Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/33

17 their best work, other things being equal, when they emphasize the forms of beauty which their several arts alone can give. We have here, in my view, a rational ground for the repulsion many of us feel for the so-called 'programme music' of our day. Music and literature of the highest types nowadays present sources of beauty, of very diverse character, and any effort to make one subsidiary to the other is likely to lessen the æsthetic worth of each, and of the combination.

Here, again, I may say that I have no objection to raise to a recombination of the arts of hearing, provided a fuller sense of beauty can thereby be reached. But this recombination becomes year by year more difficult, and must in my view soon reach its limit.

The opera of to-day attempts such a recombination, but does so either to the detriment of the musical, or of the literary, constituent. This is clear, when we consider the musical ineptitude of such operas as deal with a finely developed drama, and the literary crudeness of the plot interest in Wagner's very best works. Such a consideration makes very clear to us how much each of the great divisions of the arts of hearing has gained by their differentiation, and by their independent development.

Here, as with the arts of sight, we may, in my view, hope for better æsthetic results from the development of each of the differentiated arts in conjunction, rather than from the persistent attempt to recombine them, with the almost certain result that the æsthetic value of each will be reduced.

But æsthetics demands more of philosophy than an account of the genesis of art, with all the valuable lessons that involves. It demands rightly that it be given a place of honor in any system which claims to give us a rationalized scheme of the universe of experience.

The æsthetician tells the philosopher that he cannot but ask himself what significance aesthetic facts have for his pluralism, or for his monism. He claims that this question is too often overlooked entirely, or too lightly considered; but that it must be