Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/233

Rh .ESTHETICS 215 so productive of noble artistic creations, and at the same time so speculative, numerous attempts to theorise on these subjects should have been made. We have in classic writings many allusions to works of an aesthetic character now lost, such as a series on poetry, harmony, and even painting, by Democritus. It is to be gathered, too, from Plato s Dialogues that the Sophists made the principles of beauty a special department in their teaching. The first Greek thinker, however, whose views on these subjects are
 * rates. at all known is Socrates. Accepting Xenophon s account

of his views in the Memorabilia and the Symposion, we find that he regarded the Beautiful as coincident with the Good, and both of them as resolvable into the Useful. Every beautiful object is so called because it serves some rational end, whether the security or gratification of man. It looks as though Socrates rather disparaged the immediate grati fication which a beautiful object affords to perception and contemplation, and emphasised rather its power of further ing the more necessary ends of life. Thus he said that pictures and other purposeless works of art, when used to adorn a house, hindered rather than furthered enjoyment, because of the space they took from useful objects. This mode of estimating the value of beauty is, however, no necessary consequence of the theory that the whole nature of beauty is to minister pleasure. It arises from undue attention to mere material comfort as a condition of happi ness. The really valuable point which Socrates distinctly brought to light is the relativity of beauty. Unlike his illustrious disciple, he recognised no self-beauty (avro TO KO.A.OI/) existing absolutely and out of all relation to a per cipient mind. ito. Of the precise views of Plato on this subject, even if they were really formed, it is very difficult to gain a just conception from the Dialogues. In some of these, called by Mr Grote the Dialogues of Research, as the Hippias Major, he ventures on no dogmatic theory of Beauty, and several definitions of the Beautiful proposed are rejected as inadequate by the Platonic Socrates. At the same time we may conclude that Plato s mind leaned decidedly to a theoiy of an absolute Beauty, this, indeed, being but one side of his remarkable scheme of Ideas or self-existing Forms. In the Symposion he describes how love (Eros) produces aspiration towards the pure idea of beauty. It is only this absolute beauty, he tells us, which deserves the name of beauty; and this is beautiful in every manner, and the ground of beauty in all things. It is nothing discoverable as an attribute in another thing, whether living being, earth, or heaven; for these are only beautiful things, not the Beautiful itself. It is the eternal and perfect existence contrasted with the oscillations between existence and non- existence in the phenomenal world. In the Phcedrus, again, he treats the soul s intuition of the self-beautiful as a reminiscence of its pne-natal existence, undefiled by union with the body. With respect to the precise forms in which the idea of beauty reveals itself, Plato is very un decided. Of course his theory of an absolute Beauty is incompatible with the notion of its ministering simply a variety of sensuous pleasure, to which he appears to lean in the Gorgias and even the Hippias Major. Further, his peculiar system of ideas naturally led him to confuse the self-beautiful with other general conceptions of the true and the good, and so arose the Platonic formula KoXoKayaOia, expressive of the intimate union of the two principles. So far as his writings embody tlie notion of any dis tinguishing element in beautiful objects, it is proportion, harmony, or unity among the parts of an object. The superior beauty of proportion is taught in the Philebus, and in the Phcedon it is applied to virtue. As a closely-related view, we see him emphasising unity in its simplest aspect of evenness and purity, the need of variety being over looked. Thus in the Philebus he states his preference for regular and mathematical forms, as the straight line and the circle. So he selected among colours pure white, among tones the pure and equal, and among impressions of touch the smooth. At the same time the Dialogues evince many other tentative distinctions in the Beautiful, as, for example, the recognition in the Politics of tAvo opposed classes of beautiful things, those characterised by force and velocity, and those by a certain slowness and softness; which points to a contrast between the stimula tive and the restful in sensation, since enlarged upon by English psychologists. Elsewhere he descants on the beauty of the mind, and seems to think, in the Republic, that the highest beauty of proportion is seen in the union of a beautiful mind with a beautiful body. In spite of his lofty theory of the origin and nature of beauty, Plato seems to have imperfectly appreciated the worth of art as an independent end in human life and culture. He found the end of art in- imitation (/i^Tjtris), but esti mated the creative activity of art as a clever knack, little higher in intellectual value than the tricks of a juggler. He tended to regard the effects of art as devoid of all serious value, and as promoting indolence and the supremacy of the sensual elements of human nature. (See the Sopkistes, Gorgias, and Republic.} Accordingly, in his scheme for an ideal republic, he provided for the most inexorable censorship on poets, &c., so as to make art as far as possible a mere instrument of moral and political training. As to particular arts, Plato appears to have allowed a certain ethical value to music, in combination with dance and song, if of a certain character, as expressing either the worthy and manly, or the quiet and orderly. With respect to poetry, his views, as expressed in the Republic and else where, were very uncertain. Thus at times he^ondemns tragedy and comedy in toto ; at other times he admits the claims of a lofty dramatic poetry. He seems not to have fully considered the aims and influences of painting and sculpture, which he constantly disparages. A loftier conception of the aims of poetry was afforded Aristotle by the strictures of Aristophanes in the Frogs and else where. But the one Greek who, as far as we know, fully appreciated and clearly set forth the ends of the fine arts, considered, independently of ethical and political aims, as the vehicles to the mind of the ideas and delights of beaiity, was Aristotle. Unlike Plato, he proceeded less metaphysically and more scientifically to investigate the phenomena of beauty by a careful analysis of the principles of art. In his treatises on poetiy and rhetoric, he gives us, along with a theory of these arts, certain principles of beauty in general; and scattered among his other writings we find many valuable suggestions on the same subject. First of all, Aristotle ignores all conceptions of an absolute Beauty, and at the same time seeks to distinguish the Beautiful from the Good. Thus, although in the more popular exposition, the Rhetoric, he somewhat incorrectly makes praiseworthi- ness a distinguishing mark of the Beautiful, regarded as a species of the Agreeable or Desirable, he seeks in the Meta physics to distinguish the Good and the Beautiful thus : the Good is always in action (lv 7rpdei) ; the Beautiful, however, may exist in motionless things as well (e v CIKU^-TOIS). Else where he distinctly teaches that the Good and the Beautiful are different (erepov), although the Good, under certain con ditions, can be called beautiful. He thus looked on the two spheres as co-ordinate species, having a certain area in common. It should be noticed that the habit of the Greek mind, in estimating the value of moral nobleness and eleva tion of character by their power of gratifying and impress ing a spectator, gave rise to a certain ambiguity in the meaning of TO xaAov, which accounts for the prominence the Greek thinkers gave to the connection between the