poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has at his command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps feeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we look. sometimes epithets are brighter than their object; the unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of deriving it. to be lasting, the light of the epithet must be struck by the imagination out of its object. the inspired poet finds a word so sympathetic with the thought that it caresses and hugs it. depth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic imagination. the love of the beautiful, wielding a keen intellect, needs furthermore rich material to mold, and only out of the poet's individual resources can this be drawn. to make a high artist, you must have very much of a man. behind "paradise lost" and "samson agonistes" is a big miltonic man. the poet has to put a great deal of himself, and the best of him, into his work; thence, for high poetry, there must be a great deal of high self to put in. he must coin his soul, and have a large soul to coin; the best work cannot be made out of materials gathered by memory and fancy. his stream of thought must flow from springs, not from reservoirs. hence the universal biographical interest in such men; they have necessarily a rich personality. the passages i have cited are all pictures of outward nature, natural scenes mirrored on the mind, or rather refracted through it, and in the act transfigured, spiritualized; for such scenes, having the fortune to fall on the minds of poets, are reproduced with joyful revelation of their inmost being, as sunbeams are through a crystal prism. exhibiting material nature spiritualized, well do these passages show the uplifting character of poetic imagination. but this displays a higher, and its highest power when, striking like a thunderbolt into the core of things, it lays bare mysteries of god and of the heart which mere prosaic reason cannot solve or approach, cannot indeed alone even dimly apprehend. i will now quote passages, brief ones, wherein through the poet are opened vast vistas into the shining universe, or is concentrated in single or few lines the life of man's finer nature, as in the diamond are condensed the warmth and splendor that lie latent in acres of fossil carbon. when, in the sixth book of "paradise lost," milton narrates the arrival on the battle-field of the son,- "attended by ten thousand thousand saints," and then adds:- "far off his coming shone," in these five short words is a sudden glare of grandeur that dilates the capable mind with light, and, as the sublime always does, with awe. when ferdinand, in "the tempest," leaps "with hair up-staring" into the sea, crying,- "hell is empty, and all the devils are here," the mind is suddenly filled with an image of the tumult and flaming rage of a thunder-storm at sea, such as words have never elsewhere carried. what a reach in the imaginative stroke! in the first scene of "faust," the earth-spirit, whom faust has evoked, concludes the whirling, dazzling, brief, but gigantic sketch of his function with these words, the majesty of which translation cannot entirely subdue:- "i ply the resounding great loom of old time, and work at the godhead's live vesture sublime." how ennobling is the idea the mind harbors of humanity, after taking in these lines from wordsworth's "ode on intimations of immortality:"- "but trailing clouds of glory do we come from god, who is our home." with a single epithet, coined for the occasion, keats flashes upon our imagination the dethroned saturn and the immensity of his fall: "upon the sodden ground his old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, unsceptered; and his _realmless_ eyes were closed." the "hyperion" of this transcendent genius, written in his twenty-fourth year, the year before he died, is as great poetry as has ever been treasured in words. in it he lavishes poetic wealth as though gold were with him as plenty as silver; and so on the next page he exceeds, if possible, the sublimity of the above lines, making thea write in the catalogue of saturn's colossal deprivations,- "and all the air is emptied of thine hoary majesty." these passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination, which is the illumining of a capable material by a spiritual light, a light thrown into it from the glow kindled in the poet's mind with richest sensibilities, that are refined and sublimated by an exacting, subtle inward demand for the best they can render. a single flash of new thrilling light irradiates a continent of thought. this is the work of genius, and genius is ever marked by a deeper sympathy with and recognition of the creative spirit and the divine action, a sympathy and recognition so sensitive that the spirit and action of the writer are permeated by the divine effluence, he becoming thereby the interpreter of divine law, the exhibitor of divine beauty. in these passages the thought of the poet is thrust up through the overlaying crust of the common, by a warming, expanding, inward motion, which is sped by a vitality so urgent and irresistible that, to make passage for the new thought, lightly is lifted a load which, but for this spiritual efficacy, could not be stirred, just as heavy stones are raised by delicate growing plants. to exert this power the poet is always moved at the instance of feeling. poetry having its birth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling. but what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing sentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling, the sentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or entertainment of the most divine and most perfect, and ever rises to the top of the refined joy which such contemplation educes. the poetic imagination is the ariel of the poet,--his spiritual messenger and mercury. a clear look into the above passages would show that the source of their power is in the farther scope or exquisite range the imagination opens to us, often by a word. for further illustration i will take a few other examples, scrutinizing them more minutely. had lorenzo opened the famous passage in "the merchant of venice" thus,- "how _calm_ the moonlight _lies_ upon this bank," and continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key, saying,- "there's not the _tiniest star_ that _can be seen_ but in its _revolution_ it doth _hum_, aye _chanting_ to the _heavenly_ cherubins," his words would not have become celebrated and quotable. but lorenzo has the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of shakespeare, and so he begins,- "how _sweet_ the moonlight _sleeps_ upon this bank." two words, _sweet_ and _sleep_, put in the place of _calm_ and _lies_, lift the line out of prose into poetry. a log _lies_ on a bank; so does a dead dog, and the more dead a thing is the more it lies; but only what is alive _sleeps_, and thus the word, besides an image of extreme stillness, brings with it what strengthens the image, the idea of change from liveliness to quiet; for that which was awake now sleeps; and the more full the picture of stillness, the more awake is the mind of the reader, awakened by the fitness and felicity of the image. the substitution of _sweet_ for _calm_ is, in a less degree, similarly enlivening; for, used in such conjunction, _sweet_ is more individual and subtle, and imports more life, and thus helps the distinctness and vividness of the picture. how does the poetic lorenzo word the other three lines? "there's not the _smallest orb_ which _thou behold'st_, but in _his motion like an angel sings_, still _quiring_ to the _young-eyed_ cherubins." the words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a finer meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. to _behold_ is more than to _see_: it is to see contemplatively. the figure _prosopopoeia_ is often but an impotent straining to impart poetic life; but the personification in _in his motion_ is apt and effective. _quiring_ is an amplification of the immediately preceding _sings_, and, signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges, while making more specific, the thought. and what an image of the freshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the epithet _young-eyed_! at every step the thought is expanded and beautiful, reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which the poetically excited mind is left poised in delight. but the passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still poetical. there is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less figurative words. and the thought is poetical because it is the result of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these being moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful, and beating an atmosphere exhaled from sensibility. as joubert says,--herein uttering a cardinal æsthetic principle,--"it is, above all, in the spirituality of ideas that poetry consists." thought that is poetic will glisten through the plainest words; whereas, if the thought be prosaic or trite, all the gilded epithets in the dictionary will not give it the poetic sheen. perdita wishes for "daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of march with beauty." note the poetic potency in the simple word _dares_; how much it carries: the cold which the swallow has not the courage to confront; a mental action, i might almost call it, in the swallow, who, after making a recognizance of the season, determines that it would be rash to venture so far north: all this is in the single word. for _dares_ write _does_, and the effect would be like that of cutting a gash in a rising balloon: you would let the line suddenly down, because you take the life out of the thought. "and take the winds of march with beauty." every one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of person or thing, and the thought is common; but that the winds of march be taken with the beauty of daffodils, this was a delicate secret which those winds would confide only to one so sympathetic as shakespeare. this is poetic imagination, the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility which is at once generous and bold, and fastidious through the promptings and the exactions of the beautiful. in the opening of "il penseroso" milton describes the shapes that in sprightly moods possess the fancy, "as thick and numberless as the gay motes that _people_ the sunbeams." put _shine in_ the sunbeams, for _people_, and, notwithstanding the luminousness of the word substituted, you take the sparkle out of the line, which sparkle is imparted by mental activity, and the poetic dash that has the delightful audacity to personify such atomies. the poetical is the flush on the face of things in the unconscious triumph of their purest life, cognizable by being beheld at the moment when the higher faculties are at their fullest flood, buoyed up on the joy of being and emotional sympathy. the most and the highest of this joy is possessed by him whose imagination is most capable of being poetically agitated; for by such agitation light is engendered within him, whereby objects and sensations that before were dim and opaque grow luminous and pellucid, like great statuary in twilight or moonlight, standing vague and unvalued until a torch is waved over it. when we begin to speak of poetry, the higher qualities of the mind come up for judgment. no genuine poet is without one or more of these, and a great poet must have most of them. thence the thought of the poet is pitched on a high key, and even in poets of power the poetry of a page is sometimes shown merely by the sustained tone of the sentiment, giving out no jets of fire, having no passages salient with golden embossings. through sympathy and sense of beauty, the poet gets nearer to the absolute nature of things; and thence, with little of imagery, or coloring, or passion, through this holy influence he becomes poetic, depicting by re-creating the object or feeling or condition, and rising naturally into rhythmic lines and sentences, the best substance asking for, and readily obtaining, the most suitable form of words. yet a poet of inward resources can seldom write a page without there being heard a note or bar or passage of the finer melody. but men wanting this inward wealth, that is, wanting depth and breadth of emotional capacity, have not, whatever their other gifts, the soil needed for highly imaginative poetry. with broad emphasis this æsthetic law is exemplified in the verse of voltaire, especially in his dramas, and in the verse of one who was deeper and higher than he as thinker and critic, of lessing. skillful versifiers, by help of fancy and a certain plastic aptitude and laborious culture, are enabled to give to smooth verse a flavor of poetry and to achieve a temporary reputation. but of such uninspired workmanship the gilding after a while wears off, the externally imparted perfume surely evaporates. often the most suitable form of words is made of plainest, commonest parts of speech, and the fewest of them. the more intense and deep the feeling, the greater is the need of briefest, simplest utterance. when in one of those pauses of frantic wrath,--like the sudden rifts that momentarily let the calm stars through a whirling canopy of storm,--lear utters imploringly that appeal to heaven, the words are the familiar words of hourly use; but what divine tenderness and what sweep of power in three lines! "o heavens, if you do love old men, if your sweet sway allow obedience, if yourselves are old, make it your cause; send down and take my part!" the thirty-third canto of the "inferno" supremely exemplifies the sustaining energy of poetic imagination, that by its sublimating light it can forever hold before the mind, in tearful, irresistible beauty, one of the most woful forms of human suffering, death by starvation. in that terrific picture, in front of which all the generations of men that come after dante are to weep purifying tears, the most exquisite stroke is given in five monosyllables; but in those five little words what depth of pathos, what concentration of meaning! on the fourth day one of ugolino's dying sons throws himself at his father's feet, crying,- "father, why dost not help me?" here let me remark that it is not by witnessing, through poetically imaginative representation, scenes of suffering and agony, as in this case and the tragic drama, that the sensibilities are "purged," according to the famous saying of aristotle; but it is because such scenes are witnessed by the light of the beautiful. the beautiful always purifies and exalts. in either of these two passages any piling up of words, any hyperbole of phrase, or boldness or even grandeur of figurative speech, would have proved a hindrance instead of a conductor to the feeling, smothering and not facilitating expression. but when, turned out of doors in "a wild night," by those "unnatural hags," his daughters, lear, baring his brow to the storm, invokes the thunder to "strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world," there is no tenderness, no folding of the sore heart upon itself; there is the expansion of defiance, outburst of the mighty wrath of an outraged father and wronged and crownless king: and so we have a gush of the grandest diction, of the most tempestuous rhythm, the storm in lear's mind marrying itself with a ghastly joy to the storm of the elements, the sublime tumult above echoed in the crashing splendor of the verse:- "blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage, blow! you cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! you sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving-thunderbolts, singe my white head! and thou, all-shaking thunder, strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once, that make ingrateful man!" i know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the colossal dimensions of shakespeare. here is attained, with almost unique effect, what according to schiller is the aim of poetry, "no other than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression, its most complete utterance." the best poetry, like the best music, soars towards the upper light. the genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the swell of emotion. the thought moves free and strong because there is a deep, bubbling head of feeling behind it. feeling, at its best, has an ascending movement, reaching up towards that high sphere where, through their conjunction, the earthly and the spiritual play in freedom in the sunshine of the beautiful. the surest test of the presence of poetry is buoyancy, springiness, which comes from the union, the divine union, of the spiritual and the beautiful. however weighty it may be with thought, the poetical passage floats, thus giving certain sign of life, of a soul irrepressible. but as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without strength and breadth of root, the highest poetry is the most solid, the firmest set in reality, in truth. the higher a poet is, the closer hold he has of the roots of his subject. he looks at it with a peering, deeply sympathetic insight. the roots, in fact, are in himself; they are in the depths of his soul. hence a cardinal question about a poem is, how much of it does the poet draw out of himself? is it his by projection from his inward resources, by injection with his own juices; or is it his only by adoption and adaptation, by dress and adjustment? flight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings have been feathered in the heart. loftiness or grandeur of imagination there cannot be, except there be first innate richness and breadth of feeling. imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect, is ever, like intellect in all its phases, an instrument of feeling, a mere tool. height implies inward depth. the gift to touch the vitals of a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty; it is the soul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier sympathy. compare wordsworth with southey to learn the difference between inward and outward gifts. poetry being in the mind, the man who has little poetry within him will find little in nature or in the world or in shakespeare. the man who has no music in his soul will hear none at the conservatoire in paris. wordsworth sees with the inward eye, southey too exclusively with the outward. the true poet projects visions and rhythms out from his brain, and gazes at and hearkens to them. the degree of the truthfulness to nature and the vividness of these projections is the measure of his poetic genius and capacity. only through this intense inwardness can he attain to great visions and rhythmic raptures, and make you see and hear them. what illimitable inward sight must keats have dwelt in ere, to depict the effect on him of looking into chapman's homer, he could write,- "then felt i like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken; or like stout cortez, when with eagle eyes he stared at the pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent, upon a peak in darien." here is a brilliant example of poetic imagination, the intellect urged to its finest action to satisfy the feeling which delights in the grand, the select, the beautiful. "silent, upon a peak in darien." what an outlook! what a solemn, mysterious, elevating inward moment it creates in us! to ascend to that peak, to carry the reader thither with him, that is the flight of a great poet, of one who has been--as in that choice poem, "the prelude," wordsworth, with an electric stroke of poetic imagination, says of newton- "voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." this vigor of flight in the poet, bearing on his wing the reader, whom he ushers to new, sudden vistas, is a test of poetic genius. some poets never carry you to heights, but rather make you feel while reading them as if you were moving through shut-in valleys: their verse wants sky. they are not poetically imaginative, are not strung for those leaps which the great poet at times finds it impossible not to make. they have more poetic fancy than poetic imagination. poetic fancy is a thin flame kindled deliberately with gathered materials; poetic imagination is an intense flash born unexpectedly of internal collisions. fancy is superficial and comparatively short-sighted; imagination is penetrative and far-sighted, bringing together things widely sundered, apparently diverse and opposite. fancy divides, individualizes; imagination compounds, builds, globes. fancy is not so broad or so keen or so warm or so bounding as imagination; is comparatively tame and cold and quiet. imagination is synthetical. large exhibitions of poetic imagination are rare even in the greatest poets. at its best it strikes deep into the nature of things, has a celestial quality which invests it with awe. spenser shows great resources of fancy, but little imagination. the arc of imagination is in him too near its center. hence there is no reach in his thoughts. he has no exhaustless depths within. he is not, as coleridge says shakespeare is, an example of "endless self-reproduction." cowley, says the same great critic, "is a fanciful writer, milton an imaginative poet." as i have already said, the power of imagining, of forming in the mind images, conceptions, is a purely intellectual power, and imagination becomes poetical only when this intellectual power is an agent obeying that emotional power which ardently seeks, intensely longs for, the better, the more perfect, the purer, in one word, the beautiful in each province of multiform life. the willing agent, intellect, is sent out on excursions of discovery, and unexpectedly falls in with and captures all kinds of sparkling booty. writers weak in poetic imagination are not visited by those beaming thoughts that come unsummoned out of the invisible, like new stars which, out of the unfathomable deeps of the sky, dart suddenly upon the vision of the heaven-watcher. such writers deal with the known, with the best commonplace, not the common merely; and under the glance of genius the common grows strange and profound. some poets, not weak in poetic imagination, yet use it chiefly for secondary purposes, that is, for beautifying the dress, the externals of poetry. minds with some breadth but with little depth are not thoroughly original. their sense of the beautiful busies itself necessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts; and their readiest gifts being words more than ideas, versification more than thought, form more than substance, they turn out verse, chiefly narrative, which captivates through its easy flow, its smooth sensuousness of diction, its gloss. take a poet so celebrated, in some respects so admirable, as tennyson. tennyson's verse is apt to be too richly dressed, too perfumed. the clothing is costlier than the thoughts can pay for. hence at every re-reading of him he parts with some of his strength, so that after three or four repetitions he has little left for you. from a similar cause this is the case too with byron, through whose pen to common sentiment and opinion a glow is imparted by the animal heat of the man, heightened by poetic tints from a keen sense of the beautiful. but this is not the case with keats or shelley or coleridge or wordsworth, and of course therefore not with milton or shakespeare. all these keep fresh, at every contact giving you strength and losing none. as freely and freshly as the sun's beams through a transparent, upspringing gothic spire, intellect and feeling play, ever undimmed, through shelley's "sky-lark." not so through tennyson's "dream of fair women." after a time these mellifluous stanzas droop, and cling to the paper: they have not enough flame-like motion. the nicest word-choosing will not supply the place of choice in thought, a choice prompted by fresh feeling; nor, where there is no new impulse from the heart, will the most gorgeous diction give to a line the poetic carnation. there can be no freshness of expression without freshness of thought; the sparkle on the skin comes from new blood in the heart. tennyson's poetry has often too much leaf and spray for the branches, and too much branch for the trunk, and too much trunk for the roots. there is not living stock enough of thought deeply set in emotion to keep the leaves ever fresh and fragrant. wordsworth's poetry has for the most part roots deeply hidden. poetry is at times fitted to a subject too much like clothes to a body. this is the method with even some writers of good gifts and deserved name. compared with goethe, who, sensuous as he is, but healthily sensuous, writes always from within outward, schiller is chargeable with this kind of externality. to try to make the fancy do the work of feeling is a vain effort. and so much verse is of the memory and fancy more than of the heart and imagination. inward impulse not being dominant, the words, however shiny, are touched with coldness. under the inward dominance (supposing always that the intellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness) the poet mounts springily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he ascends; and thus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness, a forward and upward movement towards the climax which ever awaits you in a subject that has a poem in it. in a genuine poem, a work of inspiration and not mainly of art, there is brisk evolution, phase of feeling climbing over phase, thought kindled by thought seizing unexpected links of association. this gives sure note of the presence of the matrix out of which poetry molds itself, that is, sensibility warm and deep, penetrating sympathy. where evolution and upward movement are not, it is a sign that the spring lacks depth and is too much fed by surface streams from without. through a poem should run a thread of emotional thought, strong enough to bind the parts together so vividly as to hold attention close to the substance. many a so-called poem is but a string of elaborate stanzas, mostly of four lines each, too slightly connected to cooperate as members of an organic whole. there is not heat enough in the originating impulse to fuse the parts into unity. there is too much manufacture and not enough growth. coleridge says, "the difference between manufactured poems and works of genius is not less than between an egg and an egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look alike." men without depth of sensibility or breadth of nature, but with enough sense of beauty to modulate their thoughts, using with skill the floating capital of sentiment and the current diction and molds of verse, for a generation are esteemed poets of more genius than they have, their pages being elaborate verse flavored with poetry, rather than poems. in much verse are found old thoughts re-dressed in the scoured garments of an ambitious fancy. the remark being made to goethe in his latter days, that scarce one of the younger german poets had given an example of good prose, he rejoined, "that is very natural; he who would write prose must have something to say; but he who has nothing to say can make verses and rhymes; for one word gives the other, till at last you have before you what in fact is nothing, yet looks as though it were something." there is much good-looking verse which does not fulfill any one of milton's primary conditions for poetry, being artificial instead of "simple," and having neither soul enough to be "passionate," nor body enough to be "sensuous." by passionate milton means imbued with feeling. the poetical mood is always a visionary mood; so much so, that even when the poet is depicting an actual person or scene, he must see it with the imaginative eye, the inward eye, as well as with the outward. unless he does, there is no poetry in the result. a poem is twofold, presenting an actuality, and at the same time a tender lucent image thereof, like the reflection of a castle, standing on the edge of a lake, in the calm deep mirror before it: at one view we see the castle and its glistening counterpart. in the best poetry there is vivid picture-making: reality is made more visible by being presented as a beautiful show. it is the power to present the beautiful show which constitutes the poet. to conceive a scene or person with such liveliness and compactness as to be able to transfer the conception to paper with a distinctness and palpitation that shall make the reader behold in it a fresh and buoyant type of the actual--this implies a subtle, creative life in the mind, this is the test of poetic faculty. to stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and sensibility, dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his conception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. the poetic mind, with a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a subject at arm's length, where it can be turned round in the light; the prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there is no room for play of light or motion. contemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest, and at the same time actively endeavoring to embody it, the genuine poet has in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here attain to; and in the reader who can attune himself to the high pitch, he enkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. there is current a detestable phrase or definition, which even coleridge allows himself to countenance, namely, that poetry is something which gives pleasure. pleasure! do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of the atlantic or from the top of mount washington, or the pleasure of standing beside niagara, or of reading about the self-sacrifice of regulus or winkelried? pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to the lighter feelings. "let me have the pleasure of taking wine with you." a good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets. even enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to poetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, and there are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an execution. but poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight which follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or scene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range of that thought, sentiment, act, or scene. in the poetical there always is exaltation, a reaching towards perfection, a subtle, blooming spirituality. the end of poetry is not pleasure,--this were to speak too grossly,--but refined enjoyment through emotion. to him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its presence, the poetical is everywhere. the beautiful is a kiss which man gives to nature, who returns it; to get the kiss from her he must first give it. wordsworth says, "poetry is the breath and fine spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." it might be called the aromatic essence of all life. a poem is the incarnation of this aroma, the condensation of it into form. a drop of dew symbolizes a poem; for a true poem should be oval, without angles, transparent, compact, complete in itself, graceful from inward quality and fullness. it may be of a few lines, or of hundreds or thousands; but there must be no superfluous line or word. a poem drops out of the brain a fragrant distillation. a poem must be a spiritual whole; that is, not only with the parts organized into proportioned unity, but with the whole and the parts springing out of the idea, the sentiment, form obedient to substance, body to soul, the sensuous life to the inward. for enduring, ruddy incarnation, the subject, whether it be incident, scene, sentiment, or action, must have within its core this essential aroma. the poet (and the test of his poetic capacity is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a core) keeps his conception distinctly and vividly before him. the conception or ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him, like the pillar of fire in the night, drawing him onward surely and rapidly. otherwise he lags and flags and stumbles. the spring into poetry is on a flash, which not only lights up the thought on which it springs, but renews, recreates it. a man's chief aim in life should be to better himself, to keep bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. poetry is the great educator of the feelings. by seizing and holding up to view the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry elevates and refines the feelings. it reveals and strengthens the spirituality of our nature. poetry tunes the mind. faculty of admiration is one of our super-animal privileges. poetry purges and guides admiration; and the sounder and higher our admirations, the more admirable ourselves become. the best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself, and sweetens its imaginations. our imaginations, that is, our inward thoughts, plans, shaping our silent, interior doings, these are the chief part of us; for out of these come most of our outward acts, and all of their color. as is the preponderance of the man, will be this inward brood. the timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man troubles, the hopeful man successes, the avaricious man accumulations, the ambitious possession of power; and the poetic man will imagine all sorts of perfections, be ever yearning for a better and higher, be ever building beautiful air-castles, earthy or moral, material or ethereal, according as the sensuous or the spiritual predominates in his nature. beckford, of a sensuously poetic nature, having command of vast wealth, brought his castle in the air down to the ground, and dazzled his contemporaries with fonthill abbey. not only are fonthill abbeys and all beautiful buildings achieved through the warm action of the poetic faculty, but all improvements are brought about by its virtue. out of this deep, inward, creative power issue all theories and practice for the bettering of human conditions. all original founders and discoverers are poets: the most poetic french mind i know is that of fourier. when a mind, having the texture and expansibility to become surcharged with magnetic effluence, has moreover that æsthetic gift of rhythmic expression which involves a sense of the beautiful, that is, of the high and exquisite possibilities of created things,--when such a mind, under the pressure of inward needs, betakes it to embodying in verse its imaginations and conceptions, the result is poetry. _poetry is thought so inly warmed by creative sensibility as to overflow in musical cadence._ and when we consider that thought is the gathering of loose intellectual activity into a fast focus; that creative sensibility is human feeling refined of its dross, stilled of its tumultuousness in the glow of the beautiful; that musical cadence is heard by him who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to catch some sound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend that a genuine poem implies, for its conception, an illuminated plenitude of mind, and involves in its production a beatific visionariness. iii. style. thought, act, and speech are of one substance. where the best things have been done, the best things have been said. the history of attica is richer and more significant than that of her sister-states of old greece, and among them her literature is supreme. so of england in modern europe. and where good thoughts have been uttered the form of those will be finest which carry the choicest life. the tree gets its texture from the quality of its sap. were i asked what author is the most profitable to the student of english on account of style, i should answer, study shakespeare. have something to say, and say it in the best and fewest words, were a good recipe for style. in this brief precept there are more ingredients than at first view appear. to have something to say implies that a man must write out of himself, and not chiefly out of his memory; and so to write involves much more than many people are aware of; in order that his style have freshness, which is a primary need of a good style, the writer's thought must be fresh. then, to say his thought in the best and fewest words implies faculty of choice in words, and faculty of getting rid of all verbal superfluity; and these two faculties betoken proficiencies and some of the finer æsthetic forces. style itself is a gift (or more properly an issue of several gifts), not an acquisition; it cannot be taught. as to teaching style to one with inharmonious or defective natural powers, you might as well attempt to teach a thrush to sing the songs of the nightingale. to be sure, like the poetical, or the scientific, or any mental gift, it requires culture. but style is little helped from without. the most, as to the form of his utterance, that a writer can get from others--whether through study of the best masters or through direct rhetorical instruction--is in the mechanical portion of the art; that is, how to put sentences together according to relation of clauses, how by position of words and phrases to avoid obscurity and awkwardness, and thus make most presentable and accessible what he has to give out. even in these superficial lessons success imports something more than a superficial capacity. these lessons learnt, and you have still to go behind them for style, whose cradle is within you. _le style c'est l'homme même_ (a man's style is his very self), is the oft-quoted profound sentence of buffon. style comes out of the interior: beneath a genuinely good style are secret springs which give to the surface its movement and sparkle. mostly when people talk of style 't is of the surface; they think not of the depths beneath. in popularly good styles there are indeed no deep or fine springs beneath; in tom moore's, for example, or southey's. nevertheless there are writers who have more skill and art than others in presenting agreeably what they have to say, in gracefully shaping their utterances; they are better endowed with some of the plastic faculties; they have what sainte-beuve calls the genius of style. tact and craft enable them to make themselves more readable than some other writers of more substance; still, they are only capable of so doing by means of qualities which, however secondary, are interior and fervent, and the skill imparted by which cannot be acquired except through the presence of these qualities. this superiority of skill in form is illustrated by the literature of france in comparison with the literature of germany, and even with that of england. the french follow a precept thus embodied by béranger: "perfection of style should be sought by all those who believe themselves called to diffuse useful thoughts. style, which is only the form appropriated to a subject by art and reflection, is the passport of which every thought has need in order to circulate, expand, and lodge itself in people's brains. to neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the ideas one wishes to make others adopt." and so effective is the following of such a precept that, through careful devices and manipulating cleverness, a brilliant success, though transitory is achieved by some writers who range lightly over surfaces, their thoughts dipping no deeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along the water, which it keeps ruffling, making a momentary sprightly splash at each contact, until, its force being soon spent, it disappears and is seen no more. the possession of certain mental gifts constitutes a talent for writing, gifts which, with reference to the great primary powers of the mind, are secondary. sainte-beuve says of the abbé gerbet that he "had naturally the flowers of speech, movement and rhythm of phrase, measure and choice of expression, even figurative language, what, in short, makes a talent for writing." the possessor of these qualifications may, nevertheless, rise only a little above mediocrity. of the styles of many, even clever, accomplished writers, one gets a clear notion from the remark made of a certain polished actress, that she always played well, never better. when sainte-beuve says _rien ne vit que par le style_, he asserts in fact the exclusive privilege of original thought to give permanence to literary work; for nothing but an interior source can give life to expression. the inward flow will shape itself adequately and harmoniously in proportion as it has at full command the auxiliary, what i have called the plastic literary qualities; but shape itself it will, effectively and with living force, without the fullest command, while the readiest mastery over these qualities can never give vitality to style when are wanting primary resources. literary substance which does not shape itself successfully (it may not be with the fullest success) is internally defective, is insufficient; for if it throb with life, it will mold a form for its embodiment, albeit that form, from lack of complete command of the secondary agents, will not be so graceful or rich as with such command it would have been. wordsworth has made to english literature a permanent addition which is of the highest worth, in spite of notable plastic deficiencies. a conception that has a soul in it will find itself a body, and if not a literary body, one furnished by some other of the fine arts; or, wanting that, in practical enterprise or invention. and the body or form will be stamped with the inward lineaments of the man. style issues from within, and if it does not, it is not style, but manner. words get all their force from the thoughts and feelings behind them. they are necessary media, created, molded, and combined by mental wants. picking and polishing words and phrases is ineffectual without the picking and polishing of the thoughts: below the surface of words lies that which controls and vivifies style. and then between the substance, the mental material, and the executive faculties there must be lively harmony. the executive power is a purely intellectual composite instrument; the force that wields it is feeling. for the best style the wielding force must be fine as well as rich and strong, and the shaping, harmonizing instrument of superfine temper and smiling willingness. style, in writing, is the art of putting into words what you think or feel, in such a way as to make the best of it--presupposed, that what you think or feel is worth putting into printed words. there are men who, without being original or inventive, have still, through strong understanding and culture, much to say that will profit their contemporaries; men of a certain mental calibre, of talent, activity, will, cleverness, of verbal facility and of prominent ambition and in most cases of audacity, and who by discipline and labor attain to a style which for their purposes is effective. of this class jeffrey, brougham, macaulay are conspicuous examples. theirs are not winged minds. they keep to the plane of commonplace; they are never rapt into an upper sphere of thought, where sentences grow transparent, illuminated by soulful revelations. all three lack subtlety, the finer insight, a penetrating perception. the style of such men, even when most vivacious, is never marked by geniality, by newness of turns, by imaginative combinations, by rhythmical sweeps, and especially not by freshness, of all which the fountain is originality, genius, creativeness. it is related that after several of carlyle's papers had appeared in the "edinburgh review," brougham, one of its founders and controllers, protested that if that man were permitted to write any more he should cease to be a contributor. and so the pages of the review were closed against the best writer it ever had. this arbitrary proceeding of brougham is to be mainly accounted for as betraying the instinct of creeping talent in the presence of soaring genius. not less than men of talent men of genius need to cultivate style; nay, from the copiousness and variousness of their material, and from its very inwardness, the molds into which it is to be thrown need the finest care. coleridge, rich and incomparable as he is, would have made many of his prose pages still more effective by a studious supervision; and de quincey tells us what labor his periods sometimes cost him. the following advice, given in a letter from maurice de guérin to his sister, may be addressed to all literary aspirants: "form for yourself a style which shall be the expression of yourself. study our french language by attentive reading, making it your care to mark constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of style, but without ever adopting the manner of any master. in the works of these masters we must learn our language, but we must use it each in our own fashion." one of the first constituents of a good style is what coleridge calls "progressive transition," which implies a dynamic force, a propulsive movement, behind the pen. hazlitt, for example, somewhat lacked this force, and hence de quincey is justified to speak of his solitary flashes of thought, his "brilliancy, seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image, which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment." one of the charms, in a high sense, of coleridge's page is that in him this dynamic force was present in liveliest action. his intellect, ever enkindled by his emotions, exacted logical sequence, and thus a rapid forward movement is overspread by a glow of generous feeling, which, being refined by his poetic sensibility made his style luminous and flowing. de quincey, treating of aphoristic writing, says, "any man [he of course means any man with good things in him] as he walks through the streets may contrive to jot down an independent thought, a short-hand memorandum of a great truth; but the labor of composition begins when you have to put your separate threads of thought into a loom; to weave them into a continuous whole; to connect, to introduce them; to blow them out or expand them; to carry them to a close." buffon attached the greatest importance to sequence, to close dependence, to continuous enchainment. he detested a chopped, jerky style, that into which the french are prone to fall. certain it is, and from obvious causes, that much of the secret of style lies in aptness of sequence, thought and word, through an irresistible impulsion and pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place promptly, because naturally and necessarily. through fusion and close coherency and dependence, the flow is at once smooth and lively. the grace as well as the strength of the living physical body depends much, nay primarily, on the joints. so with the body of a good writer's thoughts, that is, his mode of utterance. to the linking of sentences and paragraphs (the links being self-wrought out of inward sap) is due much of the buoyancy and force of style. the springiness of the joints depends, in the body, on the quality of its nervous life; in style, much on the marrow and validity of the thoughts. by a sprightly stream of thought, fed from a full spring of feeling, the current of words is kept lively and graceful. words, sentences, paragraphs, cannot be held closely, symmetrically, attractively together, without the unction invisibly distilled from brisk mental movement, movement starting from sentiment fresh and true. soul is the source of style. not sensibility alone is a prerequisite for style: the sensibility must be _active_, made active by the fine aspiring urgency which ever demands the best. a good style will have the sheen communicated by lubrication from within, not the gloss of outward rubbing. that style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject treated ought to be self-evident. in every page of "the merry wives of windsor" we recognize shakespeare not less palpably than in "king lear." in his "recollections of charles lamb" de quincey writes, "far be it from me to say one word in praise of those--people of how narrow a sensibility--who imagine that a simple (that is, according to many tastes, an unelevated and _unrhythmical_) style--take, for instance, an addisonian or a swiftian style--is _unconditionally_ good. not so: all depends upon the subject; and there is a style, transcending these and all other modes of simplicity, by infinite degrees, and, in the same proportion, impossible to most men, the rhythmical, the continuous--what in french is called the _soutenu_--which, to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ to a shepherd's pipe. this also finds its justification in its subject; and the subject which _can_ justify it must be of a corresponding quality--loftier--and therefore, rare." i quote de quincey because he has written more, and more profoundly as well as more copiously, on style than any writer i know. to this point,--the adaption of style to subject,--he returns, laying down with clearness and truth the law which should here govern. in a paper on schlosser's "literary history of the eighteenth century" he reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the common opinion that swift's style is, for all writers, a model of excellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on which swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage: "that nearly all the blockheads with whom i have at any time had the pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably regarded swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper subject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter what the subject. now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had been required to write a pendant for sir walter raleigh's immortal apostrophe to death, or to many passages in sir thomas brown's 'religio medici' and his 'urn-burial,' or to jeremy taylor's inaugural sections of his 'holy living and dying,' do you know what would have happened? are you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor bald jonathan would have cut? about the same that would be cut by a forlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of belshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords." that no writer of limited faculties can have a style of high excellence ought to be a truism. through a certain equilibrium among his faculties, and assiduous literary culture, such a one may excel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane; but that is all. from the shallowest utterance, where, thoughts and feelings lying just below the surface, there can be no strong lights and shadows, no splendid play in the exposition, styles range, with the men who make them, through all degrees of liveliness and significance and power, up to that simple grandeur which conceals a vast volume of thought, and implies a divine ruling of multiplicity. in a good style, on whatever degree it stands, there must be a full marriage between word and thought, so clean an adjustment of expression to material as to leave no rough edges or nodes. the words must not be too big or too shiny for the thought; they must not stand out from the texture, embossing, as it were, the matter. a style can hardly be too nervous; it can be too muscular, as, for example, was sometimes that of michael angelo in sculpture and painting. a primary requisite for a good style is that the man and the writer be one; that is, that the man have a personal feeling for, a free sympathy with, the theme the writer has taken in hand; his subject must be fitted to him, and he to his subject. that he be sincere is not enough; he must be cordial; then he will be magnetic, attractive. you must love your work to do it well. a good style is a stream, and a lively stream: it flows ever onward actively. the worst vice a style can have is languor. with some writers a full stop is a double full stop: the reader does not get forward. much writing consists of little more than sluggish eddies. in many minds there is not leap enough for a style. excellence in style demands three vivacities, and rather exacting ones, for they involve a somewhat rare mental apportionment; the vivacities of healthy and poetic feeling, of intellectual nimbleness, and of inviolable sequence. writers there are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a routine of phrases and words under the repetition of which thought is hardened by its molds. thence mechanical turns and forms, which cause numbness, even when there is a current of intellectual activity. writers most liable to this subjection are they who have surrendered themselves to set opinions and systems, who therefore cease to grow,--a sad condition for man or writer. hypocrites in writing, as in talking and doing, end badly. a writer who through his style aims to seem better or other than himself is soon found out. the desire so to seem argues a literary incapacity; it looks as though the very self--which will shine through the style--lacked confidence in its own substance. and after all, in writing as in doing and talking, a man must be himself, will be himself in spite of himself. one cannot put on his neighbor's style any more than he can put on his neighbor's limbs. not only has prose its melody as well as verse, but there is no _style_ unless sentences are pervaded, i might say animated, by rhythm; lacking appropriate movement, they are inelastic, inert, drowsy. rhythm implies a soul behind it and in it. the best style will have a certain rotundity imparted by the ceaseless rocking of thought in the deep ocean of sentiment. without some music in them sentences were torpid, impracticable. to put thoughts and words so together that there shall be a charm in the presentation of them, there needs a lively harmony among certain faculties, a rhythm in the mind. hence cicero said that to write prose well, one must be able to write verse. the utterance of music in song or tune, in artful melody or choral harmony, is but the consummation of a power which is ever a sweetener in life's healthily active exhibitions, the power of sound. nature is alive with music. in the fields, in the air, sound is a token of life. on high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes in great part from the absence of sound. but stand in spring under a broad, sapful norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray clad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of bees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from unseen choristers. here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, unseen, and ever rhythmical. the heartier and deeper the thought, the more melody will there be in its fit expression, and thence the higher range of style is only reached by poets, or by men who, though poetically minded, yet lack "the accomplishment of verse." the sudden electric injection of light into a thought or object or sentiment--in this consists the gift poetical, a gift which implies a sensibility so keen and select as to kindle the light, and an intellect fine and firm enough to hold and transmit it. a writer in whom there is no poetic feeling can hardly rise to a style. whoever has tried to read a play of scribe will understand from this why sainte-beuve affirms of him that he is utterly devoid of the faculty of style (_dénué de la faculté du style_). contrast with scribe his fellow-countryman, the great molière. thence, joubert says, "many of our poets having written in prose, ordinary style has received from them a brilliancy and audacities which it would not have had without them. perhaps, too, some prose writers, who were born poets without being born versifiers, have contributed to adorn our language, even in its familiarities, with those riches and that pomp which until then had been the exclusive property of the poetic idiom." a man of poetic sensibility is one born with a sleepless eye to the better, an ear that craves the musical, a soul that is uneasy in presence of the defective or the incomplete. this endowment implies a mind not only susceptible of the higher and finer movements of thought, but which eagerly demands them, and which thus makes the writer exacting towards himself. hence only he attains to a genuine correctness; he was correct by instinct before he was so by discipline. in the whole as well as the parts he requires finish and proportion. within him there is a momentum which fills out his thought and its worded envelope to warm convexity. only he has the fine tact and discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses. the best style is organic in its details as well as its structure; it shows modeling, a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and plastic effects of clay in the hands of the sculptor. goethe says that only poets and artists have method, because they require to see a thing before them in a completed, rounded form. writing is a fine art, and one of the finest; and he who would be a master in this art must unite genial gifts with conscientious culture. of style the highest examples, therefore, are to be found in the verse of the great poets, of the deep rhythmic souls who make a sure, agile intellect their willing ariel; and no prose writer gets to be a master in style but through kindred endowment. the compact, symmetrical combination of gifts and acquirements, of genius with talent, demanded for the putting forth of a fresh, priceless poem, this he need not have; but his perceptions must be brightened by the light whose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more perfect in form, deed, and sentiment, and his best thoughts suffused with that fragrance whose only source is the ravishment of the beautiful. iv. dante and his latest translators.[5] [5] putnam's magazine, 1868. "ghosts and witches are the best machinery for a modern epic." so said charles fox, who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class. fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the epopee. the term "machinery" implies ignorance of the import of the super-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism and a virtual unbelief. no poet who should accept the term could write an epic, with or without the "machinery." such acceptance would betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want of faith in the invisible supervisive energies. a genuine epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of depth and height and breadth, narrating long-prepared ruin or foundation of a race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold to lay bare the method of the divine intervention in the momentous work. the epic poet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large sympathies, together with such consciousness of power, that he takes on him to interpret and incarnate the celestial cooperation. there are people, and some of them even poets, whose consciousness is so smothered behind the senses, that they come short of belief in spiritual potency. they are what, with felicity of phrase, mr. matthew arnold calls- "light half-believers in our casual creeds." homer and milton were believers: they believed in the visible, active presence on the earth of the god mars, and the archangel raphael. had they not, there would have been no "iliad," no "paradise lost." dante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine judgment on the multitudinous dead, ranging with inspired vision through hell, and purgatory, and heaven. in his large, hot heart, he lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought them into immortal shapes. the then religious imaginations of christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of italy, then tumultuous and embittered; the theology and philosophy of his time, fantastic, unfashioned--all this was his material. but all this, and were it ten times as much, is but the skeleton, the frame. the true material of a poem is the poet's own nature and thoughts, his sentiment and his; judgment, his opinions, aspirations, imaginations, his veriest self, the whole of him, especially the best of him. than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, which were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the day,--and literature then was chiefly, almost exclusively, religious,--no more broad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet, beset, as all poets are apt to be, with the need of utterance, and possessed, moreover, of a graphic genius that craved strong, glowing themes for its play. the present teeming world to be transfigured into the world to come, and the solicitation and temptation to do this brought to a manly, powerful nature, passionate, creative, descriptive, to a stirring realist, into whose breast, as a chief actor on the italian scene, ran, all warm from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of italian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict; and that breast throbbing with the fiery passions of republican italy, while behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to tune the wide, variegated cacophony. proud, passionate, and baffled, the man dante deeply swayed the poet. much of his verse is directly woven out of his indignations and burning personal griefs. at times, contemporaneous history tyrannized over him. dante's high and various gifts, his supreme poetic gift, the noble character and warm individuality of the man, with the pathos of his personal story, the full, lively transcript he hands down of the theology and philosophy of his age, his native literary force as molder of the italian language, his being the bold, adventurous initiator, the august father of modern poetry--all this has combined to keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of men through six centuries. but even all this would not have made him one of the three or four world-poets, would not have won for him the wreath of universal european translation. what gave his rare qualities their most advantageous field, not merely for the display of their peculiar superiorities, but for keeping their fruit sound and sweet, was that he is the historian of hell, purgatory, and heaven--of the world to come such as it was pictured in his day, and as it has been pictured more or less ever since--the word-painter of that visionary, awful hereafter, the thought of which has ever been a spell. those imaginations as to future being--to the middle ages so vivid as to become soul-realities--dante, with his transcendent pictorial mastership, clothed in words fresh and weighty from the mine of popular speech, stamping them with his glittering imperial superscription. imaginations! there are imaginations of the future, the reverse of poetical. hunger will give you tormenting imaginations of breakfasts and dinners; avarice enlivens some minds with pictures of gains that are to be. but imaginations of the life beyond the grave, these we cannot entertain without spirituality. the having them with any urgency and persistence implies strong spiritual prepossessions: men must be self-possessed with their higher self, with their spirit. the very attempt to figure your disembodied state is an attempt poetical. to succeed with any distinctness denotes some power of creative projection: without wings, this domain cannot be entered. in dante's time these attempts were common. through his preëminent qualifications, crowned with the poetic faculty, the faculty of sympathy with ideal excellence, his attempt was a great, a unique success. to accompany dante through his vast triple trans-terrestrial world, would seem to demand in the reader a sustained effort of imagination. but dante is so graphic, and, we might add, corporeal in his pictures, puts such a pulse into his figures, that the artistic illusion wherewith we set out is exchanged for, or rather overborne by, an illusion of the reality of what is represented. yet from the opening of the first canto he is ever in the super-earthly world, and every line of the fourteen thousand has the benefit of a super-earthly, that is, a poetic atmosphere, which lightens it, transfigures it, floats it. one reads with the poetic prestige of the knowledge that every scene is trans-terrestrial; and, at the same time, every scene is presented with a physical realism, a visual and audible vividness, which captivates and holds the perceptive faculty; so that the reader finds himself grasped, as it were, in a vice, whose double handle is mortised on one side in the senses, and on the other in the spiritual imagination. dante had it in him,--this hell, purgatory, and heaven--so full and warm and large was his nature. within his own breast he had felt, with the keen intensity of the poetic temperament, the loves and hates, the griefs and delights of life. through his wealth of heart he had a fellow-feeling for all the joys and sorrows of his brother-men, and, added to this, an artist's will and want to reproduce them, and _to_ reproduce them a clear, outwelling, intellectual vivacity. he need scarcely have told us that his poem, though treating of spirits, relates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh. he chose a theme that at once seized the attention of his readers, and gave to himself a boundless scope. his field was all past history, around the altitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and sketches of famous sinners and famous saints, of heroes and lofty criminals; and, along with this, contemporaneous florentine and italian history, with its tumults and vicissitudes, its biographies and personalities, its wraths and triumphs. dante exhibits great fertility in situations and conjunctions; but, besides that many of them were ready to his hand, this kind of inventiveness denotes of itself no fine creative faculty. it is the necessary equipment of the voluminous novelist. in this facility and abundance goldsmith could not have coped with james and bulwer; and yet the "vicar of wakefield" (not to go so high as "tristram shandy" and "don quixote") is worth all their hundred volumes of tales put together. what insight, what weight, and faithfulness, and refinement, and breadth, and truth, and elevation of character and conception, does the framework of incident support and display? that is the æsthetic question. the novels of every day bristle with this material inventiveness, this small, abounding, tangled underwood of event and sensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build. the invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures and conditions of the "inferno" and "purgatorio" and "paradiso," is not admirable for their mere exuberance and diversity,--for that might have come from a comparatively prosaic mind, especially when fed, as all minds then were, with the passionate mediaeval beliefs,--but for the heart there is in them, throbbing deeply in some, and for the human sympathy, and thence, in part, the photographic fidelity, and for the paramount gift poetically to portray. a consequence of the choice of subject, and, as regards the epic quality of dante's poem, an important consequence, is that there is in it no unity of interest. the sympathies of the reader are not engrossed by one great group of characters, acting and reacting on one another through the whole sweep of the invention. instead of this, we have a long series of unconnected pictures, each one awakening a new interest. hereby the mind is distracted, the attention being transferred at every hundred lines to a fresh figure or group. we pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits, classed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one from the other, and separated by the projection of as many different frames. we are on a weird, adventurous journey, and make but brief stops, however attractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet. we go from person to person, from scene to scene; so that at the end of the journey, although the perception has been richly crowded, one impression has effaced the other. not carrying the weight, not pulsating in its every limb with the power of a broad, deep, involved story, architecturally reared on one foundation, whose parts are all subordinated to a great unity, the "divina commedia," as an organic, artistic whole, is inferior to the "iliad" and "paradise lost," and to the grecian and shakespearean tragedies. the exclusive super-earthliness of his scenes and personages, and, with this, his delight in picture-drawing, keep dante close to his page--fastened to it, we might say, by a twofold fascination. among the many faculties that equip him for his extraordinary task, most active is that of form. goethe says of him, "the great intellectual and moral qualities of dante being universally acknowledged, we shall be furthered in a right estimate of his works, if we keep in view that just in his life-time--giotto being his contemporary--was the re-birth of plastic art in all its natural strength. by this sensuous, form-loving spirit of the age, working so widely and deeply, dante, too, was largely swayed. with the eye of his imagination he seized objects so distinctly that he could reproduce them in sharp outline. thence we see before us the most abstruse and unusual, drawn, as it were, after nature." in recognition of the same characteristic, coleridge says, "in picturesqueness dante is beyond all other poets, ancient or modern, and more in the stern style of pindar than of any other. michael angelo is said to have made a design for every page of the 'divina commedia.'" dante, eminent in poetic gifts, has many sides, but this is his strongest side: he is preëminently a poet of form. in his mind and in his work there is a southern, an italian, sensuousness. he is a poet of thought, but more a poet of molds; he is a poet of sentiment, but more a poet of pictures. rising readily to generalization, still his intellect is more specific than generic. his subject--chosen by the concurrence of his æsthetic, moral, and intellectual needs--admits of, nay, demands portraits, isolated sketches, unconnected delineations. the personages of his poem are independent one of the other, and are thence the more easily drawn. nor does dante abound in transferable passages, sentences of universal application, from being saturated with the perfumed essence of humanity. we say it with diffidence, but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance, more idealized fidelity, in milton; more significance and wisdom and profound hint in goethe. in milton the mental reverberation is wider: he rivets us through distant grand association, by great suggestion. thus, describing the darkened head of satan, milton says,- "as when the sun new risen looks through the horizontal misty air, shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, in dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds on half the nations," setting aside the epithets "horizontal" and "disastrous," which are poetically imaginative, the likening of satan to the sun seen through a mist, or in eclipse, is a direct, parallel comparison that aids us to see satan; and it is in such, immediate, not mediate,--not involving likeness between physical and mental qualities, but merely between physical, not between subtle, relations,--that dante chiefly deals, showing imaginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet, but different from, and altogether inferior to, poetic imagination. the mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the intellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with aspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the utmost, and, as the result of this exertion, discovers a thought or image which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to the reader a new delight. of this, the lordliest mental exhibition, there is a sovereign example in the words wherewith milton concludes the passage- "and with fear of change perplexes monarchs." this fills the mind with the terror he wishes his satan to inspire; this gives its greatness to the passage. dante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself more to the reader's senses and perception; milton rouses his higher imaginative capacity. in the whole "inferno," is there a sentence so aglow as this line and a half of "paradise lost"? "and the torrid clime smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire." or is there in dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of milton's demon-host- "that tore hell's concave, and beyond frighted the reign of chaos and old night"? here the unity of his theme stands milton in stead for grandeur and breadth. dante is copious in similes. such copiousness by no means proves poetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes than one inferior to him. wordsworth has much less of this command than moore. but when a poet does use similes, he will be likely often to put of his best into them, for they are captivating instruments and facilities for poetic expansion. when a poet is in warm sympathy with the divine doings, there will be at times a flashing fitness in his similitudes, which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition. in citing some of the most prominent in the "divina commedia," we at once give brief samples of dante and of the craft of his three latest translators, using the version of dr. parsons for extracts from the "inferno," that of mr. dayman for those from the "purgatorio," and that of mr. longfellow for those from the "paradiso." "as well-filled sails, which in the tempest swell, drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent; so to the earth that cruel monster fell, and straightway down to hell's fourth pit he went." _inferno_: canto vii. "swept now amain those turbid waters o'er a tumult of a dread portentous kind, which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore, like the mad rushing of a rapid wind; as when, made furious by opposing heats, wild through the wood the unbridled tempest scours, dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats, and scatters far the broken limbs and flowers; then fly the herds,--the swains to shelter scud. freeing mine eyes, 'thy sight,' he said, 'direct o'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood, where, most condense, its acrid streams collect.'" _inferno_: canto ix. "when, lo! there met us, close beside our track, a troop of spirits. each amid the band eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by 'neath a new moon; as closely us they scanned, as an old tailor doth a needle's eye." _inferno_: canto xv. "and just as frogs that stand, with noses out on a pool's margin, but beneath it hide their feet and all their bodies but the snout, so stood the sinners there on every side." _inferno_: canto xxii. "a cooper's vessel, that by chance hath been either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, gapes not so wide as one that from his chin i noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft." _inferno_: canto xxviii. "we tarried yet the ocean's brink upon, like unto people musing of their way, whose body lingers when the heart hath gone; and lo! as near the dawning of the day, down in the west, upon the watery floor, the vapor-fogs do mars in red array, even such appeared to me a light that o'er the sea so quickly came, no wing could match its moving. be that vision mine once more." _purgatorio_: canto ii. "and thou, remembering well, with eye that sees the light, wilt know thee like the sickly one that on her bed of down can find no ease, but turns and turns again her ache to shun," _purgatorio_: canto vi. "'t was now the hour the longing heart that bends in voyagers, and meltingly doth sway, who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends; and wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way with poignant love, to hear some distant bell that seems to mourn the dying of the day; when i began to slight the sounds that fell upon my ear, one risen soul to view, whose beckoning hand our audience would compel." _purgatorio_: canto viii. "there i the shades see hurrying up to kiss each with his mate from every part, nor stay, contenting them with momentary bliss. so one with other, all their swart array along, do ants encounter snout with snout, so haply probe their fortune and their way." _purgatorio_: canto xxvi. "between two viands, equally removed and tempting, a free man would die of hunger ere either he could bring unto his teeth. so would a lamb between the ravenings of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike; and so would stand a dog between two does. hence, if i held my peace, myself i blame not, impelled in equal measure by my doubts, since it must be so, nor do i commend." _paradiso_: canto iv. "and as a lute and harp, accordant strung with many strings, a dulcet tinkling make to him by whom the notes are not distinguished, so from the lights that there to me appeared upgathered through the cross a melody, which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn." _paradiso_: canto xiv. "as through the pure and tranquil evening air there shoots from time to time a sudden fire, moving the eyes that steadfast were before, and seems to be a star that changeth place, except that in the part where it is kindled nothing is missed, and this endureth little; so from the horn that to the right extends unto that cross's foot there ran a star out of the constellation shining there." _paradiso_: canto xv. "even as remaineth splendid and serene the hemisphere of air, when boreas is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest, because is purified and resolved the rack that erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs with all the beauties of its pageantry; thus did i likewise, after that my lady had me provided with a clear response, and like a star in heaven the truth was seen." _paradiso_: canto xxviii. the first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse is, is it poetical? is there, as effect of its introduction, any heightening of the reader's mood, any cleansing of his vision, any clarification of the medium through which he is looking? is there a sudden play of light that warms, and, through this warmth, illuminates the object before him? few of those just quoted, put to such test, could be called more than conventionally poetical--if this be not a solecism. to illustrate one sensuous object by another does not animate the mind enough to fulfill any one of the above conditions. such similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness, there is through them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion. they may help to make the object ocularly more apparent, but they do not make the feeling a party to the movement. when this is done,--as in the examples from canto xv. of the "inferno," and canto viii. of the "purgatorio,"--what an instantaneous vivification of the picture! but in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright as in the best of shakespeare's. as one instance out of many: towards the end of the great soliloquy of henry v., after enumerating the emblems and accompaniments of royalty, the king continues,- "no, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, not all these, laid in bed majestical, can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; who, with a body filled, and vacant mind, gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread; never sees horrid night, the child of hell; but, like a lackey, from the rise to set, sweats in the eye of phoebus, and all night sleeps in elysium; next day, after dawn, doth rise _and help hyperion to his horse_" what a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image, so fresh and unexpected, of the rising sun, with its suggestion of beauty and healthfulness! then the far-reaching, transfiguring imagination, that, in a twinkle, transmutes into the squire of hyperion a stolid rustic, making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. it is by this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with brilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures, denoting overflow of resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel after shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying more and better,--it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming fullness of life, this creative readiness, that shakespeare throws a farther and whiter and a broader light than dante. nor does dante's page glisten, as shakespeare's so often does, with metaphor, or compressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual sphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but inter-tissued with the web of thought, upflashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the surface, as on the calm level of the atlantic you may see a circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up from the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten,--a sign of life, power, and abundance. like his great compeer, milton, dante fails of universality from want of humor. neither had any fun in him. this was the only fault (liberally to interpret can's conduct) that dante's host, can grande of verona, had to find with him. the subjects of both poets (unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were predominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their times, was crude and cruel. the deep, sympathetic earnestness, which is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration of richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,--a great feat, only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom, and, with the fool in "lear," forces you, like a child, to smile through warmest tears of sympathy. humor imparts breadth and buoyancy to tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and follies of men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough to sport with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful delight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter. of pathos dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. by the story of ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and awe possess us wholly; and by that of francesca they are touched to tenderest sympathy. but ugolino is to lear what a single fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape with a hundred flashes. all the personages of dante's poem (unless we regard himself as one) are spirits. shakespeare, throughout his many works, gives only a few glimpses into the world beyond the grave; but how grandly by these few is the imagination expanded. clarence's dream, "lengthened after life," in which he passes "the melancholy flood," is almost super-dantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful foretaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth. and the great ghost in "hamlet," when you read of him, how shadowy real! dante's representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe. profound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, thought-breeding thoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pure, large sensibilities, and by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion, to be wrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful,--of these, which are the test of poetic greatness, dante, if we may venture to say so, has not more or brighter examples than milton, and not so many as goethe; while of such passages, compactly embodying as they do the finer insights of a poetic mind, there are more in a single one of the greater tragedies of shakespeare, than in all the three books of the "divina commedia." juxtaposition beside shakespeare, even if it bring out the superiorities of the english bard, is the highest honor paid to any other great poet. glory enough is it if admiration can lift dante so high as to take him into the same look that beholds shakespeare; what though the summit of the mighty englishman shine alone in the sky, and the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied domains. the traveler, even if he come directly from wondering at mont blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest delight before the majesty of the yungfrau and the eigher. but it is time to speak of dante in english. "it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet." thus writes a great poet, shelley, in his beautiful "defense of poetry." but have we not in modern tongues the creations of homer, and of plato, who shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet? and can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by deprivation of them in translated form? pope's homer--still homer though so popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture of thousands, who without it would have known no more of hector and achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would incidently have learnt from lempriere. lord derby's iliad has gone through many editions already. and job and the psalms: what should we have done without them in english? translations are the telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from their words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth and wisdom forever. the flash on which the message was first launched has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is freighted, and even much of its beauty. shall we not eat oranges, because on being translated from cuba to our palates they have lost somewhat of their flavor? in reading a translated poem we wish to have as much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the poetry, as possible. a poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological exposition,--a poem, only in another dress. thence a work in verse, that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that. a prose translation of a poem is an æsthetic impertinence, shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the continent in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him in verse. and in shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the deflowering of many delicate stems. forty years ago, mr. hay ward translated the "faust" of goethe into prose; but let any one compare the hymn of the archangels and other of the more highly-wrought passages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in verse,--with that of mr. brooks for example,--to perceive at once the insufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally faithful a prose version. the effect on "faust," or on any high passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what would be the effect on an exquisite _bas-relief_ of reducing its projection one half by a persevering application of pumice. in all genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so inwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by the transplanting of it into another soil. the translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the page into his own language. he must brace himself into an active state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, then transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt. to get into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the words, embracing them from within, not merely seizing them from without. having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the original, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key. such surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original, and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his verse; for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and to see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled by himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which he had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that of his own first inspirations. a poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity. "paradise lost," conceived in milton's brain, could not utter itself in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our language a new music. it could not have been written in the spenserian stanza. what would the "fairy queen" be in blank verse? for his theme and mood dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which enlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration. rhyme was then a new element in verse, a modern æsthetic creation; and it is a help and an added beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it be not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to freedom of movement, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are offensive both to sense and to ear. like buds that lie half-hidden in leaves, rhymes should peep out, sparkling but modest, from the cover of words, falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible strokes of a melodious pulse at the heart of the verse. the _terza rima_--already in use--dante adopted as suitable to continuous narrative. with his feeling and æsthetic want rhymed verse harmonized, the triple repetition offering no obstacle, italian being copious in endings of like sound. his measure is iambic, free iambic, and every line consists, not of ten syllables, but of eleven, his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes. and this weakness is so inherent in italian speech, that every line even of the blank verse in all the twenty-two tragedies of alfieri ends femininely, that is, with an unaccented eleventh syllable. in all italian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme, the final syllable, moreover, invariably ending with a vowel. this, besides being too much rhyme and too much vowel, is, in iambic lines, metrically a defect, the eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable. in these two prominent features english verse is different from italian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes are masculine; and it has fewer than italian. this second characteristic, the comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one of its sources of strength: it denotes musical richness and not poverty, as at first aspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying variety in its sounds. it has all the vocalic syllables and endings it needs for softness, and incloses them mostly in consonants for condensation, vigor, and emphasis. primarily the translator has to consider the resources and individualities of his own tongue. in the case of dante the rhythmical basis is the same in both languages; for the iambic measure is our chief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by shakespeare and milton. there only remains, then, rhyme and the division into stanzas. can the _terza rima_, as used by dante, be called a stanza? the lines are not separated into trios, but run into one another, clinging very properly to the rhymes, which, interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the echo still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our spenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines. whether stanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly about the _terza rima_? to us it seems not deserving of admiration _for its own sake_; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by dante, neither byron nor shelley would have used it for original poems. we are not aware that dante's example has been followed by any poet of note in italy. _terza rima_ keeps the attention suspended too long, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to come, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the last rhyme. the rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and running ahead. it looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the first rhymers of an uncultivated age. but dante used it for his great song; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the "divina commedia." now, in rendering into english the poem of dante, is it essential,--in order to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation,--to preserve the triple rhyme? not having in english a corresponding number of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to transpositions, substitutions, forcings, indirections, in order to compass the meaning and the poetry? place the passages already cited from mr. dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised to see how direct and literal, how faithful at once to the italian thought and to english idiom in expressing it, mr. dayman is. his harness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement, so skillfully does he wear it. if we confront him with the spirited version in quatrains of dr. parsons, in the passages cited from the "inferno," or with those from the "paradiso," in mr. longfellow's less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility of mr. dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again manifest. to enable our readers to compare the translations with the original and with one another, we will give the italian, and then the three versions, of the latter part of the francesca story, from canto v. of the "inferno:"- "poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io, e cominciai: francesca, i tuoi martiri a lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio. ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri, a che, e come concedette amore che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri? ed ella a me: nessun maggior dolore, che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria, e ciò sa 'l tuo dottore. ma se a conoscer la prima radice del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, farò come colui che piange, e dice. noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto di lancilotto, come amor lo strinse. soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto. per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso: ma solo un punto fu quel, che ci vinse. qando leggemmo il disiato riso esser baciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non sia diviso, la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante. galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante. mentre che l'uno spirito queste disse, l'altro piangeva si, che di pietade io venni meno come s'io morisse, e caddi, come corpo morto cade." mr. dayman:- "then toward them turned again: 'thy racking woe,' i said, 'francesca, wrings from out mine eyes the pious drops that sadden as they flow. but tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs, by whom and how love pitying broke the spell, and in your doubtful longings made too wise.' and she to me: 'no keener pang hath hell, than to recall, amid some deep distress, our happier time: thy teacher knows it well. yet if desire so strong thy soul possess to trace the root from whence our love was bred, his part be mine, who tells and weeps no less. 't was on a day when we for pastime read of lancillot, how love snared him to ruin: we were alone, nor knew suspicious dread. oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing their glance; and from our cheeks the color started; but one sole moment wrought for our undoing: when that we read of lover so kind-hearted kissing the smile so coveted before, he that from me shall never more be parted kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all o'er. the broker of our vows, it was the lay, and he who wrote--that day we read no more.' the other spirit, while the first did say these words, so moanèd, that with soft remorse as death had stricken me, i swooned away, and down i fell, heavily as falls a corse." mr. longfellow:- "then unto them i turned me, and i spake, and i began: 'thine agonies, francesca, sad and compassionate to weeping make me. but tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, by what and in what manner love conceded that you should know your dubious desires?' and she to me: 'there is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy time in misery, and that thy teacher knows. but if to recognize the earliest root of love in us thou hast so great desire, i will do even as he who weeps and speaks. one day we reading were for our delight of launcelot, how love did him enthrall. alone we were, and without any fear. full many a time our eyes together drew that reading, and drove the color from our faces; but one point was it that o'ercame us. whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile being by such a noble lover kissed, this one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. that day no farther did we read therein.' and all the while one spirit uttered this, the other one did weep so, that, for pity, i swooned away as if i had been dying, and fell even as a dead body falls." dr. parsons:- "then, turning round to them, i thus began: 'francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes: my pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman; but tell me,--in the time of happy sighs, your vague desires how gave love utterance first?" and she to me: "the mightiest of all woes is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed with bliss remembered,--this thy teacher knows. yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head, as one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim, so will i speak. together once we read the tale of lancelot,--how love bound him. alone we were without suspecting aught: oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue, and oft our eyes each other's glances caught; but one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew. at reading of the longed-for smile,--to be by such a lover's kissing so much blest, this dearest--never shalt thou part from me! his lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed. the writer was our galeot with his book:- that day we read no further on." she stopped: meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took my sense away, and like a corse i dropped. observe that dr. parsons has put dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour. but why does he make francesca address her companion personally, instead of saying, "who shall never part from me?" and why does mr. dayman say, "pious drops," instead of piteous? mr. dayman and mr. longfellow fill up the twenty-eight lines. in neither of the three is there any strain or wresting of the sense. but all three, and before them lord byron and carey, mistranslate this passage,- "per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse quella lettura." all these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read, their eyes often met; whereas dante says, they read that passage over more than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or passage drew to it their eyes. to restore the meaning of the original adds to the refinement of the scene. why does mr. longfellow use such long words as _compassionate_ instead of _pitiful_ or _piteous_, _recognize_ for _know_, _palpitating_ for _trembling_, _conceded that you should know_ for _gave you to know_? by the resolution to translate line for line, mr. longfellow ties his poetic hands. the first effect of this self-binding is, to oblige him to use often long latin-english instead of short saxon-english words, that is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to poetic expression. mr. dayman, not translating line for line, is free from this prosaic incumbrance; but as he makes it a rule to himself that every english canto shall contain the same number of lines as its original, he is obliged, much more often than mr. longfellow, to throw in epithets or words not in the italian. and dr. parsons, who, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, in several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than the italian, and the xxxi. into nine lines less, might with advantage have curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines. do what we will, poetic translation is brought about more from without than from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, which, in good original work, comes from free inward impulsion. to counteract, in so far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full swing his own native speech. by his line-for-line allegiance, mr. longfellow forfeits much of this freedom. he is too intent on the words; he sacrifices the spirit to the letter; he overlays the poetry with a verbal literalness; he deprives himself of scope to give a billowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice passages. the rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity, this lineal servility, is increased by a frequent looseness in the endings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some pages, have--contrary to all good usage--the superfluous eleventh syllable. milton never allows himself this liberty, nor mr. tennyson in epic verse so little pretentious as "idyls of the king." nor do good blank-verse translators give in to it. cowper does not in his iliad, nor lord derby, nor mr. bryant in his version of the fifth book of the odyssey, nor mr. carey in his dante. permissible at times in dramatic blank verse, it is in epic rejected by the best artists as a weakness. can it be that mr. longfellow hereby aims to be more close to the form of dante? whatever the cause of its use, the effect is still farther to weaken his translation. these loose poetic endings--and on most pages one third of the lines have eleven syllables and on some pages more than a third--do a part in causing mr. longfellow's dante to lack the clean outline, the tonic ring, the chiseled edge of the original, and in making his cantos read as would sound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are relaxed. looking at the printed italian dante beside the english, in a volume where opposite each english page is the corresponding page of the original, as in mr. dayman's, one cannot fail to be struck with the comparative narrowness of the italian column. this comes of the comparative shortness of italian syllables. for instance, as the strongest exemplification, the ever-recurring _and_, and the often-repeated _is_, are both expressed in italian by a single letter, _e_. and this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. in lines of thirty letters dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to fourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have about twenty consonants to ten vowels, or two to one. from this comparative rejection of consonants, italian cannot, as english can, bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like _friends_ and _straight_, nor even words of six letters, like _chimed_, _shoots_, _thwart_, _spring_; nor does italian abound as english does in monosyllables, and the few it has are mostly of but two or three letters. in combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters, as in _fronte_ and _braccia_. as a consequence hereof, dante's lines, although always of eleven syllables, average about twenty-nine letters, while those of the three translators about thirty-three. hence, the poem in their versions carries more weight than the original; its soul is more cumbered with body. in order to the faithful reproduction of dante, to the giving the best transcript, possible in english, of his thought and feeling, should not regard be had to the essential difference between the syllabic constitutions of the two languages, what may be called the physical basis of the two mediums of utterance? here is the francesca story, translated in the spirit of this suggestion:- i turned to them, and then i spake: "francesca! tears o'erfill mine eyes, such pity thy keen pangs awake. but say: in th' hour of sweetest sighs, by what and how found love relief and broke thy doubtful longing's spell?" and she: "there is no greater grief than joy in sorrow to retell. but if so urgently one seeks to know our love's first root, i will do as he does who weeps and speaks. one day of lancelot we still read o'er, how love held him enchained. without mistrust we were alone. our cheeks oft were of color drained: one passage vanquished us, but one. when we read of lips longed for pressed by such a lover with a kiss, this one whom naught from me shall wrest, all trembling kissed my mouth. to this that book and writer brought us. we no farther read that day." while she thus spake, the other spirit wept so bitterly, with pity i fell motionless, my senses swept by swoon, as one about to die. in the very first line two italian trisyllables, _rivolsi_ and _parlai_, are given in english with literal fidelity by two monosyllables, _turned_ and _spake_. in the fourth observe how, in a word-for-word rendering, the eleven italian syllables become, without any forcing, eight english: "ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri:" "but tell me: in th' hour of sweet sighs." for the sake of a more musical cadence, this line is slightly modified. again, in the line,- "than joy in sorrow to retell," _joy_ represents, and represents faithfully, three words containing six syllables, _del tempo felice_: _retell_ stands for _ricordarsi_, and _in sorrow_ for _nella miseria_, or, three syllables for six; so that, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and complete translation of what in italian takes up seventeen. english the most simple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a translation of dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; and this is the first fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to. owing to the fundamental difference between the syllabic structures of the two languages, we are enabled to put into english lines of eight syllables the whole meaning of dante's lines of eleven. in the above experiment even more has been done. the twenty-eight lines of dante are given in twenty-six lines of eight syllables each, and this without any sacrifice of the thought or feeling; for the "this thy teacher knows," which is omitted, besides that the commentators cannot agree on its meaning, is parenthetical in sense, and with reverence be it said, in so far a defect in such a relation. as to the form of dante, what is essential in that has been preserved, namely, the iambic measure and the rhyme. let us try if this curtailment of syllables will be successful when applied to the terrible words, written in blackest color, over the gate of hell, at the beginning of the third canto of the "inferno":- through me the path to place of wail: through me the path to endless sigh: through me the path to souls in bale. 'twas justice moved my maker high: wisdom supreme, and might divine, and primal love established me. created birth was none ere mine, and i endure eternally: ye who pass in, all hope resign. has anything been lost in the transit from italian words to english? english speech being organically more concentrated than italian, does not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve what ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic translation, namely, along with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original, fidelity to the idiom, and cast and play of the translator's own tongue? here is another short passage in a different key,--the opening of the last canto of the "paradiso":- maid-mother, daughter of thy son, meek, yet above all things create, fair aim of the eternal one, 'tis thou who so our human state ennobledst, that its maker deigned himself his creature's son to be. this flower, in th' endless peace, was gained through kindling of god's love in thee. in this passage nine italian lines of eleven syllables are converted into eight lines of eight syllables each. we submit it to the candid reader of italian to say, whether aught of the original has been sacrificed to brevity. the rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic verse gives more room, but of which the translator of dante does not feel the want. one more short passage of four lines,--the famous figure of the lark in the twentieth canto of the "paradiso":- like lark that through the air careers, first singing, then, silent his heart, feeds on the sweetness in his ears, such joy to th' image did impart th' eternal will. this paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but, nevertheless, we beg the reader's indulgence for a few moments longer, while we conclude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty lines of the celebrated ugolino story. it is unrhymed; for that terrible tale can dispense, in english, with soft echoes at the end of lines. when locked i heard the nether door of the dread tower, i without speech into my children's faces looked: nor wept, so inly turned to stone. they wept: and my dear anselm said, "thou look'st so, father, what hast thou?" still i nor wept nor answer made that whole day through, nor the next night, till a new sun rose on the world. as in our doleful prison came a little glimmer, and i saw on faces four my own pale stare, both of my hands for grief i bit; and they, thinking it was from wish to eat, rose suddenly and said: "father, less shall we feel of pain if them wilt eat of us: from thee came this poor flesh: take it again." i calmed me then, not to grieve them. the next two days we spake no word. oh! obdurate earth, why didst not ope? when we had come to the fourth day gaddo threw him stretched at my feet, saying, "father, why dost not help me?" there died he; and, as thou seest me, i saw the three fall one by one the fifth and sixth day; then i groped, now blind, o'er each; and two whole days i called them after they were dead: then hunger did what grief could not. v. sainte-beuve, the critic. a literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an arsenal of opposites. he should combine common sense with tact, integrity with indulgence, breadth with keenness, vigor with delicacy, largeness with subtlety, knowledge with geniality, inflexibility with sinuousness, severity with suavity; and, that all these counter qualities be effective, he will need constant culture and vigilance, besides the union of reason with warmth, of enthusiasm with self-control, of wit with philosophy,--but hold: at this rate, in order to fit out the critic, human nature will have to set apart its highest and best. dr. johnson declared, the poet ought to know everything and to have seen everything, and the ancients required the like of an orator. truly, the supreme poet should have manifold gifts, be humanly indued as generously and completely as is the bust of homer, ideally shaped by the light of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the greeks. the poet, it is true, must be born a poet, and the critic is the child of culture. but as the poet, to perfect his birthright, has need of culture, so the man whom culture can shape and sharpen to the good critic, must be born with many gifts, to be susceptible of such shaping. and when we reflect that the task of the critic is to see clearly into the subtlest and deepest mind, to measure its hollows and its elevations, to weigh all its individual and its composite powers, and, that from every one of the throbbing aggregates, whom it is his office to analyze and portray, issue lines that run on all sides into the infinite, we must conclude that he who is to be the accomplished interpreter, the trusted judge, should be able swiftly to follow these lines. long and exacting as is our roll of what is wanted to equip a veritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications, which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal allotment. the first is, joy in life, from which the pages of m. sainte-beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a mellow, radiant geniality. the other, which is of still deeper account, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue--for so it deserves to be called--born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those in whose presence only can be recognized and enjoyed the lofty and the profound, the beautiful and the true. he who is not well endowed with these higher senses is not a bad critic; he is no critic at all. not only can he not discern the good there is in a man or a work, he can as little discover and expose the bad; for, deficiencies implying failures to reach a certain fullness, implying a falling short of the complete, to say where and what are deficiencies, involves the having in the mind an idea of the full and complete. the man so meagrely furnished as to hold no such idea is but a carper, not a critic. to know the bad denotes knowledge of the good; in criticism as in morals, a righteous indignation can only flash from a shock to pure feelings. in a notice of m. thiers' chapter on st. helena, m. sainte-beuve, after expressing his admiration of the commentaries of napoleon on the campaigns of turenne, frederic, and caesar, adds: "a man of letters smiles at first involuntarily to see napoleon apply to each of these famous campaigns a methodical criticism, just as we would proceed with a work of the mind, with an epic or tragic poem. but is not a campaign of a great captain equally a work of genius? napoleon is here the high sovereign critic, the goethe in this department, as the feuquières, the jominis, the st. cyrs are the la harpes or the fontanes, the lessings or the schlegels, all good and expert critics; but he is the first of all, nor, if you reflect on it, could it have been otherwise. and who then would say better things of homer than milton?"--goethe supreme in literary criticism, milton on homer; this touches the root of the matter; sympathy with the writer and his work the critic must have,--sympathy as one of the sources of good judgment, and even of knowledge. you cannot know, and therefore not judge of a man or book or thing, unless you have some fellow-feeling with him or it; and to judge well you must have much fellow-feeling. the critic must, moreover, be a thinker; reason is the critic's sun. scott and byron could say just and fresh things about poets and poetry; but neither could command the whole field, nor dig deep into the soil. witness byron's deliberate exaltation of pope. whereas wordsworth and coleridge were among the soundest of critics, because, besides being poets, they were both profound thinkers. for the perfecting of the literary critic the especial sympathy needed is that with excellence; for high literature is the outcome of the best there is in humanity, the finished expression of healthiest aspirations, of choicest thoughts, the ripened fruit of noble, of refined growths, the perfected fruit, with all the perfume and beauty of the flower upon it. of this sympathy m. sainte-beuve, throughout his many volumes, gives overflowing evidence, in addition to that primary proof of having himself written good poems. besides the love, he has the instinct, of literature, and this instinct draws him to what is its bloom and fullest manifestation, and his love is the more warm and constant for being discriminative and refined. through variety of knowledge, with intellectual keenness, he enjoys excellence in the diversified forms that literature assumes. his pages abound in illustrations of his versatility, which is nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in the contrast between two successive papers (both equally admirable) in the very first volume of the "causeries du lundi," the one on madame récamier, the other on napoleon. read especially the series of paragraphs beginning, "some natures are born pure, and have received _quand même_ the gift of innocence," to see how gracefully, subtly, delicately, with what a feminine tenderness, he draws the portrait of this most fascinating of women, this beautiful creature, for whom grace and sweetness did even still more than beauty, this fairy-queen of france, this refined coquette, who drew to her hundreds of hearts, this kindly magician, who turned all her lovers into friends. then pass directly to the next paper, on the terrible corsican, "who weakened his greatness by the gigantic--who loved to astonish--who delighted too much in what was his forte, war,--who was too much a bold adventurer." and further on, the account of napoleon's conversation with goethe at weimar, in which account m. sainte-beuve shows how fully he values the largeness and truthfulness and penetration of the great german. the impression thus made on the reader as to the variousness of m. sainte-beuve's power is deepened by another paper in the same volume, that on m. guizot and his historic school, a masterly paper, which reasons convincingly against those historians "who strain humanity, who make the lesson that history teaches too direct and stiff, who put themselves in the place of providence," which, as is said in another place (vol. v. p. 150), "is often but a deification of our own thought." in a paper published in 1862, m. sainte-beuve--who had then, for more than thirty years, been plying zealously and continuously the function of critic--describes what is a fundamental feature of his method in arriving at a judgment on books and authors. "literature, literary production, is in my eyes not distinct, or at least not separable, from the rest of the man and his organization. i can enjoy a work, but it is difficult for me to form a judgment on it independently of the man himself; and i readily say, _as is the tree so is the fruit_. literary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study." this, of course, he can apply but partially to the ancients; but with the moderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is to know the man who did it, to get at his primary organization, his interior beginnings and proclivities; and to learn this, one of the best means is, to make yourself acquainted with his race, his family, his predecessors. "you are sure to recognize the superior man, in part at least, in his parents, especially in his mother, the most direct and certain of his parents; also in his sisters and his brothers, even in his children. in these one discovers important features which, from being too condensed, too closely joined in the eminent individual, are masked; but whereof the basis, the _fond_, is found in others of his blood in a more naked, a more simple state." hereby is shown with what thoroughness and professional conscientiousness m. sainte-beuve sets himself to his work of critic. partially applying to himself his method, we discover in part the cause of his sympathy for feminine nature, and of his tact in delineating it. his father died before he was born; and thence all living parental influence on him was maternal. none of his volumes is more captivating than his "portraits de femmes," a translation of which we are glad to see announced. of sainte-beuve's love for excellence there is, in the third volume of the "nouveaux lundis," an illustration, eloquently disclosing how deep is his sympathy with the most excellent that human kind has known. for the london exposition of 1862 a magnificent folio of the new testament was prepared at the imperial press of paris. the critic takes the occasion to write a paper on "les saints evangiles," especially the sermon on the mount. after quoting and commenting on the beatitudes, he continues: "had there ever before been heard in the world such accents, such a love of poverty, of self-divestment, such a hunger and thirst for justice, such eagerness to suffer for it, to be cursed of men in behalf of it, such an intrepid confidence in celestial recompense, such a forgiveness of injuries, and not simply forgiveness but a livelier feeling of charity for those who have injured you, who persecute and calumniate you, such a form of prayer and of familiar address to the father who is in heaven? was there ever before anything like to that, so encouraging, so consoling, in the teaching and the precepts of the sages? was that not truly a revelation in the midst of human morals; and if there be joined to it, what cannot be separated from it, the totality of such a life, spent in doing good, and that predication of about three years, crowned by the crucifixion, have we not a right to say that here was a 'new ideal of a soul perfectly heroic,' which, under this half jewish, galilean form was set before all coming generations? "who talks to us of _myth_, of the realization, more or less instinctive or philosophical, of the human conscience reflecting itself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who hardly existed. what! do you not feel the reality, the living, vibrating, bleeding, compassionate personality, which, independently of what belief and enthusiasm may have added, exists and throbs behind such words? what more convincing demonstration of the beauty and truth of the entirely historic personage, jesus, than the sermon on the mount?" alluding, then, to the denial of originality in the moral doctrines of christianity, m. sainte-beuve, after citing from socrates, marcus aurelius, and others, passages wherein is recommended "charity toward the human race," declares that all these examples and precepts, all that makes a fine body of social and philosophical morality, is not christianity itself as beheld at its source and in its spirit. "what characterizes," he proceeds, "the discourse on the mount and the other sayings and parables of jesus, is not the charity that relates to equity and strict justice, to which, with a sound heart and upright spirit, one attains; it is something unknown to flesh and blood and to simple reason, it is a kind of innocent and pure exaltation, freed from rule and superior to law, holily improvident, a stranger to all calculation, to all positive prevision, unreservedly reliant on him who sees and knows all things, and as a last reward counting on the coming of that kingdom of god, the promise of which cannot fail:- but i say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. and if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.... give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.... no man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. ye cannot serve god and mammon. therefore i say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?... "nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and moralists, not in hesiod, nor in the maxims of greece any more than in confucius. it is not in cicero, nor in aristotle, nor even in socrates any more than in the modern franklin. the principle of inspiration is different, if indeed it be not opposite: the paths may come together for a moment, but they cross one another. and it is this delicate ideal of devotedness, of moral purification, of continual renouncement and self-sacrifice, breathing in the words and embodied in the person and life of christ, which constitutes the entire novelty as well as the sublimity of christianity taken at its source." of m. sainte-beuve's delight in what is the most excellent product of literature, poetry, testimony is borne by many papers, ranging over the whole field of french poetry, from its birth to its latest page. "poetry," says he, "is the essence of things, and we should be careful not to spread the drop of essence through a mass of water or floods of color. the task of poetry is not to say everything, but to make us dream everything." and he cites a similar judgment of fénélon: "the poet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but what can be beautified." in a critique of alfred de musset he speaks of the youthful poems of milton: "'il penseroso' is the masterpiece of meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio in which prayer ascends slowly toward the eternal. i make no comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. all that is beautiful in milton stands by itself; one feels the tranquil habit of the upper regions, and continuity in power." in a paper on the letters of ducis, he proves that he apprehends the proportions of shakespeare. he asks: "have we then got him at last? is our stomach up to him? are we strong enough to digest this marrow of lion (_cette moelle de lion_)?" and again, in an article on the men of the eighteenth century, he writes: "one may be born a sailor, but there is nothing for it like seeing a storm, nor for a soldier like seeing a battle. a shakespeare, you will say, very nearly did without all that, and yet he knew it all. but nature never but once made a shakespeare." like most writers, of whatever country, m. sainte-beuve has formed himself on native models, and the french having no poet of the highest class, no dante, no shakespeare, no goethe, it is a further proof of his breadth and insight that he should so highly value the treasures in the deeper mines opened by these foreigners. seeing, too, how catholic he is, and liberal toward all other greatness, one even takes pleasure in his occasional exuberance of national complacency. whenever he speaks of montaigne or la fontaine or molière, his words flame with a tempered enthusiasm. but he throws no dust in his own eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the feelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. his native favorites he enjoys as no englishman or german could, but he does not overrate them. nor does he overrate voltaire, whom he calls "the frenchman par excellence," and of whom he is proud as the literary sovereign of his age. at the same time, in articles directly devoted to joubert, as well as by frequent citations of his judgments, he lauds this spiritually-minded thinker as one of the best of critics. and yet of voltaire, joubert says the hardest things: "voltaire is sometimes sad; he is excited; but he is never serious. his graces even are impudent.--there are defects difficult to perceive, that have not been classed or defined, and have no names. voltaire is full of them." in a paper on louise labé, a poetess of the sixteenth century, he reproduces some of her poems and several passages of prose, and then adds: "these passages prove, once more, the marked superiority that, at almost all times, french prose has over french poetry." no german or english or italian critic could say this of his native literature, and the saying of it by the foremost of french critics is not an exaltation of french prose, it is a depression of french poetry. in this judgment there is a reach and severity of which possibly the eminent critic was not fully conscious; for it amounts to an acknowledgment that the nature and language of the french are not capable of producing and embodying the highest poetry. goethe, m. sainte-beuve always mentions with deference. on eckerman's "conversations with goethe" he has a series of three papers, wherein he deals chiefly with the critic and sage, exhibiting with honest pride goethe's admiration of some of the chief french writers, and his acknowledgment of what he owed them. to a passage relating to the french translation of eckerman, m. sainte-beuve has the following note, which we, on this side the atlantic, may cherish as a high tribute to our distinguished countrywoman: "the english translation is by miss fuller, afterwards marchioness ossoli, who perished so unhappily by shipwreck. an excellent preface precedes this translation, and i must say that for elevated comprehension of the subject and for justness of appreciation it leaves our preface far behind it. miss fuller, an american lady of boston, was a person of true merit and of great intellectual vigor." a sympathetic student of goethe, margaret fuller purposed to write a life of him; and seeing what critical capacity and what insight into the nature of goethe she has shown in this preface, we may be confident that she would have made a genuine contribution to the goethe "literature," had she lived to do that and other high literary work. her many friends had nearer and warmer motives for deploring the early loss of this gifted, generous, noble-hearted woman. one of the busiest functions of the critic being to sift the multifarious harvest of contemporaneous literature, he must have a hand that can shake hard,--and hit hard, too, at times. for fifteen years m. sainte-beuve furnished once a week, under the title of "causeries du lundi," a critical paper, to a paris daily journal; not short, rapid notices, but articles that would cover seven or eight pages of one of our double-columned monthly magazines. he was thus ever in the thick of the literary _mêlée_. attractions and repulsions, sympathies and antipathies, there will be wherever men do congregate; the æsthetic plane is as open as any other to personal preferences and friendships. a literary circle as large as that of paris, if too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous mutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and coteries, betray some of its vices. in this voluminous series of papers the critical pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality is seldom transpicuous. the parisian reader will no doubt often perceive, in this or that paragraph or paper, a heightening or a subduing of color not visible to the foreigner, who cannot so well trace the marks of political, religious, or personal influences. his perfected praise m. sainte-beuve reserves for those of the illustrious dead who are embalmed in their own excellence. besides devoting many papers (among the most valuable of the series) to these magnates of literature, he delights in frequent illustrative reference to them,--a sign this of ripe culture in a critic, and of trustworthiness. out of the severe things occasionally said, the sting is mostly taken by the temper in which they are said, or by the frank recognition of virtues and beauties beside vices and blemishes. in the general tone there is a clear humanity, a seemly gentlemanliness. of the humane spirit wherewith m. sainte-beuve tempers condemnation, take the following as one of many instances. in the correspondence of lamennais there is laid bare such contradictions between his earlier and his later sentiments on religious questions, that the reader is thus feelingly guarded against being too harsh in his censure: "let us cast a look on ourselves, and ask if in our lives, in our hearts, from youth to our latter years, there are none of these boundless distances, these secret abysses, these moral ruins, perhaps, which, for being hidden, are none the less real and profound." writing weekly for the _feuilleton_ of a paris daily journal, m. sainte-beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse; but his diffuseness is always animated, never languid. fluent, conversational, ever polished, he is full of happy turns and of gallic sprightliness. when the occasion offers, he is concise, condensed even in the utterance of a principle or of a comprehensive thought. "admiration is a much finer test of literary talent, a sign much more sure and delicate, than all the art of satire." by the side of this may be placed a sentence he cites from grimm: "people who so easily admire bad things are not in a state to enjoy good." how true and cheering is this: "there is in each of us a primitive ideal being, whom nature has wrought with her finest and most maternal hand, but whom man too often covers up, smothers, or corrupts." speaking of the sixteenth century, he says: "what it wanted was taste, if by taste we understand choice clean and perfect, the disengagement of the elements of the beautiful." when, to give a paragraph its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic point, if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to borrow just what is wanted. speaking of embellished oratorical diction, he quotes talleyrand on some polished oration that was discussed in his presence: "it is not enough to have fine sentences: you must have something to put into them." commenting on the hyper-spirituality of m. laprade, he says: "m. laprade starts from the _absolute notion of being_. for him the following is the principle of art,--'to manifest what we feel of the absolute being, of the infinite, of god, to make him known and felt by other men, such in its generality is the end of art.' is this true, is it false? i know not: at this elevation one always gets into the clouds. like the most of those who pride themselves on metaphysics, he contents himself with words (_il se paye de mots_)." here is a grand thought, that flashes out of the upper air of poetry: "humanity, that eternal child that has never done growing." m. sainte-beuve's irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of truth: witness this passage on a new volume of m. michelet: "narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost entirely sacrificed. seek here no historical highway, well laid, solid, and continuous; the method adopted is absolute points of view; you run with him on summits, peaks, on needles of granite, which he selects at his pleasure to gets views from. the reader leaps from steeple to steeple. m. michelet seems to have proposed to himself an impossible wager, which, however, he has won,--to write history with a series of flashes." could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying of a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on m. guizot: "the consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural principle of pride, place him easily above the little susceptibilities of self-love." m. sainte-beuve is not an admirer of louis philippe, and among other sly hits gives him the following: "louis philippe was too much like a _bourgeois_ himself to be long respected by the _bourgeoisie_. just as in former times the king of france was only the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the first _bourgeois_ of the country." what witty satire on lamartine he introduces, with a recognition of popularity that, with one who takes so much joy in applause as lamartine does, is enough to take the poison out of the sting: "those who knew his verses by heart (and the number who do is large among the men of our age) meet, not without regret, with whole strips of them spread out, drowned, as it were, in his prose. this prose is, in 'les confidences,' too often but the paraphrase of his verses, which were themselves become, toward the last, paraphrases of his feelings." amends are made to lamartine on another occasion, when, citing some recent french sonnets, he says: "neither lamartine nor hugo nor vigny wrote sonnets. the swans and the eagles, in trying to enter this cage, would have broken their wings. that was for us, birds of a less lofty flight and less amplitude of wing." this is better as modesty than as criticism. shakespeare, milton, wordsworth, had wings of vaster sweep as well as of more gorgeous plumage than these french soarers, and they enjoyed getting into the cage of the sonnet, and sang therein some of their strongest as well as sweetest notes. a thorough frenchman, m. sainte-beuve delights in french minds, just as a beauty delights in her mirror, which throws back an image of herself. his excellence as a critic is primarily owing to this joy in things french. through means of it he knows them through and through: they are become transparent; and while his feelings are aglow, his intellect looks calmly right through them, and sees on the other side the shadows cast by the spots and opacities which frustrate more or less the fullest illumination. freely he exhibits these shadows. neither bossuet nor louis xiv., neither voltaire nor béranger, is spared, nor the french character, with its proneness to frivolity and broad jest, its thirst for superficial excitement. whatever his individual preferences, his mental organization is so large and happy, that he enjoys, and can do equal justice to, father lacordaire and m. michelet, to madame de staël and m. guizot, to corneille and goethe, to fénélon and m. renan, to marie antoinette and mirabeau. have you then for m. sainte-beuve, some reader will be impatient to ask, nothing but praise? not much else. commencing his literary career in 1827, when only in his twenty-third year, from that date to 1849 his writings, chiefly in the shape of literary portraits, fill several thousand pages. between his forty-fifth to his sixtieth year he wrote twenty-three volumes, containing about eleven thousand pages, on four or five hundred different authors and subjects. this is the period of his critical maturity, the period of the "causeries du lundi," followed by the "nouveaux lundis." many men write voluminously, but most of these only write _about_ a subject, not _into_ it. only the few who can write into their subject add something to literature. one of these few is m. sainte-beuve. in his mind there is vitality to animate his large acquirement, to make his many chapters buoyant and stimulant. all through his writings is the sparkle of original life. but let us now cheer the reader who is impatient of much praise, and at the same time perform the negative part of our task. well, then, to be bold, as befits a critic of the critic, we beard the lion in his very den. we challenge a definition he gives of the critic. in the seventh volume of the "causeries," article "grimm," he says: "when nature has endowed some one with this vivacity of feeling, with this susceptibility to impression, and that the creative imagination be wanting, this some one is a born critic, that is to say, a lover and judge of the creations of others." why did m. sainte-beuve make goethe sovereign in criticism? why did he think milton peculiarly qualified to interpret homer? from the deep principle of like unto like; only spirit can know spirit. what were the worth of a comment of john locke on "paradise lost," except to reveal the mental composition of john locke? the critic should be what locke was, a thinker, but to be a judge of the highest form of literature, poetry, he must moreover carry within him, inborn, some share of that whereby poetry is fledged, "creative imagination." he may "want the accomplishment of verse," or the constructive faculty, but more than the common allowance of sensibility to the beautiful he must have. but do not the presence of "vivacity of feeling with susceptibility to impression" imply the imaginative temperament? if not, then we confidently assure m. sainte-beuve that had his definition fitted himself, his "causeries du lundi" would never have been rescued from the quick oblivion of the _feuilleton._ now and then there are betrayals of that predominant french weakness, which the french will persist in cherishing as a virtue,--the love of glory. m. sainte-beuve thinks buffon's passion for glory saved him in his latter years from ennui, from "that languor of the soul which follows the age of the passions." where are to be found men more the victims of disgust with life than that eminent pair, not more distinguished for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than for insatiable greed of glory,--byron and chateaubriand? no form of self-seeking is morally more weakening than this quenchless craving, which makes the soul hang its satisfaction on what is utterly beyond its sway, on praise and admiration. these stimulants--withdrawn more or less even from the most successful in latter years--leave a void which becomes the very nursery of ennui, or even of self-disgust. instead of glory being "the potent motive-power in all great souls," as m. sainte-beuve approvingly quotes, it is, with a surer moral instinct, called by milton,- "that last infirmity of noble mind." in some of the noblest and greatest, so subordinate is it as hardly to be traceable in their careers. love of glory was not the spring that set and kept in motion kepler and newton, any more than shakespeare and pascal or william of orange and washington. the military glory wherewith napoleon fed and flattered the french nation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual and animal vigor of the conqueror's mind, dazzle even m. sainte-beuve, so that he does not perceive the gaping chasms in napoleon's moral nature, and the consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action, nor the unmanning effects of his despotism. the words used to describe the moral side of the imperial career are as insufficient as would be the strokes of a gray crayon to depict a conflagration or a sunset. in the paper from which has already been quoted he speaks of the "rare good sense" of napoleon, of "his instinct of justice." but was it not a compact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of justice, backed by a titan's will, wielding a mighty intellect, that enabled napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot and the merciless devastator? again, can it be said of napoleon that he possessed good sense in a rare degree? good sense is an instinctive insight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive discernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or purpose, a soundness of judgment, resulting from the soundness of, and equilibrium among, the upper powers of reason and sensibility. the moral side is at least the half of it: napoleon's moral endowment was but fractional. good sense, it may be added, lies solidly at the basis of all good work, except such as is purely professional or technical, or in its action one-sided; and even in such its presence must be felt. in whatever reaches general human interests, whether as practical act or imaginative creation, good sense must be, for their prosperity, a primary ingredient. "the tempest" and "don quixote" shoot up into shining, imperishable beauty because their roots draw their first nourishment from this hearty, inexhaustible substratum. and let us say, that in m. sainte-beuve himself good sense is the foundation of his eminent critical ability. he has been led, we conceive, to attribute more of it to napoleon than is his due by the blinding splendor of napoleon's military genius, through which, with such swiftness and cumulative effect, he adapted means to ends on the purely material plane. when murray applied to lord byron to write a book about the life and manners of the upper class in italy, byron declined the proposal from personal regards, and then added, that were he to write such a book it would be misjudged in england; for, said he, "their moral is not your moral." such international misinterpretations and exaggerations are instinctive and involuntary. a nation from its being a nation, has a certain one-sidedness. to the italian (even to one who carries a stiletto) the english practice of boxing is a sheer brutality; while to an englishman (himself perhaps not a joseph) the _cavaliere servente_ is looked upon with reprobation tempered by scorn. to this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation on the domestic, books, too, are liable; but to books as being more abstract than usages, more ideal than manners, an absolute moral standard can with less difficulty be applied. applying it to gil blas, is not m. sainte-beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks of this and the other writings of le sage as being "the mirror of the world?" molière, too, is a satirist, and from his breadth a great one; and surely the world he holds a mirror before is a much purer world than that of le sage; and what of the shakespearean world? the world of le sage is a nether world. "of gil blas it has been well said that the book is moral like experience." the experience one may get in brothels and "hells," in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it lessons of virtue and morality,--for those who can extract them; but even for these few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot read so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the experience is demoralizing and deadening. but toward the end of the paper the critic lets it appear that he does not place le sage so high as some of his phrases prompt us to infer; and he quotes this judgment of joubert: "of the novels of le sage it may be said that they seem to have been written in a _café_, by a player of dominoes, on coming out of the comic theatre." without being over-diffident, we may feel our footing not perfectly secure on french ground when we differ from a frenchman; we are therefore not sorry to catch m. sainte-beuve tripping on english ground. in a review of the translation of the celebrated letters of lord chesterfield--whom he calls the la rochefoucauld of england--he refers to, and in part quotes, the passages in which chesterfield gives his son advice as to his _liaisons_; and he adds: "all chesterfield's morality, on this head, is resumed in a line of voltaire,- "il n'est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie." it is these passages that make the grave dr. johnson blush: we only smile at them." for ourselves, we blush with johnson, not that the man of the world should give to his youthful son, living at a corrupt continental court, counsel as to relations which were regarded as inevitable in such a circle; but that the heart of the father should not have poured (were it but parenthetically) through the pen of the worldling some single sentence like this: "writing to you, my son, as an experienced man of the world to one inexperienced, i recommend the good taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a gentleman; but to his dear boy, your father says, avoid, if possible, such _liaisons_; preserve your purity; nothing will give you such a return throughout the whole of the future." but, a single sentence like this would _vitiate_ the entire chesterfieldian correspondence. how fully and warmly m. sainte-beuve prizes moral worth may be learnt from many passages. not the least animated and cordial of his papers is one on the abbé gerbet, in the sixth volume, a paper which shows, as gustave planche said of him, that "he studies with his heart, as women do;" and one in the second volume on malesherbes, whom he describes as being "separated, on the moral side, from the mirabeaus and the condorcets not by a shade, but by an abyss," and whom he sums up as "great magistrate, minister too sensitive and too easily discouraged, heroic advocate, and sublime victim." of this noble, deeply dutiful, self-sacrificing frenchman, this exemplar of moral greatness, lord lansdowne wrote many years before the french revolution: "i have seen for the first time in my life what i did not believe could exist, that is, a man _who is exempt from fear and from hope_, and who nevertheless is full of life and warmth. nothing can disturb his peace; nothing is necessary to him, and he takes a lively interest in all that is good." in a paper on a volume of miscellaneous prose essays by m. laprade, m. sainte-beuve has this sentence: "what strikes me above all and everywhere is, that the author, whether he reasons or whether he addresses himself to literary history, only understands his own mode of being and his own individuality. hereby he reveals to us that he is not a critic." the first paragraph of a keen critique on m. de pontmartin ends thus: "to say of even those writers who are opposed to us nothing which their judicious friends do not already think and are obliged to admit, this is my highest ambition." discussing the proper method of dealing with the past, he writes: "for myself i respect tradition and i like novelty: i am never happier than when i can succeed in reconciling them together." of hoffman he says, in a paper on literary criticism: "he has many of the qualities of a true critic, conscientiousness, independence, ideas, an opinion of his own." these sentences, with others of like import, are keys to the character of the volumes from which they are taken. the office of the critic m. sainte-beuve administers, not for temporary or personal ends, but with a disinterested sense of its elevation and its responsibilities. through healthy sympathies and knowledge ample and ripe, through firm sense with artistic flexibility, through largeness of view and subtlety of insight, he enters upon it more than ordinarily empowered for its due discharge. he is at once what the french call _fin_ and what the english call "sound." in literary work, in biographical work, in work æsthetical and critical, he delights, and he has a wide capacity of appropriation. the spirit of a book, a man, an age, he seizes quickly. with a nice perception of shades he catches the individual color of a mind or a production; and by the same faculty he grasps the determining principles in a character. delicately, strongly, variously endowed, there is a steady equilibrium among his fine powers. considering the bulk and vast variety and general excellence of his critical work, is it too much to say of him, that he is not only, as he has been called, the foremost of living critics, but that he deserves to hold the first place among all critics? no other has done so much so well. goethe and coleridge are something more; they are critics incidentally; but m. sainte-beuve, with poetical and philosophical qualities that lift him to a high vantage-ground, has made criticism his life-work, and through conscientious and symmetrical use of these qualities has done his work well. besides much else in his many and many-sided volumes, there is to be read in them a full, spirited history of french literature. our attempt to make m. sainte-beuve better known on this side the atlantic we cannot more fitly conclude than with a sketch of him--a literary sketch--by himself. this we find in the fifth volume of the "nouveaux lundis," in a paper on molière, published in july, 1863. a man who, in the autumnal ripeness of his powers, thus frankly tells us his likes and dislikes, tells us what he is. while by reflected action the passage becomes a self-portraiture, it is a sample of finest criticism. "to make molière loved by more people is in my judgment to do a public service. "indeed, to love molière--i mean to love him sincerely and with all one's heart--it is, do you know? to have within one's self a guarantee against many defects, much wrong-headedness. it is, in the first place, to dislike what is incompatible with molière, all that was counter to him in his day, and that would have been insupportable to him in ours. "to love molière is to be forever cured--do not say of base and infamous hypocrisy, but of fanaticism, of intolerance, and of that kind of hardness which makes one anathematize and curse; it is to carry a corrective to admiration even of bossuet, and for all who, after his example, exult, were it only in words, over their enemy dead or dying; who usurp i know not what holy speech, and involuntarily believe themselves to be, with the thunderbolt in their hand, in the region and place of the most high. men eloquent and sublime, you are far too much so for me! "to love molière, is to be sheltered against, and a thousand leagues away from, that other fanaticism, the political, which is cold, dry, cruel, which never laughs, which smells of the sectary, which, under pretext of puritanism, finds means to mix and knead all that is bitter, and to combine in one sour doctrine the hates, the spites, and the jacobinism of all times. it is to be not less removed, on the other hand, from those tame, dull souls who, in the very presence of evil, cannot be roused to either indignation or hatred. "to love molière, is to be secured against giving in to that pious and boundless admiration for a humanity which worships itself, and which forgets of what stuff it is made, and that, do what it will, it is always poor human nature. it is, not to despise it too much, however, this common humanity, at which one laughs, of which one is, and into which we throw ourselves through a healthful hilarity whenever we are with molière. "to love and cherish molière, is to detest all mannerism in language and expression; it is, not to take pleasure in, or to be arrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, superfine finish, excessive refinement of any kind, a tricky or artificial style. "to love molière, it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor pedantic science; it is to know how to recognize at first sight our _trissotins_[6] and our _vadius_ even under their rejuvenated jaunty airs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more than formerly by the everlasting _philaminte_, that affected pretender of all times, whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly renewed; it is, to like soundness and directness of mind in others as well as in ourselves. i only give the first movement and the pitch; on this key one may continue, with variations. [6] trissotin, vadius, and philaminte, are personages in molière's comedy of _les femmes savantes_ (the blue-stockings). "to love and openly to prefer corneille, as certain minds do, is no doubt a fine thing, and, in one sense, a very legitimate thing; it is, to dwell in, and to mark one's rank in, the world of great souls: but is it not to run the risk of loving together with the grand and sublime, false glory a little, to go so far as not to detest inflation and magniloquence, an air of heroism on all occasions? he who passionately loves corneille cannot be an enemy to a little boasting. "on the other hand, to love and prefer racine, ah! that is, no doubt, to love above all things, elegance, grace, what is natural and true (at least relatively), sensibility, touching and charming passion; but at the same time is it not also, to allow your taste and your mind to be too much taken with certain conventional and over-smooth beauties, a certain tameness and petted languidness, with certain excessive and exclusive refinements? in a word, to love racine so much, it is to run the risk of having too much of what in france is called taste, and which brings so much distaste. "to love boileau--but no, one does not love boileau, one esteems him, one respects him; we admire his uprightness, his understanding, at times his animation, and if we are tempted to love him, it is solely for that sovereign equity which made him do such unshaken justice to the great poets his contemporaries, and especially to him whom he proclaims the first of all, molière. "to love la fontaine, is almost the same thing as to love molière; it is, to love nature, the whole of nature, humanity ingenuously depicted, a representation of the grand comedy "of a hundred different acts," unrolling itself, cutting itself up before our eyes into a thousand little scenes with the graces and freedoms that are so becoming, with weaknesses also, and liberties which are never found in the simple, manly genius of the master of masters. but why separate them? la fontaine and molière--we must not part them, we love them united." * * * * * the number of "putnam's magazine," containing this paper, was sent to m. sainte-beuve accompanied by a note. in due time i received an answer to the note, saying that the magazine had not reached him. hereupon i sent the article by itself. on receiving it he wrote the following acknowledgment. in my note i referred to a rumor of his illness. his disease was, by _post-mortem_ examination, discovered to be as the newspapers had reported, the stone. but a consultation of physicians declared that it was what he states it to be in his letter. had they not made so gross a mistake, his life might have been prolonged. "paris, 6 _decembre_, 1868, no. 11 rue mont parnasse. "cher monsieur:-"oh! cette fois je reçois bien décidément le très aimable et si bien etudié portrait du _critique_. comment exprimer comme je le sens ma gratitude pour tant de soin, d'attention pénétrante, de désir d'être agréable tout en restant juste? il y avait certes moyen d'insister bien plus sur les variations, les disparates et les défaillances momentanées de la pensée et du jugement à travers cette suite de volumes. c'est toujours un sujet d'étonnement pour moi, et cette fois autant que jamais, de voir comment un lecteur ami et un juge de goût parvient à tirer une figure une et consistante de ce qui ne me parait à moi même dans mon souvenir que le cours d'un long fleuve qui va s'épandant un pen au hazard des pentes et désertant continuellement ses rives. de tels portraits comme celui que vous voulez bien m'offrir me rendent un point d'appui et me feraient véritablement croire à moi-même. et quand je songe a l'immense quantité d'esprits auxquels vous me présentez sous un aspect si favorable et si magistral dans ce nouveau monde de tant de jeunesse et d'avenir, je me prends d'une sorte de fierté et de courageuse confiance comme en présence déjà de la postérité. "le mal auquel vous voulez bien vous intéresser est tout simplement une hypertrophie de la prostate. les souffrances ne sont pas vives, mais l'incommodité est grande, ne pouvant supporter à aucun degré le mouvement de la voiture, ce qui restreint ma vie sociale à un bien court rayon. "veuillez agreéer, cher monsieur, l'assurance de ma cordiale gratitude, et de mes sentiments les plus distingués. sainte-beuve." vi. thomas carlyle. a brain ever aglow with self-kindled fire--a cerebral battery bristling with magnetic life--such is thomas carlyle. exceptional fervor of temperament, rare intellectual vivacity, manful earnestness--these are the primary qualifications of the man. he has an uncommon soul-power. hence his attractiveness, hence his influence. every page, every paragraph, every sentence, throbs with his own being. themselves all authors put, of course, more or less, into what they write: few, very few, can make their sentences quiver with themselves. this mr. carlyle does by the intenseness of a warm individuality, by the nimble vigor of his mental life, and, be it added, by the rapture of his spirituality. the self, in his case, is a large, deep self, and it sends an audible pulse through his pen into his page. to all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the difference between a genius and a blockhead. there being high vital pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental currents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a dante, in another, a newton, in another, a mirabeau. and nature, with all her generosity, being jealous of her rights, allows no interchange of gifts. even the many-sided goethe could not, by whatever force of will and practice, have written a bar in a symphony of beethoven. in his dominant aptitudes, mr. carlyle is not more one-sided than many other intellectual potentates; but, like some others, his activity and ambition have at times led him into paths where great deficiencies disclose themselves by the side of great superiorities. his mind is biographical, not historical; stronger in details than in generalization; more intuitive than scientific; critical, not constructive; literary, not philosophical. mr. carlyle is great at a picture, very great; he can fail in a survey or an induction. wealth of thought, strokes of tenderness, clean insight into life, satire, irony, humor, make his least successful volumes to teem with passages noteworthy, beautiful, wise, as do his "cromwell" and his "frederick." such giants carrying nations on their broad fronts, mr. carlyle, in writing their lives with duteous particularity, has embraced the full story of the epoch in which each was the leader. to him they are more than leaders. herein he and mr. buckle stand at opposite poles; mr. buckle underrating the protagonists of history, them and their share of agency; mr. carlyle overrating them,--a prejudicial one-sidedness in both cases. leader and led are the complements the one of the other. history is a growth, and a slow growth. evils in one age painfully sow the seed that is to come up good in another. the historian, and still more the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient, calm, judicial, hopeful. mr. carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful, nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. one healthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, would not be ever betaking him to the past as a refuge from the present; would not tauntingly throw into the face of contemporaries an abbot sampson of the twelfth century as a model. a judicial expounder would not cite one single example as a characteristic of that age in contrast with this. a patient, impartial elucidator, would not deride "ballot-boxes, reform bills, winnowing machines:" he would make the best of these and other tools within reach; or, if his part be to write and not to act, would animate, not dishearten, those who are earnestly doing, and who, by boldly striking at abuses, by steadily striving for more justice, by aiming to lift up the down-trodden, prepare, through such means as are at hand, a better ground for the next generation. if to such workers, instead of god-speed, a writer of force and influence gives jeers and gibes, and ever-repeated shrieks about "semblance and quackery, and cant and speciosity, and dilettantism," and deems himself profound and original, as well as hopeful, when he exclaims: "dim all souls of men to the divine, the high and awful meaning of human worth and truth, we shall never by all the machinery in birmingham discover the true and worthy:" in that case, does he not expose him to the taunt of being himself very like a mouthing quack, and his words, which should be cordial, brotherly, do they not partake of the hollow quality of what mr. carlyle holds in such abhorrence, namely, of cant? the sick lion crouches growling in his lair; he cannot eat, and he will not let others eat. many grateful and admiring readers mr. carlyle wearies with his ever-recurrent fallacy that might is right. in heaven's name, what are all the shams whose presence he so persistently bemoans,--worldly bishops, phantasm-aristocracies, presumptuous upstarts, shallow sway-wielding dukes,--what are all these, and much else, but so many exemplications of might that is not right? when might shall cease to bully, to trample on right, we shall be nearing utopia. utopia may be at infinite distance, not attainable by finite men; but as surely as our hearts beat, we are gradually getting further from its opposite, the coarse rule of force and brutality, such rule as in the twelfth century was rife all around "abbot sampson." like unto this moral fallacy is an æsthetic fallacy which, through bright pages of criticism, strikes up at times to vitiate a judgment. "i confess," says mr. carlyle, "i have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men." could newton have written the "fairy queen?" could spenser have discovered the law of gravitation? could columbus have given birth to "don quixote?" one of mr. carlyle's military heroes tried hard to be a poet. over frederick's verses, how his friend voltaire must have grinned. "i cannot understand how a mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward." thus mr. carlyle writes in "heroes and hero-worship." if mirabeau, why not savonarola, or marcus aurelius. in that case a "twelfth night," or an "othello," might have come from luther. nature does not work so loosely. rich is she, unspeakably rich, and as artful as she is profuse in the use of her riches. she delights in variety, thence her ineffable radiance, and much of her immeasurable efficiency. diverseness in unity is a source of her power as well as of her beauty. her wealth of material being infinite, her specifications are endless, countless, superfinely minute. even no two of the commonest men does she make alike; her men of genius she diversifies at once grandly and delicately, broadly and subtly. "petrarch and boccaccio did diplomatic messages," says mr. carlyle. we hope they did, or could have done, in the prosaic field, much better than that. we americans know with what moderate equipment diplomatic messages may be done. on poetry and poets mr. carlyle has written many of his best pages, pages penetrating, discriminative, because so sympathetic, and executed with the scholar's care and the critic's culture. his early papers on goethe and burns, published more than forty years ago, made something like an epoch in english criticism. seizing the value and significance of genuine poetry, he exclaims in "past and present,"--"genius, poet! do we know what these words mean? an inspired soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from nature's own great fire-heart, to see the truth, and speak it and do it." on the same page he thus taunts his countrymen: "we english find a poet, as brave a man as has been made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the sun; and do we kindle bonfires, thank the gods? not at all. we, taking due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the burgh of dumfries, and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'" "george the third is defender of something we call 'the faith' in those years. george the third is head charioteer of the destinies of england, to guide them through the gulf of french revolutions, american independences; and robert burns is gauger of ale in dumfries." poor george the third! one needs not be a craniologist to know that the eyes which looked out from beneath that retreating pyramidal forehead could see but part even of the commonest men and things before them. how could they see a robert burns? to be sure, had dundas, or whoever got burns the place of gauger, given him one of the many sinecures of two or three hundred pounds a year that were wasted on idle scions of titled families, an aureole of glory would now shine through the darkness that environs the memory of george iii. so much for george guelf. now for thomas carlyle. if, for not recognizing burns, _poor_ george is to be blamed, what terms of stricture will be too harsh for _rich_ thomas, that by him were not recognized poets greater than burns, at a time when for england's good, full, sympathetic recognition of them was just what was literarily most wanted? here was a man, for the fine function of poetic criticism how rarely gifted is visible in those thorough papers on burns and goethe, written so early as 1828, wherein, besides a masterly setting forth of their great subjects, are notable passages on other poets. on byron is passed the following sentence, which will, we think, be ever confirmed by sound criticism. "generally speaking, we should say that byron's poetry is not true. he refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even nausea. are his harolds and giaours, we would ask, real men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? do not these characters, does not the character of their author, which more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended to look much grander than nature? surely, all these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last threescore and ten years. to our minds, there is a taint of this sort, something which we should call theatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces." in the same paper, that on burns, mr. carlyle thus opened the ears of that generation,--partially opened, for the general æsthetic ear is not fully opened yet,--to a hollowness which was musical to the many: "our grays and glovers seemed to write almost as if _in vacuo_; the thing written bears no mark of place; it is not written so much for englishmen as for men; or rather, which is the inevitable result of this, for certain generalizations which philosophy termed men." and in the paper on goethe, he calls gray's poetry, "a laborious mosaic, through the hard, stiff lineaments of which, little life or true grace could be expected to look." thus choicely endowed was mr. carlyle to be, what is the critic's noblest office, an interpreter between new poets and the public. such an interpreter england grievously needed, to help and teach her educated and scholarly classes to prize the treasures just lavished upon them by wordsworth, and coleridge, and shelley, and keats. the interpreter was there, but he spoke not. better than any man in england mr. carlyle could, if he would, have taught the generation that was growing up with him, whose ear he had already gained, what truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity there was in the strains of this composite chorus of superlative singers. of such teaching, that generation stood in especial need, to disabuse its ear of the hollowness which had been mistaken for harmony; to refresh, with clear streams from "the divine fountain," hearts that were fevered by the stimulus of byronic "strong waters;" to wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which lights the way to that higher plane where breathe great poets, whose incomparable function it is, to impart to their fellow-men some of the enlargement and the purification of consciousness in which themselves exult through the influx of fresh ideas and the upspringing of prolific sentiment. the gifted interpreter was dumb. nay, he made diversions into scotland and germany, to bring burns and scott more distinctly before englishmen, and to make schiller and goethe and richter better known to them. and it pleased him to write about "corn-law rhymes." that he did these tasks so well, proves how well he could have done, by the side of them, the then more urgent task. in 1828, mr. carlyle wrote for one of the quarterly reviews an exposition of "goethe's helena," which is a kind of episode in the second part of "faust," and was first published as a fragment. this takes up more than sixty pages in the first volume of the "miscellanies," about the half being translations from "helena," which by no means stands in the front rank of goethe's poetic creations, which is indeed rather a high artistic composition than a creation. at that time there lay, almost uncalled for, on the publisher's shelf, where it had lain for five years, ever since its issue, a poem of fifty-five spenserian stanzas, flushed with a subtler beauty, more divinely dyed in pathos, than any in english literature of its rare kind, or of any kind out of shakespeare,--a poem in which all the inward harvests of a tender, deep, capacious, loving, and religious life, all the heaped hoards of feeling and imagination in a life most visionary and most real, are gathered into one sheaf of poetic affluence, to dazzle and subdue with excess of light,--or gathered rather into a bundle of sheaves, stanza rising on stanza, each like a flame fresh shooting from a hidden bed of nature's most precious perfumes, each shedding a new and a richer fragrance; i mean the "adonais" of shelley. for this glittering masterpiece,--a congenial commentary on which would have illuminated the literary atmosphere of england,--mr. carlyle had no word; no word for shelley, no word for coleridge, no word for wordsworth. for keats he had a word in the paper on burns, and here it is: "poetry, except in such cases as that of keats, where the whole consists in a weak-eyed, maudlin sensibility and a certain vague, random timefulness of nature, is no separate faculty." a parenthesis, short and contemptuous, is all he gives to one of whom it has been truly said, that of no poet who has lived, not of shakespeare, is the poetry written before the twenty-fifth year so good as his; and of whom it may as truly be said, that his best poems need no apology in the youthfulness of their author; but that for originality, power, variety, feeling, thoughtfulness, melody, they take rank in the first class of the poetry of the world. is not thomas carlyle justly chargeable with having committed a high literary misdemeanor? nay, considering his gift of poetic insight, and with it his persistent ignoring of the great english poets of his age, considering the warm solicitation on the one side, and the duty on the other, his offense may be termed a literary crime. he knew better. mr. carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of elizabeth, after this fashion; "for raleighs and shakespeares we have beau brummell and sheridan knowles." only on the surmise that mr. carlyle owed poor knowles some desperate grudge, can such an outburst be accounted for. otherwise it is sheer fatuity, or an impotent explosion of literary spite. for the breadth and brilliancy of the poetic day shed upon it, no period in the history of any nation, not that of pericles or of elizabeth, is more resplendent than that which had not yet faded for england when mr. carlyle began his career; nor in the field of public action can the most prolific era of greece or of england hold up, for the admiration of the world and the pride of fellow-countrymen, two agents more deservedly crowned with honor and gratitude than nelson and wellington. here are two leaders, who, besides exhibiting rare personal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast breadth, and in performances of unwonted magnitude and momentousness, were, moreover, by their great, brave deeds, most palpably saving england, saving europe, from the grasp of an inexorable despot. surely these were heroes of a stature to have strained to its utmost the reverence and the love of a genuine hero-worshipper. on the ten thousand luminous pages of mr. carlyle they find no place. not only are their doings not celebrated, that they lived is scarce acknowledged. even when its objects are the loftiest and the most honored, jealousy is not a noble form of "the last infirmity of noble mind." does mr. carlyle feel that nelson and wellington, coleridge, shelley, keats, and wordsworth, stand already so broad and high that they chill him with their shadow, and that therefore he will not, by eulogy, or even notice, add to their altitude? is he repeating the littleness of byron, who was jealous not only of his contemporaries, napoleon, and wellington, and wordsworth, but was jealous of shakespeare? that a pen which, with zestful animation, embraces all contemporaneous things, should be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of genius who illustrate his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is driven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive. in such a case it is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an imaginative man will not rise. writing of thomas carlyle, the last words must not be censorious comments on a weakness; we all owe too much to his strength; he is too large a benefactor. despite over-fondness for frederick and the like, and what may be termed a pathological drift towards political despotism, how many quickening chapters has he not added to the "gospel of freedom"? flushed are his volumes with generous pulses, with delicate sympathies. from many a page what cordialities step forth to console and to fortify us; what divine depths we come upon; what sudden vistas of sunshine through tempest-shaken shadows; what bursts of splendor through nebulous mutterings. much has he helped the enfranchisement of the spirit. well do i remember the thirst wherewith, more than thirty years ago, i seized the monthly "frazer," to drink of the spiritual waters of "sartor resartus." here was a new spring; with what stimulating, exhilarating, purifying draughts, did it bubble and sparkle! that picture, in the beginning, of the "doing and driving (_thun und treiben_)" of a city as beheld by professor teufelsdroeckh from his attic--would one have been surprised to read that on a page of shakespeare? a marvelous faculty of speech has mr. carlyle; a gift of saying what he has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought tingle through your ears. his diction surrounds itself with a magnetic _aura_, which seems to float it, to part it from the paper, it stands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro. common phrases he refreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings, and in the ordering of words he has command of a magical logic. the marrowy vigor in his mind it is that lends such expressiveness, such nimbleness, such accent to his sentences, to his style. mr. carlyle's power comes mainly from his sensibilities. through them he is poetical; through them there is so much light in his pages. more often from his than from any others, except those of the major poets, breaks the sudden, joyful beam that flames around a thought when it knows itself embraced by a feeling. of humor and of wit, what an added fund does our language now possess through his pen. the body of criticism, inclosed in the five volumes of miscellanies, were enough to give their author a lasting name. when one of these papers appeared in the edinburgh, or other review, it shone, amid the contributions of the jeffreys and broughams, like a guinea in a handful of shillings. the masterpiece of mr. carlyle, and the masterpiece of english prose literature, is his "french revolution," a rhythmic epic without verse. to write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big, glowing heart, thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a momentous volcanic epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he must have, to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and diverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of millions of contentious brains; he needs a literary faculty finely artistic, creatively imaginative, to enrank the figures of such vast tumultuous scenes, to depict the actors in each, to present vividly in clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. outside of the choice achievements of verse, is there a literary task of breadth and difficulty that has been done so well? a theme of unusual grandeur and significance is here greatly treated. the foremost literary gift,--nay, the test whereby to try whether there be any genuine literary gift,--is the power in a writer to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested, or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with a fire from the writer's soul. of this, the most perfect exhibition is in poetry, wherein, by the intensity and fullness of inflammation, of passion, is born a something new, which, through the strong creativeness of the poet, has henceforth a rounded being of its own. with this power mr. carlyle is highly endowed. not only, as already said, does his page quiver with himself; through the warmth and healthiness of his sympathies, and his intellectual mastery, he makes each scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the french revolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly that this life has been lighted up by his. where in history is there a picture greater than that of the execution of louis xvi.? with a few strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. and then his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the queen, of the duke of orleans, of lafayette, of camille desmoulins, of danton, of robespierre: it seems now that only on his throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true being. the giant mirabeau, 'twas thought at first he had drawn too gigantic. but intimate documents, historical and biographical, that have come to light since, confirm the insight of mr. carlyle, and swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him. for a conclusion we will let mr. carlyle depict himself. making allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so eccentric as his friend, professor teufelsdroeckh, this we think he does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of "sartor resartus," wherein, under the head of "characteristics," he comments on the professor's work on clothes, and its effect on himself. from this chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences. it opens thus:-"it were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this work on clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dullness' double-vision, and even utter blindness. "without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the "weissnichtwo'sche anzeiger," we admitted that the book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of _speculation_ might henceforth dig to unknown depths. more especially it may now be declared that professor teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of research, philosophic, and even poetic vigor, are here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity and manifold inaptitude.... "many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into mysterious nature, and the still more mysterious life of man. wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the true center of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home and buries it.... "occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like so many full-formed minervas, issuing amid flame and splendor from jove's head; a rich idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy twins; all the graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages, circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon so often intervene.... a wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the song of spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix.... "under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial round, after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest." vii. errata.[7] [7] from lippincott's magazine, 1870. words are the counters of thought; speech is the vocalization of the soul; style is the luminous incarnation of reason and emotion. thence it behooves scholars, the wardens of language, to keep over words a watch as keen and sleepless as a dutiful guardian keeps over his pupils. a prime office of this guardianship is to take care lest language fall into loose ways; for words being the final elements into which all speech resolves itself, if they grow weak by negligence or abuse, speech loses its firmness, veracity, and expressiveness. style may be likened to a close tyrian garment woven by poets and thinkers out of words and phrases for the clothing and adornment of the mind; and the strength and fineness of the tissue, together with its beauties of color, depend on the purity and precision, the transparency and directness of its threads, which are words. a humble freeman of the guild of scholars would here use his privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and phrases,--abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and written speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, the pages, even of good writers. these are not errors that betoken or lead to general final corruption, and the great anglo-saxo-norman race is many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show signs of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral and intellectual energies of a people, soon spots its speech. nevertheless, as inaccuracies, laxities, vulgarisms--transgressions more or less superficial--such errors take from the correctness, from the efficacy, from the force as well as the grace, of written or spoken speech. the high level of strength, suppleness and beauty occupied by our english tongue has been reached, and can only be maintained, by strenuous, varied, and continuous mental action. offenses against the laws and proprieties of language--like so many other of our lapses--are in most cases effects of the tendency in human nature to relax its tone. none save the most resolute and rigorous but have their moods of unwatchfulness, of indolence. moreover, men are prone to resist mental refinement and intellectual subdivisions. discrimination requires close attention and sustained effort; and without habitual discrimination there can be no linguistic precision or excellence. in this, as in other provinces, people like to take things easily. now, every capable man of business knows that to take things easily is an easy way to ruin. language is in a certain sense every one's business; but it is especially the business, as their appellation denotes, of men of letters; and a primary duty of their high vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling with, or mishandling of, those little glistening, marvelous tools wherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are ever a-building. culture, demanding and creating diversity and subtlety of mental processes, is at once a cause and an effect of infinite multiplication in the relations the mind is capable of establishing between itself and the objects of its action, and between its own processes; and language, being a chief instrument of culture, has to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands, any fall, therefore, on its part from the obedient fineness of its modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness, any slide into looseness or vagueness, any unweaving of the complex tissue, psychical and metaphysical, into which it has been wrought by the exquisite wants of the mind, will have a relaxing, debilitating influence on thought itself. to use the clear, wise words of mr. whewell; "language is often called an instrument of thought, but it is also the nutriment of thought; or, rather, it is the atmosphere on which thought lives--a medium essential to the activity of our speculative powers, although invisible and imperceptible in its operation; and an element modifying, by its changes and qualities, the growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds." our enumeration of _errata_ being made alphabetically, the first to be cited is one of the chief of sinners--the particle. as. the misuse of _as_ for _so_ is, in certain cases, almost universal. if authority could justify error and convert the faulty into the faultless, it were idle to expose a misuse in justification of which can be cited most of the best names in recent english literature. "_as_ far as doth concern my single self," is a line in wordsworth ("prelude," p. 70) which, by a change of the first _as_ into _so_, would gain not only in sound (which is not our affair at present), but, likewise in grammar. the seventh line of the twenty-first stanza in that most tender of elegies and most beautiful of poems, shelley's "adonais," begins, "_as_ long as skies are blue," where also there would be a double gain by writing "_so_ long as skies are blue." on page 242 of the first volume of de quincey's "literary remains" occurs this sentence; "even by _as_ philosophic a politician _as_ edmund burke," in which the critical blunder of calling burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse for the grammatical blunder. the rule (derived, like all good rules, from principle) which determines the use of this small particle is, i conceive, that the double _as_ should only be employed when there is direct comparison. in the first part of the following sentence there is no direct comparative relation--in the second, the negative destroys it; "_so_ far as geographical measurement goes, philadelphia is not _so_ far from new york as from baltimore." five writers out of six would commit the error of using _as_ in both members of the sentence. the most prevalent misuse of _as_ is in connection with _soon_; and this general misuse, having moreover the countenance of good writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to unravel it. but principle is higher than the authority derived from custom. judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute; and if the highest writers, whose influence is deservedly judicial, violate the laws of language, their decisions ought to be, and will be, reversed, or language will be undermined, and, slipping into shallow, illogical habits, into anarchical conditions, will forfeit much of its manliness, of its subtlety, of its truthfulness. language is a living organism, and to substitute authority, or even long usage, for its innate genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices that result from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it to become subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism. worcester quotes from the psalms the phrase, "they go astray _as_ soon as they be born." we ask, were not the translators of the bible as liable to err in grammar as de quincey, or wordsworth, or shelley? a writer in the english "national review" for january, 1862, in an admirable paper on the "italian clergy and the pope," begins a sentence with the same phrase: "_as_ soon as the law was passed." and we ourselves, sure though we be that the use of _as_ in this and every similar position is an error, need to brace both pen and tongue against running into it, so strong to overcome principle and conviction is the habit of the senses, accustomed daily to see and to hear the wrong. at that. we should not have noticed this squat vulgarism, had not the pen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of newspapers into bound volumes. the speech and page of every one, who would not be italicized for lingual looseness, should be forever closed against a phrase so shocking to taste, a phrase, we are sorry to say, of american mintage, coined in one of those frolicksome exuberant moods, when a young people, like a loosed horse full of youth and oats, kicks up and scatters mud with the unharnessed license of his heels. another. before passing to the letter b on our alphabetical docket, we will call up a minor criminal in a, viz. _another_, often incorrectly used for _other_; as in "on one ground or another," "from one cause or another." now, _another_, the prefix _an_ making it singular,--embraces but one ground or cause, and therefore, contrary to the purpose of the writer, the words mean that there are but two grounds or causes. write "on one ground or other," and the words are in harmony with the meaning of the writer, the word _other_ implying several or many grounds. boquet. the sensibility that gives the desire to preserve a present sparkling so long as is possible with all the qualities that made it materially acceptable, should rule us where the gift is something so precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. we therefore protest against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of france, the word _bouquet_, being maimed into _boquet_, a corruption as dissonant to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated nosegay, and leaving only its thorny stem. _boquet_ is heard at times in well-upholstered drawing-rooms, and may even be seen in print. offensive in its mutilated shape, it smells sweet again when restored to its native orthography. by no manner of means. the most vigorous writers are liable, in unguarded moments, to lapse into verbal weakness, and so you meet with this vulgar pleonasm in ruskin. by reason of. an ill-assorted, ugly phrase, used by accomplished reviewers and others, who ought to set a purer example. come off. were a harp to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe, or the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, the æsthetic sense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words, "the concert will _come off_ on wednesday." this vulgarism should never be heard beyond the "ring" and the cock-pit, and should be banished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar. consider. neither weight of authority nor universality of use can purify or justify a linguistic corruption, and make the intrinsically wrong in language right; and therefore such phrases as, "i consider him an honest man," "do you consider the dispute settled?" will ever be bad english, however generally sanctioned. in his dedication of the "diversions of purley" to the university of cambridge, horne tooke uses it wrongly when he says, "who always _considers_ acts of voluntary justice toward himself as favors." the original signification and only proper use of _consider_ are in phrases like these: "if you consider the matter carefully;" "consider the lilies of the field." conduct. it seems to us that it were as allowable to say of a man, "he carries well," as "he conducts well." we say of a gun that it carries well, and we might say of a pipe that it conducts well. the gun and pipe are passive instruments, not living organisms, and thence the verbs are used properly in the neuter form. perhaps, strictly speaking, even here _its charge_ and _water_ are understood. contemplate. "do you contemplate going to washington to-morrow?" "no: i contemplate moving into the country." this is more than exaggeration and inflation: it is desecration of a noble word, born of man's higher being; for contemplation is an exercise of the very highest faculties, a calm collecting of them for silent meditation--an act, or rather a mood, which implies even more than concentrated reflection, and involves themes dependent on large, pure sentiment. an able lawyer has to reflect much upon a broad, difficult case in order to master it; but when in the solitude of his study he is drawn, by the conflicts and wrongs he has witnessed during the day, to think on the purposes and destiny of human life, he more than reflects--he is lifted into a contemplative mood. archbishop trench, in his valuable volume on the "study of words," opens a paragraph with this sentence: "let us now proceed to _contemplate_ some of the attestations for god's truth, and some of the playings into the hands of the devil's falsehood, which may be found to lurk in words." here we suggest that the proper word were _consider_; for there is activity, and a progressive activity, in the mental operation on which he enters, which disqualifies the verb _contemplate_. habitual showiness in language, as in dress and manners, denotes lack of discipline or lack of refinement. our american magniloquence--the tendency to which is getting more and more subdued--comes partly from national youthfulness, partly from license, that bastard of liberty, and partly from the geographical and the present, and still more the prospective, political grandeur of the country, which coleridge somewhere says is to be "england in glorious magnification." i am free to confess. an irredeemable vulgarism. in this connection. another. indebtedness. "the amount of my _engagedness_" sounds as well and is as proper as "the amount of my _indebtedness_." we have already _hard-heartedness_, _wickedness_, _composedness_, and others. nevertheless, this making of nouns out of adjectives with the participial form is an irruption over the boundaries of the parts of speech which should not be encouraged. archbishop whately, in a passage of his shortcoming comments on bacon's "essays," uses _preparedness_. albeit that brevity is a cardinal virtue in writing, a circumlocution would, we think, be better than a gawky word like this, so unsteady on its long legs. in favor of _indebtedness_ over others of like coinage, this is to be said--that it imports that which in one form or other comes home to the bosom of all humanity. intellects. that man's intellectual power is not one and indivisible, but consists of many separate, independent faculties, is a momentous truth, revealed by the insight of gall. one of the results of this great discovery may at times underlie the plural use of the important word _intellect_ when applied to one individual. if so, it were still indefensible. it has, we suspect, a much less philosophic origin, and proceeds from the unsafe practice of overcharging the verbal gun in order to make more noise in the ear of the listener. the plural is correctly used when we speak of two or more different men. left. "i left at ten o'clock." this use of _leave_ as a neuter verb, however attractive from its brevity, is not defensible. _to leave off_ is the only proper neuter form. "we left off at six, and left (the hall) at a quarter past six." the place should be inserted after the second _left_. even the first is essentially active, some form of action being understood after _off_: we left off _work_ or _play_. midst. "in our midst" is a common but incorrect phrase. our author. a vulgarism, which, by its seeming convenience, gets the countenance of critical writers. we say _seeming_ convenience; for in this seeming lies the vulgarity, the writer expressing, unconsciously often, by the _our_, a feeling of patronage. with his _our_ he pats the author on the back. periodical is an adjective, and its use as a substantive is an unwarrantable gain of brevity at the expense of grammar. propose. hardly any word that we have cited is so frequently misused, and by so many good writers, as _propose_, when the meaning is to design, to intend to propose. it should always be followed by a personal accusative--i propose to you, to him, to myself. in the preface to hawthorne's "marble faun" occurs the following sentence; "the author _proposed_ to himself merely to write a fanciful story, evolving a thoughtful moral, and did not _purpose_ attempting a portraiture of italian manners and character"--a sentence than which a fitter could not be written to illustrate the proper use of _propose_ and _purpose_. predicated upon. this abomination is paraded by persons who lose no chance of uttering "dictionary words," hit or miss; and is sometimes heard from others from whom the educated world has a right to look for more correctness. reliable. a counterfeit, which no stamping by good writers or universality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the family circle of honest english as a substitute for the robust saxon word whose place it would usurp--_trustworthy_. _reliable_ is, however, good english when used to signify that one is liable again. when you have lost a receipt, and cannot otherwise prove that a bill rendered has been paid, you are _re-liable_ for the amount. religion. even by scholars this word is often used with looseness. in strictness it expresses exclusively our relation to the infinite, the _bond_ between man and god. you will sometimes read that he is the truly religious man who most faithfully performs his duties of neighbor, father, son, husband, citizen. however much a religious man may find himself strengthened by his faith and inspirited for the performance of all his duties, this strength is an indirect, and not a uniform or necessary, effect of religious convictions. some men who are sincere in such convictions fail in these duties conspicuously; while, on the other hand, they are performed, at times, with more than common fidelity by men who do not carry within them any very lively religious belief or impressions. "and now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." nor can the greatest do the work of the others any more than faith that of hope or charity. each one of "these three" is different from and independent of the other, however each one be aided by cooperation from the others. the deep, unique feeling which lifts up and binds the creature to the creator is elementarily one in the human mind, and the word used to denote it should be kept solely for this high office, and not weakened or perverted by other uses. worcester quotes from dr. watts the following sound definition: "in a proper sense, _virtue_ signifies duty toward men, and _religion_ duty to god." saloon. that eminent pioneer of american sculpture, brilliant talker, and accomplished gentleman, the lamented horatio greenough, was indignantly eloquent against the american abuse of this graceful importation from france, applied as it is in the united states to public billiard-rooms, oyster-cellars and grog-shops. subject-matter. a tautological humpback. to ventilate, applied to a subject or person. the scholar who should use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb taken off. we have here noted a score of the errors prevalent in written and spoken speech--some of them perversions or corruptions, countenanced even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright vulgarisms--that is, phrases that come from below, and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. these last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors, clinging for generations to tongues and pens. of this tenacity there is a notable exemplification in a passage of boswell, written nearly a hundred years ago. dr. johnson found fault with boswell for using the phrase to _make_ money: "don't you see the impropriety of it? to _make_ money is to _coin_ it: you should say _get_ money." johnson, adds boswell, "was jealous of infractions upon the genuine english language, and prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as _pledging_ myself, for _undertaking_; _line_ for _department_ or _branch_, as the _civil line_, the _banking line_. he was particularly indignant against the almost universal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or _opinion_, when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of which an image can be formed in the mind. we may have an _idea_ or _image_ of a mountain, a tree, a building, but we surely cannot have an idea or image of an _argument_ or _proposition_. yet we hear the sages of the law 'delivering their _ideas_ upon the question under consideration;' and the first speakers of parliament 'entirely coinciding in the _idea_ which has been ably stated by an honorable member.'" whether or not the word _idea_ may be properly used in a deeper or grander sense than that stated by dr. johnson, there is no doubt that he justly condemned its use in the cases cited by him, and in similar ones. all the four phrases _make money_, _pledge_, _line_, and _idea_, whereupon sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer, are still at large, and, if it be not a bull to say so, more at large to-day than in the last century, since the area of their currency has been extended to america, australia, and the pacific islands. viii. a national drama.[8] [8] from _putnam's monthly_, 1857. we are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows, processions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more imitative than our british cousins, that, without limiting its appeals to the mimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory of a simian descent for man might find support in the features of our general life. to complete the large compound of qualities that are required, in order that an emulous people give birth to a drama, one is yet wanting; but that one is not merely the most important of all, but is the one which lifts the others into dramatic importance. are we poetical? ask any number of continental europeans, whether the english are a poetical people. a loud, unanimous, derisive _no_ would be the answer. and yet, there is shakespeare! and around him, back to chaucer and forward to tennyson, a band of such poets, that this prosaic nation has the richest poetic literature in christendom. especially in this matter are appearances delusive, and hasty inferences liable to be illogical. from the prosers that one hears in pulpits, legislatures, lecture-rooms, at morning calls and well-appointed dinner-tables in anglo-america, let no man infer against our poetic endowment. shakespeare, and milton, and burns, and wordsworth, are of our stock; and what we have already done in poetry and the plastic arts, while yet, as a nation, hardly out of swaddling-clothes, is an earnest of a creative future. we are to have a national literature and a national drama. what is a national drama? premising that as little in their depth as in their length will our remarks be commensurate with the dimensions of this great theme, we would say a few words. a literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in the heart of a people. good books are the crystallization of thoughts and feelings. to have a literature--that is, a body of enduring books--implies vigor and depth. such books are the measure of the mental vitality in a people. those peoples that have the best books will be found to be at the top of the scale of humanity; those that have none, at the bottom. good books, once brought forth, exhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment. they educate while they delight many generations. good books are the best thoughts of the best men. they issue out of deep hearts and strong heads; and where there are deep hearts and strong heads such books are sure to come to life. the mind, like the body, will reproduce itself: the mind, too, is procreative, transmitting itself to a remote posterity. the best books are the highest products of human effort. themselves the evidence of creative power, they kindle and nourish power. consider what a spring of life to european people have been the books of the hebrews. what so precious treasure has england as shakespeare? to be good, books must be generic. they may be, in subject, in tone, and in color, national; but in substance they must be so universally human, that other cognate nations can imbibe and be nourished by them. not that, in their fashioning, this fitness for foreign minds is to be a conscious aim; but to be thus attractive and assimilative, is a proof of their breadth and depth--of their high humanity. the peoples who earliest reached the state of culture which is needed to bring forth books, each standing by itself, each necessarily sang and wrote merely of itself. thus did the hebrews and the greeks. but already the romans went out of themselves, and virgil takes a trojan for his hero. this appropriation of foreign material shows that the aim of high books is, to ascend to the sphere of ideas and feelings that are independent of time and place. thence, when, by multiplication of christian nations our mental world had become vastly enlarged, embracing in one bond of culture, not only all modern civilized peoples, but also the three great ancient ones, the poets--especially the dramatic, for reasons that will be presently stated--looked abroad and afar for the frame-work and corporeal stuff of their writings. the most universal of all writers, ancient or modern, he who is most generic in his thought, shakespeare, embodied his transcendent conceptions for the most part in foreign personages. of shakespeare's fourteen comedies, the scene of only one is laid in england; and that one, "the merry wives of windsor"--the only one not written chiefly or largely in verse--is a shakespearean farce. of the tragedies (except the series of the ten historical ones) only two, "lear" and "macbeth," stand on british ground. is "hamlet" on that score less english than "lear," or "othello" than "macbeth"? does italy count juliet among her trophies, or desdemona? of milton's two dramas---to confine myself here to the dramatic domain--the tragedy ("samson agonistes,") like his epics, is biblical; the comedy ("comus") has its home in a sphere "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call earth." of the numerous athletic corps of dramatists, contemporary with shakespeare and milton, few have left works pithy enough and so poetically complete as to withstand the wear of time and keep fresh to each successive generation. but if you inspect the long list from which charles lamb took his "specimens," you will find few british names. casting our eyes on the dramatic efforts of the recent english poetic celebrities, we perceive that byron, coleridge, and shelley, all abandoned, in every instance, native ground. the only dramatic work of a great modern, the scene of which is laid within the british limits, is "the borderers," of wordsworth, which, though having the poetic advantage of remoteness in time--being thrown back to the reign of henry iii.--is, in strictness, neither a drama nor a poem, wordsworth's deficiency in dramatic gifts being so signal as to cause, by the impotent struggle in an uncongenial element, a partial paralysis even of his high poetic genius. glance now across the channel. french poetic tragedy is in its subjects almost exclusively ancient--greek, roman, and biblical. in the works of the great comic genius of france, molière, we have a salient exception to the practice of all other eminent dramatists. the scene of his plays is paris; the time is the year in which each was written. let us look for the cause of this remarkable isolation. molière was the manager of a theatrical company in the reign of louis xiv., and he wrote, as he himself declares, to please the king and amuse the parisians. but deeper than this; molière was by nature a great satirist. i call him a _great_ satirist, because of the affluence of inward substance that fed his satiric appetite--namely, a clear, moral sensibility, distinguishing by instinct the true from the false, rare intellectual nimbleness, homely common sense, shrewd insight into men, a keen wit, with vivid perception of the comic and absurd. for a satirist so variously endowed, the stage was the best field, and for molière especially, gifted as he was with histrionic genius. the vices and abuses, the follies and absurdities, the hypocrisies and superficialities of civilized life, these were the game for his faculties. the interior of paris households he transferred to the stage with biting wit, doubling the attractiveness of his pictures by comic hyperbole. his portraits are caricatures, not because they exaggerate vices or foibles, but because they so bloat out a single personage with one vice or one folly as to make him a lop-sided deformity. characters he did not seek to draw, but he made a personage the medium of incarnating a quality. harpagon is not a miser; he is avarice speaking and doing. alceste is not a person; he is misanthropy personified. this fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the caricature of relations and juxtapositions. with laughable unscrupulousness molière multiplies improbable blunders and conjunctions. all verisimilitude is sacrificed to scenic vivacity. hence, the very highest of his comedies are farce-like; even "tartuffe" is so. in molière little dramatic growth goes on before the spectator's eye. his personages are not gradually built up by successive touches, broad or fine; they do not evolve themselves chiefly by collision with others; in the first act they come on the stage unfolded. the action and plot advance rapidly, but not through the unrolling of the persons represented. hence, his most important personages are prosaic and finite. they interest you more as agents for the purpose in hand than as men and women. they are subordinate rather to the action than creative of action. molière is a most thorough realist, and herein is his strength. in him the comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire gives pungency and body to the comic. he was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet. such being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was a present parisian actuality of story and agents. a poetic comedy ought to be, and will necessarily be, a chapter of very high life. molière's comedies, dealing unctuously with vice and folly, are, philosophically speaking, low life. his are comedies not of character and sentiment, but of manners and morals, and therefore cannot be highly poetical; and thence he felt no want of a remote ground, clean of all local coloring and association, such as is essential to the dramatist whose inspiration is poetical, and who therefore must reconcile the ideal with the real, by which reconciliation only can be produced the purest truth. that, notwithstanding they belong not to the highest poetic sphere, his comedies continue to live and to be enjoyed, this testifies of the breadth and truthfulness of his humanity, the piercing insight of his rich mind, and his superlative comic genius. of alfieri's twenty-two tragedies, three only are modern, and of these three the scene of one is in spain. of the nine or ten tragedies of the foremost german dramatic poet, schiller, three are german, "the robbers," "intrigue and love," and "wallenstein." goethe's highest dramas, "iphigenia," "egmont," "torquato tasso," are all foreign in clothing. "the natural daughter" has no local habitation, no dependence on time or place. "goetz von berlichingen," written in goethe's earliest days of authorship, is german and in prose, "faust"--the greatest poem of these latter times, and rivaling the greatest poems of all time--"faust" is not strictly a drama: its wonderful successive scenes are not bound together by dramatic necessity. the drama of spain, like the comedies of molière, is an exception to the rule we deduce from the practice of other dramatists; but it is an exception which, like that of molière, confirms the rule. unlike the ancient greek and the french tragic poets, unlike schiller, shakespeare, goethe, alfieri, the spanish dramatists do not aim at ideal humanity. the best of them, calderon, is so intensely spanish and romish, as to be, in comparison with the breadth and universality of his eminent compeers above named, almost provincial. his personages are not large and deep enough to be representative. the manifold recesses of great minds he does not unveil; he gets no deeper than the semi-barbarous exaggerations of selfish, passionate love; of revenge, honor, and jealousy. his characterization is weak. his highest characters lack intellectual calibre, and are exhibited in lyrical one-sidedness rather than dramatic many-sidedness. he is mostly content with spanish cavaliers of the seventeenth century, ruled by the conventionalisms in manners, morals, and superstition, which have already passed away even in spain. he is a marvelously fertile, skillful, poetic playwright. thus we perceive that, with poetic dramatists, the prevailing practice is, to look abroad for fables. moreover, in the cases where these were drawn from the bosom of the poet's own people, he shuns the present, and hies as far back as he can into the dark abysms of time, as shakespeare does in macbeth and lear. the greek tragic poets, having no outward resource, took possession of the fabulous era of greece. the poetic dramatist seeks mostly a double remoteness, that of place as well as that of time; and he must have one or the other. the law lying behind this phenomenon is transparent. the higher poetry is, the more generic it is. its universality is a chief constituent of its excellence. the drama is the most generically human, and, therefore, the highest of the great forms of poetry. the epic deals with the material, the outward--humanity concreted into events; the lyric with the inward, when that is so individual and intense as to gush out in ode or song. the dramatic is the union of the epic and lyric--the inward moulding the outward, predominant over the outward while co-working with it. in the dramatic, the action is more made by the personality; in the epic, the personality is more merged in the strong, full stream of events. the lyric is the utterance of one-sided, partial (however deep and earnest) feeling, the which must be linked to other feelings to give wholeness to the man and his actions. the dramatic combines several lyrics with the epic. out of humanity and human action it extracts the essence. it presents men in their completest form, in warm activity, impelled thereto by strongest feelings. hence, it must be condensed and compact, and must, for its highest display, get rid of local coloring, personal associations, and all prosaic circumscriptions. the poetic dramatist needs the highest poetic freedom, and only through this can he attain to that breadth and largeness whereof the superiority of his form admits, and which are such in shakespeare, that in his greatest plays the whole world seems to be present as spectators and listeners. observe that the highest dramatic literatures belong to the two freest peoples--the greeks and the english. a people, possessing already a large political freedom, must be capable of, and must be in the act of, vigorous, rich development, through deep inward passion and faculty, in order that its spirit shall issue in the perennial flowers of the poetic drama. the dramatic especially implies and demands variety and fullness and elevation of _personality_; and this is only possible through freedom, the attainment of which freedom implies on its side the innate fertility of nature which results in fullness and elevation. now in the subjective elevation of the individual, and therewith the unprecedented relative number of individuals thus elevated, herein do we exceed all other peoples. by subjective elevation i mean, liberation from the outward, downward pressure of dogmatic prescription, of imperious custom, of blindfolded tradition, of irresponsible authority. the despotic objectivity of asia--where religion is submissiveness, and manhood is crushed by obedience--has been partially withstood in europe. the emancipation therefrom of the indo-germanic race is completed in anglo-america. through this manifold emancipation we are to be, in all the high departments of human achievement, preeminently creative, because, while equipped with the best of the past, we are at the same time preeminently subjective; and, therefore, high literature will, with us, necessarily take the lyrical, and especially the dramatic, form. more than our european ancestors, we mold, each one of us, our own destiny; we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and elevate ourselves; we are more ready and more capable to withstand the assaults of circumstance. here is more thoroughly embodied the true christian principle, that out of himself is to come every man's redemption; that the favor and help of god are only to be obtained through resolute self-help, and honest, earnest struggle. in christendom we stand alone as having above us neither the objectivity of politics nor that of the church. the light of the past we have, without its darkness. we carry little weight from the exacting past. hence, our unexampled freedom and ease of movement which, wanting the old conventional ballast, to europeans seems lawless and reckless. even among ourselves, many tremble for our future, because they have little faith in humanity, and because they cannot grasp the new, grand historic phenomenon of a people possessing all the principles, practices, and trophies of civilization without its paralyzing incumbrances. but think not, because we are less passive to destiny, we are rebellious against deity; because we are boldly self-reliant, we are, therefore, irreligiously defiant. the freer a people is, the nearer it is to god. the more subjective it is, through acquired self-rule, the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of absolute truth and justice. for having thrown off the capricious secondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, under the steadfast, primary rule of god; for having broken the force of human, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and acknowledge the supremacy of flawless, divine law; for having rejected the tyranny of man's willfulness, we shall submit the more fully to the beneficent power of principle. our birth, growth, and continued weal, depending on large, deep principles--principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by reason, and generously embracing the whole--our life must be interpenetrated by principle, and thence our literature must embrace the widest and most human wants and aspirations of man. and thus, it will be our privilege and our glory to be then the most national in our books when we are the most universal. ix. usefulness of art. address delivered at the inauguration of the rhode island art association in providence, september 4, 1854. _gentlemen of the rhode island art association:_-we are met to inaugurate an association whose aim and end shall be the encouragement and culture of art. a most high end--among the highest that men can attempt; an end that never can be entertained except by men of the best breed. there is no art among savages, none among barbarians. barbarism and art are adversary terms. when men capable of civilization ascend into it, art manifests itself an inevitable accompaniment, an indispensable aid to human development. i will say further, that in a people the capacity to be cultivated involves the capacity, nay, the necessity of art. and still further, that those nations that have been or are preeminent on the earth, are preeminent in art. nay, more, that a nation cannot attain to and maintain eminence without being proficient in art; and that to abstract from a people its artists were not merely to pluck the flowers from its branches; it were to cut off its-deep roots. who is the artist? he who embodies, in whatever mode,--so that they be visible or audible, and thus find entrance to the mind,--conceptions of the beautiful, is an artist. the test and characteristic of the artistic nature are superior sensibility to the beautiful. unite to this the faculties and the will to give form to the impressions and emotions that are the fruit of this susceptibility, and you have the artist. whether he shall embody his conception in written verse, in marble, in stone, in sound, on the canvas, that will depend on each one's individual aptitudes. generic, common, indispensable to all is the superior sensibility to the beautiful. in this lies the essence of the artist. the beautiful and the perfect being, if not identical, in closest consanguinity, the artist's is an important, a great function. the artist must receive into his mind, or engender in his mind's native richness, conceptions of what is most high, most perfect, most beautiful in shape or sound, in thought or feeling; and producing it before his fellow-men, appeal to their sensibility to the beautiful, to their deepest sympathies, to their capacity of being moved by the grandest and the noblest there is in man and nature. truly, a mighty part is that of the artist. artists are the educators of humanity. tutors and professors instruct princes and kings, but poets (and all genuine artists are poets) educate nations. take from greece homer and phidias, and sophocles and scopas, and the planner of the parthenon, and you efface greece from history. wanting them, she would not have been the great greece that we know; she would not have had the vigor of sap, the nervous vitality, to have continued to live in a remote posterity, immortal in the culture, the memories, and the gratitude of men. so great, so far-stretching, so undying is the power of this exalted class of men, that it were hardly too much to say that had homer and phidias never lived, we should not be here today. if this be deemed extravagant, with confidence i affirm that but for the existence of the greatest artist the world has ever known,--of him who may be called the chief educator of england,--but for shakespeare, we assuredly should not be here to-day doing the good work we are doing. there are probably some of this company who, like myself, having had the good fortune to be in london at the time of the world's fair, stood under that magnificent, transparent roof, trod that immense area whereon fifty thousand people moved at ease. it was a privilege,--the memory of which will last a life-time, to have been admitted into that gigantic temple of industry, there to behold in unimaginable profusion and variety the product of man's labor, intellect, and genius, gathered from the four corners of the earth into one vast, gorgeous pile,--a spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor, and from its moral significance absolutely sublime. on entering by the chief portal into the transept,--covering in the huge oaks of hyde park,--the american, after wondering for a moment in the glare of the first aspect, will, with the eagerness and perhaps the vanity of his nation,--have hastened through the compartments of france, belgium, germany, gorgeous with color, glistening with gold. he will have hastened, hard as it was to hurry through such a show, in order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace where a broad area had been allotted to the united states,--jonathan, as is his wont, having helped himself largely. great was the american's disappointment, cutting was the rebuke to his vanity; his country made no _show_ at all. the samples of her industry were not outwardly brilliant. their excellence lay in their inward power, in their wide usefulness. they were not ornaments and luxuries for the dwellings of the few, they were inventions that diffuse comforts and blessings among the many,--labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers. by the thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated, as it was acknowledged in the final awards of the judges. and even in this high department where we are so eminent, owing to distance and misunderstandings, we were not adequately represented. but even if we had been, the european would have said, "this has a high value and interest; but still i find not here enough to justify the expectations entertained by this people, and by many in europe, of the future greatness of the american republic. these things, significant as they are, are yet not an alphabet that can be so compounded as to write the richest page of man's history. in this present display i find not prefigured that splendid future the americans are fond of predicting for themselves." and the american, acknowledging the force of the comment, would have turned away mortified, humbled. but he was saved any such humiliation. in the midst of that area, under that beautiful flag, day after day, week after week, month after month, from morn till night, go when he would, he beheld there a circle ever full, its vacancies supplied as soon as they were made, a circle silent with admiration, hushed by emotion, gazing at a master-piece of american art, the greek slave of powers. and from that contemplation hundreds of thousands of europeans carried away an impression of american capacity, a conviction that truly a great page is to be written by the young republic in the book of history,--a sense of american power which they could have gotten from no other source. our association, gentlemen, owes its origin to the wants of industry. the moving power which has been strongest in bringing so many of us together to found an institution for the encouragement of art in rhode island, is the desire hereby more thoroughly to inweave the beautiful into cotton and woolen fabrics, into calicoes and delaines; to melt the beautiful into iron and brass, and copper, as well as into silver and gold; so that our manufacturers and artisans may hold their own against the competition of england and france and germany, whereof in the two latter countries especially, schools of design have long existed, and high artists find their account in furnishing the beautiful to manufacturers. "a low origin this for such a society, and the fruits will be without flavor. art will not submit to be so lowered," will say some travelled dilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders of the louvre and the vatican; but the creator of the universe teaches a different lesson from this observer. not the rare lightning merely, but the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded canopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, has he made beautiful. he surrounds us with beauty; he envelops us in beauty. beauty is spread out on the familiar grass, glows in the daily flower, glistens in the dew, waves in the commonest leafy branch. all about us, in infinite variety, beauty is lavished by god in sights and sounds, and odors. now, in using the countless and multifarious substances that are put within our reach, to be by our ingenuity and contrivance wrought into materials for our protection and comfort, and pleasure, it becomes us to--it is part of his design that we shall--follow the divine example, so that in all our handiwork, as in his, there shall be beauty, so much as the nature of each product is susceptible of. that it is the final purpose of providence that our whole life, inward and outward, shall be beautiful, and be steeped in beauty, we have evidence, in the yearnings of the best natures for the perfect, in the delight we take in the most resplendent objects of art and nature, in the ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful deed. by culture we can so create and multiply beauty, that all our surroundings shall be beautiful. can you not imagine a city of the size of this, or vastly larger, the structure of whose streets and buildings shall be made under the control of the best architectural ideas, being of various stones and marbles, and various in style and color, so that each and every one shall be either light, or graceful, or simple, or ornate, or solid, or grand, according to its purpose, and the conception of the builder; and in the midst and on the borders of the city, squares, and parks, planted with trees and flowers and freshened by streams and fountains. and when you recall the agreeable, the elevating sensation you have experienced in front of a perfect piece of architecture (still so rare), will you not readily concede that where every edifice should be beautiful, and you never walked or drove out but through streets of palaces and artistic parks, the effect on the whole population of this ever-present beauty and grandeur, would be to refine, to expand, to elevate. when we look at the architectural improvements made within a generation, in london, in paris, in new york, we may, without being utopians, hope for this transformation. but the full consummation of such a hope can only be brought about in unison with improvements in all the conditions and relations of life, and the diffusion of such improvements among the masses. it is to further-such diffusion that this association has been founded. our purpose is to meet the growing demand for beauty in all things; to bring into closer cooperation the artisan and the artist; to make universally visible and active the harmony,--i almost might say the identity,--there is between the useful and the beautiful. gentlemen, ever in the heart of the practical, in the very core of the useful, there is enclosed a seed of beauty; and upon the fructification, growth, and expansion of that seed depends,--aye, absolutely depends,--the development of the practical. but for the expansion of that seed, we should have neither the plough nor the printing-press, neither shoes nor the steam engine. to that we owe silver forks as well as the electric telegraph. in no province of work or human endeavor is improvement made, is improvement possible, but by the action of that noble faculty through which we are uplifted when standing before a masterpiece of raphael. this ceaseless seeking for a better, this unresting impulse towards the perfect, has brought the english race through a thousand years of gradual upward movement, from the narrow heptarchy, with its rude simplicity of life, up to this wide cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of life; and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our present as that is to the times of alfred. in the works of the almighty this principle is so alive that they are radiant with beauty; and the degree of the radiance of each is often the measure of its usefulness. how beautiful is a field of golden wheat--whereby our bodies live--and the more beautiful the closer it stands and the fuller are its heads. the oak and the pine owe their majestic beauty to that which is the index of their usefulness, the solid magnitude of their trunks. the proportions which give the horse his highest symmetry of form, give him his fleetness and endurance and strength. and thus, too, with man,--his works, when best, sparkle most with this fire of the beautiful. we profit by history in proportion as it registers beautiful sayings and beautiful doings. we profit one another in everyday life in proportion as our acts, the minor as well as the greater, are vitalized by this divine essence of beauty. to the speeches of webster, even to the most technical, this essence gives their completeness and their grandeur of proportion; while it is this which illuminates with undying splendor the creations of allston. thus, gentlemen, the aim of our association is most noble and useful, drawing its nobleness from its high usefulness. may it so prosper, that a generation hence, thousands and tens of thousands shall look back to this the day of its inauguration with praise and thankfulness. and pg distributed proofreaders aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic translated from the italian of benedetto croce by douglas ainslie b.a. (oxon.) 1909 the aesthetic is dedicated by the author to the memory of his parents pasquale and luisa sipari and of his sister maria note i give here a close translation of the complete _theory of aesthetic_, and in the historical summary, with the consent of the author, an abbreviation of the historical portion of the original work. contents introduction theory i intuition and expression intuitive knowledge--its independence in respect to the intellect-intuition and perception--intuition and the concepts of space and time--intuition and sensation--intuition and association--intuition and representation--intuition and expression--illusions as to their difference--identity of intuition and expression. ii intuition and art corollaries and explanations--identity of art and of intuitive knowledge-no specific difference--no difference of intensity--difference extensive and empirical--artistic genius--content and form in aesthetic--critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion--critique of art conceived as a sentimental, not a theoretic fact--the origin of aesthetic, and sentiment--critique of the theory of aesthetic senses--unity and indivisibility of the work of art--art as deliverer. iii art and philosophy indissolubility of intellective and of intuitive knowledge--critique of the negations of this thesis--art and science--content and form: another meaning. prose and poetry--the relation of first and second degree--inexistence of other cognoscitive forms--historicity--identity and difference in respect of art--historical criticism--historical scepticism--philosophy as perfect science. the so-called natural sciences, and their limits--the phenomenon and the noumenon. iv historicism and intellectualism in aesthetic critique of the verisimilar and of naturalism--critique of ideas in art, of art as thesis, and of the typical--critique of the symbol and of the allegory--critique of the theory of artistic and literary categories--errors derived from this theory in judgments on art-empirical meaning of the divisions of the categories. v analogous errors in history and in logic critique of the philosophy of history--aesthetic invasions of logic-logic in its essence--distinction between logical and non-logical judgments--the syllogism--false logic and true aesthetic--logic reformed. vi theoretic and practical activity the will--the will as ulterior grade in respect of knowledge--objections and explanations--critique of practical judgments or judgments of value--exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic--critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content--practical innocence of art--independence of art--critique of the saying: the style is the man--critique of the concept of sincerity in art. vii analogy between the theoretic and the practical the two forms of practical activity--the economically useful-distinction between the useful and the technical--distinction between the useful and the egoistic--economic and moral volition--pure economicity--the economic side of morality--the merely economical and the error of the morally indifferent--critique of utilitarianism and the reform of ethic and of economic--phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity. viii exclusion of other spiritual forms the system of the spirit--the forms of genius--inexistence of a fifth form of activity--law; sociality--religiosity--metaphysic--mental imagination and the intuitive intellect--mystical aesthetic--mortality and immortality of art. ix indivisibility of expression into modes or grades and critique of rhetoric the characteristics of art--inexistence of modes of expression-impossibility of translations--critique of rhetorical categories-empirical meaning of rhetorical categories--their use as synonyms of the aesthetic fact--their use as indicating various aesthetic imperfections--their use as transcending the aesthetic fact, and in the service of science--rhetoric in schools--similarities of expressions--relative possibility of translations. x aesthetic sentiments and the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly various meanings of the word sentiment--sentiment as activity-identification of sentiment with economic activity--critique of hedonism--sentiment as concomitant of every form of activity--meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of sentiments--value and disvalue: the contraries and their union--the beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without adjunct--the ugly and the elements of beauty that constitute it--illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor ugly--proper aesthetic sentiments and concomitant and accidental sentiments--critique of apparent sentiments. xi critique of aesthetic hedonism critique of the beautiful as what pleases the superior senses--critique of the theory of play--critique of the theory of sexuality and of the triumph--critique of the aesthetic of the sympathetic--meaning in it of content and of form--aesthetic hedonism and moralism--the rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic negation of art--critique of pure beauty. xii the aesthetic of the sympathetic and pseudo-aesthetic concepts pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the aesthetic of the sympathetic-critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of its surmounting-pseudo-aesthetic concepts appertain to psychology--impossibility of rigorous definitions of these--examples: definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous--relation between those concepts and aesthetic concepts. xiii the so-called physically beautiful in nature and in art aesthetic activity and physical concepts--expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense--intuitions and memory--the production of aids to memory--the physically beautiful-content and form: another meaning--natural beauty and artificial beauty--mixed beauty--writings--the beautiful that is free and that which is not free--critique of the beautiful that is not free-stimulants of production. xiv errors arising from the confusion between physic and aesthetic critique of aesthetic associationism--critique of aesthetic physic-critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body--critique of the beauty of geometrical figures--critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature--critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful--critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful--the astrology of aesthetic. xv the activity of externalization. technique and the theory of the arts the practical activity of externalization--the technique of externalization--technical theories of single arts--critique of the classifications of the arts--relation of the activity of externalization with utility and morality. xvi taste and the reproduction of art aesthetic judgment. its identity with aesthetic reproduction-impossibility of divergences--identity of taste and genius--analogy with the other activities--critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism--critique of relative relativism--objections founded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic disposition-critique of the distinction of signs as natural and conventional--the surmounting of variety--restorations and historical interpretation. xvii the history of literature and of art historical criticism in literature and art. its importance--artistic and literary history. its distinction from historical criticism and from the aesthetic judgment--the method of artistic and literary history--critique of the problem of the origin of art--the criterion of progress and history--inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history--errors in respect of this law--other meanings of the word "progress" in relation to aesthetic. xviii conclusion: identity of linguistic and aesthetic summary of the inquiry--identity of linguistic with aesthetic-aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. nature of language-origin of language and its development--relation between grammatic and logic--grammatical categories or parts of speech--individuality of speech and the classification of languages--impossibility of a normative grammatic--didactic organisms--elementary linguistic elements, or roots--the aesthetic judgment and the model language-conclusion. historical summary aesthetic ideas in graeco-roman antiquity--in the middle age and at the renaissance--fermentation of thought in the seventeenth century--aesthetic ideas in cartesianism, leibnitzianism, and in the "aesthetic" of baumgarten--g.b. vico--aesthetic doctrines in the eighteenth century--emmanuel kant--the aesthetic of idealism with schiller and hegel--schopenhauer and herbart--friedrich schleiermacher--the philosophy of language with humboldt and steinthal--aesthetic in france, england, and italy during the first half of the nineteenth century--francesco de sanctis--the aesthetic of the epigoni--positivism and aesthetic naturalism--aesthetic psychologism and other recent tendencies--glance at the history of certain particular doctrines--conclusion. appendix translation of the lecture on pure intuition and the lyrical nature of art, delivered by benedetto croce before the international congress of philosophy at heidelberg. introduction there are always americas to be discovered: the most interesting in europe. i can lay no claim to having discovered an america, but i do claim to have discovered a columbus. his name is benedetto croce, and he dwells on the shores of the mediterranean, at naples, city of the antique parthenope. croce's america cannot be expressed in geographical terms. it is more important than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. it belongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. that province which most interests me, i have striven in the following pages to annex to the possessions of the anglo-saxon race; an act which cannot be blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more truly than of love, that "to divide is not to take away." the historical summary will show how many a brave adventurer has navigated the perilous seas of speculation upon art, how aristotle's marvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how plato threw away its golden fruit, how baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters, kant sailed along its coast without landing, and vico hoisted the italian flag upon its shore. but benedetto croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. he has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its spiritual features with minute accuracy. the country thus won to philosophy will always bear his name, _estetica di croce_, a new america. it was at naples, in the winter of 1907, that i first saw the philosopher of aesthetic. benedetto croce, although born in the abruzzi, province of aquila (1866), is essentially a neapolitan, and rarely remains long absent from the city, on the shore of that magical sea, where once ulysses sailed, and where sometimes yet (near amalfi) we may hear the syrens sing their song. but more wonderful than the song of any syren seems to me the theory of aesthetic as the science of expression, and that is why i have overcome the obstacles that stood between me and the giving of this theory, which in my belief is the truth, to the english-speaking world. no one could have been further removed than myself, as i turned over at naples the pages of _la critica_, from any idea that i was nearing the solution of the problem of art. all my youth it had haunted me. as an undergraduate at oxford i had caught the exquisite cadence of walter pater's speech, as it came from his very lips, or rose like the perfume of some exotic flower from the ribbed pages of the _renaissance_. seeming to solve the riddle of the sphinx, he solved it not--only delighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he led one along the pathways of his enchanted garden, where i shall always love to tread. oscar wilde, too, i had often heard at his best, the most brilliant talker of our time, his wit flashing in the spring sunlight of oxford luncheon-parties as now in his beautiful writings, like the jewelled rapier of mercutio. but his works, too, will be searched in vain by the seeker after definite aesthetic truth. with a.c. swinburne i had sat and watched the lava that yet flowed from those lips that were kissed in youth by all the muses. neither from him nor from j.m. whistler's brilliant aphorisms on art could be gathered anything more than the exquisite pleasure of the moment: the _monochronos haedonae_. of the great pedagogues, i had known, but never sat at the feet of jowett, whom i found far less inspiring than any of the great men above mentioned. among the dead, i had studied herbert spencer and matthew arnold, schopenhauer, nietzsche and guyau: i had conversed with that living neo-latin, anatole france, the modern rousseau, and had enjoyed the marvellous irony and eloquence of his writings, which, while they delight the society in which he lives, may well be one of the causes that lead to its eventual destruction. the solution of the problem of aesthetic is not in the gift of the muses. to return to naples. as i looked over those pages of the bound volumes of _la critica_. i soon became aware that i was in the presence of a mind far above the ordinary level of literary criticism. the profound studies of carducci, of d'annunzio, and of pascoli (to name but three), in which those writers passed before me in all their strength and in all their weakness, led me to devote several days to the _critica_. at the end of that time i was convinced that i had made a discovery, and wrote to the philosopher, who owns and edits that journal. in response to his invitation, i made my way, on a sunny day in november, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like a necklace, the rione de la bellezza, and wound zigzag along the over-crowded toledo. i knew that signor croce lived in the old part of the town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as i experienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself in old naples. this has already been described elsewhere, and i will not here dilate upon this world within a world, having so much of greater interest to tell in a brief space. i will merely say that the costumes here seemed more picturesque, the dark eyes flashed more dangerously than elsewhere, there was a quaint life, an animation about the streets, different from anything i had known before. as i climbed the lofty stone steps of the palazzo to the floor where dwells the philosopher of aesthetic i felt as though i had stumbled into the eighteenth century and were calling on giambattista vico. after a brief inspection by a young man with the appearance of a secretary, i was told that i was expected, and admitted into a small room opening out of the hall. thence, after a few moments' waiting, i was led into a much larger room. the walls were lined all round with bookcases, barred and numbered, filled with volumes forming part of the philosopher's great library. i had not long to wait. a door opened behind me on my left, and a rather short, thick-set man advanced to greet me, and pronouncing my name at the same time with a slight foreign accent, asked me to be seated beside him. after the interchange of a few brief formulae of politeness in french, our conversation was carried on in italian, and i had a better opportunity of studying my host's air and manner. his hands he held clasped before him, but frequently released them, to make those vivid gestures with which neapolitans frequently clinch their phrase. his most remarkable feature was his eyes, of a greenish grey: extraordinary eyes, not for beauty, but for their fathomless depth, and for the sympathy which one felt welling up in them from the soul beneath. this was especially noticeable as our conversation fell upon the question of art and upon the many problems bound up with it. i do not know how long that first interview lasted, but it seemed a few minutes only, during which was displayed before me a vast panorama of unknown height and headland, of league upon league of forest, with its bright-winged birds of thought flying from tree to tree down the long avenues into the dim blue vistas of the unknown. i returned with my brain awhirl, as though i had been in fairyland, and when i looked at the second edition of the _estetica_, with his inscription, i was sure of it. these lines will suffice to show how the translation of the _estetica_ originated from the acquaintance thus formed, which has developed into friendship. i will now make brief mention of benedetto croce's other work, especially in so far as it throws light upon the _aesthetic_. for this purpose, besides articles in italian and german reviews, i have made use of the excellent monograph on the philosopher, by g. prezzolini.[1] first, then, it will be well to point out that the _aesthetic_ forms part of a complete philosophical system, to which the author gives the general title of "philosophy of the spirit." the _aesthetic_ is the first of the three volumes. the second is the _logic_, the third the _philosophy of the practical_. in the _logic_, as elsewhere in the system, croce combats that false conception, by which natural science, in the shape of psychology, makes claim to philosophy, and formal logic to absolute value. the thesis of the _pure concept_ cannot be discussed here. it is connected with the logic of evolution as discovered by hegel, and is the only logic which contains in itself the interpretation and the continuity of reality. bergson in his _l'evolution crã©atrice_ deals with logic in a somewhat similar manner. i recently heard him lecture on the distinction between spirit and matter at the collã¨ge de france, and those who read french and italian will find that both croce's _logic_ and the book above mentioned by the french philosopher will amply repay their labour. the conception of nature as something lying outside the spirit which informs it, as the non-being which aspires to being, underlies all croce's thought, and we find constant reference to it throughout his philosophical system. with regard to the third volume, the _philosophy of the practical_, it is impossible here to give more than a hint of its treasures. i merely refer in passing to the treatment of the will, which is posited as a unity _inseparable from the volitional act_. for croce there is no difference between action and intention, means and end: they are one thing, inseparable as the intuition-expression of aesthetic. the _philosophy of the practical_ is a logic and science of the will, not a normative science. just as in aesthetic the individuality of expression made models and rules impossible, so in practical life the individuality of action removes the possibility of catalogues of virtues, of the exact application of laws, of the existence of practical judgments and judgments of value _previous to action_. the reader will probably ask here: but what, then, becomes of morality? the question will be found answered in the _theory of aesthetic_, and i will merely say here that croce's thesis of the _double degree_ of the practical activity, economic and moral, is one of the greatest contributions to modern thought. just as it is proved in the _theory of aesthetic_ that the _concept_ depends upon the _intuition_, which is the first degree, the primary and indispensable thing, so it is proved in the _philosophy of the practical_ that _morality_ or _ethic_ depends upon _economic_, which is the _first_ degree of the practical activity. the volitional act is _always economic_, but true freedom of the will exists and consists in conforming not merely to economic, but to moral conditions, to the human spirit, which is greater than any individual. here we are face to face with the ethics of christianity, to which croce accords all honour. this philosophy of the spirit is symptomatic of the happy reaction of the twentieth century against the crude materialism of the second half of the nineteenth. it is the spirit which gives to the work of art its value, not this or that method of arrangement, this or that tint or cadence, which can always be copied by skilful plagiarists: not so the _spirit_ of the creator. in england we hear too much of (natural) science, which has usurped the very name of philosophy. the natural sciences are very well in their place, but discoveries such as aviation are of infinitely less importance to the race than the smallest addition to the philosophy of the spirit. empirical science, with the collusion of positivism, has stolen the cloak of philosophy and must be made to give it back. among croce's other important contributions to thought must be mentioned his definition of history as being aesthetic and differing from art solely in that history represents the _real_, art the _possible_. in connection with this definition and its proof, the philosopher recounts how he used to hold an opposite view. doing everything thoroughly, he had prepared and written out a long disquisition on this thesis, which was already in type, when suddenly, from the midst of his meditations, _the truth flashed upon him_. he saw for the first time clearly that history cannot be a science, since, like art, it always deals with the particular. without a moment's hesitation he hastened to the printers and bade them break up the type. this incident is illustrative of the sincerity and good faith of benedetto croce. one knows him to be severe for the faults and weaknesses of others, merciless for his own. yet though severe, the editor of _la critica_ is uncompromisingly just, and would never allow personal dislike or jealousy, or any extrinsic consideration, to stand in the way of fair treatment to the writer concerned. many superficial english critics might benefit considerably by attention to this quality in one who is in other respects also so immeasurably their superior. a good instance of this impartiality is his critique of schopenhauer, with whose system he is in complete disagreement, yet affords him full credit for what of truth is contained in his voluminous writings.[2] croce's education was largely completed in germany, and on account of their thoroughness he has always been an upholder of german methods. one of his complaints against the italian positivists is that they only read second-rate works in french or at the most "the dilettante booklets published in such profusion by the anglo-saxon press." this tendency towards german thought, especially in philosophy, depends upon the fact of the former undoubted supremacy of germany in that field, but croce does not for a moment admit the inferiority of the neo-latin races, and adds with homely humour in reference to germany, that we "must not throw away the baby with the bath-water"! close, arduous study and clear thought are the only key to scientific (philosophical) truth, and croce never begins an article for a newspaper without the complete collection of the works of the author to be criticized, and his own elaborate notes on the table before him. schopenhauer said there were three kinds of writers--those who write without thinking, the great majority; those who think while they write, not very numerous; those who write after they have thought, very rare. croce certainly belongs to the last division, and, as i have said, always feeds his thought upon complete erudition. the bibliography of the works consulted for the _estetica_ alone, as printed at the end of the italian edition, extends to many pages and contains references to works in any way dealing with the subject in all the european languages. for instance, croce has studied mr. b. bosanquet's eclectic works on aesthetic, largely based upon german sources and by no means without value. but he takes exception to mr. bosanquet's statement that _he_ has consulted all works of importance on the subject of aesthetic. as a matter of fact, mr. bosanquet reveals his ignorance of the greater part of the contribution to aesthetic made by the neo-latin races, which the reader of this book will recognize as of first-rate importance. this thoroughness it is which gives such importance to the literary and philosophical criticisms of _la critica_. croce's method is always historical, and his object in approaching any work of art is to classify the spirit of its author, as expressed in that work. there are, he maintains, but two things to be considered in criticizing a book. these are, _firstly_, what is its _peculiarity_, in what way is it singular, how is it differentiated from other works? _secondly_, what is its degree of purity?--that is, to what extent has its author kept himself free from all considerations alien to the perfection of the work as an expression, as a lyrical intuition? with the answering of these questions croce is satisfied. he does not care to know if the author keep a motor-car, like maeterlinck; or prefer to walk on putney heath, like swinburne. this amounts to saying that all works of art must be judged by their own standard. how far has the author succeeded in doing what he intended? croce is far above any personal animus, although the same cannot be said of those he criticizes. these, like d'annunzio, whose limitations he points out--his egoism, his lack of human sympathy--are often very bitter, and accuse the penetrating critic of want of courtesy. this seriousness of purpose runs like a golden thread through all croce's work. the flimsy superficial remarks on poetry and fiction which too often pass for criticism in england (scotland is a good deal more thorough) are put to shame by _la critica_, the study of which i commend to all readers who read or wish to read italian.[3] they will find in its back numbers a complete picture of a century of italian literature, besides a store-house of philosophical criticism. the _quarterly_ and _edinburgh reviews_ are our only journals which can be compared to _the critica_, and they are less exhaustive on the philosophical side. we should have to add to these _mind_ and the _hibbert journal_ to get even an approximation to the scope of the italian review. as regards croce's general philosophical position, it is important to understand that he is _not_ a hegelian, in the sense of being a close follower of that philosopher. one of his last works is that in which he deals in a masterly manner with the philosophy of hegel. the title may be translated, "what is living and what is dead of the philosophy of hegel." here he explains to us the hegelian system more clearly than that wondrous edifice was ever before explained, and we realize at the same time that croce is quite as independent of hegel as of kant, of vico as of spinoza. of course he has made use of the best of hegel, just as every thinker makes use of his predecessors and is in his turn made use of by those that follow him. but it is incorrect to accuse of hegelianism the author of an anti-hegelian _aesthetic_, of a _logic_ where hegel is only half accepted, and of a _philosophy of the practical_, which contains hardly a trace of hegel. i give an instance. if the great conquest of hegel be the dialectic of opposites, his great mistake lies in the confusion of opposites with things which are distinct but not opposite. if, says croce, we take as an example the application of the hegelian triad that formulates becoming (affirmation, negation and synthesis), we find it applicable for those opposites which are true and false, good and evil, being and not-being, but _not applicable_ to things which are distinct but not opposite, such as art and philosophy, beauty and truth, the useful and the moral. these confusions led hegel to talk of the death of art, to conceive as possible a philosophy of history, and to the application of the natural sciences to the absurd task of constructing a philosophy of nature. croce has cleared away these difficulties by shewing that if from the meeting of opposites must arise a superior synthesis, such a synthesis cannot arise from things which are distinct _but not opposite_, since the former are connected together as superior and inferior, and the inferior can exist without the superior, but _not vice versa_. thus we see how philosophy cannot exist without art, while art, occupying the lower place, can and does exist without philosophy. this brief example reveals croce's independence in dealing with hegelian problems. i know of no philosopher more generous than croce in praise and elucidation of other workers in the same field, past and present. for instance, and apart from hegel, _kant_ has to thank him for drawing attention to the marvellous excellence of the _critique of judgment_, generally neglected in favour of the critiques of _pure reason and of practical judgment_; _baumgarten_ for drawing the attention of the world to his obscure name and for reprinting his latin thesis in which the word _aesthetic_ occurs for the first time; and _schleiermacher_ for the tributes paid to his neglected genius in the history of aesthetic. _la critica_, too, is full of generous appreciation of contemporaries by croce and by that profound thinker, gentile. but it is not only philosophers who have reason to be grateful to croce for his untiring zeal and diligence. historians, economists, poets, actors, and writers of fiction have been rescued from their undeserved limbo by this valiant red cross knight, and now shine with due brilliance in the circle of their peers. it must also be admitted that a large number of false lights, popular will o' the wisps, have been ruthlessly extinguished with the same breath. for instance, karl marx, the socialist theorist and agitator, finds in croce an exponent of his views, in so far as they are based upon the truth, but where he blunders, his critic immediately reveals the origin and nature of his mistakes. croce's studies in economic are chiefly represented by his work, the title of which may be translated "historical materialism and marxist economic." to indicate the breadth and variety of croce's work i will mention the further monograph on the sixteenth century neapolitan pulcinella (the original of our punch), and the personage of the neapolitan in comedy, a monument of erudition and of acute and of lively dramatic criticism, that would alone have occupied an ordinary man's activity for half a lifetime. one must remember, however, that croce's average working day is of ten hours. his interest is concentrated on things of the mind, and although he sits on several royal commissions, such as those of the archives of all italy and of the monument to king victor emmanuel, he has taken no university degree, and much dislikes any affectation of academic superiority. he is ready to meet any one on equal terms and try with them to get at the truth on any subject, be it historical, literary, or philosophical. "truth," he says, "is democratic," and i can testify that the search for it, in his company, is very stimulating. as is well said by prezzolini, "he has a new word for all." there can be no doubt of the great value of croce's work as an _educative influence_, and if we are to judge of a philosophical system by its action on others, then we must place the _philosophy of the spirit_ very high. it may be said with perfect truth that since the death of the poet carducci there has been no influence in italy to compare with that of benedetto croce. his dislike of academies and of all forms of prejudice runs parallel with his breadth and sympathy with all forms of thought. his activity in the present is only equalled by his reverence for the past. naples he loves with the blind love of the child for its parent, and he has been of notable assistance to such neapolitan talent as is manifested in the works of salvatore di giacomo, whose best poems are written in the dialect of naples, or rather in a dialect of his own, which croce had difficulty in persuading the author always to retain. the original jet of inspiration having been in dialect, it is clear that to amend this inspiration at the suggestion of wiseacres at the cafã© would have been to ruin it altogether. of the popularity that his system and teaching have already attained we may judge by the fact that the _aesthetic_[4], despite the difficulty of the subject, is already in its third edition in italy, where, owing to its influence, philosophy sells better than fiction; while the french and germans, not to mention the czechs, have long had translations of the earlier editions. his _logic_ is on the point of appearing in its second edition, and i have no doubt that the _philosophy of the practical_ will eventually equal these works in popularity. _the importance and value of italian thought have been too long neglected in great britain_. where, as in benedetto croce, we get the clarity of vision of the latin, joined to the thoroughness and erudition of the best german tradition, we have a combination of rare power and effectiveness, which can by no means be neglected. the philosopher feels that he has a great mission, which is nothing less than the leading back of thought to belief in the spirit, deserted by so many for crude empiricism and positivism. his view of philosophy is that it sums up all the higher human activities, including religion, and that in proper hands it is able to solve any problem. but there is no finality about problems: the solution of one leads to the posing of another, and so on. man is the maker of life, and his spirit ever proceeds from a lower to a higher perfection. connected with this view of life is croce's dislike of "modernism." when once a problem has been correctly solved, it is absurd to return to the same problem. roman catholicism cannot march with the times. it can only exist by being conservative--its only logic is to be illogical. therefore, croce is opposed to loisy and neo-catholicism, and supports the encyclical against modernism. the catholic religion, with its great stores of myth and morality, which for many centuries was the best thing in the world, is still there for those who are unable to assimilate other food. another instance of his dislike for modernism is his criticism of pascoli, whose attempts to reveal enigmas in the writings of dante he looks upon as useless. we do not, he says, read dante in the twentieth century for his hidden meanings, but for his revealed poetry. i believe that croce will one day be recognized as one of the very few great teachers of humanity. at present he is not appreciated at nearly his full value. one rises from a study of his philosophy with a sense of having been all the time as it were in personal touch with the truth, which is very far from the case after the perusal of certain other philosophies. croce has been called the philosopher-poet, and if we take philosophy as novalis understood it, certainly croce does belong to the poets, though not to the formal category of those who write in verse. croce is at any rate a born philosopher, and as every trade tends to make its object prosaic, so does every vocation tend to make it poetic. yet no one has toiled more earnestly than croce. "thorough" might well be his motto, and if to-day he is admitted to be a classic without the stiffness one connects with that term, be sure he has well merited the designation. his name stands for the best that italy has to give the world of serious, stimulating thought. i know nothing to equal it elsewhere. secure in his strength, croce will often introduce a joke or some amusing illustration from contemporary life, in the midst of a most profound and serious argument. this spirit of mirth is a sign of superiority. he who is not sure of himself can spare no energy for the making of mirth. croce loves to laugh at his enemies and with his friends. so the philosopher of naples sits by the blue gulf and explains the universe to those who have ears to hear. "one can philosophize anywhere," he says--but he remains significantly at naples. thus i conclude these brief remarks upon the author of the _aesthetic_, confident that those who give time and attention to its study will be grateful for having placed in their hands this pearl of great price from the diadem of the antique parthenope. douglas ainslie. the athenaeum, pall mall, _may_ 1909. [1] napoli, riccardo ricciardi, 1909. [2] the reader will find this critique summarized in the historical portion of this volume. [3] _la critica_ is published every other month by laterza of bari. [4] this translation is made from the third italian edition (bari, 1909), enlarged and corrected by the author. the _theory of aesthetic_ first appeared in 1900 in the form of a communication to the _accademia pontiana_ of naples, vol. xxx. the first edition is dated 1902, the second 1904 (palermo). i intuition and expression [sidenote] _intuitive knowledge._ human knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations between them: it is, in fact, productive either of images or of concepts. in ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. it is said to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; that they are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively. the politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who is without a lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogue insists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in the pupil before everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makes it a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judge it by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live rather by intuition than by reason. but this ample acknowledgment, granted to intuitive knowledge in ordinary life, does not meet with an equal and adequate acknowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. there exists a very ancient science of intellective knowledge, admitted by all without discussion, namely, logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is timidly and with difficulty admitted by but a few. logical knowledge has appropriated the lion's share; and if she does not quite slay and devour her companion, yet yields to her with difficulty the humble little place of maidservant or doorkeeper. what, it says, is intuitive knowledge without the light of intellective knowledge? it is a servant without a master; and though a master find a servant useful, the master is a necessity to the servant, since he enables him to gain his livelihood. intuition is blind; intellect lends her eyes. [sidenote] _its independence in respect to intellective knowledge._ now, the first point to be firmly fixed in the mind is that intuitive knowledge has no need of a master, nor to lean upon any one; she does not need to borrow the eyes of others, for she has most excellent eyes of her own. doubtless it is possible to find concepts mingled with intuitions. but in many other intuitions there is no trace of such a mixture, which proves that it is not necessary. the impression of a moonlight scene by a painter; the outline of a country drawn by a cartographer; a musical motive, tender or energetic; the words of a sighing lyric, or those with which we ask, command and lament in ordinary life, may well all be intuitive facts without a shadow of intellective relation. but, think what one may of these instances, and admitting further that one may maintain that the greater part of the intuitions of civilized man are impregnated with concepts, there yet remains to be observed something more important and more conclusive. those concepts which are found mingled and fused with the intuitions, are no longer concepts, in so far as they are really mingled and fused, for they have lost all independence and autonomy. they have been concepts, but they have now become simple elements of intuition. the philosophical maxims placed in the mouth of a personage of tragedy or of comedy, perform there the function, not of concepts, but of characteristics of such personage; in the same way as the red in a painted figure does not there represent the red colour of the physicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait. the whole it is that determines the quality of the parts. a work of art may be full of philosophical concepts; it may contain them in greater abundance and they may be there even more profound than in a philosophical dissertation, which in its turn may be rich to overflowing with descriptions and intuitions. but, notwithstanding all these concepts it may contain, the result of the work of art is an intuition; and notwithstanding all those intuitions, the result of the philosophical dissertation is a concept. the _promessi sposi_ contains copious ethical observations and distinctions, but it does not for that reason lose in its total effect its character of simple story, of intuition. in like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions which may be found in the works of a philosopher like schopenhauer, do not remove from those works their character of intellective treatises. the difference between a scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellective fact and an intuitive fact lies in the result, in the diverse effect aimed at by their respective authors. this it is that determines and rules over the several parts of each. [sidenote] _intuition and perception._ but to admit the independence of intuition as regards concept does not suffice to give a true and precise idea of intuition. another error arises among those who recognize this, or who, at any rate, do not make intuition explicitly dependent upon the intellect. this error obscures and confounds the real nature of intuition. by intuition is frequently understood the _perception_ or knowledge of actual reality, the apprehension of something as _real_. certainly perception is intuition: the perception of the room in which i am writing, of the ink-bottle and paper that are before me, of the pen i am using, of the objects that i touch and make use of as instruments of my person, which, if it write, therefore exists;--these are all intuitions. but the image that is now passing through my brain of a me writing in another room, in another town, with different paper, pen and ink, is also an intuition. this means that the distinction between reality and non-reality is extraneous, secondary, to the true nature of intuition. if we assume the existence of a human mind which should have intuitions for the first time, it would seem that it could have intuitions of effective reality only, that is to say, that it could have perceptions of nothing but the real. but if the knowledge of reality be based upon the distinction between real images and unreal images, and if this distinction does not originally exist, these intuitions would in truth not be intuitions either of the real or of the unreal, but pure intuitions. where all is real, nothing is real. the child, with its difficulty of distinguishing true from false, history from fable, which are all one to childhood, can furnish us with a sort of very vague and only remotely approximate idea of this ingenuous state. intuition is the indifferentiated unity of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible. in our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves to external reality as empirical beings, but we simply objectify our impressions, whatever they be. [sidenote] _intuition and the concepts of space and time._ those, therefore, who look upon intuition as sensation formed and arranged simply according to the categories of space and time, would seem to approximate more nearly to the truth. space and time (they say) are the forms of intuition; to have intuitions is to place in space and in temporal sequence. intuitive activity would then consist in this double and concurrent function of spatiality and temporality. but for these two categories must be repeated what was said of intellectual distinctions, found mingled with intuitions. we have intuitions without space and without time: a tint of sky and a tint of sentiment, an ah! of pain and an effort of will, objectified in consciousness. these are intuitions, which we possess, and with their making, space and time have nothing to do. in some intuitions, spatiality may be found without temporality, in others, this without that; and even where both are found, they are perceived by posterior reflexion: they can be fused with the intuition in like manner with all its other elements: that is, they are in it _materialiter_ and not _formaliter_, as ingredients and not as essentials. who, without a similar act of interruptive reflexion, is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or a piece of music? that which intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and time, but character, individual physiognomy. several attempts may be noted in modern philosophy, which confirm the view here exposed. space and time, far from being very simple and primitive functions, are shown to be intellectual constructions of great complexity. and further, even in some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time the quality of forming or of categories and functions, one may observe the attempt to unify and to understand them in a different manner from that generally maintained in respect of these categories. some reduce intuition to the unique category of spatiality, maintaining that time also can only be conceived in terms of space. others abandon the three dimensions of space as not philosophically necessary, and conceive the function of spatiality as void of every particular spatial determination. but what could such a spatial function be, that should control even time? may it not be a residuum of criticisms and of negations from which arises merely the necessity to posit a generic intuitive activity? and is not this last truly determined, when one unique function is attributed to it, not spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing? or, better, when this is conceived as itself a category or function, which gives knowledge of things in their concretion and individuality? [sidenote] _intuition and sensation._ having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion of intellectualism and from every posterior and external adjunct, we must now make clear and determine its limits from another side and from a different kind of invasion and confusion. on the other side, and before the inferior boundary, is sensation, formless matter, which the spirit can never apprehend in itself, in so far as it is mere matter. this it can only possess with form and in form, but postulates its concept as, precisely, a limit. matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity; it is what the spirit of man experiences, but does not produce. without it no human knowledge and activity is possible; but mere matter produces animality, whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritual dominion, which is humanity. how often do we strive to understand clearly what is passing within us? we do catch a glimpse of something, but this does not appear to the mind as objectified and formed. in such moments it is, that we best perceive the profound difference between matter and form. these are not two acts of ours, face to face with one another; but we assault and carry off the one that is outside us, while that within us tends to absorb and make its own that without. matter, attacked and conquered by form, gives place to concrete form. it is the matter, the content, that differentiates one of our intuitions from another: form is constant: it is spiritual activity, while matter is changeable. without matter, however, our spiritual activity would not leave its abstraction to become concrete and real, this or that spiritual content, this or that definite intuition. it is a curious fact, characteristic of our times, that this very form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so easily ignored or denied. some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with aesop, that _arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae_. some even affirm that they have never observed in themselves this "miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only one of quantity, between sweating and thinking, feeling cold and the energy of the will. others, certainly with greater reason, desire to unify activity and mechanism in a more general concept, though admitting that they are specifically distinct. let us, however, refrain for the moment from examining if such a unification be possible, and in what sense, but admitting that the attempt may be made, it is clear that to unify two concepts in a third implies a difference between the two first. and here it is this difference that is of importance and we set it in relief. [sidenote] _intuition and association._ intuition has often been confounded with simple sensation. but, since this confusion is too shocking to good sense, it has more frequently been attenuated or concealed with a phraseology which seems to wish to confuse and to distinguish them at the same time. thus, it has been asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple sensation as _association_ of sensations. the equivoque arises precisely from the word "association." association is understood, either as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that case is evident the absurdity of wishing to join together in memory elements which are not intuified, distinguished, possessed in some way by the spirit and produced by consciousness: or it is understood as association of unconscious elements. in this case we remain in the world of sensation and of nature. further, if with certain associationists we speak of an association which is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but is a _productive_ association (formative, constructive, distinguishing); then we admit the thing itself and deny only its name. in truth, productive association is no longer association in the sense of the sensualists, but _synthesis_, that is to say, spiritual activity. synthesis may be called association; but with the concept of productivity is already posited the distinction between passivity and activity, between sensation and intuition. [sidenote] _intuition and representation._ other psychologists are disposed to distinguish from sensation something which is sensation no longer, but is not yet intellective concept: _the representation or image_. what is the difference between their representation or image, and our intuitive knowledge? the greatest, and none at all. "representation," too, is a very equivocal word. if by representation be understood something detached and standing out from the psychic base of the sensations, then representation is intuition. if, on the other hand, it be conceived as a complex sensation, a return is made to simple sensation, which does not change its quality according to its richness or poverty, operating alike in a rudimentary or in a developed organism full of traces of past sensations. nor is the equivoque remedied by defining representation as a psychic product of secondary order in relation to sensation, which should occupy the first place. what does secondary order mean here? does it mean a qualitative, a formal difference? if so, we agree: representation is elaboration of sensation, it is intuition. or does it mean greater complexity and complication, a quantitative, material difference? in that case intuition would be again confused with simple sensation. [sidenote] _intuition and expression._ and yet there is a sure method of distinguishing true intuition, true representation, from that which is inferior to it: the spiritual fact from the mechanical, passive, natural fact. every true intuition or representation is, also, _expression_. that which does not objectify itself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensation and naturality. the spirit does not obtain intuitions, otherwise than by making, forming, expressing. he who separates intuition from expression never succeeds in reuniting them. _intuitive activity possesses intuitions to the extent that it expresses them_.--should this expression seem at first paradoxical, that is chiefly because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given to the word "expression." it is generally thought of as restricted to verbal expression. but there exist also non-verbal expressions, such as those of line, colour, and sound; to all of these must be extended our affirmation. the intuition and expression together of a painter are pictorial; those of a poet are verbal. but be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or whatever else it be called, to no intuition can expression be wanting, because it is an inseparable part of intuition. how can we possess a true intuition of a geometrical figure, unless we possess so accurate an image of it as to be able to trace it immediately upon paper or on a slate? how can we have an intuition of the contour of a region, for example, of the island of sicily, if we are not able to draw it as it is in all its meanderings? every one can experience the internal illumination which follows upon his success in formulating to himself his impressions and sentiments, but only so far as he is able to formulate them. sentiments or impressions, then, pass by means of words from the obscure region of the soul into the clarity of the contemplative spirit. in this cognitive process it is impossible to distinguish intuition from expression. the one is produced with the other at the same instant, because they are not two, but one. [sidenote] _illusions as to their difference._ the principal reason which makes our theme appear paradoxical as we maintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete intuition of reality than we really do. one often hears people say that they have in their minds many important thoughts, but that they are not able to express them. in truth, if they really had them, they would have coined them into beautiful, ringing words, and thus expressed them. if these thoughts seem to vanish or to become scarce and poor in the act of expressing them, either they did not exist or they really were scarce and poor. people think that all of us ordinary men imagine and have intuitions of countries, figures and scenes, like painters; of bodies, like sculptors; save that painters and sculptors know how to paint and to sculpture those images, while we possess them only within our souls. they believe that anyone could have imagined a madonna of raphael; but that raphael was raphael owing to his technical ability in putting the madonna upon the canvas. nothing can be more false than this view. the world of which as a rule we have intuitions, is a small thing. it consists of little expressions which gradually become greater and more ample with the increasing spiritual concentration of certain moments. these are the sort of words which we speak within ourselves, the judgments that we tacitly express: "here is a man, here is a horse, this is heavy, this is hard, this pleases me," etc. it is a medley of light and colour, which could not pictorially attain to any more sincere expression than a haphazard splash of colours, from among which would with difficulty stand out a few special, distinctive traits. this and nothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life; this is the basis of our ordinary action. it is the index of a book. the labels tied to things take the place of the things themselves. this index and labels (which are themselves expressions) suffice for our small needs and small actions. from time to time we pass from the index to the book, from the label to the thing, or from the slight to the greater intuitions, and from these to the greatest and most lofty. this passage is sometimes far from being easy. it has been observed by those who have best studied the psychology of artists, that when, after having given a rapid glance at anyone, they attempt to obtain a true intuition of him, in order, for example, to paint his portrait, then this ordinary vision, that seemed so precise, so lively, reveals itself as little better than nothing. what remains is found to be at the most some superficial trait, which would not even suffice for a caricature. the person to be painted stands before the artist like a world to discover. michael angelo said, "one paints, not with one's hands, but with one's brain." leonardo shocked the prior of the convent delle grazie by standing for days together opposite the "last supper" without touching it with the brush. he remarked of this attitude "that men of the most lofty genius, when they are doing the least work, are then the most active, seeking invention with their minds." the painter is a painter, because he sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse of, but do not see. we think we see a smile, but in reality we have only a vague impression of it, we do not perceive all the characteristic traits from which it results, as the painter perceives them after his internal meditations, which thus enable him to fix them on the canvas. even in the case of our intimate friend, who is with us every day and at all hours, we do not possess intuitively more than, at the most, certain traits of his physiognomy, which enable us to distinguish him from others. the illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to everyone to say that the composer had added or attached notes to the motive, which is already in the mind of him who is not the composer. as if beethoven's ninth symphony were not his own intuition and his own intuition the ninth symphony. thus, just as he who is deceived as to his material wealth is confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so is he confuted who nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughts and images. he is brought back to reality, when he is obliged to cross the bridge of asses of expression. we say to the former, count; to the latter, speak, here is a pencil, draw, express yourself. we have each of us, as a matter of fact, a little of the poet, of the sculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer: but how little, as compared with those who are so called, precisely because of the lofty degree in which they possess the most universal dispositions and energies of human nature! how little does a painter possess of the intuitions of a poet! how little does one painter possess those of another painter! nevertheless, that little is all our actual patrimony of intuitions or representations. beyond these are only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions, or whatever else one may term what is outside the spirit, not assimilated by man, postulated for the convenience of exposition, but effectively inexistent, if existence be also a spiritual fact. [sidenote] _identity of intuition and expression._ we may then add this to the verbal variants descriptive of intuition, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge, independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function; indifferent to discriminations, posterior and empirical, to reality and to unreality, to formations and perceptions of space and time, even when posterior: intuition or representation is distinguished as form from what is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or from psychic material; and this form this taking possession of, is expression. to have an intuition is to express. it is nothing else! (nothing more, but nothing less) than _to express_. ii intuition and art [sidenote] _corollaries and explanations._ before proceeding further, it seems opportune to draw certain consequences from what has been established and to add some explanation. [sidenote] _identity of art and intuitive knowledge._ we have frankly identified intuitive or expressive knowledge with the aesthetic or artistic fact, taking works of art as examples of intuitive knowledge and attributing to them the characteristics of intuition, and _vice versa_. but our identification is combated by the view, held even by many philosophers, who consider art to be an intuition of an altogether special sort. "let us admit" (they say) "that art is intuition; but intuition is not always art: artistic intuition is of a distinct species differing from intuition in general by something _more_." [sidenote] _no specific difference._ but no one has ever been able to indicate of what this something more consists. it has sometimes been thought that art is not a simple intuition, but an intuition of an intuition, in the same way as the concept of science has been defined, not as the ordinary concept, but as the concept of a concept. thus man should attain to art, by objectifying, not his sensations, as happens with ordinary intuition, but intuition itself. but this process of raising to a second power does not exist; and the comparison of it with the ordinary and scientific concept does not imply what is wished, for the good reason that it is not true that the scientific concept is the concept of a concept. if this comparison imply anything, it implies just the opposite. the ordinary concept, if it be really a concept and not a simple representation, is a perfect concept, however poor and limited. science substitutes concepts for representations; it adds and substitutes other concepts larger and more comprehensive for those that are poor and limited. it is ever discovering new relations. but its method does not differ from that by which is formed the smallest universal in the brain of the humblest of men. what is generally called art, by antonomasia, collects intuitions that are wider and more complex than those which we generally experience, but these intuitions are always of sensations and impressions. art is the expression of impressions, not the expression of expressions. [sidenote] _no difference of intensity._ for the same reason, it cannot be admitted that intuition, which is generally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as to intensity. this would be the case if it were to operate differently on the same matter. but since artistic function is more widely distributed in different fields, but yet does not differ in method from ordinary intuition, the difference between the one and the other is not intensive but extensive. the intuition of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very nearly, as a declaration of love such as issues at every moment from the lips of thousands of ordinary men, may be intensively perfect in its poor simplicity, although it be extensively so much more limited than the complex intuition of a love-song by leopardi. [sidenote] _the difference is extensive and empirical._ the whole difference, then, is quantitative, and as such, indifferent to philosophy, _scientia qualitatum_. certain men have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express certain complex states of the soul. these men are known in ordinary language as artists. some very complicated and difficult expressions are more rarely achieved and these are called works of art. the limits of the expressions and intuitions that are called art, as opposed to those that are vulgarly called not-art, are empirical and impossible to define. if an epigram be art, why not a single word? if a story; why not the occasional note of the journalist? if a landscape, why not a topographical sketch? the teacher of philosophy in moliã¨re's comedy was right: "whenever we speak we create prose." but there will always be scholars like monsieur jourdain, astonished at having created prose for forty years without knowing it, and who will have difficulty in persuading themselves that when they call their servant john to bring their slippers, they have spoken nothing less than--prose. we must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principal reasons which have prevented aesthetic, the science of art, from revealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature, has been its separation from the general spiritual life, the having made of it a sort of special function or aristocratic circle. no one is astonished when he learns from physiology that every cellule is an organism and every organism a cellule or synthesis of cellules. no one is astonished at finding in a lofty mountain the same chemical elements that compose a small stone or fragment. there is not one physiology of small animals and one of large animals; nor is there a special chemical theory of stones as distinct from mountains. in the same way, there is not a science of lesser intuition distinct from a science of greater intuition, nor one of ordinary intuition distinct from artistic intuition. there is but one aesthetic, the science of intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic fact. and this aesthetic is the true analogy of logic. logic includes, as facts of the same nature, the formation of the smallest and most ordinary concept and the most complicated scientific and philosophical system. [sidenote] _artistic genius._ nor can we admit that the word _genius_ or artistic genius, as distinct from the non-genius of the ordinary man, possesses more than a quantitative signification. great artists are said to reveal us to ourselves. but how could this be possible, unless there be identity of nature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference be only one of quantity? it were well to change _poeta nascitur_ into _homo nascitur poeta_: some men are born great poets, some small. the cult and superstition of the genius has arisen from this quantitative difference having been taken as a difference of quality. it has been forgotten that genius is not something that has fallen from heaven, but humanity itself. the man of genius, who poses or is represented as distant from humanity, finds his punishment in becoming or appearing somewhat ridiculous. examples of this are the _genius_ of the romantic period and the _superman_ of our time. but it is well to note here, that those who claim unconsciousness as the chief quality of an artistic genius, hurl him from an eminence far above humanity to a position far below it. intuitive or artistic genius, like every form of human activity, is always conscious; otherwise it would be blind mechanism. the only thing that may be wanting to the artistic genius is the _reflective_ consciousness, the superadded consciousness of the historian or critic, which is not essential to artistic genius. [sidenote] _content and form in aesthetic._ the relation between matter and form, or between _content and form_, as it is generally called, is one of the most disputed questions in aesthetic. does the aesthetic fact consist of content alone, or of form alone, or of both together? this question has taken on various meanings, which we shall mention, each in its place. but when these words are taken as signifying what we have above defined, and matter is understood as emotivity not aesthetically elaborated, that is to say, impressions, and form elaboration, intellectual activity and expression, then our meaning cannot be doubtful. we must, therefore, reject the thesis that makes the aesthetic fact to consist of the content alone (that is, of the simple impressions), in like manner with that other thesis, which makes it to consist of a junction between form and content, that is, of impressions plus expressions. in the aesthetic fact, the aesthetic activity is not added to the fact of the impressions, but these latter are formed and elaborated by it. the impressions reappear as it were in expression, like water put into a filter, which reappears the same and yet different on the other side. the aesthetic fact, therefore, is form, and nothing but form. from this it results, not that the content is something superfluous (it is, on the contrary, the necessary point of departure for the expressive fact); but that _there is no passage_ between the quality of the content and that of the form. it has sometimes been thought that the content, in order to be aesthetic, that is to say, transformable into form, should possess some determinate or determinable quality. but were that so, then form and content, expression and impression, would be the same thing. it is true that the content is that which is convertible into form, but it has no determinable qualities until this transformation takes place. we know nothing of its nature. it does not become aesthetic content at once, but only when it has been effectively transformed. aesthetic content has also been defined as what is _interesting_. that is not an untrue statement; it is merely void of meaning. what, then, is interesting? expressive activity? certainly the expressive activity would not have raised the content to the dignity of form, had it not been interested. the fact of its having been interested is precisely the fact of its raising the content to the dignity of form. but the word "interesting" has also been employed in another not illegitimate sense, which we shall explain further on. [sidenote] _critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion._ the proposition that art is _imitation of nature_ has also several meanings. now truth has been maintained or at least shadowed with these words, now error. more frequently, nothing definite has been thought. one of the legitimate scientific meanings occurs when imitation is understood as representation or intuition of nature, a form of knowledge. and when this meaning has been understood, by placing in greater relief the spiritual character of the process, the other proposition becomes also legitimate: namely, that art is the _idealization_ or _idealizing_ imitation of nature. but if by imitation of nature be understood that art gives mechanical reproductions, more or less perfect duplicates of natural objects, before which the same tumult of impressions caused by natural objects begins over again, then the proposition is evidently false. the painted wax figures that seem to be alive, and before which we stand astonished in the museums where such things are shown, do not give aesthetic intuitions. illusion and hallucination have nothing to do with the calm domain of artistic intuition. if an artist paint the interior of a wax-work museum, or if an actor give a burlesque portrait of a man-statue on the stage, we again have spiritual labour and artistic intuition. finally, if photography have anything in it of artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. and if it be not altogether art, that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or less insubordinate and ineradicable. do we ever, indeed, feel complete satisfaction before even the best of photographs? would not an artist vary and touch up much or little, remove or add something to any of them? [sidenote] _critique of art conceived as a sentimental not a theoretical fact. aesthetic appearance and feeling._ the statements repeated so often, with others similar, that art is not knowledge, that it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong to the world of theory, but to the world of feeling, arise from the failure to realize exactly the theoretic character of the simple intuition. this simple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge, as it is distinct from the perception of the real. the belief that only the intellective is knowledge, or at the most also the perception of the real, also arises from the failure to grasp the theoretic character of the simple intuition. we have seen that intuition is knowledge, free of concepts and more simple than the so-called perception of the real. since art is knowledge and form, it does not belong to the world of feeling and of psychic material. the reason why so many aestheticians have so often insisted that art is _appearance_ (_schein_), is precisely because they have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the more complex fact of perception by maintaining its pure intuitivity. for the same reason it has been claimed that art is _sentiment_. in fact, if the concept as content of art, and historical reality as such, be excluded, there remains no other content than reality apprehended in all its ingenuousness and immediateness in the vital effort, in _sentiment_, that is to say, pure intuition. [sidenote] _critique of theory of aesthetic senses._ the theory of the _aesthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure to establish, or from having lost to view the character of the expression as distinct from the impression, of the form as distinct from the matter. as has just been pointed out, this reduces itself to the error of wishing to seek a passage from the quality of the content to that of the form. to ask, in fact, what the aesthetic senses may be, implies asking what sensible impressions may be able to enter into aesthetic expressions, and what must of necessity do so. to this we must at once reply, that all impressions can enter into aesthetic expressions or formations, but that none are bound to do so. dante raised to the dignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire" (visual impression), but also tactile or thermic impressions, such as the "thick air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch all the more" the throat of the thirsty. the belief that a picture yields only visual impressions is a curious illusion. the bloom of a cheek, the warmth of a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the cutting of a sharpened blade, are not these, also, impressions that we have from a picture? maybe they are visual? what would a picture be for a hypothetical man, deprived of all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the sole organ of sight? the picture we are standing opposite and believe we see only with our eyes, would appear to his eyes as little more than the paint-smeared palette of a painter. some who hold firmly to the aesthetic character of given groups of impressions (for example, the visual, the auditive), and exclude others, admit, however, that if visual and auditive impressions enter _directly_ into the aesthetic fact, those of the other senses also enter into it, but only as _associated_. but this distinction is altogether arbitrary. aesthetic expression is a synthesis, in which it is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. all impressions are by it placed on a level, in so far as they are aestheticised. he who takes into himself the image of a picture or of a poem does not experience, as it were, a series of impressions as to this image, some of which have a prerogative or precedence over others. and nothing is known of what happens prior to having received it, for the distinctions made after reflexion have nothing to do with art. the theory of the aesthetic senses has also been presented in another way; that is to say, as the attempt to establish what physiological organs are necessary for the aesthetic fact. the physiological organ or apparatus is nothing but a complex of cellules, thus and thus constituted, thus and thus disposed; that is to say, it is merely physical and natural fact or concept. but expression does not recognize physiological facts. expression has its point of departure in the impressions, and the physiological path by which these have found their way to the mind is to it altogether indifferent. one way or another amounts to the same thing: it suffices that they are impressions. it is true that the want of given organs, that is, of given complexes of cells, produces an absence of given impressions (when these are not obtained by another path by a kind of organic compensation). the man born blind cannot express or have the intuition of light. but the impressions are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by the stimuli which operate upon the organ. thus, he who has never had the impression of the sea will never be able to express it, in the same way as he who has never had the impression of the great world or of the political conflict will never express the one or the other. this, however, does not establish a dependence of the expressive function on the stimulus or on the organ. it is the repetition of what we know already: expression presupposes impression. therefore, given expressions imply given impressions. besides, every impression excludes other impressions during the moment in which it dominates; and so does every expression. [sidenote] _unity and indivisibility of the work of art._ another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the _indivisibility_ of the work of art. every expression is a unique expression. activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole. a desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that the world of art should have _unity_, or, what amounts to the same thing, _unity in variety_. expression is a synthesis of the various, the multiple, in the one. the fact that we divide a work of art into parts, as a poem into scenes, episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem to be an objection to this affirmation. but such division annihilates the work, as dividing the organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the living being into a corpse. it is true that there exist organisms in which the division gives place to more living things, but in such a case, and if we transfer the analogy to the aesthetic fact, we must conclude for a multiplicity of germs of life, that is to say, for a speedy re-elaboration of the single parts into new single expressions. it will be observed that expression is sometimes based on other expressions. there are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. one must admit some difference between the _eureka_, with which archimedes expressed all his joy after his discovery, and the expressive act (indeed all the five acts) of a regular tragedy. not in the least: expression is always directly based on impressions. he who conceives a tragedy puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of impressions: the expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as we can cast into a smelting furnace formless pieces of bronze and most precious statuettes. those most precious statuettes must be melted in the same way as the formless bits of bronze, before there can be a new statue. the old expressions must descend again to the level of impressions, in order to be synthetized in a new single expression. [sidenote] _art as the deliverer._ by elaborating his impressions, man _frees_ himself from them. by objectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself their superior. the liberating and purifying function of art is another aspect and another formula of its character of activity. activity is the deliverer, just because it drives away passivity. this also explains why it is customary to attribute to artists alike the maximum of sensibility or _passion_, and the maximum insensibility or olympic _serenity_. both qualifications agree, for they do not refer to the same object. the sensibility or passion relates to the rich material which the artist absorbs into his psychic organism; the insensibility or serenity to the form with which he subjugates and dominates the tumult of the feelings and of the passions. iii art and philosophy [sidenote] _indissolubility of intellective from intuitive knowledge._ the two forms of knowledge, aesthetic and intellectual or conceptual, are indeed diverse, but this does not amount altogether to separation and disjunction, as we find with two forces going each its own way. if we have shown that the aesthetic form is altogether independent of the intellectual and suffices to itself without external support, we have not said that the intellectual can stand without the aesthetic. this _reciprocity_ would not be true. what is knowledge by concepts? it is knowledge of relations of things, and those things are intuitions. concepts are not possible without intuitions, just as intuition is itself impossible without the material of impressions. intuitions are: this river, this lake, this brook, this rain, this glass of water; the concept is: water, not this or that appearance and particular example of water, but water in general, in whatever time or place it be realized; the material of infinite intuitions, but of one single and constant concept. however, the concept, the universal, if it be no longer intuition in one respect, is in another respect intuition, and cannot fail of being intuition. for the man who thinks has impressions and emotions, in so far as he thinks. his impression and emotion will not be love or hate, but _the effort of his thought itself_, with the pain and the joy, the love and the hate joined to it. this effort cannot but become intuitive in form, in becoming objective to the mind. to speak, is not to think logically; but to _think logically_ is, at the same time, to _speak_. [sidenote] _critique of the negations of this thesis._ that thought cannot exist without speech, is a truth generally admitted. the negations of this thesis are all founded on equivoques and errors. the first of the equivoques is implied by those who observe that one can likewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers, ideographic signs, without a single word, even pronounced silently and almost insensibly within one. they also affirm that there are languages in which the word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless the written sign also be looked at. but when we said "speech," we intended to employ a synecdoche, and that "expression" generically, should be understood, for expression is not only so-called verbal expression, as we have already noted. it may be admitted that certain concepts may be thought without phonetic manifestations. but the very examples adduced to show this also prove that those concepts never exist without expressions. others maintain that animals, or certain animals, think or reason without speaking. now as to how, whether, and what animals think, whether they be rudimentary, half-savage men resisting civilization, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists would have it, are questions that do not concern us here. when the philosopher talks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature and the like, he does not base himself on conjectures as to these facts concerning dogs or cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called animal and brutal in man: of the boundary or animal basis of what we feel in ourselves. if individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants, possess something of the activity of man, so much the better, or so much the worse for them. this means that as regards them also we must talk, not of their nature as a whole, but of its animal basis, as being perhaps larger and more strong than the animal basis of man. and if we suppose that animals think, and form concepts, what is there in the line of conjecture to justify the admission that they do so without corresponding expressions? the analogy with man, the knowledge of the spirit, human psychology, which is the instrument of all our conjectures as to animal psychology, would oblige us to suppose that if they think in any way, they also have some sort of speech. it is from human psychology, that is, literary psychology, that comes the other objection, to the effect that the concept can exist without the word, because it is true that we all know books that are _well thought and badly written_: that is to say, a thought which remains thought _beyond_ the expression, _notwithstanding_ the imperfect expression. but when we talk of books well thought and badly written, we cannot mean other than that in those books are parts, pages, periods or propositions well thought out and well written, and other parts (perhaps the least important) ill thought out and badly written, not truly thought out and therefore not truly expressed. where vico's _scienza nuova_ is really ill written, it is also ill thought out. if we pass from the consideration of big books to a short proposition, the error or the imprecision of this statement will be recognized at once. how could a proposition be clearly thought and confusedly written out? all that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts (concepts) in an intuitive form, or in an abbreviated or, better, peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient to communicate it with ease to another or other definite individuals. hence people say inaccurately, that we have the thought without the expression; whereas it should properly be said that we have, indeed, the expression, but in a form that is not easy of social communication. this, however, is a very variable and altogether relative fact. there are always people who catch our thought on the wing, and prefer it in this abbreviated form, and would be displeased with the greater development of it, necessary for other people. in other words, the thought considered abstractly and logically will be the same; but aesthetically we are dealing with two different intuition-expressions, into both of which enter different psychological elements. the same argument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret correctly, the altogether empirical distinction between an _internal_ and an _external_ language. [sidenote] _art and science._ the most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and of intuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, art and science. art and science, then, are different and yet linked together; they meet on one side, which is the aesthetic side. every scientific work is also a work of art. the aesthetic side may remain little noticed, when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort to understand the thought of the man of science, and to examine its truth. but it is no longer concealed, when we pass from the activity of understanding to that of contemplation, and behold that thought either developed before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous words, without lack of words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. great thinkers are sometimes termed great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less fragmentary writers, if indeed their fragments are scientifically to be compared with harmonious, coherent, and perfect works. [sidenote] _content and form: another meaning. prose and poetry._ we pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. the fragments console us for the failure of the whole, for it is far more easy to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary work of genius than to achieve the discovery of genius. but how can we pardon mediocre expression in pure artists? _mediocribus esse poetis non di, non homines, non concessere columnae_. the poet or painter who lacks form, lacks everything, because he lacks _himself_. poetical material permeates the soul of all: the expression alone, that is to say, the form, makes the poet. and here appears the truth of the thesis which denies to art all content, as content being understood just the intellectual concept. in this sense, when we take "content" as equal to "concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist of content, but also that _it has no content_. in the same way the distinction between _poetry and prose_ cannot be justified, save in that of art and science. it was seen in antiquity that such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such as rhythm and metre, or on the freedom or the limitation of the form; that it was, on the contrary, altogether internal. poetry is the language of sentiment; prose of the intellect; but since the intellect is also sentiment, in its concretion and reality, so all prose has a poetical side. [sidenote] _the relation of first and second degree._ the relation between intuitive knowledge or expression, and intellectual knowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannot be otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of _double degree_. the first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the first can exist without the second, but the second cannot exist without the first. there exists poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry. expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. poetry is "the maternal language of the human race"; the first men "were by nature sublime poets." we also admit this in another way, when we observe that the passage from soul to mind, from animal to human activity, is effected by means of language. and this should be said of intuition or expression in general. but to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to define language or expression as an _intermediate_ link between nature and humanity, as though it were a mixture of the one and of the other. where humanity appears, the rest has already disappeared; the man who expresses himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does emerge: he does not stand half within and half without, as the use of the phrase "intermediate link" would imply. [sidenote] _inexistence of other forms of knowledge._ the cognitive intellect has no form other than these two. expression and concept exhaust it completely. the whole speculative life of man is spent in passing from one to the other and back again. [sidenote] _history. its identity with and difference from art._ _historicity_ is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form. history is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but intuition or aesthetic fact. history does not seek for laws nor form concepts; it employs neither induction nor deduction; it is directed _ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum_; it does not construct universals and abstractions, but posits intuitions. the this, the that, the _individuum omni modo determinatum_, is its kingdom, as it is the kingdom of art. history, therefore, is included under the universal concept of art. faced with this proposition and with the impossibility of conceiving a third mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward which would lead to the affiliation of history to intellective or scientific knowledge. the greater portion of these objections is dominated by the prejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptual science, something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. this really arises from a false idea of art, conceived, not as an essential theoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity. without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned, is finally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been and still is widely repeated. it is intended to show the logical and scientific nature of history. the sophism consists in admitting that historical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not the representation, it is added, so much as the concept of the individual. from this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific form of knowledge. history, in fact, should elaborate the concept of a personage such as charlemagne or napoleon; of an epoch, like the renaissance or the reformation; of an event, such as the french revolution and the unification of italy. this it is held to do in the same way as geometry elaborates the concepts of spatial form, or aesthetic those of expression. but all this is untrue. history cannot do otherwise than represent napoleon and charlemagne, the renaissance and the reformation, the french revolution and the unification of italy as individual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the same way as logicians state, that one cannot have a concept of an individual, but only a representation. the so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or general concept, full of details, very rich, if you will, but however rich it be, yet incapable of attaining to that individuality, to which historical knowledge, as aesthetic knowledge, alone attains. let us rather show how the content of history comes to be distinguished from that of art. the distinction is secondary. its origin will be found in what has already been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. the mind forms the concepts of external and internal at a later stage, as it does those of what has happened and of what is desired, of object and subject, and the like. thus it distinguishes historical from non-historical intuition, the _real_ from the _unreal_, real fancy from pure fancy. even internal facts, what is desired and imagined, castles in the air, and countries of cockagne, have their reality. the soul, too, has its history. his illusions form part of the biography of every individual. but the history of an individual soul is history, because in it is always active the distinction between the real and the unreal, even when the real is the illusions themselves. but these distinctive concepts do not appear in history as do scientific concepts, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and melted in the aesthetic intuitions, although they stand out in history in an altogether new relief. history does not construct the concepts of the real and unreal, but makes use of them. history, in fact, is not the theory of history. mere conceptual analysis is of no use in realizing whether an event in our lives were real or imaginary. it is necessary to reproduce the intuitions in the mind in the most complete form, as they were at the moment of production, in order to recognize the content. historicity is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination only as one intuition is distinguished from another: in the memory. [sidenote] _historical criticism._ [sidenote] _historical scepticism._ where this is not possible, owing to the delicate and fleeting shades between the real and unreal intuitions, which confuse the one with the other, we must either renounce, for the time at least, the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability. the principle of verisimilitude and of probability dominates in fact all historical criticism. examination of the sources and of authority is directed toward establishing the most credible evidence. and what is the most credible evidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those who best remember and (be it understood) have not desired to falsify, nor had interest in falsifying the truth of things? from this it follows that intellectual scepticism finds it easy to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history is never that of science. historical certainty is composed of memory and of authority, not of analyses and of demonstration. to speak of historical induction or demonstration, is to make a metaphorical use of these expressions, which bear quite a different meaning in history to that which they bear in science. the conviction of the historian is the undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses, listened attentively to the case, and prayed heaven to inspire him. sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a negligible minority compared with the occasions when he gets hold of the truth. that is why good sense is right against the intellectualists, in believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but that which the individual and humanity remember of their past. we strive to enlarge and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places is dim, in others very clear. we cannot do without it, such as it is, and taken as a whole, it is rich in truth. in a spirit of paradox only, can one doubt if there ever were a greece or a rome, an alexander or a caesar, a feudal europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on the 1st of november 1517 the theses of luther were seen fixed to the door of the church of wittenberg, or that the bastile was taken by the people of paris on the 14th of july 1789. "what proof givest thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically. humanity replies "i remember." [sidenote] _philosophy as perfect science. the so-called natural sciences, and their limits._ the world of what has happened, of the concrete, of history, is the world that is called real, natural, including in this definition the reality that is called physical, as well as that which is called spiritual and human. all this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be realistically shown as it is, or imaginary intuition, artistic in the strict sense, if shown under the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the imaginable. science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, not individuality but universality, cannot be anything but a science of the spirit, that is, of what is universal in reality: philosophy. if natural _sciences_ be spoken of, apart from philosophy, it is necessary to observe that these are not perfect sciences: they are complexes of knowledge, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. the so-called natural sciences themselves recognize, in fact, that they are surrounded by limitations. these limitations are nothing more than historical and intuitive data. they calculate, measure, establish equalities, regularity, create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their own way how one fact arises out of other facts; but in their progress they are always met with facts which are known intuitively and historically. even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses, since space is not three-dimensional or euclidean, but this assumption is made use of by preference, because it is more convenient. what there is of truth in the natural sciences, is either philosophy or historical fact. what they contain proper to themselves is abstract and arbitrary. when the natural sciences wish to form themselves into perfect sciences, they must issue from their circle and enter the philosophical circle. this they do when they posit concepts which are anything but natural, such as those of the atom without extension in space, of ether or vibrating matter, of vital force, of space beyond the reach of intuition, and the like. these are true and proper philosophical efforts, when they are not mere words void of meaning. the concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most useful; but one cannot obtain from them that _system_, which belongs only to the spirit. these historical and intuitive assumptions, which cannot be separated from the natural sciences, furthermore explain, not only how, in the progress of knowledge, that which was once considered to be truth descends gradually to the grade of mythological beliefs and imaginary illusions, but also how, among natural scientists, there are some who term all that serves as basis of argument in their teaching _mythical facts, verbal expedients_, or _conventions_. the naturalists and mathematicians who approach the study of the energies of the spirit without preparation, are apt to carry thither these mental habits and to speak, in philosophy, of such and such conventions "as arranged by man." they make conventions of truth and morality, and their supreme convention is the spirit itself! however, if there are to be conventions, something must exist about which there is no convention to be made, but which is itself the agent of the convention. this is the spiritual activity of man. the limitation of the natural sciences postulates the illimitation of philosophy. [sidenote] _the phenomenon and the noumenon._ these explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--art, and science or philosophy. with these are to be included history, which is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions, while remaining concrete and individual. all the other forms (natural sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous elements of practical origin. the intuition gives the world, the phenomenon; the concept gives the noumenon, the spirit. iv historicism and intellectualism in aesthetic these relations between intuitive or aesthetic knowledge and the other fundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitely established, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a series of theories which have been, or are, presented, as theories of aesthetic. [sidenote] _critique of verisimilitude and of naturalism._ from the confusion between the exigencies of art in general and the particular exigencies of history has arisen the theory (which has lost ground to-day, but used to dominate in the past) of _verisimilitude_ as the object of art. as is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the intention of those who employed and employ the concept of verisimilitude has no doubt often been much more reasonable than the definition given of the word. by verisimilitude used to be meant the artistic _coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, its completeness and effectiveness. if "verisimilar" be translated by "coherent," a most exact meaning will often be found in the discussions, examples, and judgments of the critics. an improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without artistic motive. it has been said with reason that even fairies and sprites must have verisimilitude, that is to say, be really sprites and fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. sometimes the word "possible" has been used instead of "verisimilar." as we have already remarked in passing, this word possible is synonymous with that which is imaginable or may be known intuitively. everything which is really, that is to say, coherently, imagined, is possible. but formerly, and especially by the theoreticians, by verisimilar was understood historical credibility, or that historical truth which is not demonstrable, but conjecturable, not true, but verisimilar. it has been sought to impose a like character upon art. who does not recall the great part played in literary history by the criticism of the verisimilar? for example, the fault found with the _jerusalem delivered_, based upon the history of the crusades, or of the homeric poems, upon that of the verisimilitude of the costume of the emperors and kings? at other times has been imposed upon art the duty of the aesthetic reproduction of historical reality. this is another of the erroneous significations assumed by the theory concerning _the imitation of nature_. verism and naturalism have since afforded the spectacle of a confusion of the aesthetic fact with the processes of the natural sciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or romance. [sidenote] _critique of ideas in art, of theses in art, and of the typical._ the confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophical sciences have been far more frequent. thus it has often been held to be within the competence of art to develop concepts, to unite the intelligible with the sensible, to represent _ideas or universals_, putting art in the place of science, that is, confusing the artistic function in general with the particular case in which it becomes aesthetico-logical. the theory of art as supporting _theses_ can be reduced to the same error, as can be the theory of art considered as individual representation, exemplifying scientific laws. the example, in so far as it is an example, stands for the thing exemplified, and is thus an exposition of the universal, that is to say, a form of science, more or less popular or vulgarized. the same may be said of the aesthetic theory of the _typical_, when by type is understood, as it frequently is, just the abstraction or the concept, and it is affirmed that art should make _the species shine in the individual_. if by typical be here understood the individual, here, too, we have a merely verbal variation. to typify would signify, in this case, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent the individual. don quixote is a type; but of whom is he a type, if not of all don quixotes? a type, that is to say, of himself. certainly he is not a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense of reality, or of the love of glory. an infinite number of personages can be thought of under these concepts, who are not don quixote. in other words, we find our own impressions fully determined and verified in the expression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). we call that expression typical, which we might call simply aesthetic. poetical or artistic universals have been spoken of in like manner, in order to show that the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal in itself. [sidenote] _critique of the symbol and of the allegory._ continuing to correct these errors, or to make clear equivoques, we will note that the _symbol_ has sometimes been given as essence of art. now, if the symbol be given as inseparable from the artistic intuition, it is the synonym of the intuition itself, which always has an ideal character. there is no double-bottom to art, but one only; in art all is symbolical, because all is ideal. but if the symbol be looked upon as separable--if on the one side can be expressed the symbol, and on the other the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the intellectualist error: that pretended symbol is the exposition of an abstract concept, it is an _allegory_, it is science, or art that apes science. but we must be just toward the allegorical also. in some cases, it is altogether harmless. given the _gerusalemme liberata_, the allegory was imagined afterwards; given the _adone_ of marino, the poet of the lascivious insinuated afterwards that it was written to show how "immoderate indulgence ends in pain"; given a statue of a beautiful woman, the sculptor can write on a card that the statue represents _clemency_ or _goodness_. this allegory linked to a finished work _post festum_ does not change the work of art. what is it, then? it is an expression externally _added_ to another expression. a little page of prose is added to the _gerusalemme_, expressing another thought of the poet; a verse or a strophe is added to the _adone_, expressing what the poet would like to make a part of his public swallow; while to the statue nothing more than the single word is added: _clemency_ or _goodness_. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of artistic and literary classes._ but the greatest triumph of the intellectualist error lies in the theory of artistic and literary classes, which still has vogue in literary treatises, and disturbs the critics and the historians of art. let us observe its genesis. the human mind can pass from the aesthetic to the logical, just because the former is a first step, in respect to the latter. it can destroy the expressions, that is, the thought of the individual with the thought of the universal. it can reduce expressive facts to logical relations. we have already shown that this operation in its turn becomes concrete in an expression, but this does not mean that the first expressions have not been destroyed. they have yielded their place to the new aesthetico-logical expressions. when we are on the second step, we have left the first. he who enters a picture-gallery, or who reads a series of poems, may, after he has looked and read, go further: he may seek out the relations of the things there expressed. thus those pictures and compositions, each of which is an individual inexpressible by logic, are resolved into universals and abstractions, such as _costumes, landscapes, portraits, domestic life, battles, animals, flowers, fruit, seascapes, lakes, deserts, tragic, comic, piteous, cruel, lyrical, epic, dramatic, knightly, idyllic facts_, and the like. they are often also resolved into merely quantitative categories, such as _little picture, picture, statuette, group, madrigal, song, sonnet, garland of sonnets, poetry, poem, story, romance_, and the like. when we think the concept _domestic life_, or _knighthood_, or _idyll_, or _cruelty_, or any other quantitative concept, the individual expressive fact from which we started is abandoned. from aesthetes that we were, we have been changed into logicians; from contemplators of expression, into reasoners. certainly no objection can be made to such a process. in what other way could science be born, which, if aesthetic expressions be assumed in it, yet has for function to go beyond them? the logical or scientific form, as such, excludes the aesthetic form. he who begins to think scientifically has already ceased to contemplate aesthetically; although his thought will assume of necessity in its turn an aesthetic form, as has already been said, and as it would be superfluous to repeat. the error begins when we try to deduce the expression from the concept, and to find in the thing substituting the laws of the thing substituted; when the difference between the second and the first step has not been observed, and when, in consequence, we declare that we are standing on the first step, when we are really standing on the second. this error is known as _the theory of artistic and literary classes_. what is the aesthetic form of domestic life, of knighthood, of the idyll, of cruelty, and so forth? how should these contents be _represented_? such is the absurd problem implied in the theory of artistic and literary classes. it is in this that consists all search after laws or rules of styles. domestic life, knighthood, idyll, cruelty, and the like, are not impressions, but concepts. they are not contents, but logico-aesthetic forms. you cannot express the form, for it is already itself expression. and what are the words cruelty, idyll, knighthood, domestic life, and so on, but the expression of those concepts? even the most refined of these distinctions, those that have the most philosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as, for instance, when works of art are divided into the subjective and the objective styles, into lyric and epic, into works of feeling and works of design. it is impossible to separate in aesthetic analysis, the subjective from the objective side, the lyric from the epic, the image of feeling from that of things. [sidenote] _errors derived from this theory appearing in judgments on art._ from the theory of the artistic and literary classes derive those erroneous modes of judgment and of criticism, thanks to which, instead of asking before a work of art if it be expressive, and what it expresses, whether it speak or stammer, or be silent altogether, it is asked if it be obedient to the _laws_ of the epic poem, or to those of tragedy, to those of historical portraiture, or to those of landscape painting. artists, however, while making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them, have really always disregarded these _laws of styles_. every true work of art has violated some established class and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus been obliged to enlarge the number of classes, until finally even this enlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the appearance of new works of art, which are naturally followed by new scandals, new upsettings, and-new enlargements. from the same theory come the prejudices, owing to which at one time (and is it really passed?) people used to lament that italy had no tragedy (until a poet arose who gave to italy that wreath which was the only thing wanting to her glorious hair), nor france the epic poem (until the _henriade_, which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). eulogies accorded to the inventors of new styles are connected with these prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century the invention of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and the honour of it was disputed, as though it were the discovery of america. but the works adorned with this name (the _secchia rapita_ and the _scherno degli dei_) were still-born, because their authors (a slight draw-back) had nothing new or original to say. mediocrities racked their brains to invent, artificially, new styles. the _piscatorial_ eclogue was added to the _pastoral_, and then, finally, the _military_ eclogue. the _aminta_ was bathed and became the _alceo_. finally, there have been historians of art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of classes, that they claimed to write the history, not of single and effective literary and artistic works, but of their classes, those empty phantoms. they have claimed to portray, not the evolution of the _artistic spirit_, but the _evolution of classes_. the philosophical condemnation of artistic and literary classes is found in the formulation and demonstration of what artistic activity has ever sought and good taste ever recognized. what is to be done if good taste and the real fact, put into formulas, sometimes assume the air of paradoxes? [sidenote] _empirical sense of the divisions of classes._ now if we talk of tragedies, comedies, dramas, romances, pictures of everyday life, battle-pieces, landscapes, seascapes, poems, versicles, lyrics, and the like, if it be only with a view to be understood, and to draw attention in general and approximatively to certain groups of works, to which, for one reason or another, it is desired to draw attention, in that case, no scientific error has been committed. we employ _vocables and phrases_; we do not establish _laws and definitions_. the mistake arises when the weight of a scientific definition is given to a word, when we ingenuously let ourselves be caught in the meshes of that phraseology. pray permit me a comparison. it is necessary to arrange the books in a library in one way or another. this used generally to be done by means of a rough classification by subjects (among which the categories of miscellaneous and eccentric were not wanting); they are now generally arranged by sizes or by publishers. who can deny the necessity and the utility of these groupings? but what should we say if some one began seriously to seek out the literary laws of miscellanies and of eccentricities from the aldine or bodonian collection, from size a or size b, that is to say, from these altogether arbitrary groupings whose sole object has been their practical use? well, whoever should undertake an enterprise such as this, would be doing neither more nor less than those who seek out the aesthetic laws of literary and artistic classes. v analogous errors in historic and logic the better to confirm these criticisms, it will be opportune to cast a rapid glance over analogous and opposite errors, born of ignorance as to the true nature of art, and of its relation to history and to science. these errors have injured alike the theory of history and of science, of historic (or historiology) and of logic. [sidenote] _critique of the philosophy of history._ historical intellectualism has been the cause of the many researches which have been made, especially during the last two centuries, researches which continue to-day, for _a philosophy of history_, for an _ideal history_, for a _sociology_, for a _historical psychology_, or however may be otherwise entitled or described a science whose object is to extract from history, universal laws and concepts. of what kind must be these laws, these universals? historical laws and historical concepts? in that case, an elementary criticism of knowledge suffices to make clear the absurdity of the attempt. when such expressions as a _historical law_, a _historical concept_ are not simply metaphors colloquially employed, they are true contradictions in terms: the adjective is as unsuitable to the substantive as in the expressions _qualitative quantity_ or _pluralistic monism_. history means concretion and individuality, law and concept mean abstraction and universality. if, on the other hand, the attempt to draw from history historical laws and concepts be abandoned, and it be merely desired to draw from it laws and concepts, the attempt is certainly not frivolous; but the science thus obtained will be, not a philosophy of history, but rather, according to the case, either philosophy in its various specifications of ethic, logic, etc., or empirical science in its infinite divisions and subdivisions. thus are sought out either those philosophical concepts which are, as has already been observed, at the bottom of every historical construction and separate perception from intuition, historical intuition from pure intuition, history from art; or already formed historical intuitions are collected and reduced to types and classes, which is exactly the method of the natural sciences. great thinkers have sometimes donned the unsuitable cloak of the philosophy of history, and notwithstanding the covering, they have conquered philosophical truths of the greatest magnitude. the cloak has been dropped, the truth has remained. modern sociologists are rather to be blamed, not so much for the illusion in which they are involved when they talk of an impossible science of sociology, as for the infecundity which almost always accompanies their illusion. it is but a small evil that aesthetic should be termed sociological aesthetic, or logic, social logic. the grave evil is that their aesthetic is an old-fashioned expression of sensualism, their logic verbal and incoherent. the philosophical movement, to which we have referred, has borne two good fruits in relation to history. first of all has been felt the desire to construct a theory of historiography, that is, to understand the nature and the limits of history, a theory which, in conformity with the analyses made above, cannot obtain satisfaction, save in a general science of intuition, in an aesthetic, from which historic would be separated under a special head by means of the intervention of the universals. furthermore, concrete truths relating to historical events have often been expressed beneath the false and presumptuous cloak of a philosophy of history; canons and empirical advice have been formulated by no means superfluous to students and critics. it does not seem possible to deny this utility to the most recent of philosophies of history, to so-called historical materialism, which has thrown a very vivid light upon many sides of social life, formerly neglected or ill understood. [sidenote] _aesthetic invasions into logic._ the principle of authority, of the _ipse dixit_, is an invasion of historicity into the domains of science and philosophy which has raged in the schools. this substitutes for introspection and philosophical analyses, this or that evidence, document, or authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense. but logic, the science of thought and of intellectual knowledge, has suffered the most grave and destructive disturbances and errors of all, through the imperfect understanding of the aesthetic fact. how, indeed, could it be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself aesthetic activity? an inexact aesthetic must of necessity drag after it an inexact logic. whoever opens logical treatises, from the _organum_ of aristotle to the moderns, must admit that they all contain a haphazard mixture of verbal facts and facts of thought, of grammatical forms and of conceptual forms, of aesthetic and of logic. not that attempts have been wanting to escape from verbal expression and to seize thought in its effective nature. aristotelian logic itself did not become mere syllogistic and verbalism, without some stumbling and oscillation. the especially logical problem was often touched upon in the middle ages, by the nominalists, realists, and conceptualists, in their disputes. with galileo and with bacon, the natural sciences gave an honourable place to induction. vico combated formalist and mathematical logic in favour of inventive methods. kant called attention to _a priori_ syntheses. the absolute idealists despised the aristotelian logic. the followers of herbart, bound to aristotle, on the other hand, set in relief those judgments which they called narrative, which are of a character altogether different from other logical judgments. finally, the linguists insisted upon the irrationality of the word, in relation to the concept. but a conscious, sure, and radical movement of reform can find no base or starting-point, save in the science of aesthetic. [sidenote] _logic in its essence._ in a logic suitably reformed on this basis, it will be fitting to proclaim before all things this truth, and to draw from it all its consequences: the logical fact, _the only logical fact_, is _the concept_, the universal, the spirit that forms, and in so far as it forms, the universal. and if be understood by induction, as has sometimes been understood, the formation of universals, and by deduction the verbal development of these, then it is clear that true logic can be nothing but inductive logic. but since by the word "deduction" has been more frequently understood the special processes of mathematics, and by the word "induction" those of the natural sciences, it will be advisable to avoid the one and the other denomination, and to say that true logic is the logic of the concept. the logic of the concept, adopting a method which is at once induction and deduction, will adopt neither the one nor the other exclusively, that is, will adopt the (speculative) method, which is intrinsic to it. the concept, the universal, is in itself, abstractly considered, _inexpressible_. no word is proper to it. so true is this, that the logical concept remains always the same, notwithstanding the variation of verbal forms. in respect to the concept, expression is a simple _sign_ or _indication_. there must be an expression, it cannot fail; but what it is to be, this or that, is determined by the historical and psychological conditions of the individual who is speaking. the quality of the expression is not deducible from the nature of the concept. there does not exist a true (logical) sense of words. he who forms a concept bestows on each occasion their true meaning on the words. [sidenote] _distinction between logical and non-logical judgements._ this being established, the only truly logical (that is, aesthetico-logical) propositions, the only rigorously logical judgments, can be nothing but those whose proper and exclusive content is the determination of a concept. these propositions or judgments are the _definitions_. science itself is nothing but a complex of definitions, unified in a supreme definition; a system of concepts, or chief concept. it is therefore necessary to exclude from logic all those propositions which do not affirm universals. narrative judgments, not less than those termed non-enunciative by aristotle, such as the expression of desires, are not properly logical judgments. they are either purely aesthetic propositions or historical propositions. "peter is passing; it is raining to-day; i am sleepy; i want to read": these and an infinity of propositions of the same kind, are nothing but either a mere enclosing, in words the impression of the fact that peter is passing, of the falling rain, of my organism inclining to sleep, and of my will directed to reading, or they are existential affirmation concerning those facts. they are expressions of the real or of the unreal, of historical or of pure imagination; they are certainly not definitions of universals. [sidenote] _syllogistic._ this exclusion cannot meet with great difficulties. it is already almost an accomplished fact, and the only thing required is to render it explicit, decisive, and coherent. but what is to be done with all that part of human experience which is called _syllogistic_, consisting of judgments and reasonings which are based on concepts. what is syllogistic? is it to be looked down upon from above with contempt, as something useless, as has so often been done in the reaction of the humanists against scholasticism, in absolute idealism, in the enthusiastic admiration of our times for the methods of observation and experiment of the natural sciences? syllogistic, reasoning _in forma_, is not a discovery of truth; it is the art of exposing, debating, disputing with oneself and others. proceeding from concepts already formed, from facts already observed and making appeal to the persistence of the true or of thought (such is the meaning of the principle of identity and contradiction), it infers consequences from these data, that is, it represents what has already been discovered. therefore, if it be an _idem per idem_ from the point of view of invention, it is most efficacious as a teaching and an exposition. to reduce affirmations to the syllogistic scheme is a way of controlling one's own thought and of criticizing that of others. it is easy to laugh at syllogisers, but, if syllogistic has been born and retains its place, it must have good roots of its own. satire applied to it can concern only its abuses, such as the attempt to prove syllogistically questions of fact, observation, and intuition, or the neglect of profound meditation and unprejudiced investigation of problems, for syllogistic formality. and if so-called _mathematical logic_ can sometimes aid us in our attempt to remember with ease, to manipulate the results of our own thought, let us welcome this form of the syllogism also, long prophesied by leibnitz and essayed by many, even in our days. but precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposing and of debating, its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophical logic, usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which is the central and dominating doctrine, to which is reduced everything logical in syllogistic, without leaving a residuum (relations of concepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification, and so on). nor must it ever be forgotten that the concept, the (logical) judgment, and the syllogism do not occupy the same position. the first alone is the logical fact, the second and third are the forms in which the first manifests itself. these, in so far as they are forms, cannot be examined save aesthetically (grammatically); in so far as they possess logical content, only by neglecting the forms themselves and passing to the doctrine of the concept. [sidenote] _false logic and true aesthetic._ this shows the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he who reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis is the basis of good expression. this truth is a tautology, for to reason well is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is the intuitive possession of one's own logical thought. the principle of contradiction, itself, is at bottom nothing but the aesthetic principle of coherence. it will be said that starting from erroneous concepts it is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also possible to reason well; that some who are dull at research may yet be most limpid writers. that is precisely because to write well depends upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it be erroneous; that is to say, not of its scientific, but of its aesthetic truth, since it is this truth itself. a philosopher like schopenhauer can imagine that art is a representation of the platonic ideas. this doctrine is absolutely false scientifically, yet he may develop this false knowledge in excellent prose, aesthetically most true. but we have already replied to these objections, when we observed that at that precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought concept, he is at the same time speaking ill and writing ill. he may, however, afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of his thought, which consist of true propositions, not connected with the preceding errors, and lucid expressions may with him follow upon turbid expressions. [sidenote] _logic reformed._ all enquiries as to the forms of judgments and of syllogisms, on their conversion and on their various relations, which still encumber treatises on logic, are therefore destined to become less, to be transformed, to be reduced to something else. the doctrine of the concept and of the organism of the concepts, of definition, of system, of philosophy, and of the various sciences, and the like, will fill the place of these and will constitute the only true and proper logic. those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between aesthetic and logic and conceived aesthetic as a _logic of sensible knowledge_, were strangely addicted to applying logical categories to the new knowledge, talking of _aesthetic concepts, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic syllogisms_, and so on. we are less superstitious as regards the solidity of the traditional logic of the schools, and better informed as to the nature of aesthetic. we do not recommend the application of logic to aesthetic, but the liberation of logic from aesthetic forms. these have given rise to non-existent forms or categories of logic, due to the following of altogether arbitrary and crude distinctions. logic thus reformed will always be _formal_ logic; it will study the true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding single and particular concepts. the old logic is ill called formal; it were better to call it _verbal_ or _formalistic_. formal logic will drive out formalistic logic. to attain this object, it will not be necessary to have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material logic, which is not a science of thought, but thought itself in the act; not only a logic, but the complex of philosophy, in which logic also is included. the science of thought (logic) is that of the concept, as that of fancy (aesthetic) is the science of expression. the well-being of both sciences lies in exactly following in every particular the distinction between the two domains. vi theoretic and practical activity the intuitive and intellective forms exhaust, as we have said, all the theoretic form of the spirit. but it is not possible to know them thoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous aesthetic theories, without first establishing clearly their relations with another form of the spirit, which is the _practical_ form. [sidenote] _the will._ this form or practical activity is the _will_. we do not employ this word here in the sense of any philosophical system, in which the will is the foundation of the universe, the principle of things and the true reality. nor do we employ it in the ample sense of other systems, which understand by will the energy of the spirit, the spirit or activity in general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. neither such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. for us, the will is, as generally accepted, that activity of the spirit, which differs from the mere theoretical contemplation of things, and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. action is really action, in so far as it is voluntary. it is not necessary to remark that in the will to do, is included, in the scientific sense, also what is vulgarly called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the prometheutic will, is also action. [sidenote] _the will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge._ man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practical form he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, with the other he creates it. but the first form is the basis of the second; and the relation of _double degree_, which we have already found existing between aesthetic and logical activity, is repeated between these two on a larger scale. knowledge independent of the will is thinkable; will independent of knowledge is unthinkable. blind will is not will; true will has eyes. how can we will, without having before us historical intuitions (perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, which enlighten us as to the nature of those objects? how can we really will, if we do not know the world which surrounds us, and the manner of changing things by acting upon them? [sidenote] _objections and elucidations._ it has been objected that men of action, practical men in the eminent sense, are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize: their energy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into will. and conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often very mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected and thrust aside in the tumult of life. it is easy to see that these distinctions are merely empirical and quantitative. certainly, the practical man has no need of a philosophical system in order to act, but in the spheres where he does act, he starts from intuitions and concepts which are most clear to him. otherwise he could not will the most ordinary actions. it would not be possible to will to feed oneself, for instance, without knowledge of the food, and of the link of cause and effect between certain movements and certain organic sensations. rising gradually to the more complex forms of action, for example to the political, how could we will anything politically good or bad, without knowing the real conditions of society, and consequently the means and expedients to be adopted? when the practical man feels himself in the dark about one or more of these points, or when he is seized with doubt, action either does not begin or stops. it is then that the theoretical moment, which in the rapid succession of human actions is hardly noticed and rapidly forgotten, becomes important and occupies consciousness for a longer time. and if this moment be prolonged, then the practical man may become hamlet, divided between desire for action and his small amount of theoretical clarity as regards the situation and the means to be employed. and if he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery, and leave willing and acting, to a more or less great extent, to others, there is formed in him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man of science, or of the philosopher, who are sometimes unpractical or altogether blameworthy. these observations are all obvious. their exactitude cannot be denied. let us, however, repeat that they are founded on quantitative distinctions and do not disprove, but confirm the fact that an action, however slight it be, cannot really be an action, that is, an action that is willed, unless it be preceded by cognoscitive activity. [sidenote] _critique of practical judgments or judgments of value._ some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action an altogether special class of judgments, which they call _practical_ judgments or judgments _of value_. they say that in order to resolve to perform an action, it is necessary to have judged: "this action is useful, this action is good." and at first sight this seems to have the testimony of consciousness on its side. but he who observes better and analyses with greater subtlety, discovers that such judgments follow instead of preceding the affirmation of the will; they are nothing but the expression of the already exercised volition. a good or useful action is an action that is willed. it will always be impossible to distil from the objective study of things a single drop of usefulness or goodness. we do not desire things because we know them to be good or useful; but we know them to be good and useful, because we desire them. here too, the rapidity, with which the facts of consciousness follow one another has given rise to an illusion. practical action is preceded by knowledge, but not by practical knowledge, or better by the practical: to obtain this, it is first necessary to have practical action. the third moment, therefore, of practical judgments, or judgments of value, is altogether imaginary. it does not come between the two moments or degrees of theory and practice. that is why there exist no normative sciences in general, which regulate or command, discover and indicate values to the practical activity; because there is none for any other activity, assuming every science already realized and that activity developed, which it afterwards takes as its object. [sidenote] _exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic._ these distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous every theory which confuses aesthetic with practical activity, or introduces the laws of the second into the first. that science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. those who make this statement, and look upon the aesthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because they have their eye on something which is really practical. but the practical which they are looking at is not aesthetic, nor within aesthetic; it is _outside and beside it_; and although they are often found united, they are not necessarily united, that is to say, by the bond of identity of nature. the aesthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaboration of the impressions. when we have conquered the word within us, conceived definitely and vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive, expression is born and is complete; there is no need for anything else. if after this we should open our mouths and _will_ to open them, to speak, or our throats to sing, and declare in a loud voice and with extended throat what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or if we should stretch out and _will_ to stretch out our hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brushes and the chisel, making thus in detail those movements which we have already done rapidly, and doing so in such a way as to leave more or less durable traces; this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws to the first, and with these laws we have not to occupy ourselves for the moment. let us, however, here recognize that this second movement is a production of things, a _practical_ fact, or a fact of _will_. it is customary to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems here to be infelicitous, for the work of art (the aesthetic work) is always _internal_; and that which is called _external_ is no longer a work of art. others distinguish between _aesthetic_ fact and _artistic_ fact, meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which may and generally does follow the first. but in this case, it is simply a case of linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, although perhaps not opportune. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of the content._ for the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous, when it is understood of art as art. and since to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be _selected_ is another form of the same error. a selection from among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise, how can a selection be made among what is continuous and indistinct? to choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, they must be expressed. practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression is free inspiration. the true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows not how; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will it or not will it. if he were to wish to act in opposition to his inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born anacreon, he were to wish to sing of atreus and of alcides, his lyre would warn him of his mistake, echoing only of venus and of love, notwithstanding his efforts to the contrary. [sidenote] _practical innocence of art._ the theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morally charged with epithets of praise or of blame. when critics of art remark that a theme is _badly selected_, in cases where that observation has a just foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of the theme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist has treated it. the expression has failed, owing to the contradictions which it contains. and when the same critics rebel against the theme or the content as being unworthy of art and blameworthy, in respect to works which they proclaim to be artistically perfect; if these expressions really are perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise the critics to leave the artists in peace, for they cannot get inspiration, save from what has made an impression upon them. the critics should think rather of how they can effect changes in nature and in society, in order that those impressions may not exist. if ugliness were to vanish from the world, if universal virtue and felicity were established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse or pessimistic sentiments, but sentiments that are calm, innocent, and joyous, like arcadians of a real arcady. but so long as ugliness and turpitude exist in nature and impose themselves on the artist, it is not possible to prevent the expression of these things also; and when it has arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit_. we speak thus entirely from the aesthetic point of view, and from that of pure aesthetic criticism. we do not delay to pass here in review the damage which the criticism of choice does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the contrast which it occasions between artistic impulse and critical exigencies. it is true that sometimes it seems to do some good also, by assisting the artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historical moment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. in these cases, criticism of choice merely recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed. it believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the midwife. [sidenote] _the independence of art._ the impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the _independence of art_, and is also the only legitimate meaning of the expression: _art for art's sake_. art is thus independent of science, as it is of the useful and the moral. let it not be feared that thus may be justified art that is frivolous or cold, since that which is truly frivolous or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; or in other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of the aesthetic elaboration, from the lack of a content, not from the material qualities of the content. [sidenote] _critique of the saying: the style is the man._ the saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completely criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the aesthetic activity. man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is also will, which contains in it the cognoscitive moment. now the saying is either altogether void, as when it is understood that the man is the style, in so far as he is style, that is to say, the man, but only in so far as he is an expression of activity; or it is erroneous, when the attempt is made to deduce from what a man has seen and expressed, that which he has done and willed, inferring thereby that there is a necessary link between knowing and willing. many legends in the biographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous sentiments should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist who gives a great many stabs in his plays, should not himself have given a few at least in real life. vainly do the artists protest: _lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba_. they are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. o you poor women of verona, how far more subtle you were, when you founded your belief that dante had really descended to hell, upon his dusky countenance! yours was at any rate a historical conjecture. [sidenote] _critique of the concept of sincerity in art._ finally, _sincerity_ imposed upon the artist as a duty (this law of ethics which, they say, is also a law of aesthetic) arises from another equivoke. for by sincerity is meant either the moral duty not to deceive one's neighbour; and in that case is foreign to the artist. for he, in fact, deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in his mind. he would deceive, only if he were to betray his duty as an artist by a lesser devotion to the intrinsic necessity of his task. if lies and deceit are in his mind, then the form which he gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is aesthetic. the artist, if he be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. or by sincerity is meant, fulness and truth of expression, and it is clear that this second sense has nothing to do with the ethical concept. the law, which is at once ethical and aesthetic, reveals itself in this case in a word employed alike by ethic and aesthetic. vii analogy between the theoretic and the practical [sidenote] _the two forms of practical activity._ the twofold grade of the theoretical activity, aesthetic and logical, has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yet been placed in due relief. the practical activity is also divided into a first and second degree, the second implying the first. the first practical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; the second the _moral_ activity. economy is, as it were, the aesthetic of practical life; morality its logic. [sidenote] _the economically useful._ if this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if its suitable place in the system of the mind has not been given to the economic activity, and it has been left to wander in the prolegomena to treatises on political economy, often uncertain and but slightly elaborated, this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic has been confused, now with the concept of _technique_, now with that of the _egoistic_. [sidenote] _distinction between the useful and the technical._ _technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit. technique is knowledge; or better, it is knowledge itself, in general, that takes this name, as we have seen, in so far as it serves as basis for practical action. knowledge which is not followed, or is presumed to be not easily followed by practical action, is called pure: the same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called applied; if it is presumed that it can be easily followed by the same action, it is called technical or applied. this word, then, indicates a _situation_ in which knowledge already is, or easily can be found, not a special form of knowledge. so true is this, that it would be altogether impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pure or applied. all knowledge, however abstract and philosophical one may imagine it to be, can be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morals can be reflected and always is reflected in some way, in practical life. one can only speak roughly and unscientifically of truths that are pure and of others that are applied. the same knowledge which is called technical, can also be called _useful_. but the word "useful," in conformity with the criticism of judgments of value made above, is to be understood as used here in a linguistic or metaphorical sense. when we say that water is useful for putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense. water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen. there is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration, and this knowledge. the technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical activity which precedes; the _action_ of him who extinguishes the fire is alone useful. [sidenote] _distinction between the useful and the egoistic._ some economists identify utility with _egoã¯sm_, that is to say, with merely economical action or desire, with that which is profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. the egoistic is the immoral. in this case economy would be a very strange science, standing, not beside, but facing ethic, like the devil facing god, or at least like the _advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization. such a conception of it is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in _logic_, the science of the true, and a science of ineffectual expression in aesthetic, the science of successful expression. if, then, economy were the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of ethic, or ethic itself; because every moral determination implies, at the same time, a negation of its contrary. further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to be inconclusive and, therefore, not truly moral. if utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist? [sidenote] _economic will and moral will._ if we are not mistaken, the difficulty is solved in a manner perfectly analogous to that in which is solved the problem of the relations between the expression and the concept, between aesthetic and logic. to will economically is to _will an end_; to will morally is to _will the rational end_. but whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will and act usefully (economically). how could he will the _rational_, unless he willed it also _as his particular end_? [sidenote] _pure economicity._ the reciprocal is not true; as it is not true in aesthetic science that the expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact. it is possible to will economically without willing morally; and it is possible to conduct oneself with perfect economic coherence, while pursuing an end which is objectively irrational (immoral), or, better, an end which would be so judged in a superior grade of consciousness. examples of the economic, without the moral character, are the prince of machiavelli, caesar borgia, or the iago of shakespeare. who can help admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only economic, and is opposed to what we hold moral? who can help admiring the ser ciappelletto of boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursues and realizes his ideal of the perfect rascal, making the small and timid little thieves who are present at his burlesque confession exclaim: "what manner of man is this, whose perversity, neither age, nor infirmity, nor the fear of death, which he sees at hand, nor the fear of god, before whose judgment-seat he must stand in a little while, have been able to remove, nor to cause that he should not wish to die as he has lived?" [sidenote] _the economic side of morality._ the moral man unites with the pertinacity and fearlessness of a caesar borgia, of an iago, or of a ser ciappelletto, the good will of the saint or of the hero. or, better, good will would not be will, and consequently not good, if it did not possess, in addition to the side which makes it _good_, also that which makes it _will_. thus a logical thought, which does not succeed in expressing itself, is not thought, but at the most, a confused presentiment of a thought yet to come. it is not correct, then, to conceive of the amoral man as also the anti-economical man, or to make of morality an element of coherence in the acts of life, and therefore of economicity. nothing prevents us from conceiving (an hypothesis which is verified at least during certain periods and moments, if not during whole lifetimes) a man altogether without moral conscience. in a man thus organized, what for us is immorality is not so for him, because it is not so felt. the consciousness of the contradiction between what is desired as a rational end and what is pursued egoistically cannot be born in him. this contradiction is anti-economicity. immoral conduct becomes also anti-economical only in the man who possesses moral conscience. the moral remorse which is the proof of this, is also economical remorse; that is to say, pain at not having known how to will completely and to attain to that moral ideal which was willed at the first moment, but was afterwards perverted by the passions. _video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor_. the _video_ and the _probo_ are here an initial will immediately contradicted and passed over. in the man deprived of moral sense, we must admit a remorse which is _merely economic_; like that of a thief or of an assassin who should be attacked when on the point of robbing or of assassinating, and should abstain from doing so, not owing to a conversion of his being, but owing to his impressionability and bewilderment, or even owing to a momentary awakening of the moral consciousness. when he has come back to himself, that thief or assassin will regret and be ashamed of his inconsequence; his remorse will not be due to having done wrong, but to not having done it; his remorse is, therefore, economic, not moral, since the latter is excluded by hypothesis. however, a lively moral conscience is generally found among the majority of men, and its total absence is a rare and perhaps non-existent monstrosity. it may, therefore, be admitted, that morality coincides with economicity in the conduct of life. [sidenote] _the merely economic and the error of the morally indifferent._ there need be no fear lest the parallelism affirmed by us should introduce afresh into the category of the _morally indifferent_, of that which is in truth action and volition, but is neither moral nor immoral; the category in sum of the _licit_ and of the _permissible_, which has always been the cause or mirror of ethical corruption, as is the case with jesuitical morality in which it dominated. it remains quite certain that indifferent moral actions do not exist, because moral activity pervades and must pervade every least volitional movement of man. but this, far from upsetting the parallelism, confirms it. do there exist intuitions which science and the intellect do not pervade and analyse, resolving them into universal concepts, or changing them into historical affirmations? we have already seen that true science, philosophy, knows no external limits which bar its way, as happens with the so-called natural sciences. science and morality entirely dominate, the one the aesthetic intuitions, the other the economic volitions of man, although neither of them can appear in the concrete, save in the intuitive form as regards the one, in the economic as regards the other. [sidenote] _critique of utilitarianism and the reform of ethic and of economic._ this combined identity and difference of the useful and of the moral, of the economic and of the ethic, explains the fortune enjoyed now and formerly by the utilitarian theory of ethic. it is in fact easy to discover and to show a utilitarian side in every moral action; as it is easy to show an aesthetic side of every logical proposition. the criticism of ethical utilitarianism cannot escape by denying this truth and seeking out absurd and inexistent examples of _useless_ moral actions. it must admit the utilitarian side and explain it as the concrete form of morality, which consists of what is _within_ this form. utilitarians do not see this within. this is not the place for a more ample development of such ideas. ethic and economic cannot but be gainers, as we have said of logic and aesthetic, by a more exact determination of the relations that exist between them. economic science is now rising to the animating concept of the useful, as it strives to pass beyond the mathematical phase, in which it is still entangled; a phase which, when it superseded historicism, was in its turn a progress, destroying a series of arbitrary distinctions and false theories of economic, implied in the confusion of the theoretical with the historical. with this conception, it will be easy on the one hand to absorb and to verify the semi-philosophical theories of so-called pure economy, and on the other, by the introduction of successive complications and additions, and by passing from the philosophical to the empirical or naturalistic method, to include the particular theories of the political or national economy of the schools. [sidenote] _phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._ as aesthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and philosophic intuition the noumenon or spirit; so economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _the spirit which desires itself_, its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. this will for the true self is _absolute liberty_. viii exclusion of other spiritual forms [sidenote] _the system of the spirit._ in this summary sketch that we have given, of the entire philosophy of the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is conceived as consisting of four moments or grades, disposed in such a way that the theoretical activity is to the practical as is the first theoretical grade to the second theoretical, and the first practical grade to the second practical. the four moments imply one another regressively by their concretion. the concept cannot be without expression, the useful without the one and the other, and morality without the three preceding grades. if the aesthetic fact is alone independent, and the others more or less dependent, then the logical is the least so and the moral will the most. moral intention operates on given theoretic bases, which cannot be dispensed with, save by that absurd practice, the jesuitical _direction of intention_. here people pretend to themselves not to know what at bottom they know perfectly well. [sidenote] _the forms of genius._ if the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of genius. geniuses in art, in science, in moral will or heroes, have certainly always been recognized. but the genius of pure economic has met with opposition. it is not altogether without reason that a category of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. the practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. it would be a mere question of words, were we to discuss whether the word "genius" should be applied only to creators of aesthetic expression, or also to men of scientific research and of action. to observe, on the other hand, that genius, of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius. [sidenote] _non-existence of a fifth form of activity. law; sociality._ a fifth form of spiritual activity does not exist. it would be easy to demonstrate how all the other forms, either do not possess the character of activity, or are verbal variants of the activities already examined, or are complex and derived facts, in which the various activities are mingled, or are filled with special contents and contingent data. the _judicial_ fact, for example, considered as what is called objective law, is derived both from the economic and from the logical activities. law is a rule, a formula (whether oral or written matters little here) in which is contained an economic relation willed by an individual or by a collectivity. this economic side at once unites it with and distinguishes it from moral activity. take another example. sociology (among the many meanings the word bears in our times) is sometimes conceived as the study of an original element, which is called _sociality_. now what is it that distinguishes sociality, or the relations which are developed in a meeting of men, not of subhuman beings, if it be not just the various spiritual activities which exist among the former and which are supposed not to exist, or to exist only in a rudimentary degree, among the latter? sociality, then, far from being an original, simple, irreducible conception, is very complex and complicated. this could be proved by the impossibility, generally recognized, of enunciating a single sociological law, properly so-called. those that are improperly called by that name are revealed as either empirical historical observations, or spiritual laws, that is to say judgments, into which are translated the conceptions of the spiritual activities; when they are not simply empty and indeterminate generalizations, like the so-called law of evolution. sometimes, too, nothing more is understood by sociality than social rule, and so law; and thus sociology is confounded with the science or theory of law itself. law, sociality, and like terms, are to be dealt with in a mode analogous to that employed by us in the consideration of historicity and technique. [sidenote] _religiosity._ it may seem fitting to form a different judgment as to _religious_ activity. but religion is nothing but knowledge, and does not differ from its other forms and subforms. for it is in truth and in turn either the expression of practical and ideal aspirations (religious ideals), or historical narrative (legend), or conceptual science (dogma). it can therefore be maintained with equal truth, both that religion is destroyed by the progress of human knowledge, and that it is always present there. their religion was the whole patrimony of knowledge of primitive peoples: our patrimony of knowledge is our religion. the content has been changed, bettered, refined, and it will change and become better and more refined in the future also; but its function is always the same. we do not know what use could be made of religion by those who wish to preserve it side by side with the theoretic activity of man, with his art, with his criticism, and with his philosophy. it is impossible to preserve an imperfect and inferior kind of knowledge, like religion, side by side with what has surpassed and disproved it. catholicism, which is always coherent, will not tolerate a science, a history, an ethic, in contradiction to its views and doctrines. the rationalists are less coherent. they are disposed to allow a little space in their souls for a religion which is in contradiction with their whole theoretic world. these affectations and religious susceptibilities of the rationalists of our times have their origin in the superstitious cult of the natural sciences. these, as we know and as is confessed by the mouth of their chief adepts, are all surrounded by _limits_. science having been wrongly identified with the so-called natural sciences, it could be foreseen that the remainder would be asked of religion; that remainder with which the human spirit cannot dispense. we are therefore indebted to materialism, to positivism, to naturalism for this unhealthy and often disingenuous reflowering of religious exaltation. such things are the business of the hospital, when they are not the business of the politician. [sidenote] _metaphysic._ philosophy withdraws from religion all reason for existing, because it substitutes itself for religion. as the science of the spirit, it looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic condition that can be surpassed. philosophy shares the domain of knowledge with the natural disciplines, with history and with art. it leaves to the first, narration, measurement and classification; to the second, the chronicling of what has individually happened; to the third, the individually possible. there is nothing left to share with religion. for the same reason, philosophy, as the science of the spirit, cannot be philosophy of the intuitive datum; nor, as has been seen, _philosophy of history, nor philosophy of nature_; and therefore there cannot be a philosophic science of what is not form and universal, but material and particular. this amounts to affirming the impossibility of _metaphysic_. the method or logic of history followed the philosophy of history; a gnoseology of the conceptions which are employed in the natural sciences succeeded natural philosophy. what philosophy can study of the one is its mode of construction (intuition, perception, document, probability, etc.); of the others she can study the forms of the conceptions which appear in them (space, time, motion, number, types, classes, etc.). philosophy, which should become metaphysical in the sense above described, would, on the other hand, claim to compete with narrative history, and with the natural sciences, which in their field are alone legitimate and effective. such a competition becomes in fact a labour spoiling labour. we are _antimetaphysical_ in this sense, while yet declaring ourselves _ultrametaphysical_, if by that word it be desired to claim and to affirm the function of philosophy as the autoconsciousness of the spirit, as opposed to the merely empirical and classificatory function of the natural sciences. [sidenote] _mental imagination and the intuitive intellect._ in order to maintain itself side by side with the sciences of the spirit, metaphysic has been obliged to assert the existence of a specific spiritual activity, of which it would be the product. this activity, which in antiquity was called _mental or superior imagination_, and in modern times more often _intuitive intellect or intellectual intuition_, would unite in an altogether special form the characters of imagination and of intellect. it would provide the method of passing, by deduction or dialectically, from the infinite to the finite, from form to matter, from the concept to the intuition, from science to history, operating by a method which should be at once unity and compenetration of the universal and the particular, of the abstract and the concrete, of intuition and of intellect. a faculty marvellous indeed and delightful to possess; but we, who do not possess it, have no means of proving its existence. [sidenote] _mystical aesthetic._ intellectual intuition has sometimes been considered as the true aesthetic activity. at others a not less marvellous aesthetic activity has been placed beside, below, or above it, a faculty altogether different from simple intuition. the glories of this faculty have been sung, and to it have been attributed the fact of art, or at the least certain groups of artistic production, arbitrarily chosen. art, religion, and philosophy have seemed in turn one only, or three distinct faculties of the spirit, now one, now another of these being superior in the dignity assigned to each. it is impossible to enumerate all the various attitudes assumed by this conception of aesthetic, which we will call _mystical_. we are here in the kingdom, not of the science of imagination, but of imagination itself, which creates its world with the varying elements of the impressions and of the feelings. let it suffice to mention that this mysterious faculty has been conceived, now as practical, now as a mean between the theoretic and the practical, at others again as a theoretic grade together with philosophy and religion. [sidenote] _mortality and immortality of art._ the immortality of art has sometimes been deduced from this last conception as belonging with its sisters to the sphere of absolute spirit. at other times, on the other hand, when religion has been looked upon as mortal and as dissolved in philosophy, then the mortality, even the actual death, or at least the agony of art has been proclaimed. these questions have no meaning for us, because, seeing that the function of art is a necessary grade of the spirit, to ask if art can be eliminated is the same thing as asking if sensation or intelligence can be eliminated. but metaphysic, in the above sense, since it transplants itself to an arbitrary world, is not to be criticized in detail, any more than one can criticize the botany of the garden of alcina or the navigation of the voyage of astolfo. criticism can only be made by refusing to join the game; that is to say, by rejecting the very possibility of metaphysic, always in the sense above indicated. as we do not admit intellectual intuition in philosophy, we can also not admit its shadow or equivalent, aesthetic intellectual intuition, or any other mode by which this imaginary function may be called and represented. we repeat again that we do not know of a fifth grade beyond the four grades of spirit which consciousness reveals to us. ix indivisibility of expression into modes or grades and critique of rhetoric [sidenote] _the characteristics of art._ it is customary to give long enumerations of the characteristics of art. having reached this point of the treatise, having studied the artistic function as spiritual activity, as theoretic activity, and as special theoretic activity (intuitive), we are able to discern that those various and copious descriptions mean, when they mean anything at all, nothing but a repetition of what may be called the qualities of the aesthetic function, generic, specific, and characteristic. to the first of these are referred, as we have already observed, the characters, or better, the verbal variants of _unity_, and of _unity_ in _variety_, those also of _simplicity_, of _originality_, and so on; to the second of these, the characteristics of _truth_, of _sincerity_, and the like; to the third, the characteristics of _life_, of _vivacity_, of _animation_, of _concretion_, of _individuality_, of _characteristicality_. the words may vary yet more, but they will not contribute anything scientifically new. the results which we have shown have altogether exhausted the analysis of expression as such. [sidenote] _inexistence of modes of expression._ but at this point, the question as to whether there be various _modes or grades_ of expression is still perfectly legitimate. we have distinguished two grades of activity, each of which is subdivided into two other grades, and there is certainly, so far, no visible logical reason why there should not exist two or more modes of the aesthetic, that is of expression.--the only objection is that these modes do not exist. for the present at least, it is a question of simple internal observation and of self consciousness. one may scrutinize aesthetic facts as much as one will: no formal differences will ever be found among them, nor will the aesthetic fact be divisible into a first and a second degree. this signifies that a philosophical classification of expressions is not possible. single expressive facts are so many individuals, of which the one cannot be compared with the other, save generically, in so far as each is expression. to use the language of the schools, expression is a species which cannot in its turn perform the functions of genus. impressions, that is to say contents, vary; every content differs from every other content, because nothing in life repeats itself; and the continuous variation of contents follows the irreducible variety of expressive facts, the aesthetic syntheses of the impressions. [sidenote] _impossibility of translations._ a corollary of this is the impossibility of _translations_, in so far as they pretend to effect the transference of one expression into another, like a liquid poured from a vase of a certain shape into a vase of another shape. we can elaborate logically what we have already elaborated in aesthetic form only; but we cannot reduce that which has already possessed its aesthetic form to another form also aesthetic. in truth, every translation either diminishes and spoils; or it creates a new expression, by putting the former back into the crucible and mixing it with other impressions belonging to the pretended translator. in the former case, the expression always remains one, that of the original, the translation being more or less deficient, that is to say, not properly expression: in the other case, there would certainly be two expressions, but with two different contents. "ugly faithful ones or faithless beauties" is a proverb that well expresses the dilemma with which every translator is faced. in aesthetic translations, such as those which are word for word or interlinear, or paraphrastic translations, are to be looked upon as simple commentaries on the original. [sidenote] _critique of rhetorical categories._ the division of expressions into various classes is known in literature by the name of theory of _ornament_ or of _rhetorical categories_. but similar attempts at classification in the other forms of art are not wanting: suffice it to mention the _realistic and symbolic forms_, spoken of in painting and sculpture. the scientific value to be attached in aesthetic and in aesthetic criticism to these distinctions of _realistic and symbolic_, of _style and absence of style_, of _objective and subjective_, of _classic and romantic_, of _simple and ornate_, of _proper and metaphorical_, of the fourteen forms of metaphor, of the figures of _word_ and of _sentence_, and further of _pleonasm_, of _ellipse_, of _inversion_, of _repetition_, of _synonyms and homonyms_, and so on; is _nil_ or altogether negative. to none of these terms and distinctions can be given a satisfactory aesthetic definition. those that have been attempted, when they are not obviously erroneous, are words devoid of sense. a typical example of this is the very common definition of metaphor as of _another word used in place of the word itself_. now why give oneself this trouble? why take the worse and longer road when you know the shorter and better road? perhaps, as is generally said, because the correct word is in certain cases not so _expressive_ as the so-called incorrect word or metaphor? but in that case the metaphor becomes exactly the right word, and the so-called right word, if it were used, would be _but little expressive_ and therefore most improper. similar observations of elementary good sense can be made regarding the other categories, as, for example, the generic one of the ornate. one can ask oneself how an ornament can be joined to expression. externally? in that case it must always remain separate. internally? in that case, either it does not assist expression and mars it; or it does form part of it and is not ornament, but a constituent element of expression, indistinguishable from the whole. it is not necessary to dwell upon the harm done by these distinctions. rhetoric has often been declaimed against, but although there has been rebellion against its consequences, its principles have been carefully preserved, perhaps in order to show proof of philosophic coherence. rhetoric has contributed, if not to make dominant in literary production, at least to justify theoretically, that particular mode of writing ill which is called fine writing or writing according to rhetoric. [sidenote] _empirical sense of the rhetorical categories._ the terms above mentioned would never have gone beyond the schools, where we all of us learned them (certain of never finding the opportunity of using them in strictly aesthetic discussions, or even of doing so jocosely and with a comic intention), save when occasionally employed in one of the following significations: as _verbal variants _of the aesthetic concept; as indications of the _anti-aesthetic_, or, finally (and this is their most important use), in a sense which is no longer aesthetic and literary, _but merely logical_. [sidenote] _use of these categories as synonyms of the aesthetic fact._ expressions are not divisible into classes, but some are successful, others half-successful, others failures. there are perfect and imperfect, complete and deficient expressions. the terms already cited, then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes the various forms of the failures. but they are employed in the most inconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the same word serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to condemn the imperfect. an instance of this is found when someone, criticizing two pictures--the one without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the other inspired, but without obvious likeness to existing objects--calls the first _realistic_, the second _symbolic_. others, on the contrary, pronounce the word _realistic_ about a strongly felt picture representing a scene of ordinary life, while they talk of _symbolic_ in reference to another picture representing but a cold allegory. it is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic, and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic and symbolic with inartistic. how, then, can we be astonished when some hotly maintain that the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that the realistic is the artistic, and the symbolic the inartistic? we cannot but grant that both are right, since each makes use of the same words in senses so diverse. the great disputes about the _classic_ and the _romantic_ are frequently based upon such equivokes. sometimes the former was understood as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect; at others, the classic was cold and artificial, the romantic sincere, warm, efficacious, and truly expressive. thus it was always possible to take the side of the classic against the romantic, or of the romantic against the classic. the same thing happens as regards the word _style_. sometimes it is affirmed that every writer should have style. here style is synonymous with form or expression. sometimes the form of a code of laws or of a mathematical work is said to be devoid of style. here the error of admitting diverse modes of expression is again committed, of admitting an ornate and a naked form of expression, because, since style is form, the code and the mathematical treatise must also, strictly speaking, have each its style. at other times, one hears the critics blaming someone for "having too much style" or for "writing a style." here it is clear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and pretentious expression, which is one form of the inartistic. [sidenote] _their use to indicate various aesthetic imperfections._ passing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these words and distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literary composition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. this means that in one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of words than is necessary (pleonasm); that in another the error arises from too few having been used (ellipse), elsewhere from the use of an unsuitable word (metaphor), or from the use of two words which seem to express two different things, where they really express the same thing (synonym); or that, on the contrary, it arises from having employed one which seems to express the same thing where it expresses two different things (equivoke). this pejorative and pathological use of the terms is, however, more uncommon than the preceding. [sidenote] _their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in the service of science._ finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no aesthetic signification similar or analogous to those passed in review, and yet one is aware that it is not void of meaning and designates something that deserves to be noted, it is then used in the service of logic and of science. if it be granted that a concept used in a scientific sense by a given writer is expressed with a definite term, it is natural that other words formed by that writer as used to signify the same concept, or incidentally made use of by him, become, _in respect to_ the vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms, elliptic forms, and the like. we, too, in the course of this treatise, have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of such terms, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or may find employed. but this proceeding, which is of value in the disquisitions of scientific and intellectual criticism, has none whatever in aesthetic criticism. for science there exist appropriate words and metaphors. the same concept may be psychologically formed in various circumstances and therefore be expressed with various intuitions. when the scientific terminology of a given writer has been established, and one of these modes has been fixed as correct, then all other uses of it become improper or tropical. but in the aesthetic fact exist only appropriate words. the same intuition can only be expressed in one way, precisely because it is an intuition and not a concept. [sidenote] _rhetoric in the schools._ some, while they admit the aesthetic insufficiency of the rhetorical categories, yet make a reserve as regards their utility and the service they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. we confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate the mind to logical clearness, or aid the teaching of a science which they disturb and obscure. perhaps it may be desired to say that they can aid memory and learning as empirical classes, as was admitted above for literary and artistic styles. but there is another purpose for which the rhetorical categories should certainly continue to be admitted to the schools: to be criticized there. we cannot simply forget the errors of the past, and truth cannot be kept alive, save by making it fight against error. unless a notion of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied by a suitable criticism of these, there is a risk of their springing up again. for they are already springing up with certain philologists, disguised as most recent _psychological_ discoveries. [sidenote] _the resemblances of expressions._ it would seem as though we wished to deny all bond of likeness among themselves between expressions and works of art. the likenesses exist, and owing to them, works of art can be arranged in this or that group. but they are likenesses such as are observed among individuals, and can never be rendered with abstract definitions. that is to say, these likenesses have nothing to do with identification, subordination, co-ordination, and the other relations of concepts. they consist wholly in what is called a _family likeness_, and are connected with those historical conditions existing at the birth of the various works, or in an affinity of soul between the artists. [sidenote] _the relative possibility of translations._ it is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of translations. this does not consist of the reproduction of the same original expressions (which it would be vain to attempt), but in the measure that expressions are given, more or less nearly resembling those. the translation that passes for good is an approximation which has original value as a work of art and can stand by itself. x aesthetic feelings and the distinction between the ugly and the beautiful passing on to the study of more complex concepts, where the aesthetic activity is found in conjunction with other orders of facts, and showing the mode of this union or complication, we find ourselves at once face to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with the feelings which are called _aesthetic_. [sidenote] _various significances of the word feeling._ the word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings. we have already had occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate the spirit in its passivity, the matter or content of art, and also as synonym of _impressions_. once again (and then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as designating the _non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the aesthetic fact, that is to say pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept and states no fact. [sidenote] _feeling as activity._ but feeling is not here understood in either of these two senses, nor in the others in which it has nevertheless been used to designate other _cognoscitive_ forms of spirit. its meaning here is that of a special activity, of non-cognoscitive nature, but possessing its two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain_. this activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have attempted either to deny it as an activity, or to attribute it to _nature_ and to exclude it from spirit. both solutions bristle with difficulties, and these are of such a kind that the solutions prove themselves finally unacceptable to anyone who examines them with care. for of what could a non-spiritual activity consist, an _activity of nature_, when we have no other knowledge of activity save as spiritual, and of spirituality save as activity? nature is, in this case, by definition, the merely passive, inert, mechanical and material. on the other hand, the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifest activity in its concreteness, and, we will say, all aquiver. [sidenote] _identification of feeling with economic activity._ this critical conclusion ought to place us in the greatest embarrassment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given above, we have left no room for the new activity, of which we are now obliged to recognize the existence. but activity of feeling, if it be activity, is not specially new. it has already had its place assigned to it in the system which we have sketched, where, however, it has been indicated under another name, as _economic_ activity. what is called the activity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical activity, which we have distinguished from ethical activity, and made to consist of the appetite and desire for some individual end, without any moral determination. [sidenote] _critique of hedonism._ if feeling has been sometimes considered as organic or natural activity, this has happened precisely because it does not coincide either with logical, aesthetic, or ethical activity. looked at from the standpoint of these three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie _outside_ the true and real spirit, the spirit in its aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature and of the soul, in so far as it is nature. thus the thesis, several times maintained, that the aesthetic activity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling, becomes at once completely proved. this thesis was inexpugnable, when sensation had already been reduced confusedly and implicitly to economic volition. the view which has been refuted is known by the name of _hedonism_. for hedonism, all the various forms of the spirit are reduced to one, which thus itself also loses its own distinctive character and becomes something turbid and mysterious, like "the shades in which all cows are black." having effected this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and pain. they find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art and that of an easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs. [sidenote] _feeling as a concomitant to every form of activity._ but if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not said that it cannot _accompany_ them. indeed it accompanies them of necessity, because they are all in close relation, both with one another and with the elementary volitional form. therefore each of them has for concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains which are known as feeling. but we must not confound what is concomitant, with the principal fact, and take the one for the other. the discovery of the truth, or the satisfaction of a moral duty fulfilled, produces in us a joy which makes our whole being vibrate, for, by attaining to those forms of spiritual activity, it attains at the same time that to which it was _practically_ tending, as to its end, during the effort. nevertheless, economic or hedonistic satisfaction, ethical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, remain always distinct, even when in union. thus is solved at the same time the much-debated question, which has seemed, not wrongly, a matter of life or death for aesthetic science, namely, whether the feeling and the pleasure precede or follow, are cause or effect of the aesthetic fact. we must enlarge this question, to include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and solve it in the sense that in the unity of the spirit one cannot talk of cause and effect and of what comes first and what follows it in time. and once the relation above exposed is established, the statements, which it is customary to make, as to the nature of aesthetic, moral, intellectual, and even, as is sometimes said, economic feelings, must also fall. in this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one, and the quest of economic feeling can be but that same one concerning the economic activity. but in the other cases also, the search can never be directed to the substantive, but to the adjective: aesthetic, morality, logic, explain the colouring of the feelings as aesthetic, moral, and intellectual, while feeling, studied alone, will never explain those refractions. [sidenote] _meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._ a further consequence is, that we can free ourselves from the distinction between values or feelings _of value_, and feelings that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; also from other similar distinctions, like those between _disinterested_ feelings and _interested_ feelings, between _objective _feelings and the others that are not _objective_ but simply _subjective_, between feelings of _approval_ and others of _mere pleasure_ (_gefallen_ and _vergnã¼gen_ of the germans). those distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritual forms, which have been recognised as the triad of the _true_, the _good_, and the _beautiful_, from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother of scandals. for us this triad has finished its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming even the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among the respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were conceived of by ourselves and others, between value and feelings, as between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but difference between value and value. [sidenote] _value and disvalue: the contraries and their union._ as has already been said, the economic feeling or activity reveals itself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure and pain, which we can now translate into useful, and useless or hurtful. this bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of the active character of feeling, precisely because the same bipartition is found in all forms of activity. if each of these is a _value_, each has opposed to it _antivalue or disvalue_. absence of value is not sufficient to cause disvalue, but activity and passivity must be struggling between themselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence the contradiction, and the disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed, contested, or interrupted. value is activity that unfolds itself freely: disvalue is its contrary. we will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, without entering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue, that is, between the problem of contraries. (are these to be thought of dualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like ormuzd and ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, which is also contrariety?) this definition of the two terms will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear aesthetic activity in particular, and one of the most obscure and disputed concepts of aesthetic which arises at this point: the concept of the _beautiful_. [sidenote] _the beautiful as the value of expression, or expression and nothing more._ aesthetic, intellectual, economic, and ethical values and disvalues are variously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good, useful, just_, and so on--these words designate the free development of spiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production, when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad, useless, unbecoming, unjust, inexact_ designate embarrassed activity, the product of which is a failure. in linguistic usage, these denominations are being continually shifted from one order of facts to another, and from this to that. _beautiful_, for instance, is said not only of a successful expression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully achieved, and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectual beauty_, of a _beautiful action_, of a _moral beauty_. many philosophers, especially aestheticians, have lost their heads in their pursuit of these most varied uses: they have entered an inextricable and impervious verbal labyrinth. for this reason it has hitherto seemed convenient studiously to avoid the use of the word beautiful to indicate successful expression. but after all the explanations that have been given, and all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and since, on the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize that the prevailing tendency, alike in current speech and in philosophy, is to limit the meaning of the vocable _beautiful_ altogether to the aesthetic value, we may define beauty as _successful expression_, or better, as _expression_ and nothing more, because expression, when it is not successful, is not expression. [sidenote] _the ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it._ consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. the paradox is true, that, in works of art that are failures, the beautiful is present as _unity_ and the ugly as _multiplicity_. thus, with regard to works of art that are more or less failures, we talk of qualities, that is to say of _those parts of them that are beautiful_. we do not talk thus of perfect works. it is in fact impossible to enumerate their qualities or to designate those parts of them that are beautiful. in them there is complete fusion: they have but one quality. life circulates in the whole organism: it is not withdrawn into certain parts. the qualities of works that are failures may be of various degrees. they may even be very great. the beautiful does not possess degrees, for there is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. ugliness, on the other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost beautiful) to the extremely ugly. but if the ugly were _complete_, that is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reason cease to be ugly, because in it would be absent the contradiction which is the reason of its existence. the disvalue would become nonvalue; activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not at war, save when there effectively is war. [sidenote] _illusions that there exist expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly._ and because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the ugly is based on the contrasts and contradictions in which aesthetic activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest cases of expression. from this arises the illusion that there are expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without sensible effort and appear easy and natural being so considered. [sidenote] _true aesthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental feelings._ the whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to these henceforth most easy definitions. should any one object that there exist perfect aesthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, it is necessary to advise him to pay great attention, as regards the aesthetic fact, to that only which is truly aesthetic pleasure. aesthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced by pleasures arising from extraneous facts, which are only casually found united with it. the poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely aesthetic pleasure, during the moment in which he sees (or has the intuition of) his work for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. on the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amusement, and that of laughingly snatching a nail from the gaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aesthetic pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. the same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure, when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. examples could be multiplied. [sidenote] _critique of apparent feelings._ a category of _apparent_ aesthetic feelings has been formed in modern aesthetic. these have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations of pleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. on the contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. it has been observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite variety and gradations. we tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melody of music. but these feelings are not those that would give occasion to the real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality, but they are quantitively an attenuation. aesthetic and _apparent_ pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable." we have no need to treat of these _apparent feelings_, for the good reason that we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of them alone. what are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, but feelings objectified, intensified, expressed? and it is natural that they do not trouble and agitate us passionately, as do those of real life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. the formula, then, of _apparent feelings_ is nothing but a tautology. the best that can be done is to run the pen through it. xi critique of aesthetic hedonism as we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theory which is based on the pleasure and pain intrinsic to economy and accompanies every other form of activity, confounding the content and that which contains it, and fails to recognize any process but the hedonistic; so we are opposed to aesthetic hedonism in particular, which looks upon the aesthetic at any rate, if not also upon all other activities, as a simple fact of feeling, and confounds the _pleasurable of expression_, which is the beautiful, with the pleasurable and nothing more, and with the pleasurable of all sorts. [sidenote] _critique of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher senses._ the aesthetic-hedonistic point of view has been presented in several forms. one of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that which pleases the sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called superior senses. when analysis of aesthetic facts first began, it was, in fact, difficult to avoid the mistake of thinking that a picture and a piece of music are impressions of sight or of hearing: it was and is an indisputable fact that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor the deaf man the music. to show, as we have shown, that the aesthetic fact does not depend upon the nature of the impressions, but that all sensible impressions can be raised to aesthetic expression and that none need of necessity be so raised, is an idea which presents itself only when all the other ways out of the difficulty have been tried. but whoso imagines that the aesthetic fact is something pleasing to the eyes or to the hearing, has no line of defence against him who proceeds logically to identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in general, and includes cooking in aesthetic, or, as some positivist has done, the viscerally beautiful. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of play._ the theory of _play_ is another form of aesthetic hedonism. the conception of play has sometimes helped towards the realization of the actifying character of the expressive fact: man (it has been said) is not really man, save when he begins to play; that is to say, when he frees himself from natural and mechanical causality and operates spiritually; and his first game is art. but since the word _play_ also means that pleasure which arises from the expenditure of the exuberant energy of the organism (that is to say, from a practical act), the consequence of this theory has been, that every game has been called an aesthetic fact, and that the aesthetic function has been called a game, in so far as it is possible to play with it, for, like science and every other thing, aesthetic can be made part of a game. but morality cannot be provoked at the intention of playing, on the ground that it does not consent; on the contrary, it dominates and regulates the act of playing itself. [sidenote] _critique of the theories of sexuality and of the triumph._ finally, there have been some who have tried to deduce the pleasure of art from the reaction of the sexual organs. there are some very modern aestheticians who place the genesis of the aesthetic fact in the pleasure of _conquering_, of _triumphing_, or, as others add, in the desire of the male, who wishes to conquer the female. this theory is seasoned with much anecdotal erudition, heaven knows of what degree of credibility! on the customs of savage peoples. but in very truth there was no necessity for such important aid, for one often meets in ordinary life poets who adorn themselves with their poetry, like cocks that raise their crests, or turkeys that spread their tails. but he who does such things, in so far as he does them, is not a poet, but a poor devil of a cock or turkey. the conquest of woman does not suffice to explain the art fact. it would be just as correct to term poetry _economic_, because there have been aulic and stipendiary poets, and there are poets the sale of whose verses helps them to gain their livelihood, if it does not altogether provide it. however, this definition has not failed to win over some zealous neophytes of historical materialism. [sidenote] _critique of the aesthetic of the sympathetic. meaning in it of content and form._ another less vulgar current of thought considers aesthetic to be the science of the _sympathetic_, of that with which we sympathize, which attracts, rejoices, gives us pleasure and excites admiration. but the sympathetic is nothing but the image or representation of what pleases. and, as such, it is a complex fact, resulting from a constant element, the aesthetic element of representation, and from a variable element, the pleasing in its infinite forms, arising from all the various classes of values. in ordinary language, there is sometimes a feeling of repugnance at calling an expression beautiful, which is not an expression of the sympathetic. hence the continual contrast between the point of view of the aesthetician or of the art critic and that of the ordinary person, who cannot succeed in persuading himself that the image of pain and of turpitude can be beautiful, or, at least, can be beautiful with as much right as the pleasing and the good. the opposition could be solved by distinguishing two different sciences, one of expression and the other of the sympathetic, if the latter could be the object of a special science; that is to say, if it were not, as has been shown, a complex fact. if predominance be given to the expressive fact, it becomes a part of aesthetic as science of expression; if to the pleasurable content, we fall back to the study of facts which are essentially hedonistic (utilitarian), however complicated they may appear. the origin, also, of the connexion between content and form is to be sought for in the aesthetic of the sympathetic, when this is conceived as the sum of two values. [sidenote] _aesthetic hedonism and moralism._ in all the doctrines just now discussed, the art fact is posited as merely hedonistic. but this view cannot be maintained, save by uniting it with a philosophic hedonism that is complete and not partial, that is to say, with a hedonism which does not admit any other form of value. hardly has this hedonistic conception of art been received by philosophers, who admit one or more spiritual values, of truth or of morality, than the following question must necessarily be asked: what should be done with art? to what use should it be put? should a free course be allowed to its pleasures? and if so, to what extent? the question of the _end of art_, which in the aesthetic of expression would be a contradiction of terms, here appears in place, and altogether logical. [sidenote] _the rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of art._ now it is evident that, admitting the premisses, but two solutions of such a question can be given, the one altogether negative, the other restrictive. the first, which we shall call _rigoristic_ or _ascetic_, appears several times, although not frequently, in the history of ideas. it looks upon art as an inebriation of the senses, and therefore, not only useless, but harmful. according to this theory, then, it is necessary to drive it with all our strength from the human soul, which it troubles. the other solution, which we shall call _pedagogic_ or _moralistico-utilitarian_, admits art, but only in so far as it concurs with the end of morality; in so far as it assists with innocent pleasure the work of him who leads to the true and the good; in so far as it sprinkles with dulcet balm the sides of the vase of wisdom and of morality. it is well to observe that it would be an error to divide this second view into intellectualist and moralistico-utilitarian, according to whether the end of leading to the true or to what is practically good, be assigned to art. the task of instructing, which is imposed upon it, precisely because it is an end which is sought after and advised, is no longer merely a theoretical fact, but a theoretical fact become the material for practical action; it is not, therefore, intellectualism, but pedagogism and practicism. nor would it be more exact to subdivide the pedagogic view into the pure utilitarian and the moralistico-utilitarian; because those who admit only the individually useful (the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ulterior justification for art. but to enunciate these theories at the point to which we have attained is to confute them. we therefore restrict ourselves to observing that in the pedagogic theory of art is to be found another of the reasons why it has been erroneously claimed that the content of art should be _chosen_ with a view to certain practical effects. [sidenote] _critique of pure beauty._ the thesis, re-echoed by the artists, that art consists of _pure beauty_, has often been brought forward against hedonistic and pedagogic aesthetic: "heaven places all our joy in _pure beauty_, and the verse is everything." if it is wished that this should be understood in the sense that art is not to be confounded with sensual pleasure, that is, in fact, with utilitarian practicism, nor with moralism, then our aesthetic also must be permitted to adorn itself with the title of _aesthetic of pure beauty_. but if (as is often the case) something mystical and transcendental be meant by this, something that is unknown to our poor human world, or something spiritual and beatific, but not expressive, we must reply that while applauding the conception of a beauty, free of all that is not the spiritual form of expression, we are yet unable to conceive a beauty altogether purified of expression, that is to say, separated from itself. xii the aesthetic of the sympathetic and pseudo-aesthetic concepts [sidenote] _pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the aesthetic of the sympathetic._ the doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded in this by the capricious metaphysical and mystical aesthetic, and by that blind tradition which assumes an intimate connection between things by chance treated of together by the same authors and in the same books), has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of aesthetic, a series of concepts, of which one example suffices to justify our resolute expulsion of them from our own treatise. their catalogue is long, not to say interminable: _tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic, humoristic, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble, decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac, cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting, dreadful, nauseating_; the list can be increased at will. since that doctrine took as its special object the sympathetic, it was naturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of this, or any of the combinations or gradations which lead at last from the sympathetic to the antipathetic. and seeing that the sympathetic content was held to be the _beautiful_ and the antipathetic the _ugly_, the varieties (tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, etc.) constituted for it the shades and gradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of the ugly surmounted._ having enumerated and defined, as well as it could, the chief among these varieties, the aesthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem of the place to be assigned to the _ugly in art_. this problem is without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the anti-aesthetic or inexpressive, which can never form part of the aesthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its antithesis. but the question for the doctrine which we are here criticizing was to reconcile in some way the false and defective idea of art from which it started, reduced to the representation of the agreeable, with effective art, which occupies a far wider field. hence the artificial attempt to settle what examples of the ugly (antipathetic) could be admitted in artistic representation, and for what reasons, and in what ways. the answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be _overcome_, an unconquerable ugliness, such as the _disgusting_ or the _nauseating_, being altogether excluded. further, that the duty of the ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening the effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of contrasts, from which the pleasurable shall issue more efficacious and pleasure-giving. it is, in fact, a common observation that pleasure is more vividly felt when it has been preceded by abstinence or by suffering. thus the ugly in art was looked upon as the servant of the beautiful, its stimulant and condiment. that special theory of hedonistic refinement, which used to be pompously called the _surmounting of the ugly_, falls with the general theory of the sympathetic; and with it the enumeration and the definition of the concepts mentioned above remain completely excluded from aesthetic. for aesthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic in their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of the representation. [sidenote] _pseudo-aesthetic concepts belong to psychology._ however, the large space which, as we have said, those concepts have hitherto occupied in aesthetic treatises makes opportune a rather more copious explanation of what they are. what will be their lot? as they are excluded from aesthetic, in what other part of philosophy will they be received? truly, in none. all those concepts are without philosophical value. they are nothing but a series of classes, which can be bent in the most various ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is sought to reduce the infinite complications and shadings of the values and disvalues of life. of those classes, there are some that have an especially positive significance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic, the solemn, the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others have a significance especially negative, like the ugly, the horrible, the dreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the foolish, the extravagant; in others prevails a mixed significance, as is the case with the comic, the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic. the complications are infinite, because the individuations are infinite; hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in the arbitrary and approximate manner of the natural sciences, whose duty it is to make as good a plan as possible of that reality which they cannot exhaust by enumeration, nor understand and surpass speculatively. and since _psychology_ is the naturalistic discipline, which undertakes to construct types and plans of the spiritual processes of man (of which, in fact, it is always accentuating in our day the merely empirical and descriptive character), these concepts do not appertain to aesthetic, nor, in general, to philosophy. they must simply be handed over to psychology. [sidenote] _impossibility of rigoristic definitions of them._ as is the case with all other psychological constructions, so is it with those concepts: no rigorous definitions are possible; and consequently the one cannot be deduced from the other and they cannot be connected in a system, as has, nevertheless, often been attempted, at great waste of time and without result. but it can be claimed as possible to obtain, apart from philosophical definitions recognised as impossible, empirical definitions, universally acceptable as true. since there does not exist a unique definition of a given fact, but innumerable definitions can be given of it, according to the cases and the objects for which they are made, so it is clear that if there were only one, and that the true one, this would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical definition. speaking exactly, every time that one of the terms to which we have referred has been employed, or any other of the innumerable series, a definition of it has at the same time been given, expressed or understood. and each one of these definitions has differed somewhat from the others, in some particular, perhaps of very small importance, such as tacit reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became especially an object of attention and was raised to the position of a general type. so it happens that not one of such definitions satisfies him who hears it, nor does it satisfy even him who constructs it. for, the moment after, this same individual finds himself face to face with a new case, for which he recognizes that his definition is more or less insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of remodelling. it is necessary, therefore, to leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or the comic, the tragic or the humoristic, on every occasion, as they please and as may seem suitable to their purpose. and if you insist upon obtaining an empirical definition of universal validity, we can but submit this one:--the sublime (comic, tragic, humoristic, etc.) is _everything_ that is or will be so _called_ by those who have employed or shall employ this _word_. [sidenote] _examples: definitions of the sublime, the comic, and the humoristic._ what is the sublime? the unexpected affirmation of an ultra-powerful moral force: that is one definition. but that other definition is equally good, which also recognizes the sublime where the force which declares itself is an ultra-powerful, but immoral and destructive will. both remain vague and assume no precise form, until they are applied to a concrete case, which makes clear what is here meant by _ultra-powerful_, and what by _unexpected_. they are quantitative concepts, but falsely quantitative, since there is no way of measuring them; they are, at bottom, metaphors, emphatic phrases, or logical tautologies. the humorous will be laughter mingled with tears, bitter laughter, the sudden passage from the comic to the tragic, and from the tragic to the comic, the comic romantic, the inverted sublime, war declared against every attempt at insincerity, compassion which is ashamed to lament, the mockery not of the fact, but of the ideal itself; and whatever else may better please, according as it is desired to get a view of the physiognomy of this or that poet, of this or that poem, which is, in its uniqueness, its own definition, and though momentary and circumscribed, yet the sole adequate. the comic has been defined as the displeasure arising from the perception of a deformity immediately followed by a greater pleasure arising from the relaxation of our psychical forces, which were strained in anticipation of a perception whose importance was foreseen. while listening to a narrative, which, for example, should describe the magnificent and heroic purpose of a definite person, we anticipate in imagination the occurrence of an action both heroic and magnificent, and we prepare ourselves to receive it, by straining our psychic forces. if, however, in a moment, instead of the magnificent and heroic action, which the premises and the tone of the narrative had led us to expect, by an unexpected change there occur a slight, mean, foolish action, unequal to our expectation, we have been deceived, and the recognition of the deceit brings with it an instant of displeasure. but this instant is as it were overcome by the one immediately following, in which we are able to discard our strained attention, to free ourselves from the provision of psychic energy accumulated and, henceforth superfluous, to feel ourselves reasonable and relieved of a burden. this is the pleasure of the comic, with its physiological equivalent, laughter. if the unpleasant fact that has occurred should painfully affect our interests, pleasure would not arise, laughter would be at once choked, the psychic energy would be strained and overstrained by other more serious perceptions. if, on the other hand, such more serious perceptions do not arise, if the whole loss be limited to a slight deception of our foresight, then the supervening feeling of our psychic wealth affords ample compensation for this very slight displeasure.--this, stated in a few words, is one of the most accurate modern definitions of the comic. it boasts of containing, justified or corrected, the manifold attempts to define the comic, from hellenic antiquity to our own day. it includes plato's dictum in the _philebus_, and aristotle's, which is more explicit. the latter looks upon the comic as an _ugliness without pain_. it contains the theory of hobbes, who placed it in the feeling of _individual superiority_; of kant, who saw in it a _relaxation of tension_; and those of other thinkers, for whom it was _the contrast between great and small, between the finite and the infinite_. but on close observation, the analysis and definition above given, although most elaborate and rigorous in appearance, yet enunciates characteristics which are applicable, not only to the comic, but to every spiritual process; such as the succession of painful and agreeable moments and the satisfaction arising from the consciousness of force and of its free development. the differentiation here given is that of quantitative determinations, to which limits cannot be assigned. they remain vague phrases, attaining to some meaning from their reference to this or that single comic fact. if such definitions be taken too seriously, there happens to them what jean paul richter said of all the definitions of the comic: namely, that their sole merit is _to be themselves comic_ and to produce, in reality, the fact, which they vainly try to define logically. and who will ever determine logically the dividing line between the comic and the non-comic, between smiles and laughter, between smiling and gravity; who will cut into clearly divided parts that ever-varying continuity into which life melts? [sidenote] _relations between those concepts and aesthetic concepts._ the facts, classified as well as possible in the above-quoted psychological concepts, bear no relation to the artistic fact, beyond the generic that all of them, in so far as they designate the material of life, can be represented by art; and the other accidental relation, that aesthetic facts also may sometimes enter into the processes described, as in the impression of the sublime that the work of a titanic artist such as dante or shakespeare may produce, and that of the comic produced by the effort of a dauber or of a scribbler. the process is external to the aesthetic fact in this case also; for the only feeling linked with that is the feeling of aesthetic value and disvalue, of the beautiful and of the ugly. the dantesque farinata is aesthetically beautiful, and nothing but beautiful: if, in addition, the force of will of this personage appear sublime, or the expression that dante gives him, by reason of his great genius, seem sublime by comparison with that of a less energetic poet, all this is not a matter for aesthetic consideration. this consists always and only in adequation to truth; that is, in beauty. xiii the so-called physically beautiful in nature and art [sidenote] _aesthetic activity and physical concepts._ aesthetic activity is distinct from practical activity but when it expresses itself is always physical accompanied by practical activity. hence its utilitarian or hedonistic side, and the pleasure and pain, which are, as it were, the practical echo of aesthetic values and disvalues, of the beautiful and of the ugly. but this practical side of the aesthetic activity has also, in its turn, a _physical_ or _psychophysical_ accompaniment, which consists of sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, and so on. does it _really_ possess this side, or does it only seem to possess it, as the result of the construction which we raise in physical science, and of the useful and arbitrary methods, which we have shown to be proper to the empirical and abstract sciences? our reply cannot be doubtful, that is, it cannot be affirmative as to the first of the two hypotheses. however, it will be better to leave it at this point in suspense, for it is not at present necessary to prosecute this line of inquiry any further. the mention already made must suffice to prevent our having spoken of the physical element as of something objective and existing, for reasons of simplicity and adhesion to ordinary language, from leading to hasty conclusions as to the concepts and the connexion between spirit and nature. [sidenote] _expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense._ it is important to make clear that as the existence of the hedonistic side in every spiritual activity has given rise to the confusion between the aesthetic activity and the useful or pleasurable, so the existence, or, better, the possibility of constructing this physical side, has generated the confusion between _aesthetic_ expression and expression _in the naturalistic sense_; between a spiritual fact, that is to say, and a mechanical and passive fact (not to say, between a concrete reality and an abstraction or fiction). in common speech, sometimes it is the words of the poet that are called _expressions_, the notes of the musician, or the figures of the painter; sometimes the blush which is wont to accompany the feeling of shame, the pallor resulting from fear, the grinding of the teeth proper to violent anger, the glittering of the eyes, and certain movements of the muscles of the mouth, which reveal cheerfulness. a certain degree of heat is also said to be the _expression_ of fever, as the falling of the barometer is of rain, and even that the height of the rate of exchange _expresses_ the discredit of the paper-money of a state, or social discontent the approach of a revolution. one can well imagine what sort of scientific results would be attained by allowing oneself to be governed by linguistic usage and placing in one sheaf facts so widely different. but there is, in fact, an abyss between a man who is the prey of anger with all its natural manifestations, and another man who expresses it aesthetically; between the aspect, the cries, and the contortions of one who is tortured with sorrow at the loss of a dear one, and the words or song with which the same individual portrays his torture at another moment; between the distortion of emotion and the gesture of the actor. darwin's book on the expression of the feelings in man and animals does not belong to aesthetic; because there is nothing in common between the science of spiritual expression and a _semiotic_, whether it be medical, meteorological, political, physiognomic, or chiromantic. expression in the naturalistic sense simply lacks expression in the spiritual sense, that is to say, the characteristic itself of activity and of spirituality, and therefore the bipartition into poles of beauty and of ugliness. it is nothing more than a relation between cause and effect, fixed by the abstract intellect. the complete process of aesthetic production can be symbolized in four steps, which are: _a_, impressions; _b_, expression or spiritual aesthetic synthesis; _c_, hedonistic accompaniment, or pleasure of the beautiful (aesthetic pleasure); _d_, translation of the aesthetic fact into physical phenomena (sounds, tones, movements, combinations of lines and colours, etc.). anyone can see that the capital point, the only one that is properly speaking aesthetic and truly real, is in that _b_, which is lacking to the mere manifestation or naturalistic construction, metaphorically also called expression. the expressive process is exhausted when those four steps have been taken. it begins again with new impressions, a new aesthetic synthesis, and relative accompaniments. [sidenote] _intuitions and memory._ expressions or representations follow and expel one another. certainly, this passing away, this disassociation, is not perishing, it is not total elimination: nothing of what is born dies with that complete death which would be identical with never having been born. though all things pass away, yet none can die. the representations which we have forgotten, also persist in some way in our spirit, for without them we could not explain acquired habits and capacities. thus, the strength of life lies in this apparent forgetting: one forgets what has been absorbed and what life has superseded. but many other things, many other representations, are still efficacious elements in the actual processes of our spirit; and it is incumbent on us not to forget them, or to be capable of recalling them when necessity demands them. the will is always vigilant in this work of preservation, for it aims at preserving (so to say) the greater and more fundamental part of all our riches. certainly its vigilance is not always sufficient. memory, we know, leaves or betrays us in various ways. for this very reason, the vigilant will excogitates expedients, which help memory in its weakness, and are its _aids_. [sidenote] _the production of aids to memory._ we have already explained how these aids are possible. expressions or representations are, at the same time, practical facts, which are also called physical facts, in so far as to the physical belongs the task of classifying them and reducing them to types. now it is clear, that if we can succeed in making those facts in some way permanent, it will always be possible (other conditions remaining equal) to reproduce in us, by perceiving it, the already produced expression or intuition. if that in which the practical concomitant acts, or (to use physical terms) the movements have been isolated and made in some sort permanent, be called the object or physical stimulus, and if it be designated by the letter _e_; then the process of reproduction will take place in the following order: _e_, the physical stimulus; _d-b_, perceptions of physical facts (sounds, tones, mimic, combinations of lines and colours, etc.), which form together the aesthetic synthesis, already produced; _c_, the hedonistic accompaniment, which is also reproduced. and what are those combinations of words which are called poetry, prose, poems, novels, romances, tragedies or comedies, but _physical stimulants of reproduction_ (the _e_ stage); what are those combinations of sound which are called operas, symphonies, sonatas; and what those of lines and of colours, which are called pictures, statues, architecture? the spiritual energy of memory, with the assistance of those physical facts above mentioned, makes possible the preservation and the reproduction of the intuitions produced, often so laboriously, by ourselves and by others. if the physiological organism, and with it memory, become weakened; if the monuments of art be destroyed; then all the aesthetic wealth, the fruit of the labours of many generations, becomes lessened and rapidly disappears. [sidenote] _the physically beautiful._ monuments of art, which are the stimulants of aesthetic reproduction, are called _beautiful things or the physically beautiful_. this combination of words constitutes a verbal paradox, because the beautiful is not a physical fact; it does not belong to things, but to the activity of man, to spiritual energy. but henceforth it is clear through what wanderings and what abbreviations, physical things and facts, which are simply aids to the reproduction of the beautiful, end by being called, elliptically, beautiful things and physically beautiful. and now that we have made the existence of this ellipse clear, we shall ourselves make use of it without hesitation. [sidenote] _content and form: another meaning._ the intervention of the physically beautiful serves to explain another meaning of the words _content and form_, as employed by aestheticians. some call "content" the internal fact or expression (which is for us already form), and they call "form" the marble, the colours, the rhythm, the sounds (for us form no longer); thus they look upon the physical fact as the form, which may or may not be joined to the content. this serves to explain another aspect of what is called aesthetic ugliness. he who has nothing definite to express may try to hide his internal emptiness with a flood of words, with sounding verse, with deafening polyphony, with painting that dazzles the eye, or by collocating great architectonic masses, which arrest and disturb, although, at bottom, they convey nothing. ugliness, then, is the arbitrary, the charlatanesque; and, in reality, if the practical will do not intervene in the theoretic function, there may be absence of beauty, but never effective presence of the ugly. [sidenote] _natural and artificial beauty._ physical beauty is wont to be divided into _natural_ and _artificial_ beauty. thus we reach one of the facts, which has given great labour to thinkers: _the beautiful in nature_. these words often designate simply facts of practical pleasure. he alludes to nothing aesthetic who calls a landscape beautiful where the eye rests upon verdure, where bodily motion is easy, and where the warm sun-ray envelops and caresses the limbs. but it is nevertheless indubitable, that on other occasions the adjective "beautiful," applied to objects and scenes existing in nature, has a completely aesthetic signification. it has been observed, that in order to enjoy natural objects aesthetically, we should withdraw them from their external and historical reality, and separate their simple appearance or origin from existence; that if we contemplate a landscape with our head between our legs, in such a way as to remove ourselves from our wonted relations with it, the landscape appears as an ideal spectacle; that nature is beautiful only for him who contemplates her _with the eye of the artist_; that zoologists and botanists do not recognize beautiful animals and flowers; that natural beauty is _discovered_ (and examples of discovery are the points of view, pointed out by men of taste and imagination, and to which more or less aesthetic travellers and excursionists afterwards have recourse in pilgrimage, whence a more or less collective _suggestion_); that, _without the aid of the imagination_, no part of nature is beautiful, and that with such aid the same natural object or fact is now expressive, according to the disposition of the soul, now insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now of another, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that _natural beauty_, which an artist would not _to some extent correct, does not exist_. all these observations are most just, and confirm the fact that natural beauty is simply a _stimulus_ to aesthetic reproduction, which presupposes previous production. without preceding aesthetic intuitions of the imagination, nature cannot arouse any at all. as regards natural beauty, man is like the mythical narcissus at the fountain. they show further that since this stimulus is accidental, it is, for the most part, imperfect or equivocal. leopardi said that natural beauty is "rare, scattered, and fugitive." every one refers the natural fact to the expression which is in his mind. one artist is, as it were, carried away by a laughing landscape, another by a rag-shop, another by the pretty face of a young girl, another by the squalid countenance of an old ruffian. perhaps the first will say that the rag-shop and the ugly face of the old ruffian are _disgusting_; the second, that the laughing landscape and the face of the young girl are _insipid_. they may dispute for ever; but they will never agree, save when they have supplied themselves with a sufficient dose of aesthetic knowledge, which will enable them to recognize that they are both right. _artificial_ beauty, created by man, is a much more ductile and efficacious aid to reproduction. [sidenote] _mixed beauty._ in addition to these two classes, aestheticians also sometimes talk in their treatises of a _mixed_ beauty. of what is it a mixture? just of natural and artificial. whoso fixes and externalizes, operates with natural materials, which he does not create, but combines and transforms. in this sense, every artificial product is a mixture of nature and artifice; and there would be no occasion to speak of a mixed beauty, as of a special category. but it happens that, in certain cases, combinations already given in nature can be used a great deal more than in others; as, for instance, when we design a beautiful garden and include in our design groups of trees or ponds which are already there. on other occasions externalization is limited by the impossibility of producing certain effects artificially. thus we may mix the colouring matters, but we cannot create a powerful voice or a personage and an appearance appropriate to this or that personage of a drama. we must therefore seek for them among things already existing, and make use of them when we find them. when, therefore, we adopt a great number of combinations already existing in nature, such as we should not be able to produce artificially if they did not exist, the result is called _mixed_ beauty. [sidenote] _writings._ we must distinguish from artificial beauty those instruments of reproduction called _writings_, such as alphabets, musical notes, hieroglyphics, and all pseudo-languages, from the language of flowers and flags, to the language of patches (so much the vogue in the society of the eighteenth century). writings are not physical facts which arouse directly impressions answering to aesthetic expressions; they are simple _indications_ of what must be done in order to produce such physical facts. a series of graphic signs serves to remind us of the movements which we must execute with our vocal apparatus in order to emit certain definite sounds. if, through practice, we become able to hear the words without opening our mouths and (what is much more difficult) to hear the sounds by running the eye down the page of the music, all this does not alter anything of the nature of the writings, which are altogether different from direct physical beauty. no one calls the book which contains the _divine comedy_, or the portfolio which contains _don giovanni_, beautiful in the same sense as the block of marble which contains michael angelo's _moses_, or the piece of coloured wood which contains the _transfiguration_ are metaphorically called beautiful. both serve for the reproduction of the beautiful, but the former by a far longer and far more indirect route than the latter. [sidenote] _the beautiful as free and not free._ another division of the beautiful, which is still found in treatises, is that into _free and not free_. by beauties that are not free, are understood those objects which have to serve a double purpose, extra-aesthetic and aesthetic (stimulants of intuitions); and since it appears that the first purpose limits and impedes the second, the beautiful object resulting therefrom has been considered as a beauty that is not free. architectural works are especially cited; and precisely for this reason, has architecture often been excluded from the number of the so-called fine arts. a temple must be above all things adapted to the use of a cult; a house must contain all the rooms requisite for commodity of living, and they must be arranged with a view to this commodity; a fortress must be a construction capable of resisting the attacks of certain armies and the blows of certain instruments of war. it is therefore held that the architect's field is limited: he may be able to _embellish_ to some extent the temple, the house, the fortress; but his hands are bound by the _object_ of these buildings, and he can only manifest that part of his vision of beauty in their construction which does not impair their extrinsic, but fundamental, objects. other examples are taken from what is called art applied to industry. plates, glasses, knives, guns, and combs can be made beautiful; but it is held that their beauty must not so far exceed as to prevent our eating from the plate, drinking from the glass, cutting with the knife, firing off the gun, or combing one's hair with the comb. the same is said of the art of printing: a book should be beautiful, but not to the extent of its being difficult or impossible to read it. [sidenote] _critique of the beautiful that is not free._ in respect to all this, we must observe, in the first place, that the external purpose, precisely because it is such, does not of necessity limit or trammel the other purpose of being a stimulus to aesthetic reproduction. nothing, therefore, can be more erroneous than the thesis that architecture, for example, is by its nature not free and imperfect, since it must also fulfil other practical objects. beautiful architectural works, however, themselves undertake to deny this by their simple presence. in the second place, not only are the two objects not necessarily in opposition; but, we must add, the artist always has the means of preventing this contradiction from taking place. in what way? by taking, as the material of his intuition and aesthetic externalization, precisely the _destination_ of the object, which serves a practical end. he will not need to add anything to the object, in order to make it the instrument of aesthetic intuitions: it will be so, if perfectly adapted to its practical purpose. rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and barracks, swords and ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are embellished and adorned, but in so far as they express the purpose for which they were made. a garment is only beautiful because it is quite suitable to a given person in given conditions. the sword bound to the side of the warrior rinaldo by the amorous armida was not beautiful: "so adorned that it seemed a useless ornament, not the warlike instrument of a warrior." it was beautiful, if you will, in the eyes and imagination of the sorceress, who loved her lover in this effeminate way. the aesthetic fact can always accompany the practical fact, because expression is truth. it cannot, however, be denied that aesthetic contemplation sometimes hinders practical use. for instance, it is a quite common experience to find certain new things so well adapted to their purpose, and yet so beautiful, that people occasionally feel scruples in maltreating them by using after contemplating them, which amounts to consuming them. it was for this reason that king frederick william of prussia evinced repugnance to ordering his magnificent grenadiers, so well suited for war, to endure the strain of battle; but his less aesthetic son, frederick the great, obtained from them excellent services. [sidenote] _the stimulants of production._ it might be objected to the explanation of the physically beautiful as a simple adjunct for the reproduction of the internally beautiful, that is to say, of expressions, that the artist creates his expressions by painting or by sculpturing, by writing or by composing, and that therefore the physically beautiful, instead of following, sometimes precedes the aesthetically beautiful. this would be a somewhat superficial mode of understanding the procedure of the artist, who never makes a stroke with his brush without having previously seen it with his imagination; and if he has not yet seen it, he will make the stroke, not in order to externalize his expression (which does not yet exist), but as though to have a rallying point for ulterior meditation and for internal concentration. the physical point on which he leans is not the physically beautiful, instrument of reproduction, but what may be called a pedagogic means, similar to retiring into solitude, or to the many other expedients, frequently very strange, adopted by artists and philosophers, who vary in these according to their various idiosyncrasies. the old aesthetician baumgarten advised poets to ride on horseback, as a means of inspiration, to drink wine in moderation, and (provided they were chaste) to look at beautiful women. xiv mistakes arising from the confusion between physic and aesthetic it is necessary to mention a series of scientific mistakes which have arisen from the failure to understand the purely external relation between the aesthetic fact or artistic vision, and the physical fact or instrument, which serves as an aid to reproduce it. we must here indicate the proper criticism, which derives from what has already been said. [sidenote] _critique of aesthetic associationism_ that form of associationism which identifies the aesthetic fact with the _association of two_ images finds a place among these errors. by what path has it been possible to arrive at such a mistake, against which our aesthetic consciousness, which is a consciousness of perfect unity, never of duality, rebels? just because the physical and the aesthetic facts have been considered separately, as two distinct images, which enter the spirit, the one drawn forth from the other, the one first and the other afterwards. a picture is divided into the image of the _picture_ and the image of the _meaning_ of the picture; a poem, into the image of the words and the image of the _meaning_ of the words. but this dualism of images is non-existent: the physical fact does not enter the spirit as an image, but causes the reproduction of the image (the only image, which is the aesthetic fact), in so far as it blindly stimulates the psychic organism and produces an impression answering to the aesthetic expression already produced. the efforts of the associationists (the usurpers of to-day in the field of aesthetic) to emerge from the difficulty, and to reaffirm in some way the unity which has been destroyed by their principle of associationism, are highly instructive. some maintain that the image called back again is unconscious; others, leaving unconsciousness alone, hold that, on the contrary, it is vague, vaporous, confused, thus reducing the _force_ of the aesthetic fact to the _weakness_ of bad memory. but the dilemma is inexorable: either keep association and give up unity, or keep unity and give up association. no third way out of the difficulty exists. [sidenote] _critique of aesthetic physic._ from the failure to analyze so-called natural beauty thoroughly, and to recognize that it is simply an incident of aesthetic reproduction, and from having, on the contrary, looked upon it as given in nature, is derived all that portion of treatises upon aesthetic which is entitled _the beautiful in nature or aesthetic physic_; sometimes even subdivided, save the mark! into aesthetic mineralogy, botany, and zoology. we do not wish to deny that such treatises contain many just remarks, and are sometimes themselves works of art, in so far as they represent beautifully the imaginings and fantasies, that is the impressions, of their authors. but we must state that it is scientifically false to ask oneself if the dog be beautiful, and the ornithorhynchus ugly; if the lily be beautiful, and the artichoke ugly. indeed, the error is here double. on one hand, aesthetic physic falls back into the equivoke of the theory of artistic and literary classes, by attempting to determine aesthetically the abstractions of our intellect; on the other, fails to recognize, as we said, the true formation of so-called natural beauty; for which the question as to whether some given individual animal, flower, or man be beautiful or ugly, is altogether excluded. what is not produced by the aesthetic spirit, or cannot be referred to it, is neither beautiful nor ugly. the aesthetic process arises from the ideal relations in which natural objects are arranged. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body._ the double error can be exemplified by the question, upon which whole volumes have been written, as to the _beauty of the human body_. here it is necessary, above all things, to urge those who discuss this subject from the abstract toward the concrete, by asking: "what do you mean by the human body, that of the male, of the female, or of the androgyne?" let us assume that they reply by dividing the inquiry into two distinct inquiries, as to the virile and feminine beauty (there really are writers who seriously discuss whether man or woman is the more beautiful); and let us continue: "masculine or feminine beauty; but of what race of men--the white, the yellow, or the black, and whatever others there may be, according to the division of races?" let us assume that they limit themselves to the white race, and let us continue: "what sub-species of the white race?" and when we have restricted them gradually to one section of the white world, that is to say, to the italian, tuscan, siennese, or porta camollia section, we will continue: "very good; but at what age of the human body, and in what condition and state of development--that of the new-born babe, of the child, of the boy, of the adolescent, of the man of middle age, and so on? and is the man at rest or at work, or is he occupied as is paul potter's cow, or the ganymede of rembrandt?" having thus arrived, by successive reductions, at the individual _omnimode determinatum_, or, better, at the man pointed out with the finger, it will be easy to expose the other error, by recalling what has been said about the natural fact, which is now beautiful, now ugly, according to the point of view, according to what is passing in the mind of the artist. finally, if the gulf of naples have its detractors, and if there be artists who declare it inexpressive, preferring the "gloomy firs," the "clouds and perpetual north winds," of the northern seas; let it be believed, if possible, that such relativity does not exist for the human body, source of the most various suggestions! [sidenote] _critique of the beauty of geometric figures._ the question of the _beauty of geometrical figures_ is connected with aesthetic physic. but if by geometrical figures be understood the concepts of geometry, the concept of the triangle, the square, the cone, these are neither beautiful nor ugly: they are concepts. if, on the other hand, by such figures be understood bodies which possess definite geometrical forms, these will be ugly or beautiful, like every natural fact, according to the ideal connexions in which they are placed. some hold that those geometrical figures are beautiful which point upwards, since they give the suggestion of firmness and of force. it is not denied that such may be the case. but neither must it be denied that those also which give the impression of instability and of being crushed down may possess their beauty, where they represent just the ill-formed and the crushed; and that in these last cases the firmness of the straight line and the lightness of the cone or of the equilateral triangle would, on the contrary, seem elements of ugliness. certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty of geometry, like the others analogous of the historically beautiful and of human beauty, seem less absurd in the aesthetic of the sympathetic, which means, at bottom, by the words "aesthetic beauty" the representation of what is pleasing. but the pretension to determine scientifically what are the sympathetic contents, and what are the irremediably antipathetic, is none the less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after the laying down of those premises. one can only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely long postscript the _sunt quos_ of the first ode of the first book of horace, and the _havvi chi_ of leopardi's letter to carlo pepoli. to each man his beautiful ( = sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. philography is not a science. [sidenote] _critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature._ the artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. these are called his _models_: bodies, stuffs, flowers, and so on. let us run over the sketches, the studies, and the notes of the artists: leonardo noted down in his pocket-book, when he was working on the last supper: "giovannina, fantastic appearance, is at st. catherine's, at the hospital; cristofano di castiglione is at the pietã , he has a fine head; christ, giovan conte, is of the suite of cardinal mortaro." and so on. from this comes the illusion that the artist _imitates nature_; when it would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. the theory that _art imitates nature_ has sometimes been grounded upon and found sustenance in this illusion, as also its variant, more easily to be defended, which makes art the _idealizer of nature_. this last theory presents the process in a disorderly manner, indeed inversely to the true order; for the artist does not proceed from extrinsic reality, in order to modify it by approaching it to the ideal; but he proceeds from the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, to his ideal, and from this he passes to the natural fact, which he employs as the instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful._ another consequence of the confusion between the aesthetic and the physical fact is the theory of the _elementary forms of the beautiful_. if expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact, in which it externalizes itself, can well be divided and subdivided; for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words, and so on. the parts thus obtained are not aesthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, cut up in an arbitrary manner. if this path were followed, and the confusion persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true forms of the beautiful are _atoms_. the aesthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have _bulk_, could be invoked against the atoms. it cannot be the imperceptibility of the too small, nor the unapprehensibility of the too large. but a bigness which depends upon perceptibility, not measurement, derives from a concept widely different from the mathematical. for what is called imperceptible and incomprehensible does not produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the requisite of bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the effective reality of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful. [sidenote] _critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful._ continuing the search for the _physical laws_ or for the _objective conditions of the beautiful_, it has been asked: to what physical facts does the beautiful correspond? to what the ugly? to what unions of tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? such inquiries are as if in political economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. the constant infecundity of the attempt should have at once given rise to some suspicion as to its vanity. in our times, especially, has the necessity for an _inductive_ aesthetic been often proclaimed, of an aesthetic starting _from below_, which should proceed like natural science and not hasten its conclusions. inductive? but aesthetic has always been both inductive and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a true science. but the word "inductive" was not here pronounced accidentally and without special intention. it was wished to imply by its use that the aesthetic fact is nothing, at bottom, but a physical fact, which should be studied by applying to it the methods proper to the physical and natural sciences. with such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive aesthetic or aesthetic of the inferior (what pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. it has conscientiously begun by making a collection of _beautiful things_, for example of a great number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and has asked which of these give the impression of the beautiful and which of the ugly. as was to be expected, the inductive aestheticians speedily found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect would appear beautiful in another. a yellow, coarse envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is, however, just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped paper. this in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an irony, if enclosed in a square english envelope. such considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive aestheticians, that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause them to remit their vain and ridiculous quest. but no: they have had recourse to an expedient, as to which we would find it difficult to say how far it belongs to natural science. they have sent their envelopes round from one to the other and opened a _referendum_, thus striving to decide by the votes of the majority in what consists the beautiful and the ugly. we will not waste time over this argument, because we should seem to be turning ourselves into narrators of comic anecdotes rather than expositors of aesthetic science and of its problems. it is an actual fact, that the inductive aestheticians have not yet discovered _one single law_. [sidenote] _astrology of aesthetic._ he who dispenses with doctors is prone to abandon himself to charlatans. thus it has befallen those who have believed in the natural laws of the beautiful. artists sometimes adopt empirical canons, such as that of the proportions of the human body, or of the golden section, that is to say, of a line divided into two parts in such a manner that the less is to the greater as is the greater to the whole line (_bc: ac=ac: ab_). such canons easily become their superstitions, and they attribute to such the success of their works. thus michael angelo left as a precept to his disciple marco del pino of siena that "he should always make a pyramidal serpentine figure multiplied by one, two, three," a precept which did not enable marco di siena to emerge from that mediocrity which we can yet observe in his many works, here in naples. others extracted from the sayings of michael angelo the precept that serpentine undulating lines were the true _lines of beauty_. whole volumes have been composed on these laws of beauty, on the golden section and on the undulating and serpentine lines. these should in our opinion be looked upon as the _astrology of aesthetic_. xv the activity of externalization, technique and the theory of the arts [sidenote] _the practical activity of externalization._ the fact of the production of the physically beautiful implies, as has already been remarked, a vigilant will, which persists in not allowing certain visions, intuitions, or representations, to be lost. such a will must be able to act with the utmost rapidity, and as it were instinctively, and also be capable of long and laborious deliberations. thus and only thus does the practical activity enter into relations with the aesthetic, that is to say, in effecting the production of physical objects, which are aids to memory. here it is not merely a concomitant, but really a distinct moment of the aesthetic activity. we cannot will or not will our aesthetic vision: we can, however, will or not will to externalize it, or better, to preserve and communicate, or not, to others, the externalization produced. [sidenote] _the technique of externalization._ this volitional fact of externalization is preceded by a complex of various kinds of knowledge. these are known as _techniques_, like all knowledge which precedes the practical activity. thus we talk of an artistic technique in the same metaphorical and elliptic manner that we talk of the physically beautiful, that is to say (in more precise language), _knowledge employed by the practical activity engaged in producing stimuli to aesthetic reproduction_. in place of employing so lengthy a phrase, we shall here avail ourselves of the vulgar terminology, since we are henceforward aware of its true meaning. the possibility of this technical knowledge, at the service of artistic reproduction, has caused people to imagine the existence of an aesthetic technique of internal expression, which is tantamount to saying, _a doctrine of the means of internal expression_, which is altogether inconceivable. and we know well the reason why it is inconceivable; expression, considered in itself, is primary theoretic activity, and, in so far as it is this, it precedes the practical activity and the intellectual knowledge which illumines the practical activity, and is thus independent alike of the one and of the other. it also helps to illumine the practical activity, but is not illuminated by it. expression does not employ _means_, because it has not an _end_; it has intuitions of things, but does not will them, and is thus indivisible into means and end. thus if it be said, as sometimes is the case, that a certain writer has invented a new technique of fiction or of drama, or that a painter has discovered a new mode of distribution of light, the word is used in a false sense; because the so-called _new technique is really that romance itself, or that new picture_ itself. the distribution of light belongs to the vision itself of the picture; as the technique of a dramatist is his dramatic conception itself. on other occasions, the word "technique" is used to designate certain merits or defects in a work which is a failure; and it is said, euphemistically, that the conception is bad, but the technique good, or that the conception is good, and the technique bad. on the other hand, when the different ways of painting in oils, or of etching, or of sculpturing in alabaster, are discussed, then the word "technique" is in its place; but in such a case the adjective "artistic" is used metaphorically. and if a dramatic technique in the artistic sense be impossible, a theatrical technique is not impossible, that is to say, processes of externalization of certain given aesthetic works. when, for instance, women were introduced on the stage in italy in the second half of the sixteenth century, in place of men dressed as women, this was a true and real discovery in theatrical technique; such too was the perfecting in the following century by the impresarios of venice, of machines for the rapid changing of the scenes. [sidenote] _the theoretic techniques of the individual arts._ the collection of technical knowledge at the service of artists desirous of externalizing their expressions, can be divided into groups, which may be entitled _theories of the arts_. thus is born a theory of architecture, comprising mechanical laws, information relating to the weight or to the resistance of the materials of construction or of fortification, manuals relating to the method of mixing chalk or stucco; a theory of sculpture, containing advice as to the instruments to be used for sculpturing the various sorts of stone, for obtaining a successful fusion of bronze, for working with the chisel, for the exact copying of the model in chalk or plaster, for keeping chalk damp; a theory of painting, on the various techniques of tempera, of oil-painting, of water-colour, of pastel, on the proportions of the human body, on the laws of perspective; a theory of oratory, with precepts as to the method of producing, of exercising and of strengthening the voice, of mimic and gesture; a theory of music, on the combinations and fusions of tones and sounds; and so on. such collections of precepts abound in all literatures. and since it soon becomes impossible to say what is useful and what useless to know, books of this sort become very often a sort of encyclopaedias or catalogues of desiderata. vitruvius, in his treatise on architecture, claims for the architect a knowledge of letters, of drawing, of geometry, of arithmetic, of optic, of history, of natural and moral philosophy, of jurisprudence, of medicine, of astrology, of music, and so on. everything is worth knowing: learn the art and lay it aside. it should be evident that such empirical collections are not reducible to a science. they are composed of notions, taken from various sciences and teachings, and their philosophical and scientific principles are to be found in them. to undertake the construction of a scientific theory of the different arts, would be to wish to reduce to the single and homogeneous what is by nature multiple and heterogeneous; to wish to destroy the existence as a collection of what was put together precisely to form a collection. were we to give a scientific form to the manuals of the architect, the painter, or the musician, it is clear that nothing would remain in our hands but the general principles of mechanic, optic, or acoustic. or if the especially artistic observations disseminated through it be extracted and isolated, and a science be made of them, then the sphere of the individual art is deserted and that of aesthetic entered upon, for aesthetic is always general aesthetic, or better, it cannot be divided into general and special. this last case (that is, the attempt to furnish a technique of aesthetic) is found, when men possessing strong scientific instincts and a natural tendency to philosophy, set themselves to work to produce such theories and technical manuals. [sidenote] _critique of the aesthetic theories of the individual arts._ but the confusion between physic and aesthetic has attained to its highest degree, when aesthetic theories of the different arts are imagined, to answer such questions as: what are the _limits_ of each art? what can be represented with colours, and what with sounds? what with simple monochromatic lines, and what with touches of various colours? what with notes, and what with metres and rhymes? what are the limits between the figurative and the auditional arts, between painting and sculpture, poetry and music? this, translated into scientific language, is tantamount to asking: what is the connexion between acoustic and aesthetic expression? what between the latter and optic?--and the like. now, if _there is no passage_ from the physical fact to the aesthetic, how could there be from the aesthetic to particular groups of aesthetic facts, such as the phenomena of optic or of acoustic? [sidenote] _critique of the classifications of the arts._ the things called _arts_ have no aesthetic limits, because, in order to have them, they would need to have also aesthetic existence; and we have demonstrated the altogether empirical genesis of those divisions. consequently, any attempt at an aesthetic classification of the arts is absurd. if they be without limits, they are not exactly determinable, and consequently cannot be philosophically classified. all the books dealing with classifications and systems of the arts could be burned without any loss whatever. (we say this with the utmost respect to the writers who have expended their labours upon them.) the impossibility of such classifications finds, as it were, its proof in the strange methods to which recourse has been had to carry them out. the first and most common classification is that into arts of _hearing, sight_, and _imagination_; as if eyes, ears, and imagination were on the same level, and could be deduced from the same logical variable, as foundation of the division. others have proposed the division into arts of _space and time_, and arts of _rest_ and _motion_; as if the concepts of space, time, rest, and motion could determine special aesthetic forms, or have anything in common with art as such. finally, others have amused themselves by dividing them into _classic and romantic_, or into _oriental, classic, and romantic_, thereby conferring the value of scientific concepts on simple historical denominations, or adopting those pretended partitions of expressive forms, already criticized above; or by talking of arts _that can only be seen from one side_, like painting, and of arts _that can be seen from all sides_, like sculpture--and similar extravagances, which exist neither in heaven nor on the earth. the theory of the limits of the arts was, perhaps, at the time when it was put forward, a beneficial critical reaction against those who believed in the possibility of the flowing of one expression into another, as of the _iliad_ or of _paradise lost_ into a series of paintings, and thus held a poem to be of greater or lesser value, according as it could or could not be translated into pictures by a painter. but if the rebellion were reasonable and victorious, this does not mean that the arguments adopted and the theories made as required were sound. [sidenote] _critique of the theory of the union of the arts._ another theory which is a corollary to that of the limits of the arts, falls with them; that of the _union of the arts_. granted different arts, distinct and limited, the questions were asked: which is the most powerful? do we not obtain more powerful effects by uniting several? we know nothing of this: we know only, in each individual case, that certain given artistic intuitions have need of definite physical means for their reproduction, and that other artistic intuitions have need of other physical means. we can obtain the effect of certain dramas by simply reading them; others need declamation and scenic display: some artistic intuitions, for their full extrinsication, need words, song, musical instruments, colours, statuary, architecture, actors; while others are beautiful and complete in a single delicate sweep of the pen, or with a few strokes of the pencil. but it is false to suppose that declamation and scenic effects, and all the other things we have mentioned together, are _more powerful_ than simply reading, or than the simple stroke with the pen and with the pencil; because each of these facts or groups of facts has, so to say, a different object, and the power of the different means employed cannot be compared when the objects are different. [sidenote] _connexion of the activity of externalization with utility and morality._ finally, it is only from the point of view of a clear and rigorous distinction between the true and proper aesthetic activity, and the practical activity of externalization, that we can solve the involved and confused questions as to the relations between _art and utility_, and _art and morality_. that art as art is independent alike of utility and of morality, as also of every volitional form, we have above demonstrated. without this independence, it would not be possible to speak of an intrinsic value of art, nor indeed to conceive an aesthetic science, which demands the autonomy of the aesthetic fact as a necessity of its existence. but it would be erroneous to maintain that this independence of the vision or intuition or internal expression of the artist should be at once extended to the practical activity of externalization and of communication, which may or may not follow the aesthetic fact. if art be understood as the externalization of art, then utility and morality have a perfect right to deal with it; that is to say, the right one possesses to deal with one's own household. we do not, as a matter of fact, externalize and fix all of the many expressions and intuitions which we form in our mind; we do not declare our every thought in a loud voice, or write down, or print, or draw, or colour, or expose it to the public gaze. _we select_ from the crowd of intuitions which are formed or at least sketched within us; and the selection is governed by selection of the economic conditions of life and of its moral direction. therefore, when we have formed an intuition, it remains to decide whether or no we should communicate it to others, and to whom, and when, and how; all of which considerations fall equally under the utilitarian and ethical criterion. thus we find the concepts of _selection_, of the _interesting_, of _morality_, of an _educational end_, of _popularity_, etc., to some extent justified, although these can in no wise be justified as imposed upon art as art, and we have ourselves denounced them in pure aesthetic. error always contains an element of truth. he who formulated those erroneous aesthetic propositions had his eye on practical facts, which attach themselves externally to the aesthetic fact in economic and moral life. by all means, be partisans of a yet greater liberty in the vulgarization of the means of aesthetic reproduction; we are of the same opinion, and let us leave the proposals for legislative measures, and for actions to be instigated against immoral art, to hypocrites, to the ingenuous, and to idlers. but the proclamation of this liberty, and the fixation of its limits, how wide soever they be, is always the affair of morality. and it would in any case be out of place to invoke that highest principle, that _fundamentum aesthetices_, which is the independence of art, in order to deduce from it the guiltlessness of the artist, who, in the externalization of his imaginings, should calculate upon the unhealthy tastes of his readers; or that licenses should be granted to the hawkers who sell obscene statuettes in the streets. this last case is the affair of the police; the first must be brought before the tribunal of the moral conscience. the aesthetic judgment on the work of art has nothing to do with the morality of the artist, in so far as he is a practical man, nor with the precautions to be taken that art may not be employed for evil purposes alien to its essence, which is pure theoretic contemplation. xvi taste and the reproduction of art [sidenote] _aesthetic judgment. its identity with aesthetic reproduction._ when the entire aesthetic and externalizing process has been completed, when a beautiful expression has been produced and fixed in a definite physical material, what is meant by _judging it_? _to reproduce it in oneself_, answer the critics of art, almost with one voice. very good. let us try thoroughly to understand this fact, and with that object in view, let us represent it schematically. the individual a is seeking the expression of an impression, which he feels or has a presentiment of, but has not yet expressed. behold him trying various words and phrases, which may give the sought-for expression, which must exist, but which he does not know. he tries the combination _m_, but rejects it as unsuitable, inexpressive, incomplete, ugly: he tries the combination _n_, with a like result. _he does not see anything, or he does not see clearly_. the expression still flies from him. after other vain attempts, during which he sometimes approaches, sometimes leaves the sign that offers itself, all of a sudden (almost as though formed spontaneously of itself) he creates the sought-for expression, and _lux facta est_. he enjoys for an instant aesthetic pleasure or the pleasure of the beautiful. the ugly, with its correlative displeasure, was the aesthetic activity, which had not succeeded in conquering the obstacle; the beautiful is the expressive activity, which now displays itself triumphant. we have taken this example from the domain of speech, as being nearer and more accessible, and because we all talk, though we do not all draw or paint. now if another individual, whom we shall term b, desire to judge this expression and decide whether it be beautiful or ugly, he _must of necessity place himself at a's point of view_, and go through the whole process again, with the help of the physical sign, supplied to him by a. if a has seen clearly, then b (who has placed himself at a's point of view) will also see clearly and will find this expression beautiful. if a has not seen clearly, then b also will not see clearly, and will find the expression more or less ugly, _just as a did_. [sidenote] _impossibility of divergences._ it may be observed that we have not taken into consideration two other cases: that of a having a clear and b an obscure vision; and that of a having an obscure and b a clear vision. philosophically speaking, these two cases are _impossible_. spiritual activity, precisely because it is activity, is not a caprice, but a spiritual necessity; and it cannot solve a definite aesthetic problem, save in one way, which is the right way. doubtless certain facts may be adduced, which appear to contradict this deduction. thus works which seem beautiful to artists, are judged to be ugly by the critics; while works with which the artists were displeased and judged imperfect or failures, are held to be beautiful and perfect by the critics. but this does not mean anything, save that one of the two is wrong: either the critics or the artists, or in one case the artist and in another the critic. in fact, the producer of an expression does not always fully realize what has happened in his soul. haste, vanity, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, make people say, and sometimes others almost believe, that works of ours are beautiful, which, if we were truly to turn inwards upon ourselves, we should see ugly, as they really are. thus poor don quixote, when he had mended his helmet as well as he could with cardboard--the helmet that had showed itself to possess but the feeblest force of resistance at the first encounter,--took good care not to test it again with a well-delivered sword-thrust, but simply declared and maintained it to be (says the author) _por celada finisima de encaxe_. and in other cases, the same reasons, or opposite but analogous ones, trouble the consciousness of the artist, and cause him to disapprove of what he has successfully produced, or to strive to undo and do again worse, what he has done well, in his artistic spontaneity. an example of this is the _gerusalemme conquistata_. in the same way, haste, laziness, want of reflexion, theoretic prejudices, personal sympathies, or animosities, and other motives of a similar sort, sometimes cause the critics to proclaim beautiful what is ugly, and ugly what is beautiful. were they to eliminate such disturbing elements, they would feel the work of art as it really is, and would not leave to posterity, that more diligent and more dispassionate judge, to award the palm, or to do that justice, which they have refused. [sidenote] _identity of taste and genius._ it is clear from the preceding theorem, that the judicial activity, which criticizes and recognizes the beautiful, is identical with that which produces it. the only difference lies in the diversity of circumstances, since in the one case it is a question of aesthetic production, in the other of reproduction. the judicial activity is called _taste_; the productive activity is called _genius_: genius and taste are therefore substantially _identical_. the common remark, that the critic should possess some of the genius of the artist and that the artist should possess taste, reveals a glimpse of this identity; or that there exists an active (productive) taste and a passive (reproductive) taste. but a denial of this is contained in other equally common remarks, as when people speak of taste without genius, or of genius without taste. these last observations are meaningless, unless they be taken as alluding to quantitative differences. in this case, those would be called geniuses without taste who produce works of art, inspired in their culminating parts and neglected and defective in their secondary parts, and those men of taste without genius, who succeed in obtaining certain isolated or secondary effects, but do not possess the power necessary for a vast artistic synthesis. analogous explanations can easily be given of other similar propositions. but to posit a substantial difference between genius and taste, between artistic production and reproduction, would render communication and judgment alike inconceivable. how could we judge what remained extraneous to us? how could that which is produced by a given activity be judged by a different activity? the critic will be a small genius, the artist a great genius; the one will have the strength of ten, the other of a hundred; the former, in order to raise himself to the altitude of the latter, will have need of his assistance; but the nature of both must be the same. in order to judge dante, we must raise ourselves to his level: let it be well understood that empirically we are not dante, nor dante we; but in that moment of judgment and contemplation, our spirit is one with that of the poet, and in that moment we and he are one single thing. in this identity alone resides the possibility that our little souls can unite with the great souls, and become great with them, in the universality of the spirit. [sidenote] _analogy with the other activities._ let us remark in passing that what has been said of the aesthetic _judgment_ holds good equally for every other activity and for every other judgment; and that scientific, economic, and ethical criticism is effected in a like manner. to limit ourselves to this last, it is only if we place ourselves ideally in the same conditions in which he who took a given resolution found himself, that we can form a judgment as to whether his resolution were moral or immoral. an action would otherwise remain incomprehensible, and therefore impossible to judge. a homicide may be a rascal or a hero: if this be, within limits, indifferent as regards the safety of society, which condemns both to the same punishment, it is not indifferent to him who wishes to distinguish and to judge from the moral point of view, and we cannot dispense with studying again the individual psychology of the homicide, in order to determine the true nature of his deed, not merely in its judicial, but also in its moral aspect. in ethic, a moral taste or tact is sometimes referred to, which answers to what is generally called moral conscience, that is to say, to the activity itself of good-will. [sidenote] _critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism._ the explanation above given of aesthetic judgment or reproduction at once affirms and denies the position of the absolutists and relativists, of those, that is to say, who affirm and of those who deny the existence of an absolute taste. the absolutists, who affirm that they can judge of the beautiful, are right; but the theory on which they found their affirmation is not maintainable. they conceive of the beautiful, that is, of aesthetic value, as of something placed outside the aesthetic activity; as if it were a model or a concept which an artist realizes in his work, and of which the critic avails himself afterwards in order to judge the work itself. concepts and models alike have no existence in art, for by proclaiming that every art can be judged only in itself, and has its own model in itself, they have attained to the denial of the existence of objective models of beauty, whether they be intellectual concepts, or ideas suspended in the metaphysical sky. in proclaiming this, the adversaries, the relativists, are perfectly right, and accomplish a progress. however, the initial rationality of their thesis becomes in its turn a false theory. repeating the old adage that there is no accounting for tastes, they believe that aesthetic expression is of the same nature as the pleasant and the unpleasant, which every one feels in his own way, and as to which there is no disputing. but we know that the pleasant and the unpleasant are utilitarian and practical facts. thus the relativists deny the peculiarity of the aesthetic fact, again confounding expression with impression, the theoretic with the practical. the true solution lies in rejecting alike relativism or psychologism, and false absolutism; and in recognizing that the criterion of taste is absolute, but absolute in a different way from that of the intellect, which is developed by reason. the criterion of taste is absolute, with the intuitive absoluteness of the imagination. thus every act of expressive activity, which is so really, will be recognized as beautiful, and every fact in which expressive activity and passivity are found engaged with one another in an unfinished struggle, will be recognized as ugly. [sidenote] _critique of relative relativism._ there lies, between absolutists and relativists, a third class, which may be called that of the relative relativists. these affirm the existence of absolute values in other fields, such as logic and ethic, but deny their existence in the field of aesthetic. to them it appears natural and justifiable to dispute about science and morality; because science rests on the universal, common to all men, and morality on duty, which is also a law of human nature; but how, they say, can one dispute about art, which rests on imagination? not only, however, is the imaginative activity universal and belongs to human nature, like the logical concept and practical duty; but we must oppose a capital objection to this intermediary thesis. if the absolute nature of the imagination were denied, we should be obliged to deny also that of intellectual or conceptual truth, and, implicitly, of morality. does not morality presuppose logical distinctions? how could these be known, otherwise than by expressions and words, that is to say, in imaginative form? if the absoluteness of the imagination were removed, spiritual life would tremble to its base. one individual would no longer understand another, nor indeed his own self of a moment before, which, when considered a moment after, is already another individual. [sidenote] _objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and on the psychic disposition._ nevertheless, variety of judgments is an indisputable fact. men are at variance in their logical, ethical, and economical appreciations; and they are equally, or even more at variance in their aesthetic appreciations. if certain reasons detailed by us, above, such as haste, prejudices, passions, etc., may be held to lessen the importance of this disagreement, they do not thereby annul it. we have been cautious, when speaking of the stimuli of reproduction, for we said that reproduction takes place, _if all the other conditions remain equal_. do they remain equal? does the hypothesis correspond to reality? it would appear not. in order to reproduce several times an impression by employing a suitable physical stimulus, it is necessary that this stimulus be not changed, and that the organism remain in the same psychical conditions as those in which was experienced the impression that it is desired to reproduce. now it is a fact, that the physical stimulus is continually changing, and in like manner the psychological conditions. oil paintings grow dark, frescoes pale, statues lose noses, hands, and legs, architecture becomes totally or partially a ruin, the tradition of the execution of a piece of music is lost, the text of a poem is corrupted by bad copyists or bad printing. these are obvious instances of the changes which daily occur in objects or physical stimuli. as regards psychological conditions, we will not dwell upon the cases of deafness or blindness, that is to say, upon the loss of entire orders of psychical impressions; these cases are secondary and of less importance compared with the fundamental, daily, inevitable, and perpetual changes of the society around us, and of the internal conditions of our individual life. the phonic manifestations, that is, the words and verses of the dantesque _commedia_, must produce a very different impression on a citizen engaged in the politics of the third rome, to that experienced by a well-informed and intimate contemporary of the poet. the madonna of cimabue is still in the church of santa maria novella; but does she speak to the visitor of to-day as she spoke to the florentines of the thirteenth century? even though she were not also darkened by time, would not the impression be altogether different? and finally, how can a poem composed in youth make the same impression on the same individual poet when he re-reads it in his old age, with his psychic dispositions altogether changed? [sidenote] _critique of the division of signs into natural and conventional._ it is true, that certain aestheticians have attempted a distinction between stimuli and stimuli, between _natural and conventional_ signs. they would grant to the former a constant effect on all; to the latter, only on a limited circle. in their belief, signs employed in painting are natural, while the words of poetry are conventional. but the difference between the one and the other is only of degree. it has often been affirmed that painting is a language which all understand, while with poetry it is otherwise. here, for example, leonardo placed one of the prerogatives of his art, "which hath not need of interpreters of different languages as have letters," and in it man and brute find satisfaction. he relates the anecdote of that portrait of the father of a family, "which the little grandchildren were wont to caress while they were still in swaddling-clothes, and the dogs and cats of the house in like manner." but other anecdotes, such as those of the savages who took the portrait of a soldier for a boat, or considered the portrait of a man on horseback as furnished with only one leg, are apt to shake one's faith in the understanding of painting by sucklings, dogs, and cats. fortunately, no arduous researches are necessary to convince oneself that pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no effects save on souls prepared to receive them. natural signs do not exist; because they are all conventional in a like manner, or, to speak with greater exactitude, all are _historically conditioned_. [sidenote] _the surmounting of variety._ this being so, how are we to succeed in causing the expression to be reproduced by means of the physical object? how obtain the same effect, when the conditions are no longer the same? would it not, rather, seem necessary to conclude that expressions cannot be reproduced, despite the physical instruments made by man for the purpose, and that what is called reproduction consists in ever new expressions? such would indeed be the conclusion, if the variety of physical and psychic conditions were intrinsically unsurmountable. but since the insuperability has none of the characteristics of necessity, we must, on the contrary, conclude: that the reproduction always occurs, when we can replace ourselves in the conditions in which the stimulus (physical beauty) was produced. not only can we replace ourselves in these conditions, as an abstract possibility, but as a matter of fact we do so continually. individual life, which is communion with ourselves (with our past), and social life, which is communion with our like, would not otherwise be possible. [sidenote] _restorations and historical interpretation._ as regards the physical object, paleographers and philologists, who _restore_ to texts their original physiognomy, _restorers_ of pictures and of statues, and similar categories of workers, exert themselves to preserve or to give back to the physical object all its primitive energy. these efforts certainly do not always succeed, or are not completely successful, for never, or hardly ever, is it possible to obtain a restoration complete in its smallest details. but the unsurmountable is only accidentally present, and cannot cause us to fail to recognize the favourable results which are nevertheless obtained. _historical interpretation_ likewise labours to reintegrate in us historical conditions which have been altered in the course of history. it revives the dead, completes the fragmentary, and affords us the opportunity of seeing a work of art (a physical object) as its author saw it, at the moment of production. a condition of this historical labour is tradition, with the help of which it is possible to collect the scattered rays and cause them to converge on one centre. with the help of memory, we surround the physical stimulus with all the facts among which it arose; and thus we make it possible for it to react upon us, as it acted upon him who produced it. when the tradition is broken, interpretation is arrested; in this case, the products of the past remain _silent_ for us. thus the expressions contained in the etruscan or messapian inscriptions are unattainable; thus we still hear discussions among ethnographers as to certain products of the art of savages, whether they be pictures or writings; thus archaeologists and prehistorians are not always able to establish with certainty, whether the figures found on the ceramic of a certain region, and on other instruments employed, be of a religious or of a profane nature. but the arrest of interpretation, as that of restoration, is never a definitely unsurmountable barrier; and the daily discoveries of historical sources and of new methods of better exploiting antiquity, which we may hope to see ever improving, link up broken tradition. we do not wish to deny that erroneous historical interpretation produces at times what we may term _palimpsests_, new expressions imposed upon the antique, artistic imaginings instead of historical reproductions. the so-called fascination of the past depends in part upon these expressions of ours, which we weave into historical expressions. thus in hellenic plastic art has been discovered the calm and serene intuition of life of those peoples, who feel, nevertheless, so poignantly, the universality of sorrow; thus has recently been discerned on the faces of the byzantine saints "the terror of the millennium," a terror which is an equivoke, or an artificial legend invented by modern scholars. but _historical criticism_ tends precisely to circumscribe _vain imaginings_ and to establish with exactitude the point of view from which we must look. thus we live in communication with other men of the present and of the past; and we must not conclude, because sometimes, and indeed often, we find ourselves face to face with the unknown or the badly known, that when we believe we are engaged in a dialogue, we are always speaking a monologue; nor that we are unable even to repeat the monologue which, in the past, we held with ourselves. xvii the history of literature and art [sidenote] _historical criticism in literature and art. its importance._ this brief exposition of the method by which is obtained reintegration of the original conditions in which the work of art was produced, and by which reproduction and judgment are made possible, shows how important is the function fulfilled by historical research concerning artistic and literary works; that is to say, by what is usually called _historical criticism_, or method, in literature and art. without tradition and historical criticism, the enjoyment of all or nearly all works of art produced by humanity, would be irrevocably lost: we should be little more than animals, immersed in the present alone, or in the most recent past. only fools despise and laugh at him who reconstitutes an authentic text, explains the sense of words and customs, investigates the conditions in which an artist lived, and accomplishes all those labours which revive the qualities and the original colouring of works of art. sometimes the depreciatory or negative judgment refers to the presumed or proved uselessness of many researches, made to recover the correct meaning of artistic works. but, it must be observed, in the first place, that historical research does not only fulfil the task of helping to reproduce and judge artistic works: the biography of a writer or of an artist, for example, and the study of the costume of a period, also possess their own interest, foreign to the history of art, but not foreign to other forms of history. if allusion be made to those researches which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor to fulfil any purpose, it must be replied that the historical student must often reconcile himself to the useful, but little glorious, office of a cataloguer of facts. these facts remain for the time being formless, incoherent, and insignificant, but they are preserves, or mines, for the historian of the future and for whomsoever may afterwards want them for any purpose. in the same way, books which nobody asks for are placed on the shelves and are noted in the catalogues, because they may be asked for at some time or other. certainly, in the same way that an intelligent librarian gives the preference to the acquisition and to the cataloguing of those books which he foresees may be of more or better service, so do intelligent students possess the instinct as to what is or may more probably be useful from among the mass of facts which they are investigating. others, on the other hand, less well-endowed, less intelligent, or more hasty in producing, accumulate useless selections, rejections and erasures, and lose themselves in refinements and gossipy discussions. but this appertains to the economy of research, and is not our affair. at the most, it is the affair of the master who selects the subjects, of the publisher who pays for the printing, and of the critic who is called upon to praise or to blame the students for their researches. on the other hand, it is evident, that historical research, directed to illuminate a work of art by placing us in a position to judge it, does not alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit: taste, and an imagination trained and awakened, are likewise presupposed. the greatest historical erudition may accompany a taste in part gross or defective, a lumbering imagination, or, as it is generally phrased, a cold, hard heart, closed to art. which is the lesser evil?--great erudition and defective taste, or natural good taste and great ignorance? the question has often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny its possibility, because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, or what exactly that means. the merely learned man never succeeds in entering into communication with the great spirits, and keeps wandering for ever about the outer courts, the staircases, and the antechambers of their palaces; but the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieces which are to him inaccessible, or instead of understanding the works of art, as they really are, he invents others, with his imagination. now, the labour of the former may at least serve to enlighten others; but the ingenuity of the latter remains altogether sterile. how, then, can we fail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive man of talent, who is not really talented, if he resign himself, and in so far as he resigns himself, to come to no conclusion? [sidenote] _literary and artistic history. its distinction from historical criticism and from artistic judgement._ it is necessary to distinguish accurately _the history, of art and literature_ from those historical labours which make use of works of art, but for extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious, and political history, etc.), and also from historical erudition, whose object is preparation for the aesthetic synthesis of reproduction. the difference between the first of these is obvious. the history of art and literature has the works of art themselves for principal subject; the other branches of study call upon and interrogate works of art, but only as witnesses, from which to discover the truth of facts which are not aesthetic. the second difference to which we have referred may seem less profound. however, it is very great. erudition devoted to rendering clear again the understanding of works of art, aims simply at making appear a certain internal fact, an aesthetic reproduction. artistic and literary history, on the other hand, does not appear until such reproduction has been obtained. it demands, therefore, further labour. like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts as have really taken place, that is, artistic and literary facts. a man who, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition, reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply a man of taste, or express at the most his own feeling, with an exclamation of beautiful or ugly. this does not suffice for the making of a historian of literature and art. there is further need that the simple act of reproduction be followed in him by a second internal operation. what is this new operation? it is, in its turn, an expression: the expression of the reproduction; the historical description, exposition, or representation. there is this difference, then, between the man of taste and the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the work of art; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it historically, thus applying to it those categories by which, as we know, history is differentiated from pure art. artistic and literary history is, therefore, _a historical work of art founded upon one or more works of art_. the denomination of artistic or literary critic is used in various senses: sometimes it is applied to the student who devotes his services to literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of art of the past in their reality; more often to both. by critic is sometimes understood, in a more restricted sense, he who judges and describes contemporary literary works; and by historian, he who is occupied with less recent works. these are but linguistic usages and empirical distinctions, which may be neglected; because the true difference lies _between the learned man, the man of taste, and the historian of art_. these words designate, as it were, three successive stages of work, of which each is relatively independent of the one that follows, but not of that which precedes. as we have seen, a man may be simply learned, yet possess little capacity for understanding works of art; he may indeed be both learned and possess taste, yet be unable to write a page of artistic and literary history. but the true and complete historian, while containing in himself, as necessary pre-requisites, both the learned man and the man of taste, must add to their qualities the gift of historical comprehension and representation. [sidenote] _the method of artistic and literary history._ the method of artistic and literary history presents problems and difficulties, some common to all historical method, others peculiar to it, because they derive from the concept of art itself. [sidenote] _critique of the problem of the origin of art._ history is wont to be divided into the history of man, the history or nature, and the mixed history of both the preceding. without examining here the question of the solidity of this division, it is clear that artistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since it concerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper to man. and since this activity is its subject, the absurdity of propounding the historical _problem of the origin of art_ becomes at once evident. we should note that by this formula many different things have in turn been included on many different occasions. _origin_ has often meant _nature_ or _disposition_ of the artistic fact, and here was a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem, in fact, which our treatise has tried to solve. at other times, by origin has been understood the ideal genesis, the search for the reason of art, the deduction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing in itself both spirit and nature. this is also a philosophical problem, and it is complementary to the preceding, indeed it coincides with it, though it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by means of an arbitrary and semi-fantastic metaphysic. but when it has been sought to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was _historically formed_, this has resulted in the absurdity to which we have referred. if expression be the first form of consciousness, how can the historical origin be sought of what is _presupposed_ not to be a product of nature and of human history? how can we find the historical genesis of that which is a category, by means of which every historical genesis and fact are understood? the absurdity has arisen from the comparison with human institutions, which have, in fact, been formed in the course of history, and which have disappeared or may disappear in its course. there exists between the aesthetic fact and a human institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) a difference to some extent comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in chemistry. it is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they cease to be simple and become compound. the problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only justified when it is proposed to seek, not for the formation of the function, but where and when art has appeared for the first time (appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or in what region of the globe, and at what point or epoch of its history; when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its most antique or primitive history, is the object of research. this problem forms one with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. data for its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstract possibility, and certainly attempts and hypotheses for its solution abound. [sidenote] _history and the criterion of progress._ every form of human history has the concept of _progress_ for foundation. but by progress must not be understood the imaginary and metaphysical _law of progress_, which should lead the generations of man with irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a providential plan which we can logically divine and understand. a supposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that accidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish the concrete fact from the abstraction. and for the same reason, progress has nothing to do with the so-called _law of evolution_. if evolution mean the concrete fact of reality which evolves (that is, which is reality), it is not a law. if, on the other hand, it be a law, it becomes confounded with the law of progress in the sense just described. the progress of which we speak here, is nothing but the _concept of human activity itself_, which, working upon the material supplied to it by nature, conquers obstacles and bends nature to its own ends. such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity applied to a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian of humanity. no one but a mere collector of stray facts, a simple seeker, or an incoherent chronicler, can put together the smallest narrative of human deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, an intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which he has undertaken to relate. the historical work of art cannot be achieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save by means of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definite figure from that rough and incoherent mass. the historian of a practical action should know what is economy and what morality; the historian of mathematics, what are mathematics; the historian of botany, what is botany; the historian of philosophy, what is philosophy. but if he do not really know these things, he must at least have the illusion of knowing them; otherwise he will never be able to delude himself that he is writing history. we cannot delay here to demonstrate the necessity and the inevitability of this subjective criterion in every narrative of human affairs. we will merely say that this criterion is compatible with the utmost objectivity, impartiality, and scrupulosity in dealing with data, and indeed forms a constitutive element of such subjective criterion. it suffices to read any book of history to discover at once the point of view of the author, if he be a historian worthy of the name and know his own business. there exist liberal and reactionary, rationalist and catholic historians, who deal with political or social history; for the history of philosophy there are metaphysical, empirical, sceptical, idealist, and spiritualist historians. absolutely historical historians do not and cannot exist. can it be said that thucydides and polybius, livy and tacitus, machiavelli and guicciardini, giannone and voltaire, were without moral and political views; and, in our time, guizot or thiers, macaulay or balbo, ranke or mommsen? and in the history of philosophy, from hegel, who was the first to raise it to a great elevation, to ritter, zeller, cousin, lewes, and our spaventa, was there one who did not possess his conception of progress and criterion of judgment? is there one single work of any value in the history of aesthetic, which has not been written from this or that point of view, with this or that bias (hegelian or herbartian), from a sensualist or from an eclectic point of view, and so on? if the historian is to escape from the inevitable necessity of taking a side, he must become a political and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business of eunuchs. they would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes of not useless erudition, _elumbis atque fracta_, which are called, not without reason, monkish. if, then, the concept of progress, the point of view, the criterion, be inevitable, the best to be done is not to try and escape from them, but to obtain the best possible. everyone strives for this end, when he forms his own convictions, seriously and laboriously. historians who profess to wish to interrogate the facts, without adding anything of their own to them, are not to be believed. this, at the most, is the result of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always add what they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it be without knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doing so, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the most insinuating and penetrative of methods. [sidenote] _non-existence of a unique line of progress in artistic and literary history._ artistic and literary history cannot dispense with the criterion of progress any more easily than other history. we cannot show what a given work of art is, save by proceeding from a conception of art, in order to fix the artistic problem which the author of such work of art had to solve, and by determining whether or no he have solved it, or by how much and in what way he has failed to do so. but it is important to note that the criterion of progress assumes a different form in artistic and literary history to that which it assumes (or is believed to assume) in the history of science. the whole history of knowledge can be represented by one single line of progress and regress. science is the universal, and its problems are arranged in one single vast system, or complex problem. all thinkers weary themselves over the same problem as to the nature of reality and of knowledge: contemplative indians and greek philosophers, christians and mohammedans, bare heads and heads with turbans, wigged heads and heads with the black berretta (as heine said); and future generations will weary themselves with it, as ours has done. it would take too long to inquire here if this be true or not of science. but it is certainly not true of art; art is intuition, and intuition is individuality, and individuality is never repeated. to conceive of the history of the artistic production of the human race as developed along a single line of progress and regress, would therefore be altogether erroneous. at the most, and working to some extent with generalizations and abstractions, it may be admitted that the history of aesthetic products shows progressive cycles, but each cycle has its own problem, and is progressive only in respect to that problem. when many are at work on the same subject, without succeeding in giving to it the suitable form, yet drawing always more nearly to it, there is said to be progress. when he who gives to it definite form appears, the cycle is said to be complete, progress ended. a typical example of this would be the progress in the elaboration of the mode of using the subject-matter of chivalry, during the italian renaissance, from pulci to ariosto. (if this instance be made use of, excessive simplification of it must be excused.) nothing but repetition and imitation could be the result of employing that same material after ariosto. the result was repetition or imitation, diminution or exaggeration, a spoiling of what had already been achieved; in sum, decadence. the ariostesque epigoni prove this. progress begins with the commencement of a new cycle. cervantes, with his more open and conscious irony, is an instance of this. in what did the general decadence of italian literature at the end of the sixteenth century consist? simply in having nothing more to say, and in repeating and exaggerating motives already found. if the italians of this period had even been able to express their own decadence, they would not have been altogether failures, but have anticipated the literary movement of the renaissance. where the subject-matter is not the same, a progressive cycle does not exist. shakespeare does not represent a progress as regards dante, nor goethe as regards shakespeare. dante, however, represents a progress in respect to the visionaries of the middle ages, shakespeare to the elizabethan dramatists, goethe, with _werther_ and the first part of _faust_, in respect to the writers of the _sturm und drang_. this mode of presenting the history of poetry and art contains, however, as we have remarked, something of abstract, of merely practical, and is without rigorous philosophical value. not only is the art of savages not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples, provided it be correlative to the impressions of the savage; but every individual, indeed every moment of the spiritual life of an individual, has its artistic world; and all those worlds are, artistically, incomparable with one another. [sidenote] _errors committed in respect to this law._ many have sinned and continue to sin against this special form of the criterion of progress in artistic and literary history. some, for instance, talk of the infancy of italian art in giotto, and of its maturity in raphael or in titian; as though giotto were not quite perfect and complete, in respect to his psychic material. he was certainly incapable of drawing a figure like raphael, or of colouring it like titian; but was raphael or titian by any chance capable of creating the _matrimonio di san francesco con la povertã _, or the _morte di san francesco_? the spirit of giotto had not felt the attraction of the body beautiful, which the renaissance studied and raised to a place of honour; but the spirits of raphael and of titian were no longer curious of certain movements of ardour and of tenderness, which attracted the man of the fourteenth century. how, then, can a comparison be made, where there is no comparative term? the celebrated divisions of the history of art suffer from the same defect. they are as follows: an oriental period, representing a disequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the second; a classical, representing an equilibrium between idea and form; a romantic, representing a new disequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the idea. there are also the divisions into oriental art, representing imperfection of form; classical, perfection of form; romantic or modern, perfection of content and of form. thus classic and romantic have also received, among their many other meanings, that of progressive or regressive periods, in respect to the realization of some indefinite artistic ideal of humanity. [sidenote] _other meanings of the word "progress" in respect to aesthetic._ there is no such thing, then, as an _aesthetic_ progress of humanity. however, by aesthetic progress is sometimes meant, not what the two words coupled together really signify, but the ever-increasing accumulation of our historical knowledge, which makes us able to sympathize with all the artistic products of all peoples and of all times, or, as is said, to make our taste more catholic. the difference appears very great, if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escaping from itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike hellenic and roman art, now better understood, byzantine, mediaeval, arabic, and renaissance art, the art of the cinque cento, baroque art, and the art of the seventeenth century. egyptian, babylonian, etruscan, and even prehistoric art, are more profoundly studied every day. certainly, the difference between the savage and civilized man does not lie in the human faculties. the savage has speech, intellect, religion, and morality, in common with civilized man, and he is a complete man. the only difference lies in that civilized man penetrates and dominates a larger portion of the universe with his theoretic and practical activity. we cannot claim to be more spiritually alert than, for example, the contemporaries of pericles; but no one can deny that we are richer than they--rich with their riches and with those of how many other peoples and generations besides our own? by aesthetic progress is also meant, in another sense, which is also improper, the greater abundance of artistic intuitions and the smaller number of imperfect or decadent works which one epoch produces in respect to another. thus it may be said that there was aesthetic progress, an artistic awakening, at the end of the thirteenth or of the fifteenth centuries. finally, aesthetic progress is talked of, with an eye to the refinement and to the psychical complications exhibited in the works of art of the most civilized peoples, as compared with those of less civilized peoples, barbarians and savages. but in this case, the progress is that of the complex conditions of society, not of the artistic activity, to which the material is indifferent. these are the most important points concerning the method of artistic and literary history. xviii conclusion: identity of linguistic and aesthetic [sidenote] _summary of the inquiry._ a glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed the entire programme of our treatise. we have studied the nature of intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic fact (i. and ii.), and we have described the other form of knowledge, namely, the intellectual, with the secondary complications of its forms (iii.). having done this, it became possible to criticize all erroneous theories of art, which arise from the confusion between the various forms, and from the undue transference of the characteristics of one form to those of another (iv.), and in so doing to indicate the inverse errors which are found in the theory of intellectual knowledge and of historiography (v.). passing on to examine the relations between the aesthetic activity and the other spiritual activities, no longer theoretic but practical, we have indicated the true character of the practical activity and the place which it occupies in respect to the theoretic activity, which it follows: hence the critique of the invasion of aesthetic theory by practical concepts (vi.). we have also distinguished the two forms of the practical activity, as economic and ethic (vii.), adding to this the statement that there are no other forms of the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed; hence (viii.) the critique of every metaphysical aesthetic. and, seeing that there exist no other spiritual forms of equal degree, therefore there are no original subdivisions of the four established, and in particular of aesthetic. from this arises the impossibility of classes of expressions and the critique of rhetoric, that is, of the partition of expressions into simple and ornate, and of their subclasses (ix.). but, by the law of the unity of the spirit, the aesthetic fact is also a practical fact, and as such, occasions pleasure and pain. this led us to study the feelings of value in general, and those of aesthetic value, or of the beautiful, in particular (x.), to criticize aesthetic hedonism in all its various manifestations and complications (xi.), and to expel from the system of aesthetic the long series of pseudo-aesthetic concepts, which had been introduced into it (xii.). proceeding from aesthetic production to the facts of reproduction, we began by investigating the mode of fixing externally the aesthetic expression, with the view of reproduction. this is the so-called physically beautiful, whether it be natural or artificial (xiii.). we then derived from this distinction the critique of the errors which arise from confounding the physical with the aesthetic side of things (xiv.). we indicated the meaning of artistic technique, that which is the technique serving for reproduction, thus criticizing the divisions, limits, and classifications of the individual arts, and establishing the connections between art, economy, and morality (xv.). because the existence of the physical objects does not suffice to stimulate to the full aesthetic reproduction, and because, in order to obtain this result, it is necessary to recall the conditions in which the stimulus first operated, we have also studied the function of historical erudition, directed toward the end of re-establishing our communication with the works of the past, and toward the creation of a base for aesthetic judgment (xvi.). we have closed our treatise by showing how the reproduction thus obtained is afterwards elaborated by the intellectual categories, that is to say, by an excursus on the method of literary and artistic history (xvii.). the aesthetic fact has thus been considered both in itself and in its relations with the other spiritual activities, with the feelings of pleasure and of pain, with the facts that are called physical, with memory, and with historical elaboration. it has passed from the position of _subject_ to that of _object_, that is to say, from the moment of _its birth_, until gradually it becomes changed for the spirit into _historical argument_. our treatise may appear to be somewhat meagre, when compared with the great volumes usually consecrated to aesthetic. but it will not seem so, when it is observed that these volumes, as regards nine-tenths of their contents, are full of matter which does not appertain to aesthetic, such as definitions, either psychical or metaphysical, of pseudo-aesthetic concepts (of the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the humorous, etc.), or of the exposition of the supposed zoology, botany, and mineralogy of aesthetic, and of universal history judged from the aesthetic standpoint. the whole history of concrete art and literature has also been dragged into those aesthetics and generally mangled; they contain judgments upon homer and dante, upon ariosto and shakespeare, upon beethoven and rossini, michelangelo and raphael. when all this has been deducted from them, our treatise will no longer be held to be too meagre, but, on the contrary, far more copious than ordinary treatises, for these either omit altogether, or hardly touch at all, the greater part of the difficult problems proper to aesthetic, which we have felt it to be our duty to study. [sidenote] _identity of linguistic and aesthetic._ aesthetic, then, as the science of expression, has been here studied by us from every point of view. but there yet remains to justify the sub-title, which we have joined to the title of our book, _general linguistic_, and to state and make clear the thesis that the science of art is that of language. aesthetic and linguistic, in so far as they are true sciences, are not two different sciences, but one single science. not that there is a special linguistic; but the linguistic science sought for, general linguistic, _in so far as what it contains is reducible to philosophy_, is nothing but aesthetic. whoever studies general linguistic, that is to say, philosophical linguistic, studies aesthetic problems, and _vice versa_. _philosophy of language and philosophy of art are the same thing_. were linguistic a _different_ science from aesthetic, it should not have expression, which is the essentially aesthetic fact, for its object. this amounts to saying that it must be denied that language is expression. but an emission of sounds, which expresses nothing, is not language. language is articulate, limited, organized sound, employed in expression. if, on the other hand, language were a _special_ science in respect to aesthetic, it would necessarily have for its object a _special class_ of expressions. but the inexistence of classes of expression is a point which we have already demonstrated. [sidenote] _aesthetic formulization of linguistic problems. nature of language._ the problems which linguistic serves to solve, and the errors with which linguistic strives and has striven, are the same that occupy and complicate aesthetic. if it be not always easy, it is, on the other hand, always possible, to reduce the philosophic questions of linguistic to their aesthetic formula. the disputes as to the nature of the one find their parallel in those as to the nature of the other. thus it has been disputed, whether linguistic be a scientific or a historical discipline, and the scientific having been distinguished from the historical, it has been asked whether it belong to the order of the natural or of the psychological sciences, by the latter being understood empirical psychology, as much as the science of the spirit. the same has happened with aesthetic, which some have looked upon as a natural science, confounding aesthetic expression with physical expression. others have looked upon it as a psychological science, confounding expression in its universality, with the empirical classification of expressions. others again, denying the very possibility of a science of such a subject, have looked upon it as a collection of historical facts. finally, it has been realized that it belongs to the sciences of activity or of values, which are the spiritual sciences. linguistic expression, or speech, has often seemed to be a fact of _interjection_, which belongs to the so-called physical expressions of the feelings, common alike to men and animals. but it was soon admitted that an abyss yawns between the "ah!" which is a physical reflex of pain, and a word; as also between that "ah!" of pain and the "ah!" employed as a word. the theory of the interjection being abandoned (jocosely termed the "ah! ah!" theory by german linguists), the theory of _association or convention_ appeared. this theory was refuted by the same objection which destroyed aesthetic associationism in general: speech is unity, not multiplicity of images, and multiplicity does not explain, but presupposes the existence of the expression to explain. a variant of linguistic associationism is the imitative, that is to say, the theory of the onomatopoeia, which the same philologists deride under the name of the "bow-wow" theory, after the imitation of the dog's bark, which, according to the onomatopoeists, gives its name to the dog. the most usual theory of our times as regards language (apart from mere crass naturalism) consists of a sort of eclecticism or mixture of the various theories to which we have referred. it is assumed that language is in part the product of interjections and in part of onomatopes and conventions. this doctrine is altogether worthy of the scientific and philosophic decadence of the second half of the nineteenth century. [sidenote] _origin of language and its development._ we must here note a mistake into which have fallen those very philologists who have best penetrated the active nature of language. these, although they admit that language was _originally a spiritual creation_, yet maintain that it was largely increased later by _association_. but the distinction does not prevail, for origin in this case cannot mean anything but nature or essence. if, therefore, language be a spiritual creation, it will always be a creation; if it be association, it will have been so from the beginning. the mistake has arisen from not having grasped the general principle of aesthetic, which we have noted: namely, that expressions already produced must redescend to the rank of impressions before they can give rise to new impressions. when we utter new words, we generally transform the old ones, varying or enlarging their meaning; but this process is not associative. it is creative, although the creation has for material the impressions, not of the hypothetical primitive man, but of man who has lived long ages in society, and who has, so to say, stored so many things in his psychic organism, and among them so much language. [sidenote] _relation between grammar and logic._ the question of the distinction between the aesthetic and the intellectual fact has appeared in linguistic as that of the relations between grammar and logic. this question has found two solutions, which are partially true: that of the indissolubility of logic and grammar, and that of their dissolubility. the complete solution is this: if the logical form be indissoluble from the grammatical (aesthetic), the grammatical is dissoluble from the logical. [sidenote] _grammatical classes or parts of speech._ if we look at a picture which, for example, portrays a man walking on a country road, we can say: "this picture represents a fact of movement, which, if conceived as volitional, is called _action_. and because every movement implies _matter_, and every action a being that acts, this picture also represents either _matter_ or a _being_. but this movement takes place in a definite place, which is a part of a given _star_ (the earth), and precisely in that part of it which is called _terra-firma_, and more properly in a part of it that is wooded and covered with grass, which is called _country_, cut naturally or artificially, in a manner which is called _road_. now, there is only one example of that given star, which is called earth: earth is an _individual_. but _terra-firma_, _country_, _road_, are _classes or universals_, because there are other terra-firmas, other countries, other roads." and it would be possible to continue for a while with similar considerations. by substituting a phrase for the picture that we have imagined, for example, one to this effect, "peter is walking on a country road," and by making the same remarks, we obtain the concepts of _verb_ (motion or action), of _noun_ (matter or agent), of _proper noun_, of _common nouns_; and so on. what have we done in both cases? neither more nor less than to submit to logical elaboration what was first elaborated only aesthetically; that is to say, we have destroyed the aesthetical by the logical. but, as in general aesthetic, error begins when it is wished to return from the logical to the aesthetical, and it is asked what is the expression of movement, action, matter, being, of the general, of the individual, etc.; thus in like manner with language, error begins when motion or action are called verb, being, or matter, noun or substantive, and when linguistic categories, or _parts of speech_, are made of all these, noun and verb and so on. the theory of parts of speech is at bottom altogether the same as that of artistic and literary classes, already criticized in the aesthetic. it is false to say that the verb or the noun is expressed in definite words, truly distinguishable from others. expression is an indivisible whole. noun and verb do not exist in themselves, but are abstractions made by our destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is _the proposition_. this last is to be understood, not in the usual mode of grammarians, but as an organism expressive of a complete meaning, from an exclamation to a poem. this sounds paradoxical, but is nevertheless a most simple truth. and as in aesthetic, the artistic productions of certain peoples have been looked upon as imperfect, owing to the error above mentioned, because the supposed kinds have seemed still to be indiscriminate or absent with them; so, in linguistic, the theory of the parts of speech has caused the analogous error of dividing languages into formed and unformed, according to whether there appear in them or not some of those supposed parts of speech; for example, the verb. [sidenote] _the individuality of speech and the classification of languages._ linguistic also discovered the irreducible individuality of the aesthetic fact, when it affirmed that the word is what is really spoken, and that two truly identical words do not exist. thus were synonyms and homonyms destroyed, and thus was shown the impossibility of really translating one word into another, from so-called dialect into so-called language, and from a so-called mother-tongue into a so-called foreign tongue. but the attempt to classify languages agrees ill with this correct view. languages have no reality beyond the propositions and complexes of propositions really written and pronounced by given peoples for definite periods. that is to say, they have no existence outside the works of art, in which they exist concretely. what is the art of a given people but the complex of all its artistic products? what is the character of an art (say, hellenic art or provenã§al literature), but the complex physiognomy of those products? and how can such a question be answered, save by giving the history of their art (of their literature, that is to say, of their language in action)? it will seem that this argument, although possessing value as against many of the wonted classifications of languages, yet is without any as regards that queen of classifications, the historico-genealogical, that glory of comparative philology. and this is certainly true. but why? precisely because the historico-genealogical method is not a classification. he who writes history does not classify, and the philologists themselves have hastened to say that the languages which can be arranged in a historical series (those whose series have been traced) are, not distinct and definite species, but a complex of facts in the various phases of its development. [sidenote] _impossibility of a normative grammar._ language has sometimes been looked upon as an act of volition or of choice. but others have discovered the impossibility of creating language artificially, by an act of will. _tu, caesar, civitatem dare potes homini, verbo non poles!_ was once said to the roman emperor. the aesthetic (and therefore theoretic) nature of expression supplies the method of correcting the scientific error which lies in the conception of a (normative) _grammar_, containing the rules of speaking well. good sense has always rebelled against this error. an example of such rebellion is the "so much the worse for grammar" of voltaire. but the impossibility of a normative grammar is also recognized by those who teach it, when they confess that to write well cannot be learned by rules, that there are no rules without exceptions, and that the study of grammar should be conducted practically, by reading and by examples, which form the literary taste. the scientific reason of this impossibility lies in what we have already proved: that a technique of the theoretical amounts to a contradiction in terms. and what could a (normative) grammar be, but just a technique of linguistic expression, that is to say, of a theoretic fact? [sidenote] _didactic purposes._ the case in which grammar is understood merely as an empirical discipline, that is to say, as a collection of groups useful for learning languages, without any claim whatever to philosophic truth, is quite different. even the abstractions of the parts of speech are in this case both admissible and of assistance. many books entitled treatises of linguistic have a merely didactic purpose; they are simply scholastic manuals. we find in them, in truth, a little of everything, from the description of the vocal apparatus and of the artificial machines (phonographs) which can imitate it, to summaries of the most important results obtained by indo-european, semitic, coptic, chinese, or other philologies; from philosophic generalizations on the origin or nature of language, to advice on calligraphy, and the arrangement of schedules for philological spoils. but this mass of notions, which is here taught in a fragmentary and incomplete manner as regards the language in its essence, the language as expression, resolves itself into notions of aesthetic. nothing exists outside _aesthetic_, which gives knowledge of the nature of language, and _empirical grammar_, which is a pedagogic expedient, save the _history of languages_ in their living reality, that is, the history of concrete literary productions, which is substantially identical with the _history of literature_. [sidenote] _elementary linguistic facts or roots._ the same mistake of confusing the physical with the aesthetic, from which the elementary forms of the beautiful originate, is made by those who seek for elementary aesthetic facts, decorating with that name the divisions of the longer series of physical sounds into shorter series. syllables, vowels, and consonants, and the series of syllables called words which give no definite sense when taken alone, are not facts of language, but simple physical concepts of sounds. another mistake of the same sort is that of roots, to which the most able philologists now accord but a very limited value. having confused physical with linguistic or expressive facts, and observing that, in the order of ideas, the simple precedes the complex, they necessarily ended by thinking that _the smaller_ physical facts were _the more simple_. hence the imaginary necessity that the most antique, primitive languages, had been monosyllabic, and that the progress of historical research must lead to the discovery of monosyllabic roots. but (to follow up the imaginary hypothesis) the first expression that the first man conceived may also have had a mimetic, not a phonic reflex: it may have been exteriorised, not in a sound but in a gesture. and assuming that it was exteriorised in a sound, there is no reason to suppose that sound to have been monosyllabic rather than plurisyllabic. philologists frequently blame their own ignorance and impotence, if they do not always succeed in reducing plurisyllabism to monosyllabism, and they trust in the future. but their faith is without foundation, as their blame of themselves is an act of humility arising from an erroneous presumption. furthermore, the limits of syllables, as those of words, are altogether arbitrary, and distinguished, as well as may be, by empirical use. primitive speech, or the speech of the uncultured man, is _continuous_, unaccompanied by any reflex consciousness of the divisions of the word and of the syllables, which are taught at school. no true law of linguistic can be founded on such divisions. proof of this is to be found in the confession of linguists, that there are no truly phonetic laws of the hiatus, of cacophony, of diaeresis, of synaeresis, but merely laws of taste and convenience; that is to say, _aesthetic_ laws. and what are the laws of _words_ which are not at the same time laws of _style_? [sidenote] _aesthetic judgment and the model language._ the search for a _model language_, or for a method of reducing linguistic usage to _unity_, arises from the misconception of a rationalistic measurement of the beautiful, from the concept which we have termed that of false aesthetic absoluteness. in italy, we call this question that of the _unity of the language_. language is perpetual creation. what has been linguistically expressed cannot be repeated, save by the reproduction of what has already been produced. the ever-new impressions give rise to continuous changes of sounds and of meanings, that is, to ever-new expressions. to seek the model language, then, is to seek the immobility of motion. every one speaks, and should speak, according to the echoes which things arouse in his soul, that is, according to his impressions. it is not without reason that the most convinced supporter of any one of the solutions of the problem of the unity of language (be it by the use of latin, of fourteenth-century italian, or of florentine) feels a repugnance in applying his theory, when he is speaking in order to communicate his thoughts and to make himself understood. the reason for this is that he feels that were he to substitute latin, fourteenth-century italian, or florentine speech for that of a different origin, but which answers to his impressions, he would be falsifying the latter. he would become a vain listener to himself, instead of a speaker, a pedant in place of a serious man, a histrion instead of a sincere person. to write according to a theory is not really to write: at the most, it is _making literature_. the question of the unity of language is always reappearing, because, put as it is, there can be no solution to it, owing to its being based upon a false conception of what language is. language is not an arsenal of ready-made arms, and it is not _vocabulary_, which, in so far as it is thought of as progressive and in living use, is always a cemetery, containing corpses more or less well embalmed, that is to say, a collection of abstractions. our mode of settling the question of the model language, or of the unity of the language, may seem somewhat abrupt, and yet we would not wish to appear otherwise than respectful towards the long line of literary men who have debated this question in italy for centuries. but those ardent debates were, at bottom, debates upon aestheticity, not upon aesthetic science, upon literature rather than upon literary theory, upon effective speaking and writing, not upon linguistic science. their error consisted in transforming the manifestation of a want into a scientific thesis, the need of understanding one another more easily among a people dialectically divided, in the philosophic search for a language, which should be one or ideal. such a search was as absurd as that other search for a _universal language_, with the immobility of the concept and of the abstraction. the social need for a better understanding of one another cannot be satisfied save by universal culture, by the increase of communications, and by the interchange of thought among men. [sidenote] _conclusion._ these observations must suffice to show that all the scientific problems of linguistic are the same as those of aesthetic, and that the truths and errors of the one are the truths and errors of the other. if linguistic and aesthetic appear to be two different sciences, this arises from the fact that people think of the former as grammar, or as a mixture between philosophy and grammar, that is, an arbitrary mnemonic scheme. they do not think of it as a rational science and as a pure philosophy of speech. grammar, or something grammatical, also causes the prejudice in people's minds, that the reality of language lies in isolated and combinable words, not in living discourse among expressive organisms, rationally indivisible. those linguists, or glottologists with philosophical endowments, who have best fathomed questions of language, resemble (to employ a worn but efficacious figure) workmen piercing a tunnel: at a certain point they must hear the voices of their companions, the philosophers of aesthetic, who have been piercing it from the other side. at a certain stage of scientific elaboration, linguistic, in so far as it is philosophy, must be merged in aesthetic; and indeed it is merged in it, without leaving a residue. historical summary i aesthetic ideas in graeco-roman antiquity the question, as to whether aesthetic should be looked upon as ancient or modern, has often been discussed. the answer will depend upon the view taken of the nature of aesthetic. benedetto croce has proved that aesthetic is _the science of expressive activity_. but this knowledge cannot be reached, until has been defined the nature of imagination, of representation, of expression, or whatever we may term that faculty which is theoretic, but not intellectual, which gives knowledge of the individual, but not of the universal. now the deviations from this, the correct theory, may arise in two ways: by _defect_ or by _excess_. negation of the special aesthetic activity, or of its autonomy, is an instance of the former. this amounts to a mutilation of the reality of the spirit. of the latter, the substitution or superposition of another mysterious and non-existent activity is an example. these errors each take several forms. that which errs by defect may be: (_a_) pure hedonism, which looks upon art as merely sensual pleasure; (_b_) rigoristic hedonism, agreeing with (_a_), but adding that art is irreconcilable with the loftiest activities of man; (_c_) moralistic or pedagogic hedonism, which admits, with the two former, that art is mere sensuality, but believes that it may not only be harmless, but of some service to morals, if kept in proper subjection and obedience. the error by excess also assumes several forms, but these are indeterminable _a priori_. this view is fully dealt with under the name of _mystic_, in the theory and in the appendix. graeco-roman antiquity was occupied with the problem in all these forms. in greece, the problem of art and of the artistic faculty arose for the first time after the sophistic movement, as a result of the socratic polemic. with the appearance of the word _mimesis_ or _mimetic_, we have a first attempt at grouping the arts, and the expression, allegoric, or its equivalent, used in defence of homer's poetry, reminds us of what plato called "the old quarrel between philosophy and poetry." but when internal facts were all looked upon as mere phenomena of opinion or feeling, of pleasure or of pain, of illusion or of arbitrary caprice, there could be no question of beautiful or ugly, of difference between the true and the beautiful, or between the beautiful and the good. the problem of the nature of art assumes as solved those problems concerning the difference between rational and irrational, material and spiritual, bare fact and value, etc. this was first done in the socratic period, and therefore the aesthetic problem could only arise after socrates. and in fact it does arise, with plato, _the author of the only great negation of art which appears in the history of ideas_. is art rational or irrational? does it belong to the noble region of the soul, where dwell philosophy and virtue, or does it cohabit with sensuality and with crude passion in the lower regions? this was the question that plato asked, and thus was the aesthetic problem stated for the first time. his gorgias remarks with sceptical acumen, that tragedy is a deception, which brings honour alike to deceived and to deceiver, and therefore it is blameworthy not to know how to deceive and not to allow oneself to be deceived. this suffices for gorgias, but plato, the philosopher, must resolve the doubt. if it be in fact deception, down with tragedy and the other arts! if it be not deception, then what is the place of tragedy in philosophy and in the righteous life? his answer was that art or mimetic does not realize the ideas, or the truth of things, but merely reproduces natural or artificial things, which are themselves mere shadows of the ideas. art, then, is but a shadow of a shadow, a thing of third-rate degree. the artificer fashions the object which the painter paints. the artificer copies the divine idea and the painter copies him. art therefore does not belong to the rational, but to the irrational, sensual sphere of the soul. it can serve but for sensual pleasure, which disturbs and obscures. therefore must mimetic, poetry, and poets be excluded from the perfect republic. plato observed with truth, that imitation does not rise to the logical or conceptual sphere, of which poets and painters, as such, are, in fact, ignorant. but he _failed to realize_ that there could be any form of knowledge other than the intellectual. we now know that intuition lies on this side or outside the intellect, from which it differs as much as it does from passion and sensuality. plato, with his fine aesthetic sense, would have been grateful to anyone who could have shown him how to place art, which he loved and practised so supremely himself, among the lofty activities of the spirit. but in his day, no one could give him such assistance. his conscience and his reason saw that art makes the false seem the true, and therefore he resolutely banished it to the lower regions of the spirit. the tendency among those who followed plato in time was to find some means of retaining art and of depriving it of the baleful influence which it was believed to exercise. life without art was to the beauty-loving greek an impossibility, although he was equally conscious of the demands of reason and of morality. thus it happened that art, which, on the purely hedonistic hypothesis, had been treated as a beautiful courtezan, became in the hands of the moralist, a pedagogue. aristophanes and strabo, and above all aristotle, dwell upon the didactic and moralistic possibility of poetry. for plutarch, poetry seems to have been a sort of preparation for philosophy, a twilight to which the eyes should grow accustomed, before emerging into the full light of day. among the romans, we find lucretius comparing the beauties of his great poem to the sweet yellow honey, with which doctors are wont to anoint the rim of the cup containing their bitter drugs. horace, as so frequently, takes his inspiration from the greek, when he offers the double view of art: as courtezan and as pedagogue. in his _ad pisones_ occur the passages, in which we find mingled with the poetic function, that of the orator--the practical and the aesthetic. "was virgil a poet or an orator?" the triple duty of pleasing, moving, and teaching, was imposed upon the poet. then, with a thought for the supposed meretricious nature of their art, the ingenious horace remarks that both must employ the seductions of form. the _mystic_ view of art appeared only in late antiquity, with plotinus. the curious error of looking upon plato as the head of this school and as the father of aesthetic assumes that he who felt obliged to banish art altogether from the domain of the higher functions of the spirit, was yet ready to yield to it the highest place there. the mystical view of aesthetic accords a lofty place indeed to aesthetic, placing it even above philosophy. the enthusiastic praise of the beautiful, to be found in the _gorgias_, _philebus_, _phaedrus_, and _symposium_ is responsible for this misunderstanding, but it is well to make perfectly clear that the beautiful, of which plato discourses in those dialogues, has nothing to do with the _artistically_ beautiful, nor with the mysticism of the neo-platonicians. yet the thinkers of antiquity were aware that a problem lay in the direction of aesthetic, and xenophon records the sayings of socrates that the beautiful is "that which is fitting and answers to the end required." elsewhere he says "it is that which is loved." plato likewise vibrates between various views and offers several solutions. sometimes he appears almost to confound the beautiful with the true, the good and the divine; at others he leans toward the utilitarian view of socrates; at others he distinguishes between what is beautiful in itself and what possesses but a relative beauty. at other times again, he is a hedonist, and makes it to consist of pure pleasure, that is, of pleasure with no shadow of pain; or he finds it in measure and proportion, or in the very sound, the very colour itself. the reason for all this vacillation of definition lay in plato's exclusion of the artistic or mimetic fact from the domain of the higher spiritual activities. the _hippias major_ expresses this uncertainty more completely than any of the other dialogues. what is the beautiful? that is the question asked at the beginning, and left unanswered at the end. the platonic socrates and hippias propose the most various solutions, one after another, but always come out by the gate by which they entered in. is the beautiful to be found in ornament? no, for gold embellishes only where it is in keeping. is the beautiful that which seems ugly to no man? but it is a question of being, not of seeming. is it their fitness which makes things seem beautiful? but in that case, the fitness which makes them appear beautiful is one thing, the beautiful another. if the beautiful be the useful or that which leads to an end, then evil would also be beautiful, because the useful may also end evilly. is the beautiful the helpful, that which leads to the good? no, for in that case the good would not be beautiful, nor the beautiful good, because cause and effect are different. thus they argued in the platonic dialogues, and when we turn to the pages of aristotle, we find him also uncertain and inclined to vary his definitions.[5] sometimes for him the good and pleasurable are the beautiful, sometimes it lies in actions, at others in things motionless, or in bulk and order, or is altogether undefinable. antiquity also established canons of the beautiful, and the famous canon of polycleitus, on the proportions of the human body, fitly compares with that of later times on the golden line, and with the ciceronian phrase from the tusculan disputations. but these are all of them mere empirical observations, mere happy remarks and verbal substitutions, which lead to unsurmountable difficulties when put to philosophical test. one important identification is absent in all those early attempts at truth. the beautiful is never identified with art, and the artistic fact is always clearly distinguished from beauty, mimetic from its content. plotinus first identified the two, and with him the beautiful and art are dissolved together in a passion and mystic elevation of the spirit. the beauty of natural objects is the archetype existing in the soul, which is the fountain of all natural beauty. thus was plato (he said) in error, when he despised the arts for imitating nature, for nature herself imitates the idea, and art also seeks her inspiration directly from those ideas whence nature proceeds. we have here, with plotinus and with neoplatonism, the first appearance in the world of mystical aesthetic, destined to play so important a part in later aesthetic theory. aristotle was far more happy in his attempts at defining aesthetic as the science of representation and of expression than in his definitions of the beautiful. he felt that some element of the problem had been overlooked, and in attempting in his turn a solution, he had the advantage over plato of looking upon the ideas as simple concepts, not as hypostases of concepts or of abstractions. thus reality was more vivid for aristotle: it was the synthesis of matter and form. he saw that art, or mimetic, was a theoretic fact, or a mode of contemplation. "but if poetry be a theoretic fact, in what way is it to be distinguished from science and from historical knowledge?" thus magnificently does the great philosopher pose the problem at the commencement of his _poetics_, and thus alone can it be posed successfully. we ask the same question in the same words to-day. but the problem is difficult, and the masterly statement of it was not equalled by the method of solution then available. he made an excellent start on his voyage of discovery, but stopped half way, irresolute and perplexed. poetry, he says, differs from history, by portraying the possible, while history deals with what has really happened. poetry, like philosophy, aims at the universal, but in a different way, which the philosopher indicates as something more (_mallon tha katholon_) which differentiates poetry from history, occupied with the particular (_malon tha kath ekaston_). what, then, is the possible, the something more, and the particular of poetry? aristotle immediately falls into error and confusion, when he attempts to define these words. since art has to deal with the absurd and with the impossible, it cannot be anything rational, but a mere imitation of reality, in accordance with the platonic theory--a fact of sensual pleasure. aristotle does not, however, attain to so precise a definition as plato, whose erroneous definition he does not succeed in supplanting. the truth is that he failed of his self-imposed task; he failed to discern the true nature of aesthetic, although he restated and re-examined the problem with such marvellous acumen. after aristotle, there comes a lull in the discussion, until plotinus. the _poetics_ were generally little studied, and the admirable statement of the problem generally neglected by later writers. antique psychology knew the fancy or imagination, as preserving or reproducing sensuous impressions, or as an intermediary between the concepts and feeling: its autonomous productive activity was not yet understood. in the _life of apollonius of tyana_, philostratus is said to have been the first to make clear the difference between mimetic and creative imagination. but this does not in reality differ from the aristotelian mimetic, which is concerned, not only with the real, but also with the possible. cicero too, before philostratus, speaks of a kind of exquisite beauty lying hidden in the soul of the artist, which guides his hand and art. antiquity seems generally to have been entrammelled in the meshes of the belief in mimetic, or the duplication of natural objects by the artist philostratus and the other protagonists of the imagination may have meant to combat this error, but the shadows lie heavy until we reach plotinus. we find already astir among the sophists the question as to the nature of language. admitting that language is a sign, are we to take that as signifying a spiritual necessity (_phusis_) or as a psychological convention (_nomos_)? aristotle made a valuable contribution to this difficult question, when he spoke of a kind of proposition other than those which predicate truth or falsehood, that is, logic. with him _euchae_ is the term proper to designate desires and aspirations, which are the vehicle of poetry and of oratory. (it must be remembered that for aristotle words, like poetry, belonged to mimetic.) the profound remark about the third mode of proposition would, one would have thought, have led naturally to the separation of linguistic from logic, and to its classification with poetry and art. but the aristotelian logic assumed a verbal and formal character, which set back the attainment of this position by many hundred years. yet the genius of epicurus had an intuition of the truth, when he remarked that the diversity of names for the same things arose, not from arbitrary caprice, but from the diverse impression derived from the same object. the stoics, too, seem to have had an inkling of the non-logical nature of speech, but their use of the word _lekton_ leaves it doubtful whether they distinguished by it the linguistic representation from the abstract concept, or rather, generically, the meaning from the sound. [5] in the appendix will be found further striking quotations from and references to aristotle.--(d.a.) ii aesthetic ideas in the middle age and in the renaissance well-nigh all the theories of antique aesthetic reappear in the middle ages, as it were by spontaneous generation. duns scotus erigena translated the neoplatonic mysticism of the pseudo-dionysus. the christian god took the place of the chief good or idea: god, wisdom, goodness, supreme beauty are the fountains of natural beauty, and these are steps in the stair of contemplation of the creator. in this manner speculation began to be diverted from the art fact, which had been so prominent with plotinus. thomas aquinas followed aristotle in distinguishing the beautiful from the good, and applied his doctrine of imitation to the beauty of the second person of the trinity (_in quantum est imago expressa patris_). with the troubadours, we may find traces of the hedonistic view of art, and the rigoristic hypothesis finds in tertullian and in certain fathers of the church staunch upholders. the retrograde savonarola occupied the same position at a later period. but the narcotic, moralistic, or pedagogic view mostly prevailed, for it best suited an epoch of relative decadence in culture. it suited admirably the middle age, offering at once an excuse for the new-born christian art, and for those works of classical or pagan art which yet survived. specimens of this view abound all through the middle age. we find it, for instance, in the criticism of virgil, to whose work were attributed four distinct meanings: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic. for dante poetry was _nihil aliud quam fictio rhetorica in musicaque posita_. "if the vulgar be incapable of appreciating my inner meaning, then they shall at least incline their minds to the perfection of my beauty. if from me ye cannot gather wisdom, at the least shall ye enjoy me as a pleasant thing." thus spoke the muse of dante, whose _convivio_ is an attempt to aid the understanding in its effort to grasp the moral and pedagogic elements of verse. poetry was the _gaia scienza_, "a fiction containing many useful things covered or veiled." it would be inexact to identify art in the middle age with philosophy and theology. its pleasing falsity could be adapted to useful ends, much in the same way as matrimony excuses love and sexual union. this, however, implies that for the middle age the ideal state was celibacy; that is, pure knowledge, divorced from art. the only line of explanation that was altogether neglected in the middle age was the right one. the _poetics_ of aristotle were badly rendered into latin, from the faulty paraphrase of averroes, by one hermann (1256). the nominalist and realist dispute brought again into the arena the relations between thought and speech, and we find duns scotus occupied with the problem in his _de modis significandi seu grammatica speculativa_. abelard had defined sensation as _confusa conceptio_, and with the importance given to intuitive knowledge, to the perception of the individual, of the _species specialissima_ in duns scotus, together with the denomination of the forms of knowledge as _confusae, indistinctae_, and _distinctae_, we enter upon a terminology, which we shall see appearing again, big with results, at the commencement of modern aesthetic. the doctrine of the middle age, in respect to art and letters, may thus be regarded as of interest rather to the history of culture than to that of general knowledge. a like remark holds good of the renaissance. theories of antiquity are studied, countless treatises in many forms are written upon them, but no really new ideas as regards aesthetic science appear on the horizon. we find among the spokesmen of mystical aesthetic in the thirteenth century such names as marsilio ficino and pico della mirandola. bembo and many others wrote on the beautiful and on love in the century that followed. the _dialogi di amore_, written in italian by a spanish jew named leone and published in 1535, had a european success, being translated into many languages. he talks of the universality of love and of its origin, of beauty that is grace, which delights the soul and impels it to love. knowledge of lesser beauties leads to loftier spiritual beauties. leone called these remarks _philographia_. petrarch's followers versified similar intuitions, while others wrote parodies and burlesques of this style; luca paciolo, the friend of leonardo, made the (false) discovery of the golden section, basing his speculating upon mathematics; michael angelo established an empirical canon for painting, attempting to give rules for imparting grace and movement to figures, by means of certain arithmetical proportions; others found special meanings in colours; while the platonicians placed the seat of beauty in the soul, the aristotelians in physical qualities. agostino nifo, the averroist, after some inconclusive remarks, is at last fortunate enough to discover where natural beauty really dwells: its abode is the body of giovanna d'aragona, princess of tagliacozzo, to whom he dedicates his book. tasso mingled the speculations of the _hippias major_ with those of plotinus. tommaso campanella, in his _poetica_, looks upon the beautiful as _signum boni_, the ugly as _signum mali_. by goodness, he means power, wisdom, and love. campanella was still under the influence of the erroneous platonic conception of the beautiful, but the use of the word _sign_ in this place represents progress. it enabled him to see that things in themselves are neither beautiful nor ugly. nothing proves more clearly that the renaissance did not overstep the limits of aesthetic theory reached in antiquity, than the fact that the pedagogic theory of art continued to prevail, in the face of translations of the _poetics_ of aristotle and of the diffuse labours expended upon that work. this theory was even grafted upon the _poetics_, where one is surprised to find it. there are a few hedonists standing out from the general trend of opinion. the restatement of the pedagogic position, reinforced with examples taken from antiquity, was disseminated throughout europe by the italians of the renaissance. france, spain, england, and germany felt its influence, and we find the writers of the period of louis xiv. either frankly didactic, like le bossu (1675), for whom the first object of the poet is to instruct, or with la mã©nardiã¨re (1640) speaking of poetry as "cette science agrã©able qui mãªle la gravitã© des prã©ceptes avec la douceur du langage." for the former of these critics, homer was the author of two didactic manuals relating to military and political matters: the _iliad_ and the _odyssey_. didacticism has always been looked upon as the poetic of the renaissance, although the didactic is not mentioned among the kinds of poetry of that period. the reason of this lies in the fact that for the renaissance all poetry was didactic, in addition to any other qualities which it might possess. the active discussion of poetic theory, the criticism of aristotle and of plato's exclusion of poetry, of the possible and of the verisimilar, if it did not contribute much original material to the theory of art, yet at any rate sowed the seeds which afterwards germinated and bore fruit. why, they asked with aristotle, at the renaissance, does poetry deal with the universal, history with the particular? what is the reason for poetry being obliged to seek verisimilitude? what does raphael mean by the "certain idea," which he follows in his painting? these themes and others cognate were dealt with by italian and by spanish writers, who occasionally reveal wonderful acumen, as when francesco patrizio, criticizing aristotle's theory of imitation, remarks: "all languages and all philosophic writings and all other writings would be poetry, because they are made of words, and words are imitations." but as yet no one dared follow such a clue to the labyrinth, and the renaissance closes with the sense of a mystery yet to be revealed. iii seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the seventeenth century is remarkable for the ferment of thought upon this difficult problem. such words as genius, taste, imagination or fancy, and feeling, appear in this literature, and deserve a passing notice. as regards the word "genius," we find the italian "ingegno" opposed to the intellect, and dialectic adorned with the attributes of the latter, while rhetoric has the advantage of "ingegno" in all its forms, such as "concetti" and "acutezze." with these the english word ingenious has an obvious connection, especially in its earlier use as applied to men of letters. the french worked upon the word "ingegno" and evolved from it in various associations the expressions "esprit," "beaux esprits." the manual of the spanish jesuit, baltasar gracian, became celebrated throughout europe, and here we find "ingegno" described as the truly inventive faculty, and from it the english word "genius," the italian "genio," the french "gã©nie," first enter into general use. the word "gusto" or taste, "good taste," in its modern sense, also sprang into use about this time. taste was held to be a judicial faculty, directed to the beautiful, and thus to some extent distinct from the intellectual judgment. it was further bisected into active and passive; but the former ran into the definition of "ingegno," the latter described sterility. the word "gusto," or taste as judgment, was in use in italy at a very early period; and in spain we find lope di vega and his contemporaries declaring that their object is to "delight the taste" of their public. these uses of the word are not of significance as regards the problem of art, and we must return to baltasar gracian (1642) for a definition of taste as a special faculty or attitude of the soul. italian writers of the period echo the praises of this laconic moralist, who, when he spoke of "a man of taste," meant to describe what we call to-day "a man of tact" in the conduct of life. the first use of the word in a strictly aesthetic sense occurs in france in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. la bruyã¨re writes in his _caractã¨res_ (1688): "il y a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme de bontã© ou de maturitã© dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime, a le goã»t parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deã§ã  ou au delã , a le goã»t dã©fectueux. il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goã»t, et l'on dispute des goã»ts avec fondement." delicacy and variability or variety were appended as attributes of taste. this french definition of the italian word was speedily adopted in england, where it became "good taste," and we find it used in this sense in italian and german writers of about this period. the words "imagination" and "fancy" were also passed through the crucible in this century. we find the cardinal sforza-pallavicino (1644) blaming those who look for truth or falsehood, for the verisimilar or for historical truth, in poetry. poetry, he holds, has to do with the primary apprehensions, which give neither truth nor falsehood. thus the fancy takes the place of the verisimilar of certain students of aristotle. the cardinal continues his eloquence with the clinching remark that if the intention of poetry were to be believed true, then its real end would be falsehood, which is absolutely condemned by the law of nature and by god. the sole object of poetic fables is, he says, to adorn our intellect with sumptuous, new, marvellous, and splendid imaginings, and so great has been the benefits accruing from this to the human race, that poets have been rewarded with a glory superior to any other, and their names have been crowned with divine honours. this, he says in his treatise, _del bene_, has been the just reward of poets, albeit they have not been bearers of knowledge, nor have they manifested truth. this throwing of the bridle on the neck of pegasus seemed to muratori sixty years later to be altogether too risky a proceeding--although advocated by a prince of the church! he reinserts the bit of the verisimilar, though he talks with admiration of the fancy, that "inferior apprehensive" faculty, which is content to "represent" things, without seeking to know if they be true or false, a task which it leaves to the "superior apprehensive" faculty of the intellect. the severe gravina, too, finds his heart touched by the beauty of poetry, when he calls it "a witch, but wholesome." as early as 1578, huarte had maintained that eloquence is the work of the imagination, not of the intellect; in england, bacon (1605) attributed knowledge to the intellect, history to memory, and poetry to the imagination or fancy; hobbes described the manifestations of the latter; and addison devoted several numbers of the _spectator_ to the analysis of "the pleasures of the imagination." during the same period, the division between those who are accustomed "ã  juger par le sentiment" and those who "raisonnent par les principes" became marked in france, du bos (1719) is an interesting example of the upholder of the feelings as regards the production of art. indeed, there is in his view no other criterion, and the feeling for art is a sixth sense, against which intellectual argument is useless. this french school of thought found a reflex in england with the position assigned there to emotion in artistic work. but the confusion of such words as imagination, taste, feeling, wit, shows that at this time there was a suspicion that these words were all applicable to the same fact. alexander pope thus distinguished wit and judgment: for wit and judgment often are at strife, though meant each other's aid like man and wife. but there was a divergence of opinion as to whether the latter should be looked upon as part of the intellect or not. there was the same divergence of opinion as to taste and intellectual judgment. as regards the former, the opposition to the intellectual principle was reinforced in the eighteenth century by kant in his _kritik der urtheilskraft_. but voltaire and writers anterior to him frequently fell back into intellectualist definitions of a word invented precisely to avoid them. dacier (1684) writes of taste as "une harmonie, un accord de l'esprit et de la raison." the difficulties surrounding a true definition led to the creation of the expression _non so che_, or _je ne sais quoi_, or _no se quã©_, which throws into clear relief the confusion between taste and intellectual judgment. as regards imagination and feeling, or sentiment, there was a strong tendency to sensualism. the cardinal sforza-pallavicino talks of poetry as ignoring alike truth or falsehood and yet delighting the senses. he approves of the remark that poetry should make us "raise our eyebrows," but in later life this keen-eyed prince seems to have fallen back from the brilliant intuition of his earlier years into the pedagogic theory. muratori was convinced that fancy was entirely sensual, and therefore he posted the intellect beside it, "to refrain its wild courses, like a friend having authority." gravina practically coincides in this view of poetic fancy, as a subordinate faculty, incapable of knowledge, fit only to be used by moral philosophy for the introduction into the mind of the true, by means of novelty and the marvellous. in england, also, bacon held poetry to belong to the fancy, and assigned to it a place between history and science. epic poetry he awarded to the former, "parabolic" poetry to the latter. elsewhere he talks of poetry as a dream, and affirms that it is to be held "rather as an amusement of the intelligence than as a science." for him music, painting, sculpture, and the other arts are merely pleasure-giving. addison reduced the pleasures of the imagination to those caused by visible objects, or by ideas taken from them. these pleasures he held to be inferior to those of the senses and less refined than those of the intellect. he looked upon imaginative pleasure as consisting in resemblances discovered between imitations and things imitated, between copies and originals, an exercise adapted to sharpen the spirit of observation. the sensualism of the writers headed by du bos, who looked upon art as a mere pastime, like a tournament or a bull-fight, shows that the truth about aesthetic had not yet succeeded in emerging from the other spiritual activities. yet the new words and the new views of the seventeenth century have great importance for the origins of aesthetic; they were the direct result of the restatement of the problem by the writers of the renaissance, who themselves took it up where antiquity had left it. these new words, and the discussions which arose from them, were the demands of aesthetic for its theoretical justification. but they were not able to provide this justification, and it could not come from elsewhere. with descartes, we are not likely to find much sympathy for such studies as relate to wit, taste, fancy, or feelings. he ignored the famous _non so che_; he abhorred the imagination, which he believed to result from the agitation of the animal spirits. he did not altogether condemn poetry, but certainly looked upon it as the _folle du logis_, which must be strictly supervised by the reason. boileau is the aesthetic equivalent of cartesian intellectualism, boileau _que la raison ã  ses rã¨gles engage_, boileau the enthusiast for allegory. france was infected with the mathematical spirit of cartesianism and all possibility of a serious consideration of poetry and of art was thus removed. witness the diatribes of malebranche against the imagination, and listen to the italian, antonio conti, writing from france in 1756 on the theme of the literary disputes that were raging at the time: "they have introduced the method of m. descartes into belles-lettres; they judge poetry and eloquence independently of their sensible qualities. thus they also confound the progress of philosophy with that of the arts. the abbã© terrasson says that the moderns are greater geometricians than the ancients; therefore they are greater orators and greater poets." la motte, fontenelle, boileau, and malebranche carried on this battle, which was taken up by the encyclopaedists, and when du bos published his daring book, jean jacques le bel published a reply to it (1726), in which he denied to sentiment its claim to judge of art. thus cartesianism could not possess an aesthetic of the imagination. the cartesian j.p. de crousaz (1715) found the beautiful to consist in what is approved of, and thereby reduced it to ideas, ignoring the pleasing and sentiment. locke was as intellectualist in the england of this period as was descartes in france. he speaks of wit as combining ideas in an agreeable variety, which strikes the imagination, while the intellect or judgment seeks for differences according to truth. the wit, then, consists of something which is not at all in accordance with truth and reason. for shaftesbury, taste is a sense or instinct of the beautiful, of order and proportion, identical with the moral sense and with its "preconceptions" anticipating the recognition of reason. body, spirit, and god are the three degrees of beauty. francis hutcheson proceeded from shaftesbury and made popular "the internal sense of beauty, which lies somewhere between sensuality and rationality and is occupied with discussing unity in variety, concord in multiplicity, and the true, the good, and the beautiful in their substantial identity." hutcheson allied the pleasure of art with this sense, that is, with the pleasure of imitation and of the likeness of the copy to the original. this he looked upon as relative beauty, to be distinguished from absolute beauty. the same view dominates the english writers of the eighteenth century, among whom may be mentioned reid, the head of the scottish school, and adam smith. with far greater philosophical vigour, leibnitz in germany opened the door to that crowd of psychic facts which cartesian intellectualism had rejected with horror. his conception of reality as _continuous_ (_natura non facit saltus_) left room for imagination, taste, and their congeners. leibnitz believed that the scale of being ascended from the lowliest to god. what we now term aesthetic facts were then identified with what descartes and leibnitz had called "confused" knowledge, which might become "clear," but not distinct. it might seem that when he applied this terminology to aesthetic facts, leibnitz had recognized their peculiar essence, as being neither sensual nor intellectual. they are not sensual for him, because they have their own "clarity," differing from pleasure and sensual emotion, and from intellectual "distinctio." but the leibnitzian law of continuity and intellectualism did not permit of such an interpretation. obscurity and clarity are here to be understood as quantitative grades of a _single_ form of knowledge, the distinct or intellectual, toward which they both tend and reach at a superior grade. though artists judge with confused perceptions, which are clear but not distinct, these may yet be corrected and proved true by intellective knowledge. the intellect clearly and distinctly knows the thing which the imagination knows confusedly but clearly. this view of leibnitz amounts to saying that the realization of a work of art can be perfected by intellectually determining its concept. thus leibnitz held that there was only one true form of knowledge, and that all other forms could only reach perfection in that. his "clarity" is not a specific difference; it is merely a partial anticipation of his intellective "distinction." to have posited this grade is an important achievement, but the view of leibnitz is not fundamentally different from that of the creators of the words and intuitions already studied. all contributed to attract attention to the peculiarity of aesthetic facts. speculation on language at this period revealed an equally determined intellectualist attitude. grammar was held to be an exact science, and grammatical variations to be explainable by the ellipse, by abbreviation, and by failure to grasp the typical logical form. in france, with arnauld (1660), we have the rigorous cartesian intellectualism; leibnitz and locke both, speculated upon this subject, and the former all his life nourished the thought of a universal language. the absurdity of this is proved in this volume. a complete change of the cartesian system, upon which leibnitz based his own, was necessary, if speculation were ever to surpass the leibnitzian aesthetic. but wolff and the other german pupils of leibnitz were as unable to shake themselves free of the all-pervading intellectualism as were the french pupils of descartes. meanwhile a young student of berlin, named alexander amedeus baumgarten, was studying the wolffian philosophy, and at the same time lecturing in poetry and latin rhetoric. while so doing, he was led to rethink and pose afresh the problem of how to reduce the precepts of rhetoric to a rigorous philosophical system. thus it came about that baumgarten published in september 1735, at the age of twenty-one, as the thesis for his degree of doctor, an opuscule entitled, _meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poã¨ma pertinentibus_, and in it we find written _for the first time_ the word "aesthetic," as the name of a special science. baumgarten ever afterwards attached great importance to his juvenile discovery, and lectured upon it by request in 1742, at frankfort-on-the-oder, and again in 1749. it is interesting to know that in this way emmanuel kant first became acquainted with the theory of aesthetic, which he greatly altered when he came to treat of it in his philosophy. in 1750, baumgarten published the first volume of a more ample treatise, and a second part in 1762. but illness, and death in 1762, prevented his completing his work. what is aesthetic for baumgarten? it is the science of sensible knowledge. its objects are the sensible facts (_aisthaeta_), which the greeks were always careful to distinguish from the mental facts (_noaeta_). it is therefore _scientia cognitionis sensitivae, theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars analogi rationis_. rhetoric and poetic are for him special cases of aesthetic, which is a general science, embracing both. its laws are diffused among all the arts, like the mariner's star (_cynosura quaedam_), and they must be always referred to in all cases, for they are universal, not empirical or merely inductive (_falsa regula pejor est quam nulla_). aesthetic must not be confounded with psychology, which supplies only suppositions. aesthetic is an independent science, which gives the rules for knowing sensibly, and is occupied with the perfection of sensible knowledge, which is beauty. its contrary is ugliness. the beauty of objects and of matter must be excluded from the beauty of sensible knowledge, because beautiful objects can be badly thought and ugly objects beautifully thought. poetic representations are those which are confused or imaginative. distinction and intellectuality are not poetic. the greater the determination, the greater the poetry; individuals absolutely determined (_omnimodo determinata_) are very poetical, as are images or fancies, and everything which refers to feeling. the judgment of sensible and imaginative representations is taste. such are, in brief, the truths which baumgarten stated in his _meditationes_, and further developed and exemplified in his _aesthetica_. close study of the two works above-mentioned leads to the conviction that baumgarten did not succeed in freeing himself from the unity of the leibnitzian monadology. he obtained from leibnitz his conception of the poetic as consisting of the confused, but german critics are wrong in believing that he attributed to it a positive, not a negative quality. had he really done this, he would have broken at a blow the unity of the leibnitzian monad, and conquered the science of aesthetic. this giant's step he did not take: he failed to banish the contradictions of leibnitz and of the other intellectualists. to posit a _perfection_ did not suffice. it was necessary to maintain it against the _lex continui_ of leibnitz and to proclaim its independence of all intellectualism. aesthetic truths for baumgarten were those which did not seem altogether false or altogether true: in fact, the verisimilar. if it were objected to baumgarten that one should not occupy oneself with what, like poetry, he defines as confused and obscure, he would reply that confusion is a condition of finding the truth, that we do not pass at once from night to dawn. thus he did not surpass the thought of leibnitz in this respect. poor baumgarten was always in suspense lest he should be held to occupy himself with things unworthy of a philosopher! "how can you, a professor of philosophy, dare to praise lying and the mixture of truth and falsehood?" he imagined that some such reproach might be addressed to him on account of his purely philosophical speculations, and true enough he actually received a criticism of his theory, in which it was argued, that if poetry consisted of sensual perfection, then it was a bad thing for mankind. baumgarten contemptuously replied that he had not the time to argue with those capable of confounding his _oratio perfecta sensitiva_ with an _oratio perfecte (omnino!) sensitiva_. the fact about baumgarten is that apart from baptizing the new science aesthetic, and apart from his first definitions, he does not stray far from the old ruts of scholastic thought. the excellent baumgarten, with all his ardour and all his convictions, is a sympathetic and interesting figure in the history of aesthetic not yet formed, but in process of formation. the revolutionary who set aside the old definitions of aesthetic, and for the first time revealed the true nature of art and poetry, is the italian, giambattista vico. what were the ideas developed by vico in his _scienza nuova_ (1725)? they were neither more nor less than the solution of the problem, posed by plato, attempted in vain by aristotle, again posed and again unsolved at the renaissance. is poetry a rational or an irrational thing? is it spiritual or animal? if it be spiritual, what is its true nature, and in what way does it differ from art and science? plato, we know, banished poetry to the inferior region of the soul, among the animal spirits. vico on the contrary raises up poetry, and makes of it a period in the history of humanity. and since vico's is an ideal history, whose periods are not concerned with contingent facts, but with spiritual forms, he makes of it a moment of the ideal history of the spirit, a form of knowledge. poetry comes before the intellect, but _after_ feeling. plato had _confused_ it with feeling, and for that reason banished it from his republic. "men _feel_," says vico, "before observing, then they observe with perturbation of the soul, finally they reflect with the pure intellect," he goes on to say, that poetry being composed of passion and of feeling, the nearer it approaches to the _particular_, the more _true_ it is, while exactly the reverse is true of philosophy. imagination is independent and autonomous as regards the intellect. not only does the intellect fail of perfection, but all it can do is to destroy it. "the studies of poetry and metaphysic are _naturally opposed_. poets are the feeling, philosophers the intellect of the human race." the weaker the reason, the stronger the imagination. philosophy, he says, deals with abstract thought or universals, poetry with the particular. painters and poets differ only in their material. homer and the great poets appear in barbaric times. dante, for instance, appeared in "the renewed barbarism of italy." the poetic ages preceded the philosophical, and poetry is the father of prose, by "necessity of nature," not by the "caprice of pleasure." fables or "imaginary universals" were conceived before "reasoned or philosophical universals." to homer, says vico, belongs wisdom, but only poetic wisdom. "his beauties are not those of a spirit softened and civilized by any philosophy." if any one make poetry in epochs of reflexion, he becomes a child again; he does not reflect with his intellect, but follows his fancy and dwells upon particulars. if the true poet make use of philosophic ideas, he only does so that he may change logic into imagination. here we have a profound statement of the line of demarcation between science and art. _they cannot be confused again_. his statement of the difference between poetry and history is a trifle less clear. he explains why to aristotle poetry seemed more philosophical than history, and at the same time he refutes aristotle's error that poetry deals with the universal, history with the particular. poetry equals science, not because it is occupied with the intellectual concept, but because, like science, it is ideal. a good poetical fable must be all ideal: "with the idea the poet gives their being to things which are without it. poetry is all fantastic, as being the art of painting the idea, not icastic, like the art of painting portraits. that is why poets, like painters, are called divine, because in that respect they resemble god the creator." vico ends by identifying poetry and history. the difference between them is posterior and accidental. "but, as it is impossible to impart false ideas, because the false consists of a vicious combination of ideas, so it is impossible to impart a tradition, which, though it be false, has not at first contained some element of truth. thus mythology appears for the first time, not as the invention of an individual, but as the spontaneous vision of the truth as it appears to primitive man." poetry and language are for vico substantially identical. he finds in the origins of poetry the origins of languages and letters. he believed that the first languages consisted in mute acts or acts accompanied by bodies which had natural relations to the ideas that it was desired to signify. with great cleverness he compared these pictured languages to heraldic arms and devices, and to hieroglyphs. he observed that during the barbarism of the middle age, the mute language of signs must return, and we find it in the heraldry and blazonry of that epoch. hence come three kinds of languages: divine silent languages, heroic emblematic languages, and speech languages. formal logic could never satisfy a man with such revolutionary ideas upon poetry and language. he describes the aristotelian syllogism as a method which explains universals in their particulars, rather than unites particulars to obtain universals, looks upon zeno and the sorites as a means of subtilizing rather than sharpening the intelligence, and concludes that bacon is a great philosopher, when he advocates and illustrates _induction_, "which has been followed by the english to the great advantage of experimental philosophy." hence he proceeds to criticize mathematics, which, had hitherto always been looked upon as the type of the _perfect science_. vico is indeed a revolutionary, a pioneer. he knows very well that he is in direct opposition to all that has been thought before about poetry. "my new principles of poetry upset all that first plato and then aristotle have said about the origin of poetry, all that has been said by the patrizzi, by the scaligers, and by the castelvetri. i have discovered that it was through lack of human reason that poetry was born so sublime that neither the arts, nor the poetics, nor the critiques could cause another equal to it to be born, i say equal, and not superior." he goes as far as to express shame at having to report the stupidities of great philosophers upon the origin of song and verse. he shows his dislike for the cartesian philosophy and its tendency to dry up the imagination "by denying all the faculties of the soul which come to it from the body," and talks of his own time as of one "which freezes all the generous quality of the best poetry and thus precludes it from being understood." as regards grammatical forms, vico may be described as an adherent of the great reaction of the renaissance against scholastic verbalism and formalism. this reaction brought back as a value the experience of feeling, and afterwards with romanticism gave its right place to the imagination. vico, in his _scienza nuova_, may be said to have been the first to draw attention to the imagination. although he makes many luminous remarks on history and the development of poetry among the greeks, his work is not really a history, but a science of the spirit or of the ideal. it is not the ethical, logical, or economic moment of humanity which interests him, but the _imaginative_ moment. _he discovered the creative imagination_, and it may almost be said of the _scienza nuova_ of vico that it is aesthetic, the discovery of a new world, of a new mode of knowledge. this was the contribution of the genius of vico to the progress of humanity: he showed aesthetic to be an autonomous activity. it remained to distinguish the science of the spirit from history, the modifications of the human spirit from the historic vicissitudes of peoples, aesthetic from homeric civilization. but although goethe, herder, and wolf were acquainted with the _scienza nuova_, the importance of this wonderful book did not at first dawn upon the world. wolf, in his prolegomena to homer, thought that he was dealing merely with an ingenious speculator on homeric themes. he did not realize that the intellectual stature of vico far surpassed that of the most able philologists. the fortunes of aesthetic after vico were very various, and the list of aestheticians who fell back into the old pedagogic definition, or elaborated the mistakes of baumgarten, is very long. yet with c.h. heydenreich in germany and sulzer in switzerland we find that the truths contained in baumgarten have begun to bear fruit. j.j. herder (1769) was more important than these, and he placed baumgarten upon a pedestal, though criticizing his pretension of creating an _ars pulchre cogitandi_ instead of a simple _scientia de pulchro et pulchris philosophice cogitans_. herder admitted baumgarten's definition of poetry as _oratio sensitiva perfecta_, perfect sensitived speech, and this is _probably the best definition of poetry that has ever been given_. it touches the real essence of poetry and opens to thought the whole of the philosophy of the beautiful. herder, although he does not cite vico upon aesthetic questions, yet praises him as a philosopher. his remarks about poetry as "the maternal language of humanity, as the garden is more ancient than the cultivated field, painting than writing, song than declamation, exchange than commerce," are replete with the spirit of the italian philosopher. but despite similar happy phrases, herder is philosophically the inferior of the great italian. he is a firm believer in the leibnitzian law of continuity, and does not surpass the conclusions of baumgarten. herder and his friend hamann did good service as regards the philosophy of language. the french encyclopaedists, j.j. rousseau, d'alembert, and many others of this period, were none of them able to get free of the idea that a word is either a natural, mechanical fact, or a sign attached to a thought. the only way out of this difficulty is to look upon the imagination as itself active and expressive in _verbal imagination_, and language as the language of _intuition_, not of the intelligence. herder talks of language as "an understanding of the soul with itself." thus language begins to appear, not as an arbitrary invention or a mechanical fact, but as a primitive affirmation of human activity, as a _creation_. but all unconscious of the discoveries of vico, the great mass of eighteenth century writers try their hands at every sort of solution. the abbã© batteux published in 1746 _les beaux-arts rã©duits a un seul principe_, which is a perfect little bouquet of contradictions. the abbã© finds himself confronted with difficulties at every turn, but with "un peu d'esprit on se tire de tout," and when for instance he has to explain artistic enjoyment of things displeasing, he remarks that the imitation never being perfect like reality, the horror caused by reality disappears. but the french were equalled and indeed surpassed by the english in their amateur aesthetics. the painter hogarth was one day reading in italian a speech about the beauty of certain figures, attributed to michael angelo. this led him to imagine that the figurative arts depend upon a principle which consists of conforming to a given line. in 1745 he produced a serpentine line as frontispiece of his collection of engravings, which he described as "the line of beauty." thus he succeeded in exciting universal curiosity, which he proceeded to satisfy with his "analysis of beauty." here he begins by rightly combating the error of judging paintings by their subject and by the degree of their imitation, instead of by their form, which is the essential in art. he gives his definition of form, and afterwards proceeds to describe the waving lines which are beautiful and those which are not, and maintains that among them all there is but one that is really worthy to be called "the line of beauty," and one definite serpentine line "the line of grace." the pig, the bear, the spider, and the frog are ugly, because they do not possess serpentine lines. e. burke, with a like assurance in his examples, was equally devoid of certainty in his general principles. he declares that the natural properties of an object cause pleasure or pain to the imagination, but that the latter also procures pleasure from their resemblance to the original. he does not speak further of the second of these, but gives a long list of the natural properties of the sensible, beautiful object. having concluded his list, he remarks that these are in his opinion the qualities upon which beauty depends and which are the least liable to caprice and confusion. but "comparative smallness, delicate structure, colouring vivid but not too much so," are all mere empirical observations of no more value than those of hogarth, with whom burke must be classed as an aesthetician. their works are spoken of as "classics." classics indeed they are, but of the sort that arrive at no conclusion. henry home (lord kaimes) is on a level a trifle above the two just mentioned. he seeks "the true principles of the beaux-arts," in order to transform criticism into "a rational science." he selects facts and experience for this purpose, but in his definition of beauty, which he divides into two parts, relative and intrinsic, he is unable to explain the latter, save by a final cause, which he finds in the almighty. such theories as the three above mentioned defy classification, because they are not composed by any scientific method. their authors pass from physiological sensualism to moralism, from imitation of nature to finalism, and to transcendental mysticism, without consciousness of the incongruity of their theses, at variance each with itself. the german, ernest platner, at any rate did not suffer from a like confusion of thought. he developed his researches on the lines of hogarth, but was only able to discover a prolongation of sexual pleasure in aesthetic facts. "where," he exclaims, "is there any beauty that does not come from the feminine figure, the centre of all beauty? the undulating line is beautiful, because it is found in the body of woman; essentially feminine movements are beautiful; the notes of music are beautiful, when they melt into one another; a poem is beautiful, when one thought embraces another with lightness and facility." french sensualism shows itself quite incapable of understanding aesthetic production, and the associationism of david hume is not more fortunate in this respect. the dutchman hemsterhuis (1769) developed an ingenious theory, mingling mystical and sensualist theory with some just remarks, which afterwards, in the hands of jacobi, became sentimentalism. hemsterhuis believed beauty to be a phenomenon arising from the meeting by the sentimentalism, which gives multiplicity, with the internal sense, which tends to unity. consequently the beautiful will be that which presents the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time. to man is denied supreme unity, but here he finds approximative unity. hence the joy arising from the beautiful, which has some analogy with the joy of love. with winckelmann (1764) platonism or neo-platonism was vigorously renewed. the creator of the history of the figurative arts saw in the divine indifference and more than human elevation of the works of greek sculpture a beauty which had descended from the seventh heaven and become incarnate in them. mendelssohn, the follower of baumgarten, had denied beauty to god: winckelmann, the neoplatonician, gave it back to him. he holds that perfect beauty is to be found only in god. "the conception of human beauty becomes the more perfect in proportion as it can be thought as in agreement with the supreme being, who is distinguished from matter by his unity and indivisibility." to the other characteristics of supreme beauty, winckelmann adds "the absence of any sort of signification" (unbezeichnung). lines and dots cannot explain beauty, for it is not they alone which form it. its form is not proper to any definite person, it expresses no sentiment, no feeling of passion, for these break up unity and diminish or obscure beauty. according to winckelmann, beauty must be like a drop of pure water taken from the spring, which is the more healthy the less it has of taste, because it is purified of all foreign elements. a special faculty is required to appreciate this beauty, which winckelmann is inclined to call intelligence, or a delicate internal sense, free of all instinctive passions, of pleasure, and of friendship. since it becomes a question of perceiving something immaterial, winckelmann banishes colour to a secondary place. true beauty, he says, is that of form, a word which describes lines and contours, as though lines and contours could not also be perceived by the senses, or could appear to the eye without any colour. it is the destiny of error to be obliged to contradict itself, when it does not decide to dwell in a brief aphorism, in order to live as well as may be with facts and concrete problems. the "history" of winckelmann dealt with historic concrete facts, with which it was necessary to reconcile the idea of a supreme beauty. his admission of the contours of lines and his secondary admission of colours is a compromise. he makes another with regard to the principle of expression. "since there is no intermediary between pain and pleasure in human nature, and since a human being without these feelings is inconceivable, we must place the human figure in a moment of action and of passion, which is what is termed expression in art." so winckelmann studied expression after beauty. he makes a third compromise between his one, indivisible, supreme, and constant beauty and individual beauties. winckelmann preferred the male to the female body as the most complete incarnation of supreme beauty, but he was not able to shut his eyes to the indisputable fact that there also exist beautiful bodies of women and even of animals. raphael mengs, the painter, was an intimate friend of winckelmann and associated himself with him in his search for a true definition of the beautiful. his ideas were generally in accordance with those of winckelmann. he defines beauty as "the visible idea of perfection, which is to perfection what the visible is to the mathematical point." he falls under the influence of the argument from design. the creator has ordained the multiplicity of beauties. things are beautiful according to our ideas of them, and these ideas come from the creator. thus each beautiful thing has its own type, and a child would appear ugly if it resembled a man. he adds to his remarks in this sense: "as the diamond is alone perfect among stones, gold among metals, and man among living creatures, so there is distinction in each species, and but little is perfect." in his _dreams of beauty_, he looks upon beauty as "an intermediate disposition," which contains a part of perfection and a part of the agreeable, and forms a _tertium quid_, which differs from the other two and deserves a special name. he names four sources of the art of painting: beauty, significant or expressive character, harmony, and colouring. the first of these he finds among the ancients, the second with raphael, the third with correggio, the fourth with titian. mengs does not succeed in rising above this empiricism of the studio, save to declaim about the beauty of nature, virtue, forms, and proportions, and indeed everything, including the first cause, which is the most beautiful of all. the name of g.e. lessing (1766) is well known to all concerned with art problems. the ideas of winckelmann reappear in lessing, with less of a metaphysical tinge. for lessing, the end of art is the pleasing, and since this is "a superfluous thing," he thought that the legislator should not allow to art the liberty indispensable to science, which seeks the truth, necessary to the soul. for the greeks painting was, as it should always be, "imitation of beautiful bodies." everything disagreeable or ill-formed should be excluded from painting. "painting, as clever imitation, may imitate deformity. painting, as a fine art, does not permit this." he was more inclined to admit deformity in poetry, as there it is less shocking, and the poet can make use of it to produce in us certain feelings, such as the ridiculous or the terrible. in his _dramaturgie_ (1767), lessing followed the peripatetics, and believed that the rules of aristotle were as absolute as the theorems of euclid. his polemic against the french school is chiefly directed to claiming a place in poetry for the verisimilar, as against absolute historical exactitude. he held the universal to be a sort of mean of what appears in the individual, the catharsis was in his view a transformation of the passions into virtuous dispositions, and he held the duty of poetry to be inspiration of the love of virtue. he followed winckelmann in believing that the expression of physical beauty was the supreme object of painting. this beauty exists only as an ideal, which finds its highest expression in man. animals possess it to a slighter extent, vegetable and inanimate nature not at all. those mistaken enough to occupy themselves with depicting the latter are imitating beauties deprived of all ideal. they work only with eye and hand; genius has little if any share in their productions. lessing found the physical ideal to reside chiefly in form, but also in the ideal of colour, and in permanent expression. mere colouring and transitory expression were for him without ideal, "because nature has not imposed upon herself anything definite as regards them." at bottom he does not care for colouring, finding in the pen drawings of artists "a life, a liberty, a delicacy, lacking to their pictures." he asks "whether even the most wonderful colouring can make up for such a loss, and whether it be not desirable that the art of oil-painting had never been invented." this "ideal beauty," wonderfully constructed from divine quintessence and subtle pen and brush strokes, this academic mystery, had great success. in italy it was much discussed in the environment of mengs and of winckelmann, who were working there. the first counterblast to their aesthetic neo-platonism came from an italian named spalletti, and took the form of a letter addressed to mengs. he represents the _characteristic_ as the true principle of art. the pleasure obtained from beauty is intellectual, and truth is its object. when the soul meets with what is characteristic, and what really suits the object to be represented, the work is held to be beautiful. a well-made man with a woman's face is ugly. harmony, order, variety, proportion, etc.--these are elements of beauty, and man enjoys the widening of his knowledge before disagreeable things characteristically represented. spalletti defines beauty as "that modification inherent to the object observed, which presents it, as it should appear, with an infallible characteristic." thus the aristotelian thesis found a supporter in italy, some years before any protestation was heard in germany. louis hirt, the historian of art (1797) observed that ancient monuments represented all sorts of forms, from the most beautiful and sublime to the most ugly and most common. he therefore denied that ideal beauty was the principle of art, and for it substituted the _characteristic_, applicable equally to gods, heroes, and animals. wolfgang goethe, in 1798, forgetting the juvenile period, during which he had dared to raise a hymn to gothic architecture, now began seriously to seek a middle term between beauty and expression. he believed that he had found it, in certain characteristic contents presenting to the artist beautiful shapes, which the artist would then develop and reduce to perfect beauty. thus for goethe at this period, the characteristic was simply the _starting-point_, or framework, from which the beautiful arose, through the power of the artist. but these writers mentioned after j.b. vico are not true philosophers. winckelmann, mengs, hogarth, lessing, and goethe are great in other ways. meier called himself a historian of art, but he was inferior both to herder and to hamann. from j.b. vico to emmanuel kant, european thought is without a name of great importance as regards this subject. kant took up the problem, where vico had left it, not in the historical, but in the ideal sense. he resembled the italian philosopher, in the gravity and the tenacity of his studies in aesthetic, but he was far less happy in his solutions, which did not attain to the truth, and to which he did not succeed in giving the necessary unity and systematization. the reader must bear in mind that kant is here criticized solely as an aesthetician: his other conclusions do not enter directly into the discussion. what was kant's idea of art? the answer is: the same in substance as baumgarten's. this may seem strange to those who remember his sustained polemic against wolf and the conception of beauty as confused perception. but kant always thought highly of baumgarten. he calls him "that excellent analyst" in the _critique of pure reason_, and he used baumgarten's text for his university lectures on metaphysic. kant looked upon logic and aesthetic as cognate studies, and in his scheme of studies for 1765, and in the _critique of pure reason_, he proposes to cast a glance at the critique of taste, that is to say, aesthetic, "since the study of the one is useful for the other and they are mutually illuminative." he followed meier in his distinctions between logical and aesthetic truth. he even quoted the instance of the young girl, whose face when distinctly seen, i.e. with a microscope, is no longer beautiful. it is true, aesthetically, he said, that when a man is dead he cannot come to life, although this be opposed both to logical and to moral truth. it is aesthetically true that the sun plunges into the sea, although that is not true logically or objectively. no one, even among the greatest, can yet tell to what extent logical truth should mingle with aesthetic truth. kant believed that logical truth must wear the habit of aesthetic, in order to become _accessible_. this habit, he thought, was discarded only by the rational sciences, which tend to depth. aesthetic certainly is subjective. it is satisfied with authority or with an appeal to great men. we are so feeble that aesthetic must eke out our thoughts. aesthetic is a vehicle of logic. but there are logical truths which are not aesthetic. we must exclude from philosophy exclamations and other emotions, which belong to aesthetic truth. for kant, poetry is the harmonious play of thought and sensation, differing from eloquence, because in poetry thoughts are fitted to suggestions, in eloquence the reverse is true. poetry should make virtue and intellect visible, as was done by pope in his _essay on man_. elsewhere, he says frankly that logical perfection is the foundation of all the rest. the confirmation of this is found in his _critique of judgment_, which schelling looked upon as the most important of the three _critiques_, and which hegel and other metaphysical idealists always especially esteemed. for kant art was always "a sensible and imaged covering for an intellectual concept." he did not look upon art as pure beauty without a concept. he looked upon it as a beauty adherent and fixed about a concept. the work of genius contains two elements: imagination and intelligence. to these must be added taste, which combines the two. art may even represent the ugly in nature, for artistic beauty "is not a beautiful thing but a beautiful representation of a thing." but this representation of the ugly has its limits in the arts (here kant remembers lessing and winckelmann), and an absolute limit in the disgusting and the repugnant, which kills the representation itself. he believes that there may be artistic productions without a concept, such as are flowers in nature, and these would be ornaments to frameworks, music without words, etc., etc., but since they represent nothing reducible to a definite concept, they must be classed, like flowers, with free beauties. this would certainly seem to exclude them from aesthetic, which, according to kant, should combine imagination and intelligence. kant is shut in with intellectualist barriers. a complete definition of the _imagination_ is _wanting_ to his system. he does not admit that the imagination belongs to the powers of the mind. he relegates it to the facts of sensation. he is aware of the reproductive and combinative imagination, but he does not recognize _fancy_ (_fantasia_), which is the true productive imagination. yet kant was aware that there exists an activity other than the intellective. intuition is referred to by him as preceding intellective activity and differing from sensation. he does not speak of it, however, in his critique of art, but in the first section of the _critique of pure reason_. sensations do not enter the mind, until it has given them _form_. this is neither sensation nor intelligence. it is _pure intuition_, the sum of the _a priori_ principles of sensibility. he speaks thus: "there must, then, exist a science that forms the first part of the transcendental doctrine of the elements, distinct from that which contains the principles of pure thought and is called transcendental logic." what does he call this new science? he calls it _transcendental aesthetic_, and refuses to allow the term to be used for the critique of taste, which could never become a science. but although he thus states so clearly the necessity of a science of the form of the sensations, that is of _pure intuition_, kant here appears to fall into grave error. this arises from _his inexact idea_ of the _essence of the aesthetic faculty or of art_, which, as we now know, is pure intuition. he conceives the form of sensibility to be reducible to the _two categories of space and time_. benedetto croce has shown that space and time are far from being categories or functions: they are complex posterior formations. kant, however, looked upon density, colour, etc., as material for sensations; but the mind only observes colour or hardness when it has _already_ given a form to its sensations. sensations, in so far as they are _crude matter_, are _outside_ the mind: they are a _limit_. colour, hardness, density, etc., are _already_ intuitions. _they are the aesthetic activity in its rudimentary manifestation._ characterizing or qualifying imagination, that is, _aesthetic activity_, should therefore _take the place occupied by the study of space and time_ in the _critique of pure reason_, and constitute the true _transcendental aesthetic_, prologue to logic. had kant done this, he would have surpassed leibnitz and baumgarten; he would have equalled vico. kant did not identify the beautiful with art. he established what he called "the four moments of beauty," amounting to a definition of it. the two negative moments are, "that is beautiful which pleases _without interest_"; this thesis was directed against the sensualist school of english writers, with whom kant had for a time agreed; and "that is beautiful which pleases without a concept," directed against the intellectualists. thus he affirmed the existence of a spiritual domain, distinct from that of organic pleasure, of the useful, the good, and the true. the two other moments are, "that is beautiful which has the form of finality without the representation of an end," and "that is beautiful which is the object of universal pleasure." what is this disinterested pleasure that we experience before pure colours, pure sounds, and flowers? benedetto croce replies that this mysterious domain has no existence; that the instances cited represent, either instances of organic pleasure, or are artistic facts of expression. kant was less severe with the neoplatonicians than with the two schools of thought above mentioned. his _critique of judgment_ contains some curious passages, in one of which he gives his distinction of form from matter: "in music, the melody is the matter, harmony the form: in a flower, the scent is the matter, the shape or configuration the form." in the other arts, he found that the design was the essential. "not what pleases in sensation, but what is approved for its form, is the foundation of taste." in his pursuit of the phantom of a beauty, which is neither that of art nor of sensual pleasure, exempt alike from expression and from enjoyment, he became enveloped in inextricable contradictions. little disposed as he was to let himself be carried away by the imagination, he expressed his contempt for philosopher-poets like herder, and kept saying and unsaying, affirming and then immediately criticizing his own affirmations as to this mysterious beauty. the truth is that _this mystery is simply his own individual uncertainty before a problem which he could not solve_, owing to his having no clear idea of an activity of sentiment. such an activity represented for him a logical contradiction. such expressions as "necessary universal pleasure," "finality without the idea of end," are verbal proofs of his uncertainty. how was he to emerge from this uncertainty, this contradiction? he fell back upon the concept of a base of subjective finality as the base of the judgment of taste, that is of the subjective finality of nature by the judgment. but nothing can be known or disclosed to the object by means of this concept, which is indeterminate in itself and not adapted for knowledge. its determining reason is perhaps situated in "the suprasensible substratum of humanity." thus beauty becomes a symbol of morality. "the subjective principle alone, that is, the indeterminate idea of the suprasensible in us, can be indicated as the sole key to reveal this faculty, which remains unknown to us in its origin. nothing but this principle can make that hidden faculty comprehensible." kant had a tendency to mysticism, which this statement does not serve to conceal, but it was a mysticism without enthusiasm, a mysticism almost against the grain. his failure to penetrate thoroughly the nature of the aesthetic activity led him to see double and even triple, on several occasions. art being unknown to him in its essential nature, he invents the functions of _space_ and _time_ and terms this _transcendental aesthetic_; he develops the theory of the imaginative beautifying of the intellectual concept by genius; he is finally forced to admit a mysterious power of feeling, intermediate between the theoretic and the practical activity. this power is cognoscitive and non-cognoscitive, moral and indifferent to morality, agreeable and yet detached from the pleasure of the senses. his successors hastened to make use of this mysterious power, for they were glad to be able to find some sort of justification for their bold speculations in the severe philosopher of kã¶nigsberg. in addition to schelling and hegel, for whom, as has been said, the _critique of judgment_ seemed the most important of the three critiques, we must now mention the name of a poet who showed himself as great in philosophical as in aesthetic achievement. _friedrich schiller_ first elaborated that portion of the kantian thought contained in the _critique of judgment_. before any professional philosopher, schiller studied that sphere of activity which unites feeling with reason. hegel talks with admiration of this artistic genius, who was also so profoundly philosophical and first announced the principle of reconciliation between life as duty and reason on the one hand, and the life of the senses and feeling on the other. to schiller belongs the great merit of having opposed the subjective idealism of kant and of having made the attempt to surpass it. the exact relations between kant and schiller, and the extent to which the latter may have been influenced by leibnitz and herder, are of less importance to the history of aesthetic than the fact that schiller _unified_ once for all art and beauty, which had been separated by kant, with his distinctions between adherent and pure beauty. schiller's artistic sense must doubtless have stood him here in good stead. schiller found a very unfortunate and misleading term to apply to the aesthetic sphere. he called it the sphere of _play_ (spiel). he strove to explain that by this he did not mean ordinary games, nor material amusement. for schiller, this sphere of play lay intermediate between thought and feeling. necessity in art gives place to a free disposition of forces; mind and nature, matter and form are here reconciled. the beautiful is life, but not physiological life. a beautiful statue may have life, and a living man be without it. art conquers nature with form. the great artist effaces matter with form. the less we are sensible of the material in a work of art, the greater the triumph of the artist. the soul of the spectator should leave the magic sphere of art as pure and as perfect as when it left the hands of the creator. the most frivolous theme should be so treated that we can pass at once from it to the most rigorous, and _vice versa_. only when man has placed himself outside the world and contemplates it aesthetically, can he know the world. while he is merely the passive receiver of sensations, he is one with the world, and therefore cannot realize it. art is indeterminism. with the help of art, man delivers himself from the yoke of the senses, and is at the same time free of any rational or moral duty: he may enjoy for a moment the luxury of serene contemplation. schiller was well aware that the moment art is employed to teach morals directly, it ceases to be art. all other teachings give to the soul a special imprint. art alone is favourable to all without prejudice. owing to this indifference of art, it possesses a great educative power, by opening the path to morality without preaching or persuasion; without determining, it produces determinability. this was the main theme of the celebrated "letters on the aesthetic education of man," which schiller wrote to his patron the duke of holstein-augustenburg. here, and in his lectures at the university of jena, it is clear that schiller addresses himself to a popular audience. he began a work, on scientific aesthetic, which he intended to entitle "kallias," but unfortunately died without completing it. we possess only a few fragments, contained in his correspondence with his friend kã¶rner. kã¶rner did not feel satisfied with the formula of schiller, and asks for some more precise and objective mark of the beautiful. schiller tells him that he has found it, but what he had found we shall never know, as there is no document to inform us. the fault of schiller's aesthetic theory was its lack of precision. his artistic faculty enabled him to give unsurpassable descriptions of the catharsis and of other effects of art, but he fails to give a precise definition of the aesthetic function. true, he disassociates it from morality, yet admits that it may in a measure be associated with it. the only formal activities that he recognizes are the moral and the intellectual, and he denies altogether (against the sensualists) that art can have anything to do with passion or sensuality. his intellectual world consisted only of the logical and the intellectual, leaving out the imaginative activity. what is art for schiller? he admits four modes of relation between man and external things. they are the physical, the logical, the moral, and the aesthetic. he describes this latter as a mode by which things affect the whole of our different forces, without being a definite object for any one in particular. thus a man may be said to please aesthetically, "when he does so without appealing to any one of the senses directly, and without any law or end being thought of in connection with him." schiller cannot be made to say anything more definite than this. his general position was probably much like kant's (save in the case above mentioned, where he made a happy correction), and he probably looked upon aesthetic as a mingling of several faculties, as a play of sentiment. schiller was faithful to kant's teaching in its main lines, and his uncertainty was largely due to this. the existence of a _third sphere_ uniting form and matter was for schiller rather an ideal conformable to reason than a _definite_ activity; it was supposititious, rather than effective. but the romantic movement in literature, which was at that time gaining ground, with its belief in a superhuman faculty called imagination, in genius breaker of rules, found no such need for restraint. schiller's modest reserve was set aside, and with j.p. richter we approach a mythology of the imagination. many of his observations are, however, just, and his distinction between productive and reproductive imagination is excellent. how could humanity appreciate works of genius, he asks, were it without some common measure? all men who can go as far as saying "this is beautiful" before a beautiful thing, are capable of the latter. he then proceeds to establish to his own satisfaction categories of the imagination, leading from simple talent to the supreme form of male genius in which all faculties flourish together: a faculty of faculties. the romantic conception of art is, in substance, that of idealist german philosophy, where we find it in a more coherent and systematic form. it is the conception of schelling, solger, and hegel. fichte, kant's first great pupil, cannot be included with these, for his view of aesthetic, largely influenced by schiller, is transformed in the fichtian system to a moral activity, to a representation of the ethical ideal. the subjective idealism of fichte, however, generated an aesthetic: that of irony as the base of art. the i that has created the universe can also destroy it. the universe is a vain appearance, smiled at by the ego its creator, who surveys it as an artist his work, from without and from above. for friedrich schlegel, art was a perpetual farce, a parody of itself; and tieck defined irony as a force which allows the poet to dominate his material. novalis, that romantic fichtian, dreamed of a magical idealism, an art of creating by an instantaneous act of the ego. but schelling's "system of transcendental idealism" was the first great philosophical affirmation of romanticism and of conscious neo-platonism reborn in aesthetic. schelling has obviously studied schiller, but he brings to the problem a mind more purely philosophical and a method more exactly scientific. he even takes kant to task for faultiness of method. his remarks as to plato's position are curious, if not conclusive. he says that plato condemned the art of his time, because it was realistic and naturalistic: like all antique art, it exhibited a _finite_ character. plato's judgment would have been quite different had he known christian art, of which the character is _infinity_. schelling held firm to the fusion of art and beauty effected by schiller, but he combated winckelmann's theory of abstract beauty with its negative conception of the characteristic, assigning to art the limits of the individual. art is characteristic beauty; it is not the individual, but the living conception of the individual. when the artist recognizes the eternal idea in an individual, and expresses it outwardly, he transforms the individual into a world apart, into a species, into an eternal idea. characteristic beauty is the fulness of form which slays form: it does not silence passion, but restrains it as the banks of a river the waters that flow between them, but do not overflow. schelling's starting-point is the criticism of teleological judgment, as stated by kant in his third critique. teleology is the union of theoretic with practical philosophy. but the system would not be complete, unless we could show the identity of the two worlds, theoretic and practical, in the subject itself. he must demonstrate the existence of an activity, which is at once unconscious as nature and conscious as spirit. this activity we find in aesthetic, which is therefore "the general organ of philosophy, the keystone of the whole building." poetry and philosophy alone possess the world of the ideal, in which the real world vanishes. true art is not the impression of the moment, but the representation of infinite life: it is transcendental intuition objectified. the time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, which was its source, and on the new philosophy will arise a new mythology. philosophy does not depict real things, but their ideas; so too, art. those same ideas, of which real things are, as philosophy shows, the imperfect copies, reappear in art objectified as ideas, and therefore in their perfection. art stands nearest to philosophy, which itself stands nearest to the idea, and therefore nearest to perfection. art differs from philosophy only by its _specialization_: in all other ways it is the ideal world in its most complete expression. the three ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty correspond to the three powers of the ideal and of the real world. beauty is not the universal whole, which is truth, nor is it the only reality, which is action: it is the perfect mingling of the two. "beauty exists where the real or particular is so adequate to its concept that this infinite thing enters into the finite, and is contemplated in the concrete." philosophy unites truth, morality, and beauty, in what they possess in common, and deduces them from their unique source, which is god. if philosophy assume the character of science and of truth, although it be superior to truth, the reason for this lies in the fact that science and truth are simply the formal determination of philosophy. schelling looked upon mythology as a necessity for every art. ideas are gods, considered from the point of view of reality; for the essence of each is equal to god in a _particular_ form. the characteristics of all gods, including the christian, are _pure limitation and absolute indivisibility_. minerva has wisdom and strength, but lacks womanly tenderness; juno has power and wisdom, but is without amorous charm, which she borrows with the girdle of venus, who in her turn is without the wisdom of minerva. what would these gods become without their limitations? they would cease to be the objects of fancy. fancy is a faculty, apart from the pure intellect and from the reason. distinct from imagination, which develops the products of art, fancy has intuitions of them, grasps them herself, and herself represents them. fancy is to imagination as intellectual intuition is to reason. fancy, then, is intellectual intuition in art. in the thought of schelling, fancy, the new or artistic intuition, sister of intellectual intuition, came to dominate alike the intellect and the old conception of the fancy and the imagination, in a system for which reason alone did not suffice. c.g. solger followed schelling and agreed with him in finding but little truth in the theories of kant, and especially of fichte. he held that their dialectic had failed to solve the difficulty of intellectual intuition. he too conceived of fancy as distinct from imagination, and divided the former into three degrees. imagination he held to appertain to ordinary knowledge, "which re-establishes the original intuition to infinity." fancy "originates from the original antithesis in the idea, and so operates that the opposing elements which are separated from the idea become perfectly united in reality. by means of fancy, we are able to understand things more lofty than those of common knowledge, and in them we recognize the idea itself as real. in art, fancy is the faculty of transforming the idea into reality." for solger as for schelling, beauty belongs to the region of ideas, which are inaccessible to common knowledge. art is nearly allied to religion, for as religion is the abyss of the idea, into which our consciousness plunges, that it may become essential, so art and the beautiful resolve, in their way, the world of distinctions, the universal and the particular. artistic activity is more than theoretical: it is practical, realized and perfect, and therefore belongs to practical, not to theoretic philosophy, as kant wrongly believed. since art must touch infinity on one side, it cannot have ordinary nature for its object. art therefore _ceases_ in the portrait, and this explains why the ancients generally chose gods or heroes as models for sculpture. every deity, even in a limited and particular form, expresses a definite modification of the idea. g.g.f. hegel gives the same definition of art as solger and schelling, all three were mystical aestheticians, and the various shades of mystical aesthetic, presented by these three writers, are not of great interest. schelling forced upon art the abstract platonic ideas, while hegel reduced it to the _concrete idea_. this concrete idea was for hegel the first and lowest of the three forms of the liberty of the spirit. it represented immediate, sensible, objectified knowledge; while religion filled the second place, as representative consciousness with adoration, which is an element foreign to art alone. the third place was of course occupied by philosophy, the free thought of the absolute spirit. beauty and truth are one for hegel; they are united in the idea. the beautiful he defined as _the sensible appearance of the idea_. some writers have erroneously believed that the views of the three philosophers above mentioned lead back to those of baumgarten. but that is not correct. they well understood that art cannot be made a medium for the expression of philosophic concepts. not only are they opposed to the moralistic and intellectualistic view, but they are its active opponents. schelling says that aesthetic production is in its essence absolutely free, and hegel that art does not contain the universal as such. hegel accentuated the _cognoscitive_ character of art, more than any of his predecessors. we have seen that he placed it with philosophy and religion in the sphere of the absolute spirit. but he does not allow either to art or to religion any difference of function from that of philosophy, which occupies the highest place in his system. they are therefore inferior, necessary, grades of the spirit. of what use are they? of none whatever, or at best, they merely represent transitory and historical phases of human life. thus we see that the tendency of hegelianism is _anti-artistic_, as it is rationalistic and anti-religious. this result of thought was a strange and a sad thing for one who loved art so fervently as hegel. our memories conjure up plato, who also loved art well, and yet found himself logically obliged to banish the poet from his ideal republic, after crowning him with roses. but the german philosopher was as staunch to the (supposed) command of reason as the greek, and felt himself obliged to announce the death of art. art, he says, occupies a lofty place in the human spirit, but not the most lofty, for it is limited to a restricted content and only a certain grade of truth can be expressed in art. such are the hellenic gods, who can be transfused in the sensible and appear in it adequately. the christian conception of truth is among those which cannot be so expressed. the spirit of the modern world, and more precisely the spirit of our religion and rational development, seem to have gone beyond the point at which art is the chief way of apprehending the absolute. the peculiarity of artistic production no longer satisfies our highest needs. thought and reflexion have surpassed art, the beautiful. he goes on to say that the reason generally given for this is the prevalence of material and political interests. but the true reason is the inferiority in degree of art as compared with pure thought. art is dead, and philosophy can therefore supply its complete biography. hegel's _vorlesungen ã�ber aesthetik_ amounts therefore to a funeral oration upon art. romanticism and metaphysical idealism had placed art, sometimes above the clouds, sometimes within them, and believing that it was no good there to anyone, hegel provided a decent burial. nothing perhaps better shows how well this fantastic conception of art suited the spirit of the time, than the fact that even the adversaries of schelling, solger, and hegel either admit agreement with that conception, or find themselves involuntarily in agreement with it, while believing themselves to be very remote. they too are mystical aestheticians. we all know with what virulence arthur schopenhauer attacked and combated schelling, hegel, and all the "charlatans" and "professors" who had divided among them the inheritance of kant. well, schopenhauer's theory of art starts, just like hegel's, from the difference between the abstract and the concrete concept, which is the _idea_. schopenhauer's ideas are the platonic ideas, although in the form which he gives to them, they have a nearer resemblance to the ideas of schelling than to the idea of hegel. schopenhauer takes much trouble to differentiate his ideas from intellectual concepts. he calls the idea "unity which has become plurality by means of space and time. it is the form of our intuitive apperception. the concept is, on the contrary, unity extracted from plurality by means of abstraction, which is an act of our intellect. the concept may be called _unitas post rem_, the idea _unitas ante rem_." the origin of this psychological illusion of the ideas or types of things is always to be found in the changing of the empirical classifications created for their own purposes by the natural sciences, into living realities. thus each art has for its sphere a special category of ideas. architecture and its derivatives, gardening (and strange to say landscape-painting is included with it), sculpture and animal-painting, historical painting and the higher forms of sculpture, etc., all possess their special ideas. poetry's chief object is man as idea. music, on the contrary, does not belong to the hierarchy of the other arts. schelling had looked upon music as expressing the rhythm of the universe itself. for schopenhauer, music does not express ideas, but the _will itself_. the analogies between music and the world, between fundamental notes and crude matter, between the scale and the scale of species, between melody and conscious will, lead schopenhauer to the conclusion that music is not only an arithmetic, as it appeared to leibnitz, but indeed a metaphysic: "the occult metaphysical exercise of a soul not knowing that it philosophizes." for schopenhauer, as for his idealist predecessors, art is beatific. it is the flower of life; he who is plunged in artistic contemplation ceases to be an individual; he is the conscious subject, pure, freed from will, from pain, and from time. yet in schopenhauer's system exist elements for a better and a more profound treatment of the problem of art. he could sometimes show himself to be a lucid and acute analyst. for instance, he continually remarks that the categories of space and time are not applicable to art, _but only the general form of representation_. he might have deduced from this that art is the most immediate, not the most lofty grade of consciousness, since it precedes even the ordinary perceptions of space and time. vico had already observed that this freeing oneself from ordinary perception, this dwelling in imagination, does not really mean an ascent to the level of the platonic ideas, but, on the contrary, a redescending to the sphere of immediate intuition, a return to childhood. on the other hand, schopenhauer had begun to submit the kantian categories to impartial criticism, and finding the two forms of intuition insufficient, added a third, causality. he also drew comparisons between art and history, and was more successful here than the idealist excogitators of a philosophy of history. schopenhauer rightly saw that history was irreducible to concepts, that it is the contemplation of the individual, and therefore not a science. having proceeded thus far, he might have gone further, and realized that the material of history is always the particular in its particularity, that of art what is and always is identical. but he preferred to execute a variation on the general motive that was in fashion at this time. the fashion of the day! it rules in philosophy as elsewhere, and we are now about to see the most rigid and arid of analysts, the leader of the so-called _realist_ school, or school of _exact science_ in germany in the nineteenth century, plunge headlong into aesthetic mysticism. g.f. herbart (1813) begins his aesthetic by freeing it from the discredit attaching to metaphysic and to psychology. he declares that the only true way of understanding art is to study particular examples of the beautiful and to note what they reveal as to its essence. we shall now see what came of herbart's analysis of these examples of beauty, and how far he succeeded in remaining free of metaphysic. for herbart, beauty consists of _relations_. the science of aesthetic consists of an enumeration of all the fundamental relations between colours, lines, tones, thoughts, and will. but for him these relations are not empirical or physiological. they cannot therefore be studied in a laboratory, because thought and the will form part of them, and these belong as much to ethics as to the external world. but herbart explicitly states that no true beauty is sensible, although sensation may and does often precede and follow the intuition of beauty. there is a profound distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable or pleasant: the latter does not require a representation, while the former consists in representations of relations, which are immediately followed by a judgment expressing unconditioned approval. thus the merely pleasurable becomes more and more indifferent, but the beautiful appears always as of more and more permanent value. the judgment of taste is universal, eternal, immutable. the complete representation of the same relations always carries with it the same judgment. for herbart, aesthetic judgments are the general class containing the sub-class of ethical judgments. the five ethical ideas, of internal liberty, of perfection, of benevolence, of equity, and of justice, are five aesthetic ideas; or better, they are aesthetic concepts applied to the will in its relations. herbart looked upon art as a complex fact, composed of an external element possessing logical or psychological value, the content, and of a true aesthetic element, which is the form. entertainment, instruction, and pleasure of all sorts are mingled with the beautiful, in order to obtain favour for the work in question. the aesthetic judgment, calm and serene in itself, may be accompanied by all sorts of psychic emotions, foreign to it. but the content is always transitory, relative, subject to moral laws, and judged by them. the form alone is perennial, absolute, and free. the true catharsis can only be effected by separating the form from the content. concrete art may be the sum of two values, _but the aesthetic fact is form alone_. for those capable of penetrating beneath appearances, the aesthetic doctrines of herbart and of kant will appear very similar. herbart is notable as insisting, in the manner of kant, on the distinction between free and adherent beauty (or adornment as sensuous stimulant), on the existence of pure beauty, object of necessary and universal judgments, and on a certain mingling of ethical with his aesthetic theory. herbart, indeed, called himself "a kantian, but of the year 1828." kant's aesthetic theory, though it be full of errors, yet is rich in fruitful suggestions. kant belongs to a period when philosophy is still young and pliant. herbart came later, and is dry and one-sided. the romantics and the metaphysical idealists had unified the theory of the beautiful and of art. herbart restored the old duality and mechanism, and gave us an absurd, unfruitful form of mysticism, void of all artistic inspiration. herbart may be said to have taken all there was of false in the thought of kant and to have made it into a system. the beginning of the nineteenth century in germany is notable for the great number of philosophical theories and of counter-theories, broached and rapidly discussed, before being discarded. none of the most prominent names in the period belong to philosophers of first-rate importance, though they made so much stir in their day. the thought of friedrich schleiermacher was obscured and misunderstood amid those crowding mediocrities; yet it is perhaps the most interesting and the most noteworthy of the period. schleiermacher looked upon aesthetic as an altogether modern form of thought. he perceived a profound difference between the "poetics" of aristotle, not yet freed from empirical precepts, and the tentative of baumgarten in the eighteenth century. he praised kant as having been the first to include aesthetic among the philosophical disciplines. he admitted that with hegel it had attained to the highest pinnacle, being connected with religion and with philosophy, and almost placed upon their level. but he was dissatisfied with the absurdity of the attempt made by the followers of baumgarten to construct a science or theory of sensuous pleasure. he disapproved of kant's view of taste as being the principle of aesthetic, of fichte's art as moral teaching, and of the vague conception of the beautiful as the centre of aesthetic. he approved of schiller's marking of the moment of spontaneity in productive art, and he praised schelling for having drawn attention to the figurative arts, as being less liable than poetry to be diverted to false and illusory moralistic ends. before he begins the study of the place due to the artistic activity in ethic, he carefully excludes from the study of aesthetic all practical rules (which, being empirical, are incapable of scientific demonstration). for schleiermacher, the sphere of ethic included the whole philosophy of the spirit, in addition to morality. these are the two forms of human activity--that which, like logic, is the same in all men, and is called activity of identity, and the activity of difference or individuality. there are activities which, like art, are internal or immanent and individual, and others which are external or practical. _the true work of art is the internal picture_. measure is what differentiates the artist's portrayal of anger on the stage and the anger of a really angry man. truth is not sought in poetry, or if it be sought there, it is truth of an altogether different kind. the truth of poetry lies in coherent presentation. likeness to a model does not compose the merit of a picture. not the smallest amount of knowledge comes from art, which expresses only the truth of a particular consciousness. art has for its field the immediate consciousness of self, which must be carefully distinguished from the thought of the ego. this last is the consciousness of identity in the diversity of moments as they pass; the immediate consciousness of self is the diversity itself of the moments, of which we should be aware, for life is nothing but the development of consciousness. in this field, art has sometimes been confused with two facts which accompany it there: these are sentient consciousness (that is, the feelings of pleasure and of pain) and religion. schleiermacher here alludes to the sensualistic aestheticians of the eighteenth century, and to hegel, who had almost identified art and religion. he refutes both points of view by pointing out that sentient pleasure and religious sentiment, however different they may be from other points of view, are yet both determined by an objective fact; while art, on the contrary, is free productivity. dream is the best parallel and proof of this free productivity. all the essential elements of art are found in dream, which is the result of free thoughts and of sensible intuitions, consisting simply of images. but dream, as compared with art, is chaotic: when measure and order is established in dream, it becomes art. thoughts and images are alike essential to art, and to both is necessary ponderation, reflexion, measure, and unity, because otherwise every image would be confused with every other image. thus the moments of inspiration and of ponderation are both necessary to art. schleiermacher's thought, so firm and lucid up to this point, begins to become less secure, with the discussion of typicity and of the extent to which the artist should follow nature. he says that ideal figures, which nature would give, were she not impeded by external obstacles, are the products of art. he notes that when the artist represents something really given, such as a portrait or a landscape, he renounces freedom of production and adheres to the real. in the artist is a double tendency, toward the perfection of the type and toward the representation of natural reality. he should not fall into the abstraction of the type, nor into the insignificance of empirical reality. schleiermacher feels all the difficulty of such a problem as whether there be one or several ideals of the human figure. this problem may be transferred to the sphere of art, and we may ask whether the poet is to represent only the ideal, or whether he should also deal with those obstacles to it that impede nature in her efforts to attain. both views contain half the truth. to art belongs the representation of the ideal as of the real, of the subjective and of the objective alike. the representation of the comic, that is of the anti-ideal and of the imperfect ideal, belongs to the domain of art. for the human form, both morally and physically, oscillates between the ideal and caricature. he arrives at a most important definition as to the independence of art in respect to morality. the nature of art, as of philosophic speculation, excludes moral and practical effects. therefore, _there is no other difference between works of art than their respective artistic perfection (vollkommenheit in der kunst)_. if we could correctly predicate volitional acts in respect of works of art, then we should find ourselves admiring only those works which stimulated the will, and there would thus be established a difference of valuation, independent of artistic perfection. the true work of art depends upon the degree of perfection with which the external in it agrees with the internal. schleiermacher rightly combats schiller's view that art is in any sense a game. that, he says, is the view held by mere men of business, to whom business alone is serious. but artistic activity is universal, and a man completely deprived of it unthinkable, although the difference here between man and man, is gigantic, ranging from the simple desire to taste of art to the effective tasting of it, and from this, by infinite gradations, to productive genius. the regrettable fact that schleiermacher's thought has reached us only in an imperfect form, may account for certain of its defects, such as his failure to eliminate aesthetic classes and types, his retention of a certain residue of abstract formalism, his definition of art as the activity of difference. had he better defined the moment of artistic reproduction, realized the possibility of tasting the art of various times and of other nations, and examined the true relation of art to science, he would have seen that this difference is merely empirical and to be surmounted. he failed also to recognize the identity of the aesthetic activity, with language as the base of all other theoretic activity. but schleiermacher's merits far outweigh these defects. he removed from aesthetic its _imperativistic_ character; he distinguished _a form of thought_ different from logical thought. he attributed to our science a _non-metaphysical, anthropological_ character. he _denied_ the concept of the beautiful, substituting for it _artistic perfection_, and maintaining the aesthetic equality of a small with a great work of art, he looked upon the aesthetic fact as an exclusively _human productivity_. thus schleiermacher, the theologian, in this period of metaphysical orgy, of rapidly constructed and as rapidly destroyed systems, perceived, with the greatest philosophical acumen, what is really characteristic of art, and distinguished its properties and relations. even where he fails to see clearly his way, he never abandons analysis for mere guess-work. schleiermacher, thus exploring the obscure region of the _immediate consciousness_, or of the aesthetic fact, can almost be heard crying out to his straying contemporaries: _hic rhodus, hi salta_! speculation upon the origin and nature of language was rife at this time in germany. many theories were put forward, among the most curious being that of schelling, who held language and mythology to be the product of a pre-human consciousness, allegorically expressed as the diabolic suggestions which had precipitated the ego from the infinite to the finite. even wilhelm von humboldt was unable to free himself altogether from the intellectualistic prejudice of the substantial identity and the merely historical and accidental diversity of logical thought and language. he speaks of a _perfect_ language, broken up and diminished with the lesser capacities of lesser peoples. he believed that language is something standing outside the individual, independent of him, and capable of being revived by use. but there were two men in humboldt, an old man and a young one. the latter was always suggesting that language should be looked upon as a living, not as a dead thing, as an activity, not as a word. this duality of thought sometimes makes his writing difficult and obscure. although he speaks of an internal form of speech, he fails to identify this with art as expression. the reason is that he looks upon the word in too unilateral a manner, as a means of developing logical thought, and his ideas of aesthetic are too vague and too inexact to enable him to discover their identity. despite his perception of the profound truth that poetry precedes prose, humboldt gives grounds for doubt as to whether he had clearly recognized and firmly grasped the fact that language is always poetry, and that prose (science) is a distinction, not of aesthetic form, but of content, that is, of logical form. steinthal, the greatest follower of humboldt, solved his master's contradictions, and in 1855 sustained successfully against the hegelian becker the thesis that words are necessary for thought. he pointed to the deaf-mute with his signs, to the mathematician with his formulae, to the chinese language, where the figurative portion is an essential of speech, and declared that becker was wrong in believing that the sanskrit language was derived from twelve cardinal concepts. he showed effectively that the concept and the word, the logical judgment and the proposition, are not comparable. the proposition is not a judgment, but the representation of a judgment; and all propositions do not represent logical judgments. several judgments can be expressed with one proposition. the logical divisions of judgments (the relations of concepts) have no correspondence in the grammatical division of propositions. "if we speak of a logical form of the proposition, we fall into a contradiction in terms not less complete than his who should speak of the angle of a circle, or of the periphery of a triangle." he who speaks, in so far as he speaks, has not thoughts, but language. when steinthal had several times solemnly proclaimed the independence of language as regards logic, and that it produces its forms in complete autonomy, he proceeded to seek the origin of language, recognizing with humboldt that the question of its origin is the same as that of its nature. language, he said, belongs to the great class of reflex movements, but this only shows one side of it, not its true nature. animals, like men, have reflex actions and sensations, though nature enters the animal by force, takes it by assault, conquers and enslaves it. with man is born language, because he is resistance to nature, governance of his own body, and liberty. "language is liberation; even to-day we feel that our soul becomes lighter, and frees itself from a weight, when we speak." man, before he attains to speech, must be conceived of as accompanying all his sensations with bodily movements, mimetic attitudes, gestures, and particularly with articulate sounds. what is still lacking to him, that he may attain to speech? the connexion between the reflex movements of the body and the state of the soul. if his sentient consciousness be already consciousness, then he lacks the consciousness of consciousness; if it be already intuition, then he lacks the intuition of intuition. in sum, he lacks the _internal form of language_. with this comes speech, which forms the connexion. man does not choose the sound of his speech. this is given to him and he adopts it instinctively. when we have accorded to steinthal the great merit of having rendered coherent the ideas of humboldt, and of having clearly separated linguistic from logical thought, we must note that he too failed to perceive the _identity_ of the internal form of language, or "intuition of the intuition," as he called it, with the aesthetic _imagination_. herbart's psychology, to which steinthal adhered, did not afford him any means for this identification. herbart separated logic from psychology, calling it a normative science; he failed to discern the exact limits between feeling and spiritual formation, psyche or soul, and spirit, and to see that one of these spiritual formations is logical thought or activity, which is not a code of laws imposed from without. for herbart, aesthetic, as we know, was a code of beautiful formal relations. thus steinthal, following herbart in psychology, was bound to look upon art as a beautifying of thought, linguistic as the science of speech, rhetoric and aesthetic as the science of beautiful speech. steinthal never realized that to speak is to speak well or beautifully, under penalty of _not_ speaking, and that the revolution which he and humboldt had effected in the conception of language must inevitably react upon and transform poetic, rhetoric, and aesthetic. thus, despite so many efforts of conscientious analysis on the part of humboldt and of steinthal, the unity of language and of poetry, and the identification of the science of language and the science of poetry still found its least imperfect expression in the prophetic aphorisms of vico. the philosophical movement in germany from the last quarter of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth, notwithstanding its many errors, is yet so notable and so imposing with the philosophers already considered, as to merit the first place in the european thought of that period. this is even more the case as regards aesthetic than as regards philosophy in general. france was the prey of condillac's sensualism, and therefore incapable of duly appreciating the spiritual activity of art. we hardly get a glimpse of winckelmann's transcendental spiritualism in quatremã¨re de quincy, and the frigid academics of victor cousin were easily surpassed by theodore jouffroy, though he too failed of isolating the aesthetic fact. french romanticism defined literature as "the expression of society," admired under german influence the grotesque and the characteristic, declared the independence of art in the formula of "art for art's sake," but did not succeed in surpassing philosophically the old doctrine of the "imitation of nature." f. schlegel and solger indeed were largely responsible for the romantic movement in france--schlegel with his belief in the characteristic or _interesting_ as the principle of modern art, which led him to admire the cruel and the ugly; solger with his dialectic arrangement, whereby the finite or terrestrial element is absorbed and annihilated in the divine and thus becomes the tragic, or _vice versa_, and the result is the comic. rosenkranz published in kã¶nigsberg an aesthetic of the ugly, and the works of vischer and zeising abound in subtleties relating to the idea and to its expression in the beautiful and sublime. these writers conceived of the idea as the knight purebeautiful, constrained to abandon his tranquil ease through the machinations of the ugly; the ugly leads him into all sorts of disagreeable adventures, from all of which he eventually emerges victorious. the sublime, the comic, the humorous, and so on, are his marengo, austerlitz, and jena. another version of their knight's adventures might be described as his conquest by his enemies, but at the moment of conquest he transforms and irradiates his conquerors. to such a mediocre and artificial mythology led the much-elaborated theory of the modifications of the beautiful. in england, the associationist psychology continued to hold sway, and showed, with dugald stewart's miserable attempt at establishing two forms of association, its incapacity to rise to the conception of the imagination. with the poet coleridge, england also showed the influence of german thought, and coleridge elaborated with wordsworth a more correct conception of poetry and of its difference from science. but the most notable contribution in english at that period came from another poet, p.b. shelley, whose _defence of poetry_ contains profound, though unsystematic views, as to the distinction between reason and imagination, prose and poetry, on primitive language, and on the poetic power of objectification. in italy, francesco de sanctis gave magnificent expression to the independence of art. he taught literature in naples from 1838 to 1848, in turin and zurich from 1850 to 1860, and after 1870 he was a professor in the university of naples. his _storia della letteratura italiana_ is a classic, and in it and in monographs on individual writers he exposed his doctrines. prompted by a natural love of speculation, he began to examine the old grammarians and rhetoricians, with a view to systematize them. but very soon he proceeded to criticize and to surpass their theories. the cold rules of reason did not find favour with him, and he advised young men to go direct to the original works. the philosophy of hegel began to penetrate italy, and the study of vico was again taken up. de sanctis translated the _logic_ of hegel in prison, where the bourbon government had thrown him for his liberalism. benard had begun his translation of the _aesthetic_ of hegel, and so completely in harmony was de sanctis with the thought of this master, that he is said to have guessed from a study of the first volume what the unpublished volumes must contain, and to have lectured upon them to his pupils. traces of mystical idealism and of hegelianism persist even in his later works, and the distinction, which he always maintained, between imagination and fancy certainly came to him from hegel and schelling. he held fancy alone to be the true poetic faculty. de sanctis absorbed all the juice of hegel, but rejected the husks of his pedantry, of his formalism, of his apriority. fancy for de sanctis was not the mystical transcendental apperception of the german philosophers, but simply the faculty of poetic synthesis and creation, opposed to the imagination, which reunites details and always has something mechanical about it. faith and poetry, he used to say, are not dead, but transformed. his criticism of hegel amounted in many places to the correction of hegel; and as regards vico, he is careful to point out, that when, in dealing with the homeric poems, vico talks of generic types, he is no longer the critic of art, but the historian of civilization. de sanctis saw that, _artistically_, achilles must always be achilles, never a force or an abstraction. thus de sanctis succeeded in keeping himself free from the hegelian domination, at a moment when hegel was the acknowledged master of speculation. but his criticism extended also to other german aestheticians. by a curious accident, he found himself at zurich in the company of theodore vischer, that ponderous hegelian, who laughed disdainfully at the mention of poetry, of music, and of the decadent italian race. de sanctis laughed at vischer's laughter. wagner appeared to him a corrupter of music, and "nothing in the world more unaesthetic than the aesthetic of theodore vischer." his lectures on ariosto and petrarch, before an international public at zurich, were delivered with the desire of correcting the errors of these and of other german philosophers and learned men. he gave his celebrated definitions of french and german critics. the french critic does not indulge in theories: one feels warmth of impression and sagacity of observation in his argument. he never leaves the concrete; he divines the quality of the writer's genius and the quality of his work, and studies the man, in order to understand the writer. his great fault is shown in substituting for criticism of the actual art work a historical criticism of the author and of his time. for the german, on the other hand, there is nothing so simple that he does not contrive to distort and to confuse it. he collects shadows around him, from which shoot vivid rays. he laboriously brings to birth that morsel of truth which he has within him. he would seize and define what is most fugitive and impalpable in a work of art. although nobody talks so much of life as he does, yet no one so much delights in decomposing and generalizing it. having thus destroyed the particular, he is able to show you as the result of this process, final in appearance, but in reality preconceived and apriorist, one measurement for all feet, one garment for all bodies. about this time he studied schopenhauer, who was then becoming the fashion. schopenhauer said of this criticism of de sanctis: "that italian has absorbed me _in succum et sanguinem_." what weight did he attach to schopenhauer's much-vaunted writings on art? having exposed the theory of ideas, he barely refers to the third volume, "which contains an exaggerated theory of aesthetic." in his criticism of petrarch, de sanctis finally broke with metaphysical aesthetic, saying of hegel's school that it believed the beautiful to become art when it surpassed form and revealed the concept or pure idea. this theory and the subtleties derived from it, far from characterizing art, represent its contrary: the impotent velleity for art, which cannot slay abstractions and come in contact with life. de sanctis held that outside the domain of art all is shapeless. the ugly is of the domain of art, if art give it form. is there anything more beautiful than iago? if he be looked upon merely as a contrast to othello, then we are in the position of those who looked upon the stars as placed where they are to serve as candles for the earth. form was for de sanctis the word which should be inscribed over the entrance to the temple of art. in the work of art are form and content, but the latter is no longer chaotic: the artist has given to it a new value, has enriched it with the gift of his own personality. but if the content has not been assimilated and made his own by the artist, then the work lacks generative power: it is of no value as art or literature, though as history or scientific document its value may be great. the gods of homer's _iliad_ are dead, but the _iliad_ remains. guelf and ghibelline have disappeared from italy: not so the _divine comedy_, which is as vigorous to-day as when dante first took pen in hand. thus de sanctis held firmly to the independence of art, but he did not accept the formula of "art for art's sake," in so far as it meant separation of the artist from life, mutilation of the content, art reduced to mere dexterity. for de sanctis, form was identical with imagination, with the artist's power of expressing or representing his artistic vision. this much must be admitted by his critics. but he never attained to a clear definition of art. his theory of aesthetic always remained a sketch: wonderful indeed, but not clearly developed and deduced. the reason for this was de sanctis' love of the concrete. no sooner had he attained from general ideas a sufficient clarity of vision for his own purposes, than he plunged again into the concrete and particular. he did not confine his activity to literature, but was active also in politics and in the prosecution and encouragement of historical studies. as a critic of literature, de sanctis is far superior to sainte-beuve, lessing, macaulay, or taine. flaubert's genial intuition adumbrated what de sanctis achieved. in one of his letters to georges sand, flaubert speaks of the lack of an _artistic_ critic. "in laharpe's time, criticism was grammatical; in the time of sainte-beuve and of taine, it is historical. they analyse with great subtlety the historical environment in which the work appeared and the causes which have produced it. but the _unconscious_ element in poetry? whence does it come? and composition? and style? and the point of view of the author? of all that they never speak. for such a critic, great imagination and great goodness are necessary. i mean an ever-ready faculty of enthusiasm, and then _taste_, a quality so rare, even among the best, that it is never mentioned." de sanctis alone fulfilled the conditions of flaubert, and italy has in his writings a looking-glass for her literature unequalled by any other country. but with de sanctis, the philosopher of art, the aesthetician, is not so great as the critic of literature. the one is accessory to the other, and his use of aesthetic terminology is so inconstant that a lack of clearness of thought might be found in his work by anyone who had not studied it with care. but his want of system is more than compensated by his vitality, by his constant citation of actual works, and by his intuition of the truth, which never abandoned him. his writings bear the further charm of suggesting new kingdoms to conquer, new mines of richness to explore. while the cry of "down with metaphysic" was resounding in germany, and a furious reaction had set in against the sort of walpurgisnacht to which the later hegelians had reduced science and history, the pupils of herbart came forward and with an insinuating air they seemed to say: "what is this? why, it is a rebellion against metaphysic, the very thing our master wished for and tried to achieve, half a century ago! but here we are, his heirs and successors, and we want to be your allies! an understanding between us will be easy. our metaphysic is in agreement with the atomic theory, our psychology with mechanicism, our ethic and aesthetic with hedonism." herbart, who died in 1841, would probably have disdained and rejected his followers, who thus courted popularity and cheapened metaphysic, putting a literal interpretation on his realities, his ideas and representations, and upon all his most lofty excogitations. the protagonist of these neo-herbartians was robert zimmermann. he constructed his system of aesthetic out of herbart, whom he perverted to his own uses, and even employed the much-abused hegelian dialectic in order to introduce modifications of the beautiful into pure beauty. the beautiful, he said, is a model which possesses greatness, fulness, order, correction, and definite compensation. beauty appears to us in a characteristic form, as a copy of this model. vischer, against whom was directed this work of zimmermann, found it easy to reply. he ridiculed zimmermann's meaning of the symbol as the object around which are clustered beautiful forms. "does an artist paint a fox, simply that he may depict an object of animal nature. no, no, my dear sir, far from it. this fox is a symbol, because the painter here employs lines and colours, in order to express something different from lines and colours. 'you think i am a fox,' cries the painted animal. 'you are mightily mistaken; i am, on the contrary, a portmanteau, an exhibition by the painter of red, white, grey, and yellow tints.'" vischer also made fun of zimmermann's enthusiasm for the aesthetic value of the sense of touch. "what joy it must be to touch the back of the bust of hercules in repose! to stroke the sinuous limbs of the venus of milo or of the faun of barberini must give a pleasure to the hand equal to that of the ear as it listens to the puissant fugues of bach or to the suave melodies of mozart." vischer defined the formal aesthetic of zimmermann as a queer mixture of mysticism and mathematic. lotze, in common with the great majority of thinkers, was dissatisfied with zimmermann, but could only oppose his formalism with a variety of the old mystical aesthetic. who, he asked, could believe that the human form pleases only by its external proportions, regardless of the spirit within. art, like beauty, should "enclose the world of values in the world of forms." this struggle between the aesthetic of the content and the aesthetic of the form attained its greatest height in germany between 1860 and 1870, with zimmermann, vischer, and lotze as protagonists. these writers were followed by j. schmidt, who in 1875 ventured to say that both lotze and zimmermann had failed to see that the problem of aesthetic concerned, not the beauty or ugliness of the content or of the form as mathematical relations, but their representation; kã¶stlin, who erected an immense artificial structure with the materials of his predecessors modified; schasler, who is interesting as having converted the old vischer to his thesis of the importance of the ugly, as introducing modifications into the beautiful and being the principle of movement there. vischer confesses that at one time he had followed the hegelian method and believed that in the essence of beauty is born a disquietude, a fermentation, a struggle: the idea conquers, hurls the image into the unlimited, and the sublime is born; but the image, offended in its finitude, declares war upon the idea, and the comic appears. thus the fight is finished and the beautiful returns to itself, as the result of these struggles. but now, he says, schasler has persuaded him that the ugly is the leaven which is necessary to all the special forms of the beautiful. e. von hartmann is in close relation with schasler. his aesthetic (1890) also makes great use of the ugly. since he insists upon appearance as a necessary characteristic of the beautiful, he considers himself justified in calling his theory concrete idealism. hartmann considers himself in opposition to the formalism of herbart, inasmuch as he insists upon the idea as an indispensable and determining element of beauty. beauty, he says, is truth, but it is not historical truth, nor scientific nor reflective truth: it is metaphysical and ideal. "beauty is the prophet of idealistic truth in an age without faith, hating metaphysic, and acknowledging only realistic truth." aesthetic truth is without method and without control: it leaps at once from the subjective appearance to the essence of the ideal. but in compensation for this, it possesses the fascination of conviction, which immediate intuition alone possesses. the higher philosophy rises, the less need has she of passing through the world of the senses and of science: she approaches ever more nearly to art. thus philosophy starts on the voyage to the ideal, like baedeker's traveller, "without too much baggage." in the beautiful is immanent logicity, the microcosmic idea, the unconscious. by means of the unconscious, the process of intellectual intuition takes place in it. the beautiful is a mystery, because its root is in the unconscious. no philosopher has ever made so great a use of the ugly as hartmann. he divides beauty into grades, of which the one below is ugly as compared with that above it. he begins with the mathematical, superior to the sensibly agreeable, which is unconscious. thence to formal beauty of the second order, the dynamically agreeable, to formal beauty of the third order, the passive teleological; to this degree belong utensils, and language, which in hartmann's view is a dead thing, inspired with seeming life, only at the moment of use. such things did the philosopher of the unconscious dare to print in the country of a humboldt during the lifetime of a steinthal! he proceeds in his list of things beautiful, with formal beauty of the fourth degree, which is the active or living teleological, with the fifth, which is that of species. finally he reaches concrete beauty, or the individual microcosm, the highest of all, because the individual idea is superior to the specific, and is beauty, no longer formal, but of content. all these degrees of beauty are, as has been said, connected with one another by means of the ugly, and even in the highest degree, which has nothing superior to it, the ugly continues its office of beneficent titillation. the outcome of this ultimate phase is the famous theory of the modifications of the beautiful. none of these modifications can occur without a struggle, save the sublime and the graceful, which appear without conflict at the side of supreme beauty. hartmann gives four instances: the solution is either immanent, logical, transcendental, or combined. the idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, the glad, the elegiac, are instances of the immanent solution; the comic in all its forms is the logical solution; the tragic is the transcendental solution; the combined form is found in the humorous, the tragi-comic. when none of these solutions is possible, we have the ugly; and when an ugliness of content is expressed by a formal ugliness, we have the maximum of ugliness, the true aesthetic devil. hartmann is the last noteworthy representative of the german metaphysical school. his works are gigantic in size and appear formidable. but if one be not afraid of giants and venture to approach near, one finds nothing but a big morgante, full of the most commonplace prejudices, quite easily killed with the bite of a crab! during this period, aesthetic had few representatives in other countries. the famous conference of the academy of moral and political sciences, held in paris in 1857, gave to the world the "science du beau" of lã©vã¨que. no one is interested in it now, but it is amusing to note that lã©vã¨que announced himself to be a disciple of plato, and went on to attribute eight characteristics to the beautiful. these he discovered by closely examining the lily! no wonder he was crowned with laurels! he proved his wonderful theory by instancing a child playing with its mother, a symphony of beethoven, and the life of socrates! one of his colleagues, who could not resist making fun of his learned friend, remarked that he would be glad to know what part was played in the life of a philosopher by the normal vivacity of colour! thus german theory made no way in france, and england proved even more refractory. j. ruskin showed a poverty, an incoherence, and a lack of system in respect to aesthetic, which puts him almost out of court. his was the very reverse of the philosophic temperament. his pages of brilliant prose contain his own dreams and caprices. they are the work of an artist and should be enjoyed as such, being without any value for philosophy. his theoretic faculty of the beautiful, which he held to be distinct alike from the intelligence and from feeling, is connected with his belief in beauty as a revelation of the divine intentions, "the seal which god sets upon his works." thus the natural beauty, which is perceived by the pure heart, when contemplating some object untouched by the hand of man, is far superior to the work of the artist. ruskin was too little capable of analysis to understand the complicated psychologico-aesthetic process taking place within him, as he contemplated some streamlet, or the nest of some small bird. at naples flourished between 1861 and 1884 antonio tari, who kept himself in touch with the movement of german thought, and followed the german idealists in placing aesthetic in a sort of middle kingdom, a temperate zone, between the glacial, inhabited by the esquimaux of thought, and the torrid, dwelt in by the giants of action. he dethroned the beautiful, and put aesthetic in its place, for the beautiful is but the first moment; the later ones are the comic, the humorous, and the dramatic. his fertile imagination found metaphors and similes in everything: for instance, he called the goat the devil, opposed to the lamb, jesus. his remarks on men and women are full of quaint fancies. he granted to women grace, but not beauty, which resides in equilibrium. this is proved by her falling down so easily when she walks; by her bow legs, which have to support her wide hips, made for gestation; by her narrow shoulders, and her opulent breast. she is therefore a creature altogether devoid of equilibrium! i wish that it were possible to record more of the sayings of the excellent tari, "the last joyous priest of an arbitrary aesthetic, source of confusion." the ground lost to the german school of metaphysicians was occupied during the second half of the nineteenth century by the evolutionary and positivist metaphysicians, of whom herbert spencer is the most notable representative. the peculiarity of this school lies in repeating at second or third hand certain idealist views, deprived of the element of pure philosophy, given to them by a schelling or a hegel, and in substituting a quantity of minute facts and anecdotes, with a view to providing the positivist varnish. these theories are dear to vulgar minds, because they correspond to inveterate religious beliefs, and the lustre of the varnish explains the good fortune of spencerian positivism in our time. another notable trait of this school is its barbaric contempt for history, especially for the history of philosophy, and its consequent lack of all link with the series composed of the secular efforts of so many thinkers. without this link, there can be no fruitful labour and no possibility of progress. spencer is colossal in his ignorance of all that has been written or thought on the subject of aesthetic (to limit ourselves to this branch alone). he actually begins his work on the philosophy of style with these words: "no one, i believe, has ever produced a complete theory of the art of writing." this in 1852! he begins his chapter on aesthetic feelings in the _principles of psychology_ by admitting that he has heard of the observation made by a german author, whose name he forgets (schiller!), on the connexion between art and play. had spencer's remarks on aesthetic been written in the eighteenth century, they might have occupied a humble place among the first rude attempts at aesthetic speculation, but appearing in the nineteenth century, they are without value, as the little of value they contain had been long said by others. in his _principles of psychology_ spencer looks upon aesthetic feelings as arising from the discharge of the exuberant energy of the organism. this he divides into degrees, and believes that we attain complete enjoyment when these degrees are all working satisfactorily each on its own plane, and when what is painful in excessive activity has been avoided. his degrees are sensation, sensation accompanied by representative elements, perception accompanied by more complex elements of representation, then emotion, and that state of consciousness which surpasses sensations and perceptions. but spencer has no suspicion of what art really is. his views oscillate between sensualism and moralism, and he sees little in the whole art of antiquity, of the middle ages, or of modern times, which can be looked upon as otherwise than imperfect! the physiology of aesthetics has also had its votaries in great britain, among whom may be mentioned j. sully, a. bain, and allen. these at any rate show some knowledge of the concrete fact of art. allen harks back to the old distinction between necessary and vital activities and superfluous activities, and gives a physiological definition, which may be read in his _physiological aesthetics_. more recent writers also look upon the physiological fact as the cause of the pleasure of art; but for them it does not alone depend upon the visual organ, and the muscular phenomena associated with it, but also on the participation of some of the most important bodily functions, such as respiration, circulation, equilibrium, intimate muscular accommodation. they believe that art owes its origin to the pleasure that some prehistoric man must have experienced in breathing regularly, without having to re-adapt his organs, when he traced for the first time on a bone or on clay regular lines separated by regular intervals. a similar order of physico-aesthetic researches has been made in germany, under the auspices of helmholtz, brã¼cke, and stumpf. but these writers have succeeded better than the above-mentioned, by restricting themselves to the fields of optic and acoustic, and have supplied information as to the physical processes of artistic technique and as to the pleasure of visual and auditive impressions, without attempting to melt aesthetic into physic, or to deprive the former of its spiritual character. they have even occasionally indicated the difference between the two kinds of research. even the degenerate herbartians, converting the metaphysical forms of their master into physiological phenomena, made soft eyes at the new sensualists and aesthetico-physiologists. the natural sciences have become in our day a sort of superstition, allied to a certain, perhaps unconscious, hypocrisy. not only have chemical, physical, and physiological laboratories become a sort of sibylline grots, where resound the most extraordinary questions about everything that can interest the spirit of man, but even those who really do prosecute their researches with the old inevitable method of internal observation, have been unable to free themselves from the illusion that they are, on the contrary, employing _the method of the natural sciences_. hippolyte taine's philosophy of art represents such an illusion. he declares that when we have studied the diverse manifestations of art in all peoples and at all epochs, we shall then possess a complete aesthetic. such an aesthetic would be a sort of botany applied to the works of man. this mode of study would provide moral science with a basis equally as sure as that which the natural sciences already possess. taine then proceeds to define art without regard to the natural sciences, by analysing, like a simple mortal, what passes in the human soul when brought face to face with a work of art. but what analysis and what definitions! art, he says, is imitation, but of a sort that tries to express an essential characteristic. thus the principal characteristic of a lion is to be "a great carnivore," and we observe this characteristic in all its limbs. holland has for essential characteristic that of being a land formed of alluvial soil. now without staying to consider these two remarkable instances, let us ask, what is this essential characteristic of taine? it is the same as the ideas, types, or concepts that the old aesthetic teaching assigned to art as its object. taine himself removes all doubt as to this, by saying that this characteristic is what philosophers call the essence of things, and for that reason they declare that the purpose of art is to manifest things. he declares that he will not employ the word essence, which is technical. but he accepts and employs the thought that the word expresses. he believes that there are two routes by which man can attain to the superior life: science and art. by the first, he apprehends fundamental laws and causes, and expresses them in abstract terms; by the second, he expresses these same laws and causes in a manner comprehensible to all, by appealing to the heart and feeling, as well as to the reason of man. art is both superior and popular; it makes manifest what is highest, and makes it manifest to all. that taine here falls into the old pedagogic theory of aesthetic is evident. works of art are arranged for him in a scale of values, as for the aesthetic metaphysicians. he began by declaring the absurdity of all judgment of taste, "ã  chacun son goã»t," but he ends by declaring that personal taste is without value, that we must establish a common measure before proceeding to praise or blame. his scale of values is double or triple. we must first fix the degree of importance of the characteristic, that is, the greater or less generality of the idea, and the degree of good in it, that is to say, its greater or lesser moral value. these, he says, are two degrees of the same thing, strength, seen from different sides. we must also establish the degree of convergence of the effects, that is, the fulness of expression, the harmony between the idea and the form. this half-moral, half-metaphysical exposition is accompanied with the usual protestations, that the matter in hand is to be studied methodically, analytically, as the naturalist would study it, that he will try to reach "a law, not a hymn." as if these protestations could abolish the true nature of his thought! taine actually went so far as to attempt dialectic solutions of works of art! "in the primitive period of italian art, we find the soul without the body: giotto. at the renaissance, with verrocchio and his school, we find the body without the soul. with raphael, in the sixteenth century, we find expression and anatomy in harmony: body and soul." thesis, antithesis, synthesis! with g.t. fechner we find the like protestations and the like procedure. he will study aesthetic inductively, from beneath. he seeks clarity, not loftiness. proceeding thus inductively, he discovers a long series of laws or principles of aesthetic, such as unity in variety, association and contrast, change and persistence, the golden mean, etc. he exhibits this chaos with delight at showing himself so much of a physiologist, and so inconclusive. then he proceeds to describe his experiments in aesthetics. these consist of attempts to decide, for instance, by methods of choice, which of certain rectangles of cardboard is the most agreeable, and which the most disagreeable, to a large number of people arbitrarily chosen. naturally, these results do not agree with others obtained on other occasions, but fechner knows that errors correct themselves, and triumphantly publishes long lists of these valuable experiments. he also communicates to us the shapes and measurements of a large number of pictures in museums, as compared with their respective subjects! such are the experiments of physiological aestheticians. but fechner, when he comes to define what beauty and what art really are, is, like everyone else, obliged to fall back upon introspection. but his definition is trivial, and his comparison of his three degrees of beauty to a family is simply grotesque in its _naã¯vetã©_. he terms this theory the eudemonistic theory, and we are left wondering why, when he had this theory all cut and dried in his mind, he should all the same give himself the immense trouble of compiling his tables and of enumerating his laws and principles, which do not agree with his theory. perhaps it was all a pastime for him, like playing at patience, or collecting postage-stamps? another example of superstition in respect to the natural sciences is afforded by ernest grosse. grosse abounds in contempt for what he calls speculative aesthetic. yet he desires a science of art (kunstwissenschaft), which shall formulate its laws from those historical facts which have hitherto been collected. but grosse wishes us to complete the collection of historical evidence with ethnographical and prehistoric materials, for we cannot obtain really general laws of art from the exclusive study of cultivated peoples, "just as a theory of reproduction exclusively based upon the form it takes with mammifers, must necessarily be imperfect!" he is, however, aware that the results of experiences among savages and prehistoric races do not alone suffice to furnish us with an equipment for such investigations as that concerning the nature of art, and, like any ordinary mortal, he feels obliged to interrogate, before starting, the spirit of man. he therefore proceeds to define aesthetic on apriorist principles, which, he remarks, can be discarded when we shall have obtained the complete theory, in like manner with the scaffolding that has served for the erection of a house. words! words! vain words! he proceeds to define aesthetic as the activity which in its development and result has the immediate value of feeling, and is, therefore, an end in itself. art is the opposite of practice; the activity of games stands intermediate between the two, having also its end in its own activity. the aesthetics of taine and of grosse have been called sociological. seeing that any true definition of sociology as a science is impossible, for it is composed of psychological elements, which are for ever varying, we do not delay to criticize the futile attempts at definition, but pass at once to the objective results attained by the sociologists. this superstition, like the naturalistic, takes various forms in practical life. we have, for instance, proudhon (1875), who would hark back to platonic aesthetic, class the aesthetic activity among the merely sensual, and command the arts to further the cause of virtue, on pain of judicial proceedings in case of contumacy. but m. guyau is the most important of sociological aestheticians. his works, published in paris toward the end of last century, and his posthumous work, entitled _les problã¨mes de l'esthã©tique contemporaine_, substitute for the theory of play, that of _life_, and the posthumous work above-mentioned makes it evident that by life he means social life. art is the development of social sympathy, but the whole of art does not enter into sociology. art has two objects; the production of agreeable sensations (colours, sounds, etc.) and of phenomena of psychological induction, which include ideas and feelings of a more complex nature than the foregoing, such as sympathy for the personages represented, interest, piety, indignation, etc. thus art becomes the expression of life. hence arise two tendencies: one for harmony, consonance, for all that delights the ear and eye; the other transforming life, under the dominion of art. true genius is destined to balance these two tendencies; but the decadent and the unbalanced deprive art of its sympathetic end, setting aesthetic sympathy against human sympathy. if we translate this language into that with which we are by this time quite familiar, we shall see that guyau admits an art that is merely hedonistic, and places above it another art, also hedonistic, but serving the ends of morality. m. nordau wages war against the decadent and unbalanced, in much the same manner as guyau. he assigns to art the function of re-establishing the integrity of life, so much broken up and specialized in our industrial civilization. he remarks that there is such a thing as art for art's sake, the simple expression of the internal states of the individual, but it is the art of the cave-dweller. c. lombroso's theory of genius as degeneration may be grouped with the naturalistic theories. his argument is in essence the following. great mental efforts, and total absorption in one dominant thought, often produce physiological disorders or atrophy of important vital functions. now these disorders often lead to madness; therefore, genius may be identified with madness. this proof, from the particular to the general, does not follow that of traditional logic. but with lombroso, bã¼chner, nordau, and the like we have come to the boundary between specious and vulgar error. they confuse scientific analysis with historical research. such inquiries may have value for history, but they have none for aesthetic. thus, too, a. lang maintains that the doctrine of the origin of art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty is not confirmed in what we know of primitive art, which is rather decorative than expressive. but primitive art, which is a given fact to be interpreted, cannot ever become its own criterion of interpretation. the naturalistic misunderstanding has had a bad effect on linguistic researches, which have not been carried out on the lofty plane to which humboldt and steinthal had brought them. max mã¼ller is popular and exaggerated. he fails clearly to distinguish thought from logical thought, although in one place he remarks that the formation of names has a more intimate connexion with wit than with judgment. he holds that the science of language is not historical, but natural, because language is not the invention of man, altogether ignoring the science of the spirit, philosophy, of which language is a part. for max mã¼ller, the natural sciences were the only sciences. the consciousness of the science of the spirit becomes ever more obscured, and we find the philologist w.d. whitney combating max mã¼ller's "miracles" and maintaining the separability of thought and speech. with hermann paul (1880) we have an awakening of humboldt's spirit. paul maintains that the origin of language is the speech of the individual man, and that a language has its origin every time it is spoken. paul also showed the fallacies contained in the _vã¶lkerpsychologie_ of steinthal and lazarus, demonstrating that there is no such thing as a collective soul, and that there is no language save that of the individual. w. wundt (1886), on the other hand, commits the error of connecting language with ethnopsychology and other non-existent sciences, and actually terms the glorious doctrine of herder and of humboldt _wundertheorie_, or theory of miracle, accusing them of mystical obscurity. wundt confuses the question of the historical appearance of language with that of its internal nature and genesis. he looks upon the theory of evolution as having attained to its complete triumph, in its application to organic nature in general, and especially to man. he has no suspicion whatever of the function of fancy, and of the true relation between thought and expression, between expression in the naturalistic, and expression in the spiritual and linguistic sense. he looks upon speech as a specially developed form of psycho-physical vital manifestations, of expressive animal movements. language is developed continuously from such facts, and thus is explained how, "beyond the general concept of expressive movement, there is no specific quality which delimits language in a non-arbitrary manner." thus the philosophy of wundt reveals its weak side, showing itself incapable of understanding the spiritual nature of language and of art. in the _ethic_ of the same author, aesthetic facts are presented as a mixture of logical and ethical elements, a special normative aesthetic science is denied, and aesthetic is merged in logic and ethic. the neo-critical and neo-kantian movement in thought was not able to maintain the concept of the spirit against the hedonistic, moralistic, and psychological views of aesthetic, in vogue from about the middle of last century. neo-criticism inherited from kant his view as to the slight importance of the creative imagination, and appears indeed to have been ignorant of any form of knowledge, other than the intellective. kirchmann (1868) was one of the early adherents to psychological aesthetic, defining the beautiful as the idealized image of pleasure, the ugly as that of pain. for him the aesthetic fact is the idealized image of the real. failing to apprehend the true nature of the aesthetic fact, kirchmann invented a new psychological category of ideal or apparent feelings, which he thought were attenuated images from those of real life. the aged theodore fischer describes aesthetic in his auto-criticism as the union of mimetic and harmony, and the beautiful as the harmony of the universe, which is never realized in fact, because it is infinite. when we think to grasp the beautiful, we experience that exquisite illusion, which is the aesthetic fact. robert fischer, son of the foregoing, introduced the word _einfã¼hlung_, to express the vitality which he believed that man inspired into things with the help of the aesthetic process. e. siebeck and m. diez, the former writing in 1875, the latter in 1892, unite a certain amount of idealistic influence, derived from kant and herbart, with the merely empirical and psychological views that have of late been the fashion. diez, for instance, would explain the artistic function as the ideal of feeling, placing it parallel to science; the ideal of thought, morality; the ideal of will and religion, the ideal of the personality. but this ideal of feeling escapes definition, and we see that these writers have not had the courage of their ideas: they have not dared to push their thought to its logical conclusion. the merely psychological and associationist view finds in theodore lipps its chief exponent. he criticizes and rejects a series of aesthetic theories, such as those of play, of pleasure, of art as recognition of real life, even if disagreeable, of emotionality, of syncretism, which attaches to art a number of other ends, in addition to those of play and of pleasure. the theory of lipps does not differ very greatly from that of jouffroy, for he assumes that artistic beauty is the sympathetic. "our ego, transplanted, objectified, and recognized in others, is the object of sympathy. we feel ourselves in others, and others in us." thus the aesthetic pleasure is entirely composed of sympathy. this extends even to the pleasure derived from architecture, geometrical forms, etc. whenever we meet with the positive element of human personality, we experience this feeling of beatitude, which is the aesthetic emotion. but the value of the personality is an ethical value: the whole sphere of ethic is included in it. therefore all artistic or aesthetic pleasure is the enjoyment of something which has ethical value, but this value is not an element of a compound, but the object of aesthetic intuition. thus is aesthetic activity deprived of all autonomous existence and reduced to a mere retainer of ethic. c. groos (1895) shows some signs of recognizing aesthetic activity as a theoretic value. feeling and intellect, he says, are the two poles of knowledge, and he recognizes the aesthetic fact as internal imitation. everything beautiful belongs to aestheticity, but not every aesthetic fact is beautiful. the beautiful is the representation of sensible pleasure, and the ugly of sensible displeasure. the sublime is the representation of something powerful, in a simple form. the comic is the representation of an inferiority, which provokes in us the pleasurable feeling of "superiority." groos very wisely makes mock of the supposed function of the ugly, which hartmann and schasler had inherited and developed from a long tradition. lipps and groos agree in denying aesthetic value to the comic, but lipps, although he gives an excellent analysis of the comic, is nevertheless in the trammels of his moralistic thesis, and ends by sketching out something resembling the doctrine of the overcoming of the ugly, by means of which may be attained a higher aesthetic and (sympathetic) value. labours such as those of lipps have been of value, since they have cleared away a number of errors that blocked the way, and restrained speculation to the field of the internal consciousness. similar is the merit of e. vã©ron's treatise (1883) on the double form of aesthetic, in which he combats the academic view of the absolute beauty, and shows that taine confuses art and science, aesthetic and logic. he acutely remarks that if the object of art were to reveal the essence of things, the greatest artists would be those who best succeeded in doing this, and the greatest works would all be _identical_; whereas we know that the very opposite is the case. vã©ron was a precursor of guyau, and we seek for scientific system in vain in his book. vã©ron looks upon art as two things: the one _decorative_, pleasing eye and ear, the other _expressive_, "l'expression ã©mue de la personalitã© humaine." he thought that decorative art prevailed in antiquity, expressive art in modern times. we cannot here dwell upon the aesthetic theories of men of letters, such as that of e. zola, developing his thesis of natural science and history mixed, which is known as that of the human document or as the experimental theory, or of ibsen and the moralization of the art problem, as presented by him and by the scandinavian school. perhaps no french writer has written more profoundly upon art than gustave flaubert. his views are contained in his correspondence, which has been published. l. tolstoã¯ wrote his book on art while under the influence of vã©ron and his hatred of the concept of the beautiful. art, he says, communicates the feelings, as the word communicates the thoughts. but his way of understanding this may be judged from the comparison which he institutes between art and science. according to this, "art has for its mission to make assimilable and sensible what may not have been assimilated in the form of argument. there is no science for science's sake, no art for art's sake. every human effort should be directed toward increasing morality and suppressing violence." this amounts to saying that well-nigh all the art that the world has hitherto seen is false. aeschylus, sophocles, euripides, aristophanes, dante, tasso, milton, shakespeare, raphael, michael angelo, bach, beethoven, are all, according to tolstoã¯, "false reputations, made by the critics." we must also class f. nietzsche with the artists, rather than with the philosophers. we should do him an injustice (as with j. ruskin) were we to express in intellectual terminology his aesthetic affirmations. the criticism which they provoke would be too facile. nowhere has nietzsche given a complete theory of art, not even in his first book, _die geburt der tragã¶die oder griechentum und pessimismus_. what seems to be theory there, is really the confession of the feelings and aspirations of the writer. nietzsche was the last, splendid representative of the romantic period. he was, therefore, deeply preoccupied with the art problem and with the relation of art to natural science and to philosophy, though he never succeeded in definitely fixing those relations. from romanticism, rather than from schopenhauer, he gathered those elements of thought out of which he wove his conception of the two forms of art: the apollonian, all serene contemplation, as expressed in the epic and in sculpture; the dionysaã¯c, all tumult and agitation, as expressed in music and the drama. these doctrines are not rigorously proved, and their power of resistance to criticism is therefore but slender, but they serve to transport the mind to a more lofty spiritual level than any others of the second half of the nineteenth century. the most noteworthy thought on aesthetic of this period is perhaps to be found among the aestheticians of special branches of the arts, and since we know that laws relating only to special branches are not conceivable, this thought may be considered as bearing upon the general theory of aesthetic. the bohemian critic e. hanslick (1854) is perhaps the most important of these writers. his work _on musical beauty_ has been translated into several languages. his polemic is chiefly directed against r. wagner and the pretension of finding in music a determined content of ideas and feelings. he expresses equal contempt for those sentimentalists who derive from music merely pathological effects, passionate excitement, or stimulus for practical activity, in place of enjoying the musical works. "if a few phrygian notes sufficed to instil courage into the soldier facing the enemy, or a doric melody to assure the fidelity of a wife whose husband was absent, then the loss of greek music may cause pain to generals and to husbands, but aestheticians and composers will have no reason to deplore it." "if every requiem, every lamenting adagio, possessed the power to make us sad, who would be able to support existence in such conditions? but if a true musical work look upon us with the clear and brilliant eyes of beauty, we feel ourselves bound by its invincible fascination, though its theme be all the sorrows of the century." for hanslick, the only end of music was form, or musical beauty. the followers of herbart showed themselves very tender towards this unexpected and vigorous ally, and hanslick, not to be behindhand in politeness, returned their compliments, by referring to herbart and to r. zimmermann, in the later editions of his work, as having "completely developed the great aesthetic principle of form." unfortunately hanslick meant something altogether different from the herbartians by his use of the word form. symmetry, merely acoustic relations, and the pleasure of the ear, did not constitute the musically beautiful for him. mathematics were in his view useless in the aesthetic of music. "sonorous forms are not empty, but perfectly full; they cannot be compared to simple lines enclosing a space; they are the spirit, which takes form, making its own bodily configuration. music is more of a picture than is an arabesque; but it is a picture of which the subject is inexpressible in words, nor is it to be enclosed in a precise concept. in music, there is a meaning and a connexion, but of a specially musical nature: it is a language which we speak and understand, but which it is impossible to translate." hanslick admits that music, if it do not render the quality of sentiments, renders their tone or dynamic side; it renders adjectives, if it fail to render substantives; if not "murmuring tenderness" or "impetuous courage," at any rate the "murmuring" and the "impetuous." the essence of his book is contained in the negation that it is possible to separate form and content in music. "take any motive you will, and say where form begins and content ends. are we to call the sounds content? very good, but they have already received form. what are we to call form? sounds again? but they are already form filled, that is to say, possessing a content." these observations testify to an acute penetration of the nature of art. hanslick's belief that they were characteristics peculiar to music, not common to every form of art, alone prevented him from seeing further. c. fiedler, published in german (in 1887) an extremely luminous work on the origin of artistic activity. he describes eloquently how the passive spectator seems to himself to grasp all reality, as the shows of life pass before him; but at the moment that he tries to realize this artistically, all disappears, and leaves him with the emptiness of his own thoughts. yet by concentration alone do we attain to expression; art is a language that we gradually learn to speak. artistic activity is only to be attained by limiting ourselves; it must consist of "forms precisely determined, tangible, sensibly demonstrable, precisely because it is spiritual." art does not imitate nature, for what is nature, but that vast confusion of perceptions and representations that were referred to above? yet in a sense art does imitate nature; it uses nature to produce values of a kind peculiar to itself. those values are true visibility. fiedler's views correspond with those of his predecessor, hanslick, but are more rigorously and philosophically developed. the sculptor a. hildebrand may be mentioned with these, as having drawn attention to the nature of art as architectonic rather than imitative, with special application to the art of sculpture. what we miss with these and with other specialists, is a broad view of art and language, as one and the same thing, the inheritance of all humanity, not of a few persons, specially endowed. h. bergson in his book on laughter (1900) falls under the same criticism. he develops his theory of art in a manner analogous to fiedler, and errs like him in looking upon it as something different and exceptional in respect to the language of every moment. he declares that in life the individuality of things escapes us: we see only as much as suffices for our practical ends. the influence of language aids this rude simplification: all but proper names are abstractions. artists arise from time to time, who recover the riches hidden beneath the labels of ordinary life. amid the ruin of idealist metaphysics, is to be desired a healthy return to the doctrine of baumgarten, corrected and enriched with the discoveries that have been made since his time, especially by romanticism and psychology. c. hermann (1876) announced this return, but his book is a hopeless mixture of empirical precepts and of metaphysical beliefs regarding logic and aesthetic, both of which, he believes, deal not with the empirical thought and experience of the soul, but with the pure and absolute. b. bosanquet (1892) gives the following definition of the beautiful, as "that which has a characteristic or individual expressivity for the sensible perception, or for the imagination, subject to the conditions of general or abstract expressivity for the same means." the problem as posed by this writer by the antithesis of the two german schools of form and content, appears to us insoluble. though de sanctis left no school in italy, his teaching has been cleared of the obscurities that had gathered round it during the last ten years; and the thesis of the true nature of history, and of its nature, altogether different from natural science, has been also dealt with in germany, although its precise relation to the aesthetic problem has not been made clear. such labours and such discussions constitute a more favourable ground for the scientific development of aesthetic than the stars of mystical metaphysic or the stables of positivism and of sensualism. we have now reached the end of the inquiry into the history of aesthetic speculation, and we are struck with the smallness of the number of those who have seen clearly the nature of the problem. no doubt, amid the crowd of artists, critics, and writers on other subjects, many have incidentally made very just remarks, and if all these were added to the few philosophers, they would form a gallant company. but if, as schiller truly observed, the rhythm of philosophy consist in a withdrawal from public opinion, in order to return to it with renewed vigour, it is evident that this withdrawal is essential, and indeed that in it lies the whole progress of philosophy. during our long journey, we have witnessed grave aberrations from the truth, which were at the same time attempts to reach it; such were the hedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity, of the sensualists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenth centuries; the moralistic hedonism of aristophanes and the stoics, of the roman eclectics, of the writers of the middle age and of the renaissance; the ascetic and logical hedonism of plato and the fathers of the church; the aesthetic mysticism of plotinus, reborn to its greatest triumphs, during the classic period of german thought. through the midst of these variously erroneous theories, that traverse the field of thought in all directions, runs a tiny rivulet of golden truth. starting from the subtle empiricism of aristotle, it flows in the profound penetration of vico to the nineteenth century, where it appears again in the masterly analyses of schleiermacher, humboldt, and de sanctis. this brief list shows that the science of aesthetic is no longer to be discovered, but it also shows _that it is only at its beginning_. the birth of a science is like the birth of a human being. in order to live, a science, like a man, has to withstand a thousand attacks of all sorts. these appear in the form of errors, which must be extirpated, if the science is not to perish. and when one set has been weeded, another crops up; when these have been dealt with, the former errors often return. therefore _scientific criticism_ is always necessary. no science can repose on its laurels, complete, unchallenged. like a human being, it must maintain its position by constant efforts, constant victories over error. the general errors which reveal a negation of the very concept of art have already been dealt with in the historical summary. the particular errors have been exposed in the theory. they may be divided under three heads: (i.) errors as to the characteristic quality of the aesthetic fact, or (ii.) as to its specific quality, or (iii.) as to its generic quality. these are contradictions of the characteristics of intuition, of theoretic contemplation, and of spiritual activity, which constitute the aesthetic fact. the principal bar to a proper understanding of the true nature of language has been and still is rhetoric, with the modern form it has assumed, as style. the rhetorical categories are still mentioned in treatises and often referred to, as having definite existence among the parts of speech. side by side with such phrases goes that of the double form, or metaphor, which implies that there are two ways of saying the same thing, the one simple, the other ornate. kant, herbart, hegel, and many minor personages, have been shown to be victims of the rhetorical categories, and in our own day we have writers in italy and in germany who devote much attention to them, such as r. bonghi and g. grã¶ber; the latter employs a phraseology which he borrows from the modern schools of psychology, but this does not alter the true nature of his argument. de sanctis gave perhaps the clearest and most stimulating advice in his lectures on rhetoric, which he termed anti-rhetoric. but even he failed to systematize his thought, and we may say that the true critique of rhetoric can only be made from the point of view of the aesthetic activity, which is, as we know, _one_, and therefore does not give rise to divisions, and _cannot express the same content now in one form, now in another_. thus only can we drive away the double monster of naked form deprived of imagination, and of decorated form, which would represent something more than imagination. the same remarks apply to artistic and literary styles, and to their various laws or rules. in modern times they have generally been comprised with rhetoric, and although now discredited, they cannot be said to have altogether disappeared. j.c. scaliger may be entitled the protagonist of the unities in comparatively modern times: he it was who "laid the foundations of the classical bastille," and supplied tyrants of literature, like boileau, with some of their best weapons. lessing opposed the french rules and restrictions with german rules and restrictions, giving as his opinion that corneille and others had wrongly interpreted aristotle, whose rules did not really prevent shakespeare from being included among correct writers! lessing undoubtedly believed in intellectual rules for poetry. aristotle was the tyrant, father of tyrants, and we find corneille saying "qu'il est aisã© de s'accommoder avec aristote," much in the same way as tartuffe makes his "accommodements avec le ciel." in the next century, several additions were made to the admitted styles, as for instance the "tragã©die bourgeoise." but these battles of the rules with one another are less interesting than the rebellion against all the rules, which began with pietro aretino in the sixteenth century, who makes mock of them in the prologues to his comedies. giordano bruno took sides against the makers of rules, saying that the rules came from the poetry, and "therefore there are as many genuses and species of true rules as there are genuses and species of true poets." when asked how the true poets are to be known, he replies, "by repeating their verses, which either cause delight, or profit, or both." guarini, too, said that "the world judges poetry, and its sentence is without appeal." strangely enough, it was priest-ridden spain that all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led the van of revolt against the rules and precepts of the grammarians. while torquato tasso remained the miserable slave of grammarians unworthy to lick the dust from his feet, lope de vega slyly remarked that when he wrote his comedies, he locked up the givers of precepts with six keys, that they might not reproach him. j.b. marino declared that he knew the rules better than all the pedants in the world; "but the true rule is to know when to break the rules, in accordance with the manners of the day and the taste of the age." among the most acute writers of the end of the seventeenth century is to be mentioned gravina, who well understood that a work of art must be its own criterion, and said so clearly when praising a contemporary for a work which did not enter any one of the admitted categories. unfortunately gravina did not clearly formulate his views. france of the eighteenth century produced several writers like du bos, who declared that men will always prefer the poems that move them, to those composed according to rule. la motte combated the unities of place and time, and batteux showed himself liberal in respect to rules. voltaire, although he opposed la motte and described the three unities as the three great laws of good sense, was also capable of declaring that all styles but the tiresome are good, and that the best style is that which is best used. in england we find home in his _elements of criticism_ deriding the critics for asserting that there must be a precise criterion for distinguishing epic poetry from all other forms of composition. literary compositions, he held, melt into one another, just like colours. the literary movement of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries attacked rules of all sorts. we will not dwell upon the many encounters of these periods, nor record the names of those that conquered gloriously, or their excesses. in france the preface to the _cromwell_ of v. hugo (1827), in italy the _lettera semiseria di grisostomo_, were clarions of rebellion. the principle first laid down by a.w. schlegel, that the form of compositions must be organic and not mechanic, resulting from the nature of the subject, from its internal development not from an external stamp, was enunciated in italy. art is always a whole, a synthesis. but it would be altogether wrong to believe that this empirical defeat of the styles and rules implied their final defeat in philosophy. even writers who were capable of dispensing with prejudice when judging works of art, once they spoke as philosophers, were apt to reassume their belief in those categories which, empirically, they had discarded. the spectacle of these literary or rhetorical categories, raised by german philosophers to the honours of philosophical deduction, is even more amusing than that which afforded amusement to home. the truth is that they were unable to free their aesthetic systems of intellectualism, although they proclaimed the empire of the mystic idea. schelling (1803) at the beginning, hartmann (1890) at the end of the century, furnish a good example of this head and tail. schelling, in his philosophy of art, declares that, historically speaking, the first place in the styles of poetry is due to epic, but, scientifically speaking, it falls to lyric. in truth, if poetry be the representation of the infinite in the finite, then lyric poetry, in which prevails the finite, must be its first moment. lyric poetry corresponds to the first of the ideal series, to reflection, to knowledge; epic poetry corresponds to the second power, to action. this philosopher finally proceeds to the unification of epic and lyric poetry, and from their union he deduces the dramatic form, which is in his view "the supreme incarnation of the essence and of the _in-se_ of every art." with hartmann, poetry is divided into poetry of declamation and poetry for reading. the first is subdivided into epic, lyric, and dramatic; the epic is divided into plastic epic, proper epic, pictorial epic, and lyrical epic; lyric is divided into epical lyric, lyrical lyric, and dramatic lyric; dramatic is divided into lyrical dramatic, epical dramatic, and dramatical dramatic. the second (readable poetry) is divided into poetry which is chiefly epical, lyrical, and dramatic, with the tertiary division of moving, comic, tragic, and humoristic; and poetry which can all be read at once, like a short story, or that requires several sittings, like a romance. these brief extracts show of what dialectic pirouettes and sublime trivialities even philosophers are capable, when they begin to treat of the aesthetic of the tragic, comic, and humorous. such false distinctions are still taught in the schools of france and germany, and we find a french critic like ferdinand brunetiã¨re devoting a whole volume to the evolution of literary styles or classes, which he really believes to constitute literary history. this prejudice, less frankly stated, still infests many histories of literature, even in italy. we believe that the falsity of these rules of classes should be scientifically demonstrated. in our theory of aesthetic we have shown how we believe that it should be demonstrated. the proof of the theory of the limits of the arts has been credited to lessing, but his merit should rather be limited to having been the first to draw attention to the problem. his solution was false, but his achievement nevertheless great, in having posed the question clearly. no one before him, in antiquity, in the middle age, or in modern times, had seriously asked: what is the value of the distinctions between the arts? which of them comes first? which second? leonardo da vinci had declared his personal predilection for painting, michael angelo for sculpture, but the question had not been philosophically treated before lessing. lessing's attention was drawn to the problem, through his desire to disprove the assertions of spence and of the comte de caylus, the former in respect to the close union between poetry and painting in antiquity, the latter as believing that a poem was good according to the number of subjects which it should afford the painter. lessing argued thus: painting manifests itself in space, poetry in time: the mode of manifestation of painting is through objects which coexist, that of poetry through objects which are consecutive. the objects which coexist, or whose parts are coexistent, are called bodies. bodies, then, owing to their visibility, are the true objects of painting. objects which are consecutive, or whose parts are consecutive, are called, in general, actions. actions, then, are the suitable object of poetry. he admitted that painting might represent an action, but only by means of bodies which make allusion to it; that poetry can represent bodies, but only by means of actions. returning to this theme, he explained the action or movement in painting as added by our imagination. lessing was greatly preoccupied with the naturalness and the unnaturalness of signs, which is tantamount to saying that he believed each art to be strictly limited to certain modes of expression, which are only overstepped at the cost of coherency. in the appendix to his _laocoã¶n_, he quotes plutarch as saying that one should not chop wood with a key, or open the door with an axe. he who should do so would not only be spoiling both those utensils, but would also be depriving himself of the utility of both. he believed that this applied to the arts. the number of philosophers and writers who have attempted empirical classifications of the arts is enormous: it ranges in comparatively recent times from lessing, by way of schasler, solger, and hartmann, to richard wagner, whose theory of the combination of the arts was first mooted in the eighteenth century. lotze, while reflecting upon the futility of these attempts, himself adopts a method, which he says is the most "convenient," and thereby incurs the censure of schasler. this method is in fact suitable for his studies in botany and in zoology, but useless for the philosophy of the spirit. thus both these thinkers maintained lessing's wrong principle as to the constancy, the limits, and the peculiar nature of each art. who among aestheticians has criticized this principle? aristotle had a glimpse of the truth, when he refused to admit that the distinction between prose and poetry lay in an external fact, the metre. schleiermacher seems to have been the only one who was thoroughly aware of the difficulty of the problem. in analysis, indeed, he goes so far as to say that what the arts have in common is not the external fact, which is an element of diversity; and connecting such an observation as this with his clear distinction between art and what is called technique, we might argue that schleiermacher looked upon the divisions between the arts as non-existent. but he does not make this logical inference, and his thought upon the problem continues to be wavering and undecided. nebulous, uncertain, and contradictory as is this portion of schleiermacher's theory, he has yet the great merit of having doubted lessing's theory, and of having asked himself by what right are special arts held to be distinct in art. schleiermacher _absolutely denied the existence of a beautiful in nature_, and praised hegel for having sustained this negation. hegel did not really deserve this praise, as his negation was rather verbal than effective; but the importance of this thesis as stated by schleiermacher is very great, in so far as he denied the existence of an objective natural beauty not produced by the spirit of man. this theory of the beautiful in nature, when taken in a metaphysical sense, does not constitute an error peculiar to aesthetic science. it forms part of a fallacious general theory, which can be criticized together with its metaphysic. the theory of aesthetic senses, that is, of certain superior senses, such as sight and hearing, being the only ones for which aesthetic impressions exist, was debated as early as plato. the _hippias major_ contains a discussion upon this theme, which socrates leads to the conclusion that there exist beautiful things, which do not reach us through impressions of eye or ear. but further than this, there exist things which please the eye, but not the ear, and _vice versa_; therefore the reason of beauty cannot be visibility or audibility, but something different from, yet common to both. perhaps this question has never been so acutely and so seriously dealt with as in this platonic dialogue. home, herder, hegel, diderot, rousseau, berkeley, all dealt with the problem, but in a more or less arbitrary manner. herder, for instance, includes touch with the higher aesthetic senses, but hegel removes it, as having immediate contact with matter as such, and with its immediate sensible qualities. schleiermacher, with his wonted penetration, saw that the problem was not to be solved so easily. he refuted the distinction between clear and confused senses. he held that the superiority of sight and hearing over the other senses lay in their free activity, in their capacity of an activity proceeding from within, and able to create forms and sounds without receiving external impressions. the eye and the ear are not merely means of perception, for in that case there could be no visual and no auditive arts. they are also functions of voluntary movements, which fill the domain of the senses. schleiermacher, however, considered that the difference was rather one of quantity, and that we should allow to the other senses a minimum of independence. the sensualists, as we know, maintain that all the senses are aesthetic. that is the hedonistic hypothesis, which has been dealt with and disproved in this book. we have shown the embarrassment in which the hedonists find themselves, when they have dubbed all the senses "aesthetic," or have been obliged to differentiate in an absurd manner some of the senses from the others. the only way out of the difficulty lies in abandoning the attempt to unite orders of facts so diverse as the representative form of the spirit and the conception of given physical organs or of a given material of impressions. the origin of classes of speech and of grammatical forms is to be found in antiquity, and as regards the latter, the disputes among the alexandrian philosophers, the analogists, and the anomalists, resulted in logic being identified with grammar. anything which did not seem logical was excluded from grammar as a deviation. the analogists, however, did not have it all their own way, and grammar in the modern sense of the word is a compromise between these extreme views, that is, it contains something of the thought of chrysippus, who composed a treatise to show that the same thing can be expressed with different sounds, and of apollonius discolus, who attempted to explain what the rigorous analogists refused to admit into their schemes and classifications. it is only of late years that we have begun to emerge from the superstitious reverence for grammar, inherited from the middle age. such writers as pott, in his introduction to humboldt, and paul in his _principien d. sprachgeschichte_, have done good service in throwing doubt upon the absolute validity of the parts of speech. if the old superstitions still survive tenaciously, we must attribute this partly to empirical and poetical grammar, partly to the venerable antiquity of grammar itself, which has led the world to forget its illegitimate and turbid origin. the theory of the relativity of taste is likewise ancient, and it would be interesting to know whether the saying "there's no accounting for tastes" could be traced to a merely gustatory origin. in this sense, the saying would be quite correct, as it is _quite wrong_ when applied to aesthetic facts. the eighteenth century writers exhibit a piteous perplexity of thought on this subject. home, for instance, after much debate, decides upon a common "standard of taste," which he deduces from the necessity of social life and from what he calls "a final cause." of course it will not be an easy matter to fix this "standard of taste." as regards moral conduct, we do not seek our models among savages, so with regard to taste, we must have recourse to those few whose taste has not been corrupted nor spoilt by pleasure, who have received good taste from nature, and have perfected it by education and by the practice of life. if after this has been done, there should yet arise disputes, it will be necessary to refer to the principles of criticism, as laid down in his book by the said home. we find similar contradictions and vicious circles in the _discourse on taste_ of david hume. we search his writings in vain for the distinctive characteristics of the man of taste, whose judgments should be final. although he asserts that the general principles of taste are universal in human nature, and admits that no notice should be accorded to perversions and ignorance, yet there exist diversities of taste that are irreconcilable, insuperable, and blameless. but the criticism of the sensualist and relativist positions cannot be made from the point of view of those who proclaim the absolute nature of taste and yet place it among the intellectual concepts. it has been shown to be impossible to escape from sensualism and relativity save by falling into the intellectualist error. muratori in the eighteenth century is an instance of this. he was one of the first to maintain the existence of a rule of taste and of universal beauty. andrã© also spoke of what appears beautiful in a work of art as being not that which pleases at once, owing to certain particular dispositions of the faculties of the soul and of the organs of the body, but that which has the right of pleasing the reason and reflection through its own excellence. voltaire admitted an "universal taste," which was "intellectual," as did many others. kant appeared, and condemned alike the intellectualist and the sensualistic error; but placing the beautiful in a symbol of morality, he failed to discover the imaginative absoluteness of taste. later speculative philosophy did not attach importance to the question. the correct solution was slow in making its way. it lies, as we know, in the fact that to judge a work of art we must place ourselves in the position of the artist at the time of production, and that to judge is to reproduce. alexander pope, in his _essay on criticism_, was among the first to state this truth: a perfect judge will read each work of wit with the same spirit that its author writ. remarks equally luminous were made by antonio conti, terrasson, and heydenreich in the eighteenth century, the latter with considerable philosophical development. de sanctis gave in his adhesion to this formula, but a true theory of aesthetic criticism had not yet been given, because for such was necessary, not only an exact conception of nature in art, but also of the relations between the aesthetic fact and its historical conditions. in more recent times has been denied the possibility of aesthetic criticism; it has been looked upon as merely individual and capricious, and historical criticism has been set up in its place. this would be better called a criticism of extrinsic erudition and of bad philosophical inspiration--positivist and materialist. the true history of literature will always require the reconstruction and then the judgment of the work of art. those who have wished to react against such emasculated erudition have often thrown themselves into the opposite extreme, that is, into a dogmatic, abstract, intellectualistic, or moralistic form of criticism. this mention of the history of certain doctrines relating to aesthetic suffices to show the range of error possible in the theory. aesthetic has need to be surrounded by a vigilant and vigorous critical literature which shall derive from it and be at once its safeguard and its source of strength. appendix i here add as an appendix, at the request of the author, a translation of his lecture which he delivered before the third international congress of philosophy, at heidelberg, on 2nd september 1908. the reader will find that it throws a vivid light upon benedetto croce's general theory of aesthetic. pure intuition and the lyrical character of art. _a lecture delivered at heidelberg at the second general session of the third international congress of philosophy._ there exists an _empirical_ aesthetic, which although it admits the existence of facts, called aesthetic or artistic, yet holds that they are irreducible to a single principle, to a rigorous philosophical concept. it wishes to limit itself to collecting as many of those facts as possible, and in the greatest possible variety, thence, at the most, proceeding to group them together in classes and types. the logical ideal of this school, as declared on many occasions, is zoology or botany. this aesthetic, when asked what art is, replies by indicating successively single facts, and by saying: "art is this, and this, and this too is art," and so on, indefinitely. zoology and botany renew the representatives of fauna and of flora in the same way. they calculate that the species renewed amount to some thousand, but believe that they might easily be increased to twenty or a hundred thousand, or even to a million, or to infinity. there is another aesthetic, which has been called hedonistic, utilitarian, moralistic, and so on, according to its various manifestations. its complex denomination should, however, be _practicism_, because that is precisely what constitutes its essential character. this aesthetic differs from the preceding, in the belief that aesthetic or artistic facts are not a merely empirical or nominalistic grouping together, but that all of them possess a common foundation. its foundation is placed in the practical form of human activity. those facts are therefore considered, either generically, as manifestations of pleasure and pain, and therefore rather as economic facts; or, more particularly, as a special class of those manifestations; or again, as instruments and products of the ethical spirit, which subdues and turns to its own ends individual hedonistic and economic tendencies. there is a third aesthetic, the _intellectualist_, which, while also recognizing the reducibility of aesthetic facts to philosophical treatment, explains them as particular cases of logical thought, identifying beauty with intellectual truth; art, now with the natural sciences, now with philosophy. for this aesthetic, what is prized in art is what is learned from it. the only distinction that it admits between art and science, or art and philosophy, is at the most that of more or less, or of perfection and imperfection. according to this aesthetic, art would be the whole mass of easy and popular truths; or it would be a transitory form of science, a semi-science and a semi-philosophy, preparatory to the superior and perfect form of science and of philosophy. a fourth aesthetic there is, which may be called _agnostic_. it springs from the criticism of the positions just now indicated, and being guided by a powerful consciousness of the truth, rejects them all, because it finds them too evidently false, and because it is too loth to admit that art is a simple fact of pleasure or pain, an exercise of virtue, or a fragmentary sketch of science and philosophy. and while rejecting them, it discovers, at the same time, that art is not now this and now that of those things, or of other things, indefinitely, but that it has its own principle and origin. however, it is not able to say what this principle may be, and believes that it is impossible to do so. this aesthetic knows that art cannot be resolved into an empirical concept; knows that pleasure and pain are united with the aesthetic activity only in an indirect manner; that morality has nothing to do with art; that it is impossible to rationalize art, as is the case with science and philosophy, and to prove it beautiful or ugly with the aid of reason. here this aesthetic is content to stop, satisfied with a knowledge consisting entirely of negative terms. finally, there is an aesthetic which i have elsewhere proposed to call _mystic_. this aesthetic avails itself of those negative terms, to define art as a spiritual form without a practical character, because it is theoretic, and without a logical or intellective form, because it is a theoretic form, differing alike from those of science and of philosophy, and superior to both. according to this view, art would be the highest pinnacle of knowledge, whence what is seen from other points seems narrow and partial; art would alone reveal the whole horizon or all the abysses of reality. now, the five aesthetics so far mentioned are not referable to contingent facts and historical epochs, as are, on the other hand, the denominations of greek and mediaeval aesthetic, of renaissance and eighteenth-century aesthetic, the aesthetic of wolff and of herbart, of vico and of hegel. these five are, on the contrary, mental attitudes, which are found in all periods, although they have not always conspicuous representatives of the kind that are said to become historical. empirical aesthetic is, for example, called burke in the eighteenth, fechner in the nineteenth century; moralistic aesthetic is horace or plutarch in antiquity, campanella in modern times; intellectualist or logical aesthetic is cartesian in the seventeenth, leibnitzian in the eighteenth, and hegelian in the nineteenth century; agnostic aesthetic is francesco patrizio at the renaissance, kant in the eighteenth century; mystic aesthetic is called neoplatonism at the end of the antique world, romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and if it be adorned during the former period with the name of plotinus, in the latter it will bear the name of schelling or of solger, and not only are those attitudes and mental tendencies common to all epochs, but they are also all found to some extent developed or indicated in every thinker, and even in every man. thus it is somewhat difficult to classify philosophers of aesthetic according to one or the other category, because each philosopher also enters more or less into some other, or into all the other categories. nor can these five conceptions and points of view be looked upon as increasable to ten or twenty, or to as many as desired, or that i have placed them in a certain order, but that they could be capriciously placed in another order. if this were so, they would be altogether heterogeneous and disconnected among themselves, and the attempt to examine and criticize them would seem altogether desperate, as also would be that of comparing one with the other, or of stating a new one, which should dominate them all. it is precisely thus that ordinary sceptics look upon various and contrasting scientific views. they group them all in the same plane, and believing that they can increase them at will, conclude that one is as good as another, and that therefore every one is free to select that which he prefers from a bundle of falsehoods. the conceptions of which we speak are definite in number, and appear in a necessary order, which is either that here stated by me, or another which might be proposed, better than mine. this would be the necessary order, which i should have failed to realize effectively. they are connected one with the other, and in such a way that the view which follows includes in itself that which precedes it. thus, if the last of the five doctrines indicated be taken, which may be summed up as the proposition that art is a form of the theoretic spirit, superior to the scientific and philosophic form--and if it be submitted to analysis, it will be seen that in it is included, in the first place, the proposition affirming the existence of a group of facts, which are called aesthetic or artistic. if such facts did not exist, it is evident that no question would arise concerning them, and that no systematization would be attempted. and this is the truth of empirical aesthetic. but there is also contained in it the proposition: that the facts examined are reducible to a definite principle or category of the spirit. this amounts to saying, that they belong either to the practical spirit, or to the theoretical, or to one of their subforms. and this is the truth of practicist aesthetic, which is occupied with the enquiry as to whether these ever are practical facts, and affirms that in every case they are a special category of the spirit. thirdly, there is contained in it the proposition: that they are not practical facts, but facts which should rather be placed near the facts of logic or of thought. this is the truth of intellectualistic aesthetic. in the fourth place, we find also the proposition; that aesthetic facts are neither practical, nor of that theoretic form which is called logical and intellective. they are something which cannot be identified with the categories of pleasure, nor of the useful, nor with those of ethic, nor with those of logical truth. they are something of which it is necessary to find a further definition. this is the truth of that aesthetic which is termed agnostic or negative. when these various propositions are severed from their connection; when, that is to say, the first is taken without the second, the second without the third, and so on,--and when each, thus mutilated, is confined in itself and the enquiry which awaits prosecution is arbitrarily arrested, then each one of these gives itself out as the whole of them, that is, as the completion of the enquiry. in this way, each becomes error, and the truths contained in empiricism, in practicism, in intellectualism, in agnostic and in mystical aesthetic, become, respectively, falsity, and these tendencies of speculation are indicated with names of a definitely depreciative colouring. empiria becomes empiricism, the heuristic comparison of the aesthetic activity with the practical and logical, becomes a conclusion, and therefore practicism and intellectualism. the criticism which rejects false definitions, and is itself negative, affirms itself as positive and definite, becoming agnosticism; and so on. but the attempt to close a mental process in an arbitrary manner is vain, and of necessity causes remorse and self-criticism. thus it comes about, that each one of those unilateral and erroneous doctrines continually tends to surpass itself and to enter the stage which follows it. thus empiricism, for example, assumes that it can dispense with any philosophical conception of art; but, since it severs art from non-art--and, however empirical it be, it will not identify a pen-and-ink sketch and a table of logarithms, as if they were just the same thing, or a painting and milk or blood (although milk and blood both possess colour)--thus empiricism too must at last resort to some kind of philosophical concept. therefore, we see the empiricists becoming, turn and turn about, hedonists, moralists, intellectualists, agnostics, mystics, and sometimes they are even better than mystics, upholding an excellent conception of art, which can only be found fault with because introduced surreptitiously and without justification. if they do not make that progress, it is impossible for them to speak in any way of aesthetic facts. they must return, as regards such facts, to that indifference and to that silence from which they had emerged when they affirmed the existence of these facts and began to consider them in their variety. the same may be said of all other unilateral doctrines. they are all reduced to the alternative of advancing or of going back, and in so far as they do not wish to do either, they live amid contradictions and in anguish. but they do free themselves from these, more or less slowly, and thus are compelled to advance, more or less slowly. and here we discover why it is so difficult, and indeed impossible, exactly to identify thinkers, philosophers, and writers with one or the other of the doctrines which we have enunciated, because each one of them rebels when he finds himself limited to one of those categories, and it seems to him that he is shut up in prison. it is precisely because those thinkers try to shut themselves up in a unilateral doctrine, that they do not succeed, and that they take a step, now in one direction, now in another, and are conscious of being now on this side, now on the other, of the criticisms which are addressed to them. but the critics fulfil their duty by putting them in prison, thus throwing into relief the absurdity into which they are led by their irresolution, or their resolution not to resolve. and from this necessary connection and progressive order of the various propositions indicated arise also the resolve, the counsel, the exhortation, to "return," as they say, to this or that thinker, to this or that philosophical school of the past. certainly, such returns are impossible, understood literally; they are also a little ridiculous, like all impossible attempts. we can never return to the past, precisely because it is the past. no one is permitted to free himself from the problems which are put by the present, and which he must solve with all the means of the present (which includes in it the means of the past). nevertheless, it is a fact that the history of philosophy everywhere resounds with cries of return. those very people who in our day deride the "return to hume" or the "return to kant," proceed to advise the "return to schelling," or the "return to hegel." this means that we must not understand those "returns" literally and in a material way. in truth, they do not express anything but the necessity and the ineliminability of the logical process explained above, for which the affirmations contained in philosophical problems appear connected with one another in such a way that the one follows the other, surpasses it, and includes it in itself. empiricism, practicism, intellectualism, agnosticism, mysticism, are _eternal stages of the search for truth_. they are eternally relived and rethought in the truth which each contains. thus it would be necessary for him who had not yet turned his attention to aesthetic facts, to begin by passing them before his eyes, that is to say, he must first traverse the empirical stage (about equivalent to that occupied by mere men of letters and mere amateurs of art); and while he is at this stage, he must be aroused to feel the want of a principle of explanation, by making him compare his present knowledge with the facts, and see if they are explained by it, that is to say, if they be utilitarian and moral, or logical and intellective. then we should drive him who has made this examination to the conclusion, that the aesthetic activity is something different from all known forms, a form of the spirit, which it yet remains to characterize. for the empiricists of aesthetic, intellectualism and moralism represent progress; for the intellectualists, hedonistic and moralistic alike, agnosticism is progress and may be called kant. but for kantians, who are real kantians (and not neo-kantians), progress is represented by the mystical and romantic point of view; not because this comes after the doctrine of kant chronologically, but because it surpasses it ideally. in this sense, and in this sense alone, we should now "return" to the romantic aesthetic. we should return to it, because it is ideally superior to all the researches in aesthetic made in the studies of psychologists, of physio-psychologists, and of psycho-physiologists of the universities of europe and of america. it is ideally superior to the sociological, comparative, prehistoric aesthetic, which studies especially the art of savages, of children, of madmen, and of idiots. it is ideally superior also to that other aesthetic, which has recourse to the conceptions of the genetic pleasure, of games, of illusion, of self-illusion, of association, of hereditary habit, of sympathy, of social efficiency, and so on. it is ideally superior to the attempts at logical explanation, which have not altogether ceased, even to-day, although they are somewhat rare, because, to tell the truth, fanaticism for logic cannot be called the failing of our times. finally, it is ideally superior to that aesthetic which repeats with kant, that the beautiful is finality without the idea of end, disinterested pleasure, necessary and universal, which is neither theoretical nor practical, but participates in both forms, or combines them in itself in an original and ineffable manner. but we should return to it, bringing with us the experience of a century of thought, the new facts collected, the new problems that have arisen, the new ideas that have matured. thus we shall return again to the stage of mystical and romantic aesthetic, but not to the personal and historical stage of its representatives. for in this matter, at least, they are certainly inferior to us: they lived a century ago and therefore inherited so much the less of the problems and of the results of thought which day by day mankind laboriously accumulates. they should return, but not to remain there; because, if a return to the romantic aesthetic be advisable for the kantians (while the idealists should not be advised to "return to kant," that is to say, to a lower stage, which represents a recession), so those who come over, or already find themselves on the ground of mystical aesthetic, should, on the other hand be advised to proceed yet further, in order to attain to a doctrine which represents a stage above it. this doctrine is that of the _pure intuition_ (or, what amounts to the same thing, of pure expression); a doctrine which also numbers representatives in all times, and which may be said to be immanent alike in all the discourses that are held and in all the judgments that are passed upon art, as in all the best criticism and artistic and literary history. this doctrine arises logically from the contradictions of mystical aesthetic; i say, _logically_, because it contains in itself those contradictions and their solution; although _historically_ (and this point does not at present concern us) that critical process be not always comprehensible, explicit, and apparent. mystical aesthetic, which makes of art the supreme function of the theoretic spirit, or, at least, a function superior to that of philosophy, becomes involved in inextricable difficulties. how could art ever be superior to philosophy, if philosophy make of art its object, that is to say, if it place art beneath itself, in order to analyse and define it? and what could this new knowledge be, supplied by art and by the aesthetic activity, appearing when the human spirit has come full circle, after it has imagined, perceived, thought, abstracted, calculated, and constructed the whole world of thought and history? as the result of those difficulties and contradictions, mystical aesthetic itself also exhibits the tendency, either to surpass its boundary, or to sink below its proper level. the descent takes place when it falls back into agnosticism, affirming that art is art, that is, a spiritual form, altogether different from the others and ineffable; or worse, where it conceives art as a sort of repose or as a game; as though diversion could ever be a category and the spirit know repose! we find an attempt at overpassing its proper limit, when art is placed below philosophy, as inferior to it; but this overpassing remains a simple attempt, because the conception of art as instrument of universal truth is always firmly held; save that this instrument is declared less perfect and less efficacious than the philosophical instrument. thus they fall back again into intellectualism from another side. these mistakes of mystical aesthetic were manifested during the romantic period in some celebrated paradoxes, such as those of _art as irony_ and of the _death of art_. they seemed calculated to drive philosophers to desperation as to the possibility of solving the problem of the nature of art, since every path of solution appeared closed. indeed, whoever reads the aestheticians of the romantic period, feels strongly inclined to believe himself at the heart of the enquiry and to nourish a confident hope of immediate discovery of the truth. above all, the affirmation of the theoretic nature of art, and of the difference between its cognitive method and that of science and of logic, is felt as a definite conquest, which can indeed be combined with other elements, but which must not in any case be allowed to slip between the fingers. and further, it is not true that all ways of solution are closed, or that all have been attempted. there is at least one still open that can be tried; and it is precisely that for which we resolutely declare ourselves: the aesthetic of the pure intuition. this aesthetic reasons as follows:--hitherto, in all attempts to define the place of art, it has been sought, either at the summit of the theoretic spirit, above philosophy, or, at least, in the circle of philosophy itself. but is not the loftiness of the search the reason why no satisfactory result has hitherto been obtained? why not invert the attempt, and instead of forming the hypothesis that art is _one of the summits or the highest grade_ of the theoretic spirit, form the very opposite hypothesis, namely, that it is _one of the lower grades_, or the lowest of all? perhaps such epithets as "lower" and "lowest" are irreconcilable with the dignity and with the splendid beauty of art? but in the philosophy of the spirit, such words as lowest, weak, simple, elementary, possess only the value of a scientific terminology. all the forms of the spirit are necessary, and the higher is so only because there is the lower, and the lower is as much to be despised or less to be valued to the same extent as the first step of a stair is despicable, or of less value in respect to the topmost step. let us compare art with the various forms of the theoretic spirit, and let us begin with the sciences which are called _natural_ or _positive_. the aesthetic of pure intuition makes it clear that the said sciences are more _complex_ than history, because they presuppose historical material, that is, collections of things that have happened (to men or animals, to the earth or to the stars). they submit this material to a further treatment, which consists in the abstraction and systematization of the historical facts. _history_, then, is less complex than the natural sciences. history further presupposes the world of the imagination and the pure philosophical concepts or categories, and produces its judgments or historical propositions, by means of the synthesis of the imagination with the concept. and _philosophy_ may be said to be even less complex than history, in so far as it is distinguished from the former as an activity whose special function it is to make clear the categories or pure concepts, neglecting, in a certain sense at any rate, the world of phenomena. if we compare _art_ with the three forms above mentioned, it must be declared inferior, that is to say, less complex than the _natural sciences_, in so far as it is altogether without abstractions. in so far as it is without conceptual determinations and does not distinguish between the real and the unreal, what has really happened and what has been dreamed, it must be declared inferior to _history_. in so far as it fails altogether to surpass the phenomenal world, and does not attain to the definitions of the pure concepts, it is inferior to _philosophy_ itself. it is also inferior to _religion_, assuming that religion is (as it is) a form of speculative truth, standing between thought and imagination. art is governed entirely by imagination; its only riches are images. art does not classify objects, nor pronounce them real or imaginary, nor qualify them, nor define them. art feels and represents them. nothing more. art therefore is _intuition_, in so far as it is a mode of knowledge, not abstract, but concrete, and in so far as it uses the real, without changing or falsifying it. in so far as it apprehends it immediately, before it is modified and made clear by the concept, it must be called _pure intuition_. the strength of art lies in being thus simple, nude, and poor. its strength (as often happens in life) arises from its very weakness. hence its fascination. if (to employ an image much used by philosophers for various ends) we think of man, in the first moment that he becomes aware of theoretical life, with mind still clear of every abstraction and of every reflexion, in that first purely intuitive instant he must be a poet. he contemplates the world with ingenuous and admiring eyes; he sinks and loses himself altogether in that contemplation. by creating the first representations and by thus inaugurating the life of knowledge, art continually renews within our spirit the aspects of things, which thought has submitted to reflexion, and the intellect to abstraction. thus art perpetually makes us poets again. without art, thought would lack the stimulus, the very material, for its hermeneutic and critical labour. art is the root of all our theoretic life. to be the root, not the flower or the fruit, is the function of art. and without a root, there can be no flower and no fruit. ii such is the theory of art as pure intuition, in its fundamental conception. this theory, then, takes its origin from the criticism of the loftiest of all the other doctrines of aesthetic, from the criticism of mystical or romantic aesthetic, and contains in itself the criticism and the truth of all the other aesthetics. it is not here possible to allow ourselves to illustrate its other aspects, such as would be those of the identity, which it lays down, between intuition and expression, between art and language. suffice it to say, as regards the former, that he alone who divides the unity of the spirit into soul and body can have faith in a pure act of the soul, and therefore in an intuition, which should exist as an intuition, and yet be without its body, expression. expression is the actuality of intuition, as action is of will; and in the same way as will not exercised in action is not will, so an intuition unexpressed is not an intuition. as regards the second point, i will mention in passing that, in order to recognize the identity of art and language, it is needful to study language, not in its abstraction and in grammatical detail, but in its immediate reality, and in all its manifestations, spoken and sung, phonic and graphic. and we should not take at hazard any proposition, and declare it to be aesthetic; because, if all propositions have an aesthetic side (precisely because intuition is the elementary form of knowledge and is, as it were, the garment of the superior and more complex forms), all are not _purely_ aesthetic, but some are philosophical, historical, scientific, or mathematical; some, in fact, of these are more than aesthetic or logical; they are aestheticological. aristotle, in his time, distinguished between semantic and apophantic propositions, and noted, that if all propositions be _semantic_, not all are _apophantic_. language is art, not in so far as it is apophantic, but in so far as it is, generically, semantic. it is necessary to note in it the side by which it is expressive, and nothing but expressive. it is also well to observe (though this may seem superfluous) that it is not necessary to reduce the theory of pure intuition, as has been sometimes done, to a historical fact or to a psychological concept. because we recognize in poetry, as it were, the ingenuousness, the freshness, the barbarity of the spirit, it is not therefore necessary to limit poetry to youth and to barbarian peoples. though we recognize language as the first act of taking possession of the world achieved by man, we must not imagine that language is born _ex nihilo_, once only in the course of the ages, and that later generations merely adopt the ancient instrument, applying it to a new order of things while lamenting its slight adaptability to the usage of civilized times. art, poetry, intuition, and immediate expression are the moment of barbarity and of ingenuousness, which perpetually recur in the life of the spirit; they are youth, that is, not chronological, but ideal. there exist very prosaic barbarians and very prosaic youths, as there exist poetical spirits of the utmost refinement and civilization. the mythology of those proud, gigantic patagonians, of whom our vico was wont to discourse, or of those _bons hurons_, who were lately a theme of conversation, must be looked upon as for ever superseded. but there arises an apparently very serious objection to the aesthetic of pure intuition, giving occasion to doubt whether this doctrine, if it represent progress in respect to the doctrines which have preceded it, yet is also a complete and definite doctrine as regards the fundamental concept of art. should it be submitted to a dialectic, by means of which it must be surpassed and dissolved into a more lofty point of view? the doctrine of pure intuition makes the value of art to consist of its power of intuition; in such a manner that just in so far as pure and concrete intuitions are achieved will art and beauty be achieved. but if attention be paid to judgments of people of good taste and of critics, and to what we all say when we are warmly discussing works of art and manifesting our praise or blame of them, it would seem that what we seek in art is something quite different, or at least something more than simple force and intuitive and expressive purity. what pleases and what is sought in art, what makes beat the heart and enraptures the admiration, is life, movement, emotion, warmth, the feeling of the artist. this alone affords the supreme criterion for distinguishing true from false works of art, those with insight from the failures. where there are emotion and feeling, much is forgiven; where they are wanting, nothing can make up for them. not only are the most profound thoughts and the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art which is looked upon as _cold_, but richness of imagery, ability and certainty in the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization and composition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regret that so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain. we do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts, nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, but that he should have a _personality_, in contact with which the soul of the hearer or spectator may be heated. a personality of any sort is asked for in this case; its moral significance is excluded: let it be sad or glad, enthusiastic or distrustful, sentimental or sarcastic, benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. art criticism would seem to consist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the work of art, and of what sort. a work that is a failure is an incoherent work; that is to say, a work in which no single personality appears, but a number of disaggregated and jostling personalities, that is, really, none. there is no further correct significance than this in the researches that are made as to the verisimilitude, the truth, the logic, the necessity, of a work of art. it is true that many protests have been made by artists, critics, and philosophers by profession, against the characteristic of _personality_. it has been maintained that the bad artist leaves traces of his personality in the work of art, whereas the great artist cancels them all. it has been further maintained that the artist should portray the reality of life, and that he should not disturb it with the opinions, judgments, and personal feelings of the author, and that the artist should give the tears of things and not his own tears. hence _impersonality_, not personality, has been proclaimed to be the characteristic of art, that is to say, the very opposite. however, it will not be difficult to show that what is really meant by this opposing formula is the same as in the first case. the theory of impersonality really coincides with that of personality in every point. the opposition of the artists, critics, and philosophers above mentioned, was directed against the invasion by the empirical and volitional personality of the artist of the spontaneous and ideal personality which constitutes the subject of the work of art. for instance, artists who do not succeed in representing the force of piety or of love of country, add to their colourless imaginings declamation or theatrical effects, thinking thus to arouse such feelings. in like manner certain orators and actors introduce into a work of art an emotion extraneous to the work of art itself. within these limits, the opposition of the upholders of the theory of impersonality was most reasonable. on the other hand, there has also been exhibited an altogether irrational opposition to personality in the work of art. such is the lack of comprehension and intolerance evinced by certain souls for others differently constituted (of calm for agitated souls, for example). here we find at bottom the claim of one sort of personality to deny that of another. finally, it has been possible to demonstrate from among the examples given of impersonal art, in the romances and dramas called naturalistic, that in so far and to the extent that these are complete artistic works, they possess personality. this holds good even when this personality lies in a wandering or perplexity of thought regarding the value to be given to life, or in blind faith in the natural sciences and in modern sociology. where every trace of personality was really absent, and its place taken by the pedantic quest for human documents, the description of certain social classes and the generic or individual process of certain maladies, there the work of art was absent. a work of science of more or less superficiality, and without the necessary proofs and control, filled its place. there is no upholder of impersonality but experiences a feeling of fatigue for a work of the utmost exactitude in the reproduction of reality in its empirical sequence, or of industrious and apathetic combination of images. he asks himself why such a work was executed, and recommends the author to adopt some other profession, since that of artist was not intended for him. thus it is without doubt that if pure intuition (and pure expression, which is the same thing) are indispensable in the work of art, the personality of the artist is equally indispensable. if (to quote the celebrated words in our own way) the _classic_ moment of perfect representation or expression be necessary for the work of art, the _romantic_ moment of feeling is not less necessary. poetry, or art in general, cannot be exclusively _ingenuous_ or _sentimental_; it must be both ingenuous and sentimental. and if the first or representative moment be termed _epic_, and the second, which is sentimental, passionate, and personal, be termed _lyric_, then poetry and art must be at once epic and lyric, or, if it please you better, _dramatic_. we use these words here, not at all in their empirical and intellectualist sense, as employed to designate special classes of works of art, exclusive of other classes; but in that of elements or moments, which must of necessity be found united in every work of art, how diverse soever it may be in other respects. now this irrefutable conclusion seems to constitute exactly that above-mentioned apparently serious objection to the doctrine which defines art as pure intuition. but if the essence of art be merely theoretic--and it is _intuibility_--can it, on the other hand, be practical, that is to say, feeling, personality, and _passionality_? or, if it be practical, how can it be theoretic? it will be answered that feeling is the _content_, intuibility the _form_; but form and content do not in philosophy constitute a duality, like water and its recipient; in philosophy content is form, and form is content. here, on the other hand, form and content appear to be different from one another; the content is of one quality, the form of another. thus art appears to be the sum of two qualities, or, as herbart used to say in his time, of _two values_. accordingly we have an altogether unmaintainable aesthetic, as is clear from recent largely vulgarized doctrines of aesthetic as operating with the concept of the _infused personality_. here we find, on the one hand, things intuible lying dead and soulless; on the other, the artist's feeling and personality. the artist is then supposed to put himself into things, by an act of magic, to make them live and palpitate, love and adore. but if we start with the _distinction_, we can never again reach _unity_: the distinction requires an intellectual act, and what the intellect has divided intellect or reason alone, not art or imagination, can reunite and synthetize. thus the aesthetic of infusion or transfusion--when it does not fall into the antiquated hedonistic doctrines of agreeable illusion, of games, and generally of what affords a pleasurable emotion; or of moral doctrines, where art is a symbol and an allegory of the good and the true;--is yet not able, despite its airs of modernity and its psychology, to escape the fate of the doctrine which makes of art a semi-imaginative conception of the world, like religion. the process that it describes is mythological, not aesthetic; it is a making of gods or of idols. "to make one's gods is an unhappy art," said an old italian poet; but if it be not unhappy, certainly it is not poetic and not aesthetic. the artist does not make the gods, because he has other things to do. another reason is that, to tell the truth, he is so ingenuous and so absorbed in the image that attracts him, that he cannot perform that act of abstraction and conception, wherein the image must be surpassed and made the allegory of a universal, though it be of the crudest description. this recent theory, then, is of no use. it leads back to the difficulties arising from the admission of two characteristics of art, _intuibility_ and _lyricism_, not unified. we must recognize, either that the duality must be destroyed and proved illusory, _or_ that we must proceed to a more ample conception of art, in which that of pure intuibility would remain merely secondary or particular. and to destroy and prove it illusory must consist in showing that here too form is content, and that pure intuition is _itself_ lyricism. now, the truth is precisely this: _pure intuition is essentially lyricism_. all the difficulties concerning this question arise from not having thoroughly understood that concept, from having failed to penetrate its true nature and to explore its multiple relations. when we consider the one attentively, we see the other bursting from its bosom, or better, the one and the other reveal themselves as one and the same, and we escape from the desperate trilemma, of either denying the lyrical and personal character of art, or of asserting that it is adjunctive, external and accidental, or of excogitating a new doctrine of aesthetic, which we do not know where to find. in fact, as has already been remarked, what can pure intuition mean, but intuition pure of every abstraction, of every conceptual element, and, for this reason, neither science, history, nor philosophy? this means that the content of the pure intuition cannot be either an abstract concept, or a speculative concept or idea, or a conceptualized, that is historicized, representation. nor can it be a so-called perception, which is a representation intellectually, and so historically, discriminated. but outside logic in its various forms and blendings, no other psychic content remains, save that which is called appetites, tendencies, feelings, and will. these things are all the same and constitute the practical form of the spirit, in its infinite gradations and in its dialectic (pleasure and pain). pure intuition, then, since it does not produce concepts, must represent the will in its manifestations, that is to say, it can represent nothing but _states of the soul_. and states of the soul are passionality, feeling, personality, which are found in every art and determine its lyrical character. where this is absent, art is absent, _precisely because pure intuition is absent_, and we have at the most, in exchange for it, _that reflex_, philosophical, historical, or scientific. in the last of these, passion is represented, not immediately, but mediately, or, to speak exactly, it is no longer represented, but thought. thus the origin of language, that is, its true nature, has several times been placed in _interjection_. thus, too, aristotle, when he wished to give an example of those propositions which were not _apophantic_, but generically _semantic_ (we should say, not logical, but purely aesthetic), and did not predicate the logically true and false, but nevertheless said something, gave as example invocation or prayer, _hae enchae_. he added that these propositions do not appertain to logic, but to rhetoric and poetic. a landscape is a state of the soul; a great poem may all be contained in an exclamation of joy, of sorrow, of admiration, or of lament. the more objective is a work of art, by so much the more is it poetically suggestive. if this deduction of lyricism from the intimate essence of pure intuition do not appear easily acceptable, the reason is to be sought in two very deep-rooted prejudices, of which it is useful to indicate here the genesis. the first concerns the nature of the _imagination_, and its likenesses to and differences from _fancy_. imagination and fancy have been clearly distinguished thus by certain aestheticians (and among them, de sanctis), as also in discussions relating to concrete art: they have held fancy, not imagination, to be the special faculty of the poet and the artist. not only does a new and bizarre combination of images, which is vulgarly called _invention_, not constitute the artist, but _ne fait rien ã  l'affaire_, as alceste remarked with reference to the length of time expended upon writing a sonnet. great artists have often preferred to treat groups of images, which had already been many times used as material for works of art. the novelty of these new works has been solely that of art or form, that is to say, of the new _accent_ which they have known how to give to the old material, of the new way in which they have _felt_ and therefore _intuified_ it, thus creating _new images_ upon the old ones. these remarks are all obvious and universally recognized as true. but if mere imagination as such has been excluded from art, it has not therefore been excluded from the theoretic spirit. hence the disinclination to admit that a pure intuition must of necessity express a state of the soul, whereas it may also consist, as they believe, of a pure image, without a content of feeling. if we form an arbitrary image of any sort, _stans pede in uno_, say of a bullock's head on a horse's body, would not this be an intuition, a pure intuition, certainly quite without any content of reflexion? would one not attain to a work of art in this way, or at any rate to an artistic motive? certainly not. for the image given as an instance, and every other image that may be produced by the imagination, not only is not a pure intuition, but it is not a _theoretic_ product of any sort. it is a product of _choice_, as was observed in the formula used by our opponents; and choice is external to the world of thought and contemplation. it may be said that imagination is a practical artifice or game, played upon that patrimony of images possessed by the soul; whereas the fancy, the translation of practical into theoretical values, of states of the soul into images, is the _creation_ of that patrimony itself. from this we learn that an image, which is not the expression of a state of the soul, is not an image, since it is without any theoretical value; and therefore it cannot be an obstacle to the identification of lyricism and intuition. but the other prejudice is more difficult to eradicate, because it is bound up with the metaphysical problem itself, on the various solutions of which depend the various solutions of the aesthetic problem, and _vice versa_. if art be intuition, would it therefore be any intuition that one might have of a _physical_ object, appertaining to _external nature_? if i open my eyes and look at the first object that they fall upon, a chair or a table, a mountain or a river, shall i have performed by so doing an aesthetic act? if so, what becomes of the lyrical character, of which we have asserted the necessity? if not, what becomes of the intuitive character, of which we have affirmed the equal necessity and also its identity with the former? without doubt, the perception of a physical object, as such, does not constitute an artistic fact; but precisely for the reason that it is not a pure intuition, but a judgment of perception, and implies the application of an abstract concept, which in this case is physical or belonging to external nature. and with this reflexion and perception, we find ourselves at once outside the domain of pure intuition. we could have a pure perception of a physical object in one way only; that is to say, if physical or external nature were a metaphysical reality, a truly real reality, and not, as it is, a construction or abstraction of the intellect. if such were the case, man would have an immediate intuition, in his first theoretical moment, both of himself and of external nature, of the spiritual and of the physical, in an equal degree. this represents the dualistic hypothesis. but just as dualism is incapable of providing a coherent system of philosophy, so is it incapable of providing a coherent aesthetic. if we admit dualism, we must certainly abandon the doctrine of art as pure intuition; but we must at the same time abandon all philosophy. but art on its side tacitly protests against metaphysical dualism. it does so, because, being the most immediate form of knowledge, it is in contact with activity, not with passivity; with interiority, not exteriority; with spirit, not with matter, and never with a double order of reality. those who affirm the existence of two forms of intuition--the one external or physical, the other subjective or aesthetic; the one cold and inanimate, the other warm and lively; the one imposed from without, the other coming from the inner soul--attain without doubt to the distinctions and oppositions of the vulgar (or dualistic) consciousness, but their aesthetic is vulgar. the lyrical essence of pure intuition, and of art, helps to make clear what we have already observed concerning the persistence of the intuition and of the fancy in the higher grades of the theoretical spirit, why philosophy, history, and science have always an artistic side, and why their expression is subject to aesthetic valuation. the man who ascends from art to thought does not by so doing abandon his volitional and practical base, and therefore he too finds himself in a particular _state of the soul_, the representation of which is intuitive and lyrical, and accompanies of necessity the development of his ideas. hence the various styles of thinkers, solemn or jocose, troubled or gladsome, mysterious and involved, or level and expansive. but it would not be correct to divide intuition immediately into two classes, the one of _aesthetic_, the other of _intellectual_ or _logical_ intuitions, owing to the persistence of the artistic element in logical thought, because the relation of degrees is not the relation of classes, and copper is copper, whether it be found alone, or in combination as bronze. further, this close connection of feeling and intuition in pure intuition throws much light on the reasons which have so often caused art to be separated from the theoretic and confounded with the practical activity. the most celebrated of these confusions are those formulated about the relativity of tastes and of the impossibility of reproducing, tasting, and correctly judging the art of the past, and in general the art of others. a life lived, a feeling felt, a volition willed, are certainly impossible to reproduce, because nothing happens more than once, and my situation at the present moment is not that of any other being, nor is it mine of the moment before, nor will be of the moment to follow. but art remakes ideally, and ideally expresses my momentary situation. its image, produced by art, becomes separated from time and space, and can be again made and again contemplated in its ideal-reality from every point of time and space. it belongs not to the _world_, but to the _superworld_; not to the flying moment, but to eternity. thus life passes, but art endures. finally, we obtain from this relation between the intuition and the state of the soul the criterion of exact definition of the _sincerity_ required of artists, which is itself also an essential request. it is essential, precisely because it means that the artist must have a state of the soul to express, which really amounts to saying, that he must be an artist. his must be a state of the soul really experienced, not merely imagined, because imagination, as we know, is not a work of truth. but, on the other hand, the demand for sincerity does not go beyond asking for a state of the soul, and that the state of soul expressed in the work of art be a desire or an action. it is altogether indifferent to aesthetic whether the artist have had only an aspiration, or have realized that aspiration in his empirical life. all that is quite indifferent in the sphere of art. here we also find the confutation of that false conception of sincerity, which maintains that the artist, in his volitional or practical life, should be at one with his dream, or with his incubus. whether or no he have been so, is a matter that interests his biographer, not his critic; it belongs to history, which separates and qualifies that which art does not discriminate, but represents. iii this attitude of indiscrimination and indifference, observed by art in respect to history and philosophy, is also foreshadowed at that place of the _de interpretatione_ (_c_. 4), to which we have already referred, to obtain thence the confirmation of the thesis of the identity of art and language, and another confirmation, that of the identity of lyric and pure intuition. it is a really admirable passage, containing many profound truths in a few short, simple words, although, as is natural, without full consciousness of their richness. aristotle, then, is still discussing the said rhetorical and poetical propositions, semantic and not apophantic, and he remarks that in them there rules no distinction between true and false: _to alaetheueion hae pseudeothai ouk hyparchei_. art, in fact, is in contact with palpitating reality, but does not know that it is so in contact, and therefore is not truly in contact. art does not allow itself to be troubled with the abstractions of the intellect, and therefore does not make mistakes; but it does not know that it does not make mistakes. if art, then (to return to what we said at the beginning), be the first and most ingenuous form of knowledge, it cannot give complete satisfaction to man's need to know, and therefore cannot be the ultimate end of the theoretic spirit. art is the dream of the life of knowledge. its complement is waking, lyricism no longer, but the concept; no longer the dream, but the judgment. thought could not be without fancy; but thought surpasses and contains in itself the fancy, transforms the image into perception, and gives to the world of dream the clear distinctions and the firm contours of reality. art cannot achieve this; and however great be our love of art, that cannot raise it in rank, any more than the love one may have for a beautiful child can convert it into an adult. we must accept the child as a child, the adult as an adult. therefore, the aesthetic of pure intuition, while it proclaims energetically the autonomy of art and of the aesthetic activity, is at the same time averse to all _aestheticism_, that is, to every attempt at lowering the life of thought, in order to elevate that of fancy. the origin of aestheticism is the same as that of mysticism. both proceed from a rebellion against the predominance of the abstract sciences and against the undue abuse of the principle of causation in metaphysic. when we pass from the stuffed animals of the zoological museums, from anatomical reconstructions, from tables of figures, from classes and sub-classes constituted by means of abstract characters, or from the fixation and mechanization of life for the ends of naturalistic science, to the pages of the poets, to the pictures of the painters, to the melodies of the composers, when in fact we look upon life with the eye of the artist, we have the impression that we are passing from death to life, from the abstract to the concrete, from fiction to reality. we are inclined to proclaim that only in art and in aesthetic contemplation is truth, and that science is either charlatanesque pedantry, or a modest practical expedient. and certainly art has the superiority of its own truth; simple, small, and elementary though it be, over the abstract, which, as such, is altogether without truth. but in violently rejecting science and frantically embracing art, that very form of the theoretic spirit is forgotten, by means of which we can criticize science and recognize the nature of art. now this theoretic spirit, since it criticizes science, is not science, and, as reflective consciousness of art, is not art. philosophy, the supreme fact of the theoretic world, is forgotten. this error has been renewed in our day, because the consciousness of the limits of the natural sciences and of the value of the truth which belongs to intuition and to art, have been renewed. but just as, a century ago, during the idealistic and romantic period, there were some who reminded the fanatics for art, and the artists who were transforming philosophy, that art was not "the most lofty form of apprehending the absolute"; so, in our day, it is necessary to awaken the consciousness of thought. and one of the means for attaining this end is an exact understanding of the limits of art, that is, the construction of a solid aesthetic. the end the principles of aesthetics by dewitt h. parker professor of philosophy in the university of michigan preface this book has grown out of lectures to students at the university of michigan and embodies my effort to express to them the nature and meaning of art. in writing it, i have sought to maintain scientific accuracy, yet at the same time to preserve freedom of style and something of the inspiration of the subject. while intended primarily for students, the book will appeal generally, i hope, to people who are interested in the intelligent appreciation of art. my obligations are extensive,--most directly to those whom i have cited in foot-notes to the text, but also to others whose influence is too indirect or pervasive to make citation profitable, or too obvious to make it necessary. for the broader philosophy of art, my debt is heaviest, i believe, to the artists and philosophers during the period from herder to hegel, who gave to the study its greatest development, and, among contemporaries, to croce and lipps. in addition, i have drawn freely upon the more special investigations of recent times, but with the caution desirable in view of the very tentative character of some of the results. to mrs. robert m. wenley i wish to express my thanks for her very careful and helpful reading of the page proof. the appended bibliography is, of course, not intended to be in any sense adequate, but is offered merely as a guide to further reading; a complete bibliography would itself demand almost a volume. contents chapter i. introduction: purpose and method chapter ii. the definition of art chapter iii. the intrinsic value of art chapter iv. the analysis of the aesthetic experience: the elements of the experience chapter v. the analysis of the aesthetic experience: the structure of the experience chapter vi. the problem of evil in aesthetics, and its solution through the tragic, pathetic, and comic chapter vii. the standard of taste chapter viii. the aesthetics of music chapter ix. the aesthetics of poetry chapter x. prose literature chapter xi. the dominion of art over nature: painting chapter xii. the dominion of art over nature: sculpture chapter xiii. beauty in the industrial arts: architecture chapter xiv. the function of art: art and morality chapter xv. the function of art: art and religion bibliography the principles of aesthetics chapter i introduction: purpose and method although some feeling for beauty is perhaps universal among men, the same cannot be said of the understanding of beauty. the average man, who may exercise considerable taste in personal adornment, in the decoration of the home, or in the choice of poetry and painting, is at a loss when called upon to tell what art is or to explain why he calls one thing "beautiful" and another "ugly." even the artist and the connoisseur, skilled to produce or accurate in judgment, are often wanting in clear and consistent ideas about their own works or appreciations. here, as elsewhere, we meet the contrast between feeling and doing, on the one hand, and knowing, on the other. just as practical men are frequently unable to describe or justify their most successful methods or undertakings, just as many people who astonish us with their fineness and freedom in the art of living are strangely wanting in clear thoughts about themselves and the life which they lead so admirably, so in the world of beauty, the men who do and appreciate are not always the ones who understand. very often, moreover, the artist and the art lover justify their inability to understand beauty on the ground that beauty is too subtle a thing for thought. how, they say, can one hope to distill into clear and stable ideas such a vaporous and fleeting matter as aesthetic feeling? such men are not only unable to think about beauty, but skeptical as to the possibility of doing so,--contented mystics, deeply feeling, but dumb. however, there have always been artists and connoisseurs who have striven to reflect upon their appreciations and acts, unhappy until they have understood and justified what they were doing; and one meets with numerous art-loving people whose intellectual curiosity is rather quickened than put to sleep by just that element of elusiveness in beauty upon which the mystics dwell. long acquaintance with any class of objects leads naturally to the formation of some definition or general idea of them, and the repeated performance of the same type of act impels to the search for a principle that can be communicated to other people in justification of what one is doing and in defense of the value which one attaches to it. thoughtful people cannot long avoid trying to formulate the relation of their interest in beauty, which absorbs so much energy and devotion, to other human interests, to fix its place in the scheme of life. it would be surprising, therefore, if there had been no shelleys or sidneys to define the relation between poetry and science, or tolstoys to speculate on the nature of all art; and we should wonder if we did not everywhere hear intelligent people discussing the relation of utility and goodness to beauty, or asking what makes a poem or a picture great. now the science of aesthetics is an attempt to do in a systematic way what thoughtful art lovers have thus always been doing haphazardly. it is an effort to obtain a clear general idea of beautiful objects, our judgments upon them, and the motives underlying the acts which create them,--to raise the aesthetic life, otherwise a matter of instinct and feeling, to the level of intelligence, of understanding. to understand art means to find an idea or definition which applies to it and to no other activity, and at the same time to determine its relation to other elements of human nature; and our understanding will be complete if our idea includes all the distinguishing characteristics of art, not simply enumerated, but exhibited in their achieved relations. how shall we proceed in seeking such an idea of art? we must follow a twofold method: first, the ordinary scientific method of observation, analysis, and experiment; and second, another and very different method, which people of the present day often profess to avoid, but which is equally necessary, as i shall try to show, and actually employed by those who reject it. in following the first method we treat beautiful things as objects given to us for study, much as plants and animals are given to the biologist. just as the biologist watches the behavior of his specimens, analyzes them into their various parts and functions, and controls his studies through carefully devised experiments, arriving at last at a clear notion of what a plant or an animal is--at a definition of life; so the student of aesthetics observes works of art and other well-recognized beautiful things, analyzes their elements and the forms of connection of these, arranges experiments to facilitate and guard his observations from error and, as a result, reaches the general idea for which he is looking,--the idea of beauty. a vast material presents itself for study of this kind: the artistic attempts of children and primitive men; the well-developed art of civilized nations, past and present, as creative process and as completed work; and finally, the everyday aesthetic appreciations of nature and human life, both by ourselves and by the people whom we seek out for study. each kind of material has its special value. the first has the advantage of the perspicuity which comes from simplicity, similar for our purposes to the value of the rudimentary forms of life for the biologist. but this advantage of early art may be overestimated; for the nature of beauty is better revealed in its maturer manifestations, even as the purposes of an individual are more fully, if not more clearly, embodied in maturity than in youth or childhood. yet a purely objective method will not suffice to give us an adequate idea of beauty. for beautiful things are created by men, not passively discovered, and are made, like other things which men make, in order to realize a purpose. just as a saw is a good saw only when it fulfills the purpose of cutting wood, so works of art are beautiful only because they embody a certain purpose. the beautiful things which we study by the objective method are selected by us from among countless other objects and called beautiful because they have a value for us, without a feeling for which we should not know them to be beautiful at all. they are not, like sun and moon, independent of mind and will and capable of being understood in complete isolation from man. no world of beauty exists apart from a purpose that finds realization there. we are, to be sure, not always aware of the existence of this purpose when we enjoy a picture or a poem or a bit of landscape; yet it is present none the less. the child is equally unaware of the purpose of the food which pleases him, yet the purpose is the ground of his pleasure; and we can understand his hunger only through a knowledge of it. the dependence of beauty upon a relation to purpose is clear from the fact that in our feelings and judgments about art we not only change and disagree, but correct ourselves and each other. the history of taste, both in the individual and the race, is not a mere process, but a progress, an evolution. "we were wrong in calling that poem beautiful," we say; "you are mistaken in thinking that picture a good one"; "the eighteenth century held a false view of the nature of poetry"; "the english pre-raphaelites confused the functions of poetry and painting"; "to-day we understand what the truly pictorial is better than giotto did"; and so on. now nothing can be of worth to us, one thing cannot be better than another, nor can we be mistaken as to its value except with reference to some purpose which it fulfills or does not fulfill. there is no growth or evolution apart from a purpose in terms of which we can read the direction of change as forward rather than backward. this purpose cannot be understood by the observation and analysis, no matter how careful, of beautiful _things_; for it exists in the mind primarily and only through mind becomes embodied in things; and it cannot be understood by a mere inductive study of aesthetic experiences--the mind plus the object--just as they come; because, as we have just stated, they are changeful and subject to correction, therefore uncertain and often misleading. the aesthetic impulse may falter and go astray like any other impulse; a description of it in this condition would lead to a very false conception. no, we must employ a different method of investigation--the socratic method of self-scrutiny, the conscious attempt to become clear and consistent about our own purposes, the probing and straightening of our aesthetic consciences. instead of accepting our immediate feelings and judgments, we should become critical towards them and ask ourselves, what do we really seek in art and in life which, when found, we call beautiful? of course, in order to answer this question we cannot rely on an examination of our own preferences in isolation from those of our fellow-men. here, as everywhere, our purposes are an outgrowth of the inherited past and are developed in imitation of, or in rivalry with, those of other men. the problem is one of interpreting the meaning of art in the system of culture of which our own minds are a part. nevertheless, the personal problem remains. aesthetic value is emphatically personal; it must be felt as one's own. if i accept the standards of my race and age, i do so because i find them to be an expression of my own aesthetic will. in the end, my own will to beauty must be cleared up; its darkly functioning goals must be brought to light. now, unless we have thought much about the matter or are gifted with unusual native taste, we shall find that our aesthetic intentions are confused, contradictory, and entangled with other purposes. to become aware of this is the first step towards enlightenment. we must try to distinguish what we want of art from what we want of other things, such as science or morality; for something unique we must desire from anything of permanent value in our life. in the next place we should come to see that we cannot want incompatible things; that, for example, we cannot want art to hold the mirror up to life and, at the same time, to represent life as conforming to our private prejudices; or want a picture to have expressive and harmonious colors and look exactly like a real landscape; or long for a poetry that would be music or a sculpture that would be pictorial. finally, we must make sure that our interpretation of the aesthetic purpose is representative of the actual fullness and manysidedness of it; we should observe, for example, that sensuous pleasure is not all that we seek from art; that truth of some kind we seek besides; and yet that in some sort of union we want both. this clearing up can be accomplished only in closest touch with the actual experience of beauty; it must be performed upon our working preferences and judgments. it must be an interpretation of the actual history of art. there is no a priori method of establishing aesthetic standards. just as no one can discover his life purpose apart from the process of living, or the purpose of another except through sympathy; so no one can know the meaning of art except through creating and enjoying and entering into the aesthetic life of other artists and art lovers. this so-called normative--perhaps better, critical--moment in aesthetics introduces an inevitable personal element into every discussion of the subject. even as every artist seeks to convince his public that what he offers is beautiful, so every philosopher of art undertakes to persuade of the validity of his own preferences. i would not make any secret of this with regard to the following pages of this book. yet this intrusion of personality need not be harmful, but may, on the contrary, be valuable. it cannot be harmful if the writer proceeds undogmatically, making constant appeals to the judgment of his readers and claiming no authority for his statements except in so far as they find favor there. influence rather than authority is what he should seek. in presenting his views, as he must, he should strive to stimulate the reader to make a clear and consistent formulation of his own preferences rather than to impose upon him standards ready made. and the good of the personal element comes from the power which one strong preference or conviction has of calling forth another, and compelling it to the discovery and defense of its grounds. in so far as aesthetics is studied by the objective method it is a branch of psychology. aesthetic facts are mental facts. a work of art, no matter how material it may at first seem to be, exists only as perceived and enjoyed. the marble statue is beautiful only when it enters into and becomes alive in the experience of the beholder. keys and strings and vibrations of the air are but stimuli for the auditory experience which is the real nocturne or etude. ether vibrations and the retina upon which they impinge are nothing more than instruments for the production of the colors which, together with the interpretation of them in terms of ideas and feelings, constitute the real picture which we appreciate and judge. the physical stimuli and the physiological reactions evoked by them are important for our purpose only so far as they help us to understand the inner experiences with which they are correlated. a large part of our work, therefore, will consist in the psychological analysis of the experience of art and the motives underlying its production. we shall have to distinguish the elements of mind that enter into it, show their interrelations, and differentiate the total experience from other types of experience. since, moreover, art is a social phenomenon, we shall have to draw upon our knowledge of social psychology to illumine our analysis of the individual's experience. art is a historical, even a technical, development; hence the personal enjoyment of beauty itself is conditioned by factors that spring from the traditions of groups of artists and art lovers. no one can understand his pleasure in beauty apart from the pleasure of others. in so far, on the other hand, as aesthetics is an attempt to define the purpose of art and so to formulate the standards presupposed in judgments of taste, it is closely related to criticism. the relation is essentially that between theory and the application of theory. it is the office of the critic to deepen and diffuse the appreciation of particular works of art. for this purpose he must possess standards; but he need not be, and in fact often is not, aware of them. a fine taste may serve his ends. not infrequently, however, the critic endeavors to make clear to himself and his readers the principles he is employing. now, on its normative side, aesthetics is ideally the complete rationale of criticism, the systematic achievement, for its own sake, of what the thoughtful critic attempts with less exactness and for the direct purpose of appreciation. it is beyond the province of aesthetics to criticize any particular work of art, except by way of illustration. the importance of illustration for the sake of explaining and proving general principles is, however, fundamental; for, as we have seen, a valuable aesthetic theory is impossible unless developed out of the primary aesthetic life of enjoyment and estimation, a life of contact with individual beautiful things. no amount of psychological skill in analysis or philosophical aptitude for definition can compensate for want of a real love of beauty,--of the possession of something of the artistic temperament. people who do not love art, yet study it from the outside, may contribute to our knowledge of it through isolated bits of analysis, but their interpretations of its more fundamental nature are always superficial. hence, just as the wise critic will not neglect aesthetics, so the philosopher of art should be something of a critic. yet the division of labor is clear enough. the critic devotes himself to the appreciation of some special contemporary or historical field of art--shakespearean drama, renaissance sculpture, italian painting, for example; while the philosopher of art looks for general principles, and gives attention to individual works of art and historical movements only for the purpose of discovering and illustrating them. and, since the philosopher of art seeks a universal idea of art rather than an understanding of this or that particular work of art, an intimate acquaintance with a few examples, through which this idea can be revealed to the loving eye, is of more importance than a wide but superficial aesthetic culture. in our discussion thus far, we have been assuming the possibility of aesthetic theory. but what shall we say in answer to the mystic who tells us that beauty is indefinable? first of all, i think, we should remind him that his own thesis can be proved or refuted only through an attempt at a scientific investigation of beauty. every attempt to master our experience through thought is an adventure; but the futility of adventures can be shown only by courageously entering into them. and, although the failure of previous efforts may lessen the probabilities of success in a new enterprise, it cannot prove that success is absolutely impossible. through greater persistence and better methods the new may succeed where the old have failed. moreover, although we are ready to grant that the pathway to our goal is full of pitfalls, marked by the wreckage of old theories, yet we claim that the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing can be known by hearsay. if, then, he would really know that the road to theoretical insight into beauty is impassable, let him travel with us and see; or, if not with us, alone by himself or with some one wiser than we as guide; let him compare fairly and sympathetically the results of theoretical analysis and construction with the data of his firsthand experience and observe whether the one is or is not adequate to the other. again, the cleft between thought and feeling, even subtle and fleeting aesthetic feeling, is not so great as the mystics suppose. for, after all, there is a recognizable identity and permanence even in these feelings; we should never call them by a common name or greet them as the same despite their shiftings from moment to moment if this were not true. although whatever is unique in each individual experience of beauty, its distinctive flavor or nuance, cannot be adequately rendered in thought, but can only be felt; yet whatever each new experience has in common with the old, whatever is universal in all aesthetic experiences, can be formulated. the relations of beauty, too, its place in the whole of life, can be discovered by thought alone; for only by thought can we hold on to the various things whose relations we are seeking to establish; without thought our experience falls asunder into separate bits and never attains to unity. finally, the mystics forget that the life of thought and the life of feeling have a common root; they are both parts of the one life of the mind and so cannot be foreign to each other. the motive impelling to any kind of undertaking is usually complex, and that which leads to the development of aesthetic theory is no exception to the general rule. a disinterested love of understanding has certainly played a part. every region of experience invites to the play of intelligence upon it; the lover of knowledge, as plato says, loves the whole of his object. yet even intelligence, insatiable and impartial as it is, has its predilections. the desire to understand a particular type of thing has its roots in an initial love of it. as the born botanist is the man who finds joy in contact with tree and moss and mushroom, so the student of aesthetics is commonly a lover of beauty. and, although the interest which he takes in aesthetic theory is largely just the pleasure in possessing clear ideas, one may question whether he would pursue it with such ardor except for the continual lover's touch with picture and statue and poem which it demands. for the intelligent lover of beauty, aesthetic theory requires no justification; it is as necessary and pleasurable for him to understand art as it is compulsive for him to seek out beautiful things to enjoy. to love without understanding is, to the thoughtful lover, an infidelity to his object. that the interest in aesthetic theory is partly rooted in feeling is shown from the fact that, when developed by artists, it takes the form of a defense of the type of art which they are producing. the aesthetic theory of the german romanticists is an illustration of this; hebbel and wagner are other striking examples. these men could not rest until they had put into communicable and persuasive form the aesthetic values which they felt in creation. and we, too, who are not artists but only lovers of beauty, find in theory a satisfaction for a similar need with reference to our preferences.[footnote: compare santayana: the sense of beauty, p. 11.] more important to the average man is the help which aesthetic theory may render to appreciation itself. if to the basal interest in beauty be added an interest in understanding beauty, the former is quickened and fortified and the total measure of enjoyment increased. even the love of beauty, strong as it commonly is, may well find support through connection with an equally powerful and enduring affection. the aesthetic interest is no exception to the general truth that each part of the mind gains in stability and intensity if connected with the others; isolated, it runs the risk of gradual decay in satiety or through the crowding out of other competing interests, which if joined with it, would have kept it alive instead. moreover, the understanding of art may increase the appreciation of particular works of art. for the analysis and constant attention to the subtler details demanded by theory may bring to notice aspects of a work of art which do not exist for an unthinking appreciation. as a rule, the appreciations of the average man are very inadequate to the total possibilities offered, extending only to the more obvious features. often enough besides, through a mere lack of understanding of the purpose of art in general and of the more special aims of the particular arts, people expect to find what cannot be given, and hence are prejudiced against what they might otherwise enjoy. the following pages will afford, i hope, abundant illustrations of this truth. finally, aesthetic theory may have a favorable influence upon the creation of art. not that the student of aesthetics can prescribe to the artist what he shall or shall not do; for the latter can obey, for better or worse, only the inner imperative of his native genius. yet, inevitably, the man of genius receives direction and cultivation from the aesthetic sentiment of the time into which he is born and grown; even when he reacts against it, he nevertheless feels its influence; a sound conception of the nature and purpose of art may save him from many mistakes. the french classical tradition in sculpture and painting, which is not merely academic, having become a part of public taste, prevented the production of the frightful crudities which passed for art in germany and england during the present and past centuries. by helping to create a freer and more intelligent atmosphere for the artist to be born and educated in, and finer demands upon him when once he has begun to produce and is seeking recognition, the student of aesthetics may indirectly do not a little for him. and surely in our own country, where an educated public taste does not exist and the fiercest prejudices are rampant, there is abundant opportunity for service. chapter ii definition of art since it is our purpose to develop an adequate idea of art, it might seem as if a definition were rather our goal than our starting point; yet we must identify the field of our investigations and mark it off from other regions; and this we can do only by means of a preliminary definition, which the rest of our study may then enrich and complete. we shall find it fruitful to begin with the definition recently revived by croce: [footnote: benedetto croce: _estetica_, translated into english by douglas ainslie, under title _aesthetic_, chap. i.] art is expression; and expression we may describe, for our own ends, as the putting forth of purpose, feeling, or thought into a sensuous medium, where they can be experienced again by the one who expresses himself and communicated to others. thus, in this sense, a lyric poem is an expression--a bit of a poet's intimate experience put into words; epic and dramatic poetry are expressions--visions of a larger life made manifest in the same medium. pictures and statues are also expressions; for they are embodiments in color and space-forms of the artists' ideas of visible nature and man. works of architecture and the other industrial arts are embodiments of purpose and the well-being that comes from purpose fulfilled. this definition, good so far as it goes, is, however, too inclusive; for plainly, although every work of art is an expression, not every expression is a work of art. automatic expressions, instinctive overflowings of emotion into motor channels, like the cry of pain or the shout of joy, are not aesthetic. practical expressions also, all such as are only means or instruments for the realization of ulterior purposes--the command of the officer, the conversation of the market place, a saw--are not aesthetic. works of art--the _ninth symphony_, the _ode to the west wind_--are not of this character. no matter what further purposes artistic expressions may serve, they are produced and valued for themselves; we linger in them; we neither merely execute them mechanically, as we do automatic expressions, nor hasten through them, our minds fixed upon some future end to be gained by them, as is the case with practical expressions. both for the artist and the appreciator, they are ends in themselves. compare, for example, a love poem with a declaration of love.[footnote: contrast croce's use of the same illustration: esthetic, p. 22, english translation.] the poem is esteemed for the rhythmic emotional experience it gives the writer or reader; the declaration, even when enjoyed by the suitor, has its prime value in its consequences, and the quicker it is over and done with and its end attained the better. the one, since it has its purpose within itself, is returned to and repeated; the other, being chiefly a means to an end, would be senseless if repeated, once the end that called it forth is accomplished. the value of the love poem, although written to persuade a lady, cannot be measured in terms of its mere success; for if beautiful, it remains of worth after the lady has yielded, nay, even if it fails to win her. any sort of practical purpose may be one motive in the creation of a work of art, but its significance is broader than the success or failure of that motive. the russian novel is still significant, even now, alter the revolution. as beautiful, it is of perennial worth and stands out by itself. but practical expressions are only transient links in the endless chain of means, disappearing as the wheel of effort revolves. art is indeed expression, but free or autonomous expression. the freedom of aesthetic expression is, however, only an intensification of a quality that may belong to any expression. for, in its native character, expression is never merely practical; it brings its own reward in the pleasure of the activity itself. ordinarily, when a man makes something embodying his need or fancy, or says something that expresses his meaning, he enjoys himself in his doing. there is naturally a generous superfluity in all human behavior. the economizing of it to what is necessary for self-preservation and dominion over the environment is secondary, not primary, imposed under the duress of competition and nature. only when activities are difficult or their fruits hard to get are they disciplined for the sake of their results alone; then only does their performance become an imperative, and nature and society impose upon them the seriousness and constraint of necessity and law. but whenever nature and the social organization supply the needs of man ungrudgingly or grant him a respite from the urgency of business, the spontaneity of his activities returns. the doings of children, of the rich, and of all men on a holiday illustrate this. compare, for example, the speech of trade, where one says the brief and needful thing only, with the talk of excursionists, where verbal expression, having no end beyond itself, develops at length and at leisure; where brevity is no virtue and abundant play takes the place of a narrow seriousness. but we have not yet so limited the field of expression that it becomes equivalent to the aesthetic; for not even all of free expression is art. the most important divergent type is science. science also is expression,--an embodiment in words, diagrams, mathematical symbols, chemical formula, or other such media, of thoughts meant to portray the objects of human experience. scientific expressions have, of course, a practical function; concepts are "plans of action" or servants of plans, the most perfect and delicate that man possesses. yet scientific knowledge is an end in itself as well as a utility; for the mere construction and possession of concepts and laws is itself a source of joy; the man of science delights in making appropriate formulations of nature's habits quite unconcerned about their possible uses. in science, therefore, there is much free expression; but beauty not yet. no abstract expression such as euclid's _elements_, newton's _principia_, or peano's _formulaire_, no matter how rigorous and complete, is a work of art. we admire the mathematician's formula for its simplicity and adequacy; we take delight in its clarity and scope, in the ease with which it enables the mind to master a thousand more special truths, but we do not find it beautiful. equally removed from the sphere of the beautiful are representations or descriptions of mere things, whether inaccurate or haphazard, as we make them in daily life, or accurate and careful as they are elaborated in the empirical sciences. no matter how exact and complete, the botanist's or zoologist's descriptions of plant and animal life are not works of art. they may be satisfactory as knowledge, but they are not beautiful. there is an important difference between a poet's description of a flower and a botanist's, or between an artistic sketch and a photograph, conferring beauty upon the former, and withholding it from the latter. the central difference is this. the former are descriptions not of things only, but of the artist's reactions to things, his mood or emotion in their presence. they are expressions of total, concrete experiences, which include the self of the observer as well as the things he observes. scientific descriptions, on the other hand, render objects only; the feelings of the observer toward them are carefully excluded. science is intentionally objective,--from the point of view of the artistic temperament, dry and cold. even the realistic novel and play, while seeking to present a faithful picture of human life and to eliminate all private comment and emotion, cannot dispense with the elementary dramatic feelings of sympathy, suspense, and wonder. sthetic expression is always integral, embodying a total state of mind, the core of which is some feeling; scientific expression is fragmentary or abstract, limiting itself to thought. art, no less than science, may contain truthful images of things and abstract ideas, but never these alone; it always includes their life, their feeling tones, or values. because philosophy admits this element of personality, it is nearer to art than science is. yet some men of science, like james and huxley, have made literature out of science because they could not help putting into their writings something of their passionate interest in the things they discovered and described. the, necessity in art for the expression of value is, i think, the principal difference between art and science, rather than, as croce [footnote: _estetica_, quarta edizione, p.27; english translation. p.36.] supposes, the limitation of art to the expression of the individual and of science to the expression of the concept. for, on the one hand, science may express the individual; and, on the other hand, art may express the concept. the geographer, for example, describes and makes maps of particular regions of the earth's surface; the astronomer studies the individual sun and moon. poets like dante, lucretius, shakespeare, and goethe express the most universal concepts of ethics or metaphysics. but what makes men poets rather than men of science is precisely that they never limit themselves to the mere clear statement of the concept, but always express its human significance as well. a theory of human destiny is expressed in prospero's lines- we are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep; but with overtones of feeling at the core. or consider the passion with which lucretius argues for a naturalistic conception of the universe. and the reason why poets clothe their philosophical expressions in concrete images is not because of any shame of the concept, but just in order the more easily and vividly to attach and communicate their emotion. their general preference for the concrete has the same motive; for there are only a few abstractions capable of arousing and fixing emotion. even as an element of spontaneity is native to all expression, so originally all expression is personal. this is easily observable in the child. his first uses of words as well as of things are touched with emotion. every descriptive name conveys to him his emotional reaction to the object; disinterested knowledge does not exist for him; every tool, a knife or a fork, means to him not only something to be used, but the whole background of feelings which its use involves. our first perceptions of things contain as much of feeling and attitude as of color and shape and sound and odor. pure science and mere industry are abstractions from the original integrity of perception and expression; mutilations of their wholeness forced upon the mind through the stress of living. to be able to see things without feeling them, or to describe them without being moved by their image, is a disciplined and derivative accomplishment. only as the result of training and of haste do the forms and colors of objects, once the stimuli to a wondering and lingering attention, become mere cues to their recognition and employment, or mere incitements to a cold and disinterested analysis and description. knowledge may therefore enter into beauty when, keeping its liberality, it participates in an emotional experience; and every other type of expression may become aesthetic if, retaining its native spontaneity, it can acquire anew its old power to move the heart. to be an artist means to be, like the child, free and sensitive in envisaging the world. under these conditions, nature as well as art may be beautiful. in themselves, things are never beautiful. this is not apparent to common sense because it fails to think and analyze. but beauty may belong to our _perceptions_ of things. for perception is itself a kind of expression, a process of mind through which meanings are embodied in sensations. given are only sensations, but out of the mind come ideas through which they are interpreted as objects. when, for example, i perceive my friend, it may seem as if the man himself were a given object which i passively receive; but, as a matter of fact, all that is given are certain visual sensations; that these are my friend, is pure interpretation--i construct the object in embodying this thought in the color and shape i see. the elaboration of sensation in perception is usually so rapid that, apart from reflection, i do not realize the mental activity involved. but if it turns out that it was some other man that i saw, then i realize at once that my perception was a work of mind, an expression of my own thought. of course, not all perceptions are beautiful. only as felt to be mysterious or tender or majestic is a landscape beautiful; and women only as possessed of the charm we feel in their presence. that is, perceptions are beautiful only when they embody feelings. the sea, clouds and hills, men and women, as perceived, awaken reactions which, instead of being attributed to the mind from which they proceed, are experienced as belonging to the things evoking them, which therefore come to embody them. and this process of emotional and objectifying perception has clearly no other end than just perception itself. we do not gaze upon a landscape or a pretty child for any other purpose than to get the perceptual, emotional values that result. the aesthetic perception of nature is, as kant called it, disinterested; that is, autonomous and free. the beauty of nature, therefore, is an illustration of our definition. on the same terms, life as remembered or observed or lived, may have the quality of beauty. in reverie we turn our attention back over events in our own lives that have had for us a rare emotional significance; these events then come to embody the wonder, the interest, the charm that excited us to recollect them. here the activity of remembering is not a mere habit set going by some train of accidental association; or merely practical, arising for the sake of solving some present problem by applying the lesson of the past to it; or finally, not unpleasantly insistent, like the images aroused by worry and sorrow, but spontaneous and self-rewarding, hence beautiful. there are also events in the lives of other people, and people themselves, whose lives read like a story, which, by absorbing our pity or joy or awe, claim from us a like fascinated regard. and there are actions we ourselves perform, magnificent or humble, like sweeping a room, which, if we put ourselves into them and enjoy them, have an equal charm. and they too have the quality of beauty. despite the community between beautiful nature and art, the differences are striking. suppose, in order fix our ideas, we compare one of monet's pictures of a lily pond with the aesthetic appreciation of the real pond. the pond is undoubtedly beautiful every time it is seen; with its round outline, its sunlit, flower-covered surface, its background of foliage, it is perhaps the source and expression of an unfailing gladness and repose. now the painting has very much the same value, but with these essential differences. first, the painting is something deliberately constructed and composed, the artist himself controlling and composing the colors and shapes, and hence their values also; while the natural beauty is an immediate reaction to given stimuli, each observer giving meaning to his sensations without intention or effort. like the beauty of woman, it is almost a matter of instinct. in natural beauty, there is, to be sure, an element of conscious intention, in so far as we may purposely select our point of view and hold the object in our attention; hence this contrast with art, although real and important, is not absolute. moreover, beauty in perception and memory is the basis of art; the artist, while he composes, nevertheless partly transcribes significant memories and observations. yet, although relative, the difference remains; art always consists of works of art, natural beauty of more immediate experiences. and from this difference follows another--the greater purity and perfection of art. the control which the artist exerts over his material enables him to make it expressive all through; every element conspires toward the artistic end; there are no irrelevant or recalcitrant parts, such as exist in every perception of nature. last, the beauty of the painting, because created in the beholder through a fixed and permaneat mechanism constructed by the artist, is communicable and abiding, whereas the immediate beauty of nature is incommunicable and transient. since the sthetic perception of nature has its starting point in variable aspects that never recur, no other man could see or feel the lily pond as monet saw and felt it. and, although in memory we may possess a silent gallery of beautiful images, into which we may enter privately as long as we live, in the end the flux has its way and at death shatters this treasure house irrevocably. hence, only if the beauty of the lily pond is transferred to a canvas, can it be preserved and shared. the work of art is the tool of the aesthetic life. just as organic efficiency is tied to the nerve and muscle of the workman and cannot be transferred to another, but the tool, on the other hand, is exchangeable and transmissible (i cannot lend or bequeath my arm, but i can my boat); and just as efficiency is vastly increased by the use of tools (i can go further with my boat than i can swim); so, through works of art, aesthetic capacity and experience are enhanced and become common possessions, a part of the spiritual capital of the race. moreover, even as each invention becomes the starting point for new ones that are better instruments for practical ends; so each work of art becomes the basis for new experiments through which the aesthetic expression of life attains to higher levels. monet's own art, despite its great originality, was dependent upon all the impressionists, and they, even when they broke away from, were indebted to, the traditions of french painting established by centuries. through art, the aesthetic life, which otherwise would be a private affair, receives a social sanction and assistance. that permanence and communication of expression are essential to a complete conception of art can be discerned by looking within the artistic impulse itself. however much the artist may affect indifference to the public, he creates expecting to be understood. mere selfexpression does not satisfy him; he needs in addition appreciation. deprived of sympathy, the artistic impulse withers and dies or supports itself through the hope of eventually finding it. the heroism of the poet consists in working on in loneliness; but his crown of glory is won only when all men are singing his songs. and every genuine artist, as opposed to the mere improviser or dilettante, wishes his work to endure.[footnote: see anatole france: _le lys rouge_. "moi, dit choulette, je pense si peu a l'avenir terrestre que j'ai ecrit mes plus beaux poemes sur les feuilles de papier a cigarettes. elles se sont facilement evanuies, ne laissant a mes vers qu'une espece d'existence metaphysique." c'etait un air de negligence qu'il se donnait. en fait, il n'avait jamais perdu une ligne de son ecriture.] having put his substance into it, he desires its preservation as he does his own. his immortality through it is his boast. exegi monumentum aere perennius regalique situ pyramidum altius * * * * * non omnis moriar. art is not mere inspiration, the transient expression of private moods, but a work of communication, meant to endure. there are certain distinguishing characteristics of aesthetic expression all of which are in harmony with the description we have given of it. in the first place, in art the sensuous medium of the expression receives an attention and possesses a significance not to be found in other types of expression. although every one hears, no one attends to the sound of the voice in ordinary conversation; one looks through it, as through a glass, to the thought or emotion behind. in our routine perceptions of nature, we are not interested in colors and shapes on their own account, but only in order that we may recognize the objects possessing them; in a scientific woodcut also, they are indifferent to us, except in so far as they impart correct information about the objects portrayed. outside of art, sensation is a mere transparent means to the end of communication and recognition. compare the poem, the piece of music, the artistic drawing or painting. there the words or tones must be not only heard but listened to; the colors and lines not only seen but held in the eye; of themselves, apart from anything they may further mean, they have the power to awaken feeling and pleasure. and this is no accident. for the aesthetic expression is meant to possess worth in itself and is deliberately fashioned to hold us to itself, and this purpose will be more certainly and effectively accomplished if the medium of the expression has the power to move and please. we enter the aesthetic expression through the sensuous medium; hence the artist tries to charm us at the start and on the outside; having found favor there, he wins us the more easily to the content lying within. if the medium, moreover, instead of being a transparent embodiment of the artist's feelings, can express them in some direct fashion as well, the power of the whole expression will gain. this is exactly what the sound of the words of a poem or the colors and lines of a painting or statue can do. as mere sound and as mere color and line, they convey something of the feeling tone of the subject which, as symbols, they are used to represent. for example, the soft flowing lines of correggio, quite apart from the objects they represent, express the voluptuous happiness of his "venus and mars"; the slow rhythm of the repeated word sounds and the quality of the vowels in the opening lines of _tithonus_ are expressive in themselves, apart from their meaning, of the weariness in the thoughts of the hero, and so serve to re-express and enforce the mood of those thoughts. when we come to study the particular arts, we shall find this phenomenon of re-expression through the medium everywhere. a second characteristic distinguishing aesthetic expressions from other expressions is their superior unity. in the latter, the unity lies in the purpose to be attained or in the content of the thought expressed; it is teleological or logical. the unity of a chair is its purpose, which demands just such parts and in just such a mechanical arrangement; the unity of a business conversation is governed by the bargain to be closed, requiring such words and such only, and in the appropriate logical and grammatical order. the unity of an argument is the thesis to be proved; the unity of a diagram is the principle to be illustrated or the information to be imparted. compare the unity of a sonnet or a painting. in a sonnet, there is a unity of thought and sentiment creating a fitting grammatical unity in language, but in addition a highly elaborate pattern in the words themselves that is neither grammatical nor logical. in a painting, besides the dramatic unity of the action portrayed, as in a battle scene; or of the spatial and mechanical togetherness of things, as in a landscape; there is a harmony of the colors, a composition of the lines and masses themselves, not to be found in nature. and, although the general shape and arrangement of the parts of a useful object is dominated by its purpose, if it is also beautiful--a louis seize chair, for example--there is, besides, a design that cannot be explained by use. in artistic expressions, therefore, there exists a unity in the material, superposed upon the unity required by the purpose or thought expressed. and this property follows from the preceding. for, since the medium is valuable in itself, the mind, which craves unity everywhere, craves it there also, and lingers longer and more happily on finding it; and, since the medium can be expressive, the unity of the fundamental mood of the thought expressed will overflow into and pervade it. hence there occurs an autonomous development of unity in the material, raising the total unity of the expression to a higher power. chapter iii the intrinsic value of art our definition of art can be complete only if it enables us to understand the value of art. the reader may well ask what possible value expression can have when it becomes an end in itself. "i can understand," he may say, "the value of expression for the sake of communication and influence, but what value can it have of itself?" at this point, moreover, we are concerned with the intrinsic value immediately realized in the experience of art, not with further values that may result from it. art, no less than practical expression, may have effects on other experiences, which have to be considered in measuring its total worth; but these we shall leave for investigation in our last chapters, after we have reached our fullest comprehension of art; we are interested now, in order to test and complete our definition, in the resident value only. as a help toward reaching a satisfactory view, let us examine critically some of the chief theories in the field. first, the theory, often called "hedonistic," that the value of art consists in the satisfactions of sense which the media of aesthetic expression afford--the delight in color and sound and rhythmical movement of line and form. the theory finds support in the industrial arts, where beauty often seems to be only a luxurious charm supervening upon utility; but also in painting and sculpture when appreciated in their decorative capacity as "things of beauty." there is a partial truth in this theory; for, as we have seen, the sensuous media of all the arts tend to be developed in the direction of pleasure; and no man who lacks feeling for purely sensuous values can enter into the fullness of the aesthetic experience. but the theory fails in not recognizing the expressive function of sensation in art. as goethe said, art was long formative, that is, expressive, before it was beautiful, in the narrow sense of charming.[footnote: "die kunst is lange bildend eh sie schon ist." _von deutscher baukunst_, 1773.] in order to be beautiful, it is not enough for a work of art to offer us delightful colors and lines and sounds; it must also have a meaning--it must speak to us, tell us something. the second theory which i shall examine is the moralistic or platonic. according to this, art is an image of the good, and has value in so far as through expression it enables us to experience edifying emotions or to contemplate noble objects. the high beauty of the "sistine madonna," for example, would be explained as identical with the worth of the religious feelings which it causes in the mind of the beholder. the advantage of art over life is supposed to consist in its power to create in the imagination better and more inspiring objects than life can offer, and to free and control the contemplation of them. this is the narrower interpretation of the theory. when the notion of the good is liberalized so as to include innocent happiness as well as the strictly ethical and religious values, beauty is conceded to belong to pictures of fair women and children, and to lyrics and romances, provided there is nothing in them to shock the moral sense. aesthetic value is the reflection--the imaginative equivalent--of moral or practical value. the prime difficulty of this theory is its inadequacy as an interpretation of the whole of actual art; for, in order to find support among existing examples, it is compelled to make an arbitrary selection of such as can be made to fit it. actual art is quite as much an image of evil as of good; there is nothing devilish which it has not represented. and this part of art is often of the highest aesthetic merit. velasquez's pictures of dwarfs and degenerate princes are as artistic as raphael's madonnas; goethe's mephistopheles is one of his supreme artistic achievements; shakespeare is as successful artistically in his delineation of lady macbeth as of desdemona. now for us who claim that the purpose of art must be divined from the actual practice of artists, from the inside, and should not be an arbitrary construction, from the outside, the existence of such examples is sufficient to refute the theory in question. if the artist finds a value in the representation of evil, value exists there and can be discovered. if, indeed, the sole effect of artistic expression were to bring to the mind objects and emotions in the same fashion that ordinary life does, then the value of art, the image of life, would be a function of the value of the life imaged. and just as one seeks contact with the good in real life and avoids the evil, so one would seek in art imaginative contact with the good alone. but expression, and above all artistic expression, does something more than present objects to the imagination and arouse emotions. art is not life over again, a mere shadow of life; if it were, what would be its unique value? who would not prefer the substance to the shadow? the expression of life is not life itself; hence, even if the evil in life be always evil, the expression of it may still be a good. another theory, often called the "intellectualistic" theory, claims that the purpose of art is truth. "beauty is truth; truth, beauty." the immediate pleasure which we feel in the beautiful is the same as the instant delight in the apprehension of truth. there is no difference in purpose or value between science and art, but only a difference in method--science presents truth in the form of the abstract judgment; art, in the form of the concrete image or example. the difficulty with this theory is the uncertainty as to what is meant by truth; hence the many shapes it assumes. but before going deeply into this question, let us consider some of the simple facts which seem to tell for and against the theory. there can be no doubt that many examples of the representative arts--painting, sculpture, novel, and drama--are praised for their truth. we demand truth of coloring or line in painting, of form in sculpture, of character and social relation in the drama or novel. on the other hand, we admit aesthetic value to fanciful painting and literature, and to expressions of beliefs which no one accepts at the present time. we appreciate the beauty of dante's descriptions of the inferno and of the conversations between him and its inhabitants without believing them to be reports of fact. no one values the _blue bird_ the less because it is not an account of an actual occurrence. even with regard to the realistic novel and drama, no one thinks of holding them to the standards of historical or scientific accuracy. and, although we may demand of a landscape painting plausibility of color and line, we certainly do not require that it be a representation of any identifiable scene. if by truth, therefore, be meant a description or image of matters of fact, then surely it is not the purpose of art to give us this truth. the artist, to be sure, may give this, as when the landscapist paints some locality dear to his client or the portraitist paints the client himself; but he does not need to do this, and the aesthetic value of his work is independent of it; for the picture possesses its beauty even when we know nothing of its model. in the language of current philosophy, truth in the sense of the correspondence of a portrayal to an object external to the portrayal, is not "artistic truth." the partisans of the intellectualistic theory would, of course, deny that they ever meant truth with this meaning. "we mean by truth," they would say, "an embodiment in sensuous or imaginative form of some universal principle of nature and life. the image may be entirely fictitious or fanciful, but so long as the principle is illustrated, essential truth, and that is beauty, is attained." but if this were so, every work of art would be the statement of a universal truth, as indeed philosophical adherents of this theory have always maintained--witness hegel. yet what is the universal truth asserted in one of monet's pictures of a lily pond? there is, of course, an observance of the general laws of color and space, but does the beauty of the picture consist in that? does it not attach to the representation of the concrete, individual pond? i do not mean that there may not be beauty in the expression of universals; in fact, i have explicitly maintained that there may, under certain conditions; i am simply insisting that beauty may belong to expressions of the individual also, and that you cannot reduce these to mere illustrations of universal ideas. because of its completeness and internal harmony, the philosopher may find the simplest melody a revelation of the absolute; but even if it were, its beauty would still pertain to it primarily as a revelation of the individual experience which it embodies. again, by reason of the freedom from the particular conditions out of which it arises acquired by a work of art, its individual meaning easily becomes typical, so that it often serves as a universal under which individuals similar to those represented are subsumed--as when we speak of "a faust" or "a hamlet"; nevertheless, the adequate expression of the individual is at once the basis of its beauty and of its extended, universalized significance. it is when works of art are profoundly individual that we generalize their meaning. in art the individual never sinks to the position of a mere specimen or example of a universal law. the intellectualistic theory is partly true of symbolic art, but not wholly, for even there, the individuality of the symbol counts. and yet, as we shall see, there is another meaning of artistic truth, which is legitimate. aesthetic value, therefore, is not alone sensuous value or ethical or scientific or philosophical value. a work of art may contain one or all of these values; but they do not constitute its unique value as art. the foregoing attempts to define the value of art fail because they renounce the idea of unique value, substituting goodness, sensuous pleasure, or truth-values found outside of art. but the intrinsic value of art must be unique, for it is the value of a unique activity--the free expression of experience in a form delightful and permanent, mediating communication. and this value we should be able to discover by seeking the difference which supervenes upon experience through expression of this kind. apart from expression, experience may be vivid and satisfactory as we feel and think and dream and act; yet it is always in flux, coming and going, shifting and unaware. but through expression it is arrested by being attached to a permanent form, and there can be retained and surveyed. experience, which is otherwise fluent and chaotic, or when orderly too busy with its ends to know itself, receives through expression the fixed, clear outlines of a thing, and can be contemplated like a thing. every one has verified the clarifying effect of expression upon ideas, how they thus acquire definiteness and coherence, so that even the mind that thinks them can hold them in review. but this effect upon feeling is no less sure. the unexpressed values of experience are vague strivings embedded in chaotic sensations and images; these expression sorts and organizes by attaching them to definite ordered symbols. even what is most intimate and fugitive becomes a stable object. when put into patterned words, the subtlest and deepest passions of a poet, which before were felt in a dim and tangled fashion, are brought out into the light of consciousness. in music, the most elusive moods, by being embodied in ordered sounds, remain no longer subterranean, but are objectified and lifted into clearness. in the novel or drama, the writer is able not only to enact his visions of life in the imagination, but, by bodying them forth in external words and acts, to possess them for reflection. in painting, all that is seen and wondered at in nature is seen with more delicacy and discrimination and felt with greater freedom; or the vague fancies which a heated imagination paints upon the background of the mind come out more vivid and better controlled, when put with care upon a canvas. even ordinary expression, of course, arrests and clarifies experience, enabling us to commune with ourselves; but since its purpose is usually beyond itself, this result is hasty and partial, limited to what is needful for the practical end in view. in art alone is this value complete. for there, life is intentionally held in the medium of expression, put out into color and line and sound for the clear sight and contemplation of men. the aim is just to create life upon which we may turn back and reflect. this effect of artistic expression upon experience has usually been called "intuition." because of its connotation of mysterious knowledge, intuition is not a wholly satisfactory word, yet is probably as good as any for the purpose of denoting what artists and philosophers of art have had in mind and what we have been trying to describe. other terms might also serve--vision, sympathetic insight (sympathetic, because it includes the value of experience; insight, because it involves possessing experience as a whole and ordered, and as an object for reflection). intuition is opposed, on the one hand, to crude unreflecting experience that never observes itself as a whole or attains to clearness and self-possession; and, on the other hand, to science, which gives the elements and relations of an experience, the classes to which it belongs, but loses its uniqueness and its values. science elaborates concepts of things, gives us knowledge about things; art presents us with the experience of things purified for contemplation. scientific truth is the fidelity of a description to the external objects of experience; artistic truth is sympathetic vision--the organization into clearness of experience itself. compare, for illustration, life as we live it from day to day with our delineation of it as we recall it and tell it to an intimate companion; and then compare that with the analysis and classification of it which some psychologist or sociologist might make. or compare the kind of knowledge of human nature that we get from shakespeare or moliere with the sort that we get from the sciences. in the one case, knowledge attends a personal acquaintance with the experience, a bringing of it home, a feeling for its values, a realization of the inner necessity of its elements; in the other, it is a mere set of concepts. or finally, compare the knowledge of the human figure contained in an anatomist's manual with a painting of it, where we not only see it, but in the imagination touch it and move with it, in short live with it. intuition is the effect of artistic appreciation no less than of artistic creation. if the artist's expression of his feelings and ideas results in intuition, our appreciation of his work must have the same value, for appreciation is expression transferred from the artist to the spectator. by means of the colors, lines, words, tones that he makes, the artist determines in us a process of expression similar to his. out of our own minds we put into the sense-symbols he has woven ideas and feelings which provide the content and meaning he intends. hence all aesthetic appreciation is self-expression. this is evident in the case of the more lyrical types of art. the lyric poem is appreciated by us as an expression of our own inner life; music as an expression of our own slumberous or subconscious moods. yet even the more objective types of art, like the novel or the drama, become forms of self-expression, for we have to build up the worlds which they contain in our own imagination and emotion. we have to live ourselves out in them; we can understand them only in terms of our own life. in the appreciation of the more objective types of art, the personality expressed is not, of course, the actual personality; but rather the self extended and expanded through the imagination. the things which i seem to see and enjoy in the landscape picture i may have never really seen; i may have never really moved through the open plain there, as i seem to move, toward the mountain in the distance. the acts described in the novel or portrayed on the stage i do not really perform; the opinions uttered by the persons i do not hold. and yet, in order to appreciate the picture, it must be _as if_ i really saw the mountain and moved towards it; in order to appreciate the novel or the play, i must make the acts and opinions mine. and this i can do; for, as it is a commonplace to note, each one of us has within him capacities of action and emotion and thought unrealized--the actual self is only one of many that might have been--hundreds of possible lives slumber in our souls. and no matter which of these lives we have chosen for our own, or have had forced upon us by our fate, we always retain a secret longing for all the others that have gone unfulfilled, and an understanding born of longing. some of these we imagine distinctly--those that we consciously rejected or that a turn of chance might have made ours; but most of them we ourselves have not the power even to dream. yet these too beckon us from behind, and the artist provides us with their dream. through art we secure an imaginative realization of interests and latent tendencies to act and think and feel which, because they are contradictory among themselves or at variance with the conditions of our existence, cannot find free play within our experience. that same sort of imaginative enlarged expression of self that we get vicariously by participating in the life of our friends we get also from art.[footnote: compare santayana: _the sense of beauty_, p. 186.] yet in appreciation, as in creation, expression results in intuition. appreciation is no mere imagining, transitory and lawless like a daydream. the activity of the imagination is so organized in a permanent and perspicuous form that we not only live it, but possess it as an object. the activities engaged in building up the work of art in my own mind are not the whole of me; judgment remains free to watch and synthesize those that are being crystallized there. in looking at a portrait, for example, the process of interpreting the life represented is ancillary to a total judgment of character. in the novel or drama, no matter with what abandon i put myself into the persons and situations, the expression of them in outward words and acts, and the organization which the artist has imposed upon them, makes of them permanent objects for reflection, not mere modes of feeling and imagining to endure. self-expression that does not attain to objectivity is incomplete as art. even music and lyric poetry are something more than mere feeling. in all genuine art, experience takes on permanence and form--a synthesis, a total meaning, supervenes within the flux of impressions and ideas and moods, not excluding, but embracing and controlling them. that is intuition. the insight into experience which art provides is the more valuable because it is communicable; to possess it alone would be a good, but to share it is better. all values become enhanced when we add to them the joy of fellow feeling. the universality of aesthetic expression carries with it the universality of aesthetic insight. merely private and unutterable inspirations are not art. beauty does for life what science does for intelligence; even as the one universalizes thought, so the other universalizes values. in expressing himself, the artist creates a form into which all similar experiences can be poured and out of which they can all be shared. when, for example, we listen to the hymns of the church or read the poems of horace, the significance of our experience is magnified because we find the feelings of millions there; we are in unison with a vast company living and dead. no thing of beauty is a private possession. all artists feed on one another and into each experience of art has gone the mind-work of the ages. but there are two types of universality, one by exclusion, the other by inclusion. communists like tolstoy demand that art express only those feelings that are already common, the religious and moral; they would exclude all values that have not become those of the race. but this is to diminish the importance of art; for it is art's privilege to make feelings common by providing a medium through which they can be communicated rather than merely to express them after they have become common. understanding is more valuable when it encompasses the things that tend to separate and distinguish men than when it is limited to the things that unite them. there is nothing so bizarre that art may not express it, provided it be communicable. the life of the imagination, which is the life of art, is, moreover, the only life that we can have in common. sharing life can never mean anything else than possessing the life of one another sympathetically. actually to lead another's life would involve possessing his body, occupying his position, doing his work, and so destroying him. but through the sympathetic imagination we can penetrate his life and leave him in possession. to do this thoroughly is possible, however, only with the life of a very few people, with intimates and friends. with the mass, we can share only ideal things like religion or patriotism, but these also are matters of imagination. now art enlarges the scope of this common life by creating a new imaginary world to which we can all belong, where action, enjoyment, and experience do not involve competition or depend on possession and mastery. finally, the intuitions that art provides are relatively permanent. art not only extends life and enables us to share it, but also preserves it. existence has a leak in it, as plato said; experience flows in and then flows out forever. the individual passes from one act to another, from one phase of life to another, childhood, then youth, then old age. so the race; one generation follows another, and each type of civilization displaces a predecessor. against this flux, our belief in progress comforts us; maturity is better than youth, we think, and each generation happier and more spiritual than the last. yet the consolations of progress are partial. for even if we always do go on to something better in the future, the past had its unique value, and that is lost ineluctably. the present doubtless repeats much of the form of the past--the essential aspects of human nature remain the same; but the subtle, distinctive bloom of each stage of personal life, and of each period of the world's history, is transient. we cannot again become children, nor can we possess again the strenuous freedom of the renaissance or the unclouded integrity of personality of the greeks. in the life of the individual, however, the flux is not absolute; for through memory we preserve something of the unique value of our past. its vividness, its fullness, the sharp bite of its reality go; but a subtilized essence remains. and the worth that we attach to our personality depends largely upon it; for the instinct of selfpreservation penetrates the inner world; we strive not only to maintain our physical existence in the present, but our psychic past as well. in conserving the values of the past through memory we find a satisfaction akin to that of protecting our lives from danger. through memory we feel childhood's joys and youth's sweet love and manhood's triumphs still our own, secure against the perils of oblivion. now art does for the race what memory does for the individual. only through expression can the past be preserved for all men and all time. when the individual perishes, his memories go with him; unless, therefore, he puts them into a form where they can be taken up into the consciousness of other men, they are lost forever. and just as the individual seeks a vicarious self-preservation through identifying himself with his children and his race, and finds compensation for his own death in their continuance, so he rejoices when he knows that men who come after will appreciate the values of his life. we of the present feel ourselves enriched, in turn, as by a longer memory, in adding to the active values of our own lives the remembered values of the past. their desire to know themselves immortal is met by our desire to unite our lives with all our past. art alone makes this possible. history may tell us what men did, but only the poet or other artist can make us relive the values of their experience. for through expression they make their memories, or their interpretations of other men's memories, ours. art is the memory of the race, the conserver of its values. the distinguishing characteristics of aesthetic expression observed by us--the pleasurableness of the medium, the enhanced unity--serve intuition as that has been described by us. one of the strongest objections against the theory of art as intuition, as that theory has been developed by croce, for example, is that it provides no place for charm. yet without charm there is no complete beauty, and any interpretation of the facts of the aesthetic experience which neglects this element is surely inadequate. but charm although an indispensable, is not an independent, factor in the experience of art; for it serves intuition. it does so in two ways. the charm of the medium, by drawing attention to itself, increases the objectivity of the experience expressed. even when the experiences felt into color and line and sound are poignantly our own, to live pleasantly in any one of these sensations is to live as an object to oneself, the life sharing the externality of the medium--we put our life out there more readily when it is pleasant there. and the charm of the medium serves intuition in another way. when the activities of thought and feeling and imagination released by the work of art are delightful, they become more delightful still if the medium in which they function is itself delightful. to imagine charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn is a pleasure by itself, but more pleasurable, and therefore more spontaneous, because of the melody of sound in which it is enveloped. and when the activities expressed are not pleasant, the expression of them in a delightful medium helps to induce us to make them our own and accept them notwithstanding. the medium becomes a charming net to hold us, and because of its allurements we give ourselves the more freely to its spirit within. the following, for example, is not an agreeable thought: to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. yet the expression of this thought is pleasant, among other reasons, because of the rhythmic charm of language. we shall come back to this fact in our chapter on "the problem of evil in aesthetics." there is no contradiction between the fair form of a work of art and its content, however repellent. for if we value the sympathetic knowledge of life, we shall be glad of any means impelling us to undertake what alone can give this--a friendly dwelling with life itself. thus the decorative and the expressive functions of art are reconciled--pleasure and intuition meet. just as from time to time pleasure in sensation has been one-sidedly thought to be the purpose of art, so likewise the unity characteristic of beautiful things. indeed, beauty and order have become almost synonymous in popular thought. and, to be sure, this unity, as we have already remarked, has its own value; the mind delights in order just for its own sake, and the artist, who is bent on making something worthful on its own account, strives to develop it for that reason. and yet unity is no more independent of expression and intuition than sensation is; it too enters into their service. many forms of unity in works of art are themselves media of expression--the simplest and most striking example is perhaps the rhythmical ordering of sounds in poetry and music, the emotional value of which everybody appreciates. in a later chapter, i shall try to show that the same is true of harmony and balance. in another way, also, unity serves intuition. for the existence of order in an experience is indispensable to that wholeness of view, that mastery in the mind, which is half of intuition. the merely various, the chaotic, the disorganized, cannot be grasped or understood. in order that an experience may be understood, its items must be strung together by some principle in terms of which they may demand each other and constitute a whole. organization _is_ understanding. every work of art, every beautiful thing, is organized, and, as we have observed, organized not merely in the thought or other meaning expressed, but throughout, in the sensuous medium as well. so far the value which we have discovered in artistic expression has been that of delightful and orderly sympathetic vision. this is supplemented from still another source of value. through artistic expression pent-up emotions find a welcome release. no matter how poignant be the experience expressed, the weight, the sting of it disappears through expression. for through expression, as we have seen, the experience is drawn from the dark depths of the self to the clear and orderly surface of the work of art; the emotions that weighed are lifted out and up into color and line and sound, where the mind can view and master them. mere life gives place to the contemplation of life; and contemplation imposes on life some of the calm that is its own. the most violent and unruly passions may be the material of art, but once they are put into artistic form they are mastered and refined. "there is an art of passion, but no passionate art" (schiller). through expression, the repression, the obstruction of feeling is broken down; the mere effort to find and elaborate a fitting artistic form for the material diverts the attention and provides other occupation for the mind; an opportunity is given to reflect upon and understand the experience, bringing it somehow into harmony with one's total life,--through all these means procuring relief. it is impossible to cite the famous passage from goethe's "poetry and truth" too often:- and thus began that bent of mind from which i could not deviate my whole life through; namely, that of turning into an image, into a poem, everything that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied my attention, and of coming to some certain understanding with myself thereupon.... all the works therefore that have been published by me are only fragments of one great confession. [footnote: english translation, edited by parke godwin, vol. i, p.66.] this effect of artistic expression belongs, of course, to other forms of expression. every confession, every confidential outpouring of emotion, is an example. we have all verified the truth that to formulate feeling is to be free with reference to it; not that we thereby get rid of it, but that we are able to look it in the face, and find some place for it in our world where we can live on good terms with it. the greatest difficulty in bearing with any disappointment or sorrow comes not from the thing itself--for after all we have other things to live for--but from its effect upon the presuppositions, so to speak, of our entire existence. the mind has an unconscious set of axioms or postulates which it assumes in the process of living; now anything that seems to contradict these, as a great calamity does, by destroying the logic of life, makes existence seem meaningless and corrupts that faith in life which is the spring of action. in order for the health of the mind to be restored, the contradictory fact must be somehow reconciled with the mind's presuppositions, and the rationality of existence reaffirmed. but an indispensable preliminary to this is that we should clearly envisage and reflect upon the fact, viewing it in its larger relations, where it will lose its overwhelming significance. now that is what expression, by stabilizing and clarifying experience, enables us to do. a great many works of art besides goethe's, not merely of lyric poetry, but also of the novel and drama, among them some of the greatest, like the _divine comedy_, so far as they spring intimately from the life of the artist, are "fragments of a great confession," and have had the sanitary value of a confession for their creators. it is not always possible to trace the personal feelings and motives lying behind the artist's fictions; for the suffering soul covers its pains with subtle disguises; yet even when we do not know them, we can divine them. we are certain, for example, that watteau's gay pictured visions were the projection--and confession--of his own disappointed dreams. the great advantage of art over ordinary expression, in this respect, is its universality. art is the confessional of the race. the artist provides a medium through which all men can confess themselves and heal their souls. in making the artist's expression ours, we find an equal relief. who does not feel a revival of some old or present despair of his own when he reads:- un grand sommeil noir tombe sur ma vie; dormez toute espoir, dormez toute envie! je ne vois plus rien, je perds la memoire du mal et du bien.... oh, la triste histoire! yet who does not at the same time experience its assuagement? and this effect is not confined to lyrical art, for so far as, in novel and drama, we put ourselves in the place of the dramatis persona, we can pour our own emotional experiences into them and through them find relief for ourselves. just so, aristotle recognized the cathartic or healing influence of art, both in music and the drama--"through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions." [footnote: _poetics,_ 6, 2. _politics,_ 5, 7.] the delightsomeness of the work of art and its self-sufficient freedom, standing in contrast with the drab or difficult realities of nature and personal striving, serve also to make of beauty a consoler and healer. in place of a confused medley of sense impressions, art offers orderly and pleasant colors or sounds; instead of a real life of duties hard to fulfill and ambitions painfully accomplished, art provides an imagined life which, while imitating and thus preserving the interest of real life, remains free from its hazards and burdens. i would not base the value of art on the contrast between art and life; yet it is unlikely, i think, if life were not so bound and disordered, that art would seem so free and perfect; and it is often true that those who suffer and struggle most love art best. the unity of the work of art, in which each element suggests another within its world, keeping you there and shutting you out momentarily from the real world to which you must presently return, and the sensuous charm of the medium, fascinating your eyes and ears, bring forgetfulness and a temporary release. to sum the results of the last two chapters. art is expression, not of mere things or ideas, but of concrete experience with its values, and for its own sake. it is experience held in a delightful, highly organized sensuous medium, and objectified there for communication and reflection. its value is in the sympathetic mastery and preservation of life in the mind. chapter iv the analysis of the aesthetic experience: the elements of the experience thus far we have sought to define art, to form a concrete idea of the experience of art, and to place it in its relations to other facts. we shall now pass from synthetic definition to psychological analysis. we want to pick out the elements of mind entering into the experience of art and exhibit their characteristic relations. in the present chapter we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the elements, leaving the study of most of the problems of structure to the following chapter. every experience of art [footnote: throughout this discussion, i use "experience of art," "aesthetic experience," and "beauty" with the same meaning.] contains, in the first place, the sensations which are the media of expression. in a painting, for example, there are colors; in a piece of music, tones; in a poem, word-sounds. to this material, secondly, are attached vague feelings. it is characteristic of aesthetic expressions, as we have observed, that their media, quite apart from anything that they may mean or represent, are expressive of moods--the colors of a painting have a _stimmung,_ so have tones and words, when rhythmically composed. the simplest aesthetic experiences, like the beauty of single musical tones or colors, are of no greater complexity; yet almost all works of art contain further elements; for as a rule the sensations do not exist for their own sakes alone, but possess a function, to represent things. the colors of a landscape painting are not only interesting to us as beautiful colors, but as symbols of a landscape; the words of a ballad charm and stimulate us not only through their music, but because of actions or events which they bring before the mind. this involves, psychologically speaking, that certain ideas--of trees and clouds in the painting, of men and their deeds in the poem--are associated to the sense elements and constitute their meaning. such ideas or meanings are the third class of elements in the aesthetic experience. but these ideas, in their turn, also arouse emotions, only not of the indefinite sort which belong to the sense elements, but definite, like the emotions aroused by things and events in real life. for example, rembrandt's "man with the gold helmet" will not only move us in a vague way through the character and rhythm of its lines and colors, but will, in addition, stimulate sentiments of respect and veneration, similar to those that we should feel if the old warrior were himself before us. in such definite feelings we have, then, a fourth class of mental elements. a fifth class will make our list complete. it consists of images from the various sense departments--sight, hearing, taste, smell, temperature, movement--which arise in connection with the ideas or meanings, making them concrete and full. for example, some of the colors in a landscape painting will not only give us the idea that there is sunlight there, but will also arouse faint images of warmth, which will make the idea more vivid; other colors, representing the clouds, will produce faint sensations of softness; still others, representing flowers, may produce faint odors. let us study sensation as an element in beauty, first. sensation is the door through which we enter into the experience of beauty; and, again, it is the foundation upon which the whole structure rests. without feeling for the values of sensation, men may be sympathetic and intelligent, but they cannot be lovers of the beautiful. they may, for example, appreciate the profound or interesting ideas in poetry, but unless they can connect them with the rhythm-values of the sounds of the words, they have only an intellectual or emotional, not an aesthetic experience. yet, despite the omnipresence and supreme worth of sensation in beauty, not all kinds are equally fit for entrance into the experience. from the time of plato, who writes of "fair sights and sounds" only, vision and hearing have been recognized as the preeminently aesthetic senses. these senses provide the basis for all the arts--music and poetry are arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision. and there are good reasons for their special fitness. most cogent of all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts and feelings; so do visual sensations--the facial expression or gesture seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract colors and space-forms, like red and the circle, have independent feeling-tones. a taste or a temperature sensation may be pleasant or unpleasant, but has no meaning, either by itself, as a color or a tone has, or through association, as a word has. it has no connection with the life of feeling or of thought. its chief significance is practical--sweet invites to eating, cold impels to the seeking of a warm shelter, touch is a preliminary to grasping. all the so-called lower senses are bound up with instincts and actions. of course sights and sounds have also a significance for instinct--the color and form and voice of the individual of the opposite sex, for example. but, before acting on the prompting of instinct, the lover may pause and enjoy the appealing color and form; he may connect his feelings with them and hold on to and delight in the resulting experience--an emotional appreciation of the object may intervene between the stimulus and the appropriate action, and even supplant it. in this way, vision and hearing may free themselves from the merely practical and become autonomous embodiments of feeling. the distance between the seen or heard object and the body is important. the objects of touch and taste, on the other hand, have to be brought into contact with the body; the practical reaction then follows; there is no time during which it may be suspended. important also, especially for the beauty of art, is our greater power to control sensations of vision and hearing. only colors and sounds can be woven into complex and stable wholes. tastes and odors, when produced simultaneously or in succession, do not keep their distinctness as colors and sounds do, but blur and interfere with each other. no one, however ingenious, could construct a symphony of odors or a picture of tastes. nevertheless, the possibility of controlling colors and sounds and of creating stable and public objects out of them, is only a secondary reason for their aesthetic fitness. even if one could construct instruments for the orderly production of tastes and odors--and simple instruments of this kind have been devised--one could not make works of art out of them; for a succession of such sensations would express nothing; they would still be utterly without meaning. the fundamental reason for the superiority of sights and sounds is their expressiveness, their connection with the life of feeling and thought. they take root in the total self; whereas the other elements remain, for the most part, on the surface. under favorable conditions, however, all sensations may enter into the sthetic experience. despite the close connection between the lower senses and the impulses serving practical life, there is a certain disinterestedness in all pleasant sensations. fine wines and perfumes offer tastes and odors which are sought and enjoyed apart from the satisfaction of hunger; in dancing, movement sensations are enjoyed for their own sake; in the bath, heat and cold. but, as we have seen, it is not sufficient for a sensation to be free from practical ends in order to become aesthetic; it must be connected with the larger background of feeling; it must be expressive. now, under certain circumstances and in particular cases, this may occur, even in the instance of the lower senses. the perfume of flowers, of roses and of violets, has a strong emotional appeal; it is their "soul" as the poets say. the odor of incense in a cathedral may be an important element in devotion, fusing with the music and the architecture. or recall the odor of wet earth and reviving vegetation during a walk in the woods on a spring morning. even sensations of taste may become aesthetic. an oft-cited example is the taste of wine on a rhine steamer. guyau, the french poet-philosopher, mentions the taste of milk after a hard climb in the pyrenees. [footnote: _les problemes de l'esthetique contemporaine_, 8me edition, p. 63.] a drink of water from a clear spring would serve equally well as an example familiar to all. the warmth of a fire, of sunlight, of a cozy room, or the cold of a star-lit winter night have an emotional significance almost, if not quite, equal to that of the visual sensations from these objects. touch seems to be irretrievably bound up with grasping and using, but the touch of a well-loved person may be a free and glowing experience, sharing with sight in beauty. the movement sensations during a run in the open air or in dancing are not only free from all practical purpose, but are elements in the total animation. and other examples will come to the mind of every reader. [footnote: compare volkelt: _system der aesthetik_, bd. i, zweites capitel, s. 92.] as our illustrations show, the lower senses enter into the beauty of nature only; they do not enter into the beauty of art. their beauty is therefore vague and accidental. it usually depends, moreover, upon some support from vision, with the beauty of which it fuses. apart from the picturesque surroundings seen, the mountain milk and the rhine wine would lose much of their beauty; the warmth of sunlight or of fire, without the brightness of these objects, the odor of flowers without their form and color, would be of small aesthetic worth. through connection with vision the lower senses acquire something of its permanence and independence. people differ greatly in their capacity to render the lower senses aesthetic; it is essentially a matter of refinement, of power to free them from their natural root in the practical and instinctive, and lift them into the higher region of sentiment. but every kind of sensation, however low, may become beautiful; this is not to degrade beauty, but to ennoble sensation. from a psychological standpoint, sensation is the datum of the aesthetic experience, the first thing there, while its power to express depends upon a further process which links it up with thoughts and feelings. we must inquire, therefore, how this linkage takes place--how, for example, it comes about that the colors of a painting are something more than mere colors, being, in addition, embodiments of trees and sky and foliage, and of liveliness and gayety and other feelings appropriate to a spring landscape. let us consider the linkage with feeling first. there are two characteristics of aesthetic feeling in its relation to sensations and ideas which must be taken into account in any explanation; its objectification in them and the universality of this connection. expression is embodiment. we find gayety in the colors of the painting, joy in the musical tones, happiness in the pictured face, tenderness in the sculptured pose. we hear the feeling in the sounds and see it in the lines and colors. the happiness seems to belong to the face, the joy to the tones, in the same simple and direct fashion as the shape of the one or the pitch of the others. the feelings have become true attributes. it is only by analysis that we pick them out, separate them from the other elements of idea or sensation in the whole, and then, for the purpose of scientific explanation, inquire how they came to be connected. and this connection is not one that depends upon the accidents of personal experience. it is not, for example, like the emotional significance that the sound of the voice of the loved one has for the lover, which even he may some day cease to feel, and which other men do not feel at all. it is rather typified by the emotional value of a melody, which, through psychological processes common to all men, becomes a universal language of feeling. the work of art is a communicable, not a private expression. as we have observed, the elements of feeling in the aesthetic experience are of two broad kinds--either vague, when directly linked with the sensuous medium, or else definite, when this linkage is mediated by ideas through which the medium is given content and meaning. the former kind, which i shall consider first, comprises all cases of the emotional expressiveness of the medium itself,--of tones and word-sounds and their rhythms and patterns, of colors and lines and space-forms and their designs. the detailed study of this expressiveness i shall leave to the chapters on the arts; here i wish merely to indicate the kind of psychological process involved. in many cases the psychological principle of association operates. the tender expressiveness of certain curved lines, like those of the greek amphora, for example, is due, partially at least, to association with lines of the human body, with which normally this feeling is associated. the associated object, together with its feeling tone, are sufficiently common to the experience of all men to account for the universality of the emotion, and the isolation of the stimulus--abstract line--from its usual context of color and bulk accounts for the vagueness. sometimes, on the other hand, expressiveness seems to be due to a direct psychological relation between the sense-stimulus and the emotion. this is almost certainly the case with rhythms, and, as i shall argue in the chapters on painting and music, is at least partially true of colors and tones. the expressiveness is at once too immediate and too universal to depend upon association with definite things and events, or personal, emotional crises. a rhythm, for example, may be exciting the first time it is heard; one does not have to wait to hear it at a battle-charge; a melody may be sad even when one has never heard it sung by chance at parting. of course the fact that associations are not remembered is no proof that they do not operate; but it is difficult to conceive of any which could operate in these cases. for this reason, i think, we must suppose that certain sense-stimuli and combinations of stimuli not only produce in the sensory areas of the brain the appropriate sensations, but that their effects are prolonged, overflowing into the motor channels and there causing a total reaction of the organism, the conscious aspect of which is a vague feeling. the organic resonance is too slight and diffuse to produce a true emotion; hence only a mood results. in all the representative arts the vague expressiveness of the medium is reinforced through emotions aroused by ideas which interpret sensation as an element of a thing. the green in the painting is not only green, but green of the sea; the red is not only red, but red of the sky; the curved line is not a mere curve, it is the outline of a wave. the totality of colors and lines is not a mere color and line composition, but a marine landscape. the feeling tones of the elements of this complex and of the complex itself are not only those of the colors and lines as such, but of the interpretative ideas as well; which in turn are the same as those of the corresponding real things. the psychological process is here simple enough. the feeling tone of the sea is carried by the idea of the sea, which now fuses with the green color and wavy lines of the painting. but in order fully to explain the phenomena of aesthetic expression, it is not sufficient to show how the connection between feeling and sensation and idea takes place; it is necessary, in addition, to explain the nature of this connection. the feeling is not experienced by us as what it is--our reaction to the sensations or represented objects--but rather as an objective quality of them. the sounds are sad, the curve tender, the sea placid and reposeful. why is this? the explanation is, i think, as follows. despite their usual subjectivity, feelings tend to be located in the objective world whenever they are in conflict with or not directly rooted in the personal life or character of the individual. in listening to music, for example, feelings of despair and terror may be aroused in me who am perhaps secure and happy; and even if the feelings are joyous, they are not occasioned by any piece of personal good fortune--my situation in life is the same now as before. hence, finding no lodgment in the ego, and having to exist somewhere, they seek a domicile in the sounds evoking them. and, in general, works of art arouse but offer no personal occasions for feeling, and therefore absorb it into themselves. the process of objectification may, however, go further. it often happens in the aesthetic experience that feelings are not objectified alone, but carry with them the idea of the self--i come to feel _myself_ as joyous or despairing in the sounds. the extent to which the idea of the self thus follows the objectified feelings depends largely upon the amount of their reverberation throughout the organism. when this is small, and the feelings are vague and tenuous, as in color appreciation, there is little or no definite projection of the idea of the self; when, on the other hand, it is large and the emotions are strong, as oftentimes in music, where breathing, circulation, hand and foot are affected, then i myself seem to be there,--striving, pursuing, struggling, in the sounds. i am where my body is. the projection of the idea of the self is facilitated for the same reason when the body is actually employed in the creation of the work of art, as in singing and acting. it also occurs more readily when the life expressed in the work of art is akin to the spectator's. thus, an emotional and suggestible woman, in watching a fine performance of "magda," inevitably puts herself in the place of the heroine if she has herself lived through a similar experience. but when the life expressed is strikingly foreign to our own, the projection of the idea of self is more difficult; the duality between subject and object tends to remain. these phenomena have excited special attention when, as in painting and sculpture and the drama, a human being is represented. suppose, for example, i see a statue of a runner ready to start. i not only see the form and color of the marble and recognize them as a man's; i also feel emotions of excitement, tension, and expectation such as i should myself feel were i too posed and waiting to run a race. and these emotions i experience as the man's, and as his, not in a vague way, but as definitely present in his sculptured form, even in particular parts of it,--in the swelling chest and tightened limbs. or consider another case. suppose i see franz hals' "laughing cavalier." i feel jollity in the face, as the cavalier's. yet in both cases i may feel the emotions as also my own--as if i too were about to run or were laughing. and the projection of the idea of the self will occur most readily if i am myself a runner or a jolly person. in both instances, moreover, the process will be mediated by impulses to movements that are the normal accompaniments of the emotions in question. if i observe myself carefully, i may find that my own chest is tending to swell and my own limbs to tighten, in imitation of the runner's, or my own pupils to dilate and the muscles of my face to wrinkle and to part, in imitation of the dutchman's. and these movement-impulses i objectify. i not only see jollity in the face, but laughter as well; in the statue, not only excitement, but running. and again--where my body is, there am i; so i am jolly with the cavalier and excited with the runner. the psychology of this process is simple enough. in my experience there is a plain connection between the sight of a movement and sensations attendant upon movement, and further, a connection between some of these movements, namely, the expressive movements, and the emotions which they express. in accordance with the law of association by contiguity, whenever any one of several mental elements usually connected together is present in the mind, the others tend to arise also. so here. seeing the semblance of tight muscles and a smiling face, i feel the emotions which have these visual associates, experience the correlated movement-sensations, project them all into the object which initiated the process. in recent years, a great deal has been made of these movement-sensations in explaining aesthetic feeling. [footnote: see the discussions in lee and thompson: _beauty and ugliness_.] yet in the case of all people who are not strongly of the motor type, people in whose mental make-up movement plays a minor part in comparison with vision and other sensations, they play a secondary role, or even hardly any role at all. most spectators, indeed, instead of actually making slight movements imitative of the movements seen or represented, and experiencing the corresponding sensations, make no movements at all and simply experience movement images; this substitution of image for movement probably occurs in the minds of all except the most imitative. most people, even of the motor type, do not smile when they see the "laughing cavalier" or start to run when they see the statue of the runner; careful observation of themselves would disclose only faint movement images which seem to play about their lips or limbs--mere images of movement have supplanted movements. and many visualists would not find any images at all. however, although the mistake has been committed by some investigators of supposing that everybody experiences movement because they themselves, being of the motor type, do, it cannot be denied, i think, that such people attain to a vividness of aesthetic living not reached by others. they appreciate beauty with their bodies as well as with their souls. and in their case too, as has been shown, aesthetic appreciation is more strongly histrionic--they not only put themselves into the work of art, but the idea of themselves as well. following the german school of einfuehlung, i have insisted throughout this discussion on the importance of feeling in the aesthetic experience; yet i do not think the voice of those people can be neglected who claim that their experience with works of art is of slight or no emotional intensity. there are people who would report that they feel no jollity when they see the "laughing cavalier," or anguish when they read the ugolino canto in the inferno; yet such people often have a highly developed aesthetic taste. how can this difference be accounted for? starting with the emotional appreciation of art as primary, we can account for it in this wise. it is a familiar phenomenon in the mental life for a concept or idea of an emotional experience to take the place of that experience. what man has not rejoiced when the simple and cold judgment, "i suffered then," has come to supplant a recurring torment? or who that has lived constantly with a sick person has not observed how, looking on the face of pain, inevitably the mere comment, "he is in distress," comes to supplant the liveliest sympathetic thrill? there are many reasons for this. the idea or judgment is a less taxing thing than an emotion, and so is substituted for it in the mind, which everywhere seeks economy of effort. the idea is also more efficient from a practical point of view, because it leads directly to action and does not divert and waste energy in diffused and useless movements. the physician simply recognizes the states of mind of his patients, he does not sympathize with them. finally our own reactions to an objectified emotion may interfere with the emotion. if, for example, we see an angry man, our own fear of him may entirely supplant our sympathetic feeling of his anger. in general, in our dealings with our fellow men, we are too busy with our attitudes and plans with reference to them, and too much concerned with economizing our emotional energy, to get a sympathetic intuition of their inner life, and so are content with an intellectual recognition of it. now this habit of substituting the more rapid and economical process of judgment for the longer and more taxing one of sympathy, is carried over into the world of art. nevertheless, the world of art is a region especially fitted for _einfuehlung._ for there the need for quick action, which in life tends to syncopate emotion, does not exist. the characteristic attitude of art is leisurely absorption in an object, giving time for all the possibilities of feeling or other experience to develop. moreover, in art there is not the same saving need for the substitution of idea for feeling as in real life. for in art, feeling is not so strong as in life; even when the artist expresses his own personal experience, he lightens its emotional burden through expression, and we, when we make his experience ours, find a similar relief. the emotion is genuine, only weakened in intensity. in other cases, where the artist constructs a world of fictitious characters and events, our knowledge that they are not real suffices to diminish the intensity of the emotions aroused. for emotions have the practical function of inciting to action, and when action is impossible, as in the purely ideal world of the artist, they cannot keep their natural intensity. we cannot feel so strongly over the mere idea of an event as over a real event. were it otherwise, who could stand the strain of _hamlet_ or _othello_? throughout this discussion of the elements of the experience of art, i have used the terms emotion and feeling with an inclusive meaning, to cover impulses as well as feelings in the narrower sense. for in the aesthetic experience, there are impulses--impulses to move when action is represented in picture and statue, impulses to act, as when, in watching a play, we put ourselves in the place of the persons. but such impulses are always checked through the realization that they come from sources unrelated to our purposes, and fail to get the reenforcement or consent of the total self necessary to action. in reading or singing the "marseillaise," to cite an example from poetry, i experience all kinds of impulses--to shoulder a musket, to march, to kill--but no one of them is carried out. now an inhibited impulse is scarcely distinguishable from an emotion. with few exceptions, the impulses in art do not issue in resolves, decisions, determinations to act; or, if they do, the determinations refer to acts to be executed in the future, in an experience distinct and remote from the sthetic--the "marseillaise" has doubtless produced such resolutions in the minds of frenchmen; and there is much art that is productive in that way, providing the "birth in beauty" of which plato wrote. [footnote: in the _symposium_.] in art, impulses result in immediate action only when action is itself the medium of expression, as in the dance, where impulses to movement pass over into motion. of course such actions still remain aesthetic since they serve no practical end and are valued for themselves. if the question were raised, which is more fundamental in the aesthetic experience, idea or emotion? the answer would have to be, emotion. for there exists at least one great art where no explicit ideas are present, music, whereas art without emotion does not exist. take away the emotional content from expression and you get either a mere play of sensations, like fireworks, or else pseudo-science, like the modern naturalistic play. however, the supreme importance of the idea in art cannot be denied. every complex work of art, save music, is an expression of ideas as well as of feelings, and even in music there exists the tendency for feeling to seek definition in ideas--do we not say a musical idea? and do we not find the masters of so abstract an art as ornament employing their materials to represent symbolic conceptions? i wish to call the attention of the reader to certain very general considerations touching the nature and function of ideas in the aesthetic experience, leaving the study of the concrete problems to the more special chapters. first, the relation of the idea to the sense medium of the expression. here, i think, we find something comparable to the process of _einfuehlung_. for in art, ideas, like feelings, are objectified in sensation. only sensations are given; out of the mind come ideas through which the former are interpreted and made into the semblance of things. consider, for example, rembrandt's "night-watch." a festal mood is there in the golds and reds, and gloom in the blacks; but there also are the men and drums and arms. if we wished to push the analogy with _einfuehlung_, we might coin a corresponding term--_einmeinung_, "inmeaning." in all the representative arts, this is a process of equal importance with infeeling; for the artist strives just as much to realize his ideas of objects in the sense material of his art as to put his moods there. when, moreover, we consider that the expression of the more complex and definite emotions is dependent upon the expression of ideas of nature and human life, we see that the process is really a single one. feeling is a function of ideas; if, then, we demand sincerity in the one, we must equally demand conviction in the other. the poet could not convey to us his pleasure at the sight of nature or his awe of death unless he could somehow bring us into their presence. the painter could not express the moods of sunlight or of shadow until he had invented a technique for their representation. clear and confident seeing is a condition of feeling. hence every advance in the imitation of nature is an advance in the power of expression. the demand for fidelity of representation, for "truth to nature," so insistently made by the common man in his criticism of art, is justified even from the point of view of expressionism. yet this fidelity of representation does not involve exact reproduction of nature. the limitations of the media of the arts definitely exclude this. no painter can reproduce on a canvas the infinite detail of any object or exactly imitate its colors and lines. in the single matter of brightness, for example, his medium is hopelessly inadequate; even the light of the moon is beyond his power, not to speak of the light of the sun; he has to substitute a relative for an absolute scale of values. the sculptor cannot reproduce the color or hair of the human body. however, this failure exactly to imitate nature does not prevent the artist from suggesting to us ideas of the objects in which he is interested. if the outline of the marble be that of a man, we get the idea of a man; if the color and shape be that of a tree, we get the idea of a tree. our acceptance of these ideas is, of course, only partial; for we are equally susceptible to the negative suggestions of the whiteness of the marble and the smallness of the outline of the tree. every work of art represents a sort of compromise between reality and unreality, belief and disbelief. nevertheless, despite this compromise, the purpose of art is uncompromisingly attained. for art does not seek to give us nature over again, but to express its feeling tones, and these are conveyed when we get an idea of the corresponding object, even if that idea is inadequate from a strictly scientific point of view. we do not react emotionally to the infinite detail of any object, but only to its presence as a whole and to certain salient features. the artist succeeds when he constructs a humanized image of the object--one which arouses and becomes a center for feeling. this image, when made of a few elements, may be far more telling than a much more accurate copy; for there is no diffusion of interest to irrelevant aspects. how effective a medium for expression are the few and simple lines of beardsley's draftsmanship! the amount of detail necessary to convey an emotionally effective idea is relative to the technique of the different arts and varies also with the suggestibility and discrimination of the observer. here no a priori principles can be laid down for what only the experimental practice of the artist can determine. moreover, the negative suggestions of a work of art, although they are effective in preventing entire belief in the reality of the idea expressed, do not hinder the communication and appreciation of the attached feelings. just so long as the belief attitude is not wholly extinguished, this is the case; and the skillful artist takes care of that. of course, an attitude of self-surrender, of willingness to accept suggestions, has to be present and we cooperate with the artist in creating it. aesthetic belief implies sufficient abandon that we may react emotionally to a suggestion, but not enough that we may react practically. we let the idea tell upon our feelings; we do not let it incite us to action. the aesthetic plausibility of an idea depends largely upon its initial plausibility with the artist. there is nothing more contagious than belief. to utter things with an accent of conviction is half the battle in getting oneself believed. if the artist pretends to believe something and expresses himself with an air of assurance, we accept it, no matter how preposterous it may be from the practical or scientific point of view. think of rabelais! a work of art is a logical system. it presupposes certain assumptions, postulates, conventions, which we must accept if we are to live in its world. now, in order that we may accept them, the artist must first have vividly accepted them himself. only if they have become a very part of him, can they become at all valid for us. the failure of classicistic art in a non-classical age, of "pre-raphaelitism" after raphael, is a failure in this--the artist has never lived even imaginatively in the world he depicts. his belief is an artifice and a sham, and he cannot impose upon us with his pretense. but once we have accepted the artist's postulates, then we are prepared to follow him in his conclusions. in the homeric world, we shall not balk at the intercourse between gods and men; in mediaeval painting and drama, we shall accept miracle; in _alice in wonderland_, we shall accept any dream-like enchantment. but we demand that the conclusions shall follow from the premises, that the whole be consistent. we cannot tolerate miracle in a realistic novel or drama, or glaring inaccuracy of fact in a historical novel, because they are in contradiction to the laws of reality tacitly assumed. the final demand which we make of any work, of art is that it live. what can be made to live for us may be beautiful to us. but nothing can draw our life into itself which has not drawn the artist's, or which is untrue to its own inner logic. one of the most life-creating elements of a work of art is imagery. everywhere in art the tendency exists for ideas to be filled out, rendered concrete and vivid, through images. in looking at a painting of a summer landscape, for example, we not only recognize the colors as meaning sunlight, but actually experience them as warm; in looking at a statue we not only recognize its surface as that of the body of a woman, but we feel its softness and smoothness; which involves that the ideas of sunlight and a human body, employed in interpreting the sensations received from these works of art, are developed back into the original mass of images from which they were derived. however, although ideas are formed from images, they are not images,--as our ordinary employment of them in recognizing objects attests. we may and usually do, for example, recognize a mirror as smooth without experiencing it as smooth--the image equivalent of the idea remains latent. our ordinary experience with objects is too hasty and too intent on practical ends for images to develop. on the other hand, the leisurely attitude characteristic of the aesthetic experience is favorable to the recall of images; hence, just as in the aesthetic perception of objects we put our feelings into them, so equally we import into them the relevant images. the aesthetic reaction tends to be total. our demand for feeling in art also requires the image; for feelings are more vividly attached to images than to abstract ideas. it is a fact familiar in the experience of everybody that the strength of the emotional tone of an object is a function of the clearness of the image which we form of it on recall. we can preserve the feeling tone of a past event or an absent object only if we can keep a vivid image of it; as our image of it becomes vague, our interest in it dissipates. everywhere in our experience the image mediates between feeling and idea. so in art. images have no more an independent and self-sufficient status in art than sensations have; like the latter they are a means for the expression of feeling. in the painting of sunlight, for example, the images of warmth carry joyousness and a sense of ease; in the statue, the tactile images convey the emotional response to the represented object. in literature the expressiveness of images is perhaps even more impressive. consider how longing is aroused by the tactile, gustatory, and thermal images in the oft-quoted lines of keats:- o, for a draught of vintage! that hath been cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. examples might be multiplied indefinitely. in literature alone of the arts, images from all departments of sense can be aroused. visual images play a greater role there than in painting and sculpture, for the reason that, in the latter, visual sensations take their place--we do not image what we can see. in sculpture, the greater part of the imagery is of touch and motion--in the imagination, we feel the surfaces and move with the represented motions; the whiteness or blackness of the materials prevents the arousal of the image of the color of the body. in painting, besides the temperature images already mentioned, there are touch images--in still-life, for example, when silks and furs are represented; images of odors, in flower pieces; of motion, in pictures which depict motion, as in the racing horses of degas; of taste, in pictures of wine and fruit. of course the kind and amount of imagery depend upon the imaginal type to which the spectator belongs and the wealth of the imaginal furnishing of his mind. in any art, moreover, the chief and requisite thing is expression through the sense medium, which should never be obscured by expression through associated images. it is not the primary business of a flower painter to arouse images of perfume, but to compose colors and lines; nor the function of the musician to arouse the visual images which accompany the musical experience of many people, but to compose sounds. in sculpture, on the other hand, images of touch and movement play an almost necessary part, for they are constituent elements in the representation of form and motion; yet it is not indispensable to the appreciation of sculpture that images of the sweet odor of the human body be awakened. the image is seldom the basis of aesthetic appreciation; it is more often its completion. but we shall go into these matters more in detail in our special chapters. in the representative arts, particularly painting and sculpture, the associated images are fused with the visual sensations which constitute the medium. i see the softness and sweet-odorousness of the painted rose petal, just as i see the real rose soft and sweet; i see the surface of the statue firm and shapely, just as i see the human body so. this is because the ideas of the things represented in painting and sculpture seem to be actually present in the visual sensations which they interpret; the flower and the man seem to be there before me. in these arts, aesthetic perception is a fusion of image with sensation in much the way that normal perception is. in literature and music, on the other hand, the connection between the sense medium of the art and the associated images is less close; and for the reason that the sounds are no part of the things which they bring before the mind. in looking at a picture of a rose, i see the red as an element of the rose represented; whereas, in reading about a rose, i only seem to hear a voice describing it. in the latter case, therefore, the olfactory and visual images have a certain remoteness and independence of the word-sounds; i do not actually see and smell them in the sounds. however, in the case of familiar words with a strong emotional significance, the fusion of image with sound may be almost complete. who, for example, does not see a sweet and red image of a rose into the word-sounds when he reads:- oh, my love's like a red, red rose that's newly sprung in june. or, when dante describes the _selva oscura_, who does not see the darkness in the word _oscura_? in all such cases a strong feeling tone binds together the word-sound with the image. this fusion is most striking in poetry because of the highly emotional material with which it works. the ideas and images associated with a work of art depend very largely on the education, experience, and idiosyncrasy of the spectator. the scholar, for example, will put tenfold more meaning into his reading of the _divine comedy_ than the untrained person. or compare pater's interpretation of the "mona lisa" with muther's. can we say that certain ideas and images belong properly to the work of art, while others do not? with regard to this, we can, i think, set up two criteria. first, the intention of the artist--whatever the artist meant his work to express: that it expresses. yet, since this can never be certainly and completely discovered, there must always remain a large region of undetermined interpretation. now for judging the relevancy of this penumbra of meaning and association the following test applies--does it bring us back to the sensuous medium of the work of art or lead us away? anything is legitimate which we actually put into the form of the work of art and keep there, while whatever merely hangs loose around it is illegitimate. for example, if while listening to music we give ourselves up to personal memories and fancies, we are almost sure to neglect the sounds and their structure; we cannot objectify the former in the latter; with the result that the composition is largely lost to us. naturally, no hard and fast lines can be drawn, especially in the case of works of vague import like music; yet we can use this criterion as a principle for regulating and inhibiting our associations. it demands of us a wide-awake and receptive appreciation. the genuine meanings and associations of a work of art are those which are the irresistible and necessary results of the sense stimuli working upon an attentive percipient; the rest are not only arbitrary, but injurious. to this, some people would doubtless object on the ground that art was made for man and not man for art. the work of art, they would claim, should interpret the personal experience of the spectator; hence whatever he puts into it belongs there of right. there are, however, two considerations limiting the validity of this assertion. first, the work of art is primarily an expression of the artist's personality and, second, its purpose is to provide a common medium of expression for the experience of all men. if interpretation remains a purely individual affair, both its relation to the artist and the possibility of a common aesthetic experience through it are destroyed. for this reason we should, i believe, deliberately seek to make our appreciations historically sound and definite. and in the social and historical appreciation resulting, we shall find our own lives--not so different from the artist's and our fellows'--abundantly and sufficiently expressed. chapter v the analysis of the aesthetic experience: the structure of the experience in our discussion of first principles, we set down a high degree of unity as one of the distinguishing characteristics of works of art. in this we followed close upon ancient tradition; for the markedly structural character of beauty was noticed by the earliest observers. plato, the first philosopher of art, identified beauty with simplicity, harmony, and proportion, and aristotle held the same view. they were so impressed with aesthetic unity that they compared it with the other most highly unified type of thing they knew, the organism; and ever afterwards it has been called "organic unity." with the backing of such authority, unity in variety was long thought to be the same as beauty; and, although this view is obviously one-sided, no one has since succeeded in persuading men that an object can be beautiful without unity. since art is expression, its unity is, unavoidably, an image of the unity of the things in nature and mind which it expresses. a lyric poem reflects the unity of mood that binds together the thoughts and images of the poet; the drama and novel, the unity of plan and purpose in the acts of men and the fateful sequence of causes and effects in their lives. the statue reflects the organic unity of the body; the painting, the spatial unity of visible things. in beautiful artifacts, the basal unity is the purpose or end embodied in the material structure. but the unity of works of art is not wholly derivative; for it occurs in the free arts like music, where nothing is imitated, and even in the representative arts, as we have observed, it is closer than in the things which are imaged. aesthetic unity is therefore unique and, if we would understand it, we must seek its reason in the peculiar nature and purpose of art. since, moreover, art is a complex fact, the explanation of its unity is not simple; the unity itself is very intricate and depends upon many cooperating factors. in the case of the imitative arts, taking the given unity of the objects represented as a basis, the superior unity of the image is partly due to the singleness of the artist's interest. for art, as we know, is never the expression of mere things, but of things so far as they have value. out of the infinite fullness of nature and of life, the artist selects those elements that have a unique significance for him. music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory; odors, when sweet violets sicken, live within the sense they quicken; rose leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved's bed; and so thy thoughts when thou art gone, love itself shall slumber on. observe how, out of the countless things which he knows, the poet has chosen those which he feels akin to his faith in the immortality of love. the painter would not, if he could, reproduce all the elements of a face, but only those that are expressive of the interpretation of character he wishes to convey. the novelist and the dramatist proceed in a like selective fashion in the treatment of their material. in the lives of men there are a thousand actions and events--casual spoken words, recurrent processes such as eating and dressing, hours of idleness and futility which, because repetitious, habitual, or inconsequential, throw no light upon that alone in which we are interested,--character and fortune. to describe a single example of these facts suffices. in the novel and drama, therefore, the personalities and life histories of men have a simplicity and singleness of direction not found in reality. the artist seeks everywhere the traits that individualize and characterize, and neglects all others. moreover, since the aim of art is to afford pleasure in the intuition of life, the artist will try to reveal the hidden unities that so delight the mind to discover. he will aim to penetrate beneath the surface of experience observed by common perception, to its more obscure logic underneath. in this way he will go beyond what the mere mechanism of imitation requires. the poet, for example, manifests latent emotional harmonies among the most widely sundered things. the subtle novelist shows how single elements of character, apparently isolated acts or trivial incidents, are fateful of consequences. he discloses the minute reactions of one personality upon another. or he enters into the soul of man himself, into his private and individual selfhood, and uncovers the hidden connections between thought and feeling and impulse. finally, he may take the wider sweep of society and tradition into view and track out their part in the molding of man and his fate. in the search for unity, the artist is on common ground with the man of science; but with this difference: the artist is concerned with laws operating in concrete, individual things in which he is interested; while the scientist formulates them in the abstract. for the artist, unity is valuable as characterizing a significant individual; for the scientist, it is valuable in itself, and the individual only as an example of it. this same purpose of affording pleasure in sympathetic vision leads the artist not only to present the unity of life, but so to organize its material that it will be clear to the mind which perceives it. too great a multitude of elements, elements that are not assorted into groups and tied by relations or principles, cannot be grasped. hence the artist infuses into the world which he creates a new and wholly subjective simplicity and unity, to which there is no parallel in nature. the composition of elements in a picture does not correspond to any actual arrangement of elements in a landscape, but to the demands of visual perspicuity. the division of a novel into chapters, of the chapters into paragraphs, of the paragraphs into sentences, although it may answer in some measure to the objective divisions of the life-story related, corresponds much more closely to the subjective need for ready apprehension. the artist meets this need halfway in the organization of the material which he presents. full beauty depends upon an adaptation of the object to the senses, attention, and synthetic functions of the mind. the long, rambling novel of the eighteenth century is a more faithful image of the fullness and diversity of life, but it answers ill to the limited sweep of the mind, its proneness to fatigue, and its craving for wholeness of view. but even all the reasons so far invoked--the necessity for significance, the interest in unity, the demand for perspicuity--do not, i think, suffice to explain the structure of works of art. for structure has, oftentimes, a direct emotional appeal, which has not yet been taken into account, and which is a leading motive for its presence. consider, for example, symmetry. a symmetrical disposition of parts is indeed favorable to perspicuity; for it is easier to find on either side what we have already found on the other, the sight of one side preparing us for the sight of the other; and such an arrangement is flattering to our craving for unity, for we rejoice seeing the same pattern expressed in the two parts; yet the experience of symmetry is richer still: it includes an agreeable feeling of balance, steadfastness, stability. this is most evident in the case of visual objects, like a greek vase, where there is a plain division between right and left similar halves; but it is also felt in music when there is a balance of themes in the earlier and later parts of a composition, and in literature in the well-balanced sentence, paragraph, or poem. to cite the very simplest example, if i read, "on the one hand ... on the other hand," i have a feeling of balanced tensions precisely analogous to what i experience when i look at a vase. structure is not a purely intellectual or perceptive affair; it is also motor and organic, and that means emotional. it is felt with the body as well as understood by the mind. i have used the case of symmetry to bring out this truth, but i might have used other types of unification, each of which has its unique feeling tone, as i shall show presently, after i have analyzed them. keeping in mind the motives which explain the structure of works of art, i wish now to distinguish and describe the chief types. there are, i think, three of these, of which each one may include important special forms--unity in variety, dominance, and equilibrium. unity in variety was the earliest of the types to be observed and is the most fundamental. it is the organic unity so often referred to in criticism. it involves, in the first place, wholeness or individuality. every work of art is a definite single thing, distinct and separate from other things, and not divisible into parts which are themselves complete works of art. no part can be taken away without damage to the whole, and when taken out of the whole, the part loses much of its own value. the whole needs all of its parts and they need it; "there they live and move and have their being." the unity is a unity of the variety and the variety is a differentiation of the unity.[footnote: cf. lipps: _aesthetik_, bd. i, drittes kapitel.] the variety is of equal importance with the unity, for unity can assert itself and work only through the control of a multiplicity of elements. the analogy between the unity of the work of art and the unity of the organism is still the most accurate and illuminating. for, like the work of art, the body is a self-sufficient and distinctive whole, whose unified life depends upon the functioning of many members, which, for their part, are dead when cut away from it. the conception of unity in variety as organic represents an ideal or norm for art, which is only imperfectly realized in many works. there are few novels which would be seriously damaged by the omission of whole chapters, and many a rambling essay in good standing would permit pruning without injury, unless indeed we are made to feel that the apparently dispensable material really contributes something of fullness and exuberance, and so is not superfluous, after all. the unity in some forms of art is tighter than in others; in a play closer than in a novel; in a sonnet more compact than in an epic. in extreme examples, like _the thousand and one nights,_ the _decameron,_ the _canterbury tales,_ the unity is almost wholly nominal, and the work is really a collection, not a whole. with all admissions, it remains true, however, that offenses against the principle of unity in variety diminish the aesthetic value of a work. these offenses are of two kinds--the inclusion of the genuinely irrelevant, and multiple unity, like double composition in a picture, or ambiguity of style in a building. there may be two or more parallel lines of action in a play or a novel, two or more themes in music, but they must be interwoven and interdependent. otherwise there occurs the phenomenon aptly called by lipps "aesthetic rivalry"--each part claims to be the whole and to exclude its neighbor; yet being unable to do this, suffers injury through divided attention. unity in variety may exist in any one or more of three modes--the harmony or union of cooperating elements; the balance of contrasting or conflicting elements; the development or evolution of a process towards an end or climax. the first two are predominantly static or spatial; the last, dynamic and temporal. i know of no better way of indicating the characteristic quality of each than by citing examples. aesthetic harmony exists whenever some identical quality or form or purpose is embodied in various elements of a whole--sameness in difference. the repetition of the same space-form in architecture, like the round arch and window in the roman style; the recurrence of the same motive in music; the use of a single hue to color the different objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of whistler: these are simple illustrations of harmony. an almost equally simple case is gradation or lawful change of quality in space and time--the increase or decrease of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting, the gentle change of direction of a curved line. in these cases there is, of course, a dynamic or dramatic effect, if you take the elements in sequence; but when taken simultaneously and together, they are a harmony, not a development. simplest of all is the harmony between like parts of regular figures, such as squares and circles; or between colors which are neighboring in hue. harmonious also are characters in a story or play which are united by feelings of love, friendship, or loyalty. thus there is harmony between hamlet and horatio, or between the cid and his followers. aesthetic balance is the unity between elements which, while they oppose or conflict with one another, nevertheless need or supplement each other. hostile things, enemies at war, business men that compete, persons that hate each other, have as great a need of their opponents, in order that there may be a certain type of life, as friends have, in order that there may be love between them; and in relation to each other they create a whole in the one case as in the other. there is as genuine a unity between contrasting colors and musical themes as there is between colors closely allied in hue or themes simply transposed in key. contrasting elements are always the extremes of some series, and are unified, despite the contrast, because they supplement each other. things merely different, no matter how different, cannot contrast, for there must be some underlying whole, to which both belong, in which they are unified. in order that this unity may be felt, it is often necessary to avoid absolute extremes, or at least to mediate between them. among colors, for example, hues somewhat closer than the complementary are preferred to the latter, or, if the extremes are employed, each one leads up to the other through intermediate hues. the unity of contrasting colors is a balance because, as extremes, they take an equal hold on the attention. the well-known accentuation of contrasting elements does not interfere with the balance, because it is mutual. a balanced unity is also created by contrasts of character, as in goethe's _tasso_, or by a conflict between social classes or parties, as in hauptmann's _die weber_. balanced, finally, is the unity between the elements of a painting, right and left, which draw the attention in opposite directions. the third type of unity appears in any process or sequence in which all the elements, one after another, contribute towards the bringing about of some end or result. it is the unity characteristic of all teleologically related facts. the sequence cannot be a mere succession or even a simple causal series, but must also be purposive, because, in order to be aesthetic, the goal which is reached must have value. causality is an important aspect of this type of unity, as in the drama, but only because a teleological series of actions depends upon a chain of causally related means and ends. the type is of two varieties: in the one, the movement is smooth, each element being harmoniously related to the last; in the other, it is difficult and dramatic, proceeding through the resolution of oppositions among its elements. the movement usually has three stages: an initial phase of introduction and preparation; a second phase of opposition and complication; then a final one, the climax or catastrophe, when the goal is reached; there may also be a fourth,--the working out of the consequences of this last. illustrations of this mode of unity are: the course of a story or a play from the introduction of the characters and the complication of the plot to the denouement or solving of the problem; the development of a character in a novel from a state of simplicity or innocence through storm and stress into maturity or ruin; the evolution of a sentiment in a sonnet towards its final statement in the last line or two; the melody, in its departure from the keynote, its going forth and return; the career of a line. as i have indicated before, each type of unity has its specific emotional quality. the very word harmony which we use to denote the first mode is itself connotative of a way of being affected, of being moved emotionally. the mood of this mode is quiet, oneness, peace. we feel as if we were closely and compactly put together. if now, within the aesthetic whole, we emphasize the variety, we begin to lose the mood of peace; tensions arise, until, in the case of contrast and opposition, there is a feeling of conflict and division in the self; yet without loss of unity, because, if the whole is aesthetic, each of the opposing elements demands the other; hence there is balance between them, and this also we not only know to be there, but feel there. the characteristic mood of the evolutionary type of unity is equally unique--either a sense of easy motion, when the process is unobstructed, or excitement and breathlessness, when there is opposition. the different types of unity are by no means exclusive of each other and are usually found together in any complex work of art. symmetry usually involves a combination of harmony and balance. the symmetrical halves of a greek vase, for example, are harmonious in so far as their size and shape are the same, yet balanced as being disposed in opposite directions, right and left. rhythm is temporal symmetry, and so also represents a combination of harmony and balance. static rhythm is only apparent; for in every seeming case, the rhythm really pervades the succession of acts of attention to the elements rather than the elements themselves; a colonnade, for example, is rhythmical only when the attention moves from one column to another. there is harmony in rhythm, for there is always some law--metrical scheme in poetry, time in music, similarity of column and equality of interval between them in a colonnade--pervading the elements. but there is also balance; for as the elements enter the mind one after the other, there is rivalry between the element now occupying the focus of the attention and the one that is about to present an equal claim to this position. because of its intrinsic value, we tend to hold on to each element as we hear or see it, but are forced to relinquish it for the sake of the one that follows; only for a moment can we keep both in the conscious span; the recurrence and overcoming of the resulting tension, as we follow the succession through, creates the pulsation so characteristic of rhythm. the opposition of the elements as in turn they crowd each other out does not, however, interfere with the harmony, for they have an existence all together in memory, where the law binding them can be felt,--a law which each element as it comes into consciousness is recognized as fulfilling. since we usually look forward to the end of the rhythmical movement as a goal, rhythm often exists in combination with evolution, and is therefore the most inclusive of all artistic structural forms. in a poem, for example, the metrical rhythm is a framework overlying the development of the thought. dramatic unity is found combined with balance even in the static arts, as, for example, in the combination of blue and gold, where the balance is not quite equal, because of a slight movement from the blue to the more brilliant and striking gold. i have already shown how harmony, opposition, and evolution may be combined in a melody. in the drama, also, all three are present. there is a balance of opposing and conflicting wills or forces; this is unstable; whence movement follows, leading on to the catastrophe, where the problem is solved; and throughout there is a single mood or atmosphere in which all participate, creating an enveloping harmony despite the tension and action. and other illustrations of combinations of types will come to the mind of every reader. each form of unity has its difficulties and dangers, which must be avoided if perfection is to be attained. in harmony there may be too much identity and too little difference or variety, with the result that the whole becomes tedious and uninteresting. this is the fault of rigid symmetry and of all other simple geometrical types of composition, which, for this reason, have lost their old popularity in the decorative and pictorial arts. in balance, on the other hand, the danger is that there may be too great a variety, too strong an opposition; the elements tend to fly apart, threatening the integrity of the whole. for it is not sufficient that wholeness exist in a work of art; it must also be felt. for example, in pre-raphaelite paintings and in most of the secession work of our own day, the color contrasts are too strong; there is no impression of visual unity. in the dramatic type of unity there are two chief dangers--that the evolution be tortuous, so that we lose our way in its bypaths and mazes; or, on the other hand, that the end be reached too simply and quickly; in the one case, we lose heart for the journey because of the obstacles; in the other, we lose interest and are bored for want of incidents. we come now to the second great principle of aesthetic structure-dominance.[footnote: cf. lipps: _aesthetik_, bd. i, s. 53, viertes kapitel] in an aesthetic whole the elements are seldom all on a level; some are superior, others subordinate. the unity is mediated through one or more accented elements, through which the whole comes to emphatic expression. the attention is not evenly distributed among the parts, but proceeds from certain ones which are focal and commanding to others which are of lesser interest. and the dominant elements are not only superior in significance; they are, in addition, representative of the whole; in them, its value is concentrated; they are the key by means of which its structure can be understood. they are like good rulers in a constitutional state, who are at once preeminent members of the community and signal embodiments of the common will. anything which distinguishes and makes representative of the whole serves to make dominant. in a well-constructed play there are one or more characters which are central to the action, in whom the spirit and problem of the piece are embodied, as hamlet in _hamlet_ and brand in _brand_; in every plot there is the catastrophe or turning point, for which every preceding incident is a preparation, and of which every following one is a consequent; in a melody there is the keynote; in the larger composition there are the one or more themes whose working out is the piece; in a picture there are certain elements which especially attract the attention, about which the others are composed. in the more complex rhythms, in meters, for example, the elements are grouped around the accented ones. in an aesthetic whole there are certain qualities and positions which, because of their claim upon the attention, tend to make dominant any elements which possess them. in space-forms the center and the edges are naturally places of preeminence. the eye falls first upon the center and then is drawn away to the boundaries. in old pictures, the madonna or christ is placed in the center and the angels near the perimeter; in fancy work it is the center and the border which women embroider. in time, the beginning, middle, and end are the natural places of importance; the beginning, because there the attention is fresh and expectant; towards the middle, because there we tend to rest, looking backward to the commencement and forward to the end; the end itself, because being last in the mind, its hold upon the memory is firmest. in any process the beginning is important as the start, the plan, the preparation; the middle as the climax and turning point; the end as the consummation. of course by the middle is not meant a mathematical point of division into equal parts, but a psychological point, which is usually nearer the end, because the impetus of action and purpose carry forward and beyond. thus in a plot the beginning stands out as setting the problem and introducing the characters and situation; then the movement of the action, gathering force increasingly as it proceeds, breaks at some point well beyond the middle; in the last part the problem is solved and the consequences of the action are revealed. large size is another quality which distinguishes and tends to make dominant, as in the tower and the mountain. in one of memling's paintings, "st. ursula and the maidens," which, when i saw it, was in bruges, the lady is represented twice as tall as the full grown girls whom she envelops in her protecting cloak; yet, despite the unnaturalness, we do not experience any incongruity; for it is rational to our feeling. intensity of any sort is another property which creates dominance--loudness of sound in music; concentration of light in painting, as in rembrandt; stress in rhythm; depth and scope of purpose and feeling, as in the great characters of fiction. the effectiveness of intensity may be greatly increased through contrast--the pianissimo after the fortissimo; the pathos of the fifth act of _hamlet_ set off by the comedy of the first scene. sometimes all the natural qualifications of eminence are united in a single work: in old paintings, for example, the christ child, spiritually the most significant element of the whole, will be of supernatural size, will occupy the center of the picture, will have the light concentrated upon him, and will be dressed in brightly gleaming garments. as i have already indicated, there may be more than one dominant element; for instance, two or more principal characters in a novel or play--lord and lady macbeth, sancho and don quixote, othello and desdemona, brand and his wife. in this case, there must be either subordination among them, a hierarchical arrangement; or else reciprocity or balance, as in the illustrations cited, where it is difficult to tell which is the more important of the two; otherwise they would pull the whole apart. the advantage of several dominant elements lies in the greater animation, and when the work is large, in the superior organization, which they confer. in order that there may be perspicuity, it is necessary, when there are many elements, that they be separated into minor groups around high points which individualize and represent them, and so take their place in the mind, mediating between them and unity when a final synthesis of the whole is to be made. the third great principle of aesthetic structure is equilibrium or impartiality. this is a principle counteracting dominance. it demands, despite the subordination among the elements, that none be neglected. each, no matter how minor its part in the whole, must have some unique value of its own, must be an end as well as a means. dominance is the aristocratic principle in art, the rule of the best; this is the democratic principle, the demand for freedom and significance for all. just as, in a well-ordered state, the happiness of no individual or class of individuals is sacrificed to that of other individuals or classes; so in art, each part must be elaborated and perfected, not merely for the sake of its contribution to the whole, but for its own sake. there should be no mere figure-heads or machinery. loving care of detail, of the incidental, characterizes the best art. of course this principle, like the others, is an ideal or norm, which is only imperfectly realized in many works of art. many a poet finds it necessary to fill in his lines and many a painter and musician does the like with his pictures or compositions. there is much mere scaffolding and many lay-figures in drama and novel. but the work of the masters is different. there each line or stroke or musical phrase, each character or incident, is unique or meaningful. the greatest example of this is perhaps the _divine comedy_, where each of the hundred cantos and each line of each canto is perfect in workmanship and packed with significance. there is, of course, a limit to this elaboration of the parts, set by the demands for unity and wholeness. the individuality of the elements must not be so great that we rest in them severally, caring little or nothing for their relations to one another and to the whole. the contribution of this principle is richness. unity in variety gives wholeness; dominance, order; equilibrium, wealth, interest, vitality. the structure of works of art is even more complicated than would appear from the description given thus far. for there is not only the unity of the elements among themselves, but between the two aspects of each element and of the whole--the form and content. this--the unity between the sense medium and whatever of thought and feeling is embodied in it--is the fundamental unity in all expression. it is the unity between a word and its meaning, a musical tone and its mood, a color and shape and what they represent. since, however, it is indispensable to all expression, it is not peculiar to art. and to a large extent, even in the creative work of the artist, this unity is given, not made; the very materials of the artist consisting of elementary expressions--words, tones, colors, space-forms--in which the unity of form and content has already been achieved, either by an innate psycho-physical process, as is the case with tones and simple rhythms, or by association and habit, as is the case with the words of any natural language, or the object-meanings which we attach to colors and shapes. the poet does not work with sounds, but with words which already have their definite meanings; his creation consists of the larger whole into which he weaves them. of course, even in the case of ordinary verbal expression, the thought often comes first before its clothing in words, when there is a certain process of choice and fitting; and in painting there is always the possibility of varying conventional forms; yet even so, in large measure, the elements of the arts are themselves expressions, in which a unity of form and content already exists. in art, however, there are subtler aspects to the relation between form and content, and these have a unique aesthetic significance. for there, as we know, the elements of the medium, colors and lines and sounds, and the patterns of these, their harmonies and structures and rhythms, are expressive, in a vague way, of feeling; hence, when the artist employs them as embodiments of his ideas, he has to select them, not only as carriers of meaning, but as communications of mood. now, in order that his selection be appropriate, it is clearly necessary that the feeling tone of the form be identical with that of the content which he puts into it. the medium as such must reexpress and so enforce the values of the content. this is the "harmony," as distinguished from the mere unity, of form and content, the existence of which in art is one of its distinguishing properties. i have already called attention to this in our second chapter. it involves, as we observed, that in painting, for example, the feeling tone of the colors and lines should be identical with that of the objects to be represented; in poetry, that the emotional quality of meter and rhythm should be attuned to the incidents and sentiments expressed. otherwise the effect is ugly or comical. when we come to the work of art, this harmony is already achieved. but for the artist it is something delicately to be worked out. yet, just as in ordinary expression form and content often emerge in unison, the thought itself being a word and the word a thought; so in artistic creation, the mother mood out of which the creative act springs, finds immediate and forthright embodiment in a congenial form. such a spontaneous and perfect balance of matter and form is, however, seldom achieved without long and painful experimentation and practice, both by the artist himself in his own private work, and by his predecessors, whose results he appropriates. large traditional and oftentimes rigid forms, such as the common metrical and musical schemes and architectural orders, into which the personal matter of expression may aptly fall, are thus elaborated in every art. as against every looser and novel form, they have the advantages first, of being more readily and steadily held in the memory, where they may gather new and poignant associations; second, of coming to us already freighted with similar associations out of the past; and last, of compelling the artist, in order that he may fit his inspiration into them, to purify it of all irrelevant substance. impatient artists rebel against forms, but wise ones either accommodate their genius to them, until they become in the end a second and equally spontaneous nature, or else create new forms, as definite as the old. chapter vi the problem of evil in aesthetics, and its solution through the tragic, pathetic, and comic when, in our third chapter, we defined the purpose of art, we indicated that it was broad enough to include the expression of evil, but we did not show in detail how this was possible. that is our present theme. art is sympathetic representation; the effort not only to reveal an object to us, but to unite us with it. the artist finds no difficulty in accomplishing this purpose with reference to one class of objects--those which, apart from portrayal, we call beautiful. to these we are drawn immediately because they serve directly the ends of life. nature sees to it that we dwell with pleasure on the sight of healthy children, well-grown women, and bountiful landscapes. and to the representations of such objects we are attracted by the same instincts that attract us to the things themselves. no special power of art is required that we take delight in them; the task of the artist is half accomplished before he begins. yet the scope of art is wider than this, for it represents evil as well as good. death as well as life, sickness and deformity as well as health, suffering as well as joy, sin equally with goodness, come within its purview. and these also it not only reveals to us but makes good to know, so good in fact that they are perhaps the preferred objects of artistic representation. but instead of being able to rely on instincts that would draw us to these objects, art has to overcome those that would lead us away from them. it has to conquer our natural horror at death, pain at suffering, and revulsion against wickedness. how does it? that is the problem of evil in sthetics. there are many means by which this problem is solved. in the first place, the mere fact that art is representation and not reality does much toward overcoming any feelings of moral or physical repugnance we might have toward the objects represented. these feelings exist for the sake of action; hence, when action is impossible--and we cannot act on the unreal--although they may still persist, they become less strong. toward the merely imaginary, the practical and moral attitudes, which towards the real would lead to condemnation and withdrawal, lose their relevance and tend to disappear. that is one of the advantages of art over the more immediate perception of life. it is difficult to take a purely aesthetic attitude towards all of life, to seek only to get into sympathetic contact with it for the sake of an inner realization of what it is; much of it touches us too closely on the side of our practical and moral interests. a certain man, for example, does not belong to our set, or his ways are so bohemian that it would imperil our social position or the safety of our souls to get acquainted with him; so we reject him and cast him into the outer darkness of our disapproval--or he rejects us. such a person, we feel, is to be avoided or haply, if we be saints, to be saved from himself; but not to be accepted and understood. and even if we succeed in freeing ourselves from the moral point of view, we are still preoccupied with the practical, if the man happens to interest us commercially; we have not the time nor the desire to see his nature as a whole. not so in art. as a character in a novel, a man cannot be employed; nor can it be a hazard to keep company with him; and his soul is surely beyond our saving; the only thing left for us to do is to sympathize with and try to understand him, to enter into communion with his spirit. by freeing life from the practical and moral, art gives the imagination full sway. this, to be sure, is only a negative force working in the direction of beauty, yet is important none the less because it enables the more positive influences to function easily. one of these is what i would call "sympathetic curiosity," which may encompass all images of life. things which, if met with in life, would certainly repel, when presented in image, simply excite our curiosity to know. of course some are impelled by the same interest to get into contact with all experience--_homo sum: humani nihil alienum a me puto_--yet with the great majority the impulses to withdraw are too strong. but all have a desire for further knowledge when a mere idea of human life, however repellent, is presented; for the instinct of gregariousness, which creates a special interest in our kind, works with full force in the mind to strengthen curiosity. there is no part of human experience which it does not embrace. we can well forego knowledge of stars and trees, but we cannot remain ignorant of anything human. as the moth to the flame, we are led, even against our will, into all of life, even the most unpleasant. the charm possessed by the novel and unplumbed, by such stories as _jude the obscure_, or by the weird imaginings of a baudelaire, comes from this source. it is no mere scientific curiosity, because it includes that "consciousness of kind," which makes us feel akin to all we know. sympathetic curiosity, however, seldom works alone, for other interests, less worthy and therefore often unavowed, usually cooperate to overcome our repugnances towards the unpleasant. many of our repugnances are not simple and original like those felt towards death, darkness, and deformity, but highly complex products of education, which may be dissolved by a strong appeal to the more primitive instincts which they seek to repress. an artist may, for example, through a vivid portrayal, so excite the animal lust and cruelty which lurk hidden in all of us as to make the most morally reprehensible objects acceptable. nature has taken many a revenge on civilization through art. although no one should demand that these appeals be entirely excluded, yet when they operate alone, without the sublimation of insight, they are flagrantly unaesthetic in their influence, because they deprive the work of art of its freedom. another means which the artist may employ in order to win us is the appeal of sense. however repellent be the objects which he represents, if he can clothe them in a sensuous material which will charm us, he will have exerted a powerful countervailing force. we have already had occasion to observe this in our first chapter. through the call of sense we are invited to enter and are made welcome at the very threshold of the work of art. engaging lines, winsome colors and tones, and compelling rhythms can overcome almost any repugnance that we might otherwise feel for the subject-matter. their primary appeals are superior to all the reservations of civilization. no wonder that the stern moralists who would keep beauty for the clean and holy have been afraid of art! yet the delight of sense, because its emotional effect is diffused, does not interfere with the contemplative serenity of art, as unbridled passion does; it even quiets passion by diverting the attention to itself; hence may always be employed by the artist. a good example of the aesthetic fascination of sensation is von stuck's "salome" in the art institute of chicago. for all normal feeling, salome dancing with the head of john the baptist is a revolting object; yet how beautiful the artist has made his picture through the simple loveliness of gold and red! it would be a mistake, however, to infer the indifference of the subject-matter in art. the creation of a work of art is based on a primary aesthetic experience of nature or human life, and not everything is capable of producing such an experience in all men. the subject must be one towards which the artist or spectator is able to take the sthetic attitude of emotional, yet free, perception. some people are unable to lay aside their moral prepossessions towards certain phases of life or even towards representation of them; the idea affects them as would the reality. for such people even the genius of a beardsley is too feeble to create an experience of beauty out of the material with which he works. or again, some people cannot objectify their sensual egotistic impulses and feelings; for them the reading of a boccaccio, for example, is only a substitute for such feelings, not a means of insight into them. it requires a robust intellectual attitude, a predominance of mind over feeling and instinct, aesthetically to appreciate some works of art. but for those who can receive it, the representation of any phase of life may afford an aesthetic experience, may create a thing good to know, if only it be mastered by the mind and embodied in a charming form. the charm of sense together with the satisfaction of insight are sufficient to explain the conquest of evil by art. yet further means have been employed--the special appeals of the tragic, pathetic, and comic. what any one may mean by tragic is largely a matter of personal definition or tradition; yet there is, i think, a common essence upon which all would agree. first, tragedy always involves the manful struggle of a personality in the pursuit of some end, at the cost of suffering, perhaps of death and failure. the opposition may come from nature, as in _the grammarian's funeral_; from fate, as in the _oedipus_; from social and political interests, as in _antigone_; that is of little moment; it is important solely that the battle be accepted and waged unflinchingly to the issue. in this ultimate sense, most of human life is tragic; because it involves a continual warfare with circumstances, which the majority of people carry on with a silent heroism. originally, only the glorious and spectacular conflicts of great personalities were deemed worthy of representation in art; but with the growth of sympathy the range of tragic portrayal has gradually been extended over almost the whole of human life. the peasant in his struggle for subsistence against a niggardly soil, or the patient woman who loses the bloom of her youth in the unremitting effort to maintain her children, are tragic figures. second, it is part of the essence of tragedy that the conflict should be recognized as necessary and its issue as inevitable. in one form or another, whether as greek or christian or naturalistic, fatality has remained an abiding element in the idea of tragedy. the purpose or passion or sentiment which impels the hero to undertake and maintain the struggle must be a part of his nature so integral that nothing else is possible for him. "_ich kann nicht anders_" is the cry of every tragic personality. and the opposition which he meets from other persons, from social forces or natural circumstances, must seem to be equally fateful--must be represented as issuing from a counter determination or law no less inescapable than the hero's will. even when the catastrophe depends upon some so-called accident, it must be made to appear necessary that our human purposes should sometimes be caught and strangled in the web of natural fact which envelops them. the reasons for our acceptance of tragedy are not difficult to find and have been noted, with more or less clearness, by all students. we accept it much as the hero accepts his own struggle--he believes in the values which he is fighting for and we sympathetically make his will ours. moreover, we discover a special value in his courage which, we feel, compensates for the evil of his suffering, defeat, or death. so long as we set any value on life, it is impossible for us not to esteem courage; for courage is at once the defense against attack of all our possessions and the source, in personal initiative and aggressive action, of newer and larger life. and any shrinking that we may feel against the sternness of the struggle is quenched both by the hero's example and by our recognition of its necessity. since we are not participants of it, our protest would be futile, and even if we played a part in it, we should be as foolish as we should be weak, not to recognize that the will which opposes us is as inflexible as our own--"such is life"--that is our ultimate comment. an appreciation of tragedy involves, therefore, a sure discernment of the essential disharmony of existence, yet at the same time, a feeling for the moral values which it may create; neither the optimist nor the utilitarian can enter into its world. there are, however, works of art in which sheer evil, without any compensating development of character, is portrayed; where indeed the struggle may even cause decay of character. in zola's _the dram shop_, for example, the story is the tale of the moral decline, through unfortunate circumstances and vicious surroundings, of the sweet, pliant gervaise. instead of developing a resistance to circumstances which would have made them yield a value even in defeat, she lets herself go and is spoiled beneath them. she has no friend to help or guardian angel to save. we do not blame her, for, with her soft nature, she could not do otherwise than crumble under the hard press of fate; neither can we admire her, for she lacks the adamantine stuff of which heroes are made. this is pathos, not tragedy. and just as most of human life involves tragedy in so far as it develops a strength to meet the dangers which threaten it, so likewise it involves pathos, in so far as it seldom resists at every point, but gives way, blighted without hope. many a man or woman issues from life's conflicts weaker, not stronger; broken, not defiant; petulant, not sweetened; and at the hour of death there are few heroes. yet there may be beauty in the story of this human weakness and weariness. whence comes it? how can the representation of this sheer evil become a good? the principle involved is a simple one. announced first, as far as i know, by mendelssohn, it has recently been much more scientifically and penetratingly analyzed by lipps, although wrongly applied by him to the tragic rather than the pathetic.[footnote: cf. lipps: _der streit ber die tragodie_, and _aesthetik_, bd. i, s. 599.] it is a familiar and generally recognized experience, as lipps has observed, that any threat or harm done to a value evokes in us a heightened appreciation of its worth. parting is a sweet sorrow because only then do we fully realize the worth of what we are losing; the beauty of youth that dies is more beautiful because in death its radiance shines the brighter in our memory. a good in contemplation comes to take the place of a lost good in reality. just as we hold on the more tightly to things that are slipping away from us in a vain effort to keep them, so to save ourselves from utter sorrow, we build up in the imagination a fair image of what we have lost, free of the dust of the world. this makes the peculiar charm of the delicate and fragile, of weak things and little things, of the transient and perishable; they awaken in us the tender, protective impulse while they last, and when they are gone they suffer at our hands an idealization which the strong and enduring can never receive. our pity for them mediates an increased love of them; we mock at fate which deprives us of them by keeping them secure and fairer in our memory. as in life, so in art. beneath and around the pictured destruction and ruin there opens up to us a more poignant vision of the loveliness of what was or might have been. at the end of _the dram shop_, when gervaise sinks into ruin, we inevitably revert to the beginning and see again, only more intensely, the gentle girl that she was, or else, going forward, we imagine what she might have been, if only she had been given a chance. the form of a possible good rises up from under the actual evil. the story of oppression becomes the praise of freedom; the picture of death, a vision of life. i know of no finer example of this in all literature than sophocles' _ajax_. ajax has offended athena, so he, the hero of the grecian host, is seized with the mad desire to do battle with cattle and sheep. in lucid intervals he laments to his wife the shameful fate which has befallen him. how glorious his former prowess appears lost in so ridiculous a counterfeit! and his despair creates its magic. in almost all so-called tragedies, true tragedy and pathos are intermingled; for we feel both pity and admiration, and the pity intensifies the admiration. the danger that threatens or the disaster that overwhelms the values which the hero embodies make us realize their worth the more. throughout the _antigone_ we admire the heroine's tragic courage of devotion; but it is at the point when, just before her death, she laments her youth and beauty that shall go fruitless- alechron, anymenaion, oute ton gamon mepos lachousan oute paideion tpophaes that we feel the fullness of strength that was needed for the sacrifice. one might perhaps think this lament a blemish of weakness in a picture of fortitude; but the impression is just the opposite, i believe; for force is measured by what it overcomes. there are so many different theories of tragedy that it would be impossible, were it worth while, to embark on a criticism of all of them. there are certain ones, however, which, because of their wide acceptance, demand some attention at our hands. first, it is often assumed that a tragedy should represent the good as ultimately triumphing, despite suffering and failure. but how can the good triumph when the hero fails and dies? only, it is answered, if the hero represents a cause which may win despite or even because of his individual doom; and it is with this cause, not with him, that we chiefly sympathize. this was hegel's view, who demanded that the tragic hero represent some universal interest which, when purged of the one-sidedness and uncompromising insistence of the hero's championing, may nevertheless endure and triumph in its genuine worth. in the _antigone_, hegel's favorite example, the cause of family loyalty finds recognition through the punishment of creon for the girl's death; while at the same time the principle of the sovereignty of the state is upheld through her sacrifice. there are many tragedies which conform, at least partially, to this scheme; but not all, hence it cannot be a universal norm. in _romeo and juliet_, for example, although the death of the young people serves to bring about a reconciliation of their families, the real principle for which they suffered--the right of private choice in matters of love--is in no way furthered by the outcome of the play. and, although it is always possible to universalize the good which is sought by any will, it is not possible to deflect upon a principle the full intensity of our sympathy, away from the individual, concrete passion and action. whenever a great personality is represented, it is his personal suffering and fortitude that win at once our pity and our admiration. for private sorrows, for the ruin of character, for the death of those whom we are made to love, there can be no complete atonement in the universal; because it is with the individual that we are chiefly concerned. no; the reconciliation lies where we have placed it--in tragedy, in the personal heroism of the strong character; in pathos, in the vision, not in the triumph, of the good. the ordinary protestant theological theory of tragedy is even more inadequate than the hegelian. for, by assuming that there is no genuine loss in the world, that every evil is compensated for in the future lives of the heroes, it takes away the sting from their sacrifice and so deprives them of their crown of glory. it makes every adventure a calculation of prudence and every despair a farce. it is remote from the reality of experience where men stake all on a chance and, instead of receiving the good by an act of grace, wring it by blood and tears from evil. on much the same level of thinking is the moralistic theory which requires that the misfortunes of the hero should be the penalty for some fault or weakness. this view, which has the authority of aristotle, is also based on the doctrine of the justice of the world-order. it was pretty consistently carried out in the classical greek drama; although there suffering is not exacted as an external retribution, but as the inevitable consequence of the turbulent passions of the characters; for even the punishment for offenses against the gods is of the nature of a personal revenge which they take. later, of course, when the gods retreated into the background of human life, retributive justice was conceived more abstractly. now, it must be admitted, i think, that this idea, so deeply rooted in the popular mind, has exerted a profound influence on the drama; yet it cannot be applied universally without sophistry. to be sure, in _romeo and juliet_, the young people were disobedient and headstrong; in _lear_, the old father was foolishly trustful of his wicked daughters; these frailties brought about their ruin. but did they deserve so hard a fate as theirs? did not lear suffer as much for his folly as his daughters for their wickedness? this is always true in life, and shakespeare holds the mirror up to nature--but is it consistent with the theory of retributive justice? one can usually trace back to some element of his nature, physical or moral, the misfortunes that befall an individual; even those which we call accidents, as galton claimed, are often due to some inherent defect of attention which makes us fail to respond protectively at the right moment. if we take the self to include the entire organism, then it remains true that we cooperate as a partial cause in all that happens to us. ophelia's weak and unresisting brain must share with the stresses which surrounded her the responsibility for her madness. in this sense, and in this sense only, do we deserve our fate, be it good or ill. yet, when interpreted in this broadest meaning, retributive justice loses all ethical significance. and the cosmic disharmony appears all the more glaring. it ceases to be chargeable to an external fate or god, to the environment or convention, which might perhaps be mastered and remolded; and is seen pervading the nature of reality itself, no accidental circumstance, but essential evil, ineradicable. the greatest tragic poets see it thus. and then blame turns to understanding and resentment into pity. retributive justice, as the motive force of tragedy, has for us lost its meaning. we no longer feel the necessity of justifying the ways of god to man, because we have ceased to believe that there exists any single, responsible power. the good is not a preordained and automatically accomplished fact, but an achievement of finite effort, appearing here and there in the world when individuals, instead of contending against each other, cooperate for their mutual advantage. in addition to the comic, there is much artistic representation of evil which can be classed neither as pathetic nor as tragic. neither moral admiration nor idealization are aroused by the characters portrayed. they may be great criminals like lady macbeth or iago, or the undistinguished and disorderly people of modern realistic literature, yet in either case we find them good to know. and we do so, not merely because we enjoy, as disinterested onlookers, the spectacle of human existence, but because the artist makes us enter into it and realize its values. for even that which from the moral point of view we pronounce evil is, so long as it maintains itself, a good thing from its own point of view. every will, however blind and careless, seeks a good and finds it, if only in hope and the effort to attain. through the intimacy of his descriptions and often against our resistance, the artist may compel us to adopt the attitude of the life which he is portraying, constraining us to feel the inner necessity of its choices, the compulsion of its delights. it is difficult to abandon ourselves thus to sympathy with what is wrong in life itself, because we have in mind the consequences and relations which make it wrong; yet we all do so at times, whenever we let ourselves go, charmed by its momentary offering. but in the world of art this is easier, because there the values, being merely represented, can have no sinister effects. when great personalities are portrayed, this abandon is readiest; for the strength or poignancy of their natures carries us away as by a whirlwind. witness lady macbeth when she summons the powers of hell to unsex her for her murderous task, or vanni fucci in the _inferno_,[footnote: _inferno_, canto 25, 1-3.] who mocks at god. for the instant, we become as they and feel their ecstasy of pride and power as our own. yet the great artist can awaken this sympathy even for characters that are small and weak. in gogol's _dead souls_, for example, there are no heroes. the most interesting characters are the country gentlemen who return to their estates planning to write books which will regenerate russia. but the old habits of life in the remote district are too strong. so, instead of writing, they fall back into the routine of their ancestors and merely smoke and dream. here are failure and mediocrity; yet so intimate is the artist's story that we not only understand it all, but feel how good it is--to dream our lives away. i do not doubt that in this story there are elements of pathos and comedy; yet, in general, the delineation is too objective for either; we neither laugh nor cry, but are simply borne on, unresisting, ourselves become a part of the silent tide of russian life. the problem of evil in aesthetics may finally be solved by the use of the comic. for in comedy we take pleasure in an object which, in the broadest sense, is evil. in order for an object to be comical there must be a standard or norm, an accepted system, within which the object pretends but fails to fit, and with reference to which, therefore, it is evil. there must be some points of contact between the object and the standard in order that there may be pretense, but not enough points for fulfillment. if we never had any definite expectations with reference to things, never made any demands upon them; if instead of judging them by our preconceived ideas, we took them just as they came and changed our ideas to meet them,--there would be nothing comical. or, if everything fitted into our expectations and was as we planned it, then again there would be nothing comical. in a world without ideas, the comic could not exist. the comic depends upon our apperceiving an object in terms of some idea and finding it incongruous. the most elementary illustrations demonstrate this. the unusual is the original comic; to the child all strange things are comical--the chinaman with his pigtail, the negro with his black skin, the new fashion in dress, the clown with his paint and his antics. as we get used to things, and that means as we come to form ideas of them into which they will fit, adjusting the mind to them, rather than seeking to adjust them to the mind, they cease to be comical. so fashions in dress or manners which were comical once, become matters of course and we laugh no longer. enduringly comic are only those objects that persistently create expectations and as persistently violate them. such objects are few indeed; but they exist, and constitute the perennial, yet never wearying, stock in trade of comedy. but the comic spirit does not have to depend upon them exclusively, for, as life changes, it constantly raises new expectations and offers new objects which at once provoke and fail to meet them. everything, therefore, is potentially comical and, in the course of human history, few things can escape a laugh; some curious mind is sure, sooner or later, to bring them under a new idea against which they will be shown up to be absurd. the sanctities of religion, love, and political allegiance have not been exempt. why, if the comical object is always opposed to our demands, should we take pleasure in it? how can we be reconciled to things that are admittedly incongruous with our standards? why are we not rather displeased and angry with them? investigators have usually looked for a single source of pleasure in the comic, but of those which have been suggested at least two, i think, contribute something. first, by adopting the point of view of the standard as our own, identifying ourselves with it, and through the contrast of ourselves with the object, we may take pleasure in the resulting exaltation of ourselves. the pleasure in the comic is often closely akin to that which we feel in distinction of any kind. we feel ourselves superior to the object at which we laugh. there is pride in much of laughter and not infrequently cruelty, a delight in the absurdities of other men because they exalt ourselves as the representatives of the rational and normal. there is often a touch of malice even in the laughter of the child. nevertheless, the pleasure in the comic is still contemplative, and so far aesthetic, because it is a pleasure in perception, not in action. no matter how evil be the comic object, we do not seek to destroy or remodel it; action is sublimated into laughter. but the pleasure in the comic may arise through our taking the opposite point of view--that of the funny thing itself. instead of upholding the point of view of the standard, we may identify ourselves with the object. if the comic spirit is oftentimes the champion of the normal and conventional, it is as often the mischief-maker and rebel. whenever the maintaining of a standard involves strain through the inhibition of instinctive tendencies, to relax and give way to impulse causes a pleasure which centers itself upon the object that breaks the tension. the intrusive animal that interrupts the solemn occasion, the child that wittingly or not scoffs at our petty formalities through his naive behavior, win our gratitude, not our scorn. they provide an opportunity for the welcome release of nature from convention. and the greater the strain of the tension, the greater the pleasure and the more insignificant the object or event that will bring relief and cause laughter. the perennial comic pleasure in the risque is derived from this source. there is an element of comic pleasure in the perpetration of any mischievous or unconventional act. those things which men take most seriously, schopenhauer has said, namely, love and religion, and we might add, morality, are the most abundant sources of the comic, because they involve the most strain and therefore offer the easiest chances for a playful release. even utter and absolute nonsense is comical because it undoes all kant's categories of mind. hence, contrary to the theory of bergson, the spontaneous as well as the mechanical and rigid may be comical. sometimes the same object may be comical from both the points of view which we have specified; this is always true, as we shall see, in the most highly developed comedy. for example, we may laugh at the child's prank because it is so absurd from the point of view of our grown-up expectations as to reasonable conduct, and at the same time, taking the part of the child, rejoice at the momentary relief from them which it offers us. our scorn is mixed with sympathy. and oftentimes the child himself will hold both points of view at once, laughing at his own absurdity and exulting nevertheless in his own freedom. this is the essence of slyness. it follows, moreover, that a thing which was comical for one of the reasons assigned may become comical for the other, by a simple change in the point of view regarding it. for the behavior which first pleased us because it was unconventional tends itself to become a new convention, with reference to which the old convention then becomes the object of a laughter which is scornful. the tables are turned: the rebel laughs at the king. the foregoing explanation of why we find the comical pleasant also explains why so many of our other pleasures are intermixed with the comical--why so often we not only smile when we are pleased, but laugh. for, in the case of all except the most elementary enjoyments, our pleasures are connected with the satisfaction of definite expectations regarding the actions or events of our daily lives. but, owing to the dulling effect of habit, the pleasure attendant upon these satisfactions gradually becomes smaller and smaller or even negligible; until, as a result, only the novel and surprising events which surpass our expectations give us large pleasure; but these are comical. with the child, whose expectations are rigid and few in number because of his lack of discrimination and small experience, almost all pleasures, like almost all events, are of the nature of surprises. the child almost always laughs when he is pleased. the slang phrase "to be highly tickled" expresses with precision this close connection between laughter and pleasure. moreover, as the complexity of life increases, its strains and repressions are multiplied, with the result that any giving way to an impulse contains a slight element of the mischievous or ridiculous; whence, for this reason too, the pleasant is also the comical. in fact, most of the pleasures of highly complex and reflective persons are tinged with laughter. we expect art to accomplish three great results--reconciliation, revelation, and sympathy. so far we have shown how comic art may accomplish the first; we have yet to prove how it may accomplish the rest. in his book _le rire_, bergson has expressed the view that comedy is explicitly falsifying and unsympathetic. as to the former charge, we can, i think, convince ourselves of the opposite if we examine certain of the more obvious methods of comedy, particularly those which might seem at first sight to lend support to his contention. one of the most common of these is exaggeration. the simplest example is caricature, where certain features of an object are purposely exaggerated. the effect is, of course, comical, because we expect the normal and duly-proportioned. what a manifest falsification, one might assert! yet just the opposite is the actual result. for every good caricaturist selects for exaggeration prominent and characteristic traits, through which by the very emphasis that is placed upon them, the nature of the individual is better understood. another favorite method is abstraction. certain traits are presented as if they were the whole man. we get the typical comic figures of the novel and drama; the physician who is only a physician; the lawyer who injects the legal point of view into every circumstance of life; the lover or the miser who is just love or greed; the people who, as in dickens, meet every situation with the same phrase or attitude, this, too, looks like a plain falsification of human nature, because, however strong be the professional bias or however overmastering the ruling passion, real people are always more complex and many-sided, having other modifying and counteracting elements of character which prevent their speech and actions from being completely monotonous and mechanical. nevertheless, we can again acquit the comic writer of falsification, because we understand the method which he is employing, the trick of his trade. he deceives no one. on the contrary, he enables us to perceive the logic of certain elementary springs of character. following the method of the experimentalist, he selects certain aspects from the total complexity of a phenomenon and shows how they work when isolated from the rest. and, like the man of science, he provides insight into the normal, because we can accept his results as at least partially or approximately true. art of this kind is abstract and therefore less valuable than the portrayal of the concrete; yet only the dogmatist who insists on the restriction of art to the individual can reject it. there is, however, a third common method of comical representation which neither exaggerates nor abstracts, but preserves the concreteness of the finest art--we may call it the method of contrast. it consists in exhibiting the contrast between the actual conduct of men and women and the standard,--either that which they themselves profess to live up to or our own, which we impose upon them. their pretenses are unmasked or their absurdities shown up against the ideal of reasonableness. we behold the _bourgeois_ who would be a gentleman remain _bourgeois_ and the women who would be scholars remain women. success in comedy of this kind depends upon possessing the ability to formulate the implicit assumptions underlying the behavior of the people portrayed or to make one's own standards with reference to them valid for the spectator. here is no falsification, but, on the contrary, a vivid revelation of the truth; because, just as by placing two colors in contrast with one another the hue of each is intensified, so by setting man in relief against the background of what he ought to be, we perceive his real nature more sharply. as the child dressed like a grown-up appears all the more childish for his garb, so man appears the more human for his pretenses. to be sure, in order to increase the comical effect, this method is often employed in conjunction with that of exaggeration. the athenian democracy was probably not quite so stupid as aristophanes represents it; the average britisher is not so philistine as shaw paints him. yet the measure of exaggeration may be small and we readily discount it. and finally, whereas in simple representation there is a revelation of the object only, in comical representation there is a two-fold revelation,--of the ideal and of the incongruous reality. the former is always indirectly revealed; for, as we know, the very existence of the comic depends upon it. the man who laughs, his notion of the right and the reasonable, his attitude towards the world and life, become manifest through the things which he laughs at. only a man of a certain kind, with a certain sympathy and antipathy, could laugh as he laughs. the comic writer, however much of a scoffer and a skeptic, and however much he may deny it, is always an idealist. and it is for the revelation of themselves as much as for the revelation of the people whom they portray that we value the work of a swift, a voltaire, or a thackeray. another charge which has been brought against the comic is that it is unsympathetic. its attitude, it is said, is one of externality, opposed therefore to the intimacy necessary for the complete aesthetic reaction. whereas simple aesthetic representation places us within the object itself, comical representation only exhibits a relation between it and an idea. we judge it from our point of view, not from its own. the pleasure in pride and superiority which we feel towards the comical object seems also inconsistent with sympathy; for sympathy would create a fellow feeling with it, and place us not above, but on a level with it. if we do sympathize, the comic object ceases to be comical and becomes pathetic. we can find the follies and sins of men comical just so long as we do not sympathize with the sufferings which they entail. there is nothing comical that may not also become pathetic; and the difference depends exactly on the presence or absence of sympathy. nothing, for example, is more pathetic than death; yet if you keep yourself free of its sorrow, there is nothing more comical--that man, a little lower in his own estimation than the angels, should come to this, a lump of clay. it is unquestionably true that a free, disinterested attitude is essential to comedy. you must not let yourself be carried away by any feeling; if you are over-serious you cannot laugh; you must keep to reflection and comparison. yet this attitude is not utterly destructive of all feeling. man is complex enough at once to feel and to reflect. he can pity as well as laugh. the pathetic and the comic are constantly conjoined--witness our feeling towards don quixote or towards any of the great characters of thackeray--we do not know whether to laugh or to cry. and in the most effective comedy, the standard applied to the comical object is not foreign, but rather, as we have observed, the implicit standard of the object itself, discernible only by the most intimate acquaintance with it. the sting of laughter comes from our acceptance of it as valid for ourselves; we blush and join in the laugh at ourselves. the mischievous-comic, moreover, depends directly upon sympathy; for it requires that we take the point of view of the funny thing; our pleasure in it implies a secret sympathy for it--we hold it up to a standard, yet all the time are in sympathy with its rebellion. when we laugh at the prank of the child, love is mixed with the laugh. the dual nature of man as at once a partisan of convention and of the impulses that it seeks to regulate, is nowhere better illustrated than in the comic. finally, disinterestedness is not peculiar to comedy; for it pervades all art. feeling must be dominated by reflection; even pathos demands this, for, if we lose ourselves in sorrowful feeling, no fair image can arise and steady us. there is, however, much comedy that is obviously unsympathetic, even hostile. there is satire, which condemns, as well as humor which pardons. the one blames the unexpected and unconventional, the other sympathizes with it. comedy is either biting or kindly. the one is moralistic and reformatory in its aim, the other is aesthetic and contemplative. because of its failure in sympathy, satirical comedy is incomplete as art. it provides insight and pleasure in the object, but no union with it. it does not attain to beauty, which is free and reconciling. kindly comedy or humor, on the other hand, is full beauty, combining sympathy with judgment, abandon with reflection. nevertheless, satire tends inevitably towards humor. for what we laugh at gives us pleasure, and what pleases us we must inevitably come to like, and what we like cannot long fail to win our sympathy. i do not think that even a swift or a voltaire could have been irreconcilably opposed to a world which offered them so much merriment. the satire, which begins in moral fervor, must end in understanding. the bond that binds us to our fellows is too strong to be broken by the aloofness of our condemnation. the same intelligence that discerns the incongruity between what men ought to be and what they are, cannot fail to penetrate the impelling reasons for the failure. only in humor is sympathetic insight complete. satire has the temporal usefulness of a practical expedient, humor the eternal value of beauty. chapter vii the standard of taste our interest in art is seldom a matter of mere feeling or appreciation; usually it is a matter of judgment as well. beginning in feeling, the sthetic experience passes over into comparison and estimation--into criticism, and there finds its normal completion. this, which is evidently true of the aesthetic life of artists and connoisseurs, is true also of average men. we all enjoy the beautiful in silence, but afterwards we want to talk about it to our friends. if conversation about art were suppressed, the interest in it would hardly survive. on this side, the enjoyment of art is intensely sociable, for to the civilized man sociability means discourse. but, as kant pointed out, it is characteristic of conversation about art that the participants try to reach agreement in their judgments without acknowledging common principles with reference to which disputes can be decided. and yet, since no man is content to hold an opinion all by himself, but each tries to persuade the others of the validity of his own judgment, it would seem as if there must be some axioms or postulates admitted by all. hence what kant called the antinomy of taste: thesis--the judgment of taste is not based on principles, for otherwise we would determine it by proofs; antithesis--the judgment of taste is based on principles, for otherwise, despite our disagreements, we should not be quarreling about it. in accordance with this situation, two opposed theories of criticism have always existed. on the one hand, in face of the apparent lawlessness of beauty, some thinkers have believed that there exist principles which can be applied to works of art to test their beauty with a certainty equal to that of the principles of logic in their application to inferences. lessing, for example, in the _hamburgische dramaturgic_ wrote that the laws laid down by aristotle in the _poetics_ were as certain in their application to the drama as euclid's _elements_ in geometry. this comparison is a forcible statement of belief in the existence of aesthetic standards, held by the entire classical tradition, and still held by those who are spiritually akin to it, although of course no one to-day would claim--and when it came to details lessing himself did not claim--that the judgment of aristotle or of any one else is infallible. to-day those who believe in the possibility of rational aesthetic criticism think that reflection upon the purpose and methods of the arts results in the formulation of broad principles by means of which judgments of taste can be appraised and a community of taste achieved. these principles, they would admit, are more difficult of application than the simpler logical rules, owing to the greater subtlety and complexity of art, yet, when found, have an equal validity within their own field. on the other hand, the view that "there is no disputing about tastes" has never lacked adherents. according to this view, criticism can be only a report of personal, enthusiastic appreciation or repugnance without claim to universality. anatole france, surely a master of such criticism, has expressed this conviction as follows: "l'estetique ne repose sur rien de solide. c'est un chateau en pair. on veut l'appuyer sur pethique. mais il n'y a pas d'ethique. il n'y a pas de sociologie" ... and again, in the same preface to _la vie litteraire:_ "pour fonder la critique, on parle de tradition et de consentement universel. il n'y en a pas. l'opinion presque general, il est vrai, favorise certains oeuvres. mais c'est en vertu d'un prejuge, et nullement par choix et par effet d'une preference spontane. les oeuvres que tout le monde admire sont celles que personne n'examine." although the classic view is, i think, nearer the truth, let us examine the arguments that may be advanced in favor of the impressionistic theory, as it has been called. what is there about aesthetic appreciation that makes it seemingly so recalcitrant to law? first, every aesthetic experience is unique, and therefore, it is claimed, incomparable. art is the expression of personality, and personality is always individual. but unique things are, in the end, incapable of classification, hence are not amenable to general laws or principles. of course, works of art can be classified by following some abstract characteristic, arranged in a series according as this quality is realized in them to a greater or less degree; but, in so far as a work is beautiful, it contains at least one quality not possessed by other works, the quality that gives it its distinctive flavor,--which is, indeed, its beauty. the impressionist would admit, for example, that in intellectual power keats's _eve of st. agnes_ is inferior to wordsworth's _intimations_; also that it lacks the moral grandeur of the latter; but would claim, on the other hand, that in saying this, one is far from judging the beauty of keats's poem, because that is completely lacking in wordsworth. so far as the poem is beautiful, it is unique; hence you get no farther with it through comparison with some other poem. you either appreciate it absolutely or you do not; if you do, well and good; you may then write a prose poem about it, if you desire, and so communicate some of your feeling for it to another person; if you do not appreciate it, no one can blame you or quarrel with you; all that any one can do is to invite you to read again, and, perhaps through his eloquence, seek to inspire you with--his own enthusiasm. every work of art is superlative. just as the lover thinks his sweetheart the most beautiful woman in the world, so he who appreciates a work of art finds it supreme. and among superlatives there is no comparison, no better or worse. from another point of view, moreover, the aesthetic experience seems unfavorable to comparison and classification. for a work of art demands a complete abandon of self, an entire absorption in it of attention and emotion. every picture has a frame, and every other work of art an ideal boundary to keep you in its world. beyond the frame you shall not go; beyond the stage you shall not pass; beyond the outline of the statue you shall not look. and if you do pass beyond, you have lost the full intensity and flower of the experience; and whatever comparisons you then make will not concern its original and genuine beauty. every work of art is jealous; to appreciate it aright, you must for the moment appreciate it singly, without thought of another. finally, the impressionist or skeptic would maintain that an alleged aesthetic principle would necessarily be abstracted from extant works of art; hence could not be applied to new art. a thing which does not belong within a class cannot be judged by principles governing that class. in so far, therefore, as a work of art is original, it must frustrate any attempt to judge it by traditional, historical standards--and what other standards are there? although the two facts of the aesthetic experience--its uniqueness and claim to complete sympathy--upon which the skeptical opinion can be based, are undoubted, the inferences deduced from them do not follow. if they did follow, the aesthetic experience would be fundamentally different from every other type; it would be totally atomic and discrete, instead of fluid and continuous like the rest. but its apparent discreteness is due to a failure to distinguish between the silent, unobtrusive working of comparison and the more obvious and self-conscious working. when rapt in the contemplation of a work of art, i may seemingly have no thought for other works; relative isolation and circle-like self-completeness are characteristic of the aesthetic experience; yet, as a matter of fact, the completeness of my reaction and the measure of my delight and absorption are partly determined by the accordance of the given work of art with a certain expectation or set of mind with reference to objects of its sort. i can consent fully to the will of the artist only if he has first consented to my will as expressed in other works which i have enjoyed and praised. the situation in aesthetics is no different from that which exists in any other field of values; through many experiences of good things i come to form a type or standard of what such things should be like; and, if any new thing of the kind is presented to me, i cannot be so well pleased with it if it does not conform. the type may never be formulated by me explicitly, yet it will operate none the less. the formation of what is called good taste occurs by exactly this process. the first work of art that i see, if it please me, becomes my first measure. if i see a second, in order to win my approval, it will either have to satisfy the expectation aroused by the first, or else surpass it. in the latter case, a standard somewhat different from the old is created through the new experience; and, when i have acquired a large acquaintance with works of art, there grows up a standard which is the resultant of all of them--a type or schema no longer associated with particular works. sometimes, however, it happens that the standard continues to be embodied in some one or few works which, because of outstanding excellence, serve as explicit paradigms governing judgment; such works are classics in the true sense. and the impressionist is certainly wrong in his contention that the aesthetic appreciation of a work of art excludes the recall of other works and conscious comparison with them. it is only when appreciation is of the more naive sort that this is the case. the trained observer, on seeing one of vermeer's pictures, for example, cannot fail to think of other works of the same artist; and, if he is learned in the history of art, he may even recall the whole development of dutch painting. for the moment, perhaps, at the beginning, the single work will completely absorb the attention; but, as we linger in appreciation and reflect upon it, our memory is sure to work. and the process of memory and comparison cannot be excluded on the ground that it is an external, irrelevant context to appreciation; for it actually functions to determine the degree of pleasure and absorption in a work of art. moreover, this process of memory and comparison is not confined to the individual observer; it is social and historical as well. all art movements are inspired by the desire to improve on, or to create something different from, the conserved tradition. the process of creation itself involves comparison and the recognition of a standard. and for our civilization at any rate these movements are international. they are not the products of isolated discrete groups, impenetrable to each other, but of a relatively universal, continuous experience. as for the uniqueness of aesthetic value, that, to be sure, is a fact; yet uniqueness is never the whole of any object. those aspects which ally it with other things are just as genuinely its own as those which differentiate it from them; they equally are a part of its beauty. the attempt to separate any part of a work of art from the rest as "the real part" is an unwarranted and arbitrary dismemberment. the work is whole, and beauty belongs to it as whole. hence, when, through comparison, you attend to the qualities that are shared with other works, you are still judging the reality and beauty of the object, quite as much as when you seek to taste its unique flavor. a competent judgment can neglect no aspect. the judgment that a work of art is better or worse than another in some general aspect touches it just as surely as the feeling for its distinctiveness. and if it be true that so far as things are unique they are all on a level, it is equally true that so far as they are not unique they are capable of being serialized, and our total judgment upon them must follow the lines of comparison. it is impossible, therefore, not to compare works of art one with another. we will concede to the impressionist that anything which anybody finds beautiful is beautiful momentarily; but we must insist on the everyday fact that, because of the operation of the standard as a result of growing experience in art, what once seemed beautiful often ceases to seem so. and we must also insist that among the things surviving as beautiful we inevitably set up a hierarchy, a scale. a plurality of values, each unique and in its own way indispensable to a complete world of values, is not inconsistent with relations of higher and lower among them. the impressionist has taught us to love variety and to renounce the bigotry of the old refusal to accept anything short of the highest. but in aesthetics--and in ethics too, i believe--the standpoint of spinoza rules: "god is revealed in the mouse as well as in the angel, although less in the mouse than in the angel;" and, i should add, the revelation through the humbler mouse is necessary to a complete revelation of god, that is, of the good. or, as nietzsche said, "_vieler edlern naemlich bedarf es, dass es adel gebe!_" our appreciation of _midsummer night's dream_ does not prevent us from appreciating _alice in wonderland,_ just as our esteem for the man does not hinder our feeling for the peculiar charm of the child. what takes place through the process of comparison is this: we come increasingly to realize what we want of art. every artist seeks to express something in terms of the material with which he works. but it is only by experimenting with his medium that he learns what he can and what he cannot do; and it is only by constant hospitable, yet discriminating appreciation by us spectators that we, in our turn, discover what to demand of him and commend. consider, for example, the history of painting. that we want of a picture, sometimes the delineation of emotion and action, yes; but above all and always, the representation of visible nature, with space and atmosphere and light--this purpose has been developed slowly and as the result of many experiments and comparisons. but having won it, we are secure in it. we shall still appreciate the beauty of the primitives and academics, but we shall not be able again to prefer them to the _plein-airistes_. or recall the development of english poetry. we still admit the contribution of dryden and pope, but we shall never have to fight over again the battle won by wordsworth and his contemporaries for imagination and emotion. our conception of the purpose of poetry has been enriched by an insight that we cannot permanently lose. there are, to be sure, retrograde movements in the arts--like the pre-raphaelite movement in painting--but they are soon recognized as such. now with reference to the purpose of art to express in a given material, there are, i think, a few general principles of judgment applying to all the arts, implicitly or explicitly recognized in criticism, and capable of formulation. first, the complete use of the medium. we prefer, other things being equal, the work of art that has fully exploited the expressive possibilities of its medium to one that has failed to do so. as an illustration, i would cite the almost universal condemnation, at the present time, of neo-classical sculpture, in which the touch values of the surfaces of statues were destroyed. of course some compensating gain may be claimed--a greater visual purity; yet, as we shall see, from the point of view of expression, the gain was negligible compared with the loss. so likewise, unless the _vers-libristes_ can show some positive gain in expression,--a power to do something that normal verse cannot do, their work must rank lower than normal verse, which makes fuller use of the rhythmic possibilities of language. second, the unique use of the material. what we want of art depends, not only on comparison between works of art belonging to the same genre, but on comparison of the purposes of different genres, indeed of the different arts themselves. what we want of painting depends upon what we want of sculpture; what we want of poetry depends upon what we want of painting and music. we compare picture with picture; but equally we compare picture with statue and poem. we do not want the sculptor to try to do what the painter can do better, and vice-versa; or the poet to encroach on the domains proper to the musician and painter. we do not want poetry to be merely imagistic or merely musical when we have another art that can give us much better pictures and still another that can give us much better music than any word-painting or word-music. when we read a poem, we do not want to be made to think how much better the same thing could be done in a different medium. there is nothing so salutary in keeping an art to its proper task as a flourishing condition of the other arts. here the great example is france, where the limitations of the different arts have been best recognized all the while the highest level of perfection has been reached in many arts contemporaneously. third, the perfect use of the medium in the effort to fulfill the artistic purpose of sympathetic representation--the power to delight the senses and create sympathy for the object expressed, on the one hand, and the range of the vision of the object, on the other; the depth and the breadth of the aesthetic experience. with reference to the former we ask: how vividly does the work of art force us to see; how completely does it make us enter into the world it has created; and, in doing this, how poignantly has it charmed us, how close has it united us to itself? the measure of this is partly subjective and irreducible to rules; yet experience in the arts establishes a norm or schema of appreciation through the process of comparison, largely unconscious, by which what we call good taste is acquired. there are certain works of art that seem to have fulfilled this requirement in the highest possible degree, thus attaining to perfection within their compass. such, for example, are some of sappho's or goethe's lyrics, or the fifth canto of the _inferno_. nothing more perfect, more beautiful of their kind can be conceived. and to see how works of art may differ in degree of perfection of sympathetic vision, one has only to recall lesser works expressing the same themes. yet we recognize greater works even than those cited--works in which, although the sympathetic vision is no more penetrating and compelling, it is broader, more inclusive. goethe's _faust_ is greater than any of his lyrics because the range of experience which it expresses is vaster. a velasquez is greater than a peter de hooch because, in addition to an equal beauty of expression through color and line and composition, an equal dominion over light and space, it contains a marvelous revelation of the inner life, which is absent from the latter. according to berenson, no one has yet painted the perfect landscape because thus far only a certain few aspects have been expressed, but not all. there are, i think, certain qualities which are generally recognized as necessary to the perfect fulfillment of the artistic purpose of a work; which follow, indeed, from the very meaning of art. thus, without uniqueness and freshness there can be no perfection in artistic expression. a well-worn or even an identical expression may have value in the solution of a practical problem, or in bringing men into good-natured relationships with one another in social life; as when, for example, the officer cries "halt!" repeatedly, or we say "good morning" at breakfast; because, in such cases, the expression gets its significance from the context in which it belongs. but in art, where expression is freed from the particular setting within which it arises, thus attaining universality, the repetitious and imitative, having no environment from which they may derive new meaning, are purposeless. they are, indeed, worse than negligible, because having grown into the habit of expecting originality, we are disappointed and bored when we fail to find it. originality is, of course, relative; it is not incompatible with the reminiscence of old works--what works of art are not reminiscent?--but it does prohibit saying the old things over again in the same medium; the artist must have a new message to put into the medium; or else, if the old themes are still near to his heart, he must invent a new form in which to express them, from which they will derive a new music. closely allied to freshness are spontaneity and inner necessity, the signs of a genuine, as opposed to a factitious, expression. if we get the impression from a work of art that no part could be otherwise--not a single line or note or stroke of the brush--then we have the same sort of feeling towards it that we have towards the living thing that was not made by hands capriciously, but grew in its inevitable way in accordance with the laws of its own nature. of course, works of art are products of thought, of plan, and conscious purpose; they are seldom composed all at one flash, but grow tentatively into their final form; nevertheless, in the words of kant, "a work of art must look like nature, albeit we know that it is art." sense charm and order are also necessary; for they are the conditions of a perfect sympathy and vision. we are indulgent towards the vigorous, impatient passion that bubbles over into rough and careless music or poetry, but are not satisfied with it. for art's task is not merely to express, but to dominate through expression, to create out of expression, beauty; and without order and charm of sense, there is no beauty. compose your passion, we say to the musician; pattern it forth, we say to the poet; it will not lose its vigor; rather it will acquire a new power; for thus it will achieve restraint, the sign of art's dominion. the recognition of the principles indicated presupposes, of course, that art really has a purpose with reference to which it can be judged as successful or unsuccessful. but i do not see how this can very well be denied. art is one of the oldest of human activities, one might almost say institutions, and it is inconceivable that it should not have been directed by some intention, conscious or unconscious. to be sure, men have expressed this intention in varying, often in inconsistent ways, but the same is true of all other human activities and institutions. few would deny, i suppose, that science and the state have purposes; yet how various have been the definitions of them. these variations have corresponded, without doubt, to adaptations to new conditions, yet throughout some unique purpose in human life has been subserved. so with art. art has been identified now with one interest and now with another; what people want of art differs from one age to another, and each must define that for itself; yet throughout there has been a core of identity in the purposes it has served. in our own age we witness the attempt to distinguish the purpose of art from the purposes of other elements of civilization, with which it has often been fused and confused,--science, religion, morality. correspondingly we witness the effort to limit the functions of political control; to take from its jurisdiction religion, culture, love. and this effort is for the sake of a fuller and freer realization of values. furthermore, not only has art a general function, but this function is differentiated among the different art forms and genres. no work of art can be judged without reference to its function. its beauty consists in the fulfillment of this function. now this function is, of course, largely unique for each art form and for each particular work of art, and every work has to be judged with reference to its individual purpose, yet a knowledge of other works of the same artist and the same genre, and of the general history of art, helps to divine this purpose and to judge of its relative success. there is a large measure of continuity in the intentions of a given artist and school of art. the development of painting in the last century is a striking illustration of such continuity. the painters sought to develop a definite tradition, thinking of themselves as carrying further the work of their predecessors. of course these developments were largely technical in character, but beauty itself is the fruition of technique. the people who base a skeptical opinion upon the historical changes in taste forget that taste is necessarily a growth; that it is developed by trial and error, through and despite the following of many false paths. only if the standard were something delivered to men by divine revelation--as indeed the old dogmatists came very close to believing-would it be strange and inconsistent for changes to occur. but if, as is the fact, the standard is experimental and representative of actual artistic purposes, then change is normal. moreover, the standard is not single and absolute, but plural and relative. growth in taste means not only development along a given line, within a given form, but enlargement through the origination of new forms and beauties. it is not like the straight line growth of an animal, but rather radial, like the growth of a plant, sending out branches in every direction. an art may attain to perfection in a certain genre, and then continue only through the creation of new types. thus sculpture and architecture reached a kind of perfection in the classic, beyond which it was impossible to go--the only possible development lay in the creation of new types. if it is true, then, that the existence of standards has a sound basis in the aesthetic experience, how can their apparent failure to work and secure unanimity of judgment be explained? how account for the actual chaos of judgment? partly, at least, because many judgments passed on works of art are not aesthetic judgments at all. these must be eliminated if any consensus is to be won. we may call these judgments "pseudosthetic" judgments. they fall naturally into several classes, which it will be worth while to describe. first, there is the very large class of partisan judgments--judgments based, not upon a free appreciation, but upon some personal predilection or transient appeal. to this class belong the special preferences of boyhood and youth--the liking for cooper and jules verne, for example-and those due to nationality, like the englishman's choice of thackeray and the frenchman's of balzac, or, what is a more flagrant case, the long resistance of the french public to the beauty of wagner's music. the former type of judgment is corrected by the simple process of maturing, when the beauties appreciated in youth are not lost, but only given their due place in the hierarchy of aesthetic values; the latter type, on the other hand, being more deeply based, is more difficult to remedy. but that even this prejudice can be largely overcome is shown by the example of critics who, through prolonged sympathetic study, come to prefer the art of a foreign land. a notable example of this is meier-graeffe, who condemns almost all of modern german painting and exalts the french. [footnote: see his _modern art_, and his special studies of manet, renoir, and degas.] patriotic preferences are so difficult to overcome because they spring from limitations of sympathy. sympathy depends upon acquaintance, and few of us can acquire the same expertness in an alien language or artistic form that we possess in our own. yet, understanding the reason for these deficiencies of judgment, we can go to work to improve them, through increasing our knowledge of foreign art. no less inevitable psychologically is the preference for works of art that treat of the problems and conditions of contemporary life. part of this, to be sure, is expressive merely of some transient mood of the popular mind. the enthusiasm, happily passing, for the plays of brieux or the craze for algerian landscapes in france after the acquirement of the colony, are examples. such preferences, being superficially motivated, correct themselves with ease, giving way to some new fashion in taste. the preference for works of art that reflect the more serious and permanent problems of contemporary society is more firmly rooted. men inevitably seek the artistic expression of the things that deeply concern them. the problems of the reconstruction of the family, of the working classes, and of government must continue to inspire art and to determine our interest in it, until new difficulties occupy our minds. the mere passage of time, however, brings a remedy for critical injustices flowing from this source; for, when present problems are solved, the difference between living art, which expresses them, and historical art, vanishes. then, only those works which reflect the eternal enigmas have any advantage over the others. the same process tends to eliminate the prejudice, rooted in temperament, in favor of the old and familiar in art; or, following a different bent, in favor of the new and startling. in such cases, a just estimate can be made only when the new becomes the old, and both are reduced to a common level. another type of pseudo-aesthetic judgment is the imitative. by this i mean the judgment which is made because somebody else has made it, particularly somebody in authority. the imitative judgment is the expression, in the field of aesthetics, of what trotter has called "herd instinct," [footnote: see his _the herd instinct in peace and war_, first part.] the tendency on the part of the gregarious animal to make his acts and habits conform to those of another member of the same group, particularly if that member is a leader or represents the majority. the dislike of loneliness and the love of companionship operate, as we have already had occasion to notice, even in the sphere of the spirit. differences here separate people just as other differences do. in art, herd instinct tends to make the judgment of the authoritative or fashionable critic take the place of spontaneous and sincere judgment. i do not mean that such judgments are usually consciously insincere; although they often are so, since men seek to ingratiate themselves by flattering even the aesthetic opinions of those whose love or protection they desire. i do mean, however, that they tend to suppress opinions which would reflect an autonomous appreciation. moreover, whatever may be said for herd-instinct in the realm of politics and morals, where the need for common action makes necessary some sort of consensus among the members of a group, very little can be said for it in aesthetics, where no practical issues are directly involved. there, herd instinct simply substitutes sham appreciation for a vital and healthy reaction. of course, imitative judgments must be distinguished from those that agree because they are based on a genuine contagion or community of feeling. this distinction may be a difficult one for the outsider to make; but is not so for the individual concerned. i do not deny the value of authority in aesthetics; what i am inveighing against is the substitution of authority for sincerity. in art, the suasion of the norm should be absolutely free, with no penalty except isolation from the best. the only value of authority is to counteract laziness and superficiality of appreciation; to stimulate those who would rest content with first impressions to a more studious and attentive examination. yet, however great be our natural desire to convince others of beauty, we want their conviction to be as sincere as our own: we do not want it to be factitious,--suggested or dragooned. it is often too easy, rather than too hard, to win agreement. the question of the place of authority in aesthetics is raised again by a consideration of another class of pseudo-aesthetic judgments, which i shall call ignorant judgments. these judgments are perfectly sincere, but express an aesthetic experience that is imperfect, owing to defective understanding of art. so many people judge works of art as if they could assimilate them immediately, without any knowledge of their purpose and technique. they fail to recognize that a work of art has a language, with a vocabulary and grammar, which has to be mastered through study. a work of art is a possibility of a certain complex of values, not a given actuality that can be grasped by merely stretching out the hand. very little of any work of art is given--just a few sense stimuli; the rest is an emotional and meaningful reaction, which has to be completed in a determinate fashion. a work of art is a question to which the right answer has to be found. and in order to find the answer, it is necessary to know both what to look for and what not to look for. for example, in judging japanese prints, one must realize, from the limitation of the medium, that one cannot look for all the fullness of expression of shadow and atmosphere possible in an oil painting; or in judging decorative or post-impressionistic painting, one must realize that the purpose of the artist is chiefly to obtain musical effects from color and line, not to represent nature realistically. because works of art are ideals, possibilities of experience, and not given things which everybody can appreciate without knowledge and effort, i am skeptical of all results obtained in laboratories of experimental aesthetics, where college students are asked to judge works of painting, music, and sculpture. an uninstructed majority vote cannot decide any question in aesthetics. such experiments, with the exception of those that concern the most elementary reactions, yield interesting statistical results about the groups employed as subjects, but are of no value in aesthetics. and what wonder that we should find people disagreeing in their judgments when, because of ignorance, they are not reporting about the same objects! finally, an aesthetic consensus is possible only if non-aesthetic standards and all judgments based on false conceptions of the purpose of art are eliminated. some of these judgments i have already discussed--the scientific and the moralistic. the purpose of art is sympathetic vision, not scientific truth or edification. it is often necessary, in order to win a vision of actual life, for the artist to possess scientific knowledge; but only as a means, not as an end. and again, insight into the more enduring preferences of men and the conditions of their happiness, upon which rational moral standards are founded, is indispensable to a complete interpretation of life; but there is much of life that can be envisaged sympathetically, that is, artistically and beautifully, with small hold on ethical wisdom. no one, i suppose, would regard de maupassant as a wise man in the greek sense of possessing a philosophical grasp of the norms which make up the conscience of men, yet few would deny him the supreme gift of delineating the pathos and comedy of passion. i do not doubt that men will always judge works of art from abstract standpoints; that to-day they will judge them from the points of view of science and morals, since we are so dominated by their sway; but i do claim that these standards are not aesthetic, and that so long as they control our estimates of art, there can never be anything except chaos in taste; for they will always come into conflict with the genuinely aesthetic point of view. and, i ask, why not grant to art its autonomy? if art has a unique purpose, different from that of science or morals, why should we not judge it in terms of that purpose? of course, since man's nature is one, not many, it will always be impossible entirely to get rid of the non-aesthetic bases of judgment. personal predilection for a certain kind of subject-matter, patriotic preference for one's own language and style, the influence of authority and the lure of the crowd, the intrusion of the moralistic and the scientific bias,--all these must, to a greater or less degree, divide and dispute the hegemony of taste. nevertheless, although it is impossible to reach a pure aesthetic judgment, we ought to strive to approach it, and, by dint of training and clear thinking about art, we can approach it. we ought to do this, not because of any formalism or purism, but for the sake of preserving the unique value of art, which is covered up or destroyed by the intrusion of non-aesthetic standards of judgment. for judgment does influence feeling, especially such a delicate and subtle thing as aesthetic feeling. the patriotic and the partisan judgments narrow appreciation, the imitative substitute a judgment for a feeling, the moralistic and scientific prejudices often inhibit the possibility of the aesthetic reaction at the start, or, if they allow it to begin, prevent the full sympathy and abandon which are required for its consummation. we can get scientific truth from science, why then seek it in art? we can obtain moral wisdom from the philosopher and priest, why require it of the artist? reformers and statesmen will enlighten us concerning reconstruction, why not turn to them? i do not mean, of course, that art may not express the mystery and the wonder of science, the voice of conscience, the cry of distress; but even this is not science, or sociology, or morals; and art must and should also express dark passion, hot hate or love, and joy--in the sea, in sunlight, in the shadow of leaves on the grass, in the bodies of men and women--and the other myriad forms of human life and nature that are neither right nor true, but simply are. and furthermore: the tyranny of the scientific and the moral is the death of art. art can live only when free. so long as men are subject to the exclusive habit of condemning and praising and analyzing and classifying, they are incapable of a free envisagement and expression. between sociology and puritanism, the artistic novel and the drama have become all but impossible in this country. during the nineteenth century, the predilection, among the pre-raphaelites, for the scientific and moral nearly killed landscape painting in england, its birthplace. and only in france, where alone of modern nations the moral and hygienic attitude towards the human body has not completely driven out the artistic, has there been a vital and enduring sculpture. if the aesthetic judgment is given autonomy, a sure foundation for aesthetic norms can be established, because then art will be judged with reference to a perfectly definite purpose. feeling will always tell us whether a thing is beautiful or not; but feeling itself will depend upon whether the implicit purpose of art has been realized; and, when we reflectively consider a work in relation to other works, we shall have a solid basis for comparison. judgment will have a foundation in reason as well as in feeling. we shall ask of the artist, not whether he has instructed us or edified us, but solely whether he has given us a new and sympathetic vision of some part of our experience. the kind of vision that he gives us will depend, of course, upon the materials of his art--it will be one thing in sound, another in color or line or patterned words. even as we demand of art in general a unique value, as fulfilling a unique function, so we shall demand of the different arts that each provide us with the unique beauty which its materials can create. we shall therefore commend the separation of the arts and view with suspicion any attempt to fuse them. whatever be his materials, we shall demand of the artist always the same result: that he make us see, and command our sympathy and delight for his vision. any judgment that we make, or any standard that we set up, must proceed upon a knowledge of this master purpose and of the materials and technique of the particular art through which it is to be realized. and such standards, experimental and tentative, but nevertheless potent and directive, are capable of discovery and formulation. some of the larger and more important of these we shall try to set forth in our chapters on the special arts. an artist who works within these standards is sure to produce something beautiful; one who breaks them will fail or, rarely, find some hitherto undiscovered, surprising beauty in the medium. there still remains for consideration the fear lest the recognition of standards may discourage new experiments and so interfere with the creative impulse. it is true that tragedies have occurred when criticism has been unsympathetic and malicious--remember keats and the struggles of the early french impressionistic painters--but even then i doubt if any real harm to art has resulted. for the situation in aesthetics differs from the situation in ethics and politics where the retarding effect of convention is undeniable. in art there can never be the same closeness of alliance between convention and vested interests that is so repressive a force in the "world." it is probably true indeed that, as plato said, "when the modes of music change, so do constitutions change"; for example, there is doubtless to-day some connection between imagist poetry, post-impressionistic painting, russian music, and revolutionary sentiment--witness, in our own country, _the masses_ and _the seven arts_--but the link is too delicate to alarm the powers that be. the upholding of a standard must be allied with material interests if it is to be repressive of creation and novelty. but, as a free force, operating solely by influence, the standard has the effect only of keeping alive the love of excellence, and, by providing some stability in the old, creating that contrast between the new and the old, so stimulating to the new itself. for the impulse to originate operates best alongside of and in opposition to the desire to conserve. france has been the great originator in the plastic arts during recent times; but it has also been the only country where a genuine traditional standard has existed. when tradition is based on experiments, as in art, it cannot be in essence hostile to them. and all valid aesthetic principles are sufficiently broad and abstract not to interfere with novelty and creation. when such principles as we have tried to formulate are admitted, the world of aesthetic judgments can be organized and some consensus about the beautiful achieved. without an approach to a consensus, the aesthetic impulse can never be content; for it is indefeasibly sociable. agreement in judgments depends upon a common experience, and this also art can provide. for beauty is constituted of elementary reactions to sense stimuli which are well-nigh universal among men, and of symbols and meanings which can be learned like any language. the delight in harmony and balance, order and symmetry and rhythm, and again, the pleasure in the unique and well finished, are felt by every one. the entire form side of art, its structure or design, is based on fundamental and enduring elements of human nature. the symbolism of sensation, its musical expressiveness, as we have called it, is rooted likewise in reactions and interpretations that either are, or may become, through suggestion and training, common property. there are, of course, the people who have no feeling for tones, and through defective memory for tones, no appreciation of musical design; there are also those who are insensitive to color and line. in many cases, through the training of the attention, these defects can be overcome; yet, in others, they are permanent and incurable. this fact limits the universality of art; oftentimes, when two people are discussing a work, they are not talking about the same object; for a large part of its potentialities are lost to one of them. nevertheless, the validity of empirical standards among those who are capable of appreciating the whole of a work of art is not touched by this fact. those who can agree, ultimately will agree. as for art as representation, that is a language readily acquired. it is an easier and more natural language than ordinary speech. what is meant by the colors and lines of a painting or statue, or by the mimic of the drama, is immediately grasped by any intelligent person; for to make use of images of things in order to represent them is a universal habit among men. the painting and sculpture of the chinese are intelligible to us; not so their speech. of course, to some extent, the language of painting and sculpture is conventional; the limits of accuracy of imitation are not set by nature, except at the extremes, but by the tradition or practice of painters. yet the convention is a simple one, easily understood and accepted. chapter viii the aesthetics of music in this and the following chapters which treat of the arts, i plan to make a concrete application of the aesthetic theory thus far developed. i want to show how the general principles which we have tried to establish can be used to explain the facts of our artistic experience. in doing this i shall hope to achieve a double purpose: first, to verify anew our theory of art, and second, to deepen and enlighten appreciation. i begin with music because, as we shall see, there is a musical factor in all the arts, an understanding of which at the beginning will enable us to proceed much more easily in our survey of them. i shall confine myself to an elementary analysis; for a more detailed study would take us beyond the bounds of general aesthetics and would require a knowledge of the special technique of the arts which we cannot presuppose. moreover, we shall not concern ourselves with the origin or history of the arts further than is needful for an understanding of their general character. we are investigating the theory, not the history, of taste, and are more interested in the present developed aesthetic consciousness than in its rudimentary forms. as we appreciate it to-day, music lends itself readily to our definition of art. it is a personal expression--who, when listening to music which he enjoys, does not feel himself poured forth in the tones? it is social and public--what brings us together under the sway of a common emotion more effectively than concert or opera? it is a fixed and permanent expression, for we can renew it so long as men preserve the score where it is written; and, finally, it is free--who can find any practical or moral or scientific purpose in an etude of chopin or a symphony of mozart? music is the most signal example of a mode of expression that has attained to a complete and pure aesthetic character, an unmixed beauty. yet this was not true of music in its earlier forms, and a long process of development was necessary before freedom was realized. for we must look for the beginning of music in any and all sounds through which primitive men sought to express and communicate themselves. these were, first of all, the cries of the human voice, expressive of fear and need and joy--at once direct outpourings of basic emotions and signals to one's fellows, to help, to satisfy, and to sympathize. in the voice nature provided man with a direct and immediate instrument for the expression and communication of himself through sound. then, perhaps by accident, man discovered that he could make sounds in other ways, through materials separate from his body, and so he constructed drums and cymbals and gongs; and by means of these, too, he communicated his needs and stimulated himself to rage and excitement--and his enemy to fear--in war dance and battle rush. and in doing this he was imitating nature, whose noises, exciting and terrifying, he had long known: the clap of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar of the waves, the crackling of burning wood, the crash of fallen and breaking things. out of unbeautiful noise sprang beautiful music. men discovered that through the voice they could make not only expressive noises, but also pleasant tones; they found, perhaps by accident, that they could do much the same thing with reeds and strings; they observed that when they beat their drums at regular intervals to mark the motion of the dance, they not only danced together more easily, but also experienced joy in the very sounds they made; or that when they threshed the corn with rhythmic strokes or rowed a boat in rhythmic unison, their task was lightened and their wearied attention distracted to the pleasure of their noise. hence at their dances of love or war or religion, they sang instead of shouted; and their instruments of irregular and expressive noise became instruments of rhythmical and melodious tones. eventually, having experienced the pleasure there is in tones and rhythmical sounds, they made them for their own sake, apart from any connection with tribal festivals, and the free art of music was born. and yet, as we shall see, the significance of music depends largely upon the fact that tones are akin to noises; music could not take such a hold of the emotions of men did they not overhear in the tones the meaningful and poignant noises of voice and nature; to understand music, we must think of it against its background of expressive noise. in music we still seem to hear a voice that breaks the silence and speaks, the thunder that terrifies. the material of music consists of tones, the conscious counterparts of periodic, longitudinal vibrations of the air. tones differ among themselves in many attributes, of which the following are of chief importance for music: pitch, determined by rate of vibration, through which tones differ as higher and lower; color, determined by the complexity of the vibration wave, the presence of overtones of different pitch along with the fundamental tone in the total sound; intensity, dependent upon the amplitude of the vibration, through which tones of the same pitch differ as soft or loud; and finally, quality, that specific character of a tone, by reason of which middle c, for example, is more like the c of the octave below or above than like its nearer neighbors, b or d, whence the series of tones, although in pitch linear and one-dimensional, is in quality periodic, returning again and again upon itself, as we go up or down the scale. [footnote: "see geza revesz: _tonpsychologie_."] the number of qualities in use in music--twelve in our scale of equal temperament--is, of course, not all there are in the world of tones; they are a human and arbitrary selection, governed by technical and historical motives, into which we shall not enter. peoples with a different culture have made a different selection. but we are not concerned with the music of angels or of orientals, but with our own. with these twelve, with their possible variations in pitch, loudness, and tone-color, the musician has a rich and adequate material. all the elements of an aesthetic experience are present in striking simplicity even in the single musical tone. there is the sensuous medium, the sound; there is a life expressed, a feeling aroused in us, yet so completely objectified in the sound that it seems to belong to the latter on equal terms with color or quality or loudness; there is a unity and variety and orderly structure in the dominance of the fundamental among the overtones and the fusion of all in the total clang. thus every note is a complete little aesthetic organism. yet the beauty of single tones is very slight,--less, i think, than that of single colors; they need the contrast or the agreement in consonance with other tones in order to awaken much feeling; they must be members of a wider whole; observe how, when sounded after other tones, they become enriched through the contrasting or consonant memory of those tones. nevertheless, the single tone has its feeling, however slight, and to understand this is to go a long way toward understanding the more complex structures of music. in the first place, tones, unlike noises, are all pleasant. although we cannot be sure why this is true, there can be little doubt, i think, that the regularity of the vibrations of the former, in contrast with the irregularity of the latter, is largely responsible. the clang, with its ordered complexity, is a stimulus that incites the sense organ and connected motor tracts to a unified and definite response, unlike noise, which creates confusion. the pleasure in the single tone is similar, in its causes, to the pleasure in the consonance of two tones. as we should expect from this analogy, the pleasure is greater in rich tones, which contain many partials, than in thin tones, which are relatively uninteresting. but the feeling of tones is something more than mere pleasantness; it is also a mood. now this mood of tones is partly due to associations,--some superficial in character, like the pastoral quality of flute tones or the martial character of bugle tones, others more fundamental; but it has also a still deeper-lying root. for a sound stimulus awakens not only a sensory process in the ear, the correlative of which is a sensation, but also incipient motor reactions, which, if carried out, would be an emotion, but which, being too slight and diffuse, produce only what we call a mood. every sensation has a meaning for the organism in an environment where it has constantly to be on its guard for danger or assistance; every sensation is therefore connected with the mechanism of reaction, with its attendant emotions. in ordinary experience, there are objects present to which the organism may actually respond, but in the aesthetic experience there are no real objects towards which a significant reaction can take place; in music, the source of the sound is obviously of no practical importance, while in such arts as painting and sculpture where interesting objects are represented, the objects themselves are absent; hence the reaction is never carried out, but remains incipient, a vague feeling which, finding no object upon which it may work itself off, is suffused upon the sensation. these sense feelings are the subtle, but basal, material of all beauty. the variety of moods expressed in tones is almost endless. when we experience them, they come to us as the inner life of the total concrete tones, but they depend actually upon the working together of all the tonal attributes,--color, quality, pitch, and loudness. there is the subtle intimacy of violin tones compared with the clear arresting ring of the trumpet; the emotional differences between qualities like c and g, too delicate for expression in words; the piercing excitement of the high, bright tones, compared with the earnest depth of the low, dull tones; the almost terrifying effect of loud tones compared with the soothing influence of soft tones. the precise psychophysical mechanism through which the different moods are aroused is for the most part hidden from us; yet in certain particulars we can form some idea of it. for example, the richness of feeling in the tones of certain instruments as compared with others is doubtless due to the fact that through the presence of more overtones and the admixture of noise, the reaction is more complex; the tense excitement of high and loud tones, as compared with the soft and low, is probably connected with the fact that their higher vibration rate and greater amplitude of vibration produce a more marked effect, a more pervasive disturbance,--the organism does not right itself and recover so rapidly and easily. these direct and native elements of feeling are then broadened out and intensified through other elements that come in by way of association. for example, in order to sing high tones, a greater tension and exertion of the vocal chords is needed than for low tones; loud tones suggest loud noises, which, as in breaking and crashing and thundering, are inevitably associated with fear; the loud is also the near and present and threatening, the low is distant and safe. although each tone, as separate and individual, possesses its own feeling in its own right, the tonal effects are immensely accentuated by contrast with one another,--the high against the low, the poor against the rich, the loud against the soft--and through the summation, by means of repetition, of the influences of many tones of like character; the full meaning of music depends upon the relations of tones, especially the temporal relations. this fact was fully recognized by aristotle, who raised the question why tones are so much more expressive than colors. music is almost the sole important art that relies on the expressiveness of the sense material alone, independent of any element of meaning. to be sure, the beauty of oriental rugs depends entirely on their color and line harmonies; for the meanings which the patterns have for their oriental makers is generally unknown to us of the western world; yet what we feel when we contemplate them cannot compare in volume and intensity with what we experience when we listen to music. and aristotle correctly assigned one of the chief reasons for the superior significance of music--its temporal character. a color or line scheme may express a momentary mood, with perhaps just the most rudimentary movement as we go from the dark to the bright colors, or as we follow the motion of the lines as they curve or converge; yet it cannot express an action or process that begins, proceeds, continues, ends. when we look at the colors or lines of a painting or rug, we feel intensely, but there is no development or process of feeling; if the mind moves, it moves inevitably not with, but away from, what it sees. but tones are given to us in succession; we are forced to move with them; hence they come to express for us, in ways which we shall try to analyze, the changing and developing process of the inner life. in its temporal aspect, music has two chief characteristics, rhythm and melody. in our music these are inseparable; yet they can be separated for the purposes of analysis; and a rhythmical roll of drumbeats or a careless succession of tones harmonically related proves that each may produce an aesthetic effect without the other. we shall consider melody first. a mere succession of tones, however pleasing separately, does not make a melody; for melody depends on a definite scale and on certain relations between the tones of the scale. these relations illustrate the three modes of aesthetic unity. first, there is harmony. tones are harmonically related when they belong to the leading chords of the key. the tones of such chords, when sounded together, are consonant. now harmony, which is an aesthetic feeling, although not identical with consonance, which is a purely sensory relation between tones, depends nevertheless upon consonance. in order to understand harmony, we must therefore first understand consonance, and, in order to do this, we must begin by describing the experience and then look for its possible causes. [footnote: consult the discussions in karl stumpf, tonpsychologie; carl emil seashore, the psychology of musical talent, chap. vii.] as for the first, consonant tones, when sounded together, seem to fit one another, almost to fuse, despite the fact that the different tones are distinguishable in the whole. this fitting together, in turn, seems to depend on a resemblance or partial identity between them. for example, the most consonant tones are a note and its octave, which are, perhaps, actually identical in quality; but lesser intervals are also alike, as for example a note and its fifth, which are more readily mistaken for one another than two dissonant tones, say a note and its seventh. as for the explanation of consonance, we know that consonant tones have identical partial tones and are caused by vibration rates that stand to one another in simple ratios. thus in a clang composed of a tone and its fifth, the first partial of the fifth is the second partial of the prime, and the vibration ratios are as two to three. the bearing of this second fact on the question of partial identity will become clear if we consider the concrete case of a tone produced by 24 vibrations per second, whose fifth would then be produced by 36 vibrations per second, and then consider the same tone and its dissonant second, the ratio of whose vibrations is 24 to 27; in the former case, there is a common part of 6 vibrations, a fourth of the total number of the first tone; in the latter, only 3, an eighth. that identity of partial tones is not a sufficient explanation of consonance--as helmholtz thought it to be--is proved by the fact that simple tones, which have no partials, may still be consonant. nevertheless, an identity of partials does undoubtedly contribute to the consonance of the complex tones used in our music; ultimately, however, the final reason for consonance must be sought in some underlying identity within the tones themselves, an identity that seems to be given psychologically in their resemblance, and with which physically the simplicity of their vibration ratios probably has something to do. and that in music the feeling of harmony should depend upon partial identity is what we should expect from our previous study of harmony in general. [footnote: see page 87.] the second of the tonal relations upon which melody depends is contrast. first, there is the contrast between the high and the low; even when notes are harmonically related, as a note and its fifth, they are in contrast, in so far as the one is measurably higher and more distant than the other. of equal importance is the rivalry between the fundamental tones in the leading harmonic chords; for example, the rivalry between the tonic and the dominant. for each of these claims to be the center of the melodic progression, and draws to itself all the tones which belong to its chord. dissonance is a cause of rivalry; for a dissonant tone is one that will not fit into a given harmony; yet since it is still a part of the melody, must have its home somewhere, and belongs therefore in another harmony, which, through this tone, is set up in rivalry with the prevailing one. a tone that did not belong to any harmony would not be a dissonance, but a discord,--a tone without meaning musically. dissonances, like other contrasts, enrich the melody by establishing rival harmonies; discords destroy melodies. just as the drama has little significance without conflict, so melodies are uninteresting without dissonances. were it not for the third of the tonal relations, melodies would lack unity and system and go to pieces under the stress of rival forces. this third relation may be call finality; [footnote: the explanation of this is obscure; there is no unanimity among the specialists in musical theory.] it belongs among relations we have called evolutionary. by it is meant the fact that certain tones demand and naturally lead into other tones, in which they seem to find their completion or fulfillment. for example, the tones of a chord demand the fundamental tone of the chord; dissonances must be "resolved,"--must be followed by other tones of their own harmony; the diatonic tones over and above the tonic--the "upleader" and "downleader"--naturally lead into the tonic; and all the tones demand, either immediately or through the mediation of other tones, the tonic of the scale to which they belong. this principle of finality, which, in the classic music, is the basis of what is called "tonality," by establishing the tonic as the center of reference and point of completion of all tones, gives to melody its dramatic unity. through it, by creating the tonic chord as fundamental, the rivalry between the tonic, dominant, and subdominant is overcome, and all dissonances finally resolved into unity. definite scales and tonal laws and schemes of composition are of the utmost importance for musical composition; there are, of course, many of these besides the classical, and they are all partly conventional; but that does not matter so long as, by being well known, they enable the melody to move along definite lines, arousing and fulfilling definite expectations. those forms of modernist music that dispense with scales altogether, in which therefore there are no fixed _points de repere_ like the tonic or dominant of the older music, can express chance momentary moods by means of rich and strange colors, but not an orderly and purposeful experience. of course, in our modern harmonic music the melodic movement proceeds by means, not of single tones, but of chords. yet no new principle is introduced by this fact. for the chords have in part merely the significance of highly enriched tones, the harmonized tones of the chords taking the place of the partials of the single notes and imparting a more voluminous color, which may have its own beauty as such; and, in addition, they simply confer upon the melody another dimension, as it were, the tonal relations of harmony and contrast operating between the tones of the chords simultaneously, as well as temporally between the successive elements of the melody. the orderly beauty which the tonal relations confer upon music is further enriched and complicated by rhythm. rhythm in music is of two sorts: a rhythm of time and a rhythm of accent, or increased loudness. through the one, the duration of a musical composition is divided up into approximately equal parts filled by notes and rests of definite length, and through the other, the light notes are subordinated to the heavy notes. the two, however, are interrelated; for the bars are divided from each other by the accents, and the accents recur at approximately equal intervals. the pleasure in rhythmical arrangement is derived from two sources: first, from the need for perspicuity which is fulfilled through the regular grouping of the tonal elements in the bars,--their length being adjusted to the average length of an attention wave, and the number of tones that fill them to the number of items which can be taken in at one act of attention,--and through the subordination of the light to the heavy within the bars, the bars to the measures, and the measures to the periods. the second source of satisfaction in rhythm is the combination of feelings of balance and harmony aroused--a rhythm is not only a pleasing perspicuous order, but an emotion. [footnote: see chap. v, p.90] for every recurring accent and interval competes with its predecessor for the mind's attention, yet is in agreement with it since it, too, fulfills the law that pervades them all. the full significance of both melody and rhythm depends, however, upon their interrelation, the concrete musical structure, the motive or melody in the complete sense, being an indissoluble unity of both. now if we take the term will with a broad meaning, schopenhauer's characterization of melody as an image of the will still remains the truest aesthetic interpretation of it. for, when we hear it, we not only hear, but attend to what we hear; we hear each tone in its relations of harmony or contrast or fulfillment to other tones, freighted with memories of its predecessors and carrying with it expectations, which the following tones fulfill or deny. the melody begins, let us suppose, with the tonic note. this note then becomes for us a plan or purpose; for as it goes, it leaves in the mind a memory of itself, no mere pale sensation--no image ever is--but a motor set, an expectation and desire to hear the note again. if the next note is harmonically related, this purpose is partially fulfilled and we get the satisfaction of a partial success. if, however, the tone does not belong to the tonic chord, but, let us suppose, to the subdominant, it comes as a hindrance, an obstacle, or perhaps as a new and rival purpose springing up in the course of the fulfillment of the old,--a purpose which can be satisfied only through the other tones of its chord. hence the tension of conflicting expectations and the excitement as now the one and now the other is fulfilled in the succeeding notes. yet, since all other harmonies are subordinated to the tonic harmony, and even through their very opposition increase our desire for it, they must give way to the fundamental purpose with which we started; and when the tonic does eventually triumph, it fulfills not only itself, but all lesser desires of the melody; in it we find what we have been seeking, we arrive where we set out to go. and in this success we not only obtain what we first wanted, but more--an experience enriched by every conflict, and harmonious ultimately through the inner adjustment and resolution of its elements; for in hearing the final note we hear the memories of all previous tones, also. when the departures from the keynote are many and distant and sudden, and the melody wanders into the bypaths of foreign harmonies, moving along broken and zigzag lines, it expresses an exciting, a dangerous and difficult adventure; when, however, the departures are gradual and confined for the most part within the limits of a single harmony, moving in a smooth and curving path, it expresses a life that is secure and happy, tending to repose as the line approaches the horizontal, and as repetitions of the same note predominate. rhythm enters into melody to differentiate and emphasize. by means of accent and time-value, the different tones are weighted and their relative value fixed. the heavy tones assert their will with a more insistent energy; the long tones upon which we linger make a deeper and more lasting impression; while the light and short tones in contrast become points of mere passing and transition. if, moreover, we include the element of tempo, then all the temporal feelings are introduced into melody--the excitement of rapid motion, the calmness of the slow; the agony of delay, of waiting and postponement, with the triumph and relief when the expected note arrives at last. finally, the effects of shading must be added, the contrasts between piano and forte--loudness that brings the tones so near that they may seem threatening in their insistence; softness that makes them seem far away and dreamlike. following the large idea introduced by schopenhauer, which was enriched by the minuter studies of lotze, wundt, and lipps, we may sum the foregoing analysis in the statement that music expresses the abstract aspects of action, its ease or difficulty, its advance or retrocession, its home coming or its wandering, its hesitation or its surety, its conflicts and its contrasts, its force or its weakness, its swiftness or slowness, its abruptness or smoothness, its excitement or repose, its success or failure, its seriousness or play. then, in addition, as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that the content of music becomes not a mere form of life, but life itself. it is, of course, obvious that our analysis has confined itself to the barest elements of the musical experience. our music to-day, with its many-voiced harmonies, with its procession of chords instead of single tones, with its modulation into related keys, has an infinite wealth and complexity defying description. a large part of the astonishing effect of music is derived from the fact that in a brief space we seem to hear and absorb so much: the careers of multitudinous lives compressed into an instant. yet the meaning of the complex whole can be understood, i think, from such an analysis of the simple structure as has been given. the methods by which the larger musical wholes are built up illustrate principles of aesthetic structure with which we are already familiar. there is the harmonious unification of parts through the simple repetition of motives, their inversion or imitation in higher or lower keys, either successively or simultaneously; the execution of the same theme in another time or tempo; and through the interweaving of themes. there is the balance of contrasted or competing themes; the subordination of the lesser to the more striking and insistent motives; the preparation for, emergence and triumph of, a final passage that resolves all dissonances and adjusts all conflicts. because of music's abstractness, the connection between the parts of a musical composition may be loose or subtle, taxing the synthetic powers even of the educated listener; yet some contrast or analogy of feeling must always unite them. the structure of the whole may be either static or dramatic; in the former case the dramatic element is confined to the themes, the purpose of the whole being merely to work out all their significant variations,--to embroider and repeat them in new keys and rhythms and tempos, and to contrast them with other themes. repetition is the great creative principle of musical development, the composer seeking to say over again in ever new forms what he has said before. and this, again because of the abstractness of music, is a significant process; to repeat the concrete is tiresome and trivial, but an abstract form is always enriched by appearing in a new shape. the explanation of musical expression thus far given, although it suffices to account for the basis of all musical feeling, is, i think, inadequate to its full volume and intensity. there is a concreteness of emotional content in some musical compositions--an arousal of terror and longing and despair and joy--infinitely richer than any abstract forms of feeling. to account for this, two sources of explanation suggest themselves. first, the arousing of emotions through deep-lying effects of rhythm. it is a well-known fact, cited in most discussions of this subject, that the motor mechanism of the body is somehow attuned to rhythm. when we hear rhythmical sounds, we not only follow them with the attention, we follow them also with our muscles, with hand and foot and head and heart and respiratory apparatus. even when we do not visibly move in unison with the rhythm--as we usually do not--we tend to do so, which proves that in any case the motor mechanism of the body is stimulated and brought into play by the sounds. there is a direct psychophysical connection between the hearing of rhythmic sounds and the tendency to execute certain movements. but there is an equally direct relation between emotions and tendencies to movements, through which the former find expression and are given effect in the outer world. to every kind of emotion--love and hate and fear and sorrow and joy--there corresponds a specific mode of motor manifestation. the connection between rhythmic sound and emotion is therefore plain; the link is a common motor scheme. rhythms arouse into direct and immediate activity the motor "sets" that are the physical basis of the emotions, and hence arouse the corresponding emotions themselves, without any ground for them outside of the organism. and these emotions, since they are aroused by the sounds and not by any object to which they might be directed and upon which they might work themselves off in a meaningful reaction, are interwoven into the sounds,--they and the sounds come to us as a single indissoluble whole of experience. the emotions become the content of the sounds. and hence the strangeness of the musical experience--the fact that we feel so deeply over nothing. the second cause for the concreteness of the musical experience i take to be certain emotions and feelings which are aroused by association, not with the rhythmic elements of music alone, but with the tone-color, intensity, and melody also. there is a human quality, a poignancy and intimacy, about much music, which can be understood only through its analogy with the sounds of the human voice. for the human voice is emotionally expressive through its mere sound alone: one can know a large part of what is going on in the breasts of people who talk in a foreign tongue just by listening to the sound of their voices--their excitement or boredom, their anger, love, or resentment; and one becomes conscious of these emotions, as in hearing music, without knowing what they are all about. all human emotions betray themselves in speech through the rise and fall, range of intervals, loudness or softness, tempo and differences of duration of tone. now, although it is far too much to say that music is actually an imitation of the voice, it is nevertheless true, as diderot thought, that in certain musical passages we overhear the voice. there is never any exact similarity between music and vocal sounds, but there is enough resemblance to awaken by association the feelings that are the normal accompaniments of such sounds. any tone analogies that there happen to be are felt as such. this is notably true of all music that has a peculiar lyrical and human quality,--the music that readily becomes popular because it seems to speak direct to the heart. originally, all music was song, and since speech and song employ the same organ, it would be surprising indeed if something of the same expression of the emotions that overflows into the one should not also overflow into the other, and that musicians should not, unconsciously or consciously, tend to choose their melodies because of such analogies. instrumental music probably got its first melodies from song, and despite its vast present complexity and independence, has never completely lost touch with song. since the first meaningful sounds that we hear are those of the voice, music must always have for us the significance of a glorified speech. the fault of the original proposers of the speech theory was that they thought it a complete explanation of the facts of musical expression. its explanatory value is, however, strictly limited, and supplemental to the more basic considerations adduced; yet it remains a necessary part of the complex theory of the complex fact we are studying. and the acceptance of it as such does not imply a belief in the speech theory of the origin of music. song did not grow out of impassioned speech, but arose coeval with speech, when men found--perhaps by accident--that they could make with their voices pure and pleasing tones and intervals of tones, and express something of their inner selves in so doing. yet, as i have suggested, it would be strange if speech did not react upon song--if the first vocal tones were not purified words, and the first intervals an approximation to those of speech. thus in song, lyric poetry and music arose together as a single art for the expression of feeling, until the development of instrumental music freed the one and the invention of writing freed the other; while speech kept to its different and original purpose--the expression of ideas for practical ends, and produced an aesthetic form of its own only at a later period and under independent influences. the complete understanding of musical expression involves, finally, as was suggested at the beginning of this chapter, the recognition of the analogy that exists between music and the noises produced by nature and human activities. through the imitation of their rhythm, force, and tempo, some of these can be directly suggested by musicians. yet this direct suggestion, although employed by the greatest composers, plays a subordinate part in music, and, since it introduces an element of representation of the outer world--_tonmalerei_--is usually felt to involve a departure from the prime purpose of music: the expression of the inner world through the emotional effects of pure sound. in the best program music, therefore, the purpose of the composer is not the mere imitation of nature--which is never art at all, and in music is always recognized as an unsaesthetic _tour de force_ of mere cleverness--but rather the arousal of the feelings caused by nature. and as an aid in the expression of such feelings, imitation, when delicately suggestive rather than blatant, will always play a part. there are, however, subtler and remoter analogies between music and noise, which produce their effects whether the musician wills them or not. such, for example, are loud bursts of tone suggesting falling or crashing, events which usually have a terrifying significance; crescendoes, suggesting the approach of things, so often full of expectancy and excitement; diminuendoes, suggesting a gradual departure or fading away, bearing relief or regret. and there are doubtless hundreds of other such associations, too minute or remote or longforgotten to recover, which add their mite of feeling to swell and make vast the musical emotion. as fechner pointed out, these associations may work quite unconsciously, giving evidence of their functioning only through the feeling tones which they release. so important is the part which sound plays in our lives that there must be an especially large number of such underground associations aroused by music. all of our experiences are connected together by subconscious filiation; but it is only in art that their residual feeling tones have a full opportunity to come into the mind; for in everyday life they are crowded out by the hurry of practical concerns. in the earlier stages of the development of music they must have contributed a still larger share to musical expression, when the different forms of music were connected by habit and convention with particular crises and occasions, religious, domestic, and social, in the life of individuals and groups. but even to-day, despite the new freedom of music, they are not absent. looking back over our analysis of music, we see that it is characterized by the expression of emotion without the representation of the causes or objects of emotion. this fact, which has now become a well-recognized part of aesthetic theory, distinguishes music from all the other arts. music supplies us with no definite images of nature, as painting and sculpture do, and with no ideas, as poetry does. it contains feelings, but no meanings. music offers us no background for emotion, no objects upon which it may be directed, no story, no _mise en scene_. it supplies us with the feeling tones of things and events, but not with the things or events themselves. it moves wholly in a world of its own, a world of pure feeling, with no embodiment save only sound. it may express terror, but not terror over this or that; joy, but whether the joy that comes from sight of the morning or of the beloved, it cannot tell. in one brief space of time, it may arouse despair, hope, triumph--but all over nothing. yet--and this is the central paradox of music--despite its abstractness, nay, because of this very quality, it remains the most personal and intimate of the arts. for, itself offering no images of things and events to which we may attach the feelings which it arouses, we supply our own. we fill in the impersonal form of musical feeling with the concrete emotions of our own lives; it is our strivings, our hopes and fears, which music expresses. by denying us access to the world about us, music compels us to turn in upon ourselves; it is we who live there in the sounds. for, as we have seen, the rhythmic tones seize hold not only of our attention, but of our bodies also--hand and foot and head and heart, resounding throughout the whole organism. and, where our bodies are, there are we. moreover, our life there in the sounds need not remain without objects because the music does not describe them to us; for out of our own inner selves we may build up an imaginary world for our feelings. as we listen to the music, we shall see the things we hope for or fear or desire; or else transport ourselves among purely fanciful objects and events. music is a language which we all understand because it expresses the basic mold of all emotion and striving; yet it is a language which no two people understand in the same way, because each pours into that mold his own unique experience. in itself abstract and objectless, it may thus become, in varying ways, concrete and alive. the great variety in the interpretation of musical compositions has often been used as an argument against the existence of emotions in music, but is, as we have seen, the inevitable result of their abstractness. this abstractness may, indeed, be so great that apparently opposite concrete emotions, such as love and religious adoration, despair and joy, may be aroused in different people, according to different circumstances, by the same piece. the music of the opera can be used in the cathedral. yet strikingly dissimilar emotions have common elements--worship is the love of god; joy may be a rage equally with disappointment; and at their highest intensity, all opposed emotions tend to pass over into each other: hope into fear, love into hate, exaltation into depression. the elementary feelings out of which our complex emotions are built are few and simple; hence each one of the latter is identical in some ingredients with the others. and even the elementary feelings may have common aspects of intensity and tempo, of strain and excitement. some musical compositions, like the fugues of bach, seem to express nothing more than such extremely abstract modes of feeling, without arousing any associations that would impel the mind to make a more concrete interpretation. to express feelings of this kind in language is, of course, impossible, for the reason that our emotional vocabularies have been constructed to communicate only the emotions of everyday life. other types of music--like the romantic tone poetry of a later day--which are more abundant in their associations, and hence richer in their emotional content, are difficult of translation for another reason: the rapidity of succession and subtlety of intermixture of the expressed feelings are beyond the reach of words, even of a poet's, which inevitably stabilize and isolate what they denote. but abstract and objectless emotions occur in other regions of experience beside the musical, even beyond the entire field of the aesthetic. all except the most healthy-minded and practical people are at times filled with vague fears, longings, and joys, the objects or causes of which they cannot formulate. normally, feeling is directed towards definite objects and leads to action upon them, but may nevertheless become isolated from its proper connections, and function without issue. the extreme cases of this are the pathological states of mania and depression, where such feelings assume proportions dangerous to the existence of the individual. intoxication and hysteria present analogous, though more transient phenomena. and one may observe the autonomous development of mere feeling even in the healthy life, as when one remains jolly after all occasion for it has ceased, or angry after the cause for anger has been removed. all feelings tend to acquire a strength beyond what is necessary for action and to endure after their proper objects and conditions have disappeared; hence the luxury of grief and revenge and sentimentality. in their most general character, musical emotions stand on a level with other purposeless emotions, except that they are deliberately induced and elaborated to an extent and complexity unmatched elsewhere. but while these emotions are morbid and evil outside of music, within music they are innocent. for outside of music they spring from dislocations of the practical and striving core of the personality, where, if persistently indulged in, they exacerbate the disturbance of which they are the sign, interfering with action and eventually endangering the health and happiness of the individual; while in music, being induced from the outside by mere sounds, they have no ground within the personality itself where they can take root, and hence exert only a harmless and transient effect upon the mind; they belong to the surface, not to the substance of the self, to imagination, not to the will. or when, as sometimes happens, the deeper and perhaps morbid strata of the self are reached by the sounds, the feelings which are awakened from their sleep there, where they might be productive of evil dreams, find an orderly and welcome release in the sounds--they are not only aroused, but carried off by the music. this the greeks understood when they employed music as a healer of the soul and called this effect catharsis. if, indeed, music were just a means for the arousal of feelings, it would not be a fine art, but an orgy. for, in order to be aesthetic, feelings must be not merely stimulated by, but objectified in, the sense medium, where they can be mastered and known. but the intimacy of music is not in contradiction with the freedom and objectivity characteristic of all art. for musical feelings, although they are experienced as our own, are nevertheless also experienced as the sounds; in music we live, not as we live ordinarily, within our bodies, but out there, in a rarer and unpractical medium--tone. and in this new region we gain dominion over our feelings, through the order which the form of the music imposes upon them, and also self-knowledge, because, in being externalized in the sounds, our feelings become an object for our reflection and understanding. in music the light of reflection is turned straight upon ourselves. the poignancy of music depends upon just this fact that through it we get a revelation of ourselves to ourselves. in the other arts, this revelation is indirect, occurring through the representation of the lives of other, real or fictitious, personalities; but in music, it is direct; for there the object of expression is oneself. even in the lyric poem, where the reader and the poet tend to become identical, the unity is less complete; for when embodied in words, feelings become more exterior than when put forth into tones; a tone is closer to the self, because like a cry or a laugh, it is less articulate. moreover, words are means of communication as well as expression; they therefore embody of any experience only as much as can be passed from speaker to hearer; the unique is for the most part lost on the way; but in music the full personal resonance of experience is retained. in music we get so close to ourselves that at times it is almost frightening. and this is the reason why, on all the high or serious occasions of human life, music is alone adequate to express its inner meaning. at a marriage or a funeral, in church or at a festival, the ceremonial is traditional and social; it expresses the historical and group significance of the situation, but not that which is unique and just one's own; it always contains, moreover, much that is outgrown and unacceptable--a creed of life or love or death that belongs to the past, not to us. but the music embodies all that we really believe and feel about the fact, its intimate, emotional essence, clear of everything irrelevant and external. but music does more than express the inexpressible in ourselves; it gives us entrance into a supernatural world of feeling. except at the rare high moments of our lives, its joys and despairs are too exalted for us; they are not ours; they belong to gods and heroes. in music the superman is born into our feelings. music does for the emotions what mythology and poetry do for the imagination and philosophy for the intellect--it brings us into touch with a more magnificent life, for which we have perhaps the potency, but not the opportunity here. and in doing this, music performs a great service; for, outside of love and war, life, which offers endless occasions for intense thought and action, provides few for passionate feeling. thus far our study of the art has been confined to so-called absolute music. we must now complete our survey by a rapid consideration of the union of music with the other arts. because of its abstractness, music, of all the arts, lends itself most readily to combination with others; yet even in the case of music the possibility of union is limited by the existence of a clear identity between the arts combined. thus, music goes well with the temporal arts, poetry, the dance, and the drama, and particularly well with the first two because they are rhythmical; it will also unite with architecture, because that is another abstract art; but with the static, concrete arts like painting and sculpture, it will not fuse. one might perhaps accompany a picture with a single chord whose emotional meaning was the same as that of the color scheme and the objects represented, but not with more; for the aesthetic experience of the picture is instantaneous and complete, while that of the music requires time for its development and fruition; hence the two would soon fall apart, and a person would either have to ignore the music or cease to look at the picture. originally, of course, music was always combined with some other art, and first of all, probably with the dance. in its earliest form, the dance was a communal religious expression, about which we shall have little to say, since it belongs to the past, not to living art. for to-day the dance is a free art like music. the beauty of the dance consists, first, in the free and rhythmical expression of impulses to movement. this expression, which is direct for the dancer who actually carries out her impulses in real motion, is for the spectator indirect and ideal, for he experiences only movement-images aroused by movements seen, and then, by feeling these into the limbs of the dancer, dances with her in the imagination. and to secure this free and large, even though vicarious, expression of pent-up impulses to movement is very grateful to us whose whole movement life is impoverished, because restricted by convention and occupation to a few narrow types. but the dance would have little interest for men were it not for another element in its beauty: the expression of the amorous feelings of the spectator. these, although really located in the breast of the spectator, are nevertheless embodied in the personality of the dancer, whose charm they constitute. finally, the content of the dance may be further enriched through the use of symbolic costume and mimetic gestures, suggesting emotions like joy or love or grief, emotionally toned ideas like spring, or actions such as courtship. now music, with its own rhythmical order and voluminous emotional content, has an obvious kinship with the rhythmic form and amorous substance of the dance, and so can well serve to accompany it. the result of the union is to enforce the rhythmic experience through the medium of sound, the dance keeping time with the music, and, through the heightened emotional tone and increased suggestibility created by the music, to deepen the sympathetic rapport between dancer and spectator. thus the music is given a concrete interpretation through the dance, and the dance gains in emotional power through the music. in the union, the gain to the dance is clear and absolute; but the music pays a price for the concreteness of content which it secures, by forfeiting its power to express chance inner moods--what it gains in definiteness it loses in scope and universality. and only music with a strong and evident rhythm is capable of union with the dance; the more complex and subtle music, aside from the impossibility of making its delicate rhythms fit into those of a dance, has a variety and sublimity of meaning so far transcending the personality of any human being, that to attempt to focus it in a dancer, no matter how charming, would be a travesty. of equal naturalness and almost equal antiquity with the union of music with the dance, is its union with poetry. in song this union is a real fusion; for the tones are the vocal word-sounds themselves, purified into music. here, of course, unlike absolute music, the tones are expressive, not only as other tones are through their mere sound, but also through their meaning. and this can well be; for as schopenhauer remarked, just as the universal may be illustrated by any object which embodies it, so the vague musical content of a tone may be fused with the concrete meaning of a word of like feeling. and for many hearers music doubtless gains by thus becoming articulate; for, being unable to supply out of their own imagination the concreteness which music lacks, they welcome having this done for them by the poet; yet the gain is not without a corresponding loss. for when the musical meaning is specialized through the emotions that are the burden of the song, it necessarily loses the power which it would otherwise have of expressing one's own inner life--once more, what it gains in definiteness it loses in scope. it no longer possesses the unique function of the musical. hence, if we love the music, we shall not care whether or not we understand the meaning of the words, and what we shall value in the song will be only the peculiar intimacy which it derives from its instrument, the voice. only rarely is it otherwise, as in some of the songs of schumann, when the poetic interpretation is so beautiful and so completely at one with the musical feeling, that we prefer to accept it rather than substitute our own interpretation for the poet's. but even so, the music, if genuine, will have value without the words. at the opposite pole are those songs, often popular, where the music, having little worth in itself, is a mere accompaniment for the words. in all cases, however, the music can lend to the poetry some of the intimacy which is its own, so that its burden has a deeper echo in the soul. yet much of poetry is unfit for union with music. this is true, first, of all highly intellectual poetry, where the emotions are embodied in complex and abstract ideas. one could not, for example, readily set browning to music. music may be deep, mystic, even metaphysical in its meaning, but it cannot be dialectical. the emotions that accompany subtle thought, even when intense, are not of the voluminous, massive kind which music expresses; they lack the bodily resonance of the latter; they are, moreover, clean-cut and static, while in music everything flows in half-lights, like a river moving in moonlight. on the other hand, poems which express rapidly developing states of mind, which contain quick, subtle transitions, are equally unfit for union with music. for music, although always in motion, is always in slow motion; it needs time to get under way, and time for its development in embroidering, varying, and repeating its theme. and this difficulty applies in a general way to every union between poetry and music. for words are primarily practical and communicative, and therefore cut short the passion which they express; whereas tones, never having had any other purpose than expression, draw it out and let it have its way. moreover, poetry, because of its definiteness, is compatible with only a limited range of variation, beyond which it becomes monotonous, while music, because of its abstractness, permits of variations almost endless, and is enriched by every new shape in which its meaning can appear. if, therefore, poetry is to keep time with the slow movement of the music and conform to its mode of development, the verses have to be repeated again and again; but this destroys the poetic form--as in the oratorio, with its senseless iterations. finally, the temporal and developmental character of the drama would seem to fit it for union with music. yet the union of these two arts is confronted with the same difficulties that beset the connection between poetry and music. the movement of the acting drama is swift and straight, that of music is slow and circular; hence if the music is to have its way, the action of the drama must stand. in consequence of this, there is little real action in most operas, prolonged dialogues in song taking its place. only rarely--as for example in strauss' "salome," perhaps--is the form of the drama preserved. as a rule the unity of the musical form is also destroyed, the thread of the story being substituted for it. last, as in the song, the universality of the music is renounced in favor of the interpretation given to it by the program. in the _leit-motif_, indeed, as wagner uses it, where a musical phrase is provided with a fixed connotation of ideas and acts which is understood by the hearer whenever it recurs, opera ceases to be music at all in the strict sense, and becomes a musical language. yet in the opera, as in the song, the music, when genuine, possesses its own independent meaning, which can be appreciated without the _mise en scene_ or the program. and then only rarely, as in the toreador song in "carmen," is the action so close to the inner meaning of the music, that the latter seems to gain by the interpretation. it follows that wagner's dream of making the opera a sum of all the values of poetry, drama, and music, and so an art more beautiful than any one of them, is fallacious. for, as we have repeatedly seen, in uniting the arts, there is gain as well as loss; something of the form or meaning of each has to be sacrificed. the work that results from the combination is really a new art-form, in which the elements are changed and their individuality partly destroyed; and its value is a new value, which may be equal to, but is certainly no greater than, that of any other art-form. to put the matter epigrammatically, when the arts are added together, one plus one does not equal two, but only one again. chapter ix the aesthetics of poetry our study of music in the preceding chapter has prepared us for the study of poetry, for the two arts are akin. both are arts of sound and both employ rhythm as a principle of order in sound. they had a twin birth in song, and although they have grown far apart, they come together again in song. in many ways, music is the standard for verse. yet, despite these resemblances, the differences between the arts are striking. in place of music's disembodied feelings, poetry offers us concrete intuitions of life,--the rehearsal of emotions attached to real things and clean-cut ideas. poetry is a music with a definite meaning, and that is no music at all. much of poetry, gnomic and narrative, probably grew out of speech by regularizing its natural rhythm, independent of music. to-day poetry is written to be read, not to be sung; it is an art of speech, not of song. all speech is communication, an utterance from a speaker to a hearer. in the case of ordinary speech, the aim is to effect some change of mind in the interlocutor that will lead to an action beneficial to one or both of the persons concerned. ordinary speech is practical; its end is to influence conduct; it is command, exhortation, prayer, or threat. poetry, on the other hand, is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"; its purpose is to express life for the sake of the values which expression itself may create, and to communicate them to others. [footnote: compare f. n. scott, "the most fundamental differentia of poetry and prose," in _modern language association publications_, v. 19, pp. 250-269.] the values are given _in the utterance itself_; they do not have to be waited for to come from something which may develop subsequently. they are the universal aesthetic values which may result from any free expression of life--the contemplative reliving of its joys, or the mastery of its pains through the courageous facing of them in reflection. since the appeal of poetry is to the sympathy and thoughtfulness which all men possess, there is no need that it be directed, as ordinary speech is, to particular men and women whose help or advantage is sought. the poet addresses himself to man in general, and only so to you and me. even when ostensibly directed to some particular person, a poem has an audience which is really universal. except in the first moment of creative fervor, the friend invoked is never intended to be the sole recipient of the poet's words. oftentimes the poet appeals to the dead or to natural objects which cannot hear him. one might perhaps infer from this that there is no genuine impulse to communication in poetry; that it is pure expression, a dialogue with self. but this would be a false inference; for there is always some hint in every poem that a vague background of possible auditors is bespoken. no matter how intimate and spontaneous, no poem can escape being social, and hence, in varying degrees, self-conscious. art is autonomous expression meant to be contagious. the appeal of scientific expression is also to something universal in men--to their love of knowledge and understanding. but there is this difference between poetry and science: science seeks merely the intellectual mastery of things and ideas, and so is careless of their values; while poetry, even when descriptive or thoughtful, ever has _life_ as its theme--the way man reacts to his environment and his thought. poetry is never purely descriptive or dialectical. and this difference in the substance of the expression determines a difference in the direction of interest within the expression. in scientific expression, words lead us away to things--pure description, or to their meanings--mathematics and dialectic; but in poetry, since the values which we attach to things and ideas come from within out of ourselves and are embodied in the words, they keep us to themselves; we dwell in the expression itself, in the verbal experience--its total content of sounds which we hear, ideas which we understand, and feelings which we appreciate, is of worth to us. since poetry is an art of speech, we can understand it only through a study of words, which are its media. a single word is seldom an integral element of speech; yet it may fairly be called the atom, the ultimate constituent of speech. now a word is a structure of a potentially fourfold complexity. first, it is a phenomenon of sound and movement--something heard and uttered. its sound, and the movement-sensations from vocal cords and tongue and lips which accompany its production, are the sensuous shell of the word. second, embodied in this as the speaker utters it, associated to it as the hearer understands it, is its meaning. the meaning is either an idea of a concrete thing or situation, or an abstraction. this is the irreducible minimum of a word, but is seldom all. for, in poetry, some emotional response to the object meant by the word impels to its utterance, and this is embodied in it when it is uttered, and a similar feeling is awakened in the auditor when it is heard or read. a word not only mirrors a situation through its meaning, but preserves something of the mind's response; it communicates the total experience,--the self as well as the object. finally, the meaning of a word may not remain a mere idea, but may grow out into one or more of the concrete images of which it is the residuum. when, for example, i utter the word "ocean," i may not only know what i mean and re-experience my joy in the sea, but my meaning may be clothed in images of the sight and touch and odor of the sea--vicariously, through these images, all my sense experiences of the sea may be present in the mind. a word, therefore, sounds and is articulated, means, expresses feeling, and evokes images. all understanding of poetry depends upon the knowledge and proper evaluation of the functioning of these aspects of a word. let us consider in a general way each one of them. in ordinary speech, the sound and articulation of a word, although indispensable to utterance, and therefore a necessary part of it, are of little or no value in themselves; for our interest is centered upon the meaning or upon the action which is expected to result from its understanding. we do not attend to the quality and rhythm of the wordsounds which we utter or hear, and the articulatory sensations, although felt, have only a shadowy existence in "the fringe of inattention." but in poetry, which is speech made beautiful, the mere sound of the words has value. in hearing poetry, we not only understand, but listen; we appreciate not only the ideas and emotions conveyed, but the word-sounds and their rhythms as well. even in silent reading, poetry is a voice which we delight to hear. [footnote: and for many this "inner speech" consists quite as much of articulation as of sound. the "sound" of a word is really a complex of actual sounds plus associated articulation impulses. throughout the remainder of this chapter, when i refer to the sound of words, i shall have in mind this entire complex. we may therefore say that in silent reading poetry is a voice which we delight both to hear and to use.] yet, despite the importance which sound acquires in poetry, it never achieves first place; it never becomes independent, as in music; but shares hegemony with the other aspects of the word. in practical or scientific speech, the chief aspect is meaning; for it is the meaning which gives us knowledge and guides our acts. indeed, for all practical purposes, the meaning of words consists in the actions which are to be performed on hearing them. if i ask a man the way and he tells me, the quality of his voice, the interest which he takes in telling me, and the images which float across his mind are of no importance to me, so long as i can follow his directions. but in poetry the situation alters once more. for there, since expression itself has become the end, and all action upon it is inhibited, the feeling which prompts it becomes a significant part of what i appreciate. in poetry the meanings are secondary to emotions. yet the meanings are still indispensable; for they indicate the concrete objects or ideas towards which emotion is directed. in ordinary speech, meanings are guides to action; in aesthetic speech, they are formulations of feelings. and just in this power of a word to fixate emotion lies the chief difference between poetry and music, where feeling, being aroused by sound alone, is vague and objectless. ideally, every word in a poem should be charged with feeling; but actually this is not the case, for many words, taken by themselves, are too abstract or commonplace to possess any. words all too familiar, or connectives, like "and" and "but" and "or," are examples of this; the former may be avoided by the poet, but the latter are indispensable. originally, no doubt, every word had an emotional coloring, if only that of a child's curiosity; and some words have meanings too deeply rooted in feeling ever to lose it. no amount of familiarity can deprive such words as "death" and "love" and "god" of their emotional value. words like these must forever recur in the vocabulary of poets. yet, since in living discourse a meaning is seldom complete in a single word, but requires several words in a phrase or sentence, a word which by itself would be cold may participate in the general warmth of the whole of which it is a part. consider, for example, the last line of the final stanza of wordsworth's "the lost love":- she lived unknown, and few could know when lucy ceased to be; but she is in her grave, and o! the difference to me! the first three words, by themselves, are completely bare of emotional coloring, yet, taken together with the last, and in connection with the whole stanza, and in the setting of the entire poem, they are aglow with the most poignant passion. as for the image, the last of the aspects of a word, the judgment of edmund burke, in his "essay on the sublime and beautiful" still remains true: in reading words or in listening to them, we get the sound and the meaning and their "impressions" (emotions), but the images which float across the mind, if there are any, are often too vague or too inconstant to be of much relevance to the experience. they are, moreover, highly individual in nature, differing in kind and clearness from person to person. the recent researches into imageless thinking are a striking confirmation of burke's observation. it is now pretty clearly established that the meaning of words is something more than the images, visual or other, which they arouse. probably the meaning is always carried by some sort of imagery, differing with the mental make-up of the reader, but the meaning cannot be equated to the imagery. for example, you and i both understand the word "ocean"; but when i read the word, i get a visual image of green water and sunlight, while you perhaps get an auditory image of the sound of the waves as they break upon the shore. sound, meaning, feeling, these are the essential constituents of discourse; imagery is variable and accidental. it is impossible, therefore, to found the theory of poetry on the image-making power of words. [footnote: for the opposite view, consult max eastman: _the enjoyment of poetry._] and yet, imagery plays a primary role in poetic speech. for, as we have observed so often, feelings are more vital and permanent when embedded in concrete sensations and images than when attached to abstract meanings. through the image, the poet confers upon his art some of the sensuousness which it would otherwise lack. it is not necessary that the image appear clear in the mind; for its emotional value can be conveyed even when it is obscure and marginal. when, for example, we read, freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, thou dost not bite so nigh as benefits forgot, the word "bitter" may arouse no vivid gustatory image, the word "bite" no clear image of pain; yet even when these images are very dim, they serve none the less to establish the feeling of intense disagreeableness which the poet wishes to convey. poetry, therefore, because it is more emotional than ordinary speech, is more abundantly imaginal. having distinguished in a general way the four elements of speech--sound, meaning, feeling, and imagery--we are prepared to study them singly in greater detail. we want to build out of a study of these elements a synthetic view of the nature and function of poetry, and apply our results to some of its newer and more clamant forms. let us begin with sound. in our first chapter we observed that the medium of an art tends to become expressive in itself,--that in poetry the mere sound and articulation of words, quite apart from anything which they mean, may arouse and communicate feelings. what we have called the primary expressiveness of the medium is nowhere better illustrated than in poetry. but just what is expressed through sound, and how? every lover of poetry is aware of the large share which the mere sound of the words contributes to its beauty. this is true even when we abstract from rhythm, which we shall neglect for the time being, and think only of euphony, alliteration, assonance, and rime. there is a joy truly surprising in the mere repetition of vowels and consonants. for myself, i find a pleasure in the mere repetition of vowels and consonants all out of proportion to what, a priori, i should be led to expect from so slight a cause. and yet we have the familiar analogies by means of which we can understand this seemingly so strange delight, the repeat in a pattern, consonance in chord and melody. if the repetition of the same color or line in painting, the same tone in music, can delight us, why not the repetition of the same word-sound? in all cases a like feeling of harmony is produced. and the same general principle applies to explain it. all word-sounds as we utter or hear them leave memory traces in the mind, which are not pure images (no memory traces are), but also motor sets, tendencies or impulses to the remaking of the sounds. the doing of any deed--a word is also a deed--creates a will to its doing again; hence the satisfaction when that will is fulfilled in the repeated sound, when the image melts with the fact. and the same law that rules in music and design holds here also: there must not be too much of consonance, of repetition, else the will becomes satiated and fatigued; there must be difference as well as identity,--the novelty and surprise which accompany the arousal of a still fresh and unappeased impulse. this is well provided for in alternate rimes, where the will to one kind of sound is suspended by the emergence of a different sound with its will, and where the fulfillment of the one balances the fulfillment of the other. all these facts are illustrated in such a stanza as this:- fear no more the heat o' the sun nor the furious winter's rages; thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone and ta'en thy wages; golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust. here, for example, the "f"-sound in "fear" finds harmonious fulfillment in "furious"; the "t"-sound in "task," its mate in "ta'en"; the "g"-sound in "golden," its match in "girls"; "sun" and "done," "rages" and "wages," illustrate a balance of harmonies; while in the consonance of "must" and "dust," the whole movement of the stanza comes to full and finished harmony. thus taken together, word-sounds, as mere sounds, are expressive of the general form-feelings of harmony and balance. but can they express anything singly? is there anything in poetry comparable to the expressiveness of single tones or of colors like red and blue and yellow? to this, i think, the answer must be, little or nothing. almost all the expressiveness of single words comes from their meaning. at all events, the sound and meaning of a word are so inextricably fused that, even when we suspect that it may have some expressiveness on its own account, we are nearly incapable of disentangling it. as william james has remarked, a word-sound, when taken by itself apart from its meaning, gives an impression of mere queerness. and when it does seem to have some distinctive quality, we do not know how much really belongs to the sound and how much to some lingering bit of meaning which we have failed to separate in our analysis. for example, because of its initial "s"-sound and its hard consonants, the word "struggle" seems to express, in the effort required to pronounce it, something of the emotional tone of struggle itself; but how do we know that this is not due to the association with its meaning, which we have been unable to abstract from? even true onomatopoetic words like "bang" or "crack" derive, i suspect, most of their specific quality from their meaning. they do have, to be sure, a certain mimetic impressiveness as mere sounds; but that is very vague; the meaning makes it specific. the sheer length of the word "multitudinous" in shakespeare's line, "the multitudinous seas incarnadine," seems to express something of the vastness and prolixity of the seas; but would it if it were not used as an adjective describing the seas, and if it did not have just the meaning that it has? of course, in this case, the mere sound is effective, but it gets most of its effectiveness because it happens to have a certain meaning. moreover, even the very sound quality of words depends much upon their meaning; we pronounce them in a certain way, with a certain slowness or swiftness, a certain emphasis upon particular syllables, with a high or low intonation, in accordance with the emotion which we feel into them. this is true of the word "struggle" just cited. or consider another example. take the word "blow." who, in reading this word in "blow, blow, thou winter wind," would not increase its explosiveness just in order to make its expressiveness correspond to its meaning? there is, therefore, a fundamental difference in this respect between single word-sounds and single colors or tones; they are not sufficiently impressive in themselves, not sufficiently separable from their meanings, to have anything except the slightest value as mere sounds. in collocation, however, and quite apart from rhythm and alliteration, this minute expressiveness may add up to a considerable amount. in matthew arnold's lines, swept by confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies crash by night, the hardness and difficulty of the consonants in their cumulative force become an independent element of expressiveness, strengthening that of the meaning of the words. or in tennyson's oft-quoted line, "the murmuring of innumerable bees," the sounds taken together have a genuine imitative effect, in which something of the drowsy feeling of the hive is present. following the general law of harmony between form and content, the beauty of sound should be functional; that is, it should never be developed for its own sake alone, but also to intensify, through re-expression, the mood of the thoughts. the sound-values are too lacking in independence to be purely ornamental. poetry does indeed permit of embellishment--the pleasurable elaboration of sensation--yet should never degenerate into a mere tintinnabulation of sounds. the rimes in binding words should bind thoughts also; the tonalities or contrasts of vowel and consonant should echo harmonies or strains in pervasive moods. it is by rhythm, however, that the chief expressiveness of the mere medium is imparted to verse. but here again we shall find sound and meaning intertwined--a rhythm in thought governing a rhythm in sound. only as a result of recent investigations can a satisfactory theory of modern verse be constructed. the making of this theory has been largely hampered, on the one hand, by the application of the quantitative principles of classical verse to our poetry; and, on the other hand, by forcing the analogy between music and verse. the insufficiency of the quantitative scheme for english verse is not difficult to perceive. such a scheme presupposes that syllables have a fixed quantity of duration, as either long or short, and that rhythm consists in the regularity of their distribution. but, although there are differences in the duration of syllables, some being longer than others, there are no fixed rules to determine whether a syllable is short or long; and, what is a more serious objection, it is impossible to find any regularity in the occurrence of shorts and longs in normal english verse,--in all verse that has not been written with the explicit purpose of imitating the greek or latin. an examination of any line of verse will verify these statements. take, for example, the first three lines of shakespeare's song, blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude. here the quantitative scansion is perhaps as follows:- u u x u u u u i have given the word "so" a double scansion because i conceive it impossible to determine whether it is really long or short. at any rate, there is certainly no regularity in the distribution of shorts and longs, except in the last of the three lines, and no correspondence, except in that line, between the quantitative scansion and the rhythmical movement of the verses. and whenever such a correspondence exists, it is due either to the fact that the incidence of stress tends to lengthen a syllable or to the fact that, oftentimes, in polysyllabic words, mere length will produce a stress. this is the modicum of truth in the quantitative view. but obviously stress governs, quantity obeys. although the quantitative theory of modern verse has been pretty generally abandoned, it cannot be said that the ordinary view which regards the foot as the unit of verse and its rhythm as determined by a regular distribution of accented and unaccented syllables, is in a much better case. for in the first place, by accent is usually meant word-accent; but monosyllabic words have no word-accent; hence, in a succession of such syllables, the accent must be determined by some other factor; and, granting this, there is the further fact to be reckoned with, that poetic accent is relative--the supposedly unaccented syllable is often very highly accented, more highly in fact than some of the so-called accented ones. consider, for example, the line, "from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate," where the word "sings," which in accordance with the conventional iambic scansion would be an unaccented syllable, is really strongly accented, more strongly, indeed, than "earth" which has an accent. as for the division of the line into feet, that is a pure artifice: who, in the actual reading of the above line, would divide the words "sullen" and "heaven" into two parts? the basis of rhythm is, therefore, not word-accent. value stress is the basis.[footnote: throughout the discussion of rhythm i borrow from mark h. liddell: _an introduction to the study of poetry._] certain words, because of their logical or emotional importance, have a greater claim upon the attention, and this inner stress finds outward expression in an increased loudness, duration, and explosiveness of sound. stress coincides with the word-accent of polysyllabic words because the accent is placed on those syllables, usually the root-syllables, which carry the essential meaning. and this stress is not simply present or absent in a syllable, but greater in some than in others; in iambic rhythm, usually greater in the even than in the preceding odd syllable; in trochaic, greater in the odd than in the immediately preceding even one. the rhythm is rather an undulation of stresses than an alternation of stress and lack of stress, something, therefore, far more complex and variegated than the old scheme would imply. and of this undulation, not the foot, but the line is the unit. the character of the undulation of the whole line determines the type of the rhythm, which may be very different in the case of lines of precisely the same kind of "feet." for example, the line quoted above, "from sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate," has a distinctly different rhythm from such another iambic line as "shall i compare thee to a summer's day?" this difference is due, in part at least, to the fact that the highest peaks of the wave in the former are in the center of the line, in "sings" and "hymns," while in the latter they are at the end, in "summer's" and "day." this undulation of stress is present in prose and in ordinary speech; for there also there is a rise and fall of stress corresponding to the varying values of the words and syllables; but in prose, the undulation is irregular, while in poetry, it is regularized. from the foregoing it is clear that rhythm does not exist in the mere sound of the words alone, but in the thought back of them as well. the sounds, as such, have no rhythm in themselves; they acquire rhythm through the subjective processes of significant utterance or listening. the rhythm is primarily in these activities, and from them is transferred to the sounds in which they are embodied. this comes out with additional force when we go farther into the analysis of the rhythm of verse. we have just seen that the line is one unit of the rhythm (this is true even when there are run-over lines, because we make a slight pause after the ends of such lines too); but within the line itself there are sub-units. these sub-units are units of thought. every piece of written or spoken language is a continuous flow of thought. but the movement is not perfectly fluid; for it is broken up into elementary pulses of ideas, following discontinuously upon each other. in prose the succession of pulses is complex and irregular, without any obvious pattern; but in poetry the movement is simple and regular and the pattern is clear. just as in poetry there is a rhythm of stress which represents a regularizing of the natural undulations in the stress of speech, so there is also a more deep-lying rhythm, which arises through a simplification and regularizing of the movement of thought-pulsations. the fundamental rhythm consists in an alternation of subject-group and predicate-group. this duality, although always retained as basal, may, however, be broken up into a threeor four-part movement whenever the connecting links between the subject-idea and the predicate-idea acquire sufficient importance, or whenever the one or the other of the two becomes sufficiently complex to consist of lesser parts. for example, in shakespeare's thirty-first sonnet, the thought-divisions are three for each of the following lines:- thy bosom | is endeared | with all hearts which i by lacking | have supposed | dead; and there | reigns love, | and all love's loving parts, and all those friends | which i thought | buried. these divisions are marked by pauses or casuras. here, then, in the regularizing of the number of thought-pulsations, we have another type of rhythm in poetry, and a rhythm which, coming from within, finds outward expression in sound. cutting across the rhythm of stress, it breaks up the latter with its pauses, and imparts to the whole movement variety and richness. but speech has not only its natural rhythm of stress-undulation and thought-pulsations; it has also, as we saw in the last chapter, a melody. the rise and fall of stress goes hand and hand with a rise and fall of pitch. the different forms of discourse, and the different emotions that accompany them, are each expressed with characteristic variations in pitch. accepting wundt's summary of the facts, we find that, generally speaking, in the declarative statement and the command, the pitch rises in the first thought-division, to fall in the second; while in the question and the condition, the pitch rises and falls in the first, and then rises again in the second. doubt, expectation, tension, excitement--all the forward looking moods of incompleteness--tend to find expression in a rising melody; while assurance, repose, relaxation, fulfillment, are embodied in a falling melody. the high tones are dynamic and stimulating; the low tones, static and peaceful. now in ordinary speech and prose, the change from one tone to another is constant and irregular, following the variation of mood in the substance of the discourse. how is it with verse? there is a simplification and tonality--identity in tone--which is absent from prose. the melody is more obvious and distinctive, because there is a greater simplicity in sentence structure and a higher unity of mood. yet there is no absolute regularity; and the amount of it differs with the different kinds of poetry: there is more in the simple lyric than in the complex narrative; more, for example, in shakespeare's sonnets than in his dramas. the inexpressible beauty of some lines of verse comes doubtless from a fugitive melody which we now grasp, now lose. the existence of speech melody and the tonalities of rime, assonance, and alliteration suggest an analogy between verse and music. for some people, this analogy is decisive. yet the fundamental difference between music and verse must be insisted on with equal force; the purity of tone and fixity of intervals between tones, which is distinctive of music, is absent from verse. in comparison with music, the melodiousness of verse is confused and chaotic; and this condemns to failure any attempt to identify the laws of the two arts. still, we are not yet at the end of the analogy. those who interpret verse in terms of music believe that, underlying or supplanting the rhythm of stress, there is another rhythm, similar to time in music, and capable of expression in musical language. there is, it is claimed, an equality of duration between one line and another, and between one foot in a line and another; these larger and lesser stretches of duration being divided up between syllables and pauses, each syllable and pause occupying a fixed quantity of time; just as in music each bar is divided up between notes and rests of definite value. lanier, for example writes the first line of poe's "raven" as follows:--[footnote: the science of english verse, p. 128.] [illustration] once up | on a | mid-night | drear-y; fascinating as this procedure is, it is nevertheless a distortion of the facts. poetry is meant to be read, not to be sung; when it is put to music and sung, it acquires a character which otherwise does not belong to it. we must not be misled by the historical connection between verse and song, nor by the frequency with which some verses are set to music. our poetry must be understood as we experience it to-day, not as it was experienced in its origins. and there is surely much poetry which no one wants to sing. no one wants to sing a sonnet or miltonic blank verse. the attempt to apply musical notation to verse is a _tour de force_. careful observation and experience show that the syllables in verse have no fixed duration values, and that there is no constant ratio between them. nevertheless, musical time is not wholly absent from verse. you cannot set it to the metronome or express it in musical notation, yet it is there. when lines have the same number of syllables, the time required to read them is approximately the same, and we tend to make the duration of the thought-divisions equal. our time-sense is so fallible, we do not notice the departures from exactness; and when the durations of processes are nearly equal and the values which we attach to them are equal, then we are conscious of them as equal. attention-value and time-value are subjectively equivalent. words which weigh with us give us pause, and we reckon in the time of the pause to make up for a deficiency in the time required to read or utter the syllables. and so time-rhythm enters as still another factor in the complex rhythm of verse. the importance of this rhythm differs, however, with the different kinds of verse. in lyric poetry closely allied to song, it is clear and strong; while in the more reflective and dramatic poetry, it is only an undertone. in some cases, as in the nursery rime, hot cross buns, hot cross buns, if your daughters don't like 'em, give 'em to your sons. one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns, there is almost no rhythm of stress, but there is a rhythm of time; for despite the inequality in the number of syllables, each line has approximately the same duration, even the last line with its three monosyllabic words being lengthened out into equality with the others. the variety in the rhythm is secured through the unequal number of syllables in the same stretch of duration, the more rapid movement of many syllables being set off over against the slower movement of the few. similarly, tennyson's poem, which should be scanned as i shall indicate, has a rhythm which is chiefly musical. break, | break, | break, on thy cold, | grey stones, | o sea! and i would | that my tongue | might utter the thoughts | that arise | in me. the stresses are nearly even throughout; the meter cannot be accurately described as iambic, trochaic, or anapestic; yet there is a rhythm in the approximate temporal equality of the thought-moments. these verses are, however, rather songs than poems. the failure to distinguish between verses which are songs and those which are poems accounts, i believe, for the extremes to which the musical theory of verse has been carried. still another element of poetry which allies it to music is the repetition of the thought-content. why repetition should be musical we already know: music is an art which seeks to draw out and elaborate pure emotion; repetition serves this end by constantly bringing the mind back to dwell upon the same theme. moreover, repetition involves retardation; for a movement cannot progress rapidly if it has to return upon itself; and this slowness gives time for the full value of a feeling to be worked out. in all the more emotional and lyric poetry we find, therefore, recurrence of theme: the thought is repeated again and again; in new forms, perhaps, yet still the same in essence, successive lines or stanzas taking up the same burden; sometimes there is exact recurrence of thought, as in the refrain. and this repetition in the thought is embodied in a repetition of the elements of the sound-pattern; the wave type is repeated from verse to verse or recurs again and again; there is recurrence of melodic form or parallelism between contrasted melodies in different stanzas; there is tonality of vowel and consonant sounds in rime and assonance and alliteration; there may be an approach to identity in the time-duration of the various units. parallelism or repetition is the fundamental scheme of such poetry. but between repetition with its retardation of movement and progress towards a goal there is a necessary antagonism; hence in the more dramatic and narrative forms of poetry, although recurrence is never entirely absent, there is less of it, and the movement approximates to that of prose. emotion demands repetition, but action demands progression. after our analysis of the rhythm of poetry, we are in a position to inquire into what can be expressed through it, and how psychologically this expression can be explained. the expressiveness of rhythm is like that of music, vague and objectless, for which reason rhythm is properly called the music of verse. almost everything in a general way which we have said about the expressiveness of music applies to poetic rhythm. this expressiveness cannot be translated into words with any exactness; the most that can be done is to find a set of words into which it will roughly fit, leaving much vacant space of meaning. that the emotional values of rhythms have character is, however, proved by the fact that some rhythms are better vehicles for certain kinds of thought than others are. yet it often happens that, just as, in song or opera, the same melody is used to express joy or grief, love or religious emotion, so approximately the same rhythmic form is employed in the expression of apparently antagonistic emotions. nevertheless, this fact is not fatal to expression; for, in the first place, there is much variety of rhythm within a given metrical form, so that what superficially may seem to be the same rhythm is really a different one; and, in the second place, as we have already observed in the case of music, there is much--in form and energy of movement--which contrasting emotions have in common, and this may be expressed in the rhythmic type. think of the wide sweep of emotions which have been expressed in the sonnet form! yet consider what varieties of rhythm and speech melodies are possible within this form, and how, nevertheless, there is an identity of character in all sonnets--how they are all thoughtful, all restrained, yet unfaltering in their movement! without going into details, which would lie beyond the scope of general sthetics, it is possible to state the following broad facts (compare the similar facts relating to melody) with reference to poetic rhythms: a rising rhythm expresses striving or restlessness; a falling rhythm, quiet, steadfastness. there is, however, no absolute contrast between the two kinds, because a falling rhythm is still a rhythm, and that means a movement which necessarily contains something of instability and unrest. the contrast is sharpest in the anapestic and dactylic, less sharp in the trochaic and iambic. many a trochaic rhythm becomes in effect iambic when the division of the thought moments and the distribution of the pauses make the rhythm rise after the first few words; and conversely, many an iambic rhythm becomes trochaic through a similar shift in the attention. within a single line, therefore, there may be both rising and falling pulsations. much of the rare beauty of poetry comes from such subtle combinations of rhythmic qualities. through time and tempo also, poetic rhythm is expressive, much after the manner of music; by these means too, in addition to the mode of stress-undulation, it imitates the temporal and dynamic course of action and emotion, and so tends to arouse congruous types of feeling in the mind; it is swift or slow, gliding or abrupt, retarded or accelerated. compare the slow and retarded rhythm of "when i have fears that i may cease to be," so well adapted to express the gravity of the thought, with the rapid and accelerated movement of "hail to thee, blithe spirit!" so full of a quick joyousness. or compare the light legato movement of "bird of the wilderness, blithesome and cumberless," with the heavy staccato movement of "waste endless and boundless and flowerless." yet, for all its expressiveness, the music of verse can never stand alone. it is too bare and tenuous by itself to win and keep the attention or to evoke much feeling. it does not possess the purity of color, the loudness, force, or volume of sound that belong to music and make music, almost alone of the arts, capable of existing as mere form. the rhythm of poetry, derived very largely from a rhythm of thought, has need of thought for significance. the thought and the music are one. for this reason poetry is better, i think, when read to oneself than when read aloud; for then the sound and the sense are more intimate; the attention is not drawn off to the former away from the latter. moreover, try as he will, the poet can never make his word-sounds fully harmonious; some roughness and dissonance will remain; but in silent reading these qualities disappear. however, although by itself of small significance, the musical element in verse makes all the difference between poetry and prose. through its own vague expressiveness it fortifies the emotional meaning of the poetic language, and, at the same time, sublimates it by scattering it in the medium. and finally it imparts an intimacy, a personal flavor, which also allies poetry with music; for the substance of rhythm is the movement of our own inner processes; the rhythm of thoughts and sounds is a rhythm in our own listening and attending, our own thinking and feeling; the emotional values spring from us as well as from the subject-matter. hence even narrative and dramatic poetry have a lyrical tone; we ourselves are implicated in the actions and events portrayed. the demands made by the form of poetry upon its substance are similar to those made by music upon the words in a song, only less stringent. the content must be emotional and significant; it cannot be trite and cold. the meaning of words would permit the poet to bring before the mind all possible objects, events, and ideas, but the music of words would be incongruous with most of them. events narrated must be stirring, thoughts uttered must be emotionally toned, things described must be related to human life and action. poetry may desert the royal themes of long ago--_arma virumque cano, maenin aeide thea_--and relate the lowly life of common folk, even the sordid life of the poor and miserable, but when doing so throws over it the musical glamour of verse and arouses the heat of sympathy and passion. although, since it makes use of words, poetry should always have a meaning, it need not have the definiteness of meaning of logical thought; it may suggest rather than explicate; its music is compatible with vagueness. but vagueness is not obscurity; the poet should always make us feel that we understand him; he should not seek to mystify us, or keep us guessing at his meaning. yet, since the poet operates with words and not with mere sounds, great subtlety and precision of thought are possible in poetry, although not argument and dialectic. poetry may express the results of reflection, so far as they are of high emotional value, but cannot well reproduce its processes; the steps of analysis and inference are too cold and hard for the muse to climb. on the other hand, poetry does not permit of the development and iteration of pure feeling which we find in music; for poetic rhythms and melodies lack the variety and fluency of the musical. yet poetry is capable, where music is not, of expressing brief, quick outbursts of feeling; for a few words, by referring to the causes and conditions of feeling, may adequately express what music needs time and many tones to convey. poetry wins beauty by concentration, whereas music gains by expansion. there is also a similar relation between prose and poetry in this respect; the severity of the form imposes upon poetry a simplicity which contrasts with the breadth and complexity of prose. as schopenhauer remarked, every good poem is short; long poems always contain stretches either of unmusical verse or unpoetic music. yet, in comparison with prose, the tempo of music is slow; we have to linger in the medium in order that its rhythmic and tonal beauties may impress us, and this slowness of movement is imparted to the thought; even narrative and dramatic poetry suffer retardation; for which reason the poetic form must be abandoned if great rapidity of expression is sought. from our study of the materials and forms of its expression, it becomes clear how the subject-matter of poetry is the inner life of mood and striving and passionate human action. emotions may be poured forth in words, and, by means of words, actions may be described. but neither passion nor action appear in poetry as they are lived and enacted; for the poet, working in a medium of words, has to translate them into thoughts. words cannot embody the real experiences which they express; experience is fleeting and falls away from the words, which retain only an echo of what they mean. only what can be relived in memory can be contained in a word, and not even all of that; for a word is not a mere embodiment of an experience, but a communication also, and only its public and universal content can pass from a speaker to a hearer. now, this socialized content of a word is a thought. even passion the most spontaneous and lyrical has to be translated into thought,--not the abstract thought of scientific expression, but the emotionally toned thought of art, thought which, while condensing experience, still keeps its values. emotional thought is the substance of poetry. however, albeit an image of the inner life, poetry does not volatilize it into pure feeling as music does, but distinguishes its objects and assigns its causes. poetry is concrete and articulate where music is abstract and blind. since words, through their meanings and associated images, can express things as well as man's reactions to them, poetry can also reflect the natural environment of life, its habitat and seat. and yet, because the poet has to translate things into ideas, nature never appears in poetry as it is in itself, but as it is implicated in mind. for the poet, sea and sky, the woods and plains and rivers, birds and flowers, are the symbols of human destiny or the loci of human action. emotion overflows into nature, but this involves the taking up of nature into man. not nature, but man's thoughtful life is the poet's theme. if the foregoing statement is correct, emotional thought rather than imagery is the substance of poetry. for poetry, as music with a meaning, can be quite free of definite images. "_in la sua volantade e nostra pace_" (in his will is our peace) [footnote: dante: _paradiso_, 3, 85.] is beautiful poetry, yet there is no image. the thought formulates a mood and finds a sensuous embodiment in musical language, and that suffices for beauty. and yet in poetry, as has been observed, thought tends to descend into imagery. by being connected with a sensuous material, a thought acquires a firmer support for feeling than it could possess of itself as a mere concept. especially effective is the descent to the lower senses; for they are closest to the roots of emotion. let me recall again the shakespearean lyric which i have quoted before in a similar connection, omitting the last lines of each stanza:- blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude; thy tooth is not so keen because thou art not seen, although thy breath be rude. freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, thou dost not bite so nigh as benefits forgot; though thou the waters warp, thy sting is not so sharp as friend remembered not. here are images of cold--winter, freeze; of touch--blow, breath; of pain--tooth, bite, sting, sharp; of taste--bitter. how vividly they convey the ache of desolation! only in words which are imaginative as well as musical are the full resources of verbal expression employed. all the various forms of metaphorical language have the same purpose: by substituting for a more abstract, conceptual mode of expression a more sensuous and imaginative one, to vivify the emotional quality of the situation. when keats sings, ... on the shore of the wide world i stand and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink, he has in mind to convey to us that renunciation of merely personal ambitions which comes to us when we "survey all time and all existence." and how does he do it? by evoking the image of the wide stretch of the shore of the sea, which, making us feel our nothingness as we stand and look out upon it, has the same effect, only more poignant. of the world we have no image--not so, of the shore of the world; and toward what we cannot imagine we cannot easily feel. oftentimes the metaphor is latent, a mere adjective undeveloped in its implications, as in "bitter" sky; yet the purpose is the same. incidentally the poet unifies our world for us through his metaphors; not as the scientist does by pointing out causal and class relations, but by exhibiting the emotional affinities of things. he increases the value of single things by giving them the values of other things. every metaphor should serve this purpose of emotional expression and unification, should be part of an emotional thought; otherwise it is a mere _tour de force_ of cleverness, unrelated to the poetic interest and intrinsically absurd,--the world has no shore and the wind is not bitter; feeling alone can justify such comparisons. moreover, too many metaphors, or metaphors too elaborately developed, by scattering the attention, or by drawing it away from the meaning of which the image should be a part, have the effect of no image at all. the poetry of francis thompson, for example, loses rather than gains vitality through its imaginative exuberance. we object to decadent poets, not because they are sensuous, but because they lack feeling; with them sensation, instead of supporting emotion, supplants it. such poets seek to atone for their want of vigorous feeling by stimulating our eyes and ears. if, as i believe, emotional thought rather than imagery is the essence of poetry, then the modern school of imagists and their french forbears among the "parnassiens" are mistaken. their effort comes in the end to a revival of the old thesis _ut pictura poesis_, the attempt to make poetry a vision of nature rather than an expression of the inner life. they would lead poetry away from the subjectivity of emotion into the outer object world. now, it is indeed possible for the poet to represent nature through the images which words evoke in the mind, and these images may have significance for feeling. their very evocation in musical language is bound to lend them some warmth of mood. yet--as lessing showed in his _laocoon_, despite all the crabbed narrowness of his treatment--it is hopeless for the poet to enter into rivalry with the painter or sculptor. the colors and forms of things which the poet paints for the eye of the mind are mere shadows in comparison with those which we really see.[footnote: the best the poet-painter can do is to express his memories of the outer world; but apart from some vivid emotion, memories are unsatisfactory in comparison with realities.] we admire the marvelous workmanship of such verses as the following of gautier, but they leave us cold; even the melody of the language is incapable of making them warm. how poor they are beside a painting! les femmes passent sous les arbres en martre, hermine et menu-vair et les deesses, frileux marbres, ont pris aussi l'abit d'hiver. la venus anadyomene est en pelisse a capuchon: flore, que la brise malmene, plonge ses mains dans son manchon. et pour la saison, les bergeres de coysevox et de coustou, trouvant leures echarpes legeres ont des boas autour du cou. of course, poetic pictures can be painted--gautier has painted them--but the standard for each art is set by what it can do uniquely well. if the poet works in the domain of the painter, we tend to judge him by the alien standards of another art, where he is bound to fall short; while if he works within his own province, we judge him by his own autonomous laws, under which he can achieve perfection. oftentimes, confessing the inability of the image to stand alone, these poets make it into a symbol of some mood or emotional thought. yet the image remains the chief object of the poet's care; it was clearly the first thing in his mind; the interpretation is an afterthought. the poem therefore falls into two parts--a picture and an interpretation, with little organic relation between them. another one of gautier's poems will serve to illustrate what i mean.[footnote: there are some good examples of this in baudelaire's _fleures du mat_. see for one,_l'albatros_.] les colombes sur le coteau, la-bas ou sont les tombes, un beau palmier, comme un panache vert, dresse sa tete, ou le soir les colombes viennent nicher et se mettre a couvert, mais le matin elles quittent les branches; comme un collier qui s'egrene, on les voit s'eparpiller dans fair bleu, toutes blanches, et se poser plus loin sur quelque toil. mon ame est l'arbre ou tous les soirs, comme elles, de blancs essaims de folles visions tombent des cieux, en palpitant des ailes, pour s'envoler des les premiers rayons. finally, the effort to detach poetry from the inner world and make it an expression of outer things, is incompatible with its musical character. for music is essentially subjective, an expression of pure mood unaffixed to objects. as rhythmical, poetry shares the inwardness of music; wherefore, unless its rhythm is to be a mere functionless, ornamental dress, whatever it expresses should have its source in the inner man. of course, through their meanings, word-sounds indicate the causes and objects of emotion--and this differentiates music from poetry--but in poetry the emotion is still the primary thing, springing from inner strivings, and not from objects, as in painting and sculpture. it is therefore no accident that the contemporary imagists tend to abandon the forms of verse; their poetry has little or no regular rhythm; it approximates to prose. for in proportion as poetry becomes free, it ceases to be tied to musical expressiveness, and may become objective, without prejudice to its own nature. prose poetry, and prose too, of course, may be highly emotional and subjective, for words can express emotions directly without any rhythmical ordering; yet prose need not be subjective, as poetry must be. there is no absolute difference between prose and poetry; for even prose has its rhythm and its euphony, its expressiveness of the medium; yet in prose the rhythm is irregular and accidental and the expressiveness of the medium incomplete, while in poetry the rhythm is regular and pervasive and ideally every sound-element, as mere sound, is musical. but this more complete musical expressiveness of the medium restricts poetry to a more inward world. by abandoning the strict forms and restraints of regular rhythms, the writers of free verse think to gain spontaneity and something of the amplitude of prose; yet it is doubtful whether they gain as much as they lose. for, in the hands of the skillful poet, the form, having become second nature, ceases to be a bond; and the expression, by taking on regularity of rhythm, acquires a concentration and mnemonic value which free verse cannot achieve. in comparison with free verbal expressions, verse forms are, indeed, artifices; yet they are not artificial, in the bad sense of functionless, for they possess irreplaceable values. nevertheless, it would be strange if they were not from time to time abandoned, the poet reverting to the freedom of ordinary speech; just as now and then, in civilized communities, we find vigorous and sincere men who tire of culture and take to the woods. the triplicity of the word, as sound, image, meaning, provides a certain justification for the variety of tastes in poetry, and accounts for the difficulty of setting up a single universal standard. there is an unstable equilibrium between the three aspects of words; hence poetry tends to become predominantly music or painting or thought, yet can never succeed in becoming completely any one of these. and it is inevitable that some people should be more sensitive to one rather than to another of the aspects of words, preferring therefore the more musical, or the more thoughtful, or the more pictorial poetry. and so we have poems that would be music, and others that would be pictures, and still others that would be epigrams. and each kind has a certain right and beauty; but no kind has the unique beauty that is poetical. we do not ask their makers not to produce them, nor do we condemn the pleasures which they afford us, but we cannot commend them without reservation. for the best poems achieve a synthesis of the elements of words,--they are at once musical and imaginative and thoughtful. yet with difficulty; for there is an antagonism among the elements: when the music is insistent, the thought is obscured; when the images are elaborate, their meaning is lost to sight; when the thought is subtle or profound, it rejects the image and is careless of sound. swinburne's poetry is full of philosophy, but is so sensuous and musical that we miss its thoughts; browning is too subtle a thinker to be a musician. the complexity of poetry is the source of its strength, lending it something of the inwardness of music and the plasticity of the pictorial arts; but is also the source of its weakness. seldom does it achieve the technical purity and perfection of music and painting and sculpture. music has a clear and simple medium, painting and sculpture work with colors and forms which almost are what they represent; but word-sounds are not what they mean, and what they mean is not precisely the same as the images which they evoke; too often the correspondence is factitious and artificial, rarely is there fusion. yet, as i have tried to show, when meaning is made central, sound may fit it closely, and when the meaning is emotional, the music of sound may echo its cry, and the image, instead of rebelling, may serve. emotional thought is the essence of poetry and the link between its music and its pictures. of the different modes of poetry, the lyric has rightly seemed the most typical. being an expression of a single, simple mood, its subject-matter is most closely akin to the musical expressiveness of the rhythm and euphony of the medium. when, moreover, the mood is a common one, there occurs that identification of self with the passion expressed characteristic of music: the utterance becomes ours as well as the poet's; the "i" of the poem is the "i" who read. this is especially true when the setting and causes of the emotion are without name or place or date; the poem then shares the timelessness and universality of music. in such a lyric there is complete symmetry in the relation between speaker and hearer; the poet unburdens his heart to us, and we in receiving his message tell it back to him. when, on the other hand, in explaining his feelings, the poet relates them to events and persons which have been no part of our experience, this symmetry is lost; we no longer utter the poem ourselves, but merely hear the poet speak. such poetry is already approaching the dramatic; for although still the expression of the poet's life, it is no longer an expression of the reader's life, and the poet also, as he lives past his experience, must come at length to view it as if it were another's. and yet, paradoxical as it may sound, dramatic poetry is dramatic in proportion as it is lyrical--that is, according to the degree to which the poet has made the life of others his own. dramatic poetry, when truly poetic, is a series of lyrics of the less universal type. in another respect, however, dramatic poetry is essentially different from the lyrical. for, in dramatic poetry, each utterance is a response or invitation to another utterance, while in lyric poetry, utterance is complete in itself. the one is social, the other personal: in the appreciation of the lyric, the reader is just himself; in the appreciation of dramatic poetry, he is a whole society, becoming now this man and now that. the unity of the one is the unity of a single mood; the unity of the other is the interaction of the dramatis person as it works itself out in the mind of the reader. and this difference, as we have seen, is imaged in the form. being self-contained, the lyric is a harmonious whole, in which the parts may be repeated for emphasis; looking backward and forward, the dramatic utterance is a progressive and incomplete whole, which cannot stay for iteration. lyric poetry is like a communication from friend to friend, intimate and meditative; dramatic poetry is like a passionate conversation which one overhears. the life portrayed in the epic poem is even less direct than that which is portrayed in the drama; for there the poet does not impersonate the agents in the story, but describes them. his description is the first thing which we get; we get the action only indirectly through that. hence the story-teller himself--his manner of telling, his reactions to what he tells, his sympathy, humor, and intelligence--are part of what he expresses. he himself is partly theme. no matter how hard he may try to do so, he cannot exclude himself; through his choice of words, through his illustrations, through his style, "which is the man," he will reveal himself. [footnote: see lipps: _aesthetik_, bd. 1, s. 495 et seq.] we inevitably apprehend, not merely his thoughts, but him thinking. in the epic form of poetry, the poet has, moreover, an opportunity for a more direct mode of self-revelation, an opportunity for comment and judgment upon the life which he portrays. and this we should accept, not in a spirit of controversy or criticism, but with sympathy, as a part of the total aesthetic expression, striving to get, not only the poet's story, but his point of view regarding it as well. this duality in the life of the epic involves a two-foldness in its time. in both lyric and dramatic poetry, life moves before us as a single stream actual in the present; but in the epic there is the time of the story-teller, which is present, and the time of the events that he relates, which is past. and being past, these events appear as it were at a distance, at arms' length and remote; they lack the vivid reality of things present. moreover, since the past is finished, unlike the present which is ever moving and creating itself anew, the epic, in comparison with the drama, comes to us with its parts as it were coexisting and complete, more after the manner of space than of time. and just as a spatial thing allows us to survey its parts by turn, since they are all there before we look; so, in reading an epic, we feel that we can proceed at our leisure and, despite the causal relation, take the incidents in any order. it is not so in the drama, where events move rapidly and make themselves in a determined sequence. this is what goethe meant when he said that substantiality was the category of the epic, causality of the drama, although, of course, this distinction is not absolute. finally, the fact that the epic poet tells rather than impersonates his story, enables him to enlarge its scope; for by means of descriptions he can introduce nature as one of the persons of the action. [footnote: compare munsterberg: _the eternal values_, p. 233.] he can show the molding influence of nature upon man, and how man, in turn, interacts not only with his fellows, but with his environment. fate, in the sense of the non-human determinants of man's career, can show its hand. in the _odyssey_, for example, shipwreck and the interference of the gods are factors as decisive as odysseus' courage and cunning. by contrast, in lyric poetry, nature is merely a reflection of moods; in dramatic poetry, it is simply the passive, causally ineffective stage for a social experience wholly determined by human agents. this distinction is, however, not absolute. in _brand_, for example, through the stage directions and the utterance of the persons, we are indirectly made aware of the control exerted by the physical background of the action; in the greek drama we learn this from the chorus and the prologue. chapter x prose literature there is an almost universal feeling, expressed in many common phrases, that prose literature is not one of the fine arts. the reason is this: in prose literature there is a conspicuous absence of beauty of form and sensation, of the decorative, in comparison with the other arts. the vague expressiveness and charm of the medium, the musical aspect, is largely lacking. not wholly lacking, of course, as a multitude of beautiful passages testify; yet, in general, it remains true that, in prose, the medium tends to be transparent, sacrificing itself in order that nothing may stand between what it reveals to thought and the imagination. it fulfills its function when the words are not unpleasant to the ear, and when their flow, adapting itself to the span and pulsation of the attention, is so smooth as to become unnoticeable, like the movement of a ship on a calm sea,--when it is a means to an end, not an end in itself. prose literature is, therefore, incompletely beautiful. the full meaning and value of the aesthetic are not to be found there, but rather in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture. yet prose literature remains art, if incomplete art--a free, personal expression of life, for the sake of contemplation. as free, it differs from verbal expression in the service of practical ends, and as personal, it cannot be classed with science. throughout the long course of its history, it has tended to become now the one, now the other of these--and its lack of the decorative element has done much to make this possible--but its power to outlast the moral and political issues which it has so often sought to direct, and its well-merited rejection by sociologists and psychologists as anything more than material for their work, are sufficient evidence and warning of where it properly belongs,--among the arts. the sacrifice of the musical element in the medium does not have to be justified on practical grounds as making for efficiency, or on scientific grounds as favoring analysis, but may be understood from the artistic standpoint. for it was only through a method and medium that renounced the musical manner of poetry, with its vaguely expressive, yet rigid forms, that the fullness and minuteness of life could be represented. even the more fluently musical manner of poetical prose is unsuited as a medium for the expression of the kind of life which is represented in normal prose. poetical prose is appropriate for the expression of deeds and sentiments of high and mystical import only, but not for the expression of the more commonplace or definitely and complexly articulated phases of life. for the latter, the broader and freer and more literal method of strict prose is the only appropriate medium of expression. the unmusical character of prose style is not determined by weakness, but by adaptation to function. and, although the medium of prose is attenuated almost to the vanishing point, where it may seem to be lost, it may nevertheless borrow from its content a beauty of rhythm, imagery, and form that will seem to be its very own. for in language, as we observed in our discussion of poetry, the meaning and the symbol are so closely one, that it becomes impossible, except by analysis, to distinguish them. prose rhythm is fundamentally a rhythmical movement of ideas, like poetic rhythm, only without regularization; yet, since the ideas are carried by the words, it belongs to them also; images blossom from ideas, yet they too seem to belong to the words in which they are incarnated; and the harmony and symmetry which thoughts and images may contain as we compose them synthetically in the memory, make an architecture of words. the transparent medium of prose shares the beauty of its content, just as a perfect glass partakes of the color of the light which it transmits. the psychologic roots of prose literature are the impulses to selfrevelation and to acquaintance with life. every thing that has once entered into our lives, no matter how intimate, craves to come out; the instinct of gregariousness extends, as we have noted, to the whole of the mind. the completely private and uncommunicated makes us as uncertain and afraid of ourselves as physical loneliness. but in addition to the dislike for any form of isolation, even when purely spiritual, there is another factor which determines self-revelation,--the desire for praise. we want a larger audience for our exploits than the people immediately involved in them, so we tell them to any listening ear. the friend whispering his confession illustrates the one motive; the hero bragging of his deeds illustrates the other. the desire to hear another's story is the obverse of the desire to tell one about oneself, just as the impulse to welcome a friend is the complement of his impulse to seek our companionship; we receive from him exactly what he takes from us,--an enlargement of our social world, the creation of another social bond. if we cannot hear his story from his own lips, we want to hear it from some third person, who will surely be glad to relate it, since he, as bearer of the news, will bring to himself something of the glory of the hero. there is malice enough in gossip, but most of it is the purest kind of mental and emotional satisfaction. our interest in it is of exactly the same kind as our interest in novels and romances. the stories which we tell about ourselves and our friends make up the ephemeral, yet real prose literature of daily life. most stories probably had their origin in more or less literal transcriptions from real life. history is the basis of literature. however, as stories are passed from one person to another, fiction encroaches upon fact. details are forgotten and have to be filled out from the imagination; then a sheer delight in invention enters in; it is so interesting to see if you can make a world as good as the real one, or even outdo it in strangeness and wonder, provided, of course, you can still get yourself believed. even in the relation of real events, creation inevitably plays a part; the whole of any story is not worth telling; there must be selection, emphasis upon the most striking particulars, and synthesis. besides the opportunity which it gives of unhampered control over the story, fiction has still other advantages. the interest which we take in tales of real life is bound up with personal appeals. this is most racy in gossip, but something of the kind lingers in all narratives of fact. literature can become disinterested and universal in its appeal only when, keeping the semblance of life, it becomes a work of pure imagination. it is then, as aristotle said, more philosophical, that is, more universal and typical, than history. another advantage of fiction as compared with history is its completeness. the knowledge which we possess of the lives of others is the veriest fragment. we know, of course, our own lives best; but even of these, unless we are at the end of our years, we do not know the outcome. we know next well the life of an intimate--wife, child, sweetheart, friend--yet not all of that; there is much he will not tell us and much else which we cannot observe; for even he dwells with us for a brief time only, and then is gone. of other people, we can know still less; we can observe something, we can get more from hearsay; but that is a chaos of impressions; the larger part is inference and construction, a work of the imagination, which may or may not be true. even the biography, carefully made from all available data in the way of personal recollections, letters, and diaries, although it may approach to wholeness, remains, nevertheless, very largely a construction, a work of literary fiction. the autobiography comes still closer; yet, since it is designed for a public which cannot be expected to view it in a solidly detached fashion, it suffers from the reticence which inevitably intrudes to suppress. in fiction alone, none except artistic motives need intervene to bid silence. however, although fiction be a purely ideal world of imagined life, it is essentially the same as the real social world. for that world is also imaginary. we have direct experience of our own lives alone; the lives of others can exist for us only in our thought about them. to be sure, our daily contact with the bodies of our friends and associates gives to this thought something of the pungency of self-knowledge; yet in absence, they live for us, as the characters in a novel, only in our thought. and the majority of the people, personally unknown to us, who make up our larger social world--and for most of us this includes the great ones who are such potent factors in determining it--are real to us in the same way that diana or esmond are real. all historical figures belong to this world of imagination. our friends too, as they pass out of our lives or die, and we ourselves eventually, will sink into it. our interest in the fictional world of the writer is, moreover, essentially the same as our interest in the real world. its persons arouse in us the same emotions of admiration, love, or dislike. they satisfy the same need for social stimulation, the same curiosity about life. just as we have certain instincts and habits of movement that make us restless when they are not satisfied, and afford us a wild joy in walking and running when we are released from confinement, so we have certain instincts and habits of feeling towards persons which demand objects and produce joy when companions are found. an unsatisfied or superabundant sociability lies back of our love of fiction. we read because we are lonely or because our fellow men have become trite and fail to stimulate us sufficiently. if our fellows were not so reticent, if they would talk to us and tell us their stories with the freedom and the brightness of a stevenson, or if their lives were so fresh and vivid that we never found them dull, perhaps we should not read at all. but, as it is, we can satisfy our craving for knowledge of life only by extending our social world through fiction. fiction may teach us, edify us, make us better men--it may serve all these purposes incidentally, but its prime purpose as art is to provide us with new objects for social feeling and knowledge. the interest which we take in fictitious action is also like that which we take in real action. the same emotions of desire for the attainment of a goal, suspense, hope, fear, excitement, curiosity and its satisfaction, joy, despair, are aroused. and we have a need to experience these emotions at high pitch greater than our everyday lives can satisfy. our lives are seldom adventurous all over; there are monotonous interludes with no melody, offering us little that is new to learn. our love for war and sport shows that we were not built organically for humdrum. now literature helps to make up for this deficiency in real life by providing us with adventures in which we can participate imaginatively, and from which we can derive new knowledge. if real life did supply us with all the intense living that we demand, we might not care to read, although the love of adventure grows by feeding, and many an active man revels in tales which simulate his own exploits. it follows that the novelist should imitate life, yet at the same time raise its pitch. the realists imitate life deliberately, and we measure their worth by their truth, but they select the intense moments. the romancers and weavers of fairy tales, on the other hand, instead of choosing the vivid moments of real life, in order to stimulate the emotions, accomplish the same end by exciting wonder and amazement at the exaggerations and unheard-of novelties which they create. yet even they give us truth, not truth in the sense of fact, but in the sense of a world which arouses the same elementary emotions, intensified though they be through amazement, as are aroused by fact. it matters not how outlandish their tales so long as they do this. love stories are so widely interesting because love is the one very vivid emotion in most people's lives, although there are other experiences--warfare, the pursuit of great aims, the clash of purposes and beliefs, the growth of souls--equally intense. dante's three themes, venus, salus, virtus,[footnote: see his _de vulgari eloquentia._] broadly interpreted, cover the range of literary subjects. of course, since we secure no personal triumphs in reading, and every one wishes to play his own part successfully in real life, literature cannot become a substitute for life, except with the artist who triumphs in making his story. nevertheless, as henry james says, fiction may and should compete with life, and this it can do by giving us the feelings aroused by action without imposing upon us the responsibilities and the fateful results of action itself; there we can learn new things about life without incurring the risks of participation in it. we can play the part of the adventurer without being involved in any blame; we can fall in love with the heroine without any subsequential entanglements; we can be a hero without suffering the penalties of heroism; we can travel into foreign lands without deserting our business or emptying our purses. hence, although no one would exchange life for literature, one is better content, having literature, to forego much of life. the elements of every story are these five: character, incident, nature, fate, and milieu--the social, historical, and intellectual background. character and incident are capable of some degree of separation, so far as, in novels of adventure, the personalities necessary to carry on the action may be very abstract or elementary, and so far as, in so-called psychological novels, the number of events related may be very small and their interest dependent upon their effect on character; but one without the other is as inconceivable in a story as it is in life itself, and the development of fiction has been steadily in the direction of their interdependence. aristotle's dictum regarding the superior importance of plot over character applies to the drama only, and because character cannot well be revealed there except through action. the construction of character depends upon the delineation of distinctive and recognizable physical traits, a surprisingly small number sufficing, a mere name being almost enough; upon the definition of the individual's position in a group--his relation to family, townspeople, and other associates--a matter of capital importance; and, finally, information about his more permanent interests and attitudes. this construction is best made piecemeal, the character disclosing itself gradually during the story, as it does in life, and growing under the stress of circumstances. the old idea of fixity of character does not suit our modern notions of growth; we demand that character be created by the story; it should not preexist, as schopenhauer thought it should, with its nature as determinate and its reactions as predictable as those of a chemical substance. and although in their broad outlines the possibilities of human nature are perhaps fewer in number than the chemical substances, the variations of these types in their varying environments are infinite. to create a poignant uniqueness while preserving the type is the supreme achievement of the writer of fiction. we want as many of the details of character, and no more, as are necessary to this end. by incident is meant action expressing character or action or event determining fate. there are a thousand actions, mechanical or habitual, performed by us all, which throw no light upon our individuality. almost all of these the novelist may neglect, or if he wishes to describe them, a single example will serve to reveal whatever uniqueness they may hide. there are an equal number of actions and events like blind alleys leading nowhere; from these also the novelist abstracts; it is only when he can trace some effect upon fate or character that he is interested. the delineation of nature or the milieu is governed by the same reference: a social or intellectual environment, no matter how interesting in itself, without potent individualities which it molds, or scenery, no matter how romantic, unless it is a theater of action or a spiritual influence upon persons, has no place in a story. each of these, however, may by itself become the subject-matter of a literary essay, provided the writer's own moods and appreciations are included; otherwise it is a topic for sociology, history, or topography, not for literature. by fate in a story i mean the writer's feeling for causality. as the maker of an image of life, the writer must portray life as molded by its past and by all the circumstances surrounding it. he must present character as determined by personal influence, by nature and the milieu; he must have a vivid sense for the interrelation of incidents. the feeling for fate is independent of any special philosophical view of the world; it does not imply fatalism or the denial of the spontaneous and originative force of personality; it is simply recognition of the wholeness of life. nor, again, does it imply the possibility of predicting the end of a story from the beginning, for the living sequence, forging its links as it proceeds, is not mechanical; but it does imply that after things have happened we must be able to perceive their relatedness--the beginning, middle, and end as one whole. in the story, there must be the same kind of combination of necessity and contingency that there is in life: we must be sure that every act and incident will have its effect, and we must be able to divine, in a general way, what that effect will be; but owing to the complexity of life, which prevents us from knowing all the data of its problems, and owing to the spontaneity of its agents and the creative syntheses within its processes, we must never be able to be certain just what the effect will be like; our every calculation must be subject to the correction of surprise. suspense and excitement must go hand in hand with a feeling for a developing inner necessity. there is no story without both. yet no formula for the amount of each can be devised. the dependence of man upon nature makes inevitable the occurrence of what we call accidents, violent breaks in the tissue of personal and social life, unaccountable from the point of view of our human purposes. by admitting the part played by the non-human background in determining fate, the naturalistic school of writers have enlarged the vision of the novelist beyond the range of the tender-minded sentimentalist. it is to be expected, moreover, that coincidences should occur,--the meeting of independent lines of causation with consequences fateful to each. a careful investigation would disclose that most interesting careers have been largely determined by coincidences. the only demand that we can make of the artist in this regard is that he do not give us so many of these that his work will seem unreal. we must not feel that he is making the story in order to surprise us and thrill us--the purpose of melodrama; the story should make itself. hardy's _the return of the native_ is an illustration of failure here; the coincidences are so many that it seems magical, the work of a capricious genius, not of nature. by fate in a story we do not mean, of course, the mere causal concatenation of events, for some relation to a purposeful life is always implied. but since this relation is a general condition applying to all art, we shall consider it here only as it affects the unity of a story. no rule can be laid down for the compass of a story; it may cover a small incident, as in many short stories, or it may embrace the whole or the most significant part of a life. the requirement that there be a beginning, middle, and end holds, but does not enlighten us as to what constitutes an end. death makes one natural end to a story, since it makes an end to life itself; but within the span of a life the parts are not so clearly defined. yet despite the continuity and overlapping of the parts of life, there are certain natural breaks and divisions,--the working out of a plan to fulfillment or disaster, the termination or consummation of a love affair, the commission of a crime with its consequences, or more subtle things, such as the breaking up of an old attitude and the formation of a new one. in life itself there are incidents that are closed because they cease to affect us deeply any more, purposes which we abandon because we can get no farther with them or because they have found their natural fulfillment, points of view which we have to relinquish because life supplies us with new facts which they do not include. the unity of a story should mirror these natural unities. the search for the wholeness of life should not blind us to the relative isolation of its parts; and there is fate in the parts as well as in the whole. the selection of incidents for their bearing upon fate, the selection of significant traits for the construction of character, with the resulting unity and simplicity of the parts and the whole, is responsible for most of the ideality of fiction as compared with real life. real life is a confused medley of impressions of people and events, a mixture of the important and the unimportant, the consequential and the inconsequential, with no evident pattern. of this, literary art is the _verklartes bild_. it is not because, in literature, men are happier and nobler that life seems superior there; but because its outlines are sharper, its design more perspicuous, the motives that sway it better understood. it has the advantage over life that a landscape flooded with sunshine has over one shrouded in darkness. the way the literary artist builds up the ideal social world of fiction follows closely the method which we all employ in constructing the real social world. in real life we start from certain perceived acts and utterances, to which we then attach purposive meanings, and between which we establish relations. the process of interpretation is so rapid that, although strictly inferential in character and having imagination as its seat, it seems, nevertheless, like direct perception. as we see people act and hear them talk, it is as if we had a vision, confused indeed, yet direct, of their inner lives. and yet, as we have insisted, the real social world is constructed, not perceived. the literary artist, unless he calls dramatic art to his aid, cannot present the persons and acts of his story; he can only describe them and report their talk. description must take the place of vision, a recorded conversation the place of a heard one. yet, by these means, the artist can give us almost as direct an intuition as we get from life itself; he can make us seem to see and overhear. from the acts which he describes we can infer the motives of the characters, and from the reported conversations we can learn their opinions and dreams. or the novelist may insert a letter which we can read as if it were real. the resulting image of life will be clearer than any we could construct for ourselves; for the artist can report life more carefully than we could observe it; and he can make his characters more articulate in the expression of themselves than ordinary men, giving them a gift of tongues like his own. this last is especially characteristic of the drama, where sometimes, as in shakespeare, men speak more like gods than like men. and we can listen to the intimate conversation of friends and lovers, upon which, in real life, we would not intrude. this direct method of exposition through the description of acts and events and the record of conversations is the basis of every vivid story. it leaves the necessary inferences to the reader, just as life leaves them to the observer. in the hands of a master like fontane, this method is incomparable; nothing can supplant it. it is the only method available for the dramatist, who, however, can make it still more effective through histrionic portrayal. yet it does not suffice to satisfy our craving for knowledge of life, for only the broader, more obvious feelings can be inferred from the acts of men; the subtler and more remote escape. even in conversation these cannot all be revealed; for many of them are too intimate to be spoken, and many again are unknown even to those who hold them. to-day we ask of the novelist that he disclose the finest, most hidden tissues of the soul. to this end, the microscopy of analysis, the so-called psychological method, must be employed. the novelist must perform upon his characters the same sort of dissection that we perform when, introspecting, we seek out the obscurer grounds of our conduct. and in the pursuit of this knowledge the novelist can oftentimes do better with his characters than we can do with ourselves. for utter sincerity regarding ourselves is impossible; the desire to think well of ourselves prevents us from recognizing the truth about ourselves. the novelist, on the contrary, can be unprejudiced and can know fully what he himself is creating. in order to accomplish this same purpose, the dramatist has to introduce bits of self-analysis, unusually sincere and penetrating, spoken aloud,--in the old style, monologues. and yet, without sacrificing the truthfulness of his own art, he cannot go so deep here as the novelist. through his analysis of his characters, the novelist must, however, construct them; otherwise he is a psychologist, not an artist. a synthetic vision of personality must supervene upon the dissection, and the emotional interest in character and action must subsist alongside of the intellectual interest. he must not let us lose the vivid sense of a living presence. in order to keep this, he must continue to employ the direct method of description of person and action, and report of conversation. how far the analytic method may be carried and at the same time the sense of personality kept intact, may be inferred from the work of henry james, who, nevertheless, seems at times to fail to bring the out-going threads of his thought back into the web which he is weaving. again, in order to reach the social, historical, and metaphysical background of life--the milieu, the method of thought is the only available one. for the milieu is not anything that can be seen or heard or touched; it does not manifest itself to perception, but has to be constructed by a process of inference and synthesis. much of it, to be sure, can be divined from the acts and conversations, from the dress and manners of the characters, but there is always more that has to be directly expounded. the writer cannot rely upon the reader's perspicacity to make the right inferences, or upon his knowledge to supply sufficient data; nor can he make his characters tell all that he may want told about their past and the life of the world in which they live, and through the influence of which they have become what they are. the novelist must construct for the reader the _mise en scene_ of his story. yet this must be held in complete subordination to the story. the intellectual background must lie behind, not athwart the story; it must be created for the sake of the story, not the story for its sake. a philosophy of life, even, is the inevitable presupposition of every story. for no writer, no matter how direct and empirical he may be in his methods, can escape from looking at life through the glass of certain political, social, and religious ideas. he may have none of his own construction, yet he will unconsciously share those of his age. the prose literature of our own age, aside from some minor differences of technique, differs from that of the past chiefly through its more democratic and naturalistic views of life. and just as we rightly ask of the novelist that he enlighten us regarding the subtler causation of human action, so with equal right we may ask him to exhibit the relations of the persons and incidents which he describes to social organization, spiritual movements, and nature; for only so can they be seen in their complete reality. yet right here lurks a danger threatening the enduring beauty of every story thus made complete. for the social and cosmic background of life, as we have observed, can be constructed only through thought, and thought, particularly regarding such matters, is peculiarly liable to error. the artist who goes very deep into this is sure to make mistakes. even when he tries to use the latest sociological, economic, and political theories, he runs great risks; for these theories are always one-sided and subject to correction; they never prove themselves to be what the artist thinks and wants them to be--concrete views which he can apply with utter faith. how many stories of the century past have been marred by the author's too ready application of darwinism to social life! when we can separate the story from its intellectual background, the inadequacy of the latter matters little; for we can apply metaphysical and political criticism to the theory and enjoy the story aesthetically; but many of our writers come to life with preconceived ideas deeply affecting their delineation of it. the picture no longer seems true because we feel that a false theory has prevented the artist from viewing life concretely and clearly. we could, for example, accept as natural and inevitable the ending of _tess of the d'urbervilles_, if hardy had not presented it as an illustration of the cruel sport of the gods. as it stands with the author's commentary, we suspect that the girl's fate might have been different,--that perhaps he gave it this turn in order to prove his theory of life. this fault is especially flagrant in the theory-ridden fiction of to-day. determination through the past is overemphasized as against the influence of present, novel factors in a growing experience; heredity is given undue weight as against the inborn originality of personality and the uniqueness acquired through unique experiences; the influence of sensual motives is stressed at the expense of the moral; and so on through all the other abstractions and insufficiencies of "scientific" novel writing. the writer may well profit by everything he can learn from science; but he should not let his knowledge prevent him from seeing life concretely and as a whole. the literary man's science and philosophy are bound to be condemned by the expert, but his concrete delineations of life based on direct observation and vivid sympathy and imagination are impeccable. his theories may be false, but these will always be true. nothing can take their place in fiction. it is they which give enduring value to such tales as _morte d'arthur_, despite all the crudity of the intellectual background. reflections upon life may become matter for literature in the essay, quite apart from any story. but the essay, like the story, unless it is to compete at a disadvantage with science and philosophy, must rely upon first-hand personal acquaintance with life, and artistic expression. the more abstract and theoretical it becomes, the more precarious its worth. i do not mean that the essayist may not generalize, but his generalizations should be limited to the scope of his experience of life. i do not mean that he should not philosophize, but his philosophy should be, like goethe's or emerson's, an expression of intuition and faith. properly, the literary essay is a distinct artistic genre--the expression of a concrete _thinking_ personality, and its value consists in the living wisdom it contains. such essays as those of a montaigne or a la rochefoucauld make excellent materials for the social sciences, and can never be displaced by them as sources of knowledge of life. considerations similar to those which we have adduced regarding the implied philosophy of a story apply to its moral purpose. we cannot demand of the writer that he have no moral purpose or that he leave morality out of his story. for, since the artist is also a man, he cannot rid himself of an ethical interest in human problems or with good conscience fail to use his art to help toward their solution. his observations of moral experience will inevitably result in beliefs about it, and these will reveal themselves in his work. yet we should demand that his view of what life ought to be shall not falsify his representation of life as it is. just as soon as the moral of a tale obtrudes, we begin to suspect that the tale is false. we have such suspicions about bourget, for example, because, as in _une divorce_, we are never left in doubt from the beginning as to the conventions he is advocating. and along with the feeling for the reality of the story goes the feeling for the validity of the moral; they stand and fall together. a story's moral, like life's moral, is convincing in proportion as it is an inference from the facts. the novelist, fearing that we may not have the wits to discern it, is justified in drawing this inference himself; yet it must show itself to be strictly an inference from the story--the story must not seem to have been constructed to prove it. "_die weltgeschichte ist das weltgericht,_" wrote schiller; even so, the delineation of life is the criticism of life. to show the scope of disillusion, monotony, repression--life's generous impulses narrowed and made timid by the social, economic, and political machine--would be a criticism of our modern world; there would be no need of moralizing. this the russian novelists seem to have understood; they judged russian life by describing it. the man who writes literature as a means for promulgating political or moral ideas is either a conservative who desires to return to the conventions of the past, or else a radical who seeks the establishment of a new mode of life. the method employed by the former usually consists in exposing the restlessness and unhappiness of people who live in accordance with "advanced" ideas in comparison with the contentment of those who follow the older traditions. such stories are, however, inconclusive, because they imply the false sociological thesis that the remedy for present ills is a return to the customs of the past. happiness can indeed exist only in a stable society; but each age must create its own order to suit its changing needs; it cannot, if it would, go back to the old. these stories, therefore, although they often contain truthful and valuable pictures of the ills of contemporary life, and are useful in helping to conserve what is good in the spirit of the past, are nevertheless bound to be futile in their main endeavor. the method of the radical usually consists of two parts: one of criticism, designed to show the misery due to existing laws and institutions; another of construction, the disclosure of a new and better system. but here, too, the constructive part of the story is likely to be weak. for whether the writer sets forth his program by putting it into the mouth of one of his characters or appends it as a commentary to his story, the practicability of his scheme is always open to question. it is only through trial that any scheme can be shown to be workable. there is, however, a new method that deserves better the name of "experimental romance" than zola's own works. it consists in portraying people living in accordance with new sentiments and ideals, or even under new institutions imaginatively constructed. yet this method also has its weakness, for it is difficult to make people believe in the reality of a life that has not been actually lived. still, this difficulty is not fatal; for experiments in living are constantly being made all around us, which the discerning novelist needs only to observe and report. he can show the success of these or how, if they fail, their failure is due, not to anything inherently vicious, but simply to adverse law and opinion. life is full of such stories waiting for some novelist who is not too timid to tell them. we are thus brought round again to the thesis that the enduringly valuable elements of every story are its concrete creations of life. in the end, the story teller's fame will rest upon his power to create and reveal character and upon his sense for fate. there is just one thing that should be added to this--a rich emotional attitude toward life. it is the greater wealth of this that makes a novelist like thackeray or anatole france superior to one like balzac. the personality that tells the story is as much a part of the total work as the characters and events portrayed, and must be taken into account in any final judgment of the whole. without the author's vivid and rich participation, we who read can never be fully engaged, and we shall find more of life in the story, the more there is of him in it. chapter xi the dominion of art over nature: painting in literature, as we observed in our last two chapters, nature does not find aesthetic expression on its own account. in the lyric, nature appears only as the reflection of personal moods and thoughts, in the drama and novel and epic only as the theater of human action or the determiner of human fate. in painting and sculpture, on the other hand, the expression of nature is the primary aim. of course, in so far as this expression is aesthetic, it is an expression not of nature alone, but of our responses as well; but nature is the starting point, not emotion as in lyric poetry, nor the effect upon destiny as in the epic. because they are expressions of nature, and because the copying of the human body, of trees, clouds, and the like is an indispensable part of their practice, painting and sculpture have seemed to give support to the theory of art as imitation. yet, although the activity of imitation is a means to the creation of picture and statue, the mere fact of being a copy is not the purpose of the completed work nor the ground of our pleasure in it. not its relation to anything outside itself, no matter how important for its making, but its own intrinsic qualities constitute its aesthetic worth. this was true of the earliest efforts in these arts. the primitive artist copied not for the sake of copying, but because he ascribed a magical power to images. in the image he believed he somehow possessed the object itself, and so could control it; to the image, therefore, was transferred all the value and potence of the object. the object represented was deeply significant; it was perhaps the animal upon which the tribe depended for its food, its totem or guardian divinity; or else, as among the egyptians, it was the man himself, of whom the image was meant to be an enduring habitation for the soul. if primitive men had copied indifferent objects, then we might infer that the mere making of an image was the end in view; but this they did not do, and it has never been the practice of any vigorous group of artists. only when the means are valued instead of the end--technique in place of beauty--does this occur. through such a mistaking of aims, new instruments of expression may be discovered, useful for a future genius, but no genuine art is produced. the genuine artist copies, not for the sake of copying, but in order to create a work of independent beauty. this same transference of value to the image, with the consequent freeing of the image from the model, can be observed even in commemorative art. a king desires, perhaps, to perpetuate his memory; how better than through some enduring likeness in stone or paint? while he is alive and after his death this image will remind his subjects of him and his valorous deeds. the relation to the model seems to be fundamental; but in proportion to the success of the artist in making a likeness, the stone or paint will be made to seem all alive, and for those who cannot come into direct relations with the monarch, he will be effectively present in the statue or picture, even when, through death, he is removed from all social and practical relations. who does not feel that philip the fourth is present on the velasquez canvas; where else could one find him so alive? if the work is artistic, the spectator's interest will center in feeling the life in the color and line or sculptured form; that it happens to be an imitation of something else will become of secondary importance. this is clearest when the name of the subject is not known; then surely it is the life before us that can alone concern us. any feeble copy would serve as a reminder, but a living drawing or statue brings the man or woman into our presence. the aesthetic interest in the work as living supervenes upon the interest in it as a mere reminder of life. this freedom from the model and attainment of intrinsic worth in the work of art itself is furthered through the realization of beauty in the medium of expression. the colors, lines, and shapes which the artist uses have a direct appeal to the eye and through the eye to feeling; hence arise preferences for the most agreeable and expressive. the artist discovered that he could express his emotion not only through representing its object, but through the very colors or lines or shapes used in the delineation. these effects, found by chance perhaps in the first instance, would later be striven for consciously. in this way, through some grace of line, or symmetry of form, or harmony of color, the statue or picture would acquire a power to please quite independent of any ulterior use or purpose; once more, it would become alive and of value on its own account. we shall begin our study of the representative arts with drawing and painting--representation in two dimensions--not because they preceded sculpture historically, but because, being more complex arts, a solution of the problems which they raise makes a subsequent survey of the similar problems of the simpler art relatively easy. the media of pictorial expression are color and line, and expression is attained through them in a twofold fashion. in a picture, every element of color or line is expressive directly, just as color and line, of some vague feeling or mood, and, in addition, chiefly through its resemblance, represents some action or object. the former kind of expression is indispensable. no matter how realistic the imitation, unless the picture thrill like music, through its mere colors or lines, it is aesthetically relatively ineffective. it is not sufficient that the picture move us through the vicarious presence on the canvas of a moving object; it must stir us in a more immediate fashion through the direct appeal of sense. for example, a picture which presents us with a semblance of the sea will hold us through the power which the sea has over us; but it will not hold us so fast as a picture of the same subject which, in addition, grips us through its greens and blues and wavy lines. the one sways us only through the imagination, the other through our senses as well. sensitiveness to color as such, so self-evident to one who possesses it, seems to be wanting, except in rudimentary fashion, in a great many people. they are probably few, however, who do not feel some stirrings when they look through the stained glass of a cathedral window or upon the red of venetian glass, or who are entirely indifferent to the color of silk. the reason for emotional color-blindness is probably not a native incapacity to be affected, but rather a diversion of attention; color has come to be only a sign for the recognition and subsequent use of things, a signal for a practical or intellectual reaction. in our haste to recognize and use we fail to see, and give ourselves no time to be moved by mere seeing. but when, as in art, contemplation, the filling of the mind with the object, is the aim, the power to move of the sensuous surface of things may come again into its rights. the emotional response to color, vague and abstract and objectless, is, like music, incapable of adequate expression in words, and for the same reason. words are capable of expressing only the larger and fairly well-defined emotions; such subtle shadings and complex mixtures of feeling as are conveyed by color and sound are mostly beyond their ken. colors make us feel and dream as music does in the same incommunicable fashion. or rather the only possibility of communicating them is through the color schemes arousing them. and for one who appreciates color this is sufficient; he can point to the colors and say--that is what i feel. to render his feeling also in words would be a superfluous business, supposing they could be adequate to express it; or, if they were adequate, that would make expression through color superfluous. the value of any medium consists in its power to express what none other can. nevertheless, it is possible to find rough verbal equivalents for the simpler colors. thus every one would probably agree with lipps and call a pure yellow happy, a deep blue quiet and earnest, red passionate, violet wistful; would perhaps feel that orange partakes at once of the happiness of yellow and the passion of red, while green partakes of the happiness of yellow and the quiet of blue; and in general that the brighter and warmer tones are joyful and exciting, the darker and colder, more inward and restful. to explain the expressiveness of color sensations is as difficult as to account for the parallel phenomenon in sounds. here as there resort is had to the principle of association. colors get, it is thought, their value for feeling either through some connection with emotionally toned objects, like vegetation, light, the sky, blood, darkness, and fire, or else through some relation to emotional situations, like mourning or danger, which they have come to symbolize. and there is little doubt that such associations play a part in determining the emotional meaning of colors--the reticence and distance of blue, the happiness of yellow, for example, are partly explained through the fact that blue is the color of the sky, yellow the color of sunlight; the meaning of black is due, partly at any rate, to association with mourning. yet neither of these types of association seems sufficient to explain the full emotional meaning of colors. the conventional meanings of colors seem rather themselves to need explanation than to serve as explanations--why is red the sign of danger, purple royal, white a symbol of purity, black a symbol of mourning? is it not because these colors had some native, original expressiveness which fashion and habit have only made more definite and turned to special uses? and if we can explain the reticence of blue through association with the sky, can we thus explain its quietness? can the warmth of fire and the excitement of blood explain quite all the depth of passionate feeling in red? the factors enumerated play a part in the complex effect, but there seem to be elements still unaccounted for. in order to explain the total phenomenon we must admit, as in the case of tones, some direct effect of the sensory light stimulus upon the feelings. rays of light affect not only the sensory apparatus, causing sensations of color; their influence is prolonged into the motor channels, causing a total attitude of the organism, the correlate of a feeling. it would be strange if any sensory stimulus were entirely cut off by itself and did not find its way into the motor stream. but these overflows are too diffuse to be noticed in ordinary experience; they are obscured through association or are not given time to rise to the level of clear consciousness, because we are preoccupied with the practical or cognitive significance of the colors; only in the quiet and isolation of contemplation can they come into the focus. of course the student of the evolution of mind will want to go behind these color emotions and inquire why a given color is connected with a given reaction. he may even want to connect them with instinctive responses of primitive men. but here we can only speculate; we cannot know. the problem is further complicated through the fact that private colorassociations are formed obscuring the aesthetic meanings, which can be rediscovered only through the elimination of the former. color preferences are often determined in this way; yet sometimes they spring from another and more radical source--an affinity between personal temperament and the feeling tone of the preferred color. a consistent choice of blues and grays indicates a specific kind of man or woman, very different from the chooser of yellows and reds. although single color tones are expressive, they seldom exist alone in works of art. significant expression requires variety. the invention of original and expressive color combinations is a rare gift of genius. rough rules of color combination have been devised from the practice of artists and from experiment, the following of which will enable one to produce faultless patterns, but without genius will never enable one to create a new expression. color combinations are either harmonious or balanced, the former produced by colors or tones of colors very close to one another, the latter by the contrasting or widely sundered. in the one case, we get the quiet commingling of feelings akin to each other; in the other, the lively tension of feelings opposed. compare, for example, the effect of a whistler nocturne with a monet landscape. the colors that do not go well together are such as are not close enough for union nor far enough apart for contrast. they are like personalities not sufficiently at one to lose themselves in each other, yet not sufficiently unlike to be mutually stimulating and enlarging, between whom there can be only a fruitless rivalry turning into hate. such are certain purples and reds, certain greens and blues. yet, through proper mediation, any two colors can be brought into a composition. all colors are brought together in nature through the sunlight, and in painting or weaving by giving to rival colors the same sheen or brightness. or again, the union may be effected by combining the two with a third which is in a relation of balance or harmony with each, as in the favorite scheme of blue, red, and green. despite their ability to express, colors cannot stand alone; they must be the colors of something, they must make line or shape. lines, on the other hand, seem to be independent of color, as in drawings and etchings; yet there is really some color even there--black and white and tones of gray. that color and line are independent of one another in beauty, is, however, shown by works, such as millet's, which are good in line but poor in color. lines have, as we have already seen, the same duality of function as colors: they express feeling directly through their character as mere lines and they represent objects by suggesting them through resemblance. there is, in fact, for those who can feel it, a life in lines of the same abstract and objectless sort as exists in colors and tones. lines give rise to motor impulses and make one feel and dream, as music does. there are many who are cold to this effect; yet few can fail to get something of the vibration or mood of the lines of a greek vase painting, a botticelli canvas, or a rembrandt etching. the life of lines is more allied to that of tones than of colors because it possesses a dynamic movement quality which is absent from the latter. this life is, in fact, twofold: on the one hand it is a career, with a beginning, middle, and end, something to be willed or enacted; on the other hand it is a temperament or character, a property of the line as a whole, to be felt. these two aspects of aesthetic lines are closely related; they stand to one another much as the temperament or character of a man stands to his life history, of which it is at once the cause and the result. just as we get a total impression of a man's nature by following the story of his life, so we get the temperamental quality of lines by following them with the eye; and just as all of our knowledge of a man's acts enters into our intuition of his nature, so we discover the character of the total line by a synthesis of its successive elements. it is as difficult, more difficult, perhaps, to put into words the temperamental quality of lines as to do the parallel thing with colors. lines are infinite in their possible variations, and the fine shades of feeling which they may express exceed the number of words in the emotional vocabulary of any language. moreover, in any drawing, the character of each line is partly determined through the context of other lines; you cannot take it abstractly with entire truth. it is, however, possible to find verbal equivalents for the character of the main types of lines. horizontal lines convey a feeling of repose, of quiet, as in the wall-paintings of puvis de chavannes; vertical lines, of solemnity, dignity, aspiration, as in so much of the work of boecklin; crooked lines of conflict and activity, as in the woodcuts of durer; while curved lines have always been recognized as soft and voluptuous and tender, as in correggio and renoir. the supposition that the curved line is the sole "line of beauty" is the result of a narrow and effeminate idea of the aesthetic; yet it must be admitted that this form, since it permits of the greatest amount of variation, has the highest power of expression; but in many of its more complex varieties it loses much of its soft feminine quality, and takes on some of the strength of the other forms. the expressiveness of lines is determined by several--at least three-factors. in the first place, the perception of lines is an active process. in order to get a line we have to follow it with the eye; and if we do not now follow it with our fingers, we at least followed similar lines thus in the past. now this process of the perception of a line requires of us an energy of attention to the successive elements of the line as we pass over them and a further expenditure of energy in remembering and synthesizing them into a whole. this energy, since it is evoked by the line and is not connected with any definite inner striving of the self, is felt by us to belong to the line, to be an element in its life, as clearly its own as its shape. for example, a line with many sudden turns or changes of direction is an energetic and exciting line because it demands in perception a constant and difficult and shifting attention; a straight line, on the contrary, because simple and unvarying in its demands upon the attention, is monotonous and reposeful; while the curved line, with its lawful and continuous changes, at once stimulating yet never distracting attention, possesses the character of progressive and happy action. this, the primary source of the vital interpretation of lines is supplemented by elements derived from association. lines suggest to us the movements of our bodies along paths of similar form, and we interpret them according to the feeling of these movements; in the imagination, we may seem to move along the very lines themselves as paths. every skater or runner knows the difficulty of moving along a path full of sudden turns and angles, a difficulty which, if he is in good trim, may nevertheless afford him pleasure in the overcoming; the delightful and various ease of moving along curved lines; the monotony of a long, straight path, but the quick triumph of going right to the end along a short and terminal line of this character. but lines suggest to us not only the movements, but also the attitudes of our bodies. they may be straight and rising,--rigid or dignified or joyously expanding; they may be horizontal and lie down and rest; they may be falling and sorrowful; or the shapes whose outlines they form may be heavy or light, delicate or ungainly or graceful, as bodies are. finally, the interpretation of lines may be further enriched as follows: the sight of a line suggests the drawing of it, the sweep of the brush that made it; we ourselves, in the imagination once more, may re-create the line after the artist, and feel, just as he must have felt, the mastery, ease, vigor, or delicacy of the execution into the line itself. few can fail to get this effect from the paintings of franz hals, for example, where the abounding energy of the artist is apparent in each stroke of the brush. artists feel this life in execution most strongly; yet, since almost every one has had some practice in drawing lines, it is potentially a universal quality in a painting. lines may be unified according to the three modes of harmony, balance, and evolution. the repetition of the same kind of line confers a harmonious unification upon a drawing, as in tintoretto's "bacchus and ariadne," where the circle is to be found repeated in the crown and ring, in the heads of the three figures, in the breasts of ariadne. similar to this sameness of form is sameness of direction or parallelism of lines. another kind of harmonious unification of lines is continuity, where out of different lines or shapes a single line is made. the classical geometrical forms of composition, as the circular or pyramidal, are good examples of this. the "odalisque" of ingres, where all the lines of the body constitute a single line, is a notable case. what ruskin has called "the approach, intersection, interweaving of lines, like the sea waves on the shore,"--the conspiracy of all the lines in a drawing to form one single network, of which illustrations could be found in the work of every draftsman, is a kind of harmony of line. symmetrically disposed shapes, and lines whose directions are opposed, have the balanced form of unity. here, from a given point as center, the attention is drawn in contrary yet equal ways. examples of this type of composition are abundant among the old masters; as a rigid form it is, however, disappearing. that the dramatic type of unity is to be found in lines will be confirmed by every one who has observed the movement, the career of lines. whenever shapes are so disposed that they form a line leading up to a given shape, wherever, again, lines converge to a single point, there is a clear case of evolution; we begin by attending to the line at a certain point, proceed in a certain direction, then reach a terminal point, the goal of the process. in leonardo's "last supper," the convergence of the perspective lines and the lines formed by the groups of apostles is a case of evolution. the different types of unification are, of course, not exclusive. in the painting just referred to, all three are present: christ and the apostles are arranged along a single line, the two ends of which, despite their symmetrical and balanced disposition, converge to one central point, the christ. every pyramidal form of composition is a combination of balance between the elements at the bases of the triangle, convergence towards the apex, and harmony through the participation of the three elements in a single form. one of the most interesting and complex types of organization of lines is rhythm--the balanced, harmonious movement of lines. a line is rhythmical when there is a balanced alternation of direction in its movement, a turning now to the right and now to the left, or vice versa; proportion in the length of the segments made by the turns; and general direction--a tending somewhere. as is assumed in the preceding paragraph, the elements of lines may be shapes or masses, as well as points. that is, not only do lines made up of points form shapes, but shapes in their turn, when arranged on a surface, necessarily make lines. such lines are, as a rule, not continuous; yet since the eye takes the shapes successively and in a given direction, they are nevertheless true lines and possess the qualities of ordinary simple lines. the arrangement of masses in an undulating line, say in a landscape painting, has essentially the same value for feeling as a similar continuous line; compare this with a horizontal arrangement of masses, which has all the quiet and repose of a simple horizontal line. colors and lines, relying on the direct expressiveness which we have been studying, may stand by themselves, as in an oriental rug; yet in painting they have another function: to represent. and even in the purely ornamental use of color and line, the tendency towards representation is apparent everywhere; either the lines are derivatives of schematized pictures of men and plants and animals, or else such objects are introduced as motives without disguise. in painting, therefore, the color red has value not only as so much red, but as standing for the red of a girl's lips or cheeks; and that curved line is of significance, not as mere line alone, but as the curve of her limbs. in this way the native value of the sense symbols becomes suffused and enriched with the values of the things they represent. the two functions of color and of line should never be indifferent to each other; representation should not become a mere excuse for decoration, the objects represented having no value in themselves; nor should color and line be used as mere signs of interesting objects, without reference to their intrinsic value. on the contrary, the two functions should play into each other's hands. if, for example, the human body is represented, the colors and lines employed should be so disposed that they decorate the surface of the picture and hold us there through their sheer rhythm and quality; yet, at the same time, and through their very ornamental power, they should make us feel the more keenly the values of the object they represent. between the immediate values of the colors and lines there should exist unity: stimulating colors should go with stimulating lines, quiet colors with quiet lines; and the resulting feeling tone of the medium should be in harmony with the feeling of the objects represented; the one should give the other over again, and so each enforce the other. since it is not the purpose of any art to represent mere things, but to express concrete "states of the soul," the center of which is always some feeling, exact fidelity in the representation of objects is not necessary for good painting or drawing. only so much of things needs to be represented as is necessary to give back the life of them. necessary above all is the object as a whole, for to this our feelings are attached; now this can usually be far better represented through an impressionistic sketch, which gives only the significant features, than by a painstaking and detailed drawing. since, furthermore, the life of things can be conveyed through color and line as such, a certain departure from realism is legitimate for this end. without some freedom from the exact truth of the colors and lines of things, the artist is unable to choose and compose them for expressive purposes; when exactly like the objects which they represent, they tend to lose all expressive power of their own, becoming mere signs or equivalents of things. a certain amount of variation from the normal may be necessary in order that the sense symbols shall call attention to themselves, in order that we be prevented, as we are not in the ordinary observation of nature, from looking through them to the things which they mean. whenever, moreover, the artist wishes to render a unique reaction to a scene, he can do so only through a courageous use of the subtle language of color and line, which may require a distortion of the "real" local qualities of things; for, if he makes a plain, realistic copy of the scene itself, he can evoke, and so express, only the normal emotional responses to it. when such departures from the truth of things are properly motivated, no one can be offended by them, any more than when the brilliant hues of nature appear black and white in a charcoal drawing. the amount of realism in any work of art is largely a matter of tacit convention. an artist may, if he wishes, use color with no pretense at giving back the real colors of objects, but for purely expressive purposes alone, relying on line for purposes of representation. this is often done in japanese prints. all that is necessary is that we should understand what the artist is doing and find what he presents to us real and alive. on the other hand, an expressive use of color and line leading to a distortion of objects out of all possibility of recognition, or even a use which makes them seem unreal and awry, is without excuse. for since colors and lines are employed to bring things before the imagination, they should be made to serve this purpose successfully; the value which belongs to the things should have a chance to appear; but this can happen only if they seem to be actually present before us. painting is not a mere music of color and line expressive of abstract and objectless emotions alone, but a poetry, which, through the picturing of objects to which emotions are attached, renders the latter concrete and definite. not mere feeling, such as a color or a line by itself can convey, but feeling in the presence of nature, which can be expressed only when color and line are made into a recognizable image of nature, is the substance of painting. one cannot express the feeling of the weight and bulk of objects, of their distribution in three dimensions, or the value of their shadows or atmospheric enveloping, without the representation of weight and bulk and shadow and atmosphere and perspective. every increase in the power to represent nature, every advance in the mastery of the object, adds a new power over the expression of feeling, which varies with the object. the realist is, therefore, right in his demand that nature itself be painted; only he should remember that the nature which presents itself in art is never the naked object, but veiled in feeling; and, as so veiled, may sometimes be seen pretty much as it really is; then again with parts concealed, and sometimes even transformed. both a realism that tries to unite fidelity to the full qualities of the object with musical expression in the medium, and so to render the more typical responses to nature, which depend, for the most part, on the object itself, and a symbolism or expressionism that sacrifices fidelity for the expression, through the mere medium, of more personal responses, are in their rights. only the limits of both tendencies are illegitimate--the use of color and line to produce mere images of things on the one hand, or purely musical effects on the other. the subject matter or content of painting is determined by its language, color, and line. these, as we have seen, by an imitation more or less exact, represent nature, the world of concrete things as directly presented to us in vision, colored and shapely. the inner world is expressed only so far as it is revealed in the gestures and attitudes of the bodies of men or so far as it is a mood attached to things and their colors and shapes. now space is the universal container in which all elements of the visible world are disposed. every painting, therefore, should include a representation of space; it should never represent things as if they stood alone without environment or relation. even in the portrait of a single individual some relation to space should be indicated; this is accomplished by the background, in which the figures should be made to lie, and to which they should seem to belong. in front, the space of a picture is limited by the plane of the surface on which it is painted; everything should appear to belong in the space back of this; nothing should seem to come forward out towards the spectator. but behind this, backwards, the space represented is unlimited, and its infinite depths may well be indicated by the convergence of perspective lines and the gradual fading of the outlines and colors of objects. the represented space of the picture is not, of course, the real space of the canvas or of the room in which the picture hangs. the former is infinite, while the latter is only so many square feet in area. the frame serves the purpose of cutting off the represented space from all relation to the real space, of which the frame itself is a part. a confusion of these two spaces is sometimes found in crude work and in the comments of people upon genuine works of art. i have, for example, seen a picture of a lion with iron bars riveted to the frame and extending over it,--a represented lion in a real cage! and i once heard a man criticise one of degas' paintings on the ground that "if the dancing girl were to straighten her bent body she would bump her head on the frame!" the rule that the color of the frame should harmonize with the main tones of the picture is no proof that they belong together; its purpose is merely to protect the colors of the painting from being changed through their neighborhood with those of the frame. although painting is essentially a spatial art, it includes a temporal element, the "specious present," the single moment of action or of motion. the lines are not dead and static, but alive; they progress and vibrate; by their means a smile, the rippling of a stream, the gesture of surprise, the movement of a dance, may be depicted. successive moments, the different phases of an action or movement, cannot, however, be represented. strict unities of space and time should be observed in painting. only contiguous parts of space and only one moment of time should be represented inside a single frame. both these unities were violated in old religious paintings where sometimes the nativity, flight into egypt, crucifixion, and resurrection were all portrayed on one canvas. the space of painting is no abstract aspect of things such as the geometer elaborates. to be in a common space with other things, implies, for the pictorial intuition of the world, to be played upon by the same light and to be enveloped in the same atmosphere. space, light, and air constitute the milieu in which everything lives and moves and has its being in painting. to every difference in the arrangement and foreshortening of objects, to every variation in their lights and shadows and aerial quality, the sensitive soul responds. the close proximity of objects in a tiny room has an effect upon feeling very different from their wide distribution over a broad space. an equal difference depends upon whether light is concentrated upon objects or evenly distributed over them; upon whether it is bright or dim; upon whether they are near and clear in a thin air or far and hazy in a thick and heavy cloud. the masters of light and air, rembrandt, claude, turner, evoke myriad moods through these subtle influences. a long development and the following of many false paths was necessary before painting discovered its true function as an expression of the elements, the once hard outlines of things softening in their enveloping embrace. the representation of space, which painting alone of all the arts can achieve, does not imply, however, a representation of the full plastic quality of individual objects, which is the function of sculpture. this, to be sure, can be done in painting, as the great sculptor-painters of the renaissance have shown; but it cannot be done so well as in sculpture; and when done tends to interfere with other things. it makes objects stand out too much by themselves, destroying their felt unity with other elements on the canvas, so that when provided with all the colors of life, they seem rather real than painted, and look as if they wished to leave the world of representation, where they belong, and touch hands with the spectator. the depth and the extent of space, the distance and the distribution of objects, light and shade and air, are all independent of the plasticity of individual things, which tends to disappear in proportion as they are emphasized. only when attention is directed to the individual object does its full plasticity appear; see it as an element of the environing whole, and it flattens out to view. there are, in fact, two ways of seeing, to each of which corresponds a mode of painting. on the one hand, we may see distributively, holding objects as individuals each in our attention, neglecting light and space and air. or else we may see synthetically, first the whole which light and space and air compose, and then individual things as bearers of these. the one is the more practical way of seeing; because, for practical purposes, the separate thing that can be grasped and used is all important, and the film of light and air and the neighborhood of other things are of no account. the other is more theoretical and sthetic; for to a pure vision which does not think of handling, there are no separate things, but only differences of shape and color and location in a single object, the visible whole. [footnote: cf. lipps, _aesthetik_, bd. 2, s. 165, et seq.] in the type of painting corresponding to the first way of seeing, objects are represented more as we think them to be, or as we should find them on further exploration, than as they actually appear to sight at any given moment; the outlines are clear and sharp and detail is emphasized. this mode of painting is most in place for interiors where there is an even distribution and no striking effects of light and shade, as in so many genre pictures of the dutch school; but above all when the human significance of objects or their dramatic relations, which depend upon their being taken as separate things, is to be expressed. for example, to get the expression of the action of a woman pouring water into a jug, it is necessary that we feel the shape and color of the latter as aspects of a tangible reality having a distinct purpose, that of holding water; and this purposefulness makes of the object a separate, individual thing. yet a too great distinction of objects and a too great elaboration of detail, as in meissonier and the english pre-raphaelites, is inartistic; the picture breaks up into separate parts and all feeling of unity is lost. in the work of the flemish and dutch, on the contrary, we take delight in the perspicuity of things without losing the sense of wholeness; for there is a sameness and simplicity of color tone which unites them. a genuine and unique sthetic value is possessed by such work,--that of clear intuition of the visual detail and human significance of things. very often the unification in painting of this type is dramatic chiefly--some link of action or of symbolism which the elements of the picture have as meanings, a unity of content, therefore, and not a coloristic or a linear unity. the colors are essentially local colors, serving first to characterize and distinguish the objects properly, and then to lend to them severally high value through brightness and temperament; although harmonizing as mere colors, they are held together more through some connection in what they mean than through a unity of pure expression. the dominance of any one mass, too, depends more upon its superior significance as meaning than upon its claim upon the attention through any intrinsic quality of color. nevertheless, even if secondary, the unity and dominance through color and line must be present, and should be consonant with the unity and subordination in the meanings. the painting of the great italian masters was of this character. in a madonna picture, for example, the elements representing the holy family are united through the spiritual oneness of the objects which they represent, and the madonna is dominant through her superior significance for the religious life. the colors serve to characterize and distinguish the figures; yet between the former there is a harmony corresponding to the inner harmony of the latter; the spiritual dominance of the madonna is expressed in a purely formal fashion through her larger size, central position, and more brightly gleaming garments. in painting which corresponds to the synthetic way of seeing, all particular objects are subordinated to space and light and air; their outlines are melting, suggested rather than seen, and there is little emphasis on detail. turner's painting of light and the more recent examples of impressionism afford abundant examples of this. in this style, unification is effected almost wholly through color and line as such, and through the light and space and air which they represent. just to live in the same atmosphere or in the path of the same light, to be enveloped in the same darkness or shadow, or merely to participate in a single composition of colors or rhythm of lines serves to unite objects. the relative importance of elements, too, is determined rather by some intrinsic quality which arrests attention than by any supremacy as meanings. through such materials and methods as we have described, the possibilities and limits of expression in painting are determined. first of all, painting has the power, through color and line as such, to express the purely musical emotions; this we demand of painting just as we demand music of verse: without word-music, there is no poetry, no matter how high the theme; so without color and line music, no matter how skillful the representation or how noble the subject, there is no picture. painting may give little more than this. in much of still-life painting, for example, the values attached to the objects represented are borrowed from the music of the medium. and even when the objects represented have a value in themselves, the superiority of their representation over the mere perception of them in nature comes from this source. why, for example, does the painting of flowers by a real master afford a richer aesthetic experience than real flowers? painted flowers have no perfume, rightly called the soul of flowers. it is because in painting the expressiveness of the purer and more subtly harmonious colors more than compensates for the lack of odor. through the music of color and line we are made responsive to common things which otherwise would leave us cold, or if we are responsive to them, our sensitiveness becomes finer and keener. it is largely because he is so accomplished a musician in color and composition that jan vermeer can make the inside of a room or some commonplace act by a commonplace person the object of an intense and sympathetic contemplation. for the beauty of landscape also, which the art of painting has created and which during the last century has become its favorite theme, the music of color is equally essential. in its highest form, that beauty requires emotional responsiveness combined with the power accurately to observe and reproduce the qualities of things; without observation and reproduction, the feeling is incommunicable; without feeling, the imitation is lifeless. love of the object, which at once reveals and makes responsive, mediates the highest achievements of the art. by translating the object into the language of abstract color and line, it is purified for feeling; for those qualities toward which feeling is indifferent are eliminated; only so much as can enter into an expressive color or line composition survives. the artist gives us the illusion that he is reproducing our familiar world all the while that he is glorifying it through the beauty of the colors in which he paints it. the painting of the human body, especially the nude human body, belongs to the same class of subjects as the painting of landscapes. for the human body unclothed, and as unclothed severed from the conventional social world, is a part of nature and speaks to us as nature does through form and color. to bring that object before us with all its expressive detail; to make us, in the imagination, move with it and touch it; to caress it with our eyes; to awaken that passionate interest which makes us see and feel it more vividly than anything else in the world, yet to subdue passion wholly to a glowing contemplation, this is one of the highest achievements of pictorial art. and the artistic right to represent it in the woods by lake or stream, or in the meadow among other natural things, must be accorded to the artist despite all protests of convention and habit; we never actually find it there, to be sure, yet there it belongs for imaginative feelings. the maidens in corot's paintings, for example, seem to belong as naturally to the landscape as the very trees themselves. but the painter can depict the human body not merely as something sensuously beautiful, but as expressive, through gesture and pose and countenance, of character and thought. the complex psychic life of man is thus open to him for delineation. in the portrait, through the attentive study of the many varying expressions of the inner life, leading to the selection of some characteristic pose or action, the artist concentrates into a single image what seems to him to be the distinctive nature of the man. and he can express this nature over again, and so more effectively reveal it, in the mere colors and lines which he uses. thus franz hals has embodied the abundance and good cheer of his burghers in the boldness and brightness of the lines and colors with which he paints them; and hogarth, in the "shrimp girl," through the mere singularity of line and color, has created the eerie impression which we attach to the girl herself. the best portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. thus velasquez brings before us the souls of his little infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. the background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. alongside of the portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal characters; ideal, not in the sense of good, but in the sense of more highly complex and unified than actually existing persons. such pictures symbolize for us the quintessence and highest level of definite types of life. manet's "olympia" and goya's "maja" belong here equally with leonardo's "christ" or "mona lisa," with raphael's madonnas and michelangelo's gods and angels. in them is attained the most intense concentration of psychic life possible. it is now pretty generally recognized that the unities of time and space exclude from the sphere of painting story telling and history, which require for effective representation more than the single moment included in painting. in order to tell a story in painting, one has to supplement what is seen with ideas which can be obtained only from a catalogue or other source external to the picture; one has to add in thought to the moment given on the canvas the missing moments of the action. but a work of art should be complete in itself and so far as possible self-explanatory; it should not lead us away from itself, but keep us always to itself. if the scene represented be a part of a story, the story should be so well known that its connection with the picture can be immediately recognized without external aid, and should admit of a certain completeness in its various parts. the life of christ is such a story; everybody knows it and can interpret a picture portraying it forthwith; its various incidents and situations have each a unique and complete significance in themselves. historical paintings are not necessarily bad, of course, but the good ones are good despite the history, and a proof of their excellence consists in the fact that when we see them they make us forget for the moment our historical erudition. this norm does not exclude from the sphere of painting the expression of the relation of man to his fellows; it simply confines painting to the delineation of momentary and self-sufficient glimpses of social life. pictures representing a mother and child, a pair of lovers, a family group, festival, tavern scene, or battle charge are illustrations. in dutch painting the social life of holland in the seventeenth century found its record; yet there is little or no anecdote. the genre, the representation of a group of people united by some common interest and with an appropriate background, has the same legitimacy, if not the same eminence, as the portrait. it does not possess the rank of the portrait because, since the interest is rather in the action or the situation portrayed, the figures are more merely typical, being developed only so far as is necessary to carry the action; seldom is a subtle and individualized inner life portrayed. objections are rightly raised, however, against pathetic, sentimental, and moralistic painting. here color and line, the whole picture in fact, counts for little or nothing except to stir an emotion, usually of grief or pity or love, or to preach a sermon; the unity of form and content is sacrificed, the one becoming a mere means to the other. but, as we know, it is never the purpose of art merely to stir feeling; its purpose is to objectify feeling; if the art be painting, to put feeling into color and line, and only when feeling is experienced as _there_ is it aesthetic feeling at all. and what shall we think of a picture like the "doctor" of luke fildes', which is so pathetic that one cannot bear to look at it? surely a picture should make one want to see it! of course i do not mean that an artist cannot paint pathetic and sentimental subjects. the great painters of the passion would disprove that with reference to the former and watteau with reference to the latter. but a power to achieve beauty of color and line and to objectify pathos and sentiment through them was possessed by these painters to a degree to which few others have attained. for moralistic painting, however, there can be no excuse. you can paint visible things and as much of the soul as can appear through them; you cannot paint abstract ethical maxims. of course a painter may intend his picture to be an illustration of some moral maxim, or may even, as hogarth did, paint it to expose the sins of his age and create a beautiful work notwithstanding; but only if, in the result, this purpose is irrelevant and the concrete delineation everything. chapter xii sculpture the sculptor has this advantage over all other artists, that his chief subject is the most beautiful thing in the world--the human body. in two ways the body is supremely beautiful: as an expression of mind and as an embodiment of sensuous charm. in the body mind has become actually incarnate; there purpose, emotion, and thought have taken shape and manifestation. and this shape, through its appeal to the amorous, parental, and gregarious feelings, and through the complete organization of its parts, has no rival in loveliness. what wonder, therefore, that sculptors have always thought of their work as simply one of mere imitation of nature, the divine. yet in sculpture, as in the other arts, the imitative process is never slavish, but selective and inventive. for the body is interesting to the artist only in so far as it is beautiful, that is, so far as it has charm and exhibits the control of mind; some of its details and many of its attitudes, having no relation to either, are unfit for imitation; and, although inspired by his model, the sculptor seeks to create out of his impressions a still more harmonious object. to give to his material the semblance of the body beautiful is the technical problem of the sculptor. although this semblance is primarily for sight, it is not exclusively so. for in sculpture shape is not two-dimensional, but plastic; and for the full appreciation of plasticity, the cooperation of touch is required. moreover, not only the perception of the form, but also a large part of the appreciation of the charm of the body depends upon touch. of course we do not ordinarily touch statues, but they should make us want to touch them, and we should touch them--in the imagination. the surfaces of the statue should therefore be so modeled as to give us, in the imagination, the pleasures that we get when we touch the living body. it is well known that these touch values were destroyed by the neo-classicists when they polished the surfaces of their statues. such sculpture for the eye only is almost as good when reproduced in an engraving that preserves its visual quality, and is therefore lacking in complete sculptural beauty. but no plane reproduction can replace the best greek, italian, or french work. the life of the statue should, however, be more than skin deep. we should appreciate it through sensations of motion and strain as well as through sight and touch, feeling the tenseness or relaxation of the muscles and tendons beneath. we should move with its motion or rest with its repose. and this does not mean that we should merely know that an attitude of quiet or of motion is represented; we should actually experience quiet or motion. in our own bodies sensations corresponding to these should be awakened by the visual image of the statue, yet should be fused with the latter, becoming for our perception its, not ours, in accordance with the mechanism of _einfuhlung_ described in our fourth chapter. the light rhythmic motion of the figures in carpeaux's "dance" should thrill in our own limbs, yet seem to thrill in theirs. because it preserves the full three-dimensional presence of the body, sculpture is, next to the drama, the most realistic of the arts. this realism is not, however, an unmixed advantage for general appreciation. for, finding the shape of the body, men sometimes demand its color and life, complaining that the statue is cold and dead;[footnote: see byron, _don juan_, canto ii, cxviii.] or else, giving life to the form, they react to it practically and socially, as they would toward the real body. yet, for the one attitude, the art itself cannot be held responsible, but rather some want of genius in the artist or lack of imagination in the spectator; and as for the other, although only a bloodless dogma would demand the elimination of passion and interest from the appreciation of sculpture--for unless the marble arouse the natural feelings toward the body it is no successful expression--nevertheless, good taste does demand that, through attention to form and a sense of the unreality of the object, these feelings be subdued to contemplation. in order to keep the statue on the ideal plane, it should not be too realistically fashioned. if it looks too much like a man, we shall first treat it as a man, as we do one of jarley's or mme. tissaud's waxworks, and then after we have been undeceived, we shall have toward it an uncanny feeling, totally unaesthetic, as towards a corpse. the statue, therefore, if life-sized, should not be given the colors or clothing of life. tinting is not excluded, provided no attempt is made at exact imitation; and when the statue is of heroic, or less than the normal size, as in porcelain, both coloring and clothing may be more realistic. no hard and fast rules can be formulated; yet the principle is plain--there should be realism in one aspect, above all in shape, in order that there may be an aesthetic semblance of life, but not in all, in order that the statue may not be a mere substitute for life, awakening the reactions appropriate to life. moreover, appreciating the beauty of his material, the sculptor may not wish to cover it up, as he would if he tinted it. as in painting, the attainment of beauty in the medium may interfere with full realism in execution. for the sake of beauty of color, the worker in bronze will be content to see the white man black, and for the sake of beauty of line he may even sacrifice something of exactness in the rendering of shape. for there is a beauty in the media of sculpture, apart from what they may represent, quite as real, if not as obvious, as in the other arts. and without this beauty, there is no artistic sculpture. its subtlety does not diminish its importance or its effect upon our feeling, for it makes all the difference between a mere imitation of nature and a work of art charming and compelling. we do not need to recognize its existence explicitly in order to appreciate it; yet, as soon as our attention is called to it, we admit it and accord to it that rare influence which before was felt but nameless. in the first place, the color of the material is expressive. the black and gold of bronze have a depth and intensity, the whiteness of marble a coldness, clarity, and, serenity, inescapable. the weight and hardness, or lightness and softness, of the material, also count. if people do not feel the expressiveness of these qualities directly, they nevertheless do feel it indirectly, whenever they appreciate the superior fitness of marble and bronze for the embodiment of the heroic and supernatural, and of the light and fragile porcelain for the more fleeting and trivial phases of life. size, too, is expressive. there is a daintiness and tenderness about a little statue, contrasting strongly with the grandeur and majesty of one of heroic size. the usual small size of the terra cotta figurines among the greeks was appropriate for the genre subjects which they so frequently represented, and an aphrodite in this material is rather the earthly than the heavenly love. there is also an evident beauty of line in sculpture, similar to the beauty of line in painting. the curved line is expressive of movement and grace; the horizontal, of repose; the crooked line, of energy and conflict. compare, from this point of view, rodin's "the aged helmetmaker's wife" with his "danaid,"--how expressive of struggle and suffering are the uneven lines of the former, how voluptuous the curves of the latter! michelangelo is the great example of the use of tortuous lines for the expression of conflict. undulating vertical lines are largely responsible for the "grace and dignity" of the classic sculpture. there is an organic unity of line in sculpture, similar again to that in painting. and by line i mean not only surface lines, but the lines made by the planes in which the body lies, the lines of pose and attitude. the predominance of a single type of line, the union of many lines to form a single continuous line, balance and symmetry of line, proportion of length and parallelism, are all to be found in sculpture. especially important is rhythm--the harmonious, balanced movement of lines. in the "venus de milo," for example, the plane of the lower limbs from the feet to the knees moves to the left; there is an opposite and balancing movement from the right knee to the waist; the first movement is repeated in the parallel line from the right hip to the top of the head; this, in turn, is balanced by a line in the opposite direction running from the left hip to the right shoulder, parallel to the second line; but the equilibrium of line is not a rigid one, for the body as a whole moves in an undulating line to the left, imparting grace and a total unity. the beauty of line in sculpture is, of course, no invention of the artist; for nature has created it in the body itself. the sculptor takes this beauty as the basis of his work, remodeling only by the elimination of details, through which purer effects of line are obtained, or by the selection and emphasis of pose, through which these effects are rendered more intensely expressive. all conventionalization is in the interest of increased beauty of line. but too great a sacrifice of the natural contours of the body, as in some of the work of the cubists, results in a lifelessness that cannot be atoned for by any formal beauty. the unification of line in sculpture is a matter not only of lines within the whole and of single contours, but of the total visual form of the whole, of silhouette. although three-dimensional, every statue casts a two-dimensional image on the retina. it makes as many of these plane pictures as there are points of view from which it can be seen. one can easily convince oneself of this by viewing a statue from a distance, when it will flatten out to a mere outline or silhouette. as such, it should be clear and simple and pleasing, capable of being grasped as a whole irrespective of detail. michelangelo demanded that every statue be capable of being put inside of some simple geometrical figure, like a pyramid or a cube; that there be no wayward arms or legs, but close attachment to the body, so close that the statue might be rolled down hill without any part being broken off. this last is perhaps too rigorous a requirement, but the best work of all periods exhibits visual clarity and concentration.[footnote: compare adolf hildebrand, the problem of form in painting and sculpture.] within its contours the statue stands alone. this is the essential difference between painting and sculpture; the painted thing is always a part of a larger spatial whole within which it exists in relation to other things, while the sculptured thing exists by itself; the space of the statue is the space which it fills; there is no further space to which it belongs, no background in which it lies. the space of sculpture, like the space of painting, is of course a represented or imaginary space, to be carefully distinguished from the real space of the room in which it is placed and the floor upon which it stands. the pedestal serves the same purpose in sculpture as the frame in the sister art; it cuts off the ideal space which the statue fills from the real space where it is housed, raising it above the common ground of real life, with its practical and social attitudes, into the realm of contemplation. the pedestal should be of a different material from the statue, else it belongs with the latter, and fails to perform its separating junction. the plate, on the other hand, should be of the same material, otherwise the statue would be made to stand on our earth, and in the same space with us. however, just as in painting every object should be represented as belonging to a wider whole of space, so in sculpture, every part of the body should be represented as belonging to the whole body. if, therefore, only a part of the body is sculptured, it should be evident that it is a part and not the whole. in the portrait statue, for example, if the head alone is represented, there should appear, along with the head, as much of the bust as will suggest attachment to the body, in order that it may not seem decapitated! it is because the torso is so obviously a fragment of an ideal whole that we do not feel it to be an uncanny mutilation of a man or woman. in its present condition, the "venus de milo" is not the statue of an armless woman, but a statue of part of a whole woman. a statue is not sufficiently unified by representing a single individual or several individuals united by some common interest or by participation in some common action; the unity in the object should be expressed through a unity in the material of representation. the finest taste requires that every statue should be made of only one kind of material. one part, say the body, should not be of marble, and another part, say the girdle, of gold or bronze. such a combination of materials gives the impression of two things juxtaposed, not of a single whole. if in defense of this one were to say that through the difference of materials real differences in the object are portrayed, consistency would require that the principle be carried out, that the hair be of another material, and the eyes of still a third, with the result of making the statue a sheer agglomerate. and when more than one individual is represented, even a unity of material is not sufficient; it is necessary, in addition, that the several figures in the group be in contact with each other. it is not enough that they stand on the same plate; for the real empty space that we see between them will keep them apart. the ideal space to which they belong, and the spiritual or dramatic oneness, should be mediated by a material touch of hands or other parts of the body. compare, in this connection, rodin's "citizens of calais" where this principle is violated, with the three figures from the summit of his "hell gate," where it is observed. in the former we simply know that the figures belong together, but we do not feel them as together.[footnote: compare lipps, _aesthetik_, bd. 2, fuenftes kapitel.] in the normal type of sculpture only one figure is represented. for this, there is, perhaps, a chief point of regard, in front, the same as that which we ordinarily occupy with reference to our fellow men. yet, since the body is beautiful from every point of view, the statue, unless designed to fit into a niche, should be so made that we shall want to move around it and survey it from every angle. here is another difference between painting and sculpture. in the group, however, where several figures are represented united by some common interest or by participating in some common action, this difference is already beginning to disappear. for, in order to appreciate the dramatic significance of the group, the point of regard from in front is essential. the other aspects remain important for their corporeal beauty, but, since that is not ordinarily paired with an equal inner significance, they come to acquire a secondary place. impressionistic sculpture represents a further departure from the normal and in the direction of the pictorial. here part of the block from which the statue has been hewn is left an integral member of the piece; and out of it the figure seems to grow, as it were. it performs in the whole a function corresponding to the background of a portrait--the representation of the environment. thus, in meunier's "the miner," the block represents the mine; in rodin's "orpheus and eurydice," it represents the mouth of hades; in his "mystery of the spring," a basin. through the possibility of thus representing the relation of man to his environment a notable extension in the scope of sculpture is obtained. when a background is introduced, the figure or figures, being members of a larger whole, require less detailed treatment, less clearness of outline. their parts may even be left in large measure unfinished, the contours melting together with the block. a special point of regard, from which alone the figures are modeled, is obviously essential. striking is the contrast of this type with the classic, where the utmost precision in modeling is necessary. along with the diminished emphasis on clearness of form goes an increased effort at the portrayal of the inner, more spiritual life; sentiment and mystery find an unwonted place in the art. rodin's "psyche" is a good illustration. yet, despite these differences, the classic demand for living surfaces, for rhythmical lines, for perspicuity and totality of silhouette, for singleness and unity of material, abides. however, when the block attains prominence, the unification of the different figures through contact is no longer of equal necessity. the background serves the purpose of bringing the figures together, of providing a material bond between them. this is especially true in the various kinds of relief, between which and sculpture in the round, impressionistic sculpture is a sort of compromise. in relief there may even be a representation of perspective, the figures seeming to lie behind each other, flatter and smaller to indicate distance. but we shall not enter into the technique of this, which obviously approaches that of painting. when the charm of the body is the prime object of expression, those actions and poses which exhibit grace and vigor are the ones naturally chosen. this beauty is best revealed in the single figure, because in the group there is usually some dramatic interest which diverts attention from it. the figure is preferably wholly or partially undraped, or when drapery is used, it should reveal the body underneath and possess beauty of line of its own. elaboration of drapery for its own sake, or in order to display virtuosity in modeling, shows lack of true sculptural vision, which always has its eye on the naked form. aside from lack of charm, the old and crippled are avoided because their inharmonious lines would appear again in a statue which reproduced them; it is not possible, as in painting, to make a harmony out of them through relation to other lines in the total work, for no other lines exist; nor can their natural ugliness be so easily made acceptable through beauty of color and light. nevertheless, no one can dogmatically assert that the artist must confine himself in his choice of subjects. if by harmonizing the distorted lines of an ugly body with each other, and by enhancing the given purity and expressiveness of his material, the artist can create a beauty of form overlying the repellence of the subject, and if he can make us feel the tragedy or pathos of age and disease, no one can gainsay his work. in his "aged helmet-maker's wife," rodin has perhaps accomplished this. [footnote: see rodin's own defense of this statue in his _l'art_, chap. ii.] in the classic sculpture the expression of the inner life is subordinate to the expression of corporeal beauty. or, so far as mind is revealed, the revelation occurs through the body as a whole,--through attitude and pose and act. in this way complete unity between the inner and the outer beauty is preserved. for when through subtle modeling of the face the expression of the intense and individualized life of thought is attempted, the beauties of soul and body tend to fall apart and become rivals for attention. in classic sculpture, therefore, the face is rightly somewhat inexpressive, or better, is expressive of only the broad and typical human emotions. fine or deep qualities may, however, be expressed; for dignity, poise, intelligence, sorrow, and active joy make themselves manifest in the total _habitus_ of the body no less than in the face. the work of michelangelo is a further proof that sculpture can express the spiritual life, not only in the face, but in the body also. the expression there is no different in essential kind from that found in the heroic classic sculpture. it is universal, typical, not individual, personal; of the gods, not of men. its quality alone differs; it is monstrous, pathological, grandiose, instead of serene and happily balanced. but sculpture can also portray the individualized psychic life. [footnote: consult the discussion in rodin's _l'art_, chap. vii.] for this, the portrait bust is the most appropriate medium of expression. by separating the head, the natural seat of mind, from the rest of the body, the rivalry between the beauty of soul and form is obviated. how much sculpture can do in this way is shown by the work of the greeks and romans in ancient times, and by such men as houdon and rodin among the moderns. think of the intense and concentrated expression of thought and emotion in the "voltaire" of houdon and the "dalou" of rodin! success depends largely upon the modeling of the subtle lines of the face, where the more highly specialized workings of the mind leave their impress. whatever of character the face may express can be expressed over again in its image. of course the unique responses of mind to definite situations, such as, for example, the conversation of a man with his fellows, cannot be portrayed in sculpture, which isolates the individual. but the characteristic mood and attitude, the permanent residuum and condition of these responses, can be portrayed; and this constitutes personality or character. as schopenhauer declared, the character of a man is better revealed in the face when he is in repose than when he is responding to other men, for there is always a certain amount of dissimulation or insincerity in social intercourse. the impossibility of rendering the color and animation of the eye constitutes a real deficiency, but, as has often been pointed out, this is partly minimized through the fact that the expression of the eye depends largely upon the brows; by itself, the eye is inexpressive. the portrait statue has much the same purpose as the bust, and hence should be draped. the heroic, equestrian statue, however, expresses rather the imposing, socially perceptible side of the man, than the inner life of thought and sentiment revealed in the bust. the development of sculpture has produced nothing more beautiful than the solitaire statues which the greeks have left us; and when we think of greek sculpture we usually have in mind these marble or bronze images of gods and heroes. but we should not forget the figurines of terra cotta, a genre sculpture, representing men and women in the acts and attitudes of daily life, at work and at play. the ideal of sculpture should not be pitched too high. there is no reason why, with the example set by the greeks, sculpture should not portray the lighter and more usual phases of human life. if sculpture is to strike new paths, and be something more than a repetition of classical models, it must become more realistic. and, as we have already noted, by making use of the block as a sort of background, even some relation of man to his environment can be represented. through the group the simpler relations of man with his fellows--comradeship, love, conflict, or common action--can be expressed; although the power of sculpture is greatly limited in this direction. sculpture is often taxed by people who emphasize the importance of the political and industrial mechanism with inability to portray large groups of men and the more complex relations arising out of the dependence of man upon nature and society. but one may well urge the compensating worth which sculpture will always possess of recalling men to a sense of the value and beauty of the individual as such, especially in an age like our own where they tend to be forgotten. the principles that apply to the use of historical, literary, and symbolic themes in painting hold with increased force in sculpture. we must admit the right of the sculptor to illustrate simple and well-known historical or fictitious situations. at the same time, however, we must remember that a work of this kind is subject to a twofold standard: first and indispensable, the sculptural, is the form animate and beautiful; then, are the life and action appropriate to the idea? the first is alone absolutely unequivocal. the second, on the other hand, is largely relative; for unless the sculptor has carried out the idea in so masterly a fashion that we can think of no other possibility--as phidias is said to have done with his statue of zeus--there must always be something arbitrary about any particular representation. this arbitrary element is increased in symbolic sculpture. you can perhaps depict an actual or fictitious human situation by means of sculptured bodies and make your image seem inevitable; but how can you make bodies the vehicles of abstractions? moreover, sculpture is a realistic art; it presents us with the semblance of living forms, and if these forms are monstrous or are shown accomplishing impossible things, they cannot escape a certain aspect of the ridiculous. i have in mind rodin's "man and his thought." if the man were only represented fashioning the figure with his hands, his hands guided by his thought; but the hands are inactive, and the figure grows by thought alone! or consider "the hand of god" by the same artist. to say that we are in the hands of god is a good metaphorical way of expressing our dependence upon the destiny that shapes our ends; but it is another thing to exhibit us as actually enfolded by a hand. the more sensitive we are to the beauty of the body and of the mind, so far as manifest through the body, the better content we shall be with normal sculpture and the less urgently we shall demand symbolism. of course all statues may become symbolic, as all works of art may, in the sense of possessing a universal meaning won by generalizing their individual significance. symbolic in this legitimate way were the statues of the greek gods; thus aphrodite, who was lovely, became love, and athena, who was wise, became wisdom. but there is nothing arbitrary in such symbolism. chapter xiii beauty in the industrial arts: architecture in the arts which we have studied so far, beauty has been the sole or chief end; in the industrial arts, beauty can be only a part of their total meaning. no matter how much of an artist a builder or a potter may be, he is necessarily controlled by the practical needs which houses and pots subserve. this was the original condition of all artists; for "in the beginning," before life's various aims were distinguished and pursued in isolation, the beautiful was always married to some other interest. our method of study has, therefore, reversed the temporal order; but with intent, for we believe that the nature of a thing is better revealed in its final than in its rudimentary form. to complete our survey of the arts, we must, however, give some consideration to those works in which the unity of the useful and the beautiful is still preserved; and as an example we have chosen architecture, the most magnificent of them all. first, we must clear up what might seem to be an inconsistency in our thinking. in our definition of art we insisted upon the freedom of beauty and the contrast between the aesthetic and the practical attitudes, yet now we are admitting that some things may be at once useful and beautiful. it would seem as if we must either modify our definition of art or else deny beauty to such objects as bridges and buildings. but we cannot do the latter, for the beauty of brooklyn bridge or notre dame in paris is a matter of direct feeling, which no theory can disestablish. and it is impossible to solve the problem by supposing that in the industrial arts beauty and utility are extraneous to each other, two separable aspects, which have no intimate connection. for the fact that a bridge spans a river or that a church is a place of worship is an element in its beauty. the aesthetic meaning of the object depends upon the practical meaning. you cannot reduce the beauty of a bridge or a cathedral to such factors as mere size and fine proportions, without relation to function. no preconceived idea of the purity of beauty can undermine our intuition of the beauty of utility. yet the dependence of beauty upon utility in the industrial arts is not at variance with the freedom from practical attitudes which we have claimed for it. for the beauty is still in the realm of perception, of contemplation, not of use. it is a pleasure in seeing how the purpose is expressed in the form and material of the object, not a pleasure in the possession of the object or an enjoyment of its benefits. i may take pleasure in the vision of purpose well embodied in an object which another man possesses, and my admiration will be as disinterested as my appreciation of a statue. and even if i do make use of the object, i may still get an aesthetic experience out of it, whenever i pause and survey it, delighting in it as an adequate expression of its purpose and my own joy in using it. then beauty supervenes upon mere utility, and a value for contemplation grows out of and, for the moment, supplants a value in use. i now take delight in the perception of an object when formerly i took delight only in its use; i now enjoy the expression of purpose for its present perceived perfection, when once i enjoyed it only for its ulterior results. such intervals of restful contemplation interrupt the activity of every thoughtful maker or user of tools. thus the practical life may enter into the aesthetic, and that which grows out of exigence may develop into freedom. there is one more objection which may be urged against the aesthetic character of the expression of practical purpose, namely, that the appreciation of it is an affair of intellect, not of feeling. this would indeed be fatal if it were necessarily true; but all men who love their work know that they put into admiration for their tools as much of warm emotion as of mind. there remains, however, the genuine difficulty of communicating this emotional perception of useful objects, of making it universal. it must be admitted that the attitude of the average beholder towards a useful object is usually practical, not contemplative, or else purely intellectual, an effort to understand its structure, with the idea of eventual use. most works of industrial art produce no aesthetic experience whatever. but to be a genuine and complete work of fine art, an object must be so made that it will immediately impel the spectator to regard it aesthetically. from what we have already established, we know how this requirement can be met: by elaborating the outer aspects of the object in the direction of pleasure and expression. by this means the beauty of mere appearance will strike and occupy the mind, inducing the aesthetic attitude towards the outside, from which it may then spread and embrace the inner, purposive meaning. the obviously disinterested and warmly emotional admiration of the shape will prevent the admiration for the purposive adaptation from being cold and abstract. hence, although from the point of view of utility the beauty of mere appearance may seem to be a superfluity, it is almost indispensable from an aesthetic point of view, since it raises the appreciation of the purpose to the aesthetic plane. and we can understand how enthusiastic workmen, whose admiration for their work is already aesthetic, must necessarily desire to consecrate and communicate this feeling by beautifying the appearance of their products; how inevitably, through the ages, they have made things not only as perfect as they could, but as charming. when developed for the ends of the aesthetic life, the useful object exhibits, therefore, two levels of beauty: first, that of appearance, of form and sensation, line and shape and color; and second, that of purpose spoken in the form. the first is of the vague and immediate character so well known to us; the second is more definite and less direct, since it depends upon the interpretation of the object in terms of its function. the relation between the two is like that which obtains, in a painting, between color and line, on the one hand, and representation, on the other. when the first level of beauty is richly developed on its own account, it becomes ornament. in a greek vase, for example, there is a beauty of symmetrical, well-proportioned shape, delicate coloring of surface, and decorative painting, which might be felt by people who knew nothing of its use; and, in addition, for those who have this knowledge, a beauty in the fine balance of parts in the adjustment of clay to its final cause. these factors, which we have distinguished by analysis, should, however, be felt as one in the aesthetic intuition of the object; the form, although beautiful in itself, should reveal the function, and the decoration, no matter how charming, should be appropriate and subordinate. otherwise, as indeed so often happens, the beauty of one aspect may completely dominate the others; when the object either remains a pretty ornament perhaps, but is functionally dead; or else, if it keep this life, loses its unity in a rivalry of beautiful aspects. all these points are strikingly illustrated in architecture. the architects claim that their art is a liberal one aiming at beauty, yet most buildings to-day are objects of practical interest alone. their doors are merely for entrance, their windows for admission of light, their walls for inclosure. few people, as they hurry in or out of an office building or a railway station, stay to contemplate the majesty of the height or the elegance of the facade; they transact their business, buy their tickets, check their luggage, and go. even when the building has some claim to beauty, the mood of commercial life stifles observation; or, if the building is observed, there is no strong emotion or vivid play of imagination, no permanent impression of beauty lingering in the memory, no enrichment of the inner life, such as a musical air or a poem affords, but only a transient and fruitless recognition. for this reason many have thought that buildings must become useless, as castles and ruined temples are, in order to be beautiful. yet, in proportion as this is true, it involves a failure on the part of architecture, a failure to make the useful a part of the beautiful. a building, which was designed to be a habitation of man, when taken apart from the life which it was meant to shelter and sustain, is an abstraction or a vain ornament at best. if the company which peopled it are gone, it can win significance only if we re-create them in the imagination, moving in the halls or worshiping at the altars. we cannot get rid of the practical for the sake of the aesthetic, but must take up the practical into the aesthetic. for this reason architecture has achieved its greatest successes where its uses have been most largely and freely emotional, most closely akin to the brooding spirit of beauty--in religious buildings. most buildings, it must be admitted, are not beautiful at all. in order to be beautiful, they should be alive, and alive all over, as a piece of sculpture is alive; there should be no unresponsive surfaces or details; but most of our buildings are dead--dead walls, dead lines, oblong boxes, neat and commodious, but dead. the practical problems which the architect has to solve are so complex and difficult, and the materials which he uses are so refractory, that there is inevitably a sacrifice of the beauty of appearance to utility. the very size of a building makes it aesthetically unmanageable all over. here the lesser industrial arts, like the goldsmith's, have an advantage in the superior control which the workman can exert over his materials; his work is that of a single mind and hand; it does not require, as architecture does, the cooperation of a crowd of unfeeling artisans. in architecture, mechanical necessities and forms threaten to supplant aesthetic principles and shapes. the heavy square blocks, the rectangular lines, seem the antithesis of life and beauty. "all warmth, all movement, all love is round, or at least oval.... only the cold, immovable, indifferent, and hateful is straight and square.... life is round, and death is angular." [footnote: ellen key, _the few and the many_, translated from a quotation in max dessoir, _aesthetik und allgemeine kunstwissenschaft_, page 396.] what vividness of imagination or sentiment can transmute these dead and hollow masses into a life universally felt? and yet, in a series of works of art among the most magnificent that man possesses, this miracle was achieved. the greek temples and gothic cathedrals are so much alive that they seem not to have been made with hands, but to have grown. the straight lines have been modified into delicate curves, the angles have given place to arches, the stiff and mathematical have been molten into movement and surprise, the heaviness has been so nicely balanced or overcome that it has been changed into lightness, with the help of human and animal sculpture and floral carving the inorganic has been transformed into the organic, by means of painting and stained glass even the dull surfaces of walls and windows have been made to glow into life. artists wrought each portion and detail, and built the whole for the glory of god and the city, a monument for quiet contemplation, not a mere article to be used. with few exceptions, any architectural beauty that we create is but a feeble echo of theirs. some day we may be able to produce something worthy to be placed by its side, but only when we have sanctified our life with communal aims. the aesthetic effect of a building depends upon many factors, of which only a few can be analyzed by us in this short chapter. if we abstract from its relation to purpose, architecture is fundamentally an art of spatial form. working freely with it, under the sole limitation of function, the architect can make of this form a complex, various, and beautiful language intelligible to all men, and possessed of a systematic, yet fluent logic. of this language the simplest element is line. at first view, as we approach a building from the outside, its beauty, as in the case of sculpture, is essentially pictorial. for, although a building is a three-dimensional solid in reality, each view of it is a two-dimensional surface, bounded by lines and divided and diversified within by other lines. now these lines have their life and beauty like the lines of a picture. how they get this life and what its specific quality is in the case of particular lines, we need not explain again; but no one can fail to feel the upward movement of the vertical lines of the gothic style, the repose of the horizontal lines of the renaissance style, the playful grace of the rococo. naturally, since the front of a building, where one enters, is the most important and the most constantly in view, its pictorial beauty is elaborated with especial care by the architect. this is the justification of the overshadowing preeminence of the facade in renaissance palaces, which indeed was oftentimes the only visible part of the outside of the building. when, however, the building is perspicuous all round, it should, like a statue, present a beautiful view from every standpoint. in architecture, as in painting, the visual elements are adapted to one or the other of the two chief ways of seeing. either the surfaces are seen as wholes primarily and the details in subordination; or else the parts stand out clear and distinct, and the whole is their summation. the former is always the case when the surfaces are left plain with few divisions, or, if the surfaces are divided, when the lines intersect and intermingle, as is exemplified in late renaissance or baroque work, where the walls are covered with lavish ornament, the enframement of windows is broken by moldings and sculpture which carry into the surrounding spaces, and where, instead of embracing one story, the "orders" comprise the entire height of the building. the second possibility is well illustrated by the early classical renaissance, where the surface of each story, sharply separated from the others by the line of the frieze, is divided regularly by arches or columns, each window clearly enframed, and every sculptured ornament provided with a niche. there is, however, this fundamental difference between architectural and pictorial lines: the latter are usually pure kinematical lines, lines of free and un-resisted movement, while the former are usually dynamical, lines of force which move against the resistance of mass. in a picture objects are volatilized into light and have lost all weight; but in architecture, since they are present in reality and not in mere semblance, their weight is retained. a greek column, for example, not only moves upward, but also against the superincumbent load of the entablature which it carries. the difference between the two arts can be appreciated by comparing the picture of a building with the building itself; in the former, despite the fact that we know how heavy the dome or pediment is, and how strong therefore the piers or columns that support it, we hardly feel them as heavy or strong at all--the forces and masses have been transformed into abstract lines and shapes. sometimes, however, architectural lines and surfaces remain purely kinematical; on the inside of our rooms, for example, when the surfaces are smooth, and especially when they are decorated, we often feel no tension of conflicting forces, but only a quiet play of movements; it is as if the walls had been changed into the paper or paint that covers them. the vividness of the expression of mechanical forces in architecture depends, moreover, upon the kind of materials employed; it is greater in marble than in wood, and less in our modern constructions of steel and glass, where the piers move in single vertical lines from the bottom to the top of the building, than in the old forms, where the upper part of the building is frankly carried by the lower. the mere expression of mechanical forces in a building would not, however, be aesthetic by itself, no matter how obvious to the mind. we must not only know these forces to be there, we must also feel them as there; we must appreciate them in terms of our own experiences in supporting weights and overcoming resistances. we must transform the mechanical into the vital, the material into the human. art is an expression of life, not of mathematics. and this translation is not the result of an unusual, artificial attitude assumed for the sake of aesthetic appreciation; it is the natural mode of apperceiving force and mass. we cannot see a column supporting an entablature without feeling that it stands firm to bear the weight, much as we should stand if we were in its place. if this is a "pathetic fallacy," it is one which we all inevitably commit. even the skeptic, if he were to examine carefully into his own mind, would find that he commits it, whenever he gives to the column, not a casual or merely calculating regard, but a free and earnest attention. if he gives his mind to the column and lets the column take hold of his mind, allowing his psychological mechanism to work unhampered, he will commit it. the aesthetic intuition of force--the human way of appreciating it--is, in fact, primary; the purely mechanical and mathematical is an abstraction, superimposed for practical and scientific purposes. the interplay of humanized mechanical energies, of which architecture is the expression, may be conceived as the resultant of four chief forces, acting each in a definite direction: upward, downward, outward, and inward. the downward force is associated with the weight of the materials of which the building is constructed. to all physical objects we ascribe a tendency toward the earth. an unsupported weight will fall, and even when supported will exert a pressure downward. and this tendency is no mere directed force in the physical sense, but an impulse, in the personal sense. for when with hand or shoulder we support a weight, we inevitably interpret it in terms of our own voluntary muscular exertion in resisting it; even as we strive to resist it, so it seems to strive to fall. although this force is exerted downward, it shows itself in the horizontal lines of a building, in string courses, parapets, cornices, friezes; for the horizontal is the line parallel to the earth, toward which the force is directed, and along which we lie when we rest.[footnote: compare the discussion of lipps, _aesthetik_, bd. 1, dritter abschnitt, although i am far from accepting all of his analyses.] opposed to the downward force is the upward force. if an object does not fall, it must be supported by a force in the upward direction; the hand must exert a force perpendicular to the mass which it carries; the body must hold itself erect in order to bear its own weight. just so, an architectural member, if it is not to collapse, must raise itself upward. upward forces are revealed by the vertical lines of a building--the prevailing lines of columns, piers, shafts, pinnacles, towers, spires. we interpret vertical lines as moving upward, partly because the eye moves upward in scanning them, partly because we ourselves move in lines of this general direction in going from the bottom to the top of a building. even when we are at the top of a building we apprehend its vertical lines as rising rather than as descending, because we ourselves had to rise in order to get there. converging lines, as of towers and spires, we also interpret in the same way as going to the point of meeting above. acting in conjunction with the downward force is an outward one. the lower parts of a construction tend to spread out as they give way under the weight of the superincumbent masses; if they are very much broader than the latter, they give the impression of great weight carried. as a result, a horizontal line is introduced, and the longer it is in comparison with the vertical line of height, the heavier the effect. compare, for example, the impression made by a tall and thin triangular shape, with a low and broad one; and compare also the relative lengths of the horizontal and the vertical lines. the former shape seems simply to rise, while the latter lifts. we seem to observe the working of this outward force, as lipps has remarked, in the spreading out of the trunks of trees at the base and in the feet of animals; and we feel it in ourselves whenever we spread our limbs apart to brace ourselves to withstand a load. whenever the outward force is resisted, it gives evidence of the existence of a force operating in the opposed direction--inward. without this force, the lower parts of a construction would lack all solidity and spread like a molten mass on the ground. this is especially striking where the material, instead of spreading outward and downward, seems to press itself inward and upward. compare, for example, a shape whose base-line is smaller than the line of its top with one in which the reverse holds true. the former gives the impression of lightness and agility, with a prevailing upward trend, the other an impression of weight and heaviness, with a prevailing trend towards the ground. obviously, the outward and the inward forces are correlative and complementary: we have already observed that a construction would collapse without the inward; we can now see that it would disappear entirely without the outward. obviously, also, the inward and upward go together, and the downward and outward. even a plain rectangular wall manifests the interplay of these forces. the horizontal dimension represents the downward and outward force of the weight; the vertical dimension, the upward forces, which prevent the wall from collapsing in itself and hold it upright; while the lateral boundaries give evidence of the inward tension that keeps the mass together. but the most beautiful expressions of architectural forces are to be found in the historical styles. in each style there is a characteristic relationship between the forces, imparting a distinctive feeling. i shall offer a brief analysis of some of these. many have recognized that the classical greek construction, as illustrated in the doric temple, expresses a fine equilibrium between the upward and the downward forces, embodied in the vertical and horizontal lines respectively. the upward force is manifest primarily in the vertical columns, and is emphasized there by the flutings, the slight progressive narrowing toward the top, and the inward effort of the necking just below the echinus. the downward force is embodied in the horizontal lines of the lintel, architrave, cornice, and in the hanging mutules and gutta. the two forces come to rest in the abaci, which, as the crowning members of the columns, directly carry the weight of the entire entablature. the equilibrium between the horizontal and the vertical tendencies is, however, not a static but a moving one; for the two opposing forces are present in every part of the building from the stylobate to the ridge of the triangular pediment. the downward force is already manifest in the widened base of the column, where it works in conjunction with the inward tendency, and shows its effect at the critical points at the top of the supporting column--in the spreading echinus with its horizontal bands beneath and in the horizontal lines of the abaci. the upward force, on the other hand, is continued right through the solid mass of the entablature, in the vertical lines of the triglyphs, in the antefixes, and even to the very apex of the building, where the ascending lines of the triangular pediment meet. the resulting total effect is that of a perfect, yet swaying balance. the aesthetic effect derived from the interplay of forces in the ionic form is similar to that in the doric, only more delicate and elastic. the slender columns, being less rugged and resistant than the doric, seem to transmit the weight supported, which shows itself, therefore, in the outward spreading molded base; but this apparent lack of strength in the column is compensated for by the elastic energy in the coiled spring of the volutes, upon which, with the slight mediation of a narrow band, the entablature rests. here most of the upward energy of the ionic form is concentrated; for although the dentils of the frieze perform the function of the triglyphs, they are too small to do it effectively; the style lacks, therefore, the gentle harmonizing of forces all over, characteristic of the doric, and evinces instead a clean-cut elastic tension at a given point. this effect is, however, somewhat softened by the breaking up of the downward force of weight by means of the recessed divisions of the architrave. in the corinthian capital, which has the same general feeling as the ionic, the elastic tension is still further diminished through the renewed emphasis on the mediating abacus, the reduction of the size of the volutes, and the overhanging floral carvings. however, by reason of the strength given by the bell and the projecting outward and upward curving form of the abacus, the suggestion of weakness in the corinthian form is overcome, but the gentleness remains. if the greek construction expresses a balance between the upward and downward forces, the arched forms that followed express the victory of the upward. in the arch the upward force, instead of being arrested where the support meets the mass to be carried, is continued throughout the mass itself. of the two chief types of arches, the round and the pointed, each has a specific feeling. we shall study the round form first, where the vertical tendency is indeed victorious, but only through reconciliation and compromise. in the round arch all four forces are beautifully expressed. the upward is manifest, first, in the vertical pier, which acts very much as the column does, and, in roman work, was often replaced by the column. the opposing downward force is expressed in the horizontal upper bound of the arch and in the line of the impost, also horizontal, which breaks the vertical line and so marks the place where the two forces come into sharpest conflict. in this conflict, the vertical is victorious; for, instead of being stopped by the impost, it is carried up throughout the entire construction by means of the upward and inward curving of the arch. the very curve of the arch shows, however, that the victory is not absolute; for its circular form is obviously determined as a compromise between an inward centripetal force, moving upward and diminishing the breadth of the arch to a mere point at its apex, and an outward centrifugal force, gradually spreading the arch downward until it reaches its greatest breadth at the impost, where it is arrested by the opposing vertical force in the pier. to the historical imagination, the round arch seems, therefore, to express the genial classical idea of a control by the higher nature which nevertheless did no violence to the demands of the lower. in the spherical dome the effect is the same, only the interplay of forces operates in three dimensions instead of two. when arches are superposed, the upward movement proceeds in stages, beginning anew at each horizontal division of the wall space. the use of entablatures applied to the wall and of engaged columns, common in roman work, seems to involve an attempt at a fusion of two contradictory styles, and is usually condemned as such. this contradiction can be solved, however, by viewing the entablatures as mere weightless lines of division of the wall, usually marking off the different stories, and by viewing the columns in a similar fashion as having no supporting function--which is actually the case--and as simply serving the purpose of framing the arches. at most they merely indicate the direction of the chief contending forces,--the parallel lintels signalizing the force of weight, and the vertical columns, standing one upon the other, pointing the movement of the upward force. they have, therefore, a pictorial rather than a dynamic significance. differences of feeling in arched forms depend upon the relative height of arches and supporting piers and columns. the vertical effect is strongly emphasized when the latter are relatively high, while the effect of weight is increased in flattened arches, which for this reason are especially appropriate for crypts and prison entrances. interesting complications are introduced in arcades or intersecting vaults, where a single column serves as a support for two or more arches; for there the vertical force is divided, flowing in different directions in the little triangular piece of wall between, or along the ribs of the vaults. something similar occurs in the byzantine dome on pendentives, only instead of supporting the horizontal weight of a gallery or a vault, the triangular pendentives meet the outward thrust of a superposed dome. in renaissance architecture and the modern classical revivals, where greek and roman styles are freely adapted to novel modes of life and purpose, no essentially new form was added to architectural speech. there were combinations of old forms into more complex structures, but no new important elements. the most outstanding novelty is perhaps the reversed relation between the whole and the parts. [footnote: see p. frankl, _die entwicklungsphasen der neueren baukunst_, 1914.] in the classic styles, whether arched or greek, the whole is built up of the parts additively; each is a relatively independent center of energy complete in itself; first the columns, then the architrave, frieze, and cornice, then the pediment; or first one row of arches, then another row on top of this, and so on. coordination is the governing principle. but in the modern adaptations, even where coordination rather than subordination rules in the pictorial sphere, the whole is first dynamically and the parts are secondary. in the typical renaissance facade, for example, the arches of the windows are rather openings in the walls than supporting members. they are centers of little eddies of force, rather than independent parts of the main determining stream of energy. the wall rises as a whole to its heavy overhanging cornice, despite the horizontal divisions marking the stories. there are, however, important differences between the various modern types; the earlier renaissance forms, for example, keeping closer to the antique than the later baroque and rococo. the complete triumph of the vertical tendency, foreshadowed in the roman, was proclaimed in gothic architecture in the use of the pointed arch. for in the round arch the vertical has not conquered after all; the horizontal is still active there, even to the apex of the arch, where the tangential line is parallel to the earth, the line of weight. but in the pointed style the victory of the vertical is clearly decisive,--the upward and inward forces, by elongating and narrowing the curve of the arch to a point, have dominated the downward and outward. the great height of the piers, the gabled roofs, the ribs of the vaults the pointed form of the windows, the towers, spires, and pinnacles,--all proclaim it. yet this victory does not occur without opposition; for the higher the vaulting, the greater the weight to be carried; the greater, therefore, the outward thrust, which had to find its expression and its stay in the buttress. but even the buttress, although it bears witness to the outward and horizontal force of weight, was nevertheless so fashioned with its gable and pinnacle, or its own arched form, as to aid the upward movement. the thinness of walls and partitions, and the piercing of these with arches and windows, by lightening the force of weight, also contributed to increase the vertical movement. at sight of a true gothic cathedral, we feel ourselves fairly lifted off the ground and rushed upward. in thinking of the beauty of architecture, we are all too apt to consider the exterior exclusively, forgetting that the inside of a building, where we live, is even more important practically, and is capable of at least as great an aesthetic effect. the characteristic aesthetic effect of the interior is a function of the inclosed space, the volume, not of the inclosing walls taken singly. the walls are only the limits of this space, they are not the space itself. of course, the walls within have their own beauty, of surface and pervading energy, but this does not differ markedly from that of the walls seen from the outside, and what we have established for the one holds for the other. but the beauty of the inclosed space is something entirely new. in itself, however, mere volume of space is no more aesthetic than mere bounding line or surface; in order to become beautiful, it must become alive. but how can space--the most abstract thing in the world--become alive? by having the activities which it incloses felt into it. just as our bodies are felt to be alive because our activities express themselves there, so our rooms, because we live and move within them. as we enter a cathedral and look down the long aisle, the movement of our eyes inevitably suggests the movement of our bodies; or, as we look up and our eyes follow the ribs of the vaulting, it is as if we ourselves were borne aloft; in the imagination we move through the open spaces; and since we do not actually move, we locate our impulses to movement, not in our bodies, but in the space through which we take our imagined flight. every object suggests movement to it, and we fill the intervening space with this imagined movement, provided only we stay our activities and give time for the imagination to work its will. thus all space may become alive with the possibilities of movement which it offers. the aesthetic effects of volume vary chiefly according to size and shape. in order to be appreciated, these effects must in general be somewhat striking; otherwise they pass unnoticed, and we simply take the interiors of our buildings as matters of course. it is a curious fact that an impression of vastness can be secured by inclosing a relatively small space. a square, like the place de la concorde, or even the inside of a cathedral, produces a feeling of size almost, if not quite, as great as an open prairie or sea. the reason, i suppose, is that an inclosed space offers definite points as stimuli and goals for suggested movements. as we imaginatively reach out and touch these points, we seem to encompass their distance; and the volume of our own bodies seems to be magnified accordingly. the boundaries of the space become a second and greater integument. this is of decisive importance; for the aesthetic appreciation of size is relative to an appreciation of the size of our own bodies; in nature itself there is nothing either large or small. along with the sense of vastness goes a sense of freedom; the one is the aesthetic experience resulting from the imaginative reaching of the goal of a movement, the other is the feeling of the imagined movement itself. when, on the other hand, an inclosure is small, as in the case of a cell, and especially when the ceiling or vault is low, as in a crypt, it feels cabined and confined, because our own possibilities of movement are restricted. in order to avoid this feeling, if a space is limited in one direction, it must be free in another; if narrow, it must be long; if small in plan, it must be high, as in a tower. the form of an inclosed space is also expressive. there are two chief types, the longitudinal and the radial; but since these may exist either in plan or in elevation, four possibilities result: the longitudinal-horizontal, as in an aisle; the longitudinal-vertical, as in a tower; the radial-horizontal, illustrated by every equilateral plan--triangle, square, regular polygon, and above all, the most perfect form of this type, the circle; and finally, the radial-vertical, of which domed spaces, like the pantheon or st. paul's, are examples. the terms used to designate them, together with the examples, afford a good idea of what these space forms are, making further description unnecessary. it is interesting to observe how different the expression of the square and the triangle is when they determine the plan of an inclosed space from what it is when they are the shapes of walls. [footnote: compare fritz hoeber: _systematik der architekturproportionen_, ii, b, a. ] in the case of the latter, according to the analysis which we have given of them, the figures represent an interplay of antagonistic horizontal and vertical forces, about an axis drawn perpendicular to the midpoint of the base line; while as plans they express forces homogeneous in kind radiating from their centers. the feeling of longitudinal forms is one of continued movement, forward or upward as the case may be; when the distance is very great, the feeling is of infinity, either of vista, as in an aisle, or of height, as in a tower, for even when the point at the end is clearly seen and known, we continue it in the imagination. the radial forms, on the other hand, even when the axes are very long, express completeness and security, for no matter how far we go in any one direction, we have to proceed along a line which brings us back to our starting point; in following to the top the movement of the curved line of a dome or an apse, the continuation of the same line carries us down on the other side to a point corresponding to the one from which we set out; if we wander, we return home. with reference to the division of interiors into parts, the same two types are exemplified which we found in studying the visual and the dynamic aspects of buildings. either the parts of the interior space are clearly marked off from each other, and the perception of the whole which they constitute is reached by a process of summation; or else, to one standing within, the space is first perceived as a whole, and its parts, lacking clear definition, are perceived subsequently. in the former type, the parts are of pronounced individuality, and the whole is their free and joint work; in the latter, the parts are merged, and tend to be lost in the whole. these two possibilities exist whether the space be of radial or longitudinal form. in general, the classical styles lend themselves to the coordinate type of division of the interior, while the later styles favor the subordination of the parts to the whole. the other factors in the beauty of architecture, besides the expression of the forces resident in its forms, can receive only scant notice from us. among these is light--its admission, exclusion, and diffusion. a house with ample windows flooded with sunshine shares the feeling of an open day; a cathedral, dimly lighted, stimulates a mood of brooding mystery and meditation, like some dark forest. another factor is color. color plays a double part in architecture: first, to enliven the neutral tones of certain materials; and second, to impart specific moods. it was no barbaric taste, but a keen feeling for life and warmth that induced the greeks to paint their temples; and without their rose windows, gothic cathedrals are like faces from which the glow of life is departing. the different colors have the same feelings in architecture that they have in painting. the reds and purples of ecclesiastical stained glass stimulate the passion of adoration, the blues deepen it, and the yellows seem to offer a glimpse of heavenly bliss. sound, its presence or its absence, is another factor in architectural expression: the quiet of the church in contrast with the noise of the busy street outside, the peal of the organ, or the chorus of young voices. although architecture is a spatial art and music a temporal art, they nevertheless go well together because the emotions aroused by both are vague and voluminous, and the sounds, reverberating from the walls and filling the inclosed spaces, seem to fuse with them. ornamental carving performs a diversifying and enlivening function similar to that of color. so long as its lines follow those of the architectural forms, it may well be rich and elaborate. it is fitting, moreover, that buildings designed to be houses of the gods should contain their images, and that the same spirit that expresses itself in playful lines should become embodied in griffin and gargoyle. finally, erected in the open, with no shelter or enframement, a building is, in large measure, a part of nature and possesses something of the beauty of nature. rooted to one place like a tree, it shares the beauty of its site, and responds to the ever varying effects of light and shadow, rain and mist and snow. the abstract beauty of architecture can be understood without any knowledge of the purposes of buildings. a hindu who knows nothing of our civilization cannot fail to be responsive to notre dame, any more than we can fail to admire the beauty of taj mahal. the very simplest architectural forms, like the pyramids or the washington monument, provided they are of sufficient size and mass, speak an eloquent language which is immediately understood. and the content of their speech is not so abstract as might be judged from our previous studies of it; for in architecture, as in music, concrete emotions and sentiments flow into the channel cut by the form. longing, aspiration, and mystery have universally been felt into a form pointing skyward; and the feeling of incompleteness has been lost, and security regained, in an overarching dome. there is, however, this difference between architecture and music. in music, the emotional content is purely personal; while in architecture, it may become social and historical. architectural purposes are all social: the purposes of a family, a nation, a cult. and the purposes of the greatest of buildings--of those which serve the nation and religion--are also historical; about them gather the traditions of a community. centers of the life of a people, created by it and enduring with it, they become its symbols; or outlasting it, memorials and witnesses to it. the vague emotions aroused by the architectural forms are pointed and enriched by this spirit: the vastness, seclusion, magnificence, mystery, and aspiration of the gothic cathedral become associated with the life of the medieval catholic church; the fine balance, clarity, and simplicity of the greek temple with the best in greek culture. this interpretation of a building in terms of its purpose and history is necessary to a complete aesthetic appreciation. without it, a building may have many beauties, all the beauties which we have analyzed; but they are all separate, and there is no beauty of the whole. it is the life which the many parts and aspects serve that makes them into one. i shall close this chapter with a brief discussion of architectural composition. the unity of a building is constituted primarily by the necessary adjustment of part to part which makes possible the life that it incloses. how the parts serve this purpose is not immediately evident to intuition; nor can it be; yet it should be intelligible to a thoughtful study. the knowledge thus gained may then enter into an imaginative vision, for which the building will seem like an organism pulsing with life. this purposive unity cannot well be secured without spatial contiguity; here, as in sculpture, a unified life demands a unified material. yet sometimes detached structures belong together functionally, and may be felt as one aesthetically, provided they are similar in design and some one of them is dominant; otherwise, each claims to be a distinct individual, and aesthetic rivalry is the result. functional unity, although necessary, is not sufficient for aesthetic unity; in addition, there must be formal unity--design, composition. to study this adequately would require a separate treatise, which has not yet been written, so far as i know, with anything approaching philosophical depth and completeness; but for our plan it will be sufficient to show how the general principles of aesthetic form are illustrated in architecture; and because of the perspicuity of things spatial, these principles are nowhere else so lucidly manifest. since architecture is a spatial art, unity in variety is chiefly a matter of harmony and balance rather than of evolution, and of these harmony is perhaps the most conspicuous. harmony is secured in many ways. first, by giving the whole building or parts of the building a simple geometrical form readily perceived,--for example, the cruciform plan of many gothic cathedrals, the oblong plan and oblong surmounted by a triangle in the facade of the greek temple, the octagonal shape of a renaissance chapel. a higher degree of harmony is obtained when the same shape is repeated throughout the various parts of the building,--the cylinder in the columns, the triangle or semicircle in the arches and gables. a step further is taken in the same direction when the different similar parts are all of the same size, as in the greek temple, where the columns are all of one size, and similar parts of columns of equal size, and the metopes and triglyphs likewise. a more complex type of harmony, since it admits of greater variety, is proportionality. proportionality may be of various kinds. it may be merely the existence of a definite numerical relation between the dimensions of single parts, or the areas of various parts, of a building. this, in turn, may be either a simple arithmetical relation, such as exists between the parts of a greek facade, each being some simple multiple of the unit or module; or a more complex relation like the golden section, where the smaller is to the larger dimension as the larger is to the sum of both; or like that which obtains when different parts form a geometrical series, where each is smaller or larger than the preceding by some fraction of the latter. the relation between the length and breadth of the facade of the ducal palace in florence illustrates the golden section; the heights of the stories of the peller house in nuremberg form a geometrical series. this type of harmony is most complete when the proportion between the dimensions of the different parts is the same as that of the whole building,--by the ancients called _concinnitas_ because it produces a feeling akin to that of musical harmony. dominance of a particular kind of line, horizontal or vertical, also gives harmony. finally, harmony is secured by sameness of direction of line: the alignment of windows or parallelism between moldings dividing the surfaces of walls, for example. the relations, so seemingly mathematical, upon which architectural harmony is based, need not be exact, for two reasons: minor deviations are not perceptible, and even when perceptible, they give to the whole a feeling of life. our experience with living things has taught us that, despite their orderliness, there is no exact mathematical regularity in their proportions; hence forms which cannot be precisely formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly geometrical. the same experience has taught us that the curvilinear forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency, for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the plumb-line and rule. there is, however, a type of life specifically human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical relations; hence the greeks, and all those who have followed the classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, have felt the circle and the square, and every other exact embodiment of clarity and intelligence, to be beautiful. in no other art has the passion for the intelligible been so perfectly expressed as in classical architecture. next in importance to harmony as a mode of unity in variety in architecture is balance. balance implies emphatic variety, or contrast. one mode of balance, that between the upward and the downward tendencies, we have already discussed. there is another mode, similar to that which exists in painting and sculpture, the balance between the right and left members of a building. in order that this type of balance may be appreciated, there must be some axis or line of mediation between the parts, from which the opposing tendencies take their start; otherwise we view the parts together, instead of in opposition. for example, there is balance between two wings of a building which are separated by some central member or link; balance between the aisles of a church on either side of the nave; balance between the sets of three columns right and left of the door in the greek hexastyle temple. such cases of symmetry between equal right and left parts are the simplest examples of balance; but there are other, more complex types. for example, the parts may be unequal, yet balance nevertheless, provided their inequality is compensated for by some enrichment of design or ornament in the lesser part. or again, there may be a balance between contrasting shapes, such as the square and the triangle, when they make an equal claim upon the attention. although, since architecture is a static art, evolution is not so important as harmony and balance, it exists nevertheless. in a colonnade, as you look down it, with the height of the columns diminishing in perspective, there is a rhythmical movement of eye and attention toward the last column as a goal. there is the same rhythmical movement in following the arches on either side of the nave of a church leading to the apse. there is a rhythmical movement in the progressive diminution of the height of the stories of a building, going towards the top. in such spatio-temporal rhythms, the proportional equality between the members corresponds to the equal intervals in temporal rhythms, and the alternation between member and intervening space, or between member and line of division, corresponds to the alternation between heavy and light accents. last, evolution is present in architecture, whenever, often without rhythmical divisions, the attention is impelled to move along lines that meet at a point which serves as a climax, as in all triangular forms where the lines lead up to the apex,--pointed windows or arches, towers ending in belfries or pinnacles. dominance, with its correlative, subordination, are everywhere present in architecture. in general, size and a central position, which usually go together, determine preeminence. the largest masses and those which occupy a central position inevitably rule the others. the towers and the facade dominate the exterior of a gothic cathedral, the middle doorway is superior to those which flank it, and within, the central and larger nave dominates the smaller aisles on either side. when there are many dominant elements, as is necessarily the case in a large building, they must be unified by balance, if there are two, or by subordination to one of them, if three or more; otherwise, each claims to be the whole and the building falls apart into its members. there cannot well be three vertical dominant parts, because the central one makes a claim to preeminence which cannot be satisfied without superiority in size. a central member should, therefore, either be made larger than those flanking it, or else should be reduced to the status of a mere subordinate link between the others. in the horizontal division of a building into stories--as, for example, in the palazzo farnese near rome--it is easier for the prominent parts to be equal, because they are better united by the evident contiguity of their masses, by their inclosure in a simple geometrical shape, and enframement between base and overhanging cornice. yet here also we observe the tendency to make the middle larger or otherwise dominant, exemplified even in the building cited, where the central part is distinguished by the ornamental shield, upon which the attention is focused. when there are four horizontal divisions, our tendency is to divide them into groups of two; but unless this grouping is clearly marked by a molding or other such device, our purpose is defeated because each of the two can itself be divided into two parts, whence we get the four parts again, among which there is not sufficient unity. when, however, there are more than four stories, they cease to function as individuals and become members of a series, the rhythm of which creates the necessary unity. even in this case, however, the tendency toward grouping into three with the middle dominant persists; for, as a rule, the stories are divided by moldings into three parts, of which the central part is the largest. four equal stories are difficult because they at once resist an arrangement into threes and yet fall short of being the series which they suggest. when a series of stories is divided into three parts, a superior aesthetic effect is gained if the height of each story diminishes in some regular ratio from the bottom to the top, thus expressing the gradual overcoming of the downward force by the upward,--the rhythm becomes dynamical as well as kinematical. all good architectural styles illustrate the principle of impartiality, which demands the careful elaboration of parts. yet, as we have indicated, there are two possibilities: some styles are founded on the idea of the subordination of the parts to the whole, and so permit of a less elaborate execution of details, while others are based on the idea of coordination among the parts within the whole, and so require that each part be vividly clear, distinct from the others, and possessed of a pronounced individual beauty. these two types are exemplified in each of the three aspects of a building--the visual, the dynamic, and the voluminal. for the greek and roman architecture and for that of the renaissance, the former was the ideal; while the latter is clearly characteristic of the more modern forms; between these stand the byzantine, romanesque, and gothic, in which a union of the two types, in what has well been called an organic type, was attempted, and perhaps achieved in the last. the former has the feeling of the mechanical, rational view of life, which is the classical; the latter has the feeling of the mystical and organic view, which is modern.[footnote: see p. frankl, _die entwieklungsphasen der neueren baukunst_, 1914.] chapter xiv the function of art: art and morality that an interest is innocent and pleasure giving is no longer considered sufficient to justify its existence; it must also, in order to be sanctioned in our jealous and economical world, prove itself a beneficent influence upon the total man and the group. for the time being at least, the day of _laissez-faire_ is done; men can no longer appeal to their personal needs, their inner necessities, or even their consciences, in defense of their activities. public opinion, and sometimes reason, are the only arbiters of right. it may well happen that, in a new age, men will be more generous and less exacting, once again recognizing inherent rights in spontaneous activities; but that age is not ours. not even art can claim privilege; in vain will the artist boast of his genius or the art-lover of his delights, if he can exhibit no pervasive good. it is not enough, therefore, that we should have described the peculiar, inward value of art; we must further establish that it has a function in the general life. three classes of people, the puritans, the philistines, and the proletarians, question the value of art in this sense. these classes are, of course, not new to our civilization, but are rather perennial types of human nature, appearing under one or another name and guise in every age. to the puritan, art is immoral; to the philistine, it is useless; to the proletarian, it is a cruel waste. one illustration of the complexity of human culture is the fact that art has now been regarded as the symbol and ally of goodness, and now as its enemy. this paradox can, i think, be partly explained by making a distinction between the ethical and the moral point of view regarding conduct. from the one point of view, the good belongs to all free, creative acts that look toward the growth and happiness of individuals; from the other point of view, it consists in conformity to law, convention, and custom. it is evident that these two attitudes must sometimes come into open or secret conflict. for law and convention represent either an effort to fix and stabilize modes of conduct that have proved themselves to be good under certain conditions; or else, as is more often true than is admitted, an attempt to generalize the good of some special class or type of men and impose it as a norm for all; and obviously these efforts will, from time to time, be opposed either to the freedom of individuals, or to their growth, under changing conditions. now in the sense defined, the spirit of art is fundamentally ethical and, at the same time, fundamentally non-moral. it is fundamentally ethical, for art is itself a freely creative and happy activity, and tends to propagate itself in spontaneity in other fields; it is an inspiration in every struggle for liberty and the remolding of the world. the artist and art lover, who value the expression of individuality in art, cannot fail to appreciate it outside of art. on the other hand, the spirit of art is fundamentally non-moral, for the sthetic attitude is one of sympathy--an attempt at once to express life and to feel at one with it; it demands of us that we take the point of view of the life expressed and, for the moment at any rate, refrain from a merely external judgment. through art we are compelled to sympathize with the aspiration towards growth, towards happiness, even when it leads to rebellion against our own standards and towards what we call sin. the sympathy, realism, and imagination of art are antagonistic to conformist morality. by making us intimately acquainted with individuals, art leads to skepticism of all general rules. the puritan, therefore, who is an exponent of the extremest and narrowest conformist morality, is more nearly right in his interpretation of the relation between art and morality than more liberal people who, because of their love of art, seek to ignore or palliate the facts. hence, in order to defend art, one must reckon seriously with the puritan. the puritan is fearful, above all, of works of art that represent moral evil. the method of artistic representation, which aims at awakening sympathy for the life portrayed, is bound, he thinks, to demoralize both the artist and the spectator. but art is something more than sympathy, and there are other aspects of the aesthetic experience which tend to render that sympathy innocuous, even from the standpoint of the puritan. in the first place, the sympathy is usually with an imagined life that has no direct relation to the will and gives the spectator no opportunity to enter into and share it--he participates through the imagination, not through the senses. moreover, neither the mind nor the will is a _tabula rasa_; no mature person comes to a work of art without certain habits and preferences already predetermined, which no mere imagination can destroy, but only, if at all, some concrete opportunity and temptation. hence men can lead a manifold life, partly in the imagination and partly in action, without any corruption of heart or paralysis of will. in real conduct, to lead a double life is demoralizing because there choices are exclusive and each of the two lives tends to interfere with and spoil the other; but imagination does not conflict with reality, for they have no point of contact and do not belong to the same world. in the second place, a work of art is an appeal to mind as well as to sympathetic feeling. it is no mere stirring of emotion and passion, but a means to insight into them. the attitude of reflection which it engenders is unfavorable to impetuous action. providing no immediate stimulus to action, it allows time for a better second thought to intervene. even when it offers suggestions for unwonted acts, it furnishes the spirit and the knowledge requisite for determining whether they will fit into the scheme of life of the spectator. it is characteristic of the puritanic critics of art, in their eagerness to find motives for condemnation, to overlook this element of reflection. it is forgotten, finally, that by providing an imaginative experience of passion and adventure, art often becomes rather a substitute for than an incentive to them. the perfection of form, the deep repose and circle-like completeness of the work of art, tend to prevent one from seeking a corresponding real experience, which would have none of these qualities, but perhaps only misery and wear and tear instead. thus the work of art may propagate itself in a search for new aesthetic experiences rather than in analogous conduct. to the artist who is living the evil life which he expresses, there can be even less danger in expression, than to the spectator. for the expression is not the cause of his life, but only its efflorescence. the roots of evil lie deep below in the subsoil of instinct. without expression, life would be much the same, only secret instead of articulate. the puritan shows a shocking naivete in thinking that he can reform life by destroying its utterance. moreover, to express life implies a certain mastery over it, a power of detachment and reflection, which are fundamentally ethical and may lead to a new way of living. every form of life has an inalienable right to expression. in order to be judged fairly, it must be allowed to plead for itself, and art is its best spokesman. and that we should know life sympathetically is of practical importance; for otherwise we shall not know how to change it or indeed that it ought to be changed at all. only by knowing other ways of life can we be certain of the relative worth of our own way; knowledge alone gives certitude. without knowledge we run the risk of becoming ruthless destroyers of things which an intelligent sympathy might well preserve and find a place for in the world. to all these considerations the puritan will doubtless oppose a truth impossible to deny. experience, he will say, is one, not many; imagination and action are not separated by an impassable wall; things merely imagined or dreamed, even when they do not directly issue in action, may nevertheless influence conduct through a slow and subtle transforming effect upon the sentiments and valuations which make up its background. character can be maintained only by a vigilant and steady control over impulses which are always threatening rebellion; purity of mind only through the rigid exclusion of the sensual, luxurious, and ignoble; imaginative sympathy with evil, even when sublimated in art, must necessarily undermine the one and becloud the other. "if thine eye offend thee, cut it out and cast it from thee." the truth which the puritan announces does not, i think, warrant the inference which he draws from it or alter the situation as i have described it. for morality, to be genuine, must be a choice; the good must know its alternative or it is not good. only those who already have a penchant for sin will be corrupted by imaginative sympathy with passion; a character that cannot resist such an influence is already undermined. life itself is the great temptation; how can one who cannot look with equanimity upon statues and pictures fail to be seduced by live men and women? if men can resist the suggestions that emanate from life they can surely withstand those that come from art. and mere purity of mind is not equal in value to that insight into the whole of life which a freely creative art provides. we wish to penetrate sympathetically all of our existence; nothing human shall remain foreign to us; we would enter into it all; there is no region of the grotesque, the infernal, or the sinful from which we would be shut out. in comparison with the sublimity of this demand for the complete appreciation of life, the warnings of a rigorous moralism seem timorous, and the sanctuary of purity in which it would have us take refuge, a prison. whatever conflict there may be between the spirit of art and conformist morality, there is none with a genuine and rational ethics. for the latter would formulate ways of living suited to the diversity of individuals and sympathetic with their every impulse and fancy. it would impose external constraint only where necessary for the existence and perpetuation of social life, leaving to personal tact, good will, and temperance the finer adjustments of strain. but apart from aesthetic culture, there can be no rational morality, for that alone engenders the imaginative sympathy with individual diversity upon which the latter rests. without imaginative sympathy morality will always be coarse, ruthless, and expressive of the needs and sentiments of some special type which sets out to reform or govern the world. under such a regimen, which is actual in every community devoid of imagination, virtue must always remain suspect and vice tolerable; the one a hypocrisy, the other a secret and venial indulgence, and nature will take its revenge upon the law in violent or perverse compensations. hence, instead of being a hindrance, art ought to be a help to a rational morality: its realism should foster sincerity, its imagination, sympathy and justice. the moralist inspired by art would seek to impose upon men only that kind of form and order which is characteristic of art--one which respects the peculiarities of the material with which it works, and issues in a system in which all elements freely participate. [footnote: compare schiller, _on the aesthetic education of man_, fourth letter: "the civilized man makes nature his friend, and honors her freedom, while he merely fetters her caprice."] the philistine's objection to art is that it is useless. and if we only knew what was really useful, this would be a damning indictment. but, not being much given to abstract reflection, the philistine is usually at a loss to inform us. however, by talking with him, we can eventually divine what he thinks the useful to be. useful is what contributes to the procurement of those things which he and his congeners value--material wealth, power, and sensual enjoyment. art is useless because it will not prepare a banquet, build a bridge, or help to run a business corporation. the artist is a contemptible fellow because he cares more for his art than for the things of the world; for whatever the worldling values he thinks every one else should value. to the artist, criticism of this kind seems to betray the most shameless arrogance, and he meets contempt with contempt. who is he that would be the judge between worldly goods and beauty? surely the philistine is no competent judge; for he only can judge fairly between two values who appreciates both, and, by his own confession, the philistine does not appreciate art. hence the claim of the philistine seems not to merit consideration. through his lack of sympathy for art, he puts himself beyond the possibility of fruitful debate. in this he is unlike the puritan, who is often all too sensitive to beauty for his own good--hence his alarms. if the objection of the philistine were the same as the proletarian's, that art is a luxury, a waste of the energies of the community, which might better be employed in feeding the hungry and saving sinners, it would be more worthy of a hearing; and so he often represents it. but in this he is hardly sincere; and the appropriate answer is a _tu quoque_, the fitting reply to every piece of insincere criticism. does the philistine feed the poor and save the sinners? who is commonly more careless of the workers' needs and more cruel to the fallen in his self-righteous probity? for the philistine is often a puritan. and who is more luxurious than he? who consumes more in his own person of the energies of the toilers? it costs little to maintain an artist, but it taxes thousands to support the philistine and his wife. of course, in return, the worldling performs a service to the community in the organization of industries, but many of these do not sustain the needs of the masses and are devoted to the manufacture of luxuries for the well-to-do. the insincerity of the philistine's attitude is disclosed by his changed attitude towards the artist who acquires fame and wealth through his art. for now that the artist shows himself capable of getting the things the philistine values, the latter accords him esteem. or let an interest in art become fashionable, and once again the philistine is won over. the traditional hostility between the philistine and the artist is offensive to reason, which would discover points of contact and reconciliation between all attitudes. one apparent place of meeting might seem to be just the worldling's love of luxury itself. luxury is a development of pleasure of sense beyond the necessary, paralleling the freedom and refinement of sensation in art. there is, moreover, a certain imaginative quality in reputation and glory, so well-prized by the worldling, which, as we shall see, is akin to the ideality of art. and yet both the imagination and the luxury of the worldling are usually lacking in one element essential to real kinship with the spirit of art--disinterestedness. the worldling's dreams of glory are projections of ambition, his luxuries subtle stimulations of appetite or instruments of display, her self-adornment a fine self-exhibition or coquetry. the love of insight, the free emotion, the enjoyment of sensuous harmonies for their own sake, are lacking or subordinate. glory and luxury are too often mere masks of ambition and appetite, and at best counterfeits of beauty. nevertheless, the luxurious developments of ambition and appetite are ever on the verge of tending toward the aesthetic. for when ambition has no longer to struggle against the world and is satisfied, the imagination that served it may become free; and when appetite is cloyed, the instrumentalities of sensuous pleasure can find a new meaning as beautiful. then the worldling becomes the patron of the artist and the two are reconciled. and all along this result was preparing. for instinct seldom completely dominates imagination and sensation; there is always some aesthetic freedom in the self-adornment and display of the wealthy. the absence of anxiety may release aesthetic interests that would have died in the struggle for existence; prosperity is often the herald of beauty. the proletarian's criticism of art is of unimpeachable sincerity, for when he talks of art as a luxury he speaks from the heart and in answer to bitter experience of want. there is a genuine element of moral indignation in his feeling that there must be something wrong with a public conscience that countenances, even glorifies extravagance, all the while that women slave and children die of underfeeding and neglect. this feeling is intensified when he compares the thousands paid for a single hour of a prima donna's song or a playwright's wit with his own yearly wage laboriously earned. what supreme worth does art possess that it should be valued so disproportionately? yet, sincere as this complaint is, it is largely misdirected; for art is not the extravagance which it may superficially seem to be. most of the best art has been produced by poor men who never dreamed of the prices that would be paid for their work when they were old or after they were dead. and these prices represent no consumption of the labor and capital of the community, but only a transference of wealth from one man to another. even when the artist is paid large sums for his picture or opera or play, these sums do not represent their real cost, but only what they can command in a market controlled by rich consumers. the real cost of genuine art is very small--only enough to maintain the artist in freedom for his work; for he would still produce without the incentive of large rewards. the seeming extravagance of art cannot, therefore, be blamed upon art itself, but upon the price system of modern capitalist economy. and this, of course, is clearly perceived by the "intellectual proletarians," who are willing to accord to the artist a place of honor as fellow-worker and "comrade," and direct their attacks, not upon him, but upon capitalism. there is, however, a deeper root to the proletarian's grievance against the artist--the feeling that the moral principle of mutuality is violated in their relationship. the workman plows for him, cooks for him, builds for him, spins for him, but what does he do in return? he paints pictures, makes statues, writes novels or poems or plays or sonatas which the workman has neither the leisure nor the education to enjoy. the money paid by the artist to the artisan represents nothing which the former rightfully owns or can give, but only a claim to the labor of other men, enforced by the system of wage-economy. of course, not only art but all speculation, all pure science and disinterested historical knowledge, is subject to this criticism. and such criticism is no longer purely academic, for to-day there exist large masses of men in every community determined to bring about a "world dictatorship of the proletariat" based on just this principle of mutuality in the relations of men. is this principle itself rational, and would art survive in a regime which embodied it? these, i repeat, are no longer speculative, but intensely practical problems. those who fear for art in a society where the process of democratization should go to its extreme limit of development point to the moving picture, the cheap magazine story and novel, the vaudeville and "musical" comedy, as a hint of what to expect. these, they will say, are the popular forms of art, to the production of which the artist would have to devote his time and skill in return for subsistence. under the present system the people get what they want, but in a proletarian state nobody would be allowed to get anything else. of course, as to what would happen in a workers' republic, were it ever constituted, we can only speculate; but where we cannot know, there hope has an equal chance with fear. we have the single example of the russian experiment from which to make inferences, the general validity of which is seriously limited by the peculiarities of the russian nature and situation. but there, at any rate, we do know that efforts have been made to advance general education, to bring the classic literature within reach of the masses, and to encourage opera and drama. in russia, at all events, the leaders of the revolutionary movement have sought rather to destroy what they believe to be a monopoly of culture than culture itself; and in england also they have a similar aim. there can be little doubt, i think, that our capitalist economy does promote a monopoly of culture. through their control of the market, the wealthy are able to bid up the prices of works of art until they are beyond the reach of the less prosperous. as a result, the best paintings and sculptures, with the exception of those that find their way into museums, are accumulated in inaccessible private collections, and opera and music are made needlessly expensive. one very evil consequence is the substitution of a purely pecuniary standard of valuation for aesthetic standards. i know a painter who made the experiment of reducing the price of his pictures to twenty-five dollars, in the hope that many people who really loved art but were unable to pay large prices would buy them, and that thus, by selling many of his pictures at a low price, he would be able to make as much money as if he sold only a few at the prevailing high rates. the experiment failed completely, for people thought that paintings at such a low price must be inferior, and even those who could afford to buy them, would not. the painter now tried the reverse experiment and raised the prices of all his works, with much better success, for people reasoned--the higher the price, the better the picture. but worst of all, through the purely commercial motives governing those who undertake to supply the people with works of art, the public taste is corrupted; little or no attempt is made to educate the masses, but merely to give them anything that will entertain them after a day of fatiguing labor,--anything that will sell. the demoralizing effect of commercialism upon artists themselves is too well known to require more than a reminder; hasty work for the sake of money supplants careful work for the sake of beauty; whole arts, like that of oriental rug weaving, are thereby threatened with extinction; and, instead of producing spontaneous art that would express themselves, people allow themselves to be merely entertained by things supplied to them, nasty and cheap--folk art disappears. if, on the other hand, the commercial motive were eliminated, who can say what might not result, in each community, from the experimentation of men who could not make money but only honor and a living from the profession of providing people with interesting ways of spending their leisure. the increased efficiency of machine tool work will inevitably make possible a great reduction in hours of labor, when the workers themselves control industry for their own benefit rather than for that of a class bent on still further increasing its own wealth and power. it is entirely possible that the leisure of men will then absorb as much of their devoted energies as work does now, and that they will be educated for the one as well as for the other. it is not impossible to hope that, the machine tool supplanting the slave, the commonwealth of workers will develop as free and liberal a life as existed among the citizens of ancient greece. then perhaps each group will have its painters, actors, and musicians just as surely as it now has its judges, aldermen, and police. it is impossible to judge what art might do for people in a reorganized society by what it does for them now. art has its roots in interests that are well nigh universal. everybody loves to dance, to sing, to tell a story; everybody loves either to paint or be painted, to sculpture or be sculptured. again, everybody is at least potentially sensitive to rhythm, harmony, and balance, and to the beauties of lines, colors, and tones. it is not native incapacity, but rather a failure in aesthetic education due to the one-sided emphasis on work rather than play, industry rather than leisure, success rather than happiness, that is responsible for much of the seeming lack of artistic appreciation among the masses. under a different social system the people may come to recognize the artist as a fellow-worker, elaborating his products in exchange for other desirable things, and may accord him welcome rather than envy. however, it will doubtless always remain true that the subtler and more intellectual types of art can never become popular. like higher mathematics, they will continue to be completely intelligible only to the few. yet i can conceive of no social system likely to grow out of modern tendencies that would suppress them. the artist in the new state would have his leisure, as other men would, in which he could devote himself to the refinements of his art. it is doubtful whether he would have less time for that then than he has now. how many artists under our present system waste a large part of their lives doing hack work of various kinds to make a living; only the fortunate few are masters of themselves. moreover, under any social system, men would be permitted to spend their surplus income as they chose, and the art lovers of the future are as likely to spend it for art then as now. not being so rich, they could not reward the artist so munificently as some are rewarded now; but even now most working artists are poor, and the impulse to art is independent of large rewards. heretical and unpopular artists, who could find no public backing, would come to be supported by their own special clients, as they are to-day. in a complex rational society, the principle of mutuality would be transitive rather than strictly symmetrical--a woman would cook for a machine designer although she got no machine in return, provided the designer made one, say, for the shoemaker, who could thus supply her with shoes. just so, there is no moral objection to the artist's receiving goods and services from people to whose life he contributes nothing personally, so long as these people are compensated by those whose life he does enrich. in other words, part of the reward which the art lover would receive for the work he performed would be paid, not to himself, but to the artist--art would be voluntarily supported by those who appreciated it. no complex social life could be maintained under the principle of strict mutuality, and certainly no system that undertook to preserve the variety and spontaneity of human interests. only a complete dead-level regimentation of human life in accordance with the average desires of the masses, which is unlikely, would destroy the more intellectual and subtle types of art, and, by the same token, speculation and disinterested higher learning. the higher culture has survived many revolutions; it will survive the next, when it comes. chapter xv the function of art: art and religion the distinctive purpose of art, so we have argued throughout this study, is culture, the enrichment of the spirit. but lovers of art have always claimed for it more active and broader influences. to my thinking, most of such claims, especially in our age, like similar claims for religion, are greatly exaggerated. passion, convention, economic fact in the largest sense, practical intelligence, these are the dominant forces swaying men, not beauty, not religion. indeed, one who would compare the influence of art upon life at the present time with its influence upon primitive societies might infer the early extinction of that influence altogether. for among primitive men the influence of art is all-pervading. with them art is inseparable from utility and communal activities, upon which it has an immediate modifying or strengthening effect. the movement of civilization, with the exception of the greek, mediaval, and renaissance city states, has involved a breaking away from this original unity until, among ourselves, art is developed and enjoyed in isolation from the rest of life. art is valued for its own sake, for its contribution to culture, not for any further influence upon life, and this freedom has come to be part of its very meaning. instead of being interested only in pictures and statues representing ourselves, our rulers, our gods, or our neighborhood, we enjoy imitations of people who have had no effect upon our lives whatever and scenes which we have never visited, and we repair to museums to see them; instead of employing music to beautify our daily life, we leave that life for the concert hall, where we shut ourselves away for a few hours of "absolute" musical experience. prose literature and the drama, when inspired by contemporary social problems, offer exceptions to this isolation, for through their ability to express ideas they can exert a more pervasive influence. although social problems are solved in obedience to forces and demands beyond the control of artists, literary expression is effective in persuading and drawing into a movement men whose status would tend to make them hostile or indifferent, as in russia, where numerous men and women of the aristocratic and wealthy classes became revolutionaries by reason of literature. and yet the literary arts also have acquired a large measure of isolation and independence. a play representing viennese life is appreciated in new york, a novel of contemporary manners in england is enjoyed in america. literature does not depend for its interest upon its ability to interpret and influence the life that the reader himself lives; he values it more because it extends than because it reflects that life. people decry art for art's sake, but in vain. the development of the relation of religion to life has been parallel to the development of art. originally, religion penetrated every activity; now, by contrast, it has been removed from one after another of the major human pursuits. agriculture, formerly undertaken under the guidance of religion; science, once the prerogative of the priesthood; art, at one time inseparable from worship; politics, once governed by the church and pretending a divine sanction; war, until yesterday waged with the fancied cooperation of the gods--even these are now under complete secular control. to be sure, there is some music, sculpture, painting, and poetry still in the service of religion, but its relative proportion is small; kings and congresses still appeal for divine aid in times of crisis, but that is perfunctory; men still pray for rain during drought, but without faith. no one would pretend that our commerce and manufacturing have any direct relation to religion. people still invoke divine authority for moral prescriptions, but the sanctions actually operating are social instincts and fear of public opinion and the law. religion retains a direct and potent influence only in the institution of marriage, the experience of death, philosophy, and the social life and charities conducted by the churches. yet even in these spheres the influence is declining, and, so far as it persists, is becoming indirect. civil and contractual marriage are slowly supplanting religious marriage; there are thousands living in our large cities who do not feel the need of the church to establish and cement their social life; most philosophers disclaim any religious motive or authority for their investigations or beliefs. only over death does religion still hold undisputed sway. however, despite the separation of religion and art from life, they may continue to exert influence upon it. but, barring some new integration of the sundered elements of our culture, which we may deeply desire but cannot predict, this influence must be indirect and subtle, and must occur independent of any institutional control. in the case of both it consists in imparting to life a new meaning and perfection, thus making possible a more complete affirmation of life and a freer and more genial attitude and conduct. for unless the spirit of art or of religion is infused into life, we never find it quite satisfactory. to be sure, men sometimes think they find perfection in certain things--in practical or moral endeavor, in love or in pleasure; but unless art or religion is mixed into them, they always prove to be, in the end, disappointing. no practical purpose is ever quite successful; there is always some part of the plan left unaccomplished; and the success itself is only momentary, for time eventually engulfs it and forgets it. practical life does not produce any permanent and complete work; its task is done only to be done over again; every house has to be repaired or torn down, every road rebuilt; every invention is displaced by a new one. this is true even on the higher planes of practical life, in political and social reconstruction. certain evils may be removed, certain abuses remedied, but new ones always arise to take their places; and even when the entire system is remodeled and men think that the day of freedom and justice has dawned at last, they find, after a generation, a new tyranny and a new injustice. the movement of life makes it impossible for any plan to long endure. hence the disillusion, the feeling of futility that so often poisons the triumphs of practical men. and without the spirit of art or of religion even love does not satisfy. for imagination creates the perfection of its object and, aside from institutional bonds fast loosening, a faith in the continued growth with one another and with a child, which is essentially religious, creates the permanence and meaning of its bond. love's raptures, in so far as they are instinctive, are, of course, independent of any view of life; but apart from imagination and faith in one another, love does not keep its quality or renew itself in memory, nor can it survive death which always impends to destroy. men often seek escape from the feeling of imperfection in frivolity, but ennui is the inevitable consequence, and reflection with its doubts cannot be stilled. by contrast, in the religious experience and in beauty men feel that they find perfection; hence the attitude of self-surrender and joyousness characterizing both. the abandon of the spectator who decrees that for the moment his life shall be that of the work of art, is matched in the mystical experience by the emotion expressed in dante's line, "in his will is our peace." and in both the self-surrender is based on a felt harmony between the individual and the object--the beautiful thing appeals to the senses, its form is adapted to the structure of the mind, its content is such as to win interest and sympathy; the divine is believed to realize and quiet all of our desires. but while in beauty we feel ourselves at home with the single object, in religion we feel at rest in the universe. when religion and art are separated from the other parts of life, as they are fast becoming now, the peculiar quality of the experiences which they offer can be rendered universal only by freely infusing it everywhere, through faith, in the case of the one, through imaginative re-creation, in the case of the other. the religious experience is a seeming revelation of a perfect meaning in life as a whole; this meaning must now be imparted to the details of life. by a free act of faith the scattered and imperfect fragments must be built into a purposive unity. the poisonous feeling of futility, will then be lost; each task, no matter how petty or ineffectual, will become momentous as contributing something toward the realization of a good beyond our little existence; and we, however lowly, will find ourselves sublime as instruments of destiny. there is nothing vain to him who believes. and if the believer cannot build a meaning into history and social life as he knows them empirically, he may extend them by faith in a future life, through which his purposes will be given the promise of eternity and the tie between parents and children, friends and lovers and co-workers, an invincible seriousness and worth. being at peace with the universe, he may be reconciled to the accidents of his life as expressions of its will. the method of reconciliation through religion can well be understood by its effect on the attitude towards evil. to one who has faith in the world as perfect, evil becomes an illusion that would disappear to an adequate vision of the divine. the supposedly evil thing becomes really a good thing--a necessary means to the fulfillment of the divine plan, either in the earthly progress of humanity or in the future life; or if the more mystical types of religion provide the starting point, where individuality itself is felt to be an illusion, a factor in the self-realization of the absolute. the evil thing remains, of course, what it was, but the interpretation, and therefore the attitude towards it, is transformed. pain, sorrow, and misfortune become agents for the quickening of the spirit, death a door opening to unending vistas. the attitude of faith is not embodied in dogmatic and speculative religious doctrines alone; for it finds expression in other beliefs--in progress, in the possibility of a sunny social order, in the perpetuity of human culture, in the peculiar mission of one's race or country. such beliefs are expressions primarily of faith, not of knowledge; like religion, they are interpretations of life based on aspiration, not on evidence; and through them men secure the same sort of re-enforcement of motive, courage, and consolation that they derive from the doctrines called religious. but the sphere of faith is wider even than this; the almost instinctive belief that each man has in his own longevity and success, the trust in the permanence of friendship and love, the confidence in the unique value of one's work or genius--these are also convictions founded more on desire than on knowledge, and may function in the same way as religion in a man's life. the re-affirmation of life which art may inspire is independent of any belief or faith about the world. it occurs rather through the application to the objects and incidents of life of a spirit and attitude borrowed from artistic creation and appreciation. it is a generalization of the aesthetic point of view to cover life as well as art; an attempt to bring beauty from art into the whole of life. although to-day works of art themselves are severed from direct contact with the rest of life, something of the intention and method of the artist may linger and be carried over into it. art, the image of life, may now serve as a model, after which the latter, in its turn, will be patterned. the spirit of art has two forms, one constructive, the other contemplative, and both may be infused into life. when the former is put there, each act and task is performed as if it were a work of art. this involves "throwing the whole self" into it, not only thought and patience, but enthusiasm and loving finish, even as the artist puts them into his work, so that it becomes a happy self-expression. nothing shall interfere with or mar it, or spoil its value when recalled. the imperfection and transiency of the result are then forgotten in the inspiration of endeavor; and the work or act, no matter how insignificant, becomes perfect as an experience and as a memory. the generations may judge it as they will, but as an expression of the energies of my own soul, it is divine. of course, from the industry of our time, where most work is mechanical and meaningless to him who performs it, the spirit of art has largely fled. yet there still remain tasks which we all have to execute, if not in business, then at home, which, by arousing our interest and invention, may become materials for the spirit of art. we have at least our homes, our pleasures, our relations with one another, our private adventures, where we can still be free and genial and masterly. and for our work, art will continue to be an ideal, sorrowfully appealing. the scope of the spirit of art may be extended beyond the single task or act to embrace the whole of one's life. impulse offers a plastic material to which form may be given. the principles of harmony, balance, evolution, proper subordination, and perfection of detail, indispensable to beauty in art, are conditions of happiness in life. the form of a work of art and the form of a happy life are the same, as plato insisted. [footnote: see, for example, _the gorgias_, 503, 504.] in order to yield satisfaction, the different parts of life must exemplify identity of motive, continuity and orderliness in the fulfillment of purpose, lucidity of relation, yet diversity for stimulation and totality. there must be a selective scheme to absorb what is congenial and reject the unfit. this sense for form in life may lead to the same results as morality, but the point of departure and the sanction are different. morality is largely based on conformity, on submission to the general will, and is rendered effective by fear of public disapproval and supernatural taboos; while the aesthetic direction of life has its roots in the love of form and meaning, and its sanction in personal happiness. moreover, to the reflective person, looking before and after, life has the same sort of reality as a story, and is bound to be judged in some measure like a story. the past and the future live only in the imagination, and when we survey them there they may please us with their interest, liveliness, and meaning, much as a work of art would, or displease us with their vanity and chaos. in this way personality may acquire an imaginative value fundamentally aesthetic. this is different from moral value, which has reference to the relation of a life to social ideals; it is more comprehensive than the religious judgment, which is interested only in saving the soul; because it includes every element of life,--sense, imagination, and achievement, welcoming all, so long as they contribute something to a significant, moving whole. the feeling for perfection of form and imaginative meaning in life is no invention of philosophers and aesthetes, but part of the normal reaction to conduct. everybody feels that certain acts, or even certain wishes, are to be rejected by himself, not because they are intrinsically bad or wrong, but because they are inconsistent with his particular nature, and, on the other hand, that there are certain interests that should be cultivated, not because they are universally right or good, but because they are needed to give his life complete meaning. and again, all except the meanest and most repressed souls desire somewhat to shine, if not in the world at large, at least among their friends, and act with a view to appearance and to some total survey of their lives that would consider not merely its goodness or usefulness, but its imaginative emotional appeal. this appeal is the strongest on the death of a great man; this lives longest in the memory. the love of the romantic and adventurous is partly instinctive, but largely imaginative, for it has in view not merely the rapturous pleasures of the hazardous moment, but the remembered delights of recall and expression to others. the love of glory is also imaginative, a feeling for the dramatic extending even beyond the grave. the ambitious man seeks to make a story out of his life for posterity to read and remember, just as the artist makes one out of fictitious material. more might develop out of this love of form and drama in life. we have it to a certain degree of cultivation in picturesque and refined manners, dress, and ceremonial, but even there it is hampered through conventionality and want of invention; further evolved and extended into the deeper strata of life, it would lead to a more interesting and productive existence. surely, if god is an artist as well as a judge, he will welcome into heaven not only those who have lived well, but also those who have lived beautifully. there is no necessity, finally, why the constructive spirit of art should be confined to the personal life and should not, in some measure at least, penetrate the community and even the state. by appealing to imaginative feeling, the activities of various individuals and groups, when coordinated and given a purposeful unity, produce an aesthetic effect. the organization of a business or a university may easily come to have such a value for one who has helped to create it, especially if the place where the communal spirit operates is beautiful,--the office, the campus, the shop. seldom, to be sure, do we find this value in our busy and haphazard america, but in many quarters the intention to create it is awake. as for the state, it is, of course, too little dominated by disinterested intelligence to be beautiful; yet plato's ideal of statecraft as a fine art still rules the innermost dream of men. the contemplative spirit of art is perhaps more important than the constructive in its application to life. not that any sharp line can be drawn between them, for contemplation must always attend or follow creation, to judge and enjoy; yet towards that part of life which we cannot control, our attitude must be rather that of the spectator than the creator. we cannot interfere with the greater part of life; we can, however, observe it and, in the imagination, transform it, where we can then envisage it as we should a work of art. as we watch it, life itself may become beautiful, and instead of giving ourselves to it half-heartedly and with reserve, we shall accept it with something of the abandon of passionate love,--"in thee my soul hath her content so absolute." to this end it is necessary to detach life from our more selfish interests and ambitions, from the habits of thought, annoying and preoccupying, that relate to self alone. to the worldly and selfcentered, life is interesting only so far as it refers to pride or ambition or passion; otherwise it is indifferent, as none of their concern. but to the religious and to the aesthetically minded, there is no part of life that may not be of interest; to the former, because they impute something of transcendent perfection to it all; to the latter, because they have set themselves the inexhaustible task of its free, imaginative appreciation. to this end, it is also necessary, after learning to view life objectively and impersonally, to attend to it leisurely and responsively, as we should to a work of art, allowing full scope to the disinterested feelings of curiosity, pity, sympathy, and wonder to create emotional participation. then the world may become for us the most magnificent spectacle of all. to imaginative feeling, every landscape is a potential painting, every life-story a romance, history a drama, every man or woman a statue or portrait. beauty is everywhere, where we who are perhaps not artists but only art lovers can find it; we cannot embody it in enduring form or throw over it the glamour of sensuous loveliness, but we can perceive it with that free appreciation that is the essence of art. and for this, of course, the artists have prepared us; it is they who, by first exhibiting life as beautiful in art, have shown us that it may be beautiful as mirrored in the observing mind. one region after another has been conquered by them. the poets and the painters created the beauty of the mountains, of windmills and canals, of frozen wastes and monotonous prairies, of peasants and factories and railway stations and slums. themselves the first to feel the value of these things, through some personal attachment or communion with them, they have made it universal through expression. their works have become types through which we apperceive and appreciate the world: we see french landscapes as lorrain and corot saw them, peasants after the fashion of millet, the stage after degas. in vain men have prophesied limits to the victorious advance of art. just at the time when, in the middle of the last century, some men feared that science and industry had banished beauty from the world, the impressionists and realists disclosed it in factory and steamboat and mine. in this way modern art, which might seem through its isolation to have taken beauty away from the world to itself, has given it back again. the spirit of art, no less than of religion, can help us to triumph over the evils of life. there are three ways of treating evil successfully: the practical way, to overcome it and destroy it; the religious way, by faith to deny its existence; the aesthetic way, to rebuild it in the imagination. the first is the way of all strong men; but its scope is limited; for some of the evils of life are insuperable; against these our only recourse is faith or the spirit of art. the method of art consists in taking towards life itself the same attitude that the artist takes towards his materials when he makes a comedy or a tragedy out of them; life itself becomes the object of laughter or of tragic pity and fear and admiration. as we observed in our chapter on "the problem of evil in aesthetics," laughter is an essentially aesthetic attitude, for it implies the ability disinterestedly to face a situation, although one which opposes our standards and expectations, and to take pleasure in it. all sorts of personal feelings may be mixed with laughter, bitterness and scorn and anger; but the fact that we laugh shows that they are not dominant; in laughter we assert our freedom from the yoke of circumstance and make it yield us pleasure even when it thwarts us. laughter celebrates a twofold victory, first over ourselves, in that we do not allow our disappointments to spoil our serenity, and second over the world, in that, even when it threatens to render us unhappy, we prevent it. fate may rob us of everything, but not of freedom of spirit and laughter; oftentimes we must either laugh or cry, but tears bring only relief, laughter brings merriment as well. even with the devil laughter may effect reconciliation. practical men will try to destroy him, but so far they have not succeeded; men of faith will prophesy his eventual ruin, but meanwhile we have to live in his company; and how can we live there at peace with ourselves unless with laughter at his antics and our own vain efforts to restrain them? surely the age-long struggle against him justifies us in making this compromise for our happiness. we who in our lifetime cannot defeat him can at least make him yield us this meed of laughter for our pains. people who think that laughter at evil is a blasphemy against the good set too high a valuation upon their conventions. no one can laugh without possessing a standard, but to laugh is to recognize that life is of more worth than any ideal and happiness better than any morality. and if by laughter we cannot triumph over evil, we may perhaps achieve this end by appreciating it as an element in tragedy or pathos. for once we take a contemplative attitude towards life, foregoing praise and blame, there is no spectacle equal to it for tragic pity and fear and admiration. there is a heroism in life equal to any in art, in which we may live imaginatively, and in so living forgive the evil that is its necessary condition. or, when life is pathetic rather than tragic, suffering and fading and weak rather than strong and steady and resisting, we may win insight from the pitiable reality into the possible and ideal; the shadow of evil will suggest to us the light of the good, and for this vision we shall bless life even when it disappoints our hopes. the very precariousness of values, which is an inevitable accompaniment of them, will serve to intensify their worth for us; we shall be made the more passionately to love life, with the joys that it offers us, because we so desperately realize its transiency. our knowledge of the inescapableness of death and failure will quiet our laments, leaving us at least serene and resigned where our struggles and protests would be unavailing. it is by thus generalizing the point of view of art so that we adopt it towards our own life that we secure the catharsis of tragedy. instead of letting sorrow overwhelm us, we may win self-possession through the struggle against it; instead of feeling that there is nothing left when the loved one dies, we may keep in memory a cherished image, more poignant and beautiful because the reality is gone, and loving this we shall love life also that has provided it. finally, in subtle ways, the influence of art, while remaining indirect, may affect practical action in a more concrete fashion. for silently, unobtrusively, when constantly attended to, a work of art will transform the background of values out of which action springs. the beliefs and sentiments expressed will be accepted not for the moment only, aesthetically and playfully, but for always and practically; they will become a part of our nature. the effect is not merely to enlarge the scope of our sympathies by making us responsive, as all art does, to every human aspiration, but rather to strengthen into resolves those aspirations that meet in us an answering need. this influence is especially potent during the early years of life, before the framework of valuations has become fixed. what young man nursed on shelley's poetry has not become a lover of freedom and an active force against all oppression? but even in maturer years art may work in this way. one cannot live constantly with the "hermes" of praxiteles without something of its serenity entering into one's soul to purge passion of violence, or with goethe's poetry without its wisdom making one wise to live. the effect is not to cause any particular act, but so to mold the mind that every act performed is different because of this influence. i would compare this influence to that of friends. friends may, of course, influence conduct directly and immediately through advice and persuasion, but that is not the most important effect of their lives. more important is the gradual diffusion of their attitudes and the enlightenment following their example. through living their experiences with them, we come to adopt their valuations as our own; by observing how they solve their problems, we get suggestions as to how to solve ours. art provides us with a companionship of the imagination, a new friendship. the sympathetic touch with the life there expressed enlarges our understanding of the problems and conditions of all life, and so leads to a freer and wiser direction of our own. on the one hand new and adventurous methods of living are suggested, and on the other hand the eternal limits of action are enforced. once more i would compare the influence of art with that of religion. the effect of religion upon conduct is partly due to the institutions with which it is connected and the supernatural sanctions which it attaches to the performance of duty; but partly also, and more enduringly, to the stories of the gods. now these stories, even when believed, have an existence in the imagination precisely comparable to that of works of art, and their influence upon sentiment is of exactly the same order. they are most effective when beautiful, as the legends of christ and buddha are beautiful; and they function by the sympathetic transference of attitude from the story to the believer. even when no longer accepted as true their influence may persist, for the values they embody lose none of their compulsion. and, although as an interpretation of life based upon faith religion is doubtless eternal, its specific forms are probably all fictitious; hence each particular religion is destined to pass from the sphere of faith to that of art. the greek religion has long since gone there, and there also a large part of our own will some day go--what is lost for faith is retained for beauty. bibliography general works _english._ santayana, g. the sense of beauty, 1897; reason in art, 1906. muensterberg, h. the principles of art education, 1905; the eternal values, part 3, 1909. lee and thompson. beauty and ugliness, 1911. carritt, e. i. the theory of beauty, 1914. knight, wm. the philosophy of the beautiful, part 1, 1891; part 2, 1893. puffer, ethel. the psychology of beauty, 1905. brown, baldwin. the fine arts, 1892. rowland, e. the significance of art, 1913. marshall, r. pain, pleasure, and aesthetics, 1894; aesthetic principles, 1895. sully, j., and robertson, g. c. aesthetics. bosanquet, b. history of aesthetics, 1904; three lectures on aesthetics, 1914. gordon, kate. aesthetics, 1909. _german._ lipps, t. aesthetik, 1903-1905. volkelt, j. system der aesthetik, 1905-1914. dessoir, m. aesthetik und allgemeine kunstwissenschaft, 1906. cohn, j. allgemeine aesthetik, 1901. meumann, e. aesthetik der gegenwart, 1912; system der aesthetik, 1914. utitz, e. grundlegung der allgemeinen kunstwissenschaft, bd. 1, 1914. mueller-frienfels, r. psychologic der kunst, 1912. witasek, s. grundzuege der allgemeinen aesthetik, 1904. groos, k. der aesthetische genuss, 1902. lange, k. das wesen der kunst, 1901. fiedler, c. der ursprung der kuenstlerischen thaetigkeit, 1901. kant, i. kritik der urteilskraft, 1790; english translation by j. h. bernard, 1892. _french._ taine, h. the philosophy of art, english translation, 1867. sully-prudhomme, r. f. a. l'expression dans les beaux arts, 1883. guyau, j. m. les problemes de l'estetique contemporaine, 1884; l'art au point de vue sociologique, 1889. bray, l. du beau, 1902. seailles, g. essai sur le genie en l'art, 1897. souriau, p. la suggestion en l'art, 1909. lalo, ch. les sentiments esthetiques, 1910; introduction l'estetique, 1913. dussauze, h. les regies estetiques et les lois du sentiment, 1911. fontaine, a. essai sur le principe et les lois de la critique d'art, 1909. _italian._ croce, b. estetica, 1902; english translation, 1909; french translation, 1904; german translation, 1905; breviario di estetica, 1913. pilo, m. estetica. porena, m. che cos' e il bello? 1905. experimental aesthetics fechner, g. t. vorschule der aesthetik, 1876. kuelpe, o. der gegenwaertige stand der experimentellen aesthetik, in bericht ueber den 2ten kongress fuer experimentelle psychologie, 1907. stratton, g. m. psychology and culture, 1903. valentine, c. w. experimental psychology of beauty. myers, c. s. introduction to experimental psychology, 1911. wundt, wm. physiological psychology. lalo, ch. l'estetique experimentale contemporaine, 1908. works on the origins of art hirn, y. the origins of art, 1900. grosse, e. the beginnings of art, english translation, 1897. wallaschek, r. primitive music, 1903. buecher, k. arbeit und rhythmus, 1899. gummebe, f. b. the beginnings of poetry, 1901. groos, k. the play of man, 1901. frazer, j. g. the golden bough, 1907-1915. wundt, wm. volkerpsychologie, 1911; elements of folk psychology, 1916. spearing, h. g. the childhood of art, 1913. additional references for special subjects _chapter six.--the tragic._ aristotle. poetics. corneille, p. discours de la tragedie, 1660. lessing, g. e. hamburgische dramaturgic, 1767. schopenhauer. the world as will and idea; english translation, vol. 1, bk. 3; vol. 3, ch. 27. hegel, g. w. f, vorlesungen ueber die aesthetik, 3ter abschnitt, 3tes kapitel. hebbel, f. ein wort ueber das drama, 1843. lipps, t. der streit ueber die tragoedie, 1891. volkelt, j. aesthetik des tragischen, 1906; system der aesthetik, bd. 2, 1910. bradley, a. c. oxford lectures on poetry, 1909. butcher, s. h. aristotle's theory of poetry and fine art, 1898. nietzsche, fr. die geburt der tragoedie, 1870. _chapter six.--the comic._ lipps, t. komik und humor, 1898. bergson, h. laughter, english translation, 1913. freud, s. wit, and its relation to the unconscious, english translation, 1916. martin, l. j. experimental prospecting in the fields of the comic, _american journal of psychology_, vol. 16, 1905. schopenhauer, a. the world as will and idea, english translation, vol. 2, ch. 8. volkelt, j. system der aesthetik, bd. 2, 1900. sully, j. essay on laughter, 1902. spencer, h. physiology of laughter, in _essays, scientific, political and speculative_. sidis, b. psychology of laughter, 1913. meredith, george. an essay on comedy, 1897. _chapter seven.--the standard of taste._ taine, h. the ideal in art, 1867. lemaitre, j. les contemporains. france, a. la vie litteraire. brunetiere, ferd. questions de critique, 1889. babbitt, irving. the new laocoon, 1910. gates, l. e. impressionism and appreciation, in _the atlantic monthly_, july, 1900. balfour, a. j. criticism and beauty, 1910. pater, walter. the renaissance, 1873. symonds, j. a. essays, speculative and suggestive, 1890. caine, t. hall. cobwebs of criticism, 1883. hennequin, e. la critique scientifique, 1888. spingarn, j. e. creative criticism, 1917. _chapter eight.--music._ riemann, h. elemente der musikalischen aesthetik, 1900. hanslick, e. vom musikalisch-schoenen, 11th ed., 1910. gehring, a. the basis of musical pleasure, 1910. combarieu, j. music: its laws and evolution, 1910. gurney, e. the power of sound, 1880. busoni, f. sketch of a new athetic of music, 1911. lalo, c. esquisse d'une estetique musicale scientifique, 1908. ambros, w. a. die grenzen der musik und poesie, 1872. wagner, r. das kunstwerk der zukunft; oper und drama. stumpf, c. tonpsychologie, 1883, 1890, and articles in _zeitschrift fuer psychologie._ helmholtz. sensations of tone, 1895. meyer, max. contributions to a psychological theory of music, _university of missouri studies_, 1901,1. no. 1; the psychology of music, in _american journal of psychology_, 1903: 14. bingham, w. van dyke. studies in melody, 1910. lipps. zur theorie der melodie, in _zeitschrift fuer psychologie_, 1902:27. revesz, geza. tonpsychologie, 1913. spencer, h. the origin and function of music. bolton. rhythm, in _american journal of psychology_, vol. 6. meumann, e. untersuchungen zur psy. u. aest. d. rhythmus, in _philosophische studien_, x. stetson, r. h. a motor theory of rhythm and discrete succession, in _psychological review_, vol. 12. _chapter nine_.--_poetry_. aristotle. poetics. sidney, sir philip. defense of poesy, 1581. wordsworth, wm. preface to the lyrical ballads, 1800. shelley, p. b. a defense of poetry, 1821. bradley, a. c. oxford lectures on poetry, 1909. scott, f. n. the most fundamental differentia of poetry and prose, _modern language association publications_, v. 19, pp. 250-269, mill, j. s. thoughts on poetry and its varieties, in _dissertations and discussions_, vol. 1. santayana, g. elements of poetry, in _poetry and religion_, 1900. lanier, s. science of english verse, 1880. eastman, max. the enjoyment of poetry. souriau, p. la reverie esthetique, 1906. liddell, mark h. an introduction to the study of poetry, 1902. werner, r. m. lyrik und lyriker, 1890. lowell, amy. tendencies in modern american poetry, 1917. gummere, f. b. a handbook of poetics, 1895. roetteken. poetik, 1911. burke, edmund. a philosophical enquiry into our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, part 4, 1756. mackail, j. w. lectures on poetry, 1911. poe, e. a. the philosophy of composition; the poetic principle. omond, t. s. a study of meter, 1903. verrier, p. metrique anglaise, 1909. dilthey, w. das erlebnis und die dichtung, 1907. stetson, r. h. rhythm and rhyme, in _harvard psychological studies_, vol. 1. _chapter ten.--prose literature._ schopenhauer, a. the art of literature. goethe and schiller. correspondence, passim. green, t. h. the value and influence of works of fiction, 1862. lewes, g. h. principles of success in literature, 1892. arnold, m. essays in criticism, 1869. zola, e. the experimental novel and other essays, translated by b. m. sherman, 1893. besant, w., and james, h. the art of fiction, 1885. pater, w. appreciations, with an essay on style, 1889. stevenson, r. l. on style in literature, in _contemporary review_, 47:548. bourget, p. etudes et portraits, 1911. flaubert, g. correspondance, published 1887. elster, e. prinzipien der literaturwissenschaft, 1897, 1911. freitag, g. technique of the drama, english translation, 1895. matthews, j. b. a study of the drama, 1910. jones, h. a. the foundations of a national drama, 1913. woodbridge, e. the drama: its laws and its technique, 1898. de maupassant, guy. le roman, in pierre et jean. for additional references on poetry and prose, consult _an introduction to the methods and materials of literary criticism_, by c. m. gayley and f. n. scott, 1899. _chapter eleven.--painting._ meier-graefe, j. modern art, english translation, 1908. ross, denmon. a theory of pure design, 1907; on drawing and painting, 1912. berenson, b. central italian painters of the renaissance. poore, h. r. pictorial composition, 1903. van dyke, j. c. art for art's sake, 1895. utitz, e. grundzuege der aesthetischen farbenlehre, 1908. waetzoldt, wm. die kunst des portraets, 1908. weight, wm. h. modern painting, 1915. lipps, t. aesthetik, bd. 1, 5ter abschnitt, bd. 2, 7tes kapitel. goethe. farbenlehre. souriatj, p. l'estetique du mouvement, 1889. stratton, g. m. eye movement, and the aesthetics of visual form, in philosophische studien, xx. cohn, j. experimented untersuchungen ueber die gefuehls-betonung der farben, in philosophische studien, 10: 522. baker and chown. experiments on color, in the university of toronto studies. lee and thompson. beauty and ugliness, in contemporary review, 1897. chevreul, m. e. the principles of harmony and contrast of colors, 1855. _chapter twelve.--sculpture._ hildebrand, a. the problem of form in painting and sculpture, english translation, 1907. rodin, a. art, english translation, 1912. herder, j. g. plastik, 1778. lipps, t. aesthetik, bd. 2, 5tes u. etes kapitel. lessing. laocoon, 1766. cornelius, h. elementargesetze der bildenden kunst, 1908. _chapter thirteen.--architecture._ lipps, t. raumaesthetik, 1897; aesthetik, bd. 1, 1903. scott, g. the architecture of humanism, 1914. robinson, j. b. architectural composition, 1908. van pelt, j. v. essentials of composition, 1913. guadet, j. elements et theorie de l'architecture, 1909. viollet-le-duc, e. e. entretiens sur l'architecture, 1863-72. ruskin, j. seven lamps of architecture, 1857. frankl, p. die entwicklungsphasen der neueren baukunst, 1914. worringer, w. formprobleme der gothik, 1912. woelffun, h. renaissance und barock, 1888. _chapter fourteen.--art and morality._ plato. republic, ion, phaedrus, symposium, gorgias. tolstoy, l. what is art? english translation, 1899. schiller, f. letters on the aesthetic education of man, 1793-1795. morris, wm. hopes and fears for art, 1882. wilde, o., morris, wm., and owen, w. c. the soul of man, the socialist ideal--art, and the coming solidarity. ruskin, j. lectures on art, 1900. symonds, j. a. essays, speculative and suggestive, 1890. paulhan, fr. le mensonge de l'art, 1907. whistler, j. mcn. ten o'clock, 1888. guyau, j. m. l'art au point de vue sociologique, 1889. cassagne, a. la theorie de l'art pour l'art en france, 1906. _chapter fifteen.--art and religion._ lang, a. myth, ritual, and religion, 1913. della seta, a. religion and art, 1914. harrison, j. ancient art and ritual, 1913. murray, g. four stages of greek religion, 1912. reinach, s. orpheus, 1909. santayana, g. poetry and religion, 1900. frazer, j. g. the golden bough. hegel, g. w. f. introduction to the philosophy of fine art, translated by bosanquet, 1886. muensterberg, h. philosophie der werte, 1908. wundt, wm. volkerpsychologie, 1911. santayana, g. three philosophical poets, 1910. 