Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/207

 FINE ARTS 197 language. If we consider other pleasures which might seem to be analogous to those of fine art, but to which common consent yet declines to allow that character, we shall see that one reason is, that such pleasures are not in their nature thus disinterested. Thus the senses of smell and taste have pleasures of their own like the senses of sight and hearing, and pleasures neither less poignant nor very much less capable of fine graduation and discrimination than those. Why, then, are the experiences of these senses not called beautiful? and why is the title of fine art not claimed, or only claimed in jest, for any skill in arranging and combining them 1 Why are there no arts of savours and perfumes corresponding in rank to the arts of forms, colours, and sounds? An answer commonly given is that sight and hearing are intellectual and therefore higher senses, that through them we have our avenues to all know ledge and all ideas of things outside us; while taste and smell are unintellectual and therefore lower senses, through which few such impressions find their way to us as help to build up our knowledge and our ideas. To this it may be replied that music, in its perfect or developed state, the ac complished fine art, that is, of sounds, deals precisely with those modes and relations of sound, pure sound as apart from words, which least convey knowledge or definite ideas, and can so far at least be called intellectual. The reply is far from complete; still, a more satisfactory reason than the above why there are no fine arts of taste and smell, or at best but humble fine arts half ironically so called, is this, that savours and perfumes yield only private pleasures, which it is not possible to build up into separate and durable schemes sucli that every one may have the benefit of them, and such as cinnot be monopolized or used up. If against this it is contended that what the programme of a performance is in the musical art, the same is a menu in the culinary, and that practically it is no ]ess possible to serve up a thousand times and to a thousand different companies the same dinner than the same symphony, we must fall back upon that still more fundamental form of the distinction between the aesthetic and uon-ajsthetic bodily senses, upon which the physiological psychologists of the English school lay stress. We must say that the pleasures of taste and smell cannot be aesthetic pleasures, or pleasures of fine art, because their enjoyment is too closely associated in the case of taste of inseparably with the most indispensable and the most strictly personal of utilities, eating and drink ing. To pass from these lower pleasures to the highest; con sider the nature of the delight derived from the contempla tion, by the person who is happy enough to be their object, of the signs and manifestations of love. That at least is a beautiful experience ; why is the pleasure which it affords not an artistic pleasure either? Why, in order to receive an artistic pleasure from human signs and manifestations of this kind, are we compelled to go to the theatre, and see them exhibited in favour of a third person, who is not really their object any more than ourselves? This is so, for one reason, evidently, because of that difference between art and nature on which we have already dsvelt Not to art, but to nature and life, belongs love where it is really felt, with its attendant train of hopes and fears, momentous passions and contingencies. To art belongs love displayed where it is not really felt ; and in this sphere, along with reality and spontaneousness of the display, and along with its momentous bearings, there disappear all those elements of pleasure in its contemplation which, however exquisite, are not disinterested the elements of personal exultation, of gratitude and self-congratulation, the pride of favour found, the delight of exclusive possession or acceptance, all these emotions, in short, which can be summed up in the lover s triumphant monosyllable, &quot;Mine.&quot; Only when those personal emotions are absent can the properly ivsthetic emotions or pleasures of fine art find place. That in witnessing a dramatic performance, part of the spectator s enjoyment consists in sympathetically identifying himself with the lover, may be true, but cannot affect the argument, since at the same time he is well aware that every other spectator present may be similarly engaged with himself. Thus, from the lowest point of the scale to the highest, This is we may observe that the element of personal advantage or because monopoly in human gratifications seems to exclude them j^ e ^ from the kingdom of fine art. The pleasures of fine art p em i en t seem to define themselves as pleasures of delighted con- of utility, templation, but of such contemplation only when it is dis interested. Now, the negative part of our first definition was that the fine arts were arts having nothing to do with the satisfaction of practical necessities or supply of practical utilities. So far as the necessity of anything implies its necessity to the sustenance or comfort of the individual apart from others, and so far as its utility implies its capa city of being used by one to the exclusion of others, our new observation, it is evident, does but confirm that first statement ; repeating it as to a part of the ground which it covers, and drawing out a part of its consequences in the moral and social sphere. Next, let us consider another generally accepted observa- The fine tion concerning the nature of the fine arts, and one, this arts can- time, relating to the disposition and state of mind of the not ^ artist himself. The observation we mean is this, that while j^^f for success in other arts it is only necessary to learn their an( j p re . rules, and to apply them until practice gives facility, in theceptjthis fine arts rules and their application will carry but a little way also is towards success. All that can depend on rules, on know- |j^ au ^ e ledge, and on the application of knowledge by practice, the j nc iepen- artist must indeed acquire, and the acquisition is often very dent of complicated and laborious. But outside of and beyond such utility, acquisitions, he must trust to what is called genius or imagination, that is, to the spontaneous working together of an incalculably complex group of faculties, reminiscences, preferences, emotions, instincts, in his constitution. Now, if we consider this characteristic of the activities of the artist, we shall see that it is a direct consequence or corollary of the fundamental fact that the art he practises is independent of utility: thus. A useful end is necessarily a determinate and prescribed end. To every end which is determinate and prescribed there must be one road which is the best. Skill in any useful art means knowing practi cally, by rules and the application of rules, the best road to the particular ends of that art. Thus the farmer, the engineer, the carpenter, the builder so far as he is not con cerned with the look of his buildings, the weaver so far as he is not concerned with the designing of the patterns which he weaves, these and the hundred other varieties of crafts men or artificers in a community, possess each his separate skill, but a skill to which fixed problems are set, and which, if it indulges in new inventions and combinations at all, can indulge them only for the sake of an improved solution of those particular problems and no others. The solution once found, the invention once made, its rules can be written down, or at any rate its practice can be imparted to others, who will apply it in their turn. Whereas no man can write down, in a way that others can act upon in their turn, how Beethoven conquered unknown kingdoms in the world of harmony, and established new laws by the inspired violation of old; or how Rembrandt turned the aspects of spiritual abjectness and physical gloom into pictures as worthy of contemplation as those into which the Italians had for ages turned the aspects of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day. The reason why the operations of tho artist thus differ from the operations of the ordinary crafts man or artificer is that bis ends, being ends other than useful are not determinate nor fixed as theirs are. He has