Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/231

Rh AESTHETICS 213 of all intelligence, human or divine, writers have attempted to discover the essential principle which beautifies it. It has been universally considered by metaphysicians that matter in itself is devoid of beauty, if not positively ugly, and the only question arises as to the extraneous principle which imparts beauty to it. This has been conceived either as a simple force distinct from matter, yet setting it in motion, vivifying it, and reducing it to forms, as by Le veque; or as a divine being, whose volition directly invests material objects with all their beautiful aspects, as by llcid; or, lastly, as self -existent forms or ideas superin duced upon matter, which are in truth the beauty of objects, as by Plato and his modern followers. In the prevailing German systems of aesthetics, which are based on an ontological idealism, the independent existence of matter has been denied. These writers con ceive an absolute Thought or Idea as the ultimate reality, of which matter and consciousness are but the two sides. Matter is conceived as the negative or limiting principle in the action or self-movement of the Absolute. The problem of objective beauty becomes on this hypothesis the deter mination of the particular mode in which the Beautiful is a manifestation of the supreme thought; for the Good and the True are equally revelations of the Unconditioned, and it is necessary to mark off beauty from these. Various definitions of the Beautiful, based on this mode of concep tion, may be found in the systems of Hegel, Weisse, and the Hegelians. The second great problem in the meta physics of aesthetics is to co-ordinate the species of the aesthetic genus, namely, the Beautiful (in its narrow sense), the Ugly, the Sublime, and the Ridiculous. This has been undertaken by the Hegelians, and their attempts to construct what they call the dialectics of aesthetics are among the most curious products of metaphysical thought. It being assumed that there is some one ontological process running through every manifestation of the aesthetic Idea, these writers have sought to determine how each of the subaltern notions is related to this process. The last problem in the scheme of metaphysical aesthetics relates to the nature and functions of Art, looked at on one side as a reproduction in altered form of the beauty of Nature, and, on the other, as the conscious product of aesthetic intuition in the human mind. First of all, the arts are appreciated and classi fied according to the several modes in which they body forth the Idea to our minds. Secondly, since the Absolute may be spoken of as revealing itself to human intelligence, so human intelligence may be looked on as groping through long ages after the Absolute, and thus the historical evolu tion of art finds its place in a complete metaphysic of aesthetics. In concluding this preliminary sketch of the metaphysical systems, it should be added that they can be adequately estimated and criticised only in connection with the whole systems of thought of which they are organic parts. Within the scope of a purely scientific criticism it is only possible to point out any inconsistencies in the application of these ideas to beauty and art, and to show how much or how little they effect, as hypothetical instruments, in helping us more clearly to understand the phenomena. (B.) SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS. In the scientific discussion of aesthetic subjects, the anti thesis of subject and object in human cognition is accepted as a phenomenal distinction, without any inquiry into its ontological meaning. Inquirers no longer discuss the essence of beauty, looked on as a transcendental conception above all experience, but seek to determine in what the Beautiful, as a series of phenomena, clearly and visibly consists. ^Esthetic speculation becomes, accordingly, more purely psychological. First of all, the unity of beauty is questioned. It is asked whether all objects which appear beautiful are so because of some one ultimate property, or combination of properties, running through all examples of beauty, or whether they are so called simply because they produce some common pleasurable feeling in the mind. This is a question of induction from facts and consequent definition, lying at the very threshold of aesthetic science. It has been most vigorously disputed by British writers on the subject, and many of them have decided in favour of the plurality and diversity of elements in beauty. Again, it has been asked in which category of our experience, objective or subjective, beauty originates. By some it has been referred to an objective source, whether to sensation, as a direct result of physiological action, as by Burke, or to something distinctly perceived by means of sensation, as a certain relation of unity, symmetry, &c., among the parts of an object, its colours, forms, and so on, as pro bably by Aristotle, Diderot, Hogarth, and most writers. By others the source of beauty has been sought in the inner life of the mind itself, in certain ideas and emotions which have become reflected on external objects by asso ciation. This is the doctrine of Alison. A third class recognise both of these sources, attributing the effects of beauty partly to the pleasurable effects of external stimu lation, partly to the activities of perception, and partly to multitudinous associations of ideas and feelings from past experience. This class includes Dugald Stewart, Professor Bain, and Mr Herbert Spencer. A third question in the general scientific theory of beauty which is closely related to the last and largely determined by it, is the precise nature of the mental faculty or activity concerned in the perception and appreciation of the Beautiful. This, too, has been widely discussed by English writers, answers to the other two questions frequently appearing as the necessary implications of the solution of this one. By those who affirm that beauty is a simple property or conjunction of properties in external objects, the subjective perception of this property has been regarded either as a unique faculty (the internal sense), or as the rational principle acting in a certain way. By the school of Alison, who find the source of beauty in a certain flow of ideas suggested by an object, the perception of the same, as a property of the object, would be explained as the result of inseparable association, producing a kind of momentary delusion. And this same effect of association, in producing an apparent intuition of one simple property, would be made use of by those later writers who resolve the nature of beauty into both objective and subjective elements. It is noticeable, too, that while some writers have treated the appreciation of beauty as purely intellectual, others have confined themselves to the emotional element of pleasure. With respect to the Ludi crous and the Sublime, as distinguished from the Beautiful, there seems to have been a tacit agreement that both of these are unique and single properties, whether originally in the object of sense, or reflected on it from the mind; and various theories have been suggested in explanation of the characteristic effects of these properties on human sensibility and thought. W T hat strikes one most, perhaps, in these discussions is the vagueness due to the great diversity of conception as to the real extent of the Beautiful the number of objects it may be supposed to denote. While one class of writers appears to limit the term to the highest and most refined examples of beauty in nature and art, others have looked on it as properly including the lower and more vulgarly recognised instances. There is certainly a great want of definiteness as to the legitimate scope of aesthetic theory. It will be seen, too, how closely this point bears on the question of the relativity of aesthetic impressions, whether there is any form of beauty which pleases universally and necessarily, as Kant r.fHnrs. The true method of resolving