Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/238

Rh 220 .ESTHETICS these, are the effects of every tragedy, and that it is false dramatic art to attempt to represent either the sufferings of a perfect martyr, or the actions of some monstrous horror of wickedness, as Corneille and the French school had urged ; lastly, the interpretation of Aristotle s purifica tion of the passions as referring to this very fear and pity, and pointing to a certain desirable mean between excessive sensibility and excessive callousness. Schasler says that if Lessing had had an Aristotle to lean on in the Laokoon as in the Dramaturgy, it would have been more valuable. Others might be disposed to say that if he had been as free from the traditions of authority in the Dramaturgy as he was in the Laokoon, the former might have contained as much in the way of real discovery as the latter. The partial contributions to aesthetics after Lessing need not long detain us. Goethe wrote several tracts on {esthetic topics, as well as many aphorisms. He attempts to mediate between the claims of ideal beauty, as taiight by Winckelmann, and the aims of individualisation. Schiller discusses, in a number of disconnected essays and letters, some of the principal questions in the philosophy of art. He looks at art as a side of culture and the forces of human nature, and finds in an aesthetically cultivated soul the reconciliation of the sensual and rational. His letters on aesthetic education ( Ueber die cesthetische Erzic- Imng des Menschen) are very valuable, and bring out the connection between aesthetic activity and the universal im pulse to play (Spieltrieb}. This impulse is formed from the union of two other impulses the material (Stqfftrieb] and the formal (Formtrieb) the former of which seeks to make real the inner thought, the latter to form or fashion this reality. Schiller s thoughts on this topic are cast in a highly metaphysical mould, and he makes no attempt to trace the gradual development of the first crude play of children into the aesthetic pleasures of a cultivated matu rity. He fixes as the two conditions of aesthetic growth, moral freedom of the individual and sociability. The philosophic basis of Schiller s speculation is the system of Kant. Another example of this kind of reflective discus sion of art by literary men is afforded us in the Vorschule der sEsthetik of Jean Paul llichter. This is a rather am bitious discussion of the Sublime and the Ludicrous, and contains much valuable matter on the nature of humour in romantic poetry. Jean Paul is by no means exact or systematic, and his language is highly poetic. His defini tions strike one as hasty and inadequate : for example, that the Sublime is the applied Infinite, or that the Ludi crous is the infinitely Small. Other writers of this class, as Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two Schlegels, Gervinus, though they have helped to form juster views of the several kinds of poetry, &c., have contributed little to the general theory of art. F. Schlegel s determination of the principle of romantic poetry as the Interesting, in opposi tion to the objectivity of antique poetry, may be cited as a good example of this group of speculations. No account of German aesthetics can be complete with out some reference to the attempts recently made by one or two naturalists to determine experimentally the physical conditions and the net sensational element of artistic im pression. Of these, the most imposing is the development by Helmholtz of a large part of the laws of musical com position, harmony, tone, modulation, &c., from a simple physical hypothesis as to the complex character of what appear to us as elementary tones. Another interesting experimental inquiry has been instituted by Fechner into the alleged superiority of &quot; the golden section &quot; as a visible proportion. Zeising, the author of this theory, asserts that the most pleasing division of a line, say in a cross, is the golden section, where the smaller division is to the larger as the latter to the sum. Fechner describes in his contribution Zur experimentalen jEstlictik a series of experiments on a large number of different persons, in which he supposes he eliminated all effects of individual association, and decides in favour of the hypothesis. He, however, assumes that this visible form must please pvi marily, and does not recognise that any constant association growing up in all minds alike would give precisely the same results. Finally, allusion may be made to some ingenious but very forced attempts of Unger and others to discover harmonic and melodious relations au&amp;gt;.ng the elementary colours. III. French writers onJEsthetics. In passing from German Partia to French writers on sesthetical topics we find, as might be ex- discus* pected, much less of metaphysical assumption and a clearer ?f tlie perception of the scientific character of the problem. At the same time, the authors are but few, and their works mostly of a fragmentary character. Passing by the Jesuit Andre, who sought to rehabilitate Augustin s theory of the Beauti ful, we first light on the name of Batteux. In his Cours Batten de Belles Lettres(l765) he seeks to determine the aims of art by elucidating the meaning and value of the imitation of nature, He classifies the arts according to the forms of space and time, those of either division being capable of combining among themselves, but not with those of the other. Thus architecture, sculpture, and painting may co-operate in one visible effect; also music, poetry, and the dance. Diderot, again, in the Encyclopedie, sought to Diderc define beauty by making it to consist in the perception of relations. In his Essais sur la Peinture he follows Bat teux in extolling naturalness, or fidelity to nature. Another very inadequate theory of beauty was propounded by Pere Buffier. He said it is the type of a species which gives Buffiei the measure of beauty. A beautiful face, though rare, is nevertheless the model after which the largest number is formed. Not unlike this theory is a doctrine propounded by H. Taine. In his work, De I Ideal dans I Art, he pro- Taine. ceeds in the manner of a botanist to determine a scale of characters in the physical and moral man, according to the embodiment of which a work of art becomes ideal. The degree of universality or importance, and the degree of beneficence or adaptation to the ends of life in a character, give it its measure of aesthetic value, and render the work of art, which seeks to represent it in its purity, an ideal work. The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French The sy literature are those constructed by the spiritualiistes, that temso is, the philosophic followers of Reid and D. Stewart on p ^ the one hand, and the German idealists on the other, who constituted a reaction against the crude sensationalism of the 18th century. They aim at elucidating what they call the higher and spiritual element in aesthetic impressions, and wholly ignore any capability in material substance or external sensation of affording the peculiar delights of beauty. The lectures of Cousin, entitled Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien, the Cours d Esthctique of Jouffroy, and the systematic treatise of Leveque, La Science du Beau, are the principal works of this school. The last, as the most Leveqv elaborate, will afford the student the best insight into this mode of speculation. The system of Leveque falls into four parts (1.) The psychological observation and classifi cation of the effects of the Beautiful on human intelligence and sensibility; (2.) The metaphysic of beauty, which determines whether it has a real objective existence, and if so, what is the internal principle or substance of this objective entity ; and further seeks to adjust the relations of the Beautiful, the Sublime, the Ugly, and the llidiculous in relation to this principle; (3.) The application of these psychological and metaphysical principles to the beauty of nature, animate and inanimate, and to that of the Deity (4.) Their application to the arts. The influence of the