Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/427

 THE BEAUTIFUL. 405 tion. In its full strictness this applies only to a definite and, in fact, a subordinate division of the beautiful, which Kant marks off under the name of pure or free beauty. With this he contrasts adherent beauty, as that which pre- supposes a generic concept to which its form must cor- respond and which it must adequately present. Too much a purist not to mark the coming in of an intellectual pleasure as a beclouding of the " purity " of the aesthetic satisfaction, he is still just enough to admit the higher worth of adherent beauty. For almost the whole of artificial beauty and a considerable part of natural beauty belong to this latter division, which we to-day term ideal and characteristic beauty. Examples of free or purely for- mal beauty are tapestry patterns, arabesques, fountains, flowers, and landscapes, the pleasurableness of which rests simply on the proportion of their form and relations, and not upon their conformity to a presupposed significance and determination of the thing. A building, on the con- trary — a dwelling, a summer-house, a temple — is considered beautiful only when we perceive in it not merely harmoni- ous relations of the parts one to another, but also an agree- ment between the form and the purpose or generic con- cept : a church must not look like a chalet. Here the external form is compared with an inner nature, and har- mony is required between form and content. Adherent beauty is significant and expressive beauty, which, although the satisfaction in it is not "purely" aesthetic, nevertheless stands higher than pure beauty, because it gives to the understanding also something to think, and hence busies the whole spirit. The analytical investigations concerning the nature of the beautiful receive a valuable supplement in the classical definition of genius. Kant gives two definitions of pro- ductive talent, one formal and one genetic. Natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial beauty, a beautiful representation of a thing. The gift of agreeably presenting a thing which in itself, perhaps, is ugly, is called taste. To judge of the beautiful it is sufficient to possess taste, but for its production there is still another talent needed, spirit or genius. For an art product can fulfill the