Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/211

 201 v/atching it in a mood wholly different from that in which we watch the most ordinary real fencing-match with vizors and blunt foils ; a mood much more exalted, if the repre sentation is good, but amid the aesthetic emotions of which those other fluctuations of direct, even if trivial, excitement, of participation, approval, disappointment, suspense, eager ness, find no place. Again, of athletics in general, they are pursuits to a considerable degree definitely utilitarian, hav ing for their specific end the training and strengthening of the human body. Here, however, our argument touches ground which is not free from debate; inasmuch as in some systems the title of fine arts has been consistently claimed, if not for athletics technically so-called, and involving the idea of competition and defeat, at any rate for gymnastics, regarded simply as a display of the physical frame of man cultivated by exercise as, for instance, it was cultivated by the ancient Greeks to an ideal perfec tion of beauty and strength. Divesting the view of Schiller, then, of the Kantian meta physic, and adding to it those provisions on which, in the course of our argument, we have seen the necessity of laying stress, we might put the matter thus. There are some things which we do because we must ; those are our necessities. There are other things which we do because we ought ; those are our duties. There are other things vluch we do because we like; those are our play. Among the various kinds of things done by men only because they like, the fine arts are those of which the results afford to many permanent and disinterested delight, and of ivldcli the per formance, calling for premeditated skill, is capable of regu lation up to a certain point, but, that point passed, has secrets beyond the reach and a freedom beyond the restraint of rules. We believe that this definition or description, avoiding barren controversy concerning the nature of beauty, will be found both to state the limits of the group of undis puted fino arts, and to enunciate some of its chief charac teristics. H. OF THE FINE ARTS SEVERALLY. Architecture, sculpture, paintingj music, and poetry are by common consent the five principal or greater tine arts. It is possible in thought to group these five arts in as many different orders as there are among them different k mt ] s O f relation or affinity. One thinker fixes his atten- ^ on u P n oue kind of relations as the most important, and arranges his group accordingly; another upon another ; and . each, when he has done so, is very prone to claim for his arrangement the virtue of being the sole essentially and fundamentally true. For example, we may ascertain one kind of relations between the arts by inquiring which is the simplest or most limited in its effects, which next simplest, which less simple still, which least simple or most complex of them all. This, the relation of progressive complexity or comprehensiveness between the fine arts, is the relation upon which an influential thinker of recent times, Auguste Comte, has fixed his attention, and it yields in his judgment the following order : Architecture lowest in complexity, because both of the kinds of effects which it produces, and the material conditions and limitations under which it works; sculpture next; painting third; then music; and poetry highest, as the most complex or com prehensive art of all, both in its own special effects and in its resources for ideally calling up the effects of all the other arts, as well as all the phenomena of nature and experiences of life. A somewhat similar grouping was adopted, though from the consideration of a wholly different set of relations, by Hegel. Hegel fixed his attention on the varying rela tions borne by the idea, or spiritual element, to the embodi mcnt of the idea, or material element, in each art. Leaving aside that part of his doctrine which concerns, not the phenomena of the arts themselves, but their place in the dialectical world-plan, or scheme of the universe Hegel said in effect something like this. In certain ages and among certain races, as in Egypt and Assyria, and again in the Gothic age of Europe, mankind has only dim ideas for art to express, ideas insufficiently disengaged and realized, of which the expression cannot be complete or lucid, but only adumbrated and imperfect ; the characteristic art of those ages is a symbolic art, with its material element predomi nating over and keeping down its spiritual, and such a symbolic art is architecture. In other ages, as in the Greek age, the ideas of men have come to be definite, disengaged, and clear; the characteristic art of such an age will be one in which the spiritual and material elements are in equili brium, and neither predominates over or keeps down the other, but a perfectly distinct idea is expressed in a per fectly adequate form; this is the mode of expression called classic, and the classic art is sculpture. In other ages, again, and such are the modern ages of Europe, the idea grows in power and becomes importunate ; the spiritual and material elements are no longer in equilibrium, but the spiritual element predominates; the characteristic arts of such an age will be those in which thought, passion, senti ment, aspiration, emotion, emerge in freedom, dealing with material form as masters, or declining its shackles altogether ; this is the romantic mode of expression, and the romantic arts are painting, music, and poetry. Next let us take another point of view, and turn our atten tion, with one of the acutest of recent critics of aesthetic systems, Dr Hermann Lotze, to the relative degrees of freedom or independence which the several arts enjoy their freedom, that is, from the necessity of either imitating given facts of nature or ministering, as part of their task, to given practical uses. In this grouping, instead of the order architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry music will come first, because it has neither to imitate any natural facts nor to serve any practical end ; architecture next, be cause though it is tied to useful ends and material condi tions, yet it is free from the task of imitation, and pleases the eye in its degree, by pure form, light and shade, and the rest, as music pleases the ear by pure sound; then, as arts all tied to the task of imitation, sculpture, painting, and poetry, taken in progressive order according to the pro gressing comprehensiveness of their several resources. Again, besides the enumeration of the five greater fine arts, which is fixed, and their classification, which is thus unfixed and variable, the thinker on these subjects has to consider the enumeration and classification of the lesser or subordinate fine arts. Whole clusters or families of these occur to the mind at once ; such as acting, an art auxiliary to poetry, but quite different in kind ; dancing, an art not auxiliary but subordinate to music, from which in kind it differs no less ; eloquence in all kinds, so far as it is studied and not merely spontaneous ; and among the arts which fashion or dispose material objects, embroidery and the weaving of patterns, pottery, glassmaking, goldsmith s work and jewellery, joiner s work, gardening, according to the claim of some, and a score of other dexterities and industries which are more than mere dexterities and industries because they add elements of beauty and pleasure to elements of serviceableness and use. To decide whether any given oue of these has a right to the title of fine art, and if so, to which of the greater fine arts it should be thought of as appended and subordinate, or between which two of them intermediate, is often no easy task. The weak point of all classifications of the kind of which we have above given examples is that each is intended to be final, and to serve instead of any other. The truth is, that the relations between the several fine arts are much too complex for any single classification to IX. 26 No one classifica tion suffi cient.