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AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION

AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE

BY

DOUGLAS AINSLIE B.A. (OXON.)

1909

THE AESTHETIC IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR TO THE MEMORY OF HIS PARENTS PASQUALE AND LUISA SIPARI AND OF HIS SISTER MARIA

NOTE

I give here a close translation of the complete Theory of Aesthetic, and in the Historical Summary, with the consent of the author, an abbreviation of the historical portion of the original work.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THEORY

I INTUITION AND EXPRESSION

Intuitive knowledge—Its independence in respect to the intellect— Intuition and perception—Intuition and the concepts of space and time—Intuition and sensation—Intuition and association—Intuition and representation—Intuition and expression—Illusions as to their difference—Identity of intuition and expression.

II INTUITION AND ART

Corollaries and explanations—Identity of art and of intuitive knowledge— No specific difference—No difference of intensity—Difference extensive and empirical—Artistic genius—Content and form in Aesthetic—Critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion—Critique of art conceived as a sentimental, not a theoretic fact—The origin of Aesthetic, and sentiment—Critique of the theory of Aesthetic senses—Unity and indivisibility of the work of art—Art as deliverer.

III ART AND PHILOSOPHY

Indissolubility of intellective and of intuitive knowledge—Critique of the negations of this thesis—Art and science—Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry—The relation of first and second degree—Inexistence of other cognoscitive forms—Historicity—Identity and difference in respect of 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 AESTHETIC

Critique of the verisimilar and of naturalism—Critique of ideas in art, of art as thesis, and of the typical—Critique of the symbol and of the allegory—Critique of the theory of artistic and literary categories—Errors derived from this theory in judgments on art— Empirical meaning of the divisions of the categories.

V ANALOGOUS ERRORS IN HISTORY AND IN LOGIC

Critique of the philosophy of History—Aesthetic invasions of Logic— Logic in its essence—Distinction between logical and non-logical judgments—The syllogism—False Logic and true Aesthetic—Logic reformed.

VI THEORETIC AND PRACTICAL ACTIVITY

The will—The will as ulterior grade in respect of knowledge—Objections and explanations—Critique of practical judgments or judgments of value—Exclusion of the practical from the aesthetic—Critique of the theory of the end of art and of the choice of content—Practical innocence of art—Independence of art—Critique of the saying: the style is the man—Critique of the concept of sincerity in art.

VII ANALOGY BETWEEN THE THEORETIC AND THE PRACTICAL

The two forms of practical activity—The economically useful— Distinction between the useful and the technical—Distinction between the useful and the egoistic—Economic and moral volition—Pure economicity—The economic side of morality—The merely economical and the error of the morally indifferent—Critique of utilitarianism and the reform of Ethic and of Economic—Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity.

VIII EXCLUSION OF OTHER SPIRITUAL FORMS

The system of the spirit—The forms of genius—Inexistence of a fifth form of activity—Law; sociality—Religiosity—Metaphysic—Mental imagination and the intuitive intellect—Mystical Aesthetic—Mortality and immortality of art.

IX INDIVISIBILITY OF EXPRESSION INTO MODES OR GRADES AND CRITIQUE OF RHETORIC

The characteristics of art—Inexistence of modes of expression— Impossibility of translations—Critique of rhetorical categories— Empirical meaning of rhetorical categories—Their use as synonyms of the aesthetic fact—Their use as indicating various aesthetic imperfections—Their use as transcending the aesthetic fact, and in the service of science—Rhetoric in schools—Similarities of expressions—Relative possibility of translations.

X AESTHETIC SENTIMENTS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY

Various meanings of the word sentiment—Sentiment as activity— Identification of sentiment with economic activity—Critique of hedonism—Sentiment as concomitant of every form of activity—Meaning of certain ordinary distinctions of sentiments—Value and disvalue: the contraries and their union—The beautiful as the value of expression, or expression without adjunct—The ugly and the elements of beauty that constitute it—Illusion that there exist expressions neither beautiful nor ugly—Proper aesthetic sentiments and concomitant and accidental sentiments—Critique of apparent sentiments.

XI CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM

Critique of the beautiful as what pleases the superior senses—Critique of the theory of play—Critique of the theory of sexuality and of the triumph—Critique of the Aesthetic of the sympathetic—Meaning in it of content and of form—Aesthetic hedonism and moralism—The rigoristic negation, and the pedagogic negation of art—Critique of pure beauty.

XII THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS

Pseudo-aesthetic concepts, and the Aesthetic of the sympathetic— Critique of the theory of the ugly in art and of its surmounting— Pseudo-aesthetic concepts appertain to Psychology—Impossibility of rigorous definitions of these—Examples: definitions of the sublime, of the comic, of the humorous—Relation between those concepts and aesthetic concepts.

XIII THE SO-CALLED PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE AND IN ART

Aesthetic activity and physical concepts—Expression in the aesthetic sense, and expression in the naturalistic sense—Intuitions and memory—The production of aids to memory—The physically beautiful— Content and form: another meaning—Natural beauty and artificial beauty—Mixed beauty—Writings—The beautiful that is free and that which is not free—Critique of the beautiful that is not free— Stimulants of production.

XIV ERRORS ARISING FROM THE CONFUSION BETWEEN PHYSIC AND AESTHETIC

Critique of aesthetic associationism—Critique of aesthetic physic— Critique of the theory of the beauty of the human body—Critique of the beauty of geometrical figures—Critique of another aspect of the imitation of nature—Critique of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful—Critique of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful—The astrology of Aesthetic.

XV THE ACTIVITY OF EXTERNALIZATION. TECHNIQUE AND THE THEORY OF THE ARTS

The practical activity of externalization—The technique of externalization—Technical theories of single arts—Critique of the classifications of the arts—Relation of the activity of externalization with utility and morality.

XVI TASTE AND THE REPRODUCTION OF ART

Aesthetic judgment. Its identity with aesthetic reproduction— Impossibility of divergences—Identity of taste and genius—Analogy with the other activities—Critique of absolutism (intellectualism) and of aesthetic relativism—Critique of relative relativism—Objections founded on the variation of the stimulus and of the psychic disposition— Critique of the distinction of signs as 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—Artistic and literary history. Its distinction from historical criticism and from the aesthetic judgment—The method of artistic and literary history—Critique of the problem of the origin of art—The criterion of progress and history—Inexistence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history—Errors in respect of this law—Other meanings of the word "progress" in relation to Aesthetic.

XVIII CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC

Summary of the inquiry—Identity of Linguistic with Aesthetic— Aesthetic formulation of linguistic problems. Nature of language— Origin of language and its development—Relation between Grammatic and Logic—Grammatical categories or parts of speech—Individuality of speech and the classification of languages—Impossibility of a normative Grammatic—Didactic organisms—Elementary linguistic elements, or roots—The aesthetic judgment and the model language— Conclusion.

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

Aesthetic ideas in Graeco-Roman antiquity—In the Middle Age and at the Renaissance—Fermentation of thought in the seventeenth century—Aesthetic ideas in Cartesianism, Leibnitzianism, and in the "Aesthetic" of Baumgarten—G.B. Vico—Aesthetic doctrines in the eighteenth century—Emmanuel Kant—The Aesthetic of Idealism with Schiller and Hegel—Schopenhauer and Herbart—Friedrich Schleiermacher—The philosophy of language with Humboldt and Steinthal—Aesthetic in France, England, and Italy during the first half of the nineteenth century—Francesco de Sanctis—The Aesthetic of the epigoni—Positivism and aesthetic naturalism—Aesthetic psychologism and other recent tendencies—Glance at the history of certain particular doctrines—Conclusion.

APPENDIX

Translation of the lecture on Pure Intuition and the lyrical nature of art, delivered by Benedetto Croce before the International Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg.

INTRODUCTION

There are always Americas to be discovered: the most interesting in
Europe.

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.

Croce's America cannot be expressed in geographical terms. It is more important than any space of mountain and river, of forest and dale. It belongs to the kingdom of the spirit, and has many provinces. That province which most interests me, I have striven in the following pages to annex to the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon race; an act which cannot be blamed as predatory, since it may be said of philosophy more truly than of love, that "to divide is not to take away."

The Historical Summary will show how many a brave adventurer has navigated the perilous seas of speculation upon Art, how Aristotle's marvellous insight gave him glimpses of its beauty, how Plato threw away its golden fruit, how Baumgarten sounded the depth of its waters, Kant sailed along its coast without landing, and Vico hoisted the Italian flag upon its shore.

But Benedetto Croce has been the first thoroughly to explore it, cutting his way inland through the tangled undergrowth of imperfect thought. He has measured its length and breadth, marked out and described its spiritual features with minute accuracy. The country thus won to philosophy will always bear his name, Estetica di Croce, a new America.

It was at Naples, in the winter of 1907, that I first saw the Philosopher of Aesthetic. 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 Aesthetic 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.

No one could have been further removed than myself, as I turned over at Naples the pages of La Critica, from any idea that I was nearing the solution of the problem of Art. All my youth it had haunted me. As an undergraduate at Oxford I had caught the exquisite cadence of Walter Pater's speech, as it came from his very lips, or rose like the perfume of some exotic flower from the ribbed pages of the Renaissance.

Seeming to solve the riddle of the Sphinx, he solved it not—only delighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he led one along the pathways of his Enchanted Garden, where I shall always love to tread.

Oscar Wilde, too, I had often heard at his best, the most brilliant talker of our time, his wit flashing in the spring sunlight of Oxford luncheon-parties as now in his beautiful writings, like the jewelled rapier of Mercutio. But his works, too, will be searched in vain by the seeker after definite aesthetic truth.

With A.C. Swinburne I had sat and watched the lava that yet flowed from those lips that were kissed in youth by all the Muses. Neither from him nor from J.M. Whistler's brilliant aphorisms on art could be gathered anything more than the exquisite pleasure of the moment: the monochronos haedonae. Of the great pedagogues, I had known, but never sat at the feet of Jowett, whom I found far less inspiring than any of the great men above mentioned. Among the dead, I had studied Herbert Spencer and Matthew Arnold, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Guyau: I had conversed with that living Neo-Latin, Anatole France, the modern Rousseau, and had enjoyed the marvellous irony and eloquence of his writings, which, while they delight the society in which he lives, may well be one of the causes that lead to its eventual destruction.

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

To return to Naples. As I looked over those pages of the bound volumes of La Critica. I soon became aware that I was in the presence of a mind far above the ordinary level of literary criticism. The profound studies of Carducci, of d'Annunzio, and of Pascoli (to name but three), in which those writers passed before me in all their strength and in all their weakness, led me to devote several days to the Critica. At the end of that time I was convinced that I had made a discovery, and wrote to the philosopher, who owns and edits that journal.

In response to his invitation, I made my way, on a sunny day in November, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like a necklace, the Rione de la Bellezza, and wound zigzag along the over-crowded Toledo. I knew that Signor Croce lived in the old part of the town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as I experienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself in old Naples. This has already been described elsewhere, and I will not here dilate upon this world within a world, having so much of greater interest to tell in a brief space. I will merely say that the costumes here seemed more picturesque, the dark eyes flashed more dangerously than elsewhere, there was a quaint life, an animation about the streets, different from anything I had known before. As I climbed the lofty stone steps of the Palazzo to the floor where dwells the philosopher of Aesthetic I felt as though I had stumbled into the eighteenth century and were calling on Giambattista Vico. After a brief inspection by a young man with the appearance of a secretary, I was told that I was expected, and admitted into a small room opening out of the hall. Thence, after a few moments' waiting, I was led into a much larger room. The walls were lined all round with bookcases, barred and numbered, filled with volumes forming part of the philosopher's great library. I had not long to wait. A door opened behind me on my left, and a rather short, thick-set man advanced to greet me, and pronouncing my name at the same time with a slight foreign accent, asked me to be seated beside him. After the interchange of a few brief formulae of politeness in French, our conversation was carried on in Italian, and I had a better opportunity of studying my host's air and manner. His hands he held clasped before him, but frequently released them, to make those vivid gestures with which Neapolitans frequently clinch their phrase. His most remarkable feature was his eyes, of a greenish grey: extraordinary eyes, not for beauty, but for their fathomless depth, and for the sympathy which one felt welling up in them from the soul beneath. This was especially noticeable as our conversation fell upon the question of Art and upon the many problems bound up with it. I do not know how long that first interview lasted, but it seemed a few minutes only, during which was displayed before me a vast panorama of unknown height and headland, of league upon league of forest, with its bright-winged birds of thought flying from tree to tree down the long avenues into the dim blue vistas of the unknown.

I returned with my brain awhirl, as though I had been in fairyland, and when I looked at the second edition of the Estetica, with his inscription, I was sure of it.

These lines will suffice to show how the translation of the Estetica originated from the acquaintance thus formed, which has developed into friendship. I will now make brief mention of Benedetto Croce's other work, especially in so far as it throws light upon the Aesthetic. For this purpose, besides articles in Italian and German reviews, I have made use of the excellent monograph on the philosopher, by G. Prezzolini.[1]

First, then, it will be well to point out that the Aesthetic forms part of a complete philosophical system, to which the author gives the general title of "Philosophy of the Spirit." The Aesthetic is the first of the three volumes. The second is the Logic, the third the Philosophy of the Practical.

In the Logic, as elsewhere in the system, Croce combats that false conception, by which natural science, in the shape of psychology, makes claim to philosophy, and formal logic to absolute value. The thesis of the pure concept cannot be discussed here. It is connected with the logic of evolution as discovered by Hegel, and is the only logic which contains in itself the interpretation and the continuity of reality. Bergson in his L'Evolution Créatrice deals with logic in a somewhat similar manner. I recently heard him lecture on the distinction between spirit and matter at the Collège de France, and those who read French and Italian will find that both Croce's Logic and the book above mentioned by the French philosopher will amply repay their labour. The conception of nature as something lying outside the spirit which informs it, as the non-being which aspires to being, underlies all Croce's thought, and we find constant reference to it throughout his philosophical system.

With regard to the third volume, the Philosophy of the Practical, it is impossible here to give more than a hint of its treasures. I merely refer in passing to the treatment of the will, which is posited as a unity inseparable from the volitional act. For Croce there is no difference between action and intention, means and end: they are one thing, inseparable as the intuition-expression of Aesthetic. The Philosophy of the Practical is a logic and science of the will, not a normative science. Just as in Aesthetic the individuality of expression made models and rules impossible, so in practical life the individuality of action removes the possibility of catalogues of virtues, of the exact application of laws, of the existence of practical judgments and judgments of value previous to action.

The reader will probably ask here: But what, then, becomes of morality? The question will be found answered in the Theory of Aesthetic, and I will merely say here that Croce's thesis of the double degree of the practical activity, economic and moral, is one of the greatest contributions to modern thought. Just as it is proved in the Theory of Aesthetic that the concept depends upon the intuition, which is the first degree, the primary and indispensable thing, so it is proved in the Philosophy of the Practical that Morality or Ethic depends upon Economic, which is the first degree of the practical activity. The volitional act is always economic, but true freedom of the will exists and consists in conforming not merely to economic, but to moral conditions, to the human spirit, which is greater than any individual. Here we are face to face with the ethics of Christianity, to which Croce accords all honour.

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.

Among Croce's other important contributions to thought must be mentioned his definition of History as being aesthetic and differing from Art solely in that history represents the real, art the possible. In connection with this definition and its proof, the philosopher recounts how he used to hold an opposite view. Doing everything thoroughly, he had prepared and written out a long disquisition on this thesis, which was already in type, when suddenly, from the midst of his meditations, the truth flashed upon him. He saw for the first time clearly that history cannot be a science, since, like art, it always deals with the particular. Without a moment's hesitation he hastened to the printers and bade them break up the type.

This incident is illustrative of the sincerity and good faith of Benedetto Croce. One knows him to be severe for the faults and weaknesses of others, merciless for his own.

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.[2]

Croce's education was largely completed in Germany, and on account of their thoroughness he has always been an upholder of German methods. One of his complaints against the Italian Positivists is that they only read second-rate works in French or at the most "the dilettante booklets published in such profusion by the Anglo-Saxon press." This tendency towards German thought, especially in philosophy, depends upon the fact of the former undoubted supremacy of Germany in that field, but Croce does not for a moment admit the inferiority of the Neo-Latin races, and adds with homely humour in reference to Germany, that we "must not throw away the baby with the bath-water"! Close, arduous study and clear thought are the only key to scientific (philosophical) truth, and Croce never begins an article for a newspaper without the complete collection of the works of the author to be criticized, and his own elaborate notes on the table before him. Schopenhauer said there were three kinds of writers—those who write without thinking, the great majority; those who think while they write, not very numerous; those who write after they have thought, very rare. Croce certainly belongs to the last division, and, as I have said, always feeds his thought upon complete erudition. The bibliography of the works consulted for the Estetica alone, as printed at the end of the Italian edition, extends to many pages and contains references to works in any way dealing with the subject in all the European languages. For instance, Croce has studied Mr. B. Bosanquet's eclectic works on Aesthetic, largely based upon German sources and by no means without value. But he takes exception to Mr. Bosanquet's statement that he has consulted all works of importance on the subject of Aesthetic. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bosanquet reveals his ignorance of the greater part of the contribution to Aesthetic made by the Neo-Latin races, which the reader of this book will recognize as of first-rate importance.

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 Maeterlinck; 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?

Croce is far above any personal animus, although the same cannot be said of those he criticizes. These, like d'Annunzio, whose limitations he points out—his egoism, his lack of human sympathy—are often very bitter, and accuse the penetrating critic of want of courtesy. This seriousness of purpose runs like a golden thread through all Croce's work. The flimsy superficial remarks on poetry and fiction which too often pass for criticism in England (Scotland is a good deal more thorough) are put to shame by La Critica, the study of which I commend to all readers who read or wish to read Italian.[3] They will find in its back numbers a complete picture of a century of Italian literature, besides a store-house of philosophical criticism. The Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews are our only journals which can be compared to The Critica, and they are less exhaustive on the philosophical side. We should have to add to these Mind and the Hibbert Journal to get even an approximation to the scope of the Italian review.

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 Aesthetic, 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 shewing 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 Aesthetic occurs for the first time; and Schleiermacher for the tributes paid to his neglected genius in the History of Aesthetic. La Critica, too, is full of generous appreciation of contemporaries by Croce and by that profound thinker, Gentile.

But it is not only philosophers who have reason to be grateful to Croce for his untiring zeal and diligence. Historians, economists, poets, actors, and writers of fiction have been rescued from their undeserved limbo by this valiant Red Cross knight, and now shine with due brilliance in the circle of their peers. It must also be admitted that a large number of false lights, popular will o' the wisps, have been ruthlessly extinguished with the same breath. For instance, Karl Marx, the socialist theorist and agitator, finds in Croce an exponent of his views, in so far as they are based upon the truth, but where he blunders, his critic immediately reveals the origin and nature of his mistakes. Croce's studies in Economic are chiefly represented by his work, the title of which may be translated "Historical Materialism and Marxist Economic."

To indicate the breadth and variety of Croce's work I will mention the further monograph on the sixteenth century Neapolitan Pulcinella (the original of our Punch), and the personage of the Neapolitan in comedy, a monument of erudition and of acute and of lively dramatic criticism, that would alone have occupied an ordinary man's activity for half a lifetime. One must remember, however, that Croce's average working day is of ten hours. His interest is concentrated on things of the mind, and although he sits on several Royal Commissions, such as those of the Archives of all Italy and of the monument to King Victor Emmanuel, he has taken no university degree, and much dislikes any affectation of academic superiority. He is ready to meet any one on equal terms and try with them to get at the truth on any subject, be it historical, literary, or philosophical. "Truth," he says, "is democratic," and I can testify that the search for it, in his company, is very stimulating. As is well said by Prezzolini, "He has a new word for all."

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.

His dislike of Academies and of all forms of prejudice runs parallel with his breadth and sympathy with all forms of thought. His activity in the present is only equalled by his reverence for the past. Naples he loves with the blind love of the child for its parent, and he has been of notable assistance to such Neapolitan talent as is manifested in the works of Salvatore di Giacomo, whose best poems are written in the dialect of Naples, or rather in a dialect of his own, which Croce had difficulty in persuading the author always to retain. The original jet of inspiration having been in dialect, it is clear that to amend this inspiration at the suggestion of wiseacres at the Café would have been to ruin it altogether.

Of the popularity that his system and teaching have already attained we may judge by the fact that the Aesthetic[4], 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. Connected with this view of life is Croce's dislike of "Modernism." When once a problem has been correctly solved, it is absurd to return to the same problem. Roman Catholicism cannot march with the times. It can only exist by being conservative—its only Logic is to be illogical. Therefore, Croce is opposed to Loisy and Neo-Catholicism, and supports the Encyclical against Modernism. The Catholic religion, with its great stores of myth and morality, which for many centuries was the best thing in the world, is still there for those who are unable to assimilate other food. Another instance of his dislike for Modernism is his criticism of Pascoli, whose attempts to reveal enigmas in the writings of Dante he looks upon as useless. We do not, he says, read Dante in the twentieth century for his hidden meanings, but for his revealed poetry.

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.

Croce has been called the philosopher-poet, and if we take philosophy as Novalis understood it, certainly Croce does belong to the poets, though not to the formal category of those who write in verse. Croce is at any rate a born philosopher, and as every trade tends to make its object prosaic, so does every vocation tend to make it poetic. Yet no one has toiled more earnestly than Croce. "Thorough" might well be his motto, and if to-day he is admitted to be a classic without the stiffness one connects with that term, be sure he has well merited the designation. His name stands for the best that Italy has to give the world of serious, stimulating thought. I know nothing to equal it elsewhere.

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 Aesthetic, 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 ATHENAEUM, PALL MALL, May 1909.

[1] Napoli, Riccardo Ricciardi, 1909.

[2] The reader will find this critique summarized in the historical portion of this volume.

[3] La Critica is published every other month by Laterza of Bari.

[4] This translation is made from the third Italian edition (Bari, 1909), enlarged and corrected by the author. The Theory of Aesthetic first appeared in 1900 in the form of a communication to the Accademia Pontiana of Naples, vol. xxx. The first edition is dated 1902, the second 1904 (Palermo).

I

INTUITION AND EXPRESSION

[Sidenote] Intuitive knowledge.

Human 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 to be impossible to give expression to certain truths; that they are not demonstrable by syllogisms; that they must be learnt intuitively. The politician finds fault with the abstract reasoner, who is without a lively knowledge of actual conditions; the pedagogue 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 meet with an equal and adequate acknowledgment in the field of theory and of philosophy. There exists a very ancient science of intellective knowledge, admitted by all without discussion, namely, Logic; but a science of intuitive knowledge is timidly and with difficulty admitted by but a few. Logical knowledge has appropriated the lion's share; and if she does not quite slay and devour her companion, yet yields to her with difficulty the humble little place of maidservant or doorkeeper. What, it says, is intuitive knowledge without the light of intellective 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 in respect to intellective 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 most 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 intellective relation. But, think what one may of these instances, and admitting further that one may maintain 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 they 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 figure does not there represent the red colour of the physicists, but is a characteristic element of the portrait. The whole it is that 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 be there 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 it may contain, the result of the work of art is an intuition; and notwithstanding all those intuitions, the result of the philosophical dissertation is a concept. The Promessi Sposi contains copious ethical observations and distinctions, but it does not for that reason lose in its total effect its character of simple story, of intuition. In like manner the anecdotes and satirical effusions which may be found in the works of a philosopher like Schopenhauer, do not remove from those works their character of intellective treatises. The difference between a scientific work and a work of art, that is, between an intellective fact and an intuitive fact lies in the result, in the diverse effect aimed at by their respective authors. This it is that determines and rules over the several parts of each.

[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 make intuition explicitly dependent upon the intellect. This error obscures and confounds the real nature of intuition. By intuition is frequently understood the perception or knowledge of actual reality, the apprehension of something as real.

Certainly perception is intuition: the perception 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 assume the existence of a human mind which should have intuitions for the first time, it would seem that it could have intuitions of effective reality only, that is to say, that it could have perceptions of nothing but the real. But if the knowledge of reality be based upon the distinction between real images and unreal images, and if this distinction does not originally exist, these intuitions would in truth not be intuitions either of the real or of the unreal, 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 indifferentiated unity of the perception of the real and of the simple image of the possible. In our intuitions we do not oppose ourselves to external reality as empirical beings, 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 intuitions is to place 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, found mingled with intuitions. We have intuitions without space and without time: a tint of sky and a tint of sentiment, an Ah! 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, this without that; and even where both are found, they are perceived by posterior 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 essentials. Who, without a similar act of interruptive reflexion, is conscious of temporal sequence while listening to a story or a piece of music? That which intuition reveals in a work of art is not space and time, but character, individual physiognomy. Several attempts may be noted in modern philosophy, which confirm the view here exposed. Space and time, far from being very simple and primitive functions, are shown to be intellectual constructions of great complexity. And further, even in some of those who do not altogether deny to space and time the quality of forming or of categories and functions, one may observe the attempt to unify and to understand them in a different manner from that generally maintained in respect of these categories. Some reduce intuition to the unique category of spatiality, maintaining that time also can only be conceived in terms of space. Others abandon the three dimensions of space as not philosophically necessary, and conceive the function of spatiality as void of every particular spatial determination. But what could such a spatial function be, that should control even time? May it not be a residuum of criticisms and of negations from which arises merely the necessity to posit a generic intuitive activity? And is not this last truly determined, when one unique function is attributed to it, not spatializing nor temporalizing, but characterizing? Or, better, when this is conceived as itself a category or function, which gives knowledge of things in their concretion and individuality?

[Sidenote] Intuition and sensation.

Having thus freed intuitive knowledge from any suggestion of intellectualism and from every posterior and external adjunct, we must now make clear and determine its limits from another side and from a different kind of invasion and confusion. On the other side, and before the inferior boundary, is sensation, formless matter, which the spirit can never apprehend in itself, in so far as it is mere matter. This it can only possess with form and in form, but postulates its concept as, precisely, a limit. Matter, in its abstraction, is mechanism, passivity; it is what the spirit of man experiences, but does not produce. Without it no human knowledge and activity is possible; but mere matter produces animality, whatever is brutal and impulsive in man, not the spiritual dominion, which is humanity. How often do 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. In such moments it is, that we best perceive the profound difference between matter and form. These are not two acts of ours, face to face with one another; but we assault and carry off the one that is outside us, while that within us tends to absorb and make its own that without. Matter, attacked and conquered by form, gives place to concrete form. It is the matter, the content, that differentiates one of our intuitions from another: form is constant: it is spiritual activity, while matter is changeable. Without matter, however, our spiritual activity would not leave its abstraction to become concrete and real, 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 easily ignored or denied. Some confound the spiritual activity of man with the metaphorical and mythological activity of so-called nature, which is mechanism and has no resemblance to human activity, save when we imagine, with Aesop, that arbores loquuntur non tantum ferae. Some even 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, desire to unify activity and mechanism in a more general concept, though admitting that they are specifically distinct. Let us, however, refrain for the moment from examining if such a 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 a difference between the two first. And here it is this difference that is of importance and we set it in relief.

[Sidenote] Intuition and association.

Intuition has often been confounded with simple sensation. But, since this confusion is too shocking to good sense, it has more frequently been attenuated or concealed with a phraseology which seems to wish to confuse and to distinguish them at the same time. Thus, it has been asserted that intuition is sensation, but not so much simple sensation as association of sensations. The equivoque arises precisely from the word "association." Association is understood, either as memory, mnemonic association, conscious recollection, and in that case is evident the absurdity of wishing to join together in memory elements which are not intuified, distinguished, possessed in some way by the spirit and produced by consciousness: or it is understood as association of unconscious elements. In this case we remain in the world of sensation and of nature. Further, if with certain associationists we speak of an association which is neither memory nor flux of sensations, but is a productive association (formative, constructive, distinguishing); then we admit the thing itself and deny only its name. In truth, productive association is no longer association in the sense of the sensualists, 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 intellective concept: the representation or image. What is the difference between their representation or image, and our intuitive knowledge? The greatest, and none at all. "Representation," too, is a very equivocal word. If by representation be understood something detached and standing out from the psychic base of the sensations, then representation is intuition. If, on the other hand, it be conceived as a complex sensation, a return is made to simple sensation, which does not change its quality according to its richness or poverty, operating alike in a rudimentary or in a developed organism full of traces of past sensations. Nor is the equivoque remedied by defining representation as a psychic product of secondary order in relation to sensation, which should occupy the first place. What does secondary order mean here? Does it mean a qualitative, a formal difference? If so, we agree: representation is elaboration of sensation, it is intuition. Or does it mean greater complexity and complication, a quantitative, material difference? In that case intuition would be again 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 naturality. The spirit does not obtain intuitions, otherwise than by 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 expression seem at first paradoxical, that is chiefly because, as a general rule, a too restricted meaning is given to the word "expression." It is generally thought of as restricted to verbal expression. But there exist also non-verbal expressions, such as those of line, colour, and sound; to all of these must be extended our affirmation. The intuition and expression together of a painter are pictorial; those of a poet are verbal. But be it pictorial, or verbal, or musical, or whatever else it be called, to no intuition can expression be wanting, because it is an inseparable part of intuition. How can we possess a true 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 a slate? How can we 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 sentiments, but only so far as he is able to formulate them. Sentiments or impressions, then, pass by means of words from the obscure region of the soul into the clarity of the contemplative spirit. In this cognitive process it is impossible to distinguish intuition from expression. The one is produced with the other at the same instant, because they are not two, but one.

[Sidenote] Illusions as to their difference.

The principal reason which makes our theme 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 in their minds many important thoughts, but that they are not able to express them. In truth, if they really had them, they would have coined them into beautiful, ringing words, and thus expressed them. If these thoughts seem to vanish or to become scarce and poor in the act of expressing them, either they did not exist or they really were scarce and poor. People think that all of us ordinary men imagine and have intuitions of countries, figures and scenes, like painters; of bodies, like sculptors; save that painters and sculptors know how to paint and to sculpture those images, while we possess them only within our souls. They believe that anyone could have imagined a Madonna of Raphael; but that Raphael was Raphael owing to his technical ability in putting the Madonna upon the canvas. Nothing can be more false than this view. The world of which as a rule we have intuitions, is a small thing. It consists of little expressions which gradually become greater and more ample with the increasing spiritual concentration of certain moments. These are the sort of words which we speak within ourselves, the judgments that we tacitly express: "Here is a man, here is a horse, this is heavy, this is hard, this pleases me," etc. It is a medley of light and colour, which could not pictorially attain to any more sincere expression than a haphazard splash of colours, from among which would with difficulty stand 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 take the place of the things themselves. This index and labels (which are themselves expressions) suffice for our 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 being easy. It has been observed by those who have best studied the psychology of artists, that when, after having given a rapid glance at anyone, they attempt to obtain a true 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. Michael Angelo said, "one paints, not with one's hands, but with one's brain." Leonardo shocked the prior of the convent delle Grazie by standing for days together opposite the "Last Supper" without touching it with the brush. He remarked of this attitude "that men of the most lofty genius, when they are doing the least work, are then the most active, seeking invention with their minds." 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 from which it results, as the painter perceives them after his internal meditations, which thus enable him to fix them on the canvas. Even in the case of our intimate friend, who is with us every day and at all hours, we do not possess intuitively more than, at the most, certain traits of his physiognomy, which enable us to distinguish him from others. The illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to everyone to say that the composer had added or attached notes to the motive, which is already in the mind of him who is not the composer. As if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not his own intuition and his own intuition the Ninth Symphony. Thus, just as he who is deceived as to his material wealth is confuted by arithmetic, which states its exact amount, so is he confuted who nourishes delusions as to the wealth of his own thoughts and images. He is brought back to reality, when he is obliged to cross the Bridge of Asses of expression. We say to the former, count; to the latter, speak, here is a pencil, draw, express yourself.

We have each of us, as a matter of fact, 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 are so called, precisely because of the lofty degree in which they possess the most universal dispositions and energies of human nature! How little does a painter possess of the intuitions of a poet! 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 is outside the spirit, not assimilated by man, postulated for the convenience of exposition, but effectively inexistent, if existence be also a spiritual fact.

[Sidenote] Identity of intuition and expression.

We may then add this to the verbal variants descriptive of intuition, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge, independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function; indifferent to discriminations, posterior and empirical, to reality and to unreality, to formations and perceptions of space and time, even when posterior: intuition or representation is distinguished as form from what is felt and suffered, from the flux or wave of sensation, or from psychic material; and this form this taking possession of, is expression. To have an intuition is to express. It is nothing else! (nothing more, but nothing less) than to express.

II

INTUITION AND ART

[Sidenote] Corollaries and explanations.

Before proceeding further, it seems opportune to draw certain consequences from what has been established and to add some explanation.

[Sidenote] Identity of art and intuitive knowledge.

We have frankly identified intuitive or expressive knowledge with the aesthetic 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 the 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 of 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 should 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 imply what is wished, for the good reason that it is not true that the scientific concept is the concept of a concept. If this comparison imply anything, it implies 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; it adds and substitutes other concepts larger and more comprehensive for those that are poor and limited. 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 art, by antonomasia, 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 the expression of impressions, not the expression of expressions.

[Sidenote] No difference of intensity.

For the same reason, it cannot be admitted that intuition, which is generally called artistic, differs from ordinary intuition as to intensity. This would be the case if it were to operate differently on the same matter. But since artistic function is more widely distributed in different fields, but yet does not differ in method from ordinary intuition, the difference between the one and the other is not intensive but extensive. The intuition of the simplest popular love-song, which says the same thing, or very nearly, as a declaration of love such as 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, 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 more rarely achieved and these are called works of art. The limits of the expressions and intuitions that are called art, as opposed to those that are vulgarly called not-art, are empirical and impossible to define. If an epigram be art, why not a single word? If a story; why not the occasional note 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 created prose for forty years without knowing it, and 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 Aesthetic, 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 circle. No one is astonished when he learns from physiology that every cellule is an organism and every organism a cellule or synthesis of cellules. No one is astonished at finding in a lofty mountain the same chemical elements that compose a small stone or 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 distinct from a science of greater intuition, nor one of ordinary intuition distinct from artistic intuition. There is but one Aesthetic, the science of intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic fact. And this Aesthetic is the true analogy of Logic. Logic 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 be identity of nature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference be only one of quantity? It were well to change poeta nascitur into homo nascitur poeta: some men are born great poets, some small. The cult and superstition of the genius 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 distant 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 may be wanting to the artistic genius is the reflective consciousness, the superadded consciousness of the historian or critic, which is not essential to artistic genius.

[Sidenote] Content and form in Aesthetic.

The relation between matter and form, or between content and form, as it is generally called, is one of the most disputed questions in Aesthetic. Does the aesthetic 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 emotivity not aesthetically elaborated, that is to say, impressions, and form elaboration, intellectual activity and expression, then our meaning cannot be doubtful. We must, therefore, reject the thesis that makes the aesthetic fact to consist of the content alone (that is, of the simple impressions), in like manner with that other thesis, which makes it to consist of a junction between form and content, that is, of impressions plus expressions. In the aesthetic fact, the aesthetic 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 aesthetic fact, therefore, is form, and nothing but form.

From this it results, 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 between the quality of the content and that of the form. It has sometimes been thought that the content, in order to be aesthetic, that is to say, transformable into form, should possess some determinate or determinable quality. 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 of its nature. It does not become aesthetic content at once, but only when it has been effectively transformed. Aesthetic content has also been defined as what is interesting. That is not an untrue statement; it is merely void of meaning. What, then, is interesting? Expressive activity? Certainly the expressive activity would not have raised the content to the dignity of form, had it not been interested. The fact of its having been interested is precisely the fact of its raising the content to the dignity of form. But the word "interesting" has also been employed in another not illegitimate sense, which we shall explain further on.

[Sidenote] Critique of the imitation of nature and of the artistic illusion.

The proposition that art is imitation of nature has also several meanings. Now truth has been maintained or at least shadowed with these words, now error. More frequently, nothing definite has been thought. One of the legitimate scientific meanings occurs when imitation is understood as representation or intuition of nature, a form of knowledge. And when this meaning has been understood, by placing in greater relief the spiritual character of the process, the other proposition becomes also legitimate: 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, before which the same tumult of impressions caused by natural objects begins over again, then the proposition is evidently false. The painted wax figures that seem to be alive, and before which we stand astonished in the museums where such things are shown, do not give aesthetic intuitions. Illusion and hallucination have nothing to do with the calm domain of artistic intuition. 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 again have spiritual labour and artistic intuition. Finally, if photography have anything in it of artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. And if it be not altogether art, that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or less insubordinate 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 any of them?