Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/527

 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF ART. general science has been able to reconcile the old dualism i.l higher and lower faculties, the judgment of taste has neces- sarily lost importance. In the development of monistic philosophy and monistic morals we may thus see one im- portant factor, by the influence of which aesthetic has been ousted from its central position. The evolution of modern art has been still more injurious to aesthetic speculation than the progress of science. In the golden days of art-philosophy conditions were eminently favourable to universal generalisations. The great pern "Is of art, classical antiquity and the renaissance, were so remote that only their simplest and most salient features were dis- cerned. Nor did the art of the period exhibit the bewildering multiplicity of a fertile age. The formative arts were less important than ever before ; music, which was so soon to eclipse all other arts, had not yet awakened the interest of philosophers. The crafts were dying ; landscape-gardening is indeed the only kind of applied art that we hear about at this time. Beauty, art, the ideal, these and all other general notions must have been suggested with unsurpassable sim- plicity by this uniform and monotonous artistic output. It is easy to understand the eagerness and the delight with which the earlier writers on aesthetic, once the impulse given, drew conclusions, made comparisons, and laid down laws. But it is equally evident that speculative zeal was bound to fall off as soon as the department of art was enlarged and its products differentiated. Even the more intimate knowledge which was subse- quently gained of classical culture necessitated important corrections in aesthetic dogmas. The artistic activities of savage tribes, which have been practically unknown to aes- thetic writers until recent years, display many features that cannot be harmonised with the .general laws. And in a yet higher degree contemporary art defies the generalisations of a uniform theory. With greater mastery over materials and technique, the different arts have been able to produce more and more specialised forms of beauty. The painter's ideal is no longer that of the poet or the story-teller, nor the sculptor's that of the actor. Pure music, pure poetry, pure painting thus develop into isolated, independent arts, of which each one establishes its own laws and conditions for itself. The critic who in spite of this evolution tries to apply a narrow assthetic standard of beauty to all the various arts may in- deed according to his influence delay the public apprecia- tion of modern works and thus indirectly impede artistic development. But no amount of theorising will enable him 33