Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic Part 7

Expressions are not divisible into cla.s.ses, but some are successful, others half-successful, others failures. There are perfect and imperfect, complete and deficient expressions. The terms already cited, then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes the various forms of the failures. But they are employed in the most inconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the same word serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to condemn the imperfect.

An instance of this is found when someone, criticizing two pictures--the one without inspiration, in which the author has copied natural objects without intelligence; the other inspired, but without obvious likeness to existing objects--calls the first _realistic_, the second _symbolic_.

Others, on the contrary, p.r.o.nounce the word _realistic_ about a strongly felt picture representing a scene of ordinary life, while they talk of _symbolic_ in reference to another picture representing but a cold allegory. It is evident that in the first case symbolic means artistic, and realistic inartistic, while in the second, realistic is synonymous with artistic and symbolic with inartistic. How, then, can we be astonished when some hotly maintain that the true art form is the symbolic, and that the realistic is inartistic; others, that the realistic is the artistic, and the symbolic the inartistic? We cannot but grant that both are right, since each makes use of the same words in senses so diverse.

The great disputes about the _cla.s.sic_ and the _romantic_ are frequently based upon such equivokes. Sometimes the former was understood as the artistically perfect, and the second as lacking balance and imperfect; at others, the cla.s.sic was cold and artificial, the romantic sincere, warm, efficacious, and truly expressive. Thus it was always possible to take the side of the cla.s.sic against the romantic, or of the romantic against the cla.s.sic.

The same thing happens as regards the word _style_. Sometimes it is affirmed that every writer should have style. Here style is synonymous with form or expression. Sometimes the form of a code of laws or of a mathematical work is said to be devoid of style. Here the error of admitting diverse modes of expression is again committed, of admitting an ornate and a naked form of expression, because, since style is form, the code and the mathematical treatise must also, strictly speaking, have each its style. At other times, one hears the critics blaming someone for "having too much style" or for "writing a style." Here it is clear that style signifies, not the form, nor a mode of it, but improper and pretentious expression, which is one form of the inartistic.

[Sidenote] _Their use to indicate various aesthetic imperfections._

Pa.s.sing to the second, not altogether insignificant, use of these words and distinctions, we sometimes find in the examination of a literary composition such remarks as follow: here is a pleonasm, here an ellipse, there a metaphor, here again a synonym or an equivoke. This means that in one place is an error consisting of using a larger number of words than is necessary (pleonasm); that in another the error arises from too few having been used (ellipse), elsewhere from the use of an unsuitable word (metaphor), or from the use of two words which seem to express two different things, where they really express the same thing (synonym); or that, on the contrary, it arises from having employed one which seems to express the same thing where it expresses two different things (equivoke). This pejorative and pathological use of the terms is, however, more uncommon than the preceding.

[Sidenote] _Their use in a sense transcending aesthetic, in the service of science._

Finally, when rhetorical terminology possesses no aesthetic signification similar or a.n.a.logous to those pa.s.sed in review, and yet one is aware that it is not void of meaning and designates something that deserves to be noted, it is then used in the service of logic and of science. If it be granted that a concept used in a scientific sense by a given writer is expressed with a definite term, it is natural that other words formed by that writer as used to signify the same concept, or incidentally made use of by him, become, _in respect to_ the vocabulary fixed upon by him as true, metaphors, synecdoches, synonyms, elliptic forms, and the like. We, too, in the course of this treatise, have several times made use of, and intend again to make use of such terms, in order to make clear the sense of the words we employ, or may find employed. But this proceeding, which is of value in the disquisitions of scientific and intellectual criticism, has none whatever in aesthetic criticism. For science there exist appropriate words and metaphors. The same concept may be psychologically formed in various circ.u.mstances and therefore be expressed with various intuitions. When the scientific terminology of a given writer has been established, and one of these modes has been fixed as correct, then all other uses of it become improper or tropical. But in the aesthetic fact exist only appropriate words. The same intuition can only be expressed in one way, precisely because it is an intuition and not a concept.

[Sidenote] _Rhetoric in the schools._

Some, while they admit the aesthetic insufficiency of the rhetorical categories, yet make a reserve as regards their utility and the service they are supposed to render, especially in schools of literature. We confess that we fail to understand how error and confusion can educate the mind to logical clearness, or aid the teaching of a science which they disturb and obscure. Perhaps it may be desired to say that they can aid memory and learning as empirical cla.s.ses, as was admitted above for literary and artistic styles. But there is another purpose for which the rhetorical categories should certainly continue to be admitted to the schools: to be criticized there. We cannot simply forget the errors of the past, and truth cannot be kept alive, save by making it fight against error. Unless a notion of the rhetorical categories be given, accompanied by a suitable criticism of these, there is a risk of their springing up again. For they are already springing up with certain philologists, disguised as most recent _psychological_ discoveries.

[Sidenote] _The resemblances of expressions._

It would seem as though we wished to deny all bond of likeness among themselves between expressions and works of art. The likenesses exist, and owing to them, works of art can be arranged in this or that group.

But they are likenesses such as are observed among individuals, and can never be rendered with abstract definitions. That is to say, these likenesses have nothing to do with identification, subordination, co-ordination, and the other relations of concepts. They consist wholly in what is called a _family likeness_, and are connected with those historical conditions existing at the birth of the various works, or in an affinity of soul between the artists.

[Sidenote] _The relative possibility of translations._

It is in these resemblances that lies the _relative_ possibility of translations. This does not consist of the reproduction of the same original expressions (which it would be vain to attempt), but in the measure that expressions are given, more or less nearly resembling those. The translation that pa.s.ses for good is an approximation which has original value as a work of art and can stand by itself.

X

AESTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE UGLY AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Pa.s.sing on to the study of more complex concepts, where the aesthetic activity is found in conjunction with other orders of facts, and showing the mode of this union or complication, we find ourselves at once face to face with the concept of _feeling_ and with the feelings which are called _aesthetic_.

[Sidenote] _Various significances of the word feeling._

The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings. We have already had occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate the spirit in its pa.s.sivity, the matter or content of art, and also as synonym of _impressions_. Once again (and then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as designating the _non-logical_ and _non-historical_ character of the aesthetic fact, that is to say pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept and states no fact.

[Sidenote] _Feeling as activity._

But feeling is not here understood in either of these two senses, nor in the others in which it has nevertheless been used to designate other _cognoscitive_ forms of spirit. Its meaning here is that of a special activity, of non-cognoscitive nature, but possessing its two poles, positive and negative, in _pleasure_ and _pain_. This activity has always greatly embarra.s.sed philosophers, who have attempted either to deny it as an activity, or to attribute it to _nature_ and to exclude it from spirit. Both solutions bristle with difficulties, and these are of such a kind that the solutions prove themselves finally unacceptable to anyone who examines them with care. For of what could a non-spiritual activity consist, an _activity of nature_, when we have no other knowledge of activity save as spiritual, and of spirituality save as activity? Nature is, in this case, by definition, the merely pa.s.sive, inert, mechanical and material. On the other hand, the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifest activity in its concreteness, and, we will say, all aquiver.

[Sidenote] _Identification of feeling with economic activity._

This critical conclusion ought to place us in the greatest embarra.s.sment, for in the sketch of the system of the spirit given above, we have left no room for the new activity, of which we are now obliged to recognize the existence. But activity of feeling, if it be activity, is not specially new. It has already had its place a.s.signed to it in the system which we have sketched, where, however, it has been indicated under another name, as _economic_ activity. What is called the activity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical activity, which we have distinguished from ethical activity, and made to consist of the appet.i.te and desire for some individual end, without any moral determination.

[Sidenote] _Critique of hedonism._

If feeling has been sometimes considered as organic or natural activity, this has happened precisely because it does not coincide either with logical, aesthetic, or ethical activity. Looked at from the standpoint of these three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie _outside_ the true and real spirit, the spirit in its aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature and of the soul, in so far as it is nature. Thus the thesis, several times maintained, that the aesthetic activity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling, becomes at once completely proved. This thesis was inexpugnable, when sensation had already been reduced confusedly and implicitly to economic volition. The view which has been refuted is known by the name of _hedonism_. For hedonism, all the various forms of the spirit are reduced to one, which thus itself also loses its own distinctive character and becomes something turbid and mysterious, like "the shades in which all cows are black." Having effected this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and pain. They find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art and that of an easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs.

[Sidenote] _Feeling as a concomitant to every form of activity._

But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be subst.i.tuted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not said that it cannot _accompany_ them. Indeed it accompanies them of necessity, because they are all in close relation, both with one another and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains which are known as feeling. But we must not confound what is concomitant, with the princ.i.p.al fact, and take the one for the other.

The discovery of the truth, or the satisfaction of a moral duty fulfilled, produces in us a joy which makes our whole being vibrate, for, by attaining to those forms of spiritual activity, it attains at the same time that to which it was _practically_ tending, as to its end, during the effort. Nevertheless, economic or hedonistic satisfaction, ethical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, remain always distinct, even when in union.

Thus is solved at the same time the much-debated question, which has seemed, not wrongly, a matter of life or death for aesthetic science, namely, whether the feeling and the pleasure precede or follow, are cause or effect of the aesthetic fact. We must enlarge this question, to include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and solve it in the sense that in the unity of the spirit one cannot talk of cause and effect and of what comes first and what follows it in time.

And once the relation above exposed is established, the statements, which it is customary to make, as to the nature of aesthetic, moral, intellectual, and even, as is sometimes said, economic feelings, must also fall. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one, and the quest of economic feeling can be but that same one concerning the economic activity. But in the other cases also, the search can never be directed to the substantive, but to the adjective: aesthetic, morality, logic, explain the colouring of the feelings as aesthetic, moral, and intellectual, while feeling, studied alone, will never explain those refractions.

[Sidenote] _Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of feelings._

A further consequence is, that we can free ourselves from the distinction between values or feelings _of value_, and feelings that are merely hedonistic and _without value_; also from other similar distinctions, like those between _disinterested_ feelings and _interested_ feelings, between _objective _feelings and the others that are not _objective_ but simply _subjective_, between feelings of _approval_ and others of _mere pleasure_ (_Gefallen_ and _Vergnugen_ of the Germans). Those distinctions strove hard to save the three spiritual forms, which have been recognised as the triad of the _True_, the _Good_, and the _Beautiful_, from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, yet insidious through its indeterminateness, and mother of scandals. For us this triad has finished its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by welcoming even the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings, among the respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly ant.i.theses were conceived of by ourselves and others, between value and feelings, as between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but difference between value and value.

[Sidenote] _Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union._

As has already been said, the economic feeling or activity reveals itself as divided into two poles, positive and negative, pleasure and pain, which we can now translate into useful, and useless or hurtful.

This bipart.i.tion has already been noted above, as a mark of the active character of feeling, precisely because the same bipart.i.tion is found in all forms of activity. If each of these is a _value_, each has opposed to it _antivalue or disvalue_. Absence of value is not sufficient to cause disvalue, but activity and pa.s.sivity must be struggling between themselves, without the one getting the better of the other; hence the contradiction, and the disvalue of the activity that is embarra.s.sed, contested, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely: disvalue is its contrary.

We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, without entering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue, that is, between the problem of contraries. (Are these to be thought of dualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, which is also contrariety?) This definition of the two terms will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear aesthetic activity in particular, and one of the most obscure and disputed concepts of Aesthetic which arises at this point: the concept of the _Beautiful_.

[Sidenote] _The Beautiful as the value of expression, or expression and nothing more._

Aesthetic, intellectual, economic, and ethical values and disvalues are variously denominated in current speech: _beautiful, true, good, useful, just_, and so on--these words designate the free development of spiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production, when they are successful; _ugly, false, bad, useless, unbecoming, unjust, inexact_ designate embarra.s.sed activity, the product of which is a failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations are being continually shifted from one order of facts to another, and from this to that. _Beautiful_, for instance, is said not only of a successful expression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully achieved, and of a moral action: thus we talk of an _intellectual beauty_, of a _beautiful action_, of a _moral beauty_. Many philosophers, especially aestheticians, have lost their heads in their pursuit of these most varied uses: they have entered an inextricable and impervious verbal labyrinth. For this reason it has. .h.i.therto seemed convenient studiously to avoid the use of the word beautiful to indicate successful expression. But after all the explanations that have been given, and all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and since, on the other hand, we cannot fail to recognize that the prevailing tendency, alike in current speech and in philosophy, is to limit the meaning of the vocable _beautiful_ altogether to the aesthetic value, we may define beauty as _successful expression_, or better, as _expression_ and nothing more, because expression, when it is not successful, is not expression.

[Sidenote] _The ugly, and the elements of beauty which compose it._

Consequently, the ugly is unsuccessful expression. The paradox is true, that, in works of art that are failures, the beautiful is present as _unity_ and the ugly as _multiplicity_. Thus, with regard to works of art that are more or less failures, we talk of qualities, that is to say of _those parts of them that are beautiful_. We do not talk thus of perfect works. It is in fact impossible to enumerate their qualities or to designate those parts of them that are beautiful. In them there is complete fusion: they have but one quality. Life circulates in the whole organism: it is not withdrawn into certain parts.

The qualities of works that are failures may be of various degrees. They may even be very great. The beautiful does not possess degrees, for there is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, on the other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost beautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were _complete_, that is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reason cease to be ugly, because in it would be absent the contradiction which is the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become nonvalue; activity would give place to pa.s.sivity, with which it is not at war, save when there effectively is war.

[Sidenote] _Illusions that there exist expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly._

And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the ugly is based on the contrasts and contradictions in which aesthetic activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest cases of expression. From this arises the illusion that there are expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without sensible effort and appear easy and natural being so considered.

[Sidenote] _True aesthetic feelings and concomitant or accidental feelings._

The whole mystery of the _beautiful_ and the _ugly_ is reduced to these henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there exist perfect aesthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, it is necessary to advise him to pay great attention, as regards the aesthetic fact, to that only which is truly aesthetic pleasure.

Aesthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced by pleasures arising from extraneous facts, which are only casually found united with it. The poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely aesthetic pleasure, during the moment in which he sees (or has the intuition of) his work for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amus.e.m.e.nt, and that of laughingly s.n.a.t.c.hing a nail from the gaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aesthetic pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. The same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure, when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. Examples could be multiplied.

[Sidenote] _Critique of apparent feelings._

A category of _apparent_ aesthetic feelings has been formed in modern Aesthetic. These have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations of pleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. On the contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. It has been observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite variety and gradations. We tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melody of music. But these feelings are not those that would give occasion to the real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality, but they are quant.i.tively an attenuation. Aesthetic and _apparent_ pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable." We have no need to treat of these _apparent feelings_, for the good reason that we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of them alone. What are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, but feelings objectified, intensified, expressed? And it is natural that they do not trouble and agitate us pa.s.sionately, as do those of real life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula, then, of _apparent feelings_ is nothing but a tautology. The best that can be done is to run the pen through it.