Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/232

Rh 214 AESTHETICS this difficulty would appear to be to look on aesthetic impressions more as a growth, rising, with the advance of intellectual culture, from the crude enjoyments of sensation to the more refined and subtle delights of the cultivated mind. The problem of the universal and necessary would then resolve itself into an inquiry into a general tendency. It would be asked what kinds of objects, and what ele ments of sensation, idea, and emotion, tend to become con spicuous in aesthetic pleasures, in proportion as the mind advances in general emotional and intellectual culture. Another defect in nearly all the theories of the Beautiful that have been proposed, refers to the precise relation of the intellectual element in the aesthetic impression. In opposing the narrow view, that the appreciation of beauty is a purely intellectual act, a cold intuition of reason, writers have fallen sometimes into another narrowness, in resolving the whole of the effect into emotional elements, or certain species of pleasure. Unless beauty is, as Hutcheson affirmed, a simple property of objects like colour, the per ception of it as objective, which all must allow to be a mental fact, can only be explained by means of certain intel lectual activities, by force of which the pleasurable effects come to be referred to such a seemingly simple property. The solution of this point would doubtless be found in a more complete discussion of the perceptive or discrimi native and assimilative activities of the intellect which are invariably called into play by complex objects, and which correspond to the attributes of proportion, unity in variety, fcc., on which so much stress has been laid by the intui- tivists. Not only so, but any theory of aesthetic operations must be incomplete which does not give prominence to those more subtle and exalted intellectual activities that are involved in the imaginative side of aesthetic apprecia tion, as in detecting the curious half-hidden implications which make up the essence of a refined humour, in con structing those vague yet impressive ideas which enter into our intuition of sublimity and infinity, and even in appreciat ing such seemingly simple qualities as purity of colour and tone, or the perfectly graduated blending of two adjacent colours. Such activities of the mind constitute, among other things, the symbolic aspect of the Beautiful, and give, as Mr Mill suggests, a basis of truth to such seem ingly fanciful notions respecting the meaning of beautiful qualities as one finds in the works of Mr Ruskin. But comparatively little has been done in a purely scientific manner to determine the nature and functions of Art so as to fix the relations of the different arts to simple or natural beauty. Aristotle supplied a few valuable doctrines, which have been rendered still more precise by Lessing and others. Yet there seems even now no consensus of opinion as to the precise aims of art, how far it has simply to reproduce and constructively vary the beauties of nature, or how far to seek modes of pleasurable effect wider than those supplied by natural objects. A theory of art at all comparable in scientific precision to existing theories of morals has yet to be constructed. The few attempts to establish a basis for art of a non-metaphysical kind are characterised by great one-sidedness. Thus, for example, the theory that the function of art is to imitate nature, has been broached again and again with scarcely any reference to music, merely, as it seems, out of an impatience for some one defining property. Without attempting to sketch a complete doctrine of art, a suggestion may be offered as to the right direction of inquiry. First of all, then, the widest possible generalisations on the various emotional susceptibilities to which art can appeal must be collected, from a study both of mental phenomena as a whole, and of- all varieties of pleasurable feeling actually ministered by the several forms of art. This would fix the end of the fine arts in the widest sense, marking it off from the ends of utility and morality. Secondly, the highest aims of art, or the ideal of art, would have to be determined by a con sideration of the laws of compatibility and incompatibility among these various orders of gratification, the requirements of quantity, variety, and harmony, in any lofty aesthetic impression, and the relative value of the sensational, intellectual, and emotional elements in aesthetic effect. This part of the subject would include the discussion of the value and universal necessity of the real and the ideal in art, truth to nature and imaginative transformation. These conclusions would require verification by means of the widest and most accurate study of the development of the arts, in which could be traced the gradual tentative progress of the artistic mind towards the highest achieve ments of art, as well as the permanent superiority of all those forms of art which most clearly embody this tendency. This part of the theory of art would clearly connect itself with the problem of the general law or tendency in (esthetic development already referred to. The proper determina tion of these two ideas, the whole range of possible aesthetic delight, and the direction of the highest, purest, and most permanent delight of cultivated minds, would at once dis pose of many narrow conceptions of art, by recognising the need of the widest possible diversity and grades of artistic value, if only as experiments requisite to the discovery of its highest function. At the same time the meaning and limits of the universal and necessary in art Avoiild be defined, and the unsuggestive and dreary conflicts between an unbending absolutism and a lawless individualism shown to be irrelevant. The validity of canons of art, and their limitations, would in this manner be fixed, and the impatient exaltation of certain schools and directions of taste reduced to a modest assertion of a purely relative truth. The aims of art as a whole being thus determined, the next thing would be to define and classify the individual arts of painting, music, poetry, fec., according to their respective powers of embodying these aims. This would require a careful consideration of the material or medium of expression employed by each art, and the limitations im posed by it as to the mode of representation. The deter mination of this part of aesthetic theory, which Lessing com menced, would require not only technical but considerable psychological knowledge. Similarly, any conclusion arrived at on this subject would need to be verified by a reference to the history of the arts, as exemplifying both the successes of a right conception of the scope and possibilities of the particular art, and the failures resulting from a mistaken conception. Many other points, such as the nature of genius, the function and bounds of criticism, the relation of aesthetic culture to intellectual, moral, and social pro gress, would be included in a complete scheme of art doctrine. (C.) HISTORY OF SYSTEMS. In the following brief account of the most important contributions to aesthetic doctrine, only such writings will be recognised as aim at some general conception of Art and the Beautiful. Much that passes in current literature for assthetic speculation, namely, a certain thoughtful way of criticising special works of art, is simply the application of recognised principles to new cases. Sometimes, how ever, in the hands of a philosophic critic the mere appre ciation of a single poem or the works of a particular artist may become a luminous discussion of sonic general prin ciple, and this method of constructing aesthetic theory from the criticism of a single work or series of works was ren dered very productive by Lessing. I. Greek Speculations. Ancient Greece supplies us with the first speculations on the Beautifiil and the aims of the fine arts. Nor is it surprising that among a people