Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/239

Rh AESTHETICS 221 Germans in this mode of systematising is apparent. All the characters of beauty in external objects, as a flower, of which the principal are size, unity and variety of parts, intensity of colour, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to environment, may be summed up as the ideal grandeur and order of the species. These are perceived by reason to be the manifestations of an invisible vital force. Simi larly the beauties of inorganic nature are translatable as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial physical force. Thus all beauty is in its objective essence either spirit or unconscious forco acting with fulness and in order. It is curious that L6veque in this way modifies the strictly spiritual theory of beauty by the admission of an unconscious physical force, equally with spirit or mind, as an objective substratum of the Beautiful. He seeks, however, to assimilate this as nearly as possible to con scious energy, as immaterial and indivisible. The aim of art is to reproduce this beauty of nature in a beautiful manner, and the individual arts may be classified according to the degree of beautiful force or spirit expressed, and the degree of power with which this is interpreted. Accord ingly, they are arranged by Leveque in the same order as by Hegel. IV. Italian and Dutch Writers. There are a few writers on aesthetic subjects to be found in Italian and Dutch literature, but they have little of original speculation. The Italian, as Pagano and Muratori, follow French and English writers. One Dutch writer, Franz Hemsterhuis (18th century), is worth naming. His philosophic views are an attempt at reconciliation between the sensational and the intuitive systems of knowledge. The only faculty of true knowledge is an internal sense, nevertheless all true knowledge comes through the senses. The soul, desiring immediate and complete knowledge, and being limited by its union with the senses, which are incapable of perfectly simultaneous action, strives to gain the greatest number of the elements of cognition or ideas in the shortest pos sible time. In proportion as this effort is successful, the knowledge is attended with enjoyment. The highest measure of this delight is given by beauty, wherefore it may be defined as that which affords the largest number of ideas in the shortest time. V. English Writers. In the aesthetic speculations of English writers, we find still less of metaphysical construc tion and systematisation than in those of French thinkers. Indeed, it may be said that there is nothing answering to the German conception of aesthetic in our literature. The inquiries of English and Scotch thinkers have been directed for the most part to very definite and strictly scientific pro blems, such as the psychological processes in the perception of the Beautiful. The more moderate metaphysical impulses of our countrymen have never reached beyond the bare asser tion of an objective and independent beauty. Hence we find that the German historians regard these special and limited discussions as so many empirical reflections, wholly devoid of the rational element in true philosophy. Schasler speaks of these essays as &quot; empiristic aesthetics,&quot; tending in one direction to raw materialism, in the other, by want of method, never lifting itself above the plane of &quot; an aesthe- ticising dilettanteism.&quot; English writers arc easily divisible into two groups (1.) Those who lean to the conception of a primitive objective beauty, not resolvable into any simpler ingredients of sensation or simple emotion, which is perceived intuitively either by reason or by some special faculty, an internal sense; (2.) Those who, tracing the genesis of beauty to the union of simple impressions, have been chiefly concerned with a psychological discussion of the origin and growth of our aesthetic perceptions and emotions. Lord Shaftesbury is the first of the intuitive writers on beauty. His views are highly metaphysical and Platonic The iutui in character. The Beautiful and the Good are combined in twists. one ideal conception, much as with Plato. Matter in itself Shaftes- is ugly. The order of the world, wherein all beauty really J resides, is a spiritual principle, all motion and life being the product of spirit. The principle of beauty is perceived not with the outer senses, but with an internal that is, the moral sense (which perceives the Good as well). This perception affords the only true delight, namely, spiritual enjoyment. Shaftesbury distinguishes three grades of the Beautiful, namely, (1.) Inanimate objects, including works of art; (2.) Living forms, which reveal the spiritual forma tive force; and (3.) The source from which these forms spring, God. In his Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty Hutcheso: and Virtue, Hutcheson follows many of Shaftesbury s ideas. Yet he distinctly disclaims any independent self-existing beauty in objects apart from percipient minds. &quot; All beauty,&quot; he says, &quot; is relative to the sense of some mind perceiving it.&quot; The cause of beauty is not any simple sensation from an object, as colour, tone, but a certain order among the parts, or &quot;uniformity amidst variety.&quot; The faculty by which this principle is known is an internal sense which is defined as &quot; a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity in variety.&quot; Thus Hutcheson seems to have supposed that beauty, though always residing in uniformity in variety as its form, was still something distinct from this, and so in need of a peculiar sense distinct from reason for the appreciation of it. But his meaning on this point is not clear. This faculty is called a sense, because it resembles the external senses in the immediateness of the pleasure it experiences. The perception of beauty, and the delight attending it, are quite as independent of considerations of principles, causes, or usefulness in the object, as the plea surable sensation of a sweet taste. Further, the effect of a beautiful object is like the impression of our senses in its necessity; a beautiful thing being always, whether we will or no, beautiful. In the second place, this sense is called internal, because the appreciation of beauty is clearly dis tinct from the ordinary sensibility of the eye and ear, whether emotional or intellectual and discriminative, many persons who possess the latter intact being totally destitute of the former. Another reason is, that in some affairs which have little to do with the external senses, beauty is perceived, as in theorems, universal truths, and general causes. Hutcheson discusses two kinds of beauty abso lute or original, and relative or comparative. The former is independent of all comparison of the beautiful object with another object of which it may be an imitation. The latter is perceived in an object considered as an imitation or resemblance of something else. He distinctly states that &quot;an exact imitation may still be beautiful though the original were entirely devoid of it ;&quot; but, curiously enough, will not allow that this proves his previous definition of beauty as &quot; uniformity amidst variety&quot; to be too narrow. He seems to conceive that the original sense of beauty may be &quot; varied and overbalanced&quot; with the secondary and subor dinate kind. Hutcheson spends a good deal of time in proving the universality of this sense of beauty, by show ing that all men, in proportion to the enlargement of their intellectual capacity, are more delighted with uniformity than the contrary. He argues against the supposition that custom and education are sources of our perception of beauty, though he admits that they may enlarge the capa city of our minds to retain and compare, and so may add to the delight of beauty. The next writer of consequence on the intuitive side is B-eid. In the eighth of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers he discusses the faculty of taste. He held, on the