Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic

æSthetic

_As science of expression and general linguistic_

By

Benedetto Croce

_translated, from the Italian by_ DOUGLAS AINSLIE

The Noonday Press

_A division of_

Farrar, Straus, And Company

1920

The

æSthetic

Is Dedicated By The Author To The Memory Of His Parents

Pasquale And Luisa Sipari

And Of His Sister

Maria

Contents

EXTRACT FROM INTRODUCTION xix

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR xxv

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxvii

I

Theory Of æSthetic

I

Intuition And Expression

Intuitive knowledge--Its independence with respect to intellectual knowledge--Intuition and perception--Intuition and the concepts of space and time--Intuition and sensation--Intuition and association--Intuition and representation--Intuition and expression--Illusion as to their difference--Identity of intuition and expression

II

Intuition And Art

Corollaries and explanations--Identity of art and intuitive knowledge--No specific difference--No difference of intensity--The difference is extensive and empirical--Artistic genius--Content and form in Æsthetic--Criticism of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion--Criticism of art conceived as a fact of feeling, not a theoretical fact--Æsthetic appearance, and feeling--Criticism of the theory of æsthetic senses--Unity and indivisibility of the work of art--Art as liberator

III

Art And Philosophy

Inseparability of intellectual from intuitive knowledge--Criticism of the negations of this thesis--Art and science--Content and form: another meaning--Prose and poetry--The relation of first and second degree--Non-existence of other forms of cognition--Historicity--Its identity with and difference from art--Historical criticism--Historical scepticism--Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits--The phenomenon and the noumenon

IV

Historicism And Intellectualism In æSthetic

Criticism of the probable and of naturalism--Criticism of ideas in art, of theses in art, and of the typical--Criticism of the symbol and of the allegory--Criticism of the theory of artistic and literary kinds--Errors derived from this theory in judgements on art--Empirical sense of the divisions of kinds

V

Analogous Errors In The Theory Of History And In Logic

Criticism of the philosophy of History--Æsthetic intrusions into Logic--Logic in its essence--Distinction between logical and non-logical judgements--Syllogistic--Logical falsehood and æsthetic truth--Reformed logic--Note to the fourth Italian edition

VI

The Theoretic Activity And The Practical Activity

The will--The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge--Objections and explanations--Criticism of practical judgements or judgements of value--Exclusion of the practical from the æsthetic--Criticism of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content--Practical innocence of art--Independence of art--Criticism of the saying: the style is the man--Criticism of the concept of sincerity in art

VII

Analogy Between The Theoretic And The Practical

The two forms of the practical activity--The economically useful--Distinction between the useful and the technical--Distinction of the useful from the egoistic--Economic will and moral will--Pure economicity--The economic side of morality--The merely economical and the error of the morally indifferent--Criticism of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethics and of Economics--Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity

VIII

Exclusion Of Other Spiritual Forms

The system of the spirit--The forms of genius--Non-existence of a fifth form of activity--Law; sociability--Religion--Metaphysic--Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect--Mystical Æsthetic--Mortality and immortality of art

IX

Indivisibility Of Expression Into Modes Or Degrees And Criticism Of Rhetoric

The characters of art--Non-existence of modes of expression--Impossibility of translations--Criticism of the rhetorical categories--Empirical sense of the rhetorical categories--Their use as synonyms of the æsthetic fact--Their use to indicate various æsthetic imperfections--Their use in a sense transcending æsthetic, in the service of science--Rhetoric in the schools--The resemblances of expressions--The relative possibility of translations

X

æSthetic Feelings And The Distinction Between The Beautiful And The Ugly

Various significations of the word feeling--Feeling as activity --Identification of feeling with economic activity--Criticism of hedonism--Feeling as a concomitant of every form of activity --Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings--Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union--The beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without qualification--The ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it--Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor ugly--True æsthetic feelings and concomitant and accidental feelings--Criticism of apparent feelings

XI

Criticism Of æSthetic Hedonism

Criticism of the beautiful as that which pleases the higher senses--Criticism of the theory of play--Criticism of the theory of sexuality and of triumph--Criticism of the Æsthetic of the sympathetic: meaning in it of content and form--Æsthetic hedonism and moralism--The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic justification of art--Criticism of pure beauty

XII

The æSthetic Of The Sympathetic And Pseudo-æSthetic Concepts

Pseudo-æsthetic concepts, and the Æsthetic of the sympathetic--Criticism of the theory of the ugly in art and of the overcoming of it--Pseudo-æsthetic concepts belong to Psychology--Impossibility of rigorous definitions of them--Examples: definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous--Relation between these concepts and æsthetic concepts

XIII

The "Physically Beautiful" In Nature And In Art

Æsthetic activity and physical concepts--Expression in the æsthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense--Representations and memory--The production of aids to memory--Physical beauty--Content and form: another meaning--Natural beauty and artificial beauty--Mixed beauty--Writings--Free and non-free beauty--Criticism of non-free beauty--Stimulants of production

XIV

Errors Arising From The Confusion Between Physics And æSthetic

Criticism of æsthetic associationism--Criticism of æsthetic Physics--Criticism of the theory of the beauty of the human body--Criticism of the beauty of geometrical figures--Criticism of another aspect of the imitation of nature--Criticism of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful--Criticism of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful--The astrology of Æsthetic

XV

The Activity Of Externalization. Technique And The Theory Of The Arts

The practical activity of externalization--The technique of externalization--Technical theories of the different arts--Criticism of æsthetic theories of particular arts--Criticism of the classification of the arts--Criticism of the theory of the union of the arts--Relation of the activity of externalization to utility and morality

XVI

Taste And The Reproduction Of Art

Æsthetic judgement: its identity with æsthetic reproduction--Impossibility of divergences--Identity of taste and genius--Analogy with other activities--Criticism of æsthetic absolutism (intellectualism) and relativism--Criticism of relative relativism--Objection founded on the variation of the stimulus and of psychic disposition--Criticism of the distinction of signs into natural and conventional--The surmounting of variety--Restorations and historical interpretation

XVII

The History Of Literature And Of Art

Historical criticism in literature and art: its importance--Literary and artistic history: its distinction from historical criticism and from the æsthetic judgement--The method of artistic and literary history--Criticism of the problem of the origin of art--The criterion of progress and history--Non-existence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history--Errors committed against this law-- Other meanings of the word "progress" in relation to Æsthetic

XVIII

Conclusion: Identity Of Linguistic And æSthetic

Summary of the study--Identity of Linguistic with Æsthetic--Æsthetic formulation of linguistic problems--Nature of language--Origin of language and its development--Relation between Grammar and Logic--Grammatical kinds or parts of speech--The individuality of speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of a normative Grammar--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguistic facts, or roots--Æsthetic judgement and the model language--Conclusion

II

History Of æSthetic

I

æSthetic Ideas In GræCo-Roman Antiquity

Point of view of this History of Æsthetic--Mistaken tendencies, and attempts towards an Æsthetic, in Græco-Roman antiquity--Origin of the æsthetic problem in Greece--Plato's rigoristic negation--Æsthetic hedonism and moralism--Mystical æsthetic in antiquity--Investigations as to the Beautiful--Distinction between the theory of Art and the theory of the Beautiful--Fusion of the two by Plotinus--The scientific tendency: Aristotle--The concepts of imitation and of imagination after Aristotle: Philostratus--Speculations on language

II

æSthetic Ideas In The Middle Ages And Renaissance

Middle Ages. Mysticism: Ideas on the Beautiful--The pedagogic theory of art in the Middle Ages--Hints of an Æsthetic in scholastic philosophy--Renaissance: Philography and philosophical and empirical inquiries concerning the Beautiful--The pedagogic theory of art and the Poetics of Aristotle--The "Poetics of the Renaissance"--Dispute concerning the universal and the probable in art--G. Fracastoro--L. Castelvetro--Piccolomini and Pinciano--Fr. Patrizzi (Patricius)

III

Ferments Of Thought In The Seventeenth Century

New words and new observations in the seventeenth century--Wit--Taste--Various meanings of the word taste--Fancy or imagination--Feeling--Tendency to unite these terms--Difficulties and contradictions in their definition--Wit and intellect--Taste and intellectual judgement--The "_je ne sais quoi_"--Imagination and sensationalism: the corrective of imagination--Feeling and sensationalism

IV

ÆSTHETIC IDEAS OF THE CARTESIAN AND LEIBNITIAN SCHOOLS, AND THE "ÆSTHETIC" OF BAUMGARTEN

Cartesianism and imagination--Crousaz and André--The English: Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and the Scottish School--Leibniz: "_petites perceptions_" and confused knowledge--Intellectualism of Leibniz--Speculations on language--J. C. Wolff--Demand for an organon of inferior knowledge--Alexander Baumgarten: his "Æsthetic"--Æsthetic as science of sensory consciousness--Criticism of judgements passed on Baumgarten--Intellectualism of Baumgarten--New names and old meanings

V

Giambattista Vico

Vico as inventor of æsthetic science--Poetry and philosophy: imagination and intellect--Poetry and history--Poetry and language--Inductive and formalistic logic--Vico opposed to all former theories of poetry--Vico's judgements of the grammarians and linguists who preceded him--Influence of seventeenth-century writers on Vico--Æsthetic in the _Scienza Nuova_--Vico's mistakes--Progress still to be achieved

VI

Minor æSthetic Doctrines Of The Eighteenth Century

The influence of Vico--Italian writers: A. Conti--Quadrio and Zanotti--M. Cesarotti--Bettinelli and Pagano--German disciples of Baumgarten: G. F. Meier--Confusions of Meier--M. Mendelssohn and other followers of Baumgarten--Vogue of Æsthetic--Eberhard and Eschenburg--J. G. Sulzer--K. H. Heydenreich--J. G. Herder--Philosophy of language

VII

Other æSthetic Doctrines Of The Same Period

Other writers of the eighteenth century: Batteux--The English: W. Hogarth--E. Burke--H. Home--Eclecticism and sensationalism: E. Platner--Fr. Hemsterhuis--Neo-Platonism and mysticism: Winckelmann--Beauty and lack of significance--Winckelmann's contradictions and compromises--A. R. Mengs--G. E. Lessing--Theorists of ideal Beauty--G. Spalletti and the characteristic--Beauty and the characteristic: Hirt, Meyer, Goethe

VIII

Immanuel Kant

I. Kant--Kant and Vico--Identity of the concept of Art in Kant and Baumgarten--Kant's "Lectures"--Art in the _Critique of Judgment_--Imagination in Kant's system--The forms of intuition and the Transcendental Æsthetic--Theory of Beauty distinguished by Kant from that of Art--Mystical features in Kant's theory of Beauty

IX

The æSthetic Of Idealism: Schiller, Schelling, Solger, Hegel

The _Critique of Judgment_ and metaphysical idealism--F. Schiller--Relations between Schiller and Kant--The æsthetic sphere as the sphere of Play--Æsthetic education--Vagueness and lack of precision in Schiller's Æsthetic--Schiller's caution and the rashness of the Romanticists--Ideas on Art: J. P. Richter--Romantic Æsthetic and idealistic Æsthetic--J. G. Fichte--Irony: Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis--F. Schelling--Beauty and character--Art and Philosophy--Ideas and the gods: Art and mythology--K. W. Solger--Fancy and imagination--Art, practice and religion--G. W. F. Hegel--Art in the sphere of absolute spirit--Beauty as sensible appearance of the Idea--Æsthetic in metaphysical idealism and Baumgartenism--Mortality and decay of art in Hegel's system

X

Schopenhauer And Herbart

Æsthetic mysticism in the opponents of idealism--A. Schopenhauer--Ideas as the object of art--Æsthetic catharsis--Signs of a better theory in Schopenhauer--J. F. Herbart--Pure Beauty and relations of form--Art as sum of content and form--Herbart and Kantian thought

XI

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Æsthetic of content and Æsthetic of form: meaning of the contrast--Friedrich Schleiermacher--Wrong judgements concerning him--Schleiermacher contrasted with his predecessors--Place assigned to Æsthetic in his Ethics--Æsthetic activity as immanent and individual--Artistic truth and intellectual truth--Difference of artistic consciousness from feeling and religion--Dreams and art: inspiration and deliberation--Art and the typical--Independence of art--Art and language--Schleiermacher's defects--Schleiermacher's services to Æsthetic

XII

The Philosophy Of Language: Humboldt And Steinthal

Progress of Linguistic--Linguistic speculation at the beginning of the nineteenth century--Wilhelm von Humboldt: relics of intellectualism--Language as activity: internal form--Language and art in Humboldt--II. Steinthal: the linguistic function independent of the logical--Identity of the problems of the origin and the nature of language--Steinthal's mistaken ideas on art: his failure to unite Linguistic and Æsthetic

XIII

Minor German æStheticians

Minor æstheticians in the metaphysical school--Krause, Trahndorff, Weisse and others--Fried. Theodor Vischer--Other tendencies--Theory of the Beautiful in nature, and that of the Modifications of Beauty--Development of the first theory: Herder--Schelling, Solger, Hegel--Schleiermacher--Alexander von Humboldt--Vischer's "Æsthetic Physics"--The theory of the Modifications of Beauty: from antiquity to the eighteenth century--Kant and the post-Kantians--Culmination of the development--Double form of the theory: the overcoming of the ugly: Solger, Weisse and others--Passage from abstract to concrete: Vischer--The "legend of Sir Purebeauty"

XIV

ÆSTHETIC IN FRANCE, ENGLAND AND ITALY DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Æsthetic movement in France: Cousin, Jouffroy--English Æsthetic-- Italian Æsthetic--Rosmini and Gioberti--Italian Romantics. Dependence of art

XV

Francesco De Sanctis

F. de Sanctis: development of his thought--Influence of Hegelism--Unconscious criticism of Hegelism--Criticisms of German Æsthetic--Final rebellion against metaphysical Æsthetic--De Sanctis' own theory--The concept of form--De Sanctis as art-critic--De Sanctis as philosopher

XVI

æSthetic Of The Epigoni

Revival of Herbartian Æsthetic--Robert Zimmermann--Vischer _versus_ Zimmermann--Hermann Lotze--Efforts to reconcile Æsthetic of form and Æsthetic of content--K. Köstlin--Æsthetic of content. M. Schasler--Eduard von Hartmann--Hartmann and the theory of modifications--Metaphysical Æsthetic in France: C. Levêque--In England: J. Ruskin--Æsthetic in Italy--Antonio Tari and his lectures--Æsthesigraphy

XVII

æSthetic Positivism And Naturalism

Positivism and evolutionism--Æsthetic of H. Spencer--Physiologists of Æsthetic: Grant Allen, Helmholtz and others--Method of the natural sciences in Æsthetic--H. Taine's Æsthetic--Taine's metaphysic and moralism--G. T. Fechner: inductive Æsthetic--Experiments--Trivial nature of his ideas on Beauty and Art--Ernst Grosse: speculative Æsthetic and the Science of Art--Sociological Æsthetic--Proudhon--J. M. Guyau--M. Nordau--Naturalism: C. Lombroso--Decline of linguistic--Signs of revival: H. Paul--The linguistic of Wundt

XVIII

æSthetic Psychologism And Other Recent Tendencies

Neo-criticism and empiricism--Kirchmann--Metaphysic translated into Psychology: Vischer--Siebeck--M. Diez--Psychological tendency. Teodor Lipps--K. Groos--The modifications of the Beautiful in Groos and Lipps--E. Véron and the double form of Æsthetic--L. Tolstoy--F. Nietzsche --An æsthetician of Music: E. Hanslick--Hanslick's concept of form --Æstheticians of the figurative arts: C. Fiedler--Intuition and expression--Narrow limits of these theories--H. Bergson--Attempts to return to Baumgarten: C. Hermann--Eclecticism: B. Bosanquet --Æsthetic of expression: present state

XIX

Historical Sketches Of Some Particular Doctrines

Result of the history of Æsthetic--History of science and history of the scientific criticism of particular errors

I. Rhetoric: Or The Theory Of Ornate Form.

Rhetoric in the ancient sense--Criticism from moral point of view--Accumulation without system--Its fortunes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance--Criticisms by Vives, Ramus and Patrizzi--Survival into modern times--Modern signification of Rhetoric: theory of literary form--Concept of ornament--Classes of ornament--The concept of the Fitting--The theory of ornament in the Middle Ages and Renaissance--_Reductio ad absurdum_ in the seventeenth century--Polemic concerning the theory of ornament--Du Marsais and metaphor--Psychological interpretation--Romanticism and Rhetoric: present day

II. History Of Artistic And Literary Kinds

The kinds in antiquity: Aristotle--In the Middle Ages and Renaissance--The doctrine of the three unities--Poetics of the kinds and rules: Scaliger--Lessing--Compromises and extensions--Rebellion against rules in general--G. Bruno, Guarini--Spanish critics--G. B. Marino--G. V. Gravina--Fr. Montani--Critics of the eighteenth century--Romanticism and the "strict kinds": Berchet, V. Hugo--Their persistence in philosophical theories--Fr. Schelling--E. von Hartmann--The kinds in the schools

III. The Theory Of The Limits Of The Arts

The limits of the arts in Lessing--Arts of space and arts of time--Limits and classifications of the arts in later philosophy: Herder and Kant--Schelling, Solger--Schopenhauer, Herbart--Weisse, Zeising, Vischer--M. Schasler--E. v. Hartmann--The supreme art: Richard Wagner--Lotze's attack on classifications--Contradictions in Lotze--Doubts in Schleiermacher

IV. Other Particular Doctrines

The Æsthetic theory of natural beauty--The theory of æsthetic senses--The theory of kinds of style--The theory of grammatical forms or parts of speech--Theory of æsthetic criticism--Distinction between taste and genius--Concept of artistic and literary history--Conclusion

Bibliographical Appendix

Index

Extract From Introduction To The First English Edition, 1909

I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to have discovered a Columbus. His name is Benedetto Croce, and he dwells on the shores of the Mediterranean, at Naples, city of the antique Parthenope.

It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the Philosopher of Æsthetic. Benedetto Croce, although born in the Abruzzi, Province of Aquila (1866), is essentially a Neapolitan, and rarely remains long absent from the city, on the shore of that magical sea where once Ulysses sailed, and where sometimes yet (near Amalfi) we may hear the Syrens sing their song. But more wonderful than the song of any Syren seems to me the Theory of Æsthetic as the Science of Expression, and that is why I have overcome the obstacles that stood between me and the giving of this theory, which in my belief is the truth, to the English-speaking world.

. . . . . . . . . .

The solution of the problem of Æsthetic is not in the gift of the Muses.

This Philosophy of the Spirit is symptomatic of the happy reaction of the twentieth century against the crude materialism of the second half of the nineteenth. It is the spirit which gives to the work of art its value, not this or that method of arrangement, this or that tint or cadence, which can always be copied by skilful plagiarists: not so the _spirit_ of the creator. In England we hear too much of (natural) science, which has usurped the very name of Philosophy. The natural sciences are very well in their place, but discoveries such as aviation are of infinitely less importance to the race than the smallest addition to the philosophy of the spirit. Empirical science, with the collusion of positivism, has stolen the cloak of philosophy and must be made to give it back.

. . . . . . . . . .

Yet though severe, the editor of _La Critica_ is uncompromisingly just, and would never allow personal dislike or jealousy, or any extrinsic consideration, to stand in the way of fair treatment to the writer concerned. Many superficial English critics might benefit considerably by attention to this quality in one who is in other respects also so immeasurably their superior. A good instance of this impartiality is his critique of Schopenhauer, with whose system he is in complete disagreement, yet affords him full credit for what of truth is contained in his voluminous writings.

. . . . . . . . . .

This thoroughness it is which gives such importance to the literary and philosophical criticisms of _La Critica._ Croce's method is always historical, and his object in approaching any work of art is to classify the spirit of its author, as expressed in that work. There are, he maintains, but two things to be considered in criticizing a book. These are, _firstly,_ what is its _peculiarity,_ in what way is it singular, how is it differentiated from other works? _Secondly,_ what is its degree of _purity_?--That is, to what extent has its author kept himself free from all considerations alien to the perfection of the work as an expression, as a lyrical intuition? With the answering of these questions Croce is satisfied. He does not care to know if the author keep a motor-car, like Mæterlinck; or prefer to walk on Putney Heath, like Swinburne. This amounts to saying that all works of art must be judged by their own standard. How far has the author succeeded in doing what he intended?

. . . . . . . . . .

As regards Croce's general philosophical position, it is important to understand that he is _not_ a Hegelian, in the sense of being a close follower of that philosopher. One of his last works is that in which he deals in a masterly manner with the philosophy of Hegel. The title may be translated, "What is living and what is dead of the philosophy of Hegel." Here he explains to us the Hegelian system more clearly than that wondrous edifice was ever before explained, and we realize at the same time that Croce is quite as independent of Hegel as of Kant, of Vico as of Spinoza. Of course he has made use of the best of Hegel, just as every thinker makes use of his predecessors and is in his turn made use of by those that follow him. But it is incorrect to accuse of Hegelianism the author of an anti-hegelian _Æsthetic,_ of a _Logic_ where Hegel is only half accepted, and of a _Philosophy of the Practical_ which contains hardly a trace of Hegel. I give an instance. If the great conquest of Hegel be the dialectic of opposites, his great mistake lies in the confusion of opposites with things which are distinct but not opposite. If, says Croce, we take as an example the application of the Hegelian triad that formulates becoming (affirmation, negation and synthesis), we find it applicable for those opposites which are true and false, good and evil, being and not-being, but _not applicable_ to things which are distinct but not opposite, such as art and philosophy, beauty and truth, the useful and the moral. These confusions led Hegel to talk of the death of art, to conceive as possible a Philosophy of History, and to the application of the natural sciences to the absurd task of constructing a Philosophy of Nature. Croce has cleared away these difficulties by showing that if from the meeting of opposites must arise a superior synthesis, such a synthesis cannot arise from things which are distinct _but not opposite,_ since the former are connected together as superior and inferior, and the inferior can exist without the superior, but _not vice versa._ Thus we see how philosophy cannot exist without art, while art, occupying the lower place, can and does exist without philosophy. This brief example reveals Croce's independence in dealing with Hegelian problems.

I know of no philosopher more generous than Croce in praise and elucidation of other workers in the same field, past and present. For instance, and apart from Hegel, _Kant_ has to thank him for drawing attention to the marvellous excellence of the _Critique of Judgment,_ generally neglected in favour of the Critiques of _Pure Reason and of Practical Judgment_; _Baumgarten_ for drawing the attention of the world to his obscure name and for reprinting his Latin thesis in which the word _Æsthetic_ occurs for the first time; and _Schleiermacher_ for the tributes paid to his neglected genius in the History of Æsthetic. _La Critica,_ too, is full of generous appreciation of contemporaries by Croce and by that profound thinker, Gentile.

. . . . . . . . . .

There can be no doubt of the great value of Croce's work as an _educative influence,_ and if we are to judge of a philosophical system by its action on others, then we must place the _Philosophy of the Spirit_ very high. It may be said with perfect truth that since the death of the poet Carducci there has been no influence in Italy to compare with that of Benedetto Croce.

. . . . . . . . . .

Of the popularity that his system and teaching have already attained we may judge by the fact that the _Æsthetic,_ despite the difficulty of the subject, is already in its third edition in Italy, where, owing to its influence, philosophy sells better than fiction; while the French and Germans, not to mention the Czechs, have long had translations of the earlier editions. His _Logic_ is on the point of appearing in its second edition, and I have no doubt that the _Philosophy of the Practical_ will eventually equal these works in popularity. _The importance and value of Italian thought have been too long neglected in Great Britain._ Where, as in Benedetto Croce, we get the clarity of vision of the Latin, joined to the thoroughness and erudition of the best German tradition, we have a combination of rare power and effectiveness, which can by no means be neglected.

The philosopher feels that he has a great mission, which is nothing less than the leading back of thought to belief in the spirit, deserted by so many for crude empiricism and positivism. His view of philosophy is that it sums up all the higher human activities, including religion, and that in proper hands it is able to solve any problem. But there is no finality about problems: the solution of one leads to the posing of another, and so on. Man is the maker of life, and his spirit ever proceeds from a lower to a higher perfection.

. . . . . . . . . .

I believe that Croce will one day be recognized as one of the very few great teachers of humanity. At present he is not appreciated at nearly his full value. One rises from a study of his philosophy with a sense of having been all the time as it were in personal touch with the truth, which is very far from the case after the perusal of certain other philosophies.

Secure in his strength, Croce will often introduce a joke or some amusing illustration from contemporary life, in the midst of a most profound and serious argument. This spirit of mirth is a sign of superiority. He who is not sure of himself can spare no energy for the making of mirth. Croce loves to laugh at his enemies and with his friends. So the philosopher of Naples sits by the blue gulf and explains the universe to those who have ears to hear. "One can philosophize anywhere," he says--but he remains significantly at Naples.

Thus I conclude these brief remarks upon the author of the _Æsthetic,_ confident that those who give time and attention to its study will be grateful for having placed in their hands this pearl of great price from the diadem of the antique Parthenope.

Douglas Ainslie.

THE ATHENÆUM, PALL MALL, _May_ 1909.

Note By The Translator

To The Second English Edition

This second edition of the _Æsthetic_ will be found to contain the complete translation of the historical portion, which I was obliged to summarize in the first edition. I have made a number of alterations and some additions to the theoretical portion, following closely the fourth (definitive) Italian edition, and in so doing have received much advice and assistance of value from Mrs. Salusbury, to whom I beg to tender my best thanks. I trust that this new edition will enable all those desirous of studying the work to get into direct touch with the thought of the author.

The AthenæUm, Pall Mall, S.W.,

_November_ 1920.

Author'S Preface

This volume is composed of a theoretical and of a historical part, which form two independent but complementary books.

The nucleus of the theoretical part is a memoir, bearing the title _Fundamental Theses of an Æsthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic,_ which was read at the Accademia Pontaniana of Naples during the sessions of February 18 and May 6, 1900, and printed in vol. xxx. of its _Acts._ The author has added few substantial variations, but not a few additions and amplifications in rewriting it, also following a somewhat different sequence with a view to rendering the exposition more plain and easy. The first five chapters only of the historical portion were inserted in the Neapolitan review _Flegrea_ (April 1901), under the title _Giambattista Vico, First Discoverer of Æsthetic Science,_ and these also reappear amplified and brought into harmony with the rest.

The author has dwelt, especially in the theoretical part, upon general questions which are side-issues in respect to the theme that he has treated. But this will not seem a digression to those who remember that, strictly speaking, there are no particular philosophical sciences, standing by themselves. Philosophy is unity, and when we treat of Æsthetic or of Logic or of Ethics, we treat always of the whole of philosophy, although illustrating for didactic purposes only one side of that inseparable unity. In like manner, owing to this intimate connexion of all the parts of philosophy, the uncertainty and misunderstanding as to the æsthetic activity, the representative and productive imagination, this firstborn of the spiritual activities, mainstay of the others, generates everywhere else misunderstandings, uncertainties and errors: in Psychology as in Logic, in History as in the Philosophy of Practice. If language is the first spiritual manifestation, and if the æsthetic form is language itself, taken in all its true scientific extension, it is hopeless to try to understand clearly the later and more complicated phases of the life of the spirit, when their first and simplest moment is ill known, mutilated and disfigured. From the explanation of the æsthetic activity is also to be expected the correction of several concepts and the solution of certain philosophic problems which generally seem to be almost desperate. Such is precisely the spirit animating the present work. And if the present attempt and the historical illustrations which accompany it may be of use in winning friends to these studies, by levelling obstacles and indicating paths to be followed; if this happen, especially here in Italy, whose æsthetic traditions (as has been demonstrated in its place) are very noble, the author will consider that he has gained his end, and one of his keenest desires will have been satisfied.

NAPLES, _December_ 1901.

In addition to a careful literary revision, (in which, as well as in the revision of the notes, I have received valuable help from my friend Fausto Nicolini) I have in this third edition made certain alterations of theory, especially in Chapters X. and XI. of Part I., suggested by further reflexion and self-criticism.

But I have refrained from introducing corrections or additions of such a kind as to alter the original plan of the book, which was, or was meant to be, a complete but brief æsthetic theory set in the framework of a general sketch of a Philosophy of the Spirit.

The reader who desires a complete statement of the general or collateral doctrines or a more particular exposition of the other parts of philosophy (_e.g._ the lyrical nature of art) is now referred to the volumes on _Logic_ and the _Philosophy of Practice,_ which together with the present work compose the _Philosophy of the Spirit_ which in the author's opinion exhausts the entire field of Philosophy. The three volumes were not conceived and written simultaneously; if they had been, some details would have been differently arranged. When I wrote the first I had no idea of giving it, as I have now done, two such companions; and I therefore designed it to be, as I say, complete in itself. In the second place, the present state of the study of Æsthetic made it desirable to append to the theoretical exposition a somewhat full history of the science, whereas for the other parts of Philosophy I was able to restrict myself to brief historical notes merely designed to show how, from my point of view, such a history would best be composed. Lastly, there are many things which now, after a systematic exposition of the various philosophical sciences, I see in closer connexions and in a clearer, or at least a different, light; a certain hesitation and even some doctrinal errors visible here and there in the _Æsthetic,_ especially where subjects foreign to Æsthetic itself are being treated, would now no longer be justified. For all these reasons the three volumes, in spite of their substantial unity of spirit and of aim, have each its own physiognomy, and show marks of the different periods of life at which they were written, so as to group themselves, and to demand interpretation, as a progressive series according to their dates of publication.

With what may be called the minor problems of Æsthetic, and the objections which have been or might be brought against my theory, I have dealt and am continuing to deal in special essays, of which I shall shortly publish a first collection which will form a kind of explanatory and polemical appendix to the present volume.

_November_ 1907.

In revising this book once more for a fourth edition, I take the opportunity of announcing that the supplementary volume of essays promised above was published in 1910 under the title _Problems of Æsthetic and Contributions to the History of Æsthetic in Italy._

B. C.

_May_ 1911.

Theory Of æSthetic

I

Intuition And Expression

[Sidenote: _Intuitive knowledge._]

Knowledge has two forms: it is either _intuitive_ knowledge or _logical_ knowledge; knowledge obtained through the _imagination_ or knowledge obtained through the _intellect_; knowledge of the _individual_ or knowledge of the _universal_; of _individual things_ or of the _relations_ between them: it is, in fact, productive either of _images_ or of _concepts._

In ordinary life, constant appeal is made to intuitive knowledge. It is said that we cannot give definitions of certain truths; that they are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who possesses no lively intuition of actual conditions; the educational theorist insists upon the necessity of developing the intuitive faculty in the pupil before everything else; the critic in judging a work of art makes it a point of honour to set aside theory and abstractions, and to judge it by direct intuition; the practical man professes to live rather by intuition than by reason.

But this ample acknowledgment granted to intuitive knowledge in ordinary life, does not correspond to an equal and adequate acknowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists a very ancient science of intellectual knowledge, admitted by all without discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is timidly and with difficulty asserted by but a few. Logical knowledge has appropriated the lion's share; and if she does not slay and devour her companion outright, yet yields to her but grudgingly the humble place of maid-servant or doorkeeper.--What can intuitive knowledge be without the light of intellectual knowledge? It is a servant without a master; and though a master find a servant useful, the master is a necessity to the servant, since he enables him to gain his livelihood. Intuition is blind; intellect lends her eyes.

[Sidenote: _Its independence with respect to intellectual knowledge._]

Now, the first point to be firmly fixed in the mind is that intuitive knowledge has no need of a master, nor to lean upon any one; she does not need to borrow the eyes of others, for she has excellent eyes of her own. Doubtless it is possible to find concepts mingled with intuitions. But in many other intuitions there is no trace of such a mixture, which proves that it is not necessary. The impression of a moonlight scene by a painter; the outline of a country drawn by a cartographer; a musical motive, tender or energetic; the words of a sighing lyric, or those with which we ask, command and lament in ordinary life, may well all be intuitive facts without a shadow of intellectual relation. But, think what one may of these instances, and admitting further the contention that the greater part of the intuitions of civilized man are impregnated with concepts, there yet remains to be observed something more important and more conclusive. Those concepts which are found mingled and fused with the intuitions are no longer concepts, in so far as they are really mingled and fused, for they have lost all independence and autonomy. They have been concepts, but have now become simple elements of intuition. The philosophical maxims placed in the mouth of a personage of tragedy or of comedy, perform there the function, not of concepts, but of characteristics of such personage; in the same way as the red in a painted face does not there represent the red colour of the physicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait. The whole is that which determines the quality of the parts. A work of art may be full of philosophical concepts; it may contain them in greater abundance and they may there be even more profound than in a philosophical dissertation, which in its turn may be rich to overflowing with descriptions and intuitions. But notwithstanding all these concepts the total effect of the work of art is an intuition; and notwithstanding all those intuitions, the total effect of the philosophical dissertation is a concept. The _Promessi Sposi_ contains copious ethical observations and distinctions, but does not for that reason lose as a whole its character of simple story or intuition. In like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions to be found in the works of a philosopher like Schopenhauer do not deprive those works of their character of intellectual treatises. The difference between a scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellectual fact and an intuitive fact, lies in the difference of the total effect aimed at by their respective authors. This it is that determines and rules over the several parts of each not these parts separated and considered abstractly in themselves.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and perception._]

But to admit the independence of intuition as regards concept does not suffice to give a true and precise idea of intuition. Another error arises among those who recognize this, or who at any rate do not explicitly make intuition dependent upon the intellect, to obscure and confuse the real nature of intuition. By intuition is frequently understood _perception,_ or the knowledge of actual reality, the apprehension of something as _real._

Certainly perception is intuition: the perceptions of the room in which I am writing, of the ink-bottle and paper that are before me, of the pen I am using, of the objects that I touch and make use of as instruments of my person, which, if it write, therefore exists;--these are all intuitions. But the image that is now passing through my brain of a me writing in another room, in another town, with different paper, pen and ink, is also an intuition. This means that the distinction between reality and non-reality is extraneous, secondary, to the true nature of intuition. If we imagine a human mind having intuitions for the first time, it would seem that it could have intuitions of actual reality only, that is to say, that it could have perceptions of nothing but the real. But since knowledge of reality is based upon the distinction between real images and unreal images, and since this distinction does not at the first moment exist, these intuitions would in truth not be intuitions either of the real or of the unreal, not perceptions, but pure intuitions. Where all is real, nothing is real. The child, with its difficulty of distinguishing true from false, history from fable, which are all one to childhood, can furnish us with a sort of very vague and only remotely approximate idea of this ingenuous state. Intuition is the undifferentiated unity of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible. In our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves as empirical beings to external reality, but we simply objectify our impressions, whatever they be.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and the concepts of space and time._]

Those, therefore, who look upon intuition as sensation formed and arranged simply according to the categories of space and time, would seem to approximate more nearly to the truth. Space and time (they say) are the forms of intuition; to have an intuition is to place it in space and in temporal sequence. Intuitive activity would then consist in this double and concurrent function of spatiality and temporality. But for these two categories must be repeated what was said of intellectual distinctions, when found mingled with intuitions. We have intuitions without space and without time: the colour of a sky, the colour of a feeling, a cry of pain and an effort of will, objectified in consciousness: these are intuitions which we possess, and with their making space and time have nothing to do. In some intuitions, spatiality may be found without temporality, in others, _vice versa_; and even where both are found, they are perceived by later reflexion: they can be fused with the intuition in like manner with all its other elements: that is, they are in it _materialiter_ and not _formaliter,_ as ingredients and not as arrangement. Who, without an act of reflexion which for a moment breaks in upon his contemplation, can think of space while looking at a drawing or a view? Who is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or a piece of music without breaking into it with a similar act of reflexion? What intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and time, but _character, individual physiognomy._ The view here maintained is confirmed in several quarters of modern philosophy. Space and time, far from being simple and primitive functions, are nowadays conceived as intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, even in some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time the quality of formative principles, categories and functions, one observes an effort to unite them and to regard them in a different manner from that in which these categories are generally conceived. Some limit intuition to the sole category of spatiality, maintaining that even time can only be intuited in terms of space. Others abandon the three dimensions of space as not philosophically necessary, and conceive the function of spatiality as void of all particular spatial determination. But what could such a spatial function be, a simple arrangement that should arrange even time? It represents, surely, all that criticism and refutation have left standing--the bare demand for the affirmation of some intuitive activity in general. And is not this activity truly determined, when one single function is attributed to it, not spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing? Or rather, when it is conceived as itself a category or function which gives us knowledge of things in their concreteness and individuality?

[Sidenote: _Intuition and sensation._]

Having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion of intellectualism and from every later and external addition, we must now explain it and determine its limits from another side and defend it from a different kind of invasion and confusion. On the hither side of the lower limit is sensation, formless matter, which the spirit can never apprehend in itself as simple matter. This it can only possess with form and in form, but postulates the notion of it as a mere limit. Matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity; it is what the spirit of man suffers, but does not produce. Without it no human knowledge or activity is possible; but mere matter produces animality, whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritual dominion, which is humanity. How often we strive to understand clearly what is passing within us! We do catch a glimpse of something, but this does not appear to the mind as objectified and formed. It is in such moments as these that we best perceive the profound difference between matter and form. These are not two acts of ours, opposed to one another; but the one is outside us and assaults and sweeps us off our feet, while the other inside us tends to absorb and identify itself with that which is outside. Matter, clothed and conquered by form, produces concrete form. It is the matter, the content, which differentiates one of our intuitions from another: the form is constant: it is spiritual activity, while matter is changeable. Without matter spiritual activity would not forsake its abstractness to become concrete and real activity, this or that spiritual content, this or that definite intuition.

It is a curious fact, characteristic of our times, that this very form, this very activity of the spirit, which is essentially ourselves, is so often ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of what is called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Æsop, that "_arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae._" Some affirm that they have never observed in themselves this "miraculous" activity, as though there were no difference, or only one of quantity, between sweating and thinking, feeling cold and the energy of the will. Others, certainly with greater reason, would unify activity and mechanism in a more general concept, though they are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain for the moment from examining if such a final unification be possible, and in what sense, but admitting that the attempt may be made, it is clear that to unify two concepts in a third implies to begin with the admission of a difference between the two first. Here it is this difference that concerns us and we set it in relief.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and association._]

Intuition has sometimes been confused with simple sensation. But since this confusion ends by being offensive to common sense, it has more frequently been attenuated or concealed with a phraseology apparently designed at once to confuse and to distinguish them. Thus, it has been asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple sensation as _association_ of sensations. Here a double meaning is concealed in the word "association." Association is understood, either as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that case the claim to unite in memory elements which are not intuited, distinguished, possessed in some way by the spirit and produced by consciousness, seems inconceivable: or it is understood as association of unconscious elements, in which case we remain in the world of sensation and of nature. But if with certain associationists we speak of an association which is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but a _productive_ association (formative, constructive, distinguishing); then our contention is admitted and only its name is denied to it. For productive association is no longer association in the sense of the sensationalists, but _synthesis,_ that is to say, spiritual activity. Synthesis may be called association; but with the concept of productivity is already posited the distinction between passivity and activity, between sensation and intuition.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and representation._]

Other psychologists are disposed to distinguish from sensation something which is sensation no longer, but is not yet intellectual concept: the _representation_ or _image._ What is the difference between their representation or image and our intuitive knowledge? Everything and nothing: for "representation" is a very equivocal word. If by representation be understood something cut off and standing out from the psychic basis of the sensations, then representation is intuition. If, on the other hand, it be conceived as complex sensation we are back once more in crude sensation, which does not vary in quality according to its richness or poverty, or according to whether the organism in which it appears is rudimentary or highly developed and full of traces of past sensations. Nor is the ambiguity remedied by defining representation as a psychic product of secondary degree in relation to sensation, defined as occupying the first place. What does secondary degree mean here? Does it mean a qualitative, formal difference? If so, representation is an elaboration of sensation and therefore intuition. Or does it mean greater complexity and complication, a quantitative, material difference? In that case intuition is once more confused with simple sensation.

[Sidenote: _Intuition and expression._]

And yet there is a sure method of distinguishing true intuition, true representation, from that which is inferior to it: the spiritual fact from the mechanical, passive, natural fact. Every true intuition or representation is also _expression._ That which does not objectify itself in expression is not intuition or representation, but sensation and mere natural fact. The spirit only intuites in making, forming, expressing. He who separates intuition from expression never succeeds in reuniting them.

Intuitive activity _possesses intuitions to the extent that it expresses them._ Should this proposition sound paradoxical, that is partly because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given to the word "expression." It is generally restricted to what are called verbal expressions alone. But there exist also non-verbal expressions, such as those of line, colour and sound, and to all of these must be extended our affirmation, which embraces therefore every sort of manifestation of the man, as orator, musician, painter, or anything else. But be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or in whatever other form it appear, to no intuition can expression in one of its forms be wanting; it is, in fact, an inseparable part of intuition. How can we really possess an intuition of a geometrical figure, unless we possess so accurate an image of it as to be able to trace it immediately upon paper or on the blackboard?

How can we really have an intuition of the contour of a region, for example of the island of Sicily, if we are not able to draw it as it is in all its meanderings? Every one can experience the internal illumination which follows upon his success in formulating to himself his impressions and feelings, but only so far as he is able to formulate them. Feelings or impressions, then, pass by means of words from the obscure region of the soul into the clarity of the contemplative spirit. It is impossible to distinguish intuition from expression in this cognitive process. The one appears with the other at the same instant, because they are not two, but one.

[Sidenote: _Illusion as to their difference._]

The principal reason which makes our view appear paradoxical as we maintain it, is the illusion or prejudice that we possess a more complete intuition of reality than we really do. One often hears people say that they have many great thoughts in their minds, but that they are not able to express them. But if they really had them, they would have coined them into just so many beautiful, sounding words, and thus have expressed them. If these thoughts seem to vanish or to become few and meagre in the act of expressing them, the reason is that they did not exist or really were few and meagre. People think that all of us ordinary men imagine and intuite countries, figures and scenes like painters, and bodies like sculptors; save that painters and sculptors know how to paint and carve such images, while we bear them unexpressed in our souls. They believe that any one could have imagined a Madonna of Raphæl; but that Raphæl was Raphæl owing to his technical ability in putting the Madonna upon canvas. Nothing can be more false than this view. The world which as a rule we intuite is a small thing. It consists of little expressions, which gradually become greater and wider with the increasing spiritual concentration of certain moments. They are the words we say to ourselves, our silent judgments: "Here is a man, here is a horse, this is heavy, this is sharp, this pleases me," etc. It is a medley of light and colour, with no greater pictorial value than would be expressed by a haphazard splash of colours, from among which one could barely make out a few special, distinctive traits. This and nothing else is what we possess in our ordinary life; this is the basis of our ordinary action. It is the index of a book. The labels tied to things (it has been said) take the place of the things themselves. This index and these labels (themselves expressions) suffice for small needs and small actions. From time to time we pass from the index to the book, from the label to the thing, or from the slight to the greater intuitions, and from these to the greatest and most lofty. This passage is sometimes far from easy. It has been observed by those who have best studied the psychology of artists that when, after having given a rapid glance at any one, they attempt to obtain a real intuition of him, in order, for example, to paint his portrait, then this ordinary vision, that seemed so precise, so lively, reveals itself as little better than nothing. What remains is found to be at the most some superficial trait, which would not even suffice for a caricature. The person to be painted stands before the artist like a world to discover. Michæl Angelo said, "One paints, not with the hands, but with the brain." Leonardo shocked the prior of the Convent of the Graces by standing for days together gazing at the "Last Supper," without touching it with the brush. He remarked of this attitude: "The minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they are doing the least external work." The painter is a painter, because he sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse of, but do not see. We think we see a smile, but in reality we have only a vague impression of it, we do not perceive all the characteristic traits of which it is the sum, as the painter discovers them after he has worked upon them and is thus able to fix them on the canvas. We do not intuitively possess more even of our intimate friend, who is with us every day and at all hours, than at most certain traits of physiognomy which enable us to distinguish him from others. The illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to every one to say that the composer had added or attached notes to a motive which was already in the mind of him who is not the composer; as if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not his own intuition and his intuition the Ninth Symphony. Now, just as one who is deluded as to the amount of his material wealth is confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so he who nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughts and images is brought back to reality, when he is obliged to cross the _Pons Asinorum_ of expression. Let us say to the former, count; to the latter, speak; or, here is a pencil, draw, express yourself.

Each of us, as a matter of fact, has in him a little of the poet, of the sculptor, of the musician, of the painter, of the prose writer: but how little, as compared with those who bear those names, just because they possess the most universal dispositions and energies of human nature in so lofty a degree! How little too does a painter possess of the intuitions of a poet! And how little does one painter possess those of another painter! Nevertheless, that little is all our actual patrimony of intuitions or representations. Beyond these are only impressions, sensations, feelings, impulses, emotions, or whatever else one may term what still falls short of the spirit and is not assimilated by man; something postulated for the convenience of exposition, while actually non-existent, since to exist also is a fact of the spirit.

[Sidenote: _Identity of intuition and expression._]

We may thus add this to the various verbal descriptions of intuition, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge. Independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function; indifferent to later empirical discriminations, to reality and to unreality, to formations and apperceptions of space and time, which are also later: intuition or representation is distinguished as _form_ from what is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or from psychic matter; and this form, this taking possession, is expression. To intuite is to express; and nothing else (nothing more, but nothing less) than _to express._

II

Intuition And Art

[Sidenote: _Corollaries and explanations._]

Before proceeding further, it may be well to draw certain consequences from what has been established and to add some explanations.

[Sidenote: _Identity of art and intuitive knowledge._]

We have frankly identified intuitive or expressive knowledge with the æsthetic or artistic fact, taking works of art as examples of intuitive knowledge and attributing to them the characteristics of intuition, and _vice versa._ But our identification is combated by a view held even by many philosophers, who consider art to be an intuition of an altogether special sort. "Let us admit" (they say) "that art is intuition; but intuition is not always art: artistic intuition is a distinct species differing from intuition in general by something _more_."

[Sidenote: _No specific difference._]

But no one has ever been able to indicate of what this something more consists. It has sometimes been thought that art is not a simple intuition, but an intuition of an intuition, in the same way as the concept of science has been defined, not as the ordinary concept, but as the concept of a concept. Thus man would attain to art by objectifying, not his sensations, as happens with ordinary intuition, but intuition itself. But this process of raising to a second power does not exist; and the comparison of it with the ordinary and scientific concept does not prove what is intended, for the good reason that it is not true that the scientific concept is the concept of a concept. If this comparison proves anything, it proves just the opposite. The ordinary concept, if it be really a concept and not a simple representation, is a perfect concept, however poor and limited. Science substitutes concepts for representations; for those concepts that are poor and limited it substitutes others, larger and more comprehensive; it is ever discovering new relations. But its method does not differ from that by which is formed the smallest universal in the brain of the humblest of men. What is generally called _par excellence_ art, collects intuitions that are wider and more complex than those which we generally experience, but these intuitions are always of sensations and impressions.

Art is expression of impressions, not expression of expression.

[Sidenote: _No difference of intensity._]

For the same reason, it cannot be asserted that the intuition, which is generally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as intensive intuition. This would be the case if it were to operate differently on the same matter. But since the artistic function is extended to wider fields, yet does not differ in method from ordinary intuition, the difference between them is not intensive but extensive. The intuition of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very nearly, as any declaration of love that issues at every moment from the lips of thousands of ordinary men, may be intensively perfect in its poor simplicity, although it be extensively so much more limited than the complex intuition of a love-song by Leopardi.

[Sidenote: _The difference is extensive and empirical._]

The whole difference, then, is quantitative, and as such is indifferent to philosophy, _scientia qualitatum._ Certain men have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclination fully to express certain complex states of the soul. These men are known in ordinary language as artists. Some very complicated and difficult expressions are not often achieved, and these are called works of art. The limits of the expression-intuitions that are called art, as opposed to those that are vulgarly called non-art, are empirical and impossible to define. If an epigram be art, why not a simple word? If a story, why not the news-jottings of the journalist? If a landscape, why not a topographical sketch? The teacher of philosophy in Molière's comedy was right: "whenever we speak, we create prose." But there will always be scholars like Monsieur Jourdain, astonished at having spoken prose for forty years without knowing it, who will have difficulty in persuading themselves that when they call their servant John to bring their slippers, they have spoken nothing less than--prose.

We must hold firmly to our identification, because among the principal reasons which have prevented Æsthetic, the science of art, from revealing the true nature of art, its real roots in human nature, has been its separation from the general spiritual life, the having made of it a sort of special function or aristocratic club. No one is astonished when he learns from physiology that every cell is an organism and every organism a cell or synthesis of cells. No one is astonished at finding in a lofty mountain the same chemical elements that compose a small stone fragment. There is not one physiology of small animals and one of large animals; nor is there a special chemical theory of stones as distinct from mountains. In the same way, there is not a science of lesser intuition as distinct from a science of greater intuition, nor one of ordinary intuition as distinct from artistic intuition. There is but one Æsthetic, the science of intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the æsthetic or artistic fact. And this Æsthetic is the true analogue of Logic, which includes, as facts of the same nature, the formation of the smallest and most ordinary concept and the most complicated scientific and philosophical system.

[Sidenote: _Artistic genius._]

Nor can we admit that the word _genius_ or artistic genius, as distinct from the non-genius of the ordinary man, possesses more than a quantitative signification. Great artists are said to reveal us to ourselves. But how could this be possible, unless there were identity of nature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference were only one of quantity? It were better to change _poeta nascitur_ into _homo nascitur poeta_: some men are born great poets, some small. The cult of the genius with all its attendant superstitions has arisen from this quantitative difference having been taken as a difference of quality. It has been forgotten that genius is not something that has fallen from heaven, but humanity itself. The man of genius who poses or is represented as remote from humanity finds his punishment in becoming or appearing somewhat ridiculous. Examples of this are the _genius_ of the romantic period and the _superman_ of our time.

But it is well to note here, that those who claim unconsciousness as the chief quality of an artistic genius, hurl him from an eminence far above humanity to a position far below it. Intuitive or artistic genius, like every form of human activity, is always conscious; otherwise it would be blind mechanism. The only thing that can be wanting to artistic genius is the _reflective_ consciousness, the superadded consciousness of the historian or critic, which is not essential to it.

[Sidenote: _Content and form in Æsthetic._]

The relation between matter and form, or between _content_ and _form,_ as is generally said, is one of the most disputed questions in Æsthetic. Does the æsthetic fact consist of content alone, or of form alone, or of both together? This question has taken on various meanings, which we shall mention, each in its place. But when these words are taken as signifying what we have above defined, and matter is understood as emotionality not æsthetically elaborated, or impressions, and form as intellectual activity and expression, then our view cannot be in doubt. We must, that is to say, reject both the thesis that makes the æsthetic fact to consist of the content alone (that is, the simple impressions), and the thesis which makes it to consist of a junction between form and content, that is, of impressions plus expressions. In the æsthetic fact, expressive activity is not added to the fact of the impressions, but these latter are formed and elaborated by it. The impressions reappear as it were in expression, like water put into a filter, which reappears the same and yet different on the other side. The æsthetic fact, therefore, is form, and nothing but form.

From this was inferred not that the content is something superfluous (it is, on the contrary, the necessary point of departure for the expressive fact); but that _there is no passage_ from the qualities of the content to those of the form. It has sometimes been thought that the content, in order to be æsthetic, that is to say, transformable into form, should possess some determined or determinable qualities. But were that so, then form and content, expression and impression, would be the same thing. It is true that the content is that which is convertible into form, but it has no determinable qualities until this transformation takes place. We know nothing about it. It does not become æsthetic content before, but only after it has been actually transformed. The æsthetic content has also been defined as the _interesting._ That is not an untrue statement; it is merely void of meaning. Interesting to what? To the expressive activity? Certainly the expressive activity would not have raised the content to the dignity of form, had it not been interested in it. Being interested is precisely the raising of the content to the dignity of form. But the word "interesting" has also been employed in another and a illegitimate sense, which we shall explain further on.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion._]

The proposition that art is _imitation of nature_ has also several meanings. Sometimes truths have been expressed or at least shadowed forth in these words, sometimes errors have been promulgated. More frequently, no definite thought has been expressed at all. One of the scientifically legitimate meanings occurs when "imitation" is understood as representation or intuition of nature, a form of knowledge. And when the phrase is used with this intention, and in order to emphasize the spiritual character of the process, another proposition becomes legitimate also: namely, that art is the _idealization_ or _idealizing_ imitation of nature. But if by imitation of nature be understood that art gives mechanical reproductions, more or less perfect duplicates of natural objects, in the presence of which is renewed the same tumult of impressions as that caused by natural objects, then the proposition is evidently false. The coloured waxen effigies that imitate the life, before which we stand astonished in the museums where such things are shown, do not give æsthetic intuitions. Illusion and hallucination have nothing to do with the calm domain of artistic intuition. But on the other hand if an artist paint the interior of a wax-work museum, or if an actor give a burlesque portrait of a man-statue on the stage, we have work of the spirit and artistic intuition. Finally, if photography have in it anything artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and grouping which he has striven to attain. And if photography be not quite an art, that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or less unconquered and ineradicable. Do we ever, indeed, feel complete satisfaction before even the best of photographs? Would not an artist vary and touch up much or little, remove or add something to all of them?

[Sidenote: _Criticism of art conceived as a fact of feeling, not a theoretical fact. Æsthetic appearance, and feeling._]

The statements repeated so often, that art is not knowledge, that it does not tell the truth, that it does not belong to the world of theory, but to the world of feeling, and so forth, arise from the failure to realize exactly the theoretic character of simple intuition. This simple intuition is quite distinct from intellectual knowledge, as it is distinct from perception of the real; and the statements quoted above arise from the belief that only intellectual cognition is knowledge. We have seen that intuition is knowledge, free from concepts and more simple than the so-called perception of the real. Therefore art is knowledge, form; it does not belong to the world of feeling or to psychic matter. The reason why so many æstheticians have so often insisted that art is _appearance_ (_Schein_), is precisely that they have felt the necessity of distinguishing it from the more complex fact of perception, by maintaining its pure intuitiveness. And if for the same reason it has been claimed that art is _feeling_ the reason is the same. For if the concept as content of art, and historical reality as such, be excluded from the sphere of art, there remains no other content than reality apprehended in all its ingenuousness and immediacy in the vital impulse, in its _feeling,_ that is to say again, pure intuition.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of æsthetic senses._]

The theory of the _æsthetic senses_ has also arisen from the failure to establish, or from having lost to view, the character of expression as distinct from impression, of form as distinct from matter.

This theory can be reduced to the error just indicated of wishing to find a passage from the qualities of the content to those of the form. To ask, in fact, what the æsthetic senses are, implies asking what sensible impressions are able to enter into æsthetic expressions, and which must of necessity do so. To this we must at once reply, that all impressions can enter into æsthetic expressions or formations, but that none are bound to do so of necessity. Dante raised to the dignity of form not only the "sweet colour of the oriental sapphire" (visual impressions), but also tactual or thermic impressions, such as the "dense air" and the "fresh rivulets" which "parch the more" the throat of the thirsty. The belief that a picture yields only visual impressions is a curious illusion. The bloom on a cheek, the warmth of a youthful body, the sweetness and freshness of a fruit, the edge of a sharp knife, are not these, too, impressions obtainable from a picture? Are they visual? What would a picture mean to an imaginary man, lacking all or many of his senses, who should in an instant acquire the organ of sight alone? The picture we are looking at and believe we see only with our eyes would seem to his eyes to be little more than an artist's paint-smeared palette.

Some who hold firmly to the æsthetic character of certain groups of impressions (for example, the visual and auditive), and exclude others, are nevertheless ready to admit that if visual and auditive impressions enter _directly_ into the æsthetic fact, those of the other senses also enter into it, but only as _associated._ But this distinction is altogether arbitrary. Æsthetic expression is synthesis, in which it is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are placed by it on a level, in so far as they are æstheticized. A man who absorbs the subject of a picture or poem does not have it before him as a series of impressions, some of which have prerogatives and precedence over the others. He knows nothing as to what has happened prior to having absorbed it, just as, on the other hand, distinctions made after reflexion have nothing whatever to do with art as such.

The theory of the æsthetic senses has also been presented in another way; as an attempt to establish what physiological organs are necessary for the æsthetic fact. The physiological organ or apparatus is nothing but a group of cells, constituted and disposed in a particular manner; that is to say, it is a merely physical and natural fact or concept. But expression does not know physiological facts. Expression has its point of departure in the impressions, and the physiological path by which these have found their way to the mind is to it altogether indifferent. One way or another comes to the same thing: it suffices that they should be impressions.

It is true that the want of given organs, that is, of certain groups of cells, prevents the formation of certain impressions (when these are not otherwise obtained through a kind of organic compensation). The man born blind cannot intuite and express light. But the impressions are not conditioned solely by the organ, but also by the stimuli which operate upon the organ. One who has never had the impression of the sea will never be able to express it, in the same way as one who has never had the impression of the life of high society or of the political arena will never express either. This, however, does not prove the dependence of the expressive function on the stimulus or on the organ. It merely repeats what we know already: expression presupposes impression, and particular expressions particular impressions. For the rest, every impression excludes other impressions during the moment in which it dominates; and so does every expression.

[Sidenote: _Unity and indivisibility of the work of art._]

Another corollary of the conception of expression as activity is the _indivisibility_ of the work of art. Every expression is a single expression. Activity is a fusion of the impressions in an organic whole. A desire to express this has always prompted the affirmation that the work of art should have _unity,_ or, what amounts to the same thing, _unity in variety._ Expression is a synthesis of the various, or multiple, in the one.

The fact that we divide a work of art into parts, a poem into scenes, episodes, similes, sentences, or a picture into single figures and objects, background, foreground, etc., may seem opposed to this affirmation. But such division annihilates the work, as dividing the organism into heart, brain, nerves, muscles and so on, turns the living being into a corpse. It is true that there exist organisms in which division gives rise to other living beings, but in such a case we must conclude, maintaining the analogy between the organism and the work of art, that in the latter case too there are numerous germs of life each ready to grow, in a moment, into a single complete expression.

It may be said that expression sometimes arises from other expressions. There are simple and there are _compound_ expressions. One must surely admit some difference between the _eureka,_ with which Archimedes expressed all his joy at his discovery, and the expressive act (indeed all the five acts) of a regular tragedy.--Not in the least: expression always arises directly from impressions. He who conceives a tragedy puts into a crucible a great quantity, so to say, of impressions: expressions themselves, conceived on other occasions, are fused together with the new in a single mass, in the same way as we can cast into a melting furnace formless pieces of bronze and choicest statuettes. Those choicest statuettes must be melted just like the pieces of bronze, before there can be a new statue. The old expressions must descend again to the level of impressions, in order to be synthesized in a new single expression.

[Sidenote: _Art as liberator._]

By elaborating his impressions, man _frees_ himself from them. By objectifying them, he removes them from him and makes himself their superior. The liberating and purifying function of art is another aspect and another formula of its character as activity. Activity is the deliverer, just because it drives away passivity.

This also explains why it is usual to attribute to artists both the maximum of sensibility or _passion_, and the maximum of insensibility or Olympian _serenity._ The two characters are compatible, for they do not refer to the same object. The sensibility or passion relates to the rich material which the artist absorbs into his psychic organism; the insensibility or serenity to the form with which he subdues and dominates the tumult of the sensations and passions.

III

Art And Philosophy

[Sidenote: _Inseparability of intellectual from intuitive knowledge._]

The two forms of knowledge, æsthetic and intellectual or conceptual, are indeed different, but this does not altogether amount to separation and disjunction, as of two forces each pulling in its own direction. If we have shown that the æsthetic form is altogether independent of the intellectual and suffices to itself without external support, we have not said that the intellectual can stand without the æsthetic. To describe the independence as _reciprocal_ would not be true.

What is knowledge by concepts? It is knowledge of the relations of things, and things are intuitions. Concepts are not possible without intuitions, just as intuition is itself impossible without the matter of impressions. Intuitions are: this river, this lake, this brook, this rain, this glass of water; the concept is: water, not this or that appearance and particular example of water, but water in general, in whatever time or place it be realized; the material of infinite intuitions, but of one single constant concept.

But the concept, the universal, if it be no longer intuition in one respect, is intuition in another respect, and cannot fail of being intuition. The man who thinks has impressions and emotions, in so far as he thinks. His impression and emotion will be not love or hate, not the passion of the man who is not a philosopher, not hate or love for certain objects and individuals, but _the effort of his thought itself,_ with the pain and the joy, the love and the hate joined to it. This effort cannot but assume an intuitive form, in becoming objective to the spirit. To speak is not to think logically; but to _think logically_ is also to _speak._

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the negations of this thesis._]

That thought cannot exist without speech, is a truth generally admitted. The negations of this thesis are all founded on equivocations and errors.

The first of the equivocations is that of those who observe that one can likewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers, ideographic signs, without any word, even pronounced silently and almost insensibly within one; that there are languages in which the word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless the written sign also be examined, and so on. But when we said "speak," we intended to employ a synecdoche, by which was to be understood "expression" in general, for we have already remarked that expression is not only so-called verbal expression. It may or may not be true that certain concepts may be thought without phonetic manifestations. But the very examples adduced to show this also prove that those concepts never exist without expressions.

Others point out that animals, or certain animals, think and reason without speaking. Now as to how, whether, and what animals think, whether they be rudimentary men, like savages who refuse to be civilized, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists maintained, are questions that do not concern us here. When the philosopher talks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature and the like, he does not base himself on such conjectures as to dogs or cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called animal and brutal in man: of the animal side or basis of what we feel in ourselves. If individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants, possess something of the activity of man, so much the better, or so much the worse, for them. This means that in respect to them also we must talk, not of "nature" as a whole, but of its animal basis, as being perhaps larger and stronger in them than the animal basis of man. And if we suppose that animals think and form concepts, what kind of conjecture would justify the assertion that they do so without corresponding expressions? Analogy with man, knowledge of the spirit, human psychology, the instrument of all our conjectures as to animal psychology, would constrain us on the contrary to suppose that if they think in any way, they also somehow speak.

Another objection is derived from human psychology, and indeed literary psychology, to the effect that the concept can exist without the word, for it is certainly true that we all know books _well thought and ill written_: that is to say, a thought which remains _beyond_ the expression, or _notwithstanding_ faulty expression. But when we talk of books well thought and ill written, we cannot mean anything but that in such books are parts, pages, periods or propositions well thought and well written, and other parts (perhaps the least important) ill thought and ill written, not really thought and so not really expressed. Where Vico's _Scienza nuova_ is really ill written, it is also ill thought. If we pass from the consideration of big books to a short sentence, the error or inaccuracy of such a contention will leap to the eyes. How could a single sentence be clearly thought and confusedly written?

All that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts (concepts) in an intuitive form, which is an abbreviated or rather peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient to communicate it easily to any other given person or persons. Hence it is incorrect to say that we have the thought without the expression; whereas we should rather say that we have, indeed, the expression, but in such a form that it is not easy to communicate it to others. This, however, is a very variable, relative fact. There are always those who catch our thought on the wing, prefer it in this abbreviated form, and would be wearied by the greater development of it required by others. In other words, the thought considered abstractly and logically will be the same; but æsthetically we are dealing with two different intuition-expressions, into which different psychological elements enter. The same argument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret correctly, the altogether empirical distinctior between an _internal_ and an _external_ language.

[Sidenote: _Art and science._]

The most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and of intuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, Art and Science. Art and Science, then, are different and yet linked together; they meet on one side, which is the æsthetic side. Every scientific work is also a work of art. The æsthetic side may remain little noticed when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort to understand the thought of the man of science and to examine its truth. But it is no longer unnoticed when we pass from the activity of understanding to that of contemplation and see that thought either develop itself before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous or insufficient words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes called great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less fragmentary writers even if their fragments have the scientific value of harmonious, coherent, and perfect works.

We pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. The fragments, the flashes, console us for the whole, because it is far easier to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary work of genius, to liberate the flame latent in the spark, than to achieve the discovery of genius. But how can we pardon mediocre expression in pure artists? "_Mediocribus esse poetis non di, non homines, non concessere columnae_" The poet or painter who lacks form, lacks everything, because he lacks _himself._ Poetical material permeates the souls of all: the expression alone, that is to say, the form, makes the poet. And here appears the truth of the view which denies all content to art, just the intellectual concept being understood as content. In this sense, when we take "content" as equal to "concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist of content, but also that _it has no content._

[Sidenote: _Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry._]

The distinction between _poetry and prose_ also cannot be justified, save as that between art and science. It was seen in antiquity that such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such as rhythm and metre, or on rhymed or unrhymed form; that it was, on the contrary, altogether internal. Poetry is the language of feeling, prose of the intellect; but since the intellect is also feeling, in its concreteness and reality, all prose has its poetical side.

[Sidenote: _The relation of first and second degree._]

The relation between intuitive knowledge or expression and intellectual knowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannot be otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of _double degree._ The first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the first can stand without the second, but the second cannot stand without the first. There is poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry. Expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. Poetry is "the mother tongue of the human race"; the first men "were by nature sublime poets." We assert this in another way, when we observe that the passage from soul to spirit, from animal to human activity, is effected by means of language. And this should be said of intuition or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to define language or expression as an _intermediate_ link between nature and humanity, as though it were a mixture of both. Where humanity appears, the other has already disappeared; the man who expresses himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does emerge: he does not stand half within and half without, as the use of the phrase "intermediate link" would imply.

[Sidenote: _Non-existence of other forms of knowledge._]

The cognitive spirit has no form other than these two. Expression and concept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man is spent in passing from one to the other and back again.

[Sidenote: _Historicity. Its identity with and difference from art._]

_Historicity_ is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form. Historicity is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but intuition or æsthetic fact. History does not seek for laws nor form concepts; it employs neither induction nor deduction; it is directed _ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum_; it does not construct universals and abstractions, but posits intuitions. The this and here, the _individuum omnimode determinatum,_ is its domain, as it is the domain of art. History, therefore, is included in the universal concept of art.

As against this doctrine, in view of the impossibility of conceiving a third mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward which would lead to the affiliation of history to intellectual or scientific knowledge. The greater portion of these objections is animated by the prejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptual science something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. This really arises from a false idea of art, conceived not as an essential theoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity. Without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned is finally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been and still is widely repeated. Its purpose is to show the logical and scientific nature of history. The sophism consists in admitting that historical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not the representation, it is added, but rather the concept of the individual. From this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific form of knowledge. History, in fact, is supposed to work out the concept of a personage such as Charlemagne or Napoleon; of an epoch, like the Renaissance or the Reformation; of an event, such as the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy. This it is held to do in the same way as Geometry works out the concepts of spatial forms, or Æsthetic that of expression. But all this is untrue. History cannot do otherwise than _represent_ Napoleon and Charlemagne, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy as individual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the sense in which logicians use the word "represent" when they say that one cannot have a concept of the individual, but only a representation. The so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or general concept, full of characteristics, supremely full, if you like, but however full it be, incapable of attaining to that individuality to which historical knowledge, as æsthetic knowledge, alone attains.

To show how the content of history comes to be distinguished from that of art in the narrow sense, we must recall what has already been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. Only at a later stage does the spirit form the concepts of external and internal, of what has happened and what is desired, of object and subject, and the like: only at this later stage, that is, does it distinguish historical from non-historical intuition, the _real_ from the _unreal,_ real imagination from pure imagination. Even internal facts, what is desired and imagined, castles in the air, and countries of Cockaigne, have their reality, and the soul, too, has its history. His illusions form part of the biography of every individual as real facts. But the history of an individual soul is history, because the distinction between the real and the unreal is always active in it, even when the illusions themselves are the real. But these distinctive concepts do not appear in history like the concepts of science, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and melted in the æsthetic intuitions, although in history they stand out in a manner altogether special to themselves. History does not construct the concepts of the real and unreal, but makes use of them. History, in fact, is not the theory of history. Mere conceptual analysis is of no use in ascertaining whether an event in our lives was real or imaginary. We must mentally reproduce the intuitions in the most complete form, as they were at the moment of production. Historicity is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination as any one intuition is distinguished from any other: in memory.

[Sidenote: _Historical criticism._]

Where this is not possible, where the delicate and fleeting shades between the real and unreal intuitions are so slight as to mingle the one with the other, we must either renounce for the time being at least the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability. The principle of verisimilitude and of probability in fact dominates all historical criticism. Examination of sources and authorities is devoted to establishing the most credible evidence. And what is the most credible evidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those who best remember and (be it understood) have not wished to falsify, nor had interest in falsifying the truth of things?

[Sidenote: _Historical scepticism._]

From this it follows that intellectualistic scepticism finds it easy to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history differs from that of science. It is the certainty of memory and of authority, not that of analysis and demonstration. To speak of historical induction or demonstration is to make a metaphorical use of these expressions, which bear a quite different meaning in history to that which they bear in science. The conviction of the historian is the undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses, listened attentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him. Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a negligible minority compared with the occasions when he grasps the truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists in believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but what the individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlarge and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places is dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is, and taken as a whole it is rich in truth. Only in a spirit of paradox can one doubt that there ever was a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or a Cæsar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on the 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were fixed to the door of the church at Wittemberg, or that the Bastile was taken by the people of Paris on the 14th of July 1789.

"What proof hast thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically. Humanity replies: "I remember it."

[Sidenote: _Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits._]

The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of historical fact, is the world called real, natural, including in this definition both the reality called physical and that called spiritual and human. All this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be shown as it realistically is; imaginary or artistic intuition in the narrow sense, if presented in the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the imaginable.

Science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, not individuality but universality, cannot be anything but science of the spirit, that is, of what reality has of universal: Philosophy. If natural _sciences_ be spoken of, apart from philosophy, we must observe that these are not perfect sciences: they are aggregates of cognitions, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. The so-called natural sciences indeed themselves recognize that they are surrounded by limitations, and these limitations are nothing but historical and intuitive data. They calculate, measure, establish equalities and uniformities, create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their own way how one fact arises out of other facts; but while doing this they are constantly running into facts known intuitively and historically. Even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses, since threedimensional or Euclidean space is but one of the possible spaces, selected for purposes of study because more convenient. What is true in the natural sciences is either philosophy or historical fact. What of properly naturalistic they contain, is abstraction and caprice. When the natural sciences wish to become perfect sciences, they must leave their circle and enter philosophy. They do this when they posit concepts which are anything but naturalistic, such as those of the unextended atom, of ether or vibration, of vital force, of non-intuitional space, and the like. These are true and proper attempts at philosophy, when they are not mere words void of meaning. The concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most useful; but one cannot obtain from them that _system_ which belongs only to the spirit.

These historical and intuitive data which cannot be eliminated from the natural sciences furthermore explain not only how, with the advance of knowledge, what was once believed to be true sinks gradually to the level of mythological belief and fantastic illusion, but also how among natural scientists some are to be found who call everything in their sciences upon which reasoning is founded _mythical facts, verbal expedients,_ or _conventions._ Natural scientists and mathematicians who approach the study of the energies of the spirit without preparation, are apt to carry thither such mental habits and to speak in philosophy of such and such conventions as "decreed by man." They make conventions of truth and morality, and a supreme convention of the Spirit itself! But if there are to be conventions, something must exist which is no convention, but is itself the author of conventions. This is the spiritual activity of man. The limitation of the natural sciences postulates the illimitability of philosophy.

[Sidenote: _The phenomenon and the noumenon._]

These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept--Art, and Science or Philosophy. With these are to be included History, which is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions, while remaining concrete and individual. All other forms (natural sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous elements of practical origin. Intuition gives us the world, the phenomenon; the concept gives us the noumenon, the Spirit.

IV

Historicism And Intellectualism In æSthetic

These relations between intuitive or æsthetic knowledge and the other fundamental or derivative forms of knowledge having been definitely established, we are now in a position to reveal the errors of a series of theories which have been, or are, presented as theories of Æsthetic.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of probability and of naturalism._]

From the confusion between the demands of art in general and the particular demands of history has resulted the theory (which has lost ground to-day, but was once dominant) of the _probable_ as the object of art. As is generally the case with erroneous propositions, the meaning of those who employed and employ the concept of probability has no doubt often been much more reasonable than their definition of the word. By probability used really to be meant the artistic _coherence_ of the representation, that is to say, its completeness and effectiveness, its actual presence. If "probable" be translated "coherent," a very just meaning will often be found in the discussions, examples, and judgements of the critics who employ this word. An improbable personage, an improbable ending to a comedy, are really badly-drawn personages, badly-arranged endings, happenings without artistic motive. It has been said with reason that even fairies and sprites must have probability, that is to say, be really sprites and fairies, coherent artistic intuitions. Sometimes the word "possible" has been used instead of "probable." As we have already remarked in passing, this word possible is synonymous with the imaginable or intuitible. Everything truly, that is to say coherently, imagined, is possible. But also, by a good many critics and theorists, the probable was taken to mean the historically credible, or that historical truth which is not demonstrable but conjecturable, not true but probable. This was the character which these theorists sought to impose upon art. Who does not remember how great a part was played in literary history by criticism based on probability, for example, censure of _Jerusalem Delivered,_ based upon the history of the Crusades, or of the Homeric poems, upon the probable customs of emperors and kings? Sometimes too the æsthetic reproduction of historical reality has been imposed upon art. This is another of the erroneous forms taken by the theory of the _imitation of nature._ Verism and naturalism also have afforded the spectacle of a confusion of the æsthetic fact with the processes of the natural sciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or romance.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of ideas in art, of theses in art and of the typical._]

Confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophic sciences have been far more frequent. Thus it has often been held to be the task of art to expound concepts, to unite an intelligible with a sensible, to represent _ideas_ or _universals_; putting art in the place of science, that is, confusing the artistic function in general with the particular case in which it becomes æsthetico-logical.

The theory of art as supporting _theses,_ of art considered as an individual representation exemplifying scientific laws, can be proved false in like manner. The example, as example, stands for the thing exemplified, and is thus an exposition of the universal, that is to say, a form of science, more or less popular or vulgarizing.

The same may be said of the æsthetic theory of the _typical,_ when by type is understood, as it frequently is, the abstraction or the concept, and it is affirmed that art should make the _species_ shine in the _individual._ If individual be here understood by typical, we have here too a merely verbal variation. To typify would signify, in this case, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent the individual. Don Quixote is a type; but of what is he a type, save of all Don Quixotes? A type, so to speak, of himself. Certainly he is not a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense of reality, or of the love of glory. An infinite number of personages can be thought of under these concepts, who are not Don Quixotes. In other words, we find our own impressions fully determined and realized in the expression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). We call that expression typical, which we might call simply æsthetic. Thus poetical or artistic universals have sometimes been spoken of, only to show that the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the symbol and of the allegory._]

Continuing to correct these errors, or to clear up misunderstandings, we shall also remark that the _symbol_ has sometimes been given as the essence of art. Now, if the symbol be conceived as inseparable from the artistic intuition, it is a synonym for the intuition itself, which always has an ideal character. There is no double bottom to art, but one only; in art all is symbolical, because all is ideal. But if the symbol be conceived as separable--if the symbol can be on one side, and on the other the thing symbolized, we fall back again into the intellectualist error: the so-called symbol is the exposition of an abstract concept, an _allegory_; it is science, or art aping science. But we must also be just toward the allegorical. Sometimes it is altogether harmless. Given the _Gerusalemme liberata,_ the allegory was imagined afterwards; given the _A done_ of Marino, the poet of the lascivious afterwards insinuated that it was written to show how "immoderate indulgence ends in pain"; given a statue of a beautiful woman, the sculptor can attach a label to the statue saying that it represents _Clemency_ or _Goodness._ This allegory that arrives attached to a finished work _post festum_ does not change the work of art. What then is it? It is an expression externally _added_ to another expression. A little page of prose is added to the _Gerusalemme,_ expressing another thought of the poet; a verse or a strophe is added to the _Adone,_ expressing what the poet would like to make a part of his public believe; to the statue nothing but the single word: _Clemency_ or _Goodness._

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of artistic and literary kinds._]

But the greatest triumph of the intellectualist error lies in the theory of artistic and literary kinds, which still has vogue in literary treatises and disturbs the critics and the historians of art. Let us observe its genesis.

The human mind can pass from the æsthetic to the logical, just because the former is a first step in respect to the latter. It can destroy expression, that is, the thought of the individual, by thinking of the universal. It can gather up expressive facts into logical relations. We have already shown that this operation becomes in its turn concrete in an expression, but this does not mean that the first expressions have not been destroyed. They have yielded their place to the new æsthetico-logical expressions. When we are on the second step, we have left the first.

One who enters a picture-gallery, or who reads a series of poems, having looked and read, may go further: he may seek out the nature and the relations of the things there expressed. Thus those pictures and compositions, each of which is an individual inexpressible in logical terms, are gradually resolved into universals and abstractions, such as _costumes, landscapes, portraits, domestic life, battles, animals, flowers, fruit, seascapes, lakes, deserts; tragic, comic, pathetic, cruel, lyrical, epic, dramatic, chivalrous, idyllic facts,_ and the like. They are often also resolved into merely quantitative categories, such as _miniature, picture, statuette, group, madrigal, ballad, sonnet, sonnet-sequence, poetry, poem, story, romance,_ and the like.

When we think the concept _domestic life,_ or _chivalry,_ or _idyll,_ or _cruelty,_ or one of the quantitative concepts mentioned above, the individual expressive fact from which we started has been abandoned. From æsthetes that we were, we have changed into logicians; from contemplators of expression, into reasoners. Certainly no objection can be made to such a process. In what other way could science arise, which, if it have æsthetic expressions presupposed in it, must yet go beyond them in order to fulfil its function? The logical or scientific form, as such, excludes the æsthetic form. He who begins to think scientifically has already ceased to contemplate æsthetically; although his thought assumes of necessity in its turn an æsthetic form, as has already been said, and as it would be superfluous to repeat.

Error begins when we try to deduce the expression from the concept, and to find in what takes its place the laws of the thing whose place is taken; when the difference between the second and the first step has not been observed, and when, in consequence, we declare that we are standing on the first step, when we are really standing on the second. This error is known as the _theory of artistic and literary kinds._

"What is the _æsthetic_ form of domestic life, of chivalry, of the idyll, of cruelty, and so forth? How should these contents be _represented_?" Such is the absurd problem implied in the theory of artistic and literary classes, when it has been shorn of excrescences and reduced to a simple formula. It is in this that consists all search after laws or rules of classes. Domestic life, chivalry, idyll, cruelty and the like, are not impressions, but concepts. They are not contents, but logical-æsthetic forms. You cannot express the form, for it is already itself expression. For what are the words cruelty, idyll, chivalry, domestic life, and so on, but the expression of those concepts?

Even the most refined of such distinctions, which possess the most philosophic appearance, do not resist criticism; as when works of art are divided into subjective and objective kinds, into lyric and epic, into works of feeling and decorative works. In æsthetic analysis it is impossible to separate subjective from objective, lyric from epic, the image of feeling from that of things.

[Sidenote: _Errors derived from this theory in judgements on art._]

From the theory of artistic and literary kinds derive those erroneous modes of judgement and of criticism, thanks to which, instead of asking before a work of art if it be expressive and what it expresses, whether it speak or stammer or is altogether silent, they ask if it obey the _laws_ of epic or of tragedy, of historical painting or of landscape. While making a verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience, artists have, however, really always disregarded these _laws of the kinds._ Every true work of art has violated some established kind and upset the ideas of the critics, who have thus been obliged to broaden the kinds, until finally even the broadened kind has proved too narrow, owing to the appearance of new works of art, naturally followed by new scandals, new upsettings and--new broadenings.

To the same theory are due the prejudices, owing to which at one time (is it really passed?) people used to lament that Italy had no tragedy (until one arose who bestowed such a wreath, which alone of adornments was wanting to her glorious locks), nor France the epic poem (until the _Henriade,_ which slaked the thirsty throats of the critics). Eulogies accorded to the inventors of new kinds are connected with these prejudices, so much so, that in the seventeenth century the invention of the _mock-heroic_ poem seemed an important event, and the honour of it was disputed, as though it were the discovery of America. But the works adorned with this name (the _Secchia rapita_ and the _Scherno degli Dei_) were still-born, because their authors (a slight drawback) had nothing new or original to say. Mediocrities racked their brains to invent new kinds artificially. The _piscatorial_ eclogue was added to the _pastoral,_ and finally the _military_ eclogue. The _Aminta_ was dipped and became the _Alceo._ Finally, there have been historians of art and literature, so much fascinated with these ideas of kinds, that they claimed to write the history, not of individual and real literary and artistic works, but of those empty phantoms, their kinds. They have claimed to portray, not the evolution of the _artistic spirit,_ but the _evolution of kinds._

The philosophical condemnation of artistic and literary kinds is found in the formulation and demonstration of what artistic activity has always done and good taste always recognized. What are we to do if good taste and the real fact, when reduced to formulas, sometimes assume the air of paradoxes?

[Sidenote: _Empirical sense of the divisions of kinds._]

It is not scientifically incorrect to talk of tragedies, comedies, dramas, romances, pictures of everyday life, battle-pieces, landscapes, seascapes, poems, versicles, lyrics, and the like, if it be only with a view to be understood, and to draw attention to certain groups of works, in general and approximately, to which, for one reason or another, it is desired to draw attention. To employ _words_ and _phrases_ is not to establish _laws_ and _definitions._ The mistake only arises when the weight of a scientific definition is given to a word, when we ingenuously let ourselves be caught in the meshes of that phraseology. Pray permit me a comparison. The books in a library must be arranged in one way or another. This used generally to be done by a rough classification of subjects (among which the categories of miscellaneous and eccentric were not wanting); they are now generally arranged by sizes or by publishers. Who can deny the necessity and the utility of such arrangements? But what should we say if some one began seriously to seek out the literary laws of miscellanies and of eccentricities, of the Aldines or Bodonis, of shelf A or shelf B, that is to say, of those altogether arbitrary groupings whose sole object was their practical utility. Yet should any one attempt such an undertaking, he would be doing neither more nor less than those do who seek out the _æsthetic laws_ which must in their belief control literary and artistic kinds.

V

Analogous Errors In The Theory Of History And In Logic

The better to confirm these criticisms, it will be useful to cast a rapid glance over analogous and opposite errors, due to ignorance as to the true nature of art and its relation to history and to science. These errors have injured alike the theory of history and that of science, Historic (or Historiology) and Logic.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the philosophy of history._]

Historical intellectualism has opened the way to the many attempts, made especially during the last two centuries and continued to-day, to discover _a philosophy of history,_ an _ideal history,_ a _sociology,_ a _historical psychology,_ or whatever else a science may be called, whose object is to extract from history concepts and universal laws. What must these laws, these universals be? Historical laws and historical concepts? In that case, an elementary acquaintance with the theory of knowledge suffices to make clear the absurdity of the attempt. When such expressions as a _historical law,_ a _historical concept_ are not simply metaphors colloquially employed, they are truly contradictory terms: the adjective is as unsuitable to the substantive as in the expressions "qualitative quantity" or "pluralistic monism." History implies concreteness and individuality, law and concept mean abstractness and universality. But if the attempt to extract _historical_ laws and concepts from history be abandoned, and it be merely desired to draw from it laws and concepts, the attempt is certainly not frivolous; but the science thus obtained will be, not a philosophy of history, but rather, according to circumstances, either philosophy in its various forms of Ethics, Logic, etc., or empirical science with its infinite divisions and subdivisions. The search is in fact either for those philosophical concepts which, as already remarked, are the basis of every historical construction and differentiate perception from intuition, historical intuition from pure intuition, history from art; or already formed historical intuitions are collected and arranged in types and classes, which is exactly the method of the natural sciences. Great thinkers have sometimes donned the ill-fitting cloak of the philosophy of history, and notwithstanding the covering, they have attained philosophical truths of the greatest magnitude. The cloak discarded, the truth has remained. Modern sociologists are rather to be blamed, not so much for the illusion in which they are involved when they talk of an impossible science of sociology, as for the infecundity which almost always accompanies their illusion. It matters little that Æsthetic should be called "sociological Æsthetic," or Logic, "sociological Logic." The grave evil is that such Æsthetic is an old-fashioned expression of sensationalism, such Logic verbal and incoherent. The philosophical movement to which we have referred has however borne two good fruits in relation to history. First of all, a keener desire has arisen for a theory of history, that is, a theory of the nature and the limits of history, a theory which, in conformity with the analysis made above, cannot obtain satisfaction save in a general science of intuition, in an Æsthetic, in which the theory of history would form a special chapter, distinguished by the insertion of universal functions. Furthermore, concrete truths relating to historical events have often been expressed beneath the false and presumptuous cloak of a philosophy of history; rules and warnings have been formulated, empirical no doubt, yet by no means useless to students and critics. It does not seem possible to deny this utility even to the most recent of philosophies of history, known as historical materialism, which has thrown a very vivid light upon many sides of social life formerly neglected or ill understood.

[Sidenote: _Æsthetic intrusions into Logic._]

The principle of authority, of the _ipse dixit_, is an intrusion by historicity into the domains of science and philosophy which has dominated the schools and substitutes for introspection and philosophical analysis this or that evidence, document, or authoritative statement, with which history certainly cannot dispense. But Logic, the science of thought and of intellectual knowledge, has suffered the most grave and destructive of all disturbances and errors through an imperfect understanding of the æsthetic fact. How could it be otherwise, if logical activity come after and contain in itself æsthetic activity? An inexact Æsthetic must of necessity drag after it an inexact Logic.

Whoever opens a logical treatise, from the _Organon_ of Aristotle to the modern works on the subject, must agree that all contain a haphazard mixture of verbal facts and facts of thought, of grammatical forms and of conceptual forms, of Æsthetic and of Logic. Not that attempts have been wanting to escape from verbal expression and to seize thought in its true nature. Aristotelian logic itself did not become mere syllogistic and verbalism without some hesitation and indecision. The problem proper to logic was often touched upon in their disputes by the nominalists, realists and conceptualists of the Middle Ages. With Galileo and with Bacon, the natural sciences gave an honourable place to induction. Vico combated formalist and mathematical logic in favour of inventive methods. Kant called attention to the _a priori_ synthesis. Absolute idealism despised the Aristotelian Logic. The followers of Herbart, though still loyal to Aristotle, emphasized those judgements which they called narrative and which have a character altogether differing from that of other logical judgements. Finally, the linguists insisted upon the irrationality of the word, in relation to the concept. But a conscious, sure and radical movement of reform can find no basis or point of departure, save in the science of Æsthetic.

[Sidenote: _Logic in its essence._]

In a Logic suitably reformed on this basis, this truth must first and foremost be proclaimed, and all its consequences deduced: the logical fact, _the only logical fact,_ is _the concept,_ the universal, the spirit that forms, and in so far as it forms, the universal. And if by induction be understood, as sometimes it has been, the formation of universals, and by deduction their verbal development, then it is clear that true Logic can be nothing but inductive Logic. But since by the word "deduction" has been more frequently understood the special processes of mathematics, and the word "induction" those of the natural sciences, it will be best to avoid both words and say that true Logic is Logic of the concept. The Logic of the concept, while employing a method which is both induction and deduction, will employ neither exclusively, that is, it will employ the speculative method which is intrinsic to it.

The concept, the universal, considered abstractly in itself, is _inexpressible._ No word is proper to it. So true is this, that the logical concept remains always the same, notwithstanding the variation of verbal forms. In respect to the concept, expression is a simple _sign_ or _indication._ There must be an expression, it cannot be absent; but what it is to be, this or that, is determined by the historical and psychological conditions of the individual who is speaking. The quality of the expression is not deducible from the nature of the concept. There does not exist a true (logical) sense of words. The true sense of words is that which is conferred upon them on each occasion by the person forming a concept.

[Sidenote: _Distinction between logical and non-logical judgements._]

This being so, the only truly logical (that is, æsthetico-logical) propositions, the only rigorously logical judgements, must be those whose proper and sole content is the determination of a concept. These propositions or judgements are _definitions._ Science itself is nothing but a collection of definitions, unified in a supreme definition; a system of concepts, or highest concept.

It is therefore necessary (at least as a preliminary) to exclude from Logic all those propositions which do not affirm universals. Narrative judgements, not less than those termed non-enunciative by Aristotle, such as the expression of desires, are not properly logical judgements. They are either purely æsthetic propositions or historical propositions. "Peter is passing; it is raining to-day; I am sleepy; I want to read": these and an infinity of propositions of the same kind are nothing but either a mere enclosing in words the impression of the fact that Peter is passing, of the falling rain, of my organism inclining to sleep, and of my will directed to reading, or an existential affirmation concerning those facts. They are expressions of the real or of the unreal, historical-imaginative or pure-imaginative; they are certainly not definitions of universals.

[Sidenote: _Syllogistic._]

This exclusion cannot meet with great difficulties. It is already almost an accomplished fact, and the only thing required is to render it explicit, decisive and coherent. But what is to be done with all that part of human thought called _syllogistic,_ consisting of judgements and reasonings based upon concepts? What is syllogistic? Is it to be looked down upon with contempt, as something useless, as has so often been done by the humanists in their reaction against scholasticism, by absolute idealism, by the enthusiastic admiration of our times for the methods of observation and experiment of the natural sciences?--Syllogistic, reasonings _forma,_ is not the discovery of truth; it is the art of expounding, debating, disputing with oneself and others. Proceeding from concepts already formed, from facts already observed, and appealing to the persistence of the true or of thought (such is the meaning of the laws of identity and contradiction), it infers consequences from those data, that is, it re-states what has already been discovered. Therefore, if it be an _idem per idem_ from the point of view of invention, it is most efficacious in teaching and in exposition. To reduce affirmations to a syllogistic form is a way of controlling one's own thought and of criticizing the thought of others. It is easy to laugh at syllogizers, but, if syllogistic has been born and persists, it must have good reasons of its own. Satire on it can concern only its abuses, such as the attempt to prove syllogistically questions of fact, observation and intuition, or the neglect of profound meditation and unprejudiced investigation of problems, in favour of syllogistic externality. And if so-called _mathematical Logic_ can sometimes aid us in our attempt to remember with ease, rapidly to control the results of our own thought, let us welcome this form of syllogistic also, anticipated by Leibnitz among others and again attempted by some in our own days.

But precisely because syllogistic is the art of exposition and debate, its theory cannot hold the first place in a philosophical Logic, thus usurping that belonging to the doctrine of the concept, which is the central and dominating doctrine, to which everything logical in syllogistic is reducible, without leaving a residuum (relations of concepts, subordination, co-ordination, identification and so on). Nor must it ever be forgotten that concept and (logical) judgement and syllogism are not in the same line. The first alone is the logical fact, the second and third are the forms in which the first manifests itself. These, in so far as they are forms, can only be examined æsthetically (grammatically), and in so far as they possess logical content, only by ignoring the forms themselves and passing to the doctrine of the concept.

[Sidenote: _Logical falsehood and æsthetic truth._]

This confirms the truth of the ordinary remark to the effect that he who reasons ill, also speaks and writes ill, that exact logical analysis is the basis of good expression. This truth is a tautology, for to reason well is in fact to express oneself well, because the expression is the intuitive possession of one's own logical thought. The principle of contradiction itself is at bottom nothing but the æsthetic principle of coherence. It may be maintained that it is possible to write and to speak exceedingly well, as it is also possible to reason well though starting from erroneous concepts; that some, though lacking the acuteness that makes a great discoverer, are nevertheless exceedingly lucid writers; because to write well depends upon having a clear intuition of one's own thought, even if it be erroneous; not of its scientific, but of its æsthetic truth, which indeed is the same thing as writing well. A philosopher like Schopenhauer can imagine that art is a representation of the Platonic ideas. This doctrine is scientifically false, yet he may develop this false knowledge in excellent prose, æsthetically most true. But we have already replied to these objections, when observing that at that precise point where a speaker or a writer enunciates an ill-thought concept, he is at the same time a bad speaker and a bad writer, although he may afterwards recover himself in the many other parts of his thought which contain true propositions not connected with the preceding error, and therefore lucid expressions following upon confused expressions.

[Sidenote: _Reformed logic._]

All researches as to the forms of judgements and of syllogisms, their conversions and their various relations, which still encumber treatises on Logic, are therefore destined to diminish, to be transformed, to be converted into something else. The doctrine of the concept and of the organism of concepts, of definition, of system, of philosophy and the various sciences, and the like, will occupy the field and alone will constitute true and proper Logic.

Those who first had some suspicion of the intimate connexion between Æsthetic and Logic and conceived Æsthetic as a _Logic of sensible knowledge_ were peculiarly addicted to applying logical categories to the new knowledge, talking of _æsthetic concepts, æsthetic judgements, æsthetic syllogisms,_ and so on. We who are less superstitious as regards the permanence of the traditional Logic of the schools, and better informed as to the nature of Æsthetic, do not recommend the application of Logic to Æsthetic, but the liberation of Logic from æsthetic forms. These have given rise to non-existent forms or categories of Logic, due to the adoption of altogether arbitrary and ill-considered distinctions.

Logic thus reformed will still be _formal_ Logic; it will study the true form or activity of thought, the concept, excluding individual and particular concepts. The old Logic is ill called formal; it would be better to call it _verbal_ or _formalistic._ Formal Logic will drive out formalistic Logic. To attain this object, it will not be necessary to have recourse, as some have done, to a real or material Logic, which is no longer a science of thought, but thought itself in action; not only a Logic, but the whole of Philosophy, in which Logic is also included. The science of thought (Logic) is that of the concept, as that of imagination (Æsthetic) is that of expression. The well-being of both sciences lies in exactly carrying out in every particular the distinction between the two domains.

_Note to the Fourth Italian Edition._--The observations contained in this chapter on Logic, which are not all of them clear or accurate, should be clarified and corrected by means of the further treatment of the theme in the second volume of the _Philosophy of the Spirit,_ dedicated to Logic, where the distinction between logical and historical propositions is again examined and their synthetic unity demonstrated.

VI

The Theoretic Activity And The Practical Activity

The intuitive and intellectual forms contain between them, as we have said, the whole theoretic domain of the spirit. But it is not possible to know them thoroughly, nor to criticize another series of erroneous æsthetic theories, without first establishing clearly the relations of the theoretic spirit with the _practical_ spirit.

[Sidenote: _The will._]

The practical form or activity is the _will._ We do not here employ this word in the sense of some philosophical systems, where the will is the foundation of the universe, the ground of things and the true reality. Nor do we employ it in the wide sense of other systems, which understand by will the energy of the spirit, spirit or activity in general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. Neither such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For us, the will is, as generally understood, that activity of the spirit which differs from the merely theoretical contemplation of things, and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. Action is really action, in so far as it is voluntary. It is not necessary to remark that in the will to do, we include, in the scientific sense, also what is usually called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, the will of a Prometheus, which also is action.

[Sidenote: _The will as an ulterior stage in respect to knowledge._]

Man understands things with the theoretical form, with the practical form he changes them; with the one he appropriates the universe, with the other he creates it. But the first form is the basis of the second; and the relation of _double degree,_ which we have already found existing between æsthetic and logical activity, is repeated between these two on a larger scale. A knowing independent of the will is thinkable, at least in a certain sense; will independent of knowing is unthinkable. Blind will is not will; true will has eyes.

How can we will, without having before us historical intuitions (perceptions) of objects, and knowledge of (logical) relations, which enlightens us as to the nature of those objects? How can we really will, if we do not know the world which surrounds us or how to change things by acting upon them?

[Sidenote: _Objections and explanations._]

It has been objected that men of action, practical men _par excellence,_ are the least disposed to contemplate and to theorize: their energy is not delayed in contemplation, it rushes at once into will. And conversely, that contemplative men, philosophers, are often very mediocre in practical matters, weak willed, and therefore neglected and thrust aside in the tumult of life. It is easy to see that these distinctions are merely empirical and quantitative. Certainly, the practical man has no need of a philosophical system in order to act, but in the spheres where he does act, he starts from intuitions and concepts which are perfectly clear to him. Otherwise the most ordinary actions could not be willed. It would not be possible to will to feed oneself, for instance, without knowledge of the food, and of the link of cause and effect between certain movements and certain satisfactions. Rising gradually to the more complex forms of action, for example to the political, how could we will anything politically good or bad without knowing the real conditions of society, and consequently the means and expedients to be adopted? When the practical man feels himself in the dark about one or more of these points, or when he is seized with doubt, action either does not begin or stops. It is then that the theoretical moment, which in the rapid succession of human actions is hardly noticed and rapidly forgotten, becomes important and occupies consciousness for a longer time. And if this moment be prolonged, then the practical man may become a Hamlet, divided between desire for action and his deficient theoretical clarity as regards the situation and the means to be employed. And if he develop a taste for contemplation and discovery, and leave willing and acting, to a greater or less extent, to others, there is formed in him the calm disposition of the artist, of the man of science, or of the philosopher, who in practice are sometimes incompetent or downright immoral. These observations are all obvious. Their exactitude cannot be denied. Let us, however, repeat that they are founded on quantitative distinctions and do not disprove but confirm the fact that an action, however slight it be, cannot really be an action, that is, an action that is willed, unless it be preceded by the cognitive activity.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of practical judgements or judgements of value._]

Some psychologists, on the other hand, place before practical action an altogether special class of judgements, which they call _practical_ judgements or _judgements of value._ They say that in order to resolve on performing an action there must have been a judgement to the effect: "this action is useful, this action is good." And at first sight this seems to have the testimony of consciousness on its side. But closer observation and analysis of greater subtlety reveal that such judgements follow instead of preceding the affirmation of the will, and are nothing but the expression of the volition already exercised. A good or useful action is an action willed. It will always be impossible to distil a single drop of usefulness or goodness from the objective study of things. We do not desire things because we know them to be good or useful; but we know them to be good and useful, because we desire them. Here too, the rapidity with which the facts of consciousness follow one another has given rise to an illusion. Practical action is preceded by knowledge, but not by practical knowledge, or rather, knowledge of the practical: to obtain this, we must first have practical action. The third moment, therefore, of practical judgements, or judgements of value, is altogether imaginary. It does not come between the two moments or degrees of theory and practice. For the rest, normative sciences in general, which regulate or command, discover and indicate values to the practical activity, do not exist; indeed none exist for any sort of activity, since every science presupposes that activity to be already realized and developed, which it afterwards takes as its object.

[Sidenote: _Exclusion of the practical from the æsthetic._]

These distinctions established, we must condemn as erroneous every theory which annexes the æsthetic activity to the practical, or introduces the laws of the second into the first. That science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. Those who make this statement, and look upon the æsthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because they have their eye on something which is really practical. But the practical which they aim is not Æsthetic, nor within Æsthetic; it is _outside and beside it_; and although often found united, they are not united necessarily or by the bond of identity of nature.

The æsthetic fact is altogether completed in the expressive elaboration of impressions. When we have achieved the word within us, conceived definitely and vividly a figure or a statue, or found a musical motive, expression is born and is complete; there is no need for anything else. If after this we should open our mouths-_will_ to open them to speak, or our throats to sing, that is to say, utter by word of mouth and audible melody what we have completely said or sung to ourselves; or if we should stretch out_--will_ to stretch out our hands to touch the notes of the piano, or to take up the brush and chisel, thus making on a large scale movements which we have already made in little and rapidly, in a material in which we leave more or less durable traces; this is all an addition, a fact which obeys quite different laws from the former, with which we are not concerned for the moment, although we recognize henceforth that this second movement is a production of things, a _practical_ fact, or fact of _will_. It is usual to distinguish the internal from the external work of art: the terminology seems to us infelicitous, for the work of art (the æsthetic work) is always _internal_; and what is called _external_ is no longer a work of art. Others distinguish between _æsthetic_ fact and _artistic_ fact, meaning by the second the external or practical stage, which may follow and generally does follow the first. But in this case, it is simply a question of a linguistic usage, doubtless permissible, though perhaps not advisable.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content._]

For the same reasons the search for the _end of art_ is ridiculous, when it is understood of art as art. And since to fix an end is to choose, the theory that the content of art must be _selected_ is another form of the same error. A selection among impressions and sensations implies that these are already expressions, otherwise how could a selection be made among the continuous and indistinct? To choose is to will: to will this and not to will that: and this and that must be before us, expressed. Practice follows, it does not precede theory; expression is free inspiration.

The true artist, in fact, finds himself big with his theme, he knows not how; he feels the moment of birth drawing near, but he cannot will it or not will it. If he were to wish to act in opposition to his inspiration, to make an arbitrary choice, if, born Anacreon, he should wish to sing of Atreus and of Alcides, his lyre would warn him of his mistake, sounding only of Venus and of Love, notwithstanding his efforts to the contrary.

[Sidenote: _Practical innocence of art._]

The theme or content cannot, therefore, be practically or morally charged with epithets of praise or blame. When critics of art remark that a theme is _badly selected,_ in cases where that observation has a just foundation, it is a question of blaming, not the selection of the theme (which would be absurd), but the manner in which the artist has treated it, the failure of the expression due to the contradictions which it contains. And when the same critics object to the theme or content of works which they proclaim to be artistically perfect as being unworthy of art and blameworthy; if these expressions really are perfect, there is nothing to be done but to advise the critics to leave the artists in peace, for they can only derive inspiration from what has moved their soul. They should rather direct their attention towards effecting changes in surrounding nature and society, that such impressions and states of soul should not recur. If ugliness were to vanish from the world, if universal virtue and felicity were established there, perhaps artists would no longer represent perverse or pessimistic feelings, but calm, innocent and joyous feelings, Arcadians of a real Arcady. But so long as ugliness and turpitude exist in nature and impose themselves upon the artist, to prevent the expression of these things also is impossible; and when it has arisen, _factum infectum fieri nequit._ We speak thus entirely from the æsthetic point of view, and of pure criticism of art.

We are not concerned to estimate the damage which the criticism of "choice" does to artistic production, with the prejudices which it produces or maintains among the artists themselves, and with the conflict to which it gives rise between artistic impulse and critical demands. It is true that sometimes it seems also to do some good, by aiding artists to discover themselves, that is, their own impressions and their own inspiration, and to acquire consciousness of the task which is, as it were, imposed upon them by the historical moment in which they live, and by their individual temperament. In these cases, criticism of "choice," while believing that it generates, merely recognizes and aids the expressions which are already being formed. It believes itself to be the mother, where, at most, it is only the midwife.

[Sidenote: _The independence of art._]

The impossibility of choice of content completes the theorem of the _independence of art,_ and is also the only legitimate meaning of the expression: _art for art's sake._ Art is independent both of science and of the useful and the moral. There should be no fear lest frivolous or cold art should thus be justified, since what is truly frivolous or cold is so because it has not been raised to expression; or in other words, frivolity and frigidity come always from the form of the æsthetic treatment, from failure to grasp a content, not from the material qualities of the content itself.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the saying: the style is the man_]

The saying: _the style is the man_, can also not be completely criticized, save by starting from the distinction between the theoretic and the practical, and from the theoretic character of the æsthetic activity. Man is not simply knowledge and contemplation: he is will, which contains the cognitive moment in itself. Hence the saying is either altogether void, as when it is taken to mean that the style is the man _qua_ style--is the man, that is, but only so far as he is expressive activity; or it is erroneous, as when the attempt is made to deduce what a man has done and willed from what he has seen and expressed, thereby asserting that there is a logical connexion between knowing and willing. Many legends in the biographies of artists have sprung from this erroneous identification, since it seemed impossible that a man who gives expression to generous feelings should not be a noble and generous man in practical life; or that the dramatist whose plays are full of stabbing, should not himself have done a little stabbing in real life. Artists protest vainly: "_Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba._" They are merely taxed in addition with lying and hypocrisy. How far more prudent you were, poor women of Verona, when you founded your belief that Dante had really descended to hell upon his blackened countenance! Yours was at any rate a historical conjecture.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of the concept of sincerity in art._]

Finally, _sincerity_ imposed as a duty upon the artist (a law of ethics also said to be a law of æsthetic) rests upon another double meaning. For by sincerity may be meant, in the first place, the moral duty not to deceive one's neighbour; and in that case it is foreign to the artist. For indeed he deceives no one, since he gives form to what is already in his soul. He would only deceive if he were to betray his duty as an artist by failing to execute his task in its essential nature. If lies and deceit are in his soul, then the form which he gives to these things cannot be deceit or lies, precisely because it is æsthetic. If the artist be a charlatan, a liar, or a miscreant, he purifies his other self by reflecting it in art. If by sincerity be meant, in the second place, fulness and truth of expression, it is clear that this second sense has no relation to the ethical concept. The law, called both ethical and æsthetic, reveals itself here as nothing but a word used both by Ethics and Æsthetic.

VII

Analogy Between The Theoretic And The Practical

[Sidenote: _The two forms of the practical activity._]

The double degree of the theoretical activity, æsthetic and logical, has an important parallel in the practical activity, which has not yet been placed in due relief. The practical activity is also divided into a first and second degree, the second implying the first. The first practical degree is the simply _useful_ or _economical_ activity; the second the _moral_ activity.

Economy is, as it were, the Æsthetic of practical life; Morality its Logic.

[Sidenote: _The economically useful._]

If this has not been clearly seen by philosophers; if the correct place in the system of the spirit has not been given to the economic activity, if it has been left to wander about in the prolegomena to treatises on political economy, often vague and but little developed, this is due, among other reasons, to the fact that the useful or economic has been confused, sometimes with the concept of the _technical,_ sometimes with that of the _egoistical._

[Sidenote: _Distinction between the useful and the technical._]

_Technique_ is certainly not a special activity of the spirit. Technique is knowledge; or rather, it is knowledge itself in general which takes this name when it serves as basis, as we have seen it does, for practical action. Knowledge which is not followed, or is supposed not to be easily followed by practical action, is called "pure": the same knowledge, if effectively followed by action, is called "applied"; if it is supposed that it can be easily followed by a particular action, it is called "applicable" or "technical." This word, then, indicates a _situation_ in which knowledge is, or may easily be, not a special form of knowledge. So true is this, that it would be altogether impossible to establish whether a given order of knowledge were, intrinsically, pure or applied. All knowledge, however abstract and philosophical it may be believed to be, may be a guide to practical acts; a theoretical error in the ultimate principles of morality may be reflected and always in some way is reflected in practical life. One can only speak roughly and unscientifically of certain truths as pure and of others as applied.

The same knowledge that is called technical may also be called _useful._ But the word "_useful_" in conformity with the criticism of judgements of value made above, is to be understood as used here in a verbal or metaphorical sense. When we say that water is useful for putting out fire, the word "useful" is used in a non-scientific sense. Water thrown on the fire is the cause of its going out: this is the knowledge that serves for basis to the action, let us say, of firemen. There is a link, not of nature, but of simple succession, between the useful action of the person who extinguishes the conflagration and that knowledge. The technique of the effects of the water is the theoretical activity which precedes; the only useful thing is the _action_ of the man who extinguishes the fire.

[Sidenote: _Distinction of the useful from the egoistic._]

Some economists identify utility, that is to say, merely economic action or will, with the _egoistic,_ that is to say, with what is profitable to the individual, in so far as individual, without regard to and indeed in complete opposition to the moral law. The egoistic is the immoral. In this case Economics would be a very strange science, standing not beside but opposite Ethics, like the devil facing God, or at least like the _advocatus diaboli_ in the processes of canonization. Such a conception is altogether inadmissible: the science of immorality is implied in that of morality, as the science of the false is implied in Logic, science of the true, and a science of unsuccessful expression in Æsthetic, science of successful expression. If, then, Economics were the scientific treatment of egoism, it would be a chapter of Ethics, or Ethics itself; because every moral determination implies, at the same time, a negation of its contrary.

Further, conscience tells us that to conduct oneself economically is not to conduct oneself egoistically; that even the most morally scrupulous man must conduct himself usefully (economically), if he does not wish to act at hazard and consequently in a manner quite the reverse of moral. If utility were egoism, how could it be the duty of the altruist to behave like an egoist?

[Sidenote: _Economic will and moral will._]

If we are not mistaken, the difficulty is solved in a manner perfectly analogous to that in which is solved the problem of the relations between expression and concept, Æsthetic and Logic.

To will economically is to _will an end;_ to will morally is to _will the rational end._ But whoever wills and acts morally, cannot but will and act usefully (economically). How could he will the _rational_ end, unless he also willed it _as his particular end_?

[Sidenote: _Pure economicity._]

The converse is not true; as it is not true in æsthetic science that the expressive fact must of necessity be linked with the logical fact. It is possible