Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/124

 M. CAERlfeRE, ^STEETIK. 113 return of the mind on itself after its movement outwards, a calm- ing of the internal agitation caused by this movement. Art brings about that union of " the idea" and of "feeling" in which the harmony of beauty consists by first increasing the intensity of conflicting feelings and then imposing on them " a law of measure," a law in which " freedom " and " order " are reconciled. Joy in the harmony of beauty proceeds from perception in this harmony of the completion of our own being, the accord in our- selves of nature and spirit, of unity and multiplicity. It has been rightly said that man first perceives external beauty under the form of human personality ; hence the personifications in mytho- logies. And, although afterwards the conception of beauty be- comes universalised, it always remains true that as without spirit there is no beauty, so also there is none without sense. In all the arts equally there is reconciliation of nature and spirit, of sense and the idea ; but this reconciliation is effected in different ways. Plastic art is objective, as being a representation of bodies in space. Music is subjective, as having feeling for its content and time for its formal condition. Poetry is especially "the art of the spirit"; uniting the forms of plastic art, "the art of nature," and of music, " the art of feeling". Poetry differs from music and the plastic arts in starting with thoughts instead of feelings or images ; but the thoughts expressed by the words of a poem are not there simply for their own sake, but in order to produce in the minds of others the images and feelings that are in the mind of the poet. A poem, both as a whole and in every part, is the expression of a thought in the concrete form of imagination ; as a whole and in every part it is also submitted to a musical law, a law of unity in change, which corresponds to a law of the fluctuations of feeling. The author finds in the history of the arts a support for his classification ; contending that the objective arts, or arts of nature, are the first to attain perfection, then the subjective arts, or arts of feeling, and lastly those in which there is a balance of the two elements. The same classi- fication is applied to each group of arts in turn. Of the plastic arts architecture is said to be predominantly objective as deriving its forms from external nature ; sculpture in a sense subjective, since it begins with the human form, treating this as an expres- sion of the human spirit ; while in painting there is co-existence of the objective and the subjective points of view. Music, on the same principle, is considered under the heads of " instrumental music," " vocal music," and the " combination of vocal and instru- mental music " (in opera, &c.). Lastly, poetry is regarded as objective in the epic, subjective in the lyric, and as a union of epic and lyric elements in the drama. The general principles here may be traced to Lessing's Laocoon; the grouping of the particular arts and the theory of the three stages of art to the influence of Hegel. These last cannot be regarded as an established part of aesthetic science, as the prin-