Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/205

ÆSTHESIOMETER. ÆSTHE'SIOM'ETER. See Psychological Apparatus.

ÆSTHET'ICS (Gk., ta aisthetika, or , he aiathi-tikv, the science of the beautiful, from , aisthetikos, perceptive, sensitive, , aisthtiiicstliai, to perceive, apprehend by the senses). The name now generally given to the science of the beautiful, the sublime, and the ludicrous. The history of this science furnishes us with a striking illustration of the truth that theory always follows practice. It was not till the noblest period of art in Greece had passed its zenith that any serious attempt was made to ascertain the nature of the beauty which art presents. The Sophists and Democritus seem to have made some essays in this direction, but we know practically nothing of the results they reached. It is only when we come to Socrates that we are on secure historical ground; and even in his case we know only enough to make it possible to begin our sketch of the history of æsthetics with his name. He seems to have taught that beauty is one with utility; a doctrine which is thoroughly in keeping with his ethical utilitarian- ism, but which gives no distinctive recognition to the beautiful as in any way differentiated from the good. Plato, in one respect, follows in his master's steps. While we cannot say that he identified the iesthetie and the ethical, yet in his most serious discussions he so com- pletely subordinated the former to the latter as to make it a mere handnuiid of morality. This attitude is unintelligible to any one who does not remember that Plato lived in an age of decadence in art and in art appreciation. The great poets in the Hellenic world wore not in his time appreciated so much for their beauty as revered for their infallibility as guides in faith and practice. A quotation from Homer would definitely settle a question in policy or morals, and a "Thus saith Simonides" was a ne plus ultra of debate. This dogmatism in the inter- pretation of poetry was responsible for the degra- dation of the poets from their places as artists charming and inspiring mankind, to the position of pedantic pedagogues, whoso deliverances were open to question on the ground of fact by any one who had the temerity to deny their popu- larly conceded inerrancy. Such a one was Plato, who proceeded to meet this dogmatization of poetry by a demand for its moralization. Homer, he claimed, must be expurgated in the interests of a more worthy view of God and man. Other arts suffered a like fate. For instance, only such music as could directly fit a man the better for a life of courage and temperance was to be tolerated in the ideal Platonic State. But this insistence upon the right to judge art by moral standards alone, though very prominent on the surface of Plato's thought, does not rep- resent his best philosophy of the beautiful. Re- membering that music was for Plato a general term for all the human interests over which the Muses presided, and that training in nuisic was for him a cultivation of a proper habitual atti- tude toward the good, and that a scientific edu- cation in moral values was to follow the musical education and so bring habitual attitude to in- sight, one might almost say that with Plato the beautiful is the form in which the good appears to a properly trained but unreflective conscious- ness, a view quite like that of Hegel, twenty- two hundred years later. And as the good is the supreme principle of unity in the universe, beauty is itself a relatively simple unity in variety. This variety, however, must not be too complicated. It must have a very narrow range, or it would break over the bounds of unity. Hence only those works of art which are severe in their classical simplicity were considered as true embodiments of the principle or "idea" of beauty. Such an embodiment was technically called an "imitation." This term, without doubt, meant more for Plato than it would naturally mean for us. Imitation was symbolization as well as copy. But, for the most part, Plato was unable to free himself from the conception that second-hand reproduction was characteristic of all art. Hence art is further from reality than nature, which is the first embodiment of reality. But no definite statement of Plato's æsthetic views would do justice to the unsystematic many-sidedness of his thought on the subject. His dialogues contain many stimulating suggestions as to the nature of beauty, but no explicit æsthetic theory, built on the basis of these suggestions, could be fairly attributed to Plato.

Aristotle, being himself less artistic than Plato, was in a better position to make a more scientific study of æesthetics. His works on rhetoric and poetics, and, in a more desultory way, many of his other writings, were the first inductive studies we know of the principles of art. He differentiates the good from the beautiful: the good is dynamic (, en praxei), the beautiful may be static (, en akinetois). The good, being thus always connected with action, appeals to consciousness in the form of desire for possession. We are interestedly concerned in the good; our concern in the beautiful is disinterested. For Aristotle, as for Plato, a beautiful object is a unity in variety, but Aristotle gives a wider scope to the variety than his predecessor. Under the proviso that a thing be not too large for easy apprehension, a considerable multiplicity in its organization was regarded as conducive to beauty, and, other things being equal, the greater the size the greater the beauty. Among these other things were propriety in the arrangement of parts, symmetry, and clearness of outline. Aristotle followed Plato also in making art an imitation of inartificial beauty, but he refused to follow Plato when the latter depreciated art for this reason. While Plato put the fine arts far below the works of the artisan, Aristotle put poetry, in one passage, above theoretic philosophy. This position, however, does not accord with the rank given in his Ethics to the life of philosophic contemplation. The value Aristotle attributed to art, especially to the drama, was due to the fact that it "effects, by means of pity and fear, the purgation (, katharsis) of such emotions." The meaning of this has been warmly debated. If purgation is taken in a moral sense, then Aristotle has relapsed into the Socratic position that art is not differentiated from morality. But a more plausible interpretation is that purgation is used in its physiological significance. This would make the meaning to be that drama gives free and healthy discharge to the passions of pity and fear, and thus prevents emotional congestion. Greek speculation on æsthetical theory comes to a close in Plotinus (q.v.), who explains beauty by referring it to the work of an objective reason, which informs