The Philosophy of Fine Art
by
G. W. F. Hegel
Translated, with Notes, by
F. P. B. Osmaston, B. A.
Vol I
Hegel
Translator’s Preface
The translation of Hegel’s “Aesthetik” or “Philosophy of Fine Art,” which is contained in the four volumes of the present work, is the first complete translation in English of the three volumes devoted to this subject in the collected edition (Berlin, 1835). I know of four partial translations in English of this work and one in French. These are Mr. W. M. Bryant’s translation of Part II , Mr. Kedney’s short analysis of the entire work , Mr. Hastie’s translation of Michelet’s short “Philosophy of Art ,” prefaced by Hegel’s Introduction, partly translated and partly summarized and lastly Professor B. Bosanquet’s complete translation of Hegel’s first Introduction with notes .
The French translation of M. Bénard purports to be more or less a reproduction of the entire work and runs into two large-sized volumes. It also is, however, so far as Hegel’s Introduction and the first two Parts are concerned, merely a compressed summary, and only in particular passages is the translation anything but a very free rendering of the original, though there is a far closer approach to this in Part III.
I have not seen Mr. Bryant’s translation. As any approach to an adequate reproduction of Hegel’s writing Mr. Hastie’s translation of Michelet’s work and Mr. Kedney’s analysis are of very little value . Professor Bosanquet’s translation is admirable within the limits imposed. To that extent I have merely followed, as I was able, in my friend’s footsteps; but this advance covers little more than one sixteenth part of the entire work of 1,600 pages.
With regard to all such analyses I entirely concur with Professor Bosanquet’s view stated in his preface, that such merely mislead if regarded as in any way a reflex of either Hegel himself or the German text. It is true that this work is — as are in their degree other volumes of the collected edition, the “Outlines of the Philosophy of Right” for example — a heterogeneous product, in our own instance not merely lacking the final revision of the author, but rather put together as such a connected treatise by the editor responsible (i) from several autograph MSS. of Hegel , some of which were little more than fragmentary notes for lectures, (ii) supplemented further from notes taken by pupils who attended such lectures, the entire conglomerate being (iii) finally dovetailed together with connecting links by the editorial hand much as, to cite his own illustration, a careful picture restorer might do in order to secure the impression of a unified work, the unity aimed at by himself being rather that of a connected literary treatise than a series of lectures.
It is obvious that a product of this nature will vary considerably throughout in the degree that the personality and unique flavour of Hegel himself, whether viewed as writer or thinker, asserts itself.
Of the greater portion of the work we can merely form our judgment of the nature of its authenticity from the content itself. On the whole I should myself say that the result was more favourable than might under such conditions have been expected. The editor assures us expressly that so far as all illustrations and the substantive content of the work is concerned no attempt has been made whatever to supplement the same. Hegel is throughout here entirely responsible. I think, further, that the endeavour claimed by the editor to preserve the general character and tone (Kolorit) of Hegel’s own diction has attained a degree of success that could only have been within the reach of devoted pupils and friends of the man himself, who for many years both attended his lectures and studied his published works. Whatever opinion, however, we may arrive at on this head there can hardly be two opinions as to the sources in which the main interest consists for a modern reader.
First, I should lay particular stress on the forceful and characteristic manner in which the fundamental philosophical conceptions which underlie the entire fabric are worked into and elaborated explicitly, throughout its detail. The very nature of this unwearied and insistent interfusion (Durchdringung) of positive fact, whether historical, scientific, or aesthetic, with the dialectic movement of the Idea is here as essentially the method of Hegel as it is elsewhere. And this is so despite the fact that it is here presented for the most part in a form less repellent to the ordinary reader and less provocative of hostile criticism. Translators therefore, who, following the example of the French translator , deliberately seek to lighten the burden of their cargo by throwing overboard what they choose to call the “injurious dialectic,” or the “dark labyrinth” of this aspect of our work may reproduce much that is of instruction or interest, but most certainly do not reproduce either the main strength of Hegel as a thinker, or the most characteristic impression — to say nothing of the repetitions — of such style or absence of literary style that he possessed.
Secondly, if there is one feature more striking than any other in this work, which is bound at least to surprise anyone who still harbours the obsolete notion that this philosopher moved in an exclusively abstract region of idea remote from the concrete experience of life and scientific or artistic knowledge, it is the wealth and extraordinary range of the illustrations in these volumes no less than the vigour and freshness of their application. In this respect two translations which merely amount to a summary of theoretical content simply omit the vital or at least the most attractive heart of the interest.
As to the present claim of this laborious work to recognition and study, its historical significance is, I think, admitted by the most acknowledged authorities on the subject. As Schasler has called it, it is the first complete system of a philosophy of Art. The nature of its importance to our own most able and learned historian of the Philosophy of Fine Art may not only be deduced from his own summary of its contents and significance in his invaluable historical survey , but is further illustrated by the fact that he has reproduced the concluding portion of Hegel’s Introduction in extenso in an Appendix to this work.
Other writers have been less judicious both as hostile critics and in the degree of their praise or enthusiasm. One German authority has called it Hegel’s masterpiece. Such a title is, apart from any other ground, sufficiently excluded by its history alone. Whether Hegel might have made it his masterpiece had he lived is of course another question.
Other admirers, such as the late Professor Caird , have more legitimately accepted such a distinction for the “Phenomenologie des Geistes.” Mr. Hastie will even have it that throughout “All is clear, radiant, harmonious and dim with the things that are a joy for ever.” Such an effusive display of abstract Vorstellung reminds one little of either the dour temper of the Swabian philosopher, or the concrete intelligence which most distinguishes him from his rivals now and in his lifetime. I can promise no such garden of Hesperides, or even Platonic banquet, to any of my readers. It is true that we have here, the work being primarily built upon lectures intended to instruct the ordinary student, no such parade of the dialectic method in its formal structure such as constitutes the root of offence in some other works of Hegel. But if we approach it with the belief that all is therefore the plain sailing we meet with in the world of journalistic art criticism and the commonsense conceptions of everyday life, or with the assurance that the work is, or can be, intelligible without some real attempt to grapple with the fundamental ideas of Hegelian metaphysic, we may find our disappointment very considerable. As a humble translator I am bound to say that in a very large number of passages I have by no means discovered immediacy of intelligibility or radiance to be a conspicuous feature of the original. Radiance is indeed, I should say, not an attribute emphatically characteristic of any kind of Teutonic literature, and least of all of its scientific and philosophical literature. The present work is certainly no exception. With its untiring, not to say remorseless, effort to press home in repeated expression, often but slightly varied, the same fundamental points, its dogged and endless persistence in the careful explication through rational definition of every kind of positive material that presents itself from the nature of the divine in man, or the soul of living beast to the accurate determination in the terms of expressed thought of a musical sound or an epigram or simile, with its well-nigh total disregard of the beauty of literary style, and its by no means unfrequent disregard of all principle of proportion in the co-ordination of its varied subject-matter — whatever else such a product may be it is most assuredly not, at least to English apprehension, reminiscent of the radiance either of Homer or Apollo.
But though even sincere admiration may smile over such a description, it does unquestionably reflect to a remarkable extent the thoroughness, tenacity of purpose, the absence of superficial rhetoric, the wide range, the extraordinary combination of constructive idea and detailed knowledge and research we rightly associate with the most valued works of German science and philosophy. It has never been more needful than at this time of day to draw attention to such qualities, when the national bias is to ignore or belittle their presence. It is, moreover, not without passages which attain to a very real elevation of eloquence, eloquence marked by the profoundest earnestness and entirely free from the least flavour of bombast or sentimentalism. To the right kind of reader it can hardly fail to convey a certain fascination which is not merely due to the presence of a powerful and original intellect, but is equally inseparable from the product of a human soul intent upon getting at the heart of its subject, and keeping its vision throughout fixed on that. Nor is the mere breadth of the canvas and the depth of its content its only attraction. The work is indeed full of digressions of exceptional interest to the general reader, and as such bears the indelible stamp of Hegel’s manner as a lecturer, which his editor maintains stood out in such marked contrast to his more concise style as an author, drawing as he did when lecturing so largely on his encyclopaedic stores of knowledge.
To treat all the text as we now have it with the same respect may very possibly betoken to some an excess of zeal on the part of the translator; but after all the most important thing for an English reader is to know what the volumes actually contain. In dealing with Hegel the outlined sketch, whether secured through a process of distillation or adulteration, is by no means any compensation for the loss of the complete picture. If we are impatient over many aspects of this philosopher’s particularity, we had much better dispense with him altogether.
Sympathetically studied it is hardly too much to say that this monumental work is an education in itself. It is at any rate one which cannot fail to enlarge our conceptions of the significance and dignity of human art. Nor is this by any means impossible, even though we are unable to concur in, or indeed remain insufficiently qualified to express a judgment upon all or even a few of the most important of its conclusions. But it is perhaps not wholly unnecessary to observe that before venturing upon a verdict in our wisdom we must, as Robert Browning submitted in reference to the criticism passed upon his poetry, have awakened both our senses and intelligence “that they may the better judge.” It is the modest aim of the present translation to make that preparatory process more easy for the English reader, to assist that intelligent assimilation of the truth as it appears to a great and world-famous thinker, which is the necessary condition of any criticism meriting respectful attention at all. Such assimilation is perhaps impossible in the case of Hegel without effort, and indeed something of sympathy with his general outlook and temper, making as he does little or no appeal whatever to the lover of literature as such, who had consequently far better leave him austerely alone to the consideration of others who are more attracted.
I do not propose in these prefatory remarks to enlarge further on the actual content of the work, or on the nature of the criticism which has been directed either to fundamental positions or matters of detail. Some of these I have referred to in my notes on the text where they are most obviously pertinent. The general reader will find a very useful introduction to some of the more primary difficulties in the study of Hegel in Professor Bosanquet’s prefatory essay to his translation. The more serious student can hardly dispense with the perusal of a considerable portion of the same writer’s history of Aesthetik, at least that portion which directly deals with the writings of Kant, Schiller, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel himself on the subject .
I hold my translation to be as literal as is possible consistently with an endeavour to render or interpret German philosophical language in the language or idiom of really expressive and intelligible English. It is now generally admitted that all translation is in the nature of an interpretation. However much I may have fallen short of my aim, that aim has been throughout to express the actual ideal content of the German, not merely with all the force and directness I could muster, but with as near an approach to the formal structure of the German text as was consistent with the like condition of really readable English. Above all I have striven to avoid the lassitude of mere paraphrase, that vague generalization of content which conceives itself to possess the right to eliminate from the text pretty much what it pleases.
The Index attached to the final volume is limited in its reference to proper names, and pre-eminently to illustrations in the text of works either of general literature, or other products of art, which I considered of use or interest to the general reader.
In the table of contents to the several volumes I have notified with brackets my own contributions to the German original. In all other respects I have retained the divisions of subject-matter as I found them recorded by Hegel or his editor.
F. P. O.
Introduction
I.
The Limits of Aesthetic Defined, and Certain Objections Against the Philosophy of Art Refuted
For a subject-matter such as this the term “Aesthetic” is no doubt not entirely appropriate, for “Aesthetic” denotes more accurately the science of the senses or emotion. It came by its origins as a science, or rather as something that to start with purported to be a branch of philosophy, during the period of the school of Wolff, in other words when works of art were generally regarded in Germany with reference to the feelings they were calculated to evoke, as, for example, the feelings of pleasure, admiration, fear, pity, and so forth. It is owing to the unsuitability or, more strictly speaking, the superficiality of this term that the attempt has been made by some to apply the name “Callistic” to this science. Yet this also is clearly insufficient inasmuch as the science here referred to does not investigate beauty in its general signification, but the beauty of art pure and simple. For this reason we shall accommodate ourselves to the term Aesthetic, all the more so as the mere question of nomenclature is for ourselves a matter of indifference. It has as such been provisionally accepted in ordinary speech, and we cannot do better than retain it. The term, however, which fully expresses our science is “Philosophy of Art,” and, with still more precision, “Philosophy of Fine Art.”
(a) In virtue of this expression we at once exclude the beauty of Nature from the scientific exposition of Fine Art. Such a limitation of our subject may very well appear from a certain point of view as an arbitrary boundary line, similar to that which every science is entitled to fix in the demarcation of its subject-matter. We must not, however, understand the limitation of “Aesthetic” to the beauty of art in this sense. We are accustomed, no doubt, in ordinary life to speak of a beautiful colour, a beautiful heaven, a beautiful stream, to say nothing of beautiful flowers, animals, and, above all, of beautiful human beings. Without entering now into the disputed question how far the quality of beauty can justly be predicated of such objects, and consequently the beauty of Nature comes generally into competition with that of art, we are justified in maintaining categorically that the beauty of art stands higher than Nature. For the beauty of art is a beauty begotten, a new birth of mind ; and to the extent that Spirit and its creations stand higher than Nature and its phenomena, to that extent the beauty of art is more exalted than the beauty of Nature. Indeed, if we regard the matter in its formal aspect, that is to say, according to the way it is there, any chance fancy that passes through any one’s head , is of higher rank than any product of Nature. For in every case intellectual conception and freedom are inseparable from such a conceit. In respect to content the sun appears to us an absolutely necessary constituent of actual fact, while the perverse fancy passes away as something accidental and evanescent. None the less in its own independent being a natural existence such as the sun possesses no power of self-differentiation; it is neither essentially free nor self-aware; and, if we regard it in its necessary cohesion with other things, we do not regard it independently for its own sake, and consequently not as beautiful.
Merely to maintain, in a general way, that mind and the beauty of art which originates therefrom stand higher than the beauty of Nature is no doubt to establish next to nothing. The expression higher is obviously entirely indefinite; it still indicates the beauty of Nature and art as standing juxtaposed in the field of conception, and emphasizes the difference as a quantitative and accordingly external difference. But in predicating of mind and its artistic beauty a higher place in contrast to Nature, we do not denote a distinction which is merely relative. Mind, and mind alone, is pervious to truth, comprehending all in itself, so that all which is beautiful can only be veritably beautiful as partaking in this higher sphere and as begotten of the same. Regarded under this point of view it is only a reflection of the beauty appertinent to mind, that is, we have it under an imperfect and incomplete mode, and one whose substantive being is already contained in the mind itself.
And apart from this we shall find the restriction to the beauty of art only natural, for in so far as the beauties of Nature may have come under discussion — a rarer occurrence among ancient writers than among ourselves — yet at least it has occurred to no one to insist emphatically on the beauty of natural objects to the extent of proposing a science, or systematic exposition of such beauties. It is true that the point of view of utility has been selected for such exclusive treatment. We have, for example, the conception of a science of natural objects in so far as they are useful in the conflict with diseases, in other words a description of minerals, chemical products, plants, animals, which subserve the art of healing. We do not find any analogous exploitation and consideration of the realm of Nature in its aspect of beauty. In the case of natural beauty we are too keenly conscious that we are dealing with an indefinite subject-matter destitute of any real criterion. It is for this reason that such an effort of comparison would carry with it too little interest to justify the attempt.
These preliminary observations over beauty in Nature and art, over the relation of both, and the exclusion of the first-mentioned from the province of our real subject-matter are intended to disabuse us of the notion that the limitation of our science is simply a question of capricious selection. We have, however, not reached the point where a demonstration of this fact is feasible for the reason that such an investigation falls within the limits of our science itself, and it is therefore only at a later stage that we can either discuss or prove the same.
Assuming, however, that we have, by way of prelude, limited our inquiry to the beauty of art, we are merely by this first step involved in fresh difficulties.
(b) What must first of all occur to us is the question whether Fine Art in itself is truly susceptible to a scientific treatment. It is a simple fact that beauty and art pervade all the affairs of life like some friendly genius, and embellish with their cheer all our surroundings, mental no less than material. They alleviate the strenuousness of such relations, the varied changes of actual life; they banish the tedium of our existence with their entertainment; and where nothing really worth having is actually achieved, it is at least an advantage that they occupy the place of actual vice. Yet while art prevails on all sides with its pleasing shapes, from the crude decorations of savage tribes up to the splendours of the sacred shrine adorned with every conceivable beauty of design, none the less such shapes themselves appear to fall outside the real purposes of life, and even where the imaginative work of art is not impervious to such serious objects, nay, rather at times even appear to assist them, to the extent at least of removing what is evil to a distance, yet for all that art essentially belongs to the relaxation and recreation of spiritual life, whereas its substantive interests rather make a call upon its strained energy. On such grounds an attempt to treat that which on its own account is not of a serious character with all the gravity of scientific exposition may very possibly appear to be unsuitable and pedantic. In any case from such a point of view art appears a superfluity if contrasted with the essential needs and interests of life, even assuming that the softening of the soul which a preoccupation with the beauty of objects is capable of producing, does not actually prove injurious in its effeminate influence upon the serious quality of those practical interests. Owing to this fundamental assumption that they are a luxury it has often appeared necessary to undertake the defence of the fine arts relatively to the necessities of practical life, and in particular relatively to morality and piety; and inasmuch as this harmlessness is incapable of demonstration, the idea has been at least to make it appear credible, that this luxury of human experience contributes a larger proportion of advantages than disadvantages. In this respect serious aims have been attributed to art, and in many quarters it has been commended as a mediator between reason and sensuous associations, between private inclinations and duty, personified in short as a reconciler of these forces in the strenuous conflict and opposition which this antagonism generates. But it is just conceivable that, even assuming the presence of such aims with all their indubitably greater seriousness, neither reason nor duty come by much profit from such mediation, for the simple reason that they are incapable by their very nature of any such interfusion or compromise, demanding throughout the same purity which they intrinsically possess. And we might add that art does not become in any respect more worthy thereby of scientific discussion, inasmuch as it remains still on two sides a menial, that is, subservient to idleness and frivolity, if also to objects of more elevated character. In such service, moreover, it can at most merely appear as a means instead of being an object for its own sake. And, in conclusion, assuming that art is a means, it still invariably labours under the formal defect, that so far as it in fact is subservient to more serious objects, and produces results of like nature, the means which actually brings this about is deception. For beauty is made vital in the appearance . Now it can hardly be denied that aims which are true and serious ought not to be achieved by deception; and though such an effect is here and there secured by this means, such ought only to be the case in a restricted degree; and even in the exceptional case we are not justified in regarding deception as the right means. For the means ought to correspond with the dignity of the aim. Neither semblance nor deception, but only what is itself real and true, possesses a title to create what is real and true. Just in the same way science has to investigate the true interests of the mind in accordance with the actual process of the real world and the manner of conceiving it as we actually find it.
We may possibly conclude from the above grounds that the art of beauty is unworthy of philosophical examination. It is after all, it may be said, only a pleasant pastime, and, though we may admit more serious aims are also in its purview, nevertheless it is essentially opposed to such aims in their seriousness. It is at the most merely the servant of specific amusements no less than the exceptional serious objects, and for the medium of its existence as also for the means of its operations can merely avail itself of deception and show.
But yet further in the second place, it is a still more plausible contention that even supposing fine art to be compatible generally with philosophical disquisition, none the less it would form no really adequate subject-matter for scientific enquiry in the strict sense. For the beauty of art is presented to sense, feeling, perception, and imagination: its field is not that of thought, and the comprehension of its activity and its creations demands another faculty than that of the scientific intelligence. Furthermore, what we enjoy in artistic beauty is just the freedom of its creative and plastic activity. In the production and contemplation of these we appear to escape the principle of rule and system. In the creations of art we seek for an atmosphere of repose and animation as some counterpoise to the austerity of the realm of law and the sombre self-concentration of thought; we seek for blithe and powerful reality in exchange for the shadow-world of the Idea. And, last of all, the free activity of the imagination is the source of the fair works of art, which in this world of the mind are even more free than Nature is herself. Not only has art at its service the entire wealth of natural form in all their superabundant variety, but the creative imagination is able inexhaustibly to extend the realm of form by its own productions and modifications. In the presence of such an immeasurable depth of inspired creation and its free products, it may not unreasonably be supposed that thought will lose the courage to apprehend such in their apparent range, to pronounce its verdict thereon, and to appropriate such beneath its universal formulae.
Science, on the other hand, everyone must admit, is formally bound to occupy itself with thinking which abstracts from the mass of particulars: and for this very reason, from one point of view, the imagination and its contingency and caprice, in other words the organ of artistic activity and enjoyment, is excluded from it. On the other hand, when art gives joyous animation to just this gloomy and arid dryness of the notion, bringing its abstractions and divisions into reconciliation with concrete fact, supplementing with its detail what is wanting to the notion in this respect, even in that case a purely contemplative reflection simply removes once more all that has been added, does away with it, conducting the notion once again to that simplicity denuded of positive reality which belongs to it and its shadowland of abstraction. It is also a possible contention that science in respect to content is concerned with what is essentially necessary. If our science of Aesthetic places on one side natural beauty, not merely have we apparently made no advance, but rather separated ourselves yet further from what is necessary. The expression Nature implies from the first the ideas of necessity and uniformity, that is to say a constitution which gives every expectation of its proximity and adaptability to scientific inquiry. In mental operations generally, and most of all in the imagination, if contrasted in this respect with Nature, caprice and superiority to every kind of formal restriction, caprice, it is here assumed, is uniquely in its right place, and these at once put out of court the basis of a scientific inquiry.
From each and all these points of view consequently, in its origin, that is to say, in its effect and in its range, fine art, so far from proving itself fitted for scientific effort, rather appears fundamentally to resist the regulative principle of thought, and to be ill-adapted for exact scientific discussion.
Difficulties of this kind, and others like them, which have been raised in respect to a thoroughly scientific treatment of fine art have been borrowed from current ideas, points of view, and reflection, the more systematic expansion of which we may read ad nauseam in previous literature, in particular French literature, upon the subject of beauty and the fine arts. Such contain to some extent facts which have their justification; in fact, elaborate arguments are deduced therefrom, which also are not without their tincture of apparent plausibility. In this way, for instance, there is the fact that the configuration of beauty is as multifold as the phenomenon of beauty is of universal extension; from which we may conclude, if we care to do so, that a universal impulse towards beauty is enclosed in our common nature, and may yet further conceivably infer, that because the conceptions of beauty are so countless in their variety and withal are obviously something particular, it is impossible to secure laws of universal validity either relatively to beauty or our taste for it.
Before turning away from such theories to the subject, as we ourselves conceive it, it will be a necessary and preliminary task to discuss the questions and objections raised above.
First, as to the worthiness of art to form the object of scientific inquiry, it is no doubt the case that art can be utilized as a mere pastime in the service of pleasure and entertainment, either in the embellishment of our surroundings, the imprinting of a delight-giving surface to the external conditions of life, or the emphasis placed by decoration on other objects. In these respects it is unquestionably no independent or free art, but an art subservient to certain objects. The kind of art, however, which we ourselves propose to examine is one which is free in its aim and its means. That art in general can serve other objects, and even be merely a pastime, is a relation which it possesses in common with thought itself. From one point of view thought likewise, as science subservient to other ends, can be used in just the same way for finite purposes and means as they chance to crop up, and as such serviceable faculty of science is not self-determined, but determined by something alien to it. But, further, as distinct from such subservience to particular objects, science is raised of its own essential resources in free independence to truth, and exclusively united with its own aims in discovering the true fulfillment in that truth.
Fine art is not art in the true sense of the term until it is also thus free, and its highest function is only then satisfied when it has established itself in a sphere which it shares with religion, and philosophy, becoming thereby merely one mode and form through which the Divine, the profoundest interests of mankind, and spiritual truths of widest range, art brought home to consciousness and expressed. It is in works of art that nations have deposited the richest intuitions and ideas they possess; and not infrequently fine art supplies a key of interpretation to the wisdom and religion of peoples; in the case of many it is the only one. This is an attribute which art shares in common with religion and philosophy, the peculiar distinction in the case of art being that its presentation of the most exalted subject-matter is in sensuous form, thereby bringing them nearer to Nature and her mode of envisagement, that is closer to our sensitive and emotional life. The world, into the profundity of which thought penetrates, is a supersensuous one, a world which to start with is posited as a Beyond in contrast to the immediacy of ordinary conscious life and present sensation. It is the freedom of reflecting consciousness which disengages itself from this immersion in the “this side,” or immediacy, in other words sensuous reality and finitude. But the mind is able, too, to heal the fracture which is thus created in its progression. From the wealth of its own resources it brings into being the works of fine art as the primary bond of mediation between that which is exclusively external, sensuous and transitory, and the medium of pure thought, between Nature and its finite reality, and the infinite freedom of a reason which comprehends. Now it was objected that the element of art was, if we view it as a whole, of an unworthy character, inasmuch as it consisted of appearance and deceptions inseparable from such. Such a contention would of course be justifiable, if we were entitled to assume that appearance had no locus standi at all. An appearance or show is, however, essential to actuality. There could be no such thing as truth if it did not appear, or, rather, let itself appear , were it not further true for some one thing or person, for itself as also for spirit. Consequently it cannot be appearance in general against which such an objection can be raised, but the particular mode of its manifestation under which art makes actual what is essentially real and true. If, then, the appearance, in the medium of which art gives determinate existence to its creations, be defined as deception, such an objection is in the first instance intelligible if we compare it with the external world of a phenomena, and its immediate relation to ourselves as material substance, or view it relatively to our own world of emotions, that is our inward sensuous life. Both these are worlds to which in our everyday life, the life, that is, of visible experience, we are accustomed to attach the worth and name of reality, actuality and truth as contrasted with that of art, which fails to possess such reality as we suppose. Now it is just this entire sphere of the empirical world, whether on its personal side or its objective side, which we ought rather to call in a stricter sense than when we apply the term to the world of art, merely a show or appearance, and an even more unyielding form of deception. It is only beyond the immediacy of emotional life and that world of external objects that we shall discover reality in any true sense of the term. Nothing is actually real but that which is actual in its own independent right and substance , that which is at once of the substance of Nature and of mind, which, while it is actually here in present and determinate existence, yet retains under such limitation an essential and self-concentred being, and only in virtue of such is truly real. The predominance of these universal powers is precisely that which art accentuates and manifests. In the external and soul-world of ordinary experience we have also no doubt this essence of actuality, but in the chaotic congeries of particular detail, encumbered by the immediacy of sensuous envisagement, and every kind of caprice of condition, event, character, and so forth. Now it is just the show and deception of this false and evanescent world which art disengages from the veritable significance of phenomena to which we have referred, implanting in the same a reality of more exalted rank born of mind. The phenomena of art therefore are not merely not appearance and nothing more; we are justified in ascribing to them, as contrasted with the realities of our ordinary life, an actually higher reality and more veritable existence. To as little extent are the representations of art a deceptive appearance as compared with the assumed truer delineations of historical writing. For immediate existence also does not belong to historical writing. It only possesses the intellectual appearance of the same as the medium of its delineations, and its content remains charged with the entire contingent materia of ordinary reality and its events, developments and personalities, whereas the work of art brings us face to face with the eternal powers paramount in history with this incidental association of the immediate sensuous present and its unstable appearance expunged.
If, however, it is in contrast with philosophic thought and religious and ethical principles, that the mode of appearance of the shapes of art, is described as a deception, there is certainly this in support of the view that the mode of revelation attained by a content in the realm of thought is the truest reality. In comparison, nevertheless, with the appearance of immediate sensuous existence and that of historical narration, the show of art possesses the advantage that, in its own virtue, it points beyond itself, directing us to a somewhat spiritual, which it seeks to envisage to the conceptive mind. Immediate appearance, on the contrary, does not give itself out to be thus illusive, but rather to be the true and real, though as a matter of fact such truth is contaminated and obstructed by the immediately sensuous medium. The hard rind of Nature and the everyday world offer more difficulty to the mind in breaking through to the Idea than do the products of art.
But if from this particular point of view we place art thus highly, we must not, on the other hand, fail to remember that neither in respect to content or form is art either the highest or most absolute mode of bringing the true interests of our spiritual life to consciousness. The very form of art itself is sufficient to limit it to a definite content. It is only a particular sphere and grade of truth which is capable of being reproduced in the form of a work of art. Such truth must have the power in its own determinate character to go out freely into sensuous shape and remain adequate to itself therein, if it is to be the genuine content of art, as is the case, for example, with the gods of Greece. On the other hand there is a profounder grasp of truth, in which the form is no longer on such easy and friendly terms with the sensuous material as to be adequately accepted and expressed by that medium. Of such a type is the Christian conception of truth; and above all it is the prevailing spirit of our modern world, or, more strictly, of our religion and our intellectual culture, which have passed beyond the point at which art is the highest mode under which the absolute is brought home to human consciousness. The type peculiar to art-production and its products fails any longer to satisfy man’s highest need. We are beyond the stage of reverence for works of art as divine and objects deserving our worship. The impression they produce is one of a more reflective kind, and the emotions which they arouse require a higher test and a further verification. Thought and reflection have taken their flight above fine art. To those who are fond of complaint and grumbling such a condition of things may be held as a form of decadence; it may be ascribed to the obsession of passion and selfish interests, which scare away the seriousness of art no less than its blithesomeness. Or we may find the fault to lie in the exigencies of the present day, the complex conditions of social and political life, which prevent the soul, entangled as it is in microscopic interests, from securing its freedom in the nobler objects of art, a condition, too, in which the intelligence itself becomes a menial to such trifling wants and the interests they excite in sciences, which subserve objects of a like nature, and are seduced into the voluntary exile of such a wilderness.
But however we may explain the fact it certainly is the case that Art is no longer able to discover that satisfaction of spiritual wants, which previous epochs and nations have sought for in it and exclusively found in it, a satisfaction which, at least on the religious side, was associated with art in the most intimate way. The fair days of Greek art, as also the golden time of the later middle ages, are over. The reflective culture of our life of to-day makes it inevitable, both relatively to our volitional power and our judgment, that we adhere strictly to general points of view, and regulate particular matters in consonance with them, so that universal forms, laws, duties, rights, and maxims hold valid as the determining basis of our life and the force within of main importance. What is demanded for artistic interest as also for artistic creation is, speaking in general terms, a vital energy, in which the universal is not present as law and maxim, but is operative in union with the soul and emotions, just as also, in the imagination, what is universal and rational is enclosed only as brought into unity with a concrete sensuous phenomenon. For this reason the present time is not, if we review its conditions in their widest range, favourable to art. And with regard to the executive artist himself it is not merely that reflection on every side, which will insist on utterance, owing to the universal habit of critical opinion and judgment, leads him astray from his art and infects his mind with a like desire to accumulate abstract thought in his creations; rather the entire spiritual culture of the times is of such a nature that he himself stands within a world thus disposed to reflection and the conditions it presupposes, and, do what he may, he cannot release himself either by his wish or his power of decision from their influence, neither can he by means of exceptional education, or a removal from the ordinary conditions of life, conjure up for himself and secure a solitude capable of replacing all that is lost.
In all these respects art is and remains for us, on the side, of its highest possibilities, a thing of the past. Herein it has further lost its genuine truth and life, and is rather transported to our world of ideas than is able to maintain its former necessity and its superior place in reality. What is now stimulated in us by works of art is, in addition to the fact of immediate enjoyment, our judgment. In other words we subject the content, and the means of presentation of the work of art, and the suitability and unsuitability of both, to the contemplation of our thought. A science of art is therefore a far more urgent necessity in our own days than in times in which art as art sufficed by itself alone to give complete satisfaction. We are invited by art to contemplate it reflectively, not, that is to say, with the object of recreating such art , but in order to ascertain scientifically its nature.
In doing our best to accept such an invitation we are confronted with the objection already adverted to, that even assuming that art is a subject adapted for philosophical investigation in a general way, yet it unquestionably is not so adapted to the systematic procedure of science. Such an objection, however, implies to start with the false notion that we can have a philosophical inquiry which is at the same time unscientific. In reply to such a point I can only here state summarily my opinion, that whatever ideas other people may have of philosophy and philosophizing, I myself conceive philosophical inquiry of any sort or kind to be inseparable from the methods of science. The function of philosophy is to examine subject-matter in the light of the principle of necessity, not, it is true, merely in accordance with its subjective necessity or external co-ordination, classification, and so forth; it has rather to unfold and demonstrate the object under review out of the necessity of its own intimate nature. Until this essential process is made explicit the scientific quality of such an inquiry is absent. In so far, however, as the objective necessity of an object subsists essentially in its logical and metaphysical nature the isolated examination of art may in such a case, at any rate, or rather inevitably, must be carried forward with a certain relaxation of scientific stringency. For art is based upon many assumptions, part of which relate to its content, part to its material or conceptive medium, in virtue of which art is never far from the borders of contingency and caprice. Consequently it is only relatively to the essential and ideal progression of its content and its means of expression that we are able to recall with advantage the formative principle of its necessity .
The objection that works of fine art defy the examination of scientific thought, because they originate in the unregulated world of imagination and temperament, and assert their effect exclusively on the emotions and the fancy with a complexity and variety which defies exact analysis, raises a difficulty which still carries genuine weight behind it . As a matter of fact the beauty of art does appear in a form which is expressly to be contrasted with abstract thought, a form which it is compelled to disturb in order to exercise its own activity in its own way. Such a result is simply a corollary of the thesis that reality anywhere and everywhere, whether the life of Nature or mind, is defaced and slain by its comprehension; that so far from being brought more close to us by the comprehension of thinking, it is only by this means that it is in the complete sense removed apart from us, so that in his attempt to grasp through thought as a means the nature of life, man rather renders nugatory this very aim. An exhaustive discussion of the subject is here impossible; we propose merely to indicate the point of view from which the removal of this difficulty or impossibility and incompatibility might be effected. It will at least be readily admitted that mind is capable of self-contemplation, and of possessing a consciousness, and indeed one that implies a power of thought co-extensive with itself and everything which originates from itself. It is, in fact, precisely thought, the process of thinking, which constitutes the most intimate and essential nature of mind. It is in this thinking-consciousness over itself and its products, despite all the freedom and caprice such may otherwise and indeed must invariably possess — assuming only mind or spirit to be veritably pregnant therein — that mind exhibits the activity congenial to its essential nature. Art and the creations of art, being works which originate in and are begotten of the spirit, are themselves stamped with the hall-mark of spirit, even though the mode of its presentation accept for its own the phenomenal guise of sensuous reality, permeating as it does the sensuous substance with intelligence. Viewed in this light art is placed from the first nearer to spirit and its thought than the purely external and unintelligent Nature. In the products of art mind is exclusively dealing with that which is its own. And although works of art are not thought and notion simply as such, but an evolution of the notion out of itself, an alienation of the same in the direction of sensuous being, yet for all that the might of the thinking spirit is discovered not merely in its ability to grasp itself in its most native form as pure thinking, but also, and as completely, to recognize itself in its self-divestment in the medium of emotion and the sensuous, to retain the grasp of itself in that “other” which it transforms but is not, transmuting the alien factor into thought-expression, and by so doing recovering it to itself. And moreover in this active and frequent relation to that “other” than itself the reflective mind is not in any way untrue to itself. We have here no oblivion or surrender of itself; neither is it so impotent as to be unable to comprehend what is differentiated from that other ; what it actually does is to grasp in the notion both itself and its opposite. For the notion is the universal, which maintains itself in its particularizations, which covers in its grasp both itself and its “other,” and consequently contains the power and energy to cancel the very alienation into which it passes. For this reason the work of art, in which thought divests itself of itself , belongs to the realm of comprehending thought; and mind, by subjecting it to scientific contemplation, thereby simply satisfies its most essential nature. For inasmuch as thought is its essence and notion, it can only ultimately find such a satisfaction after passing all the products of its activity through the alembic of rational thought, and in this way making them for the first time in very truth part of its own substance. But though art, as we shall eventually see with yet more distinctness, is far indeed from being the highest form of mind, it is only in the philosophy of art that it comes into all that it may justly claim.
In the same way art is not debarred from a philosophical inquiry by reason of its unregulated caprice. As already intimated, it is its true function to bring to consciousness the highest interests of mind. An immediate consequence of this is that, so far as the content of fine art is concerned, it cannot range about in all the wildness of an unbridled fancy; these interests of spirit posit categorically for the content that embodies them definite points of attachment , however multifold and inexhaustible may be the forms and shapes they assume. The same may be said of the forms themselves. They too do not remain unaffected by constraining principles. It is not every chance form which is capable of expressing and presenting these interests, capable of assimilating them and reproducing them. It is only through one determinate content that the form adequate to its embodiment is defined.
It is upon grounds such as these that we are also able to discover a track adapted to critical reflection through the apparently endless vistas of artistic creations and shapes.
We have now, I trust, by way of prelude, succeeded in restricting the content of our science on the lines of definition proposed. We have made it clear that neither is fine art unworthy of philosophical study, nor is such a philosophical study incapable of accepting as an object of its cognition the essence of fine art.
II.
Scientific Methods Which Apply to the Beautiful and Art
If we now investigate the required mode of such scientific investigation, we are here again face to face with two contradictory modes of handling the subject, each of which appears to exclude the other and to permit us to arrive at no satisfactory result.
On the one hand we observe the science of art, merely so to speak, from an external point of view busying itself with actual works of art, cataloguing them in a history of art, drawing up a sort of commentary upon extant works, or propounding theories which are intended to supply the general points of view for artistic criticism no less than artistic production.
On the other hand we find science wholly giving itself up in its independence and self-assured to the contemplation of the beautiful, offering generalizations which do not concern the specific characteristics of a work of art, producing in short an abstract philosophy of the beautiful.
