Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast

AN ESSAY
IN
EVOLUTIONARY AESTHETIC

BY

STEWART A. McDOWALL, B.D.

Chaplain and Assistant Master at Winchester College
Author of Evolution and the Need of Atonement,
Evolution and Spiritual Life, Evolution and
the Doctrine of the Trinity, etc.

CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920

For verily all men by nature were but vain who had no perception of God, and from the good things that are seen they gained not power to know him that is, neither by giving heed to the works did they recognise the artificer; but either fire, or wind, or swift air, or circling stars, or raging water, or luminaries of heaven, they thought to be gods that rule the world. And if it was through delight in their beauty that they took them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Sovereign Lord; for the first author of beauty created them: but if it was through astonishment at their power and influence, let them understand from them how much more powerful is he that formed them; for from the greatness of the beauty even of created things in like proportion does man form the image of their first maker. But yet for these men there is but small blame, for they too peradventure do but go astray while they are seeking God and desiring to find him. For living among his works they make diligent search, and they yield themselves up to sight, because the things that they look upon are beautiful. But again even they are not to be excused. For if they had power to know so much, that they should be able to explore the course of things, how is it that they did not sooner find the Sovereign Lord of these his works?

Wisdom xiii. 1-9.

PREFACE

I wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Mrs R. B. Goodden and Mr R. M. Y. Gleadowe for the help they have given me in writing this book. With Mrs Goodden the theory was discussed point by point, and her criticisms and suggestions are largely responsible for the final shaping of the argument, as well as for an important development of the theory. To Mr Gleadowe I am indebted for some useful hints, which led to a partial rearrangement of the material, by which the form of the book has been greatly improved.

S. A. McD.

Winton,
October 1919.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Are we to look at the Beautiful with our feet firmly planted on the Natural, or are we to look at the Natural from the apparently precarious height of the Beautiful? This, after all, is the dilemma of aesthetic, slow though men have been to realise it. As we read the history of Aesthetic Theory we are puzzled by the tentativeness and the uncertainty even of those philosophers who played the greatest part in moulding human thought, until it dawns on us that, idealist though they might be in all else, in this they were unconsciously disloyal to their own systems, being in some measure materialist.

An attempt to form a philosophy of religion which should start from the generally accepted facts of biological science and pass, through the common experiences of personal relationship, to the ultimate problems of Godhead and manhood, left at the close a keen sense of something lacking—something more than the lack of unity and balance inevitable in work written and published step by step. I had tried to find in Love, which is the very nature of Godhead, an essential impulse towards creation. It was clear that this creation must be the creation of something new, if it were to be justified; and the conclusion which forced itself upon me was that the creation of personal beings fulfilled this demand.

Yet an unsatisfied sense remained either that even the experience of love reciprocated by fresh personal beings could not be new for God with that utter newness which belief in Him as Transcendent and Perfect required, or else that His experience was not always perfect. At any rate something that would make this newness self-evident was missing. Something vital had clearly been left out. The one thing of which no account had been taken was Beauty; and I began to consider whether this missing something, all-pervading yet intangible, was not Beauty itself. And in Beauty I seemed to find what I had missed.

To Aesthetic has generally been assigned the fate of Cinderella. Her uglier sisters, Epistemology and Metaphysic, have monopolised the court invitations, for the most part. Might she not, after all, be destined to marry the Prince? A little thought made it clear that, properly arrayed, she would bid fair to outshine the others. This book is not an effort to dress her in a new fashion. Fairy godmother I cannot claim to be, nor have I a magic wand. I shall only try to strip off some of the rags, leaving her, like Psyche, to proclaim her own loveliness.

It is not my intention to give a systematic account of the development of aesthetic theory. Such books as Dr Bosanquet’s History of Aesthetic, and the historical portion of Croce’s Aesthetic, from which works the following summary is chiefly derived, fortunately make the task unnecessary. Nor does any detailed criticism of the work of others fall within the scope of the present essay. My aim is merely to suggest an idea, avoiding technicalities as far as I may, and then to link it up with the Christian idea of God on the one hand, and with the development of the human soul on the other. The very briefest note on the course of speculation concerning Art and Beauty will suffice to introduce the point of view that I wish to suggest, which is that Beauty must be a first and not a last consideration for metaphysic. To advocate this is to turn his own weapon against Croce; but that is inevitable. Croce claims that Beauty is the expression of that intuition of Reality which constitutes the first stage of knowledge; but the philosophy of Croce is anti-metaphysical. Since many, while agreeing with the great and original discovery involved in his affirmation, must disagree profoundly with his negation, it follows of necessity that sooner or later they will endeavour to hoist him with his own petard.

Aesthetic theories show a steady and yet very remarkable change in the views of philosophers concerning Art and even Beauty itself. The Greeks tended, on the whole, to regard Art as mere imitation. Thus, at best, the beauty produced by artistic creation was inferior, because second-hand; in fact, as Plato argued, the artist’s representation was really third-hand, for there is first the idea, then the concrete individual object, then the representation. Stress was laid on harmony, rhythm, order, as being indicative of the homogeneity of an ideal world and therefore admirable. But, being an incomplete reproduction of nature[1], art could have no primary importance. It might be evil or good, in its own degree; and from the moral standpoint it might be judged, for the beautiful and the good are not completely distinguished. Being so judged, it was found wanting. It is one of the tragedies of thought that the beauty-loving Plato should have been driven to formulate a theory which is the negation of art, because it seemed to him that art was simply the false endeavouring to masquerade as the true. In Aristotle we find the beginnings of a freer idea. Symbolism in art is implicitly recognised, and there is some escape, though not much, from the moralistic bond; some dawning conception, though not much, of the concrete expressiveness of artistic creation. In the Middle Ages the mystical symbolic conception, characteristic of Plotinus, was developed. Symmetry and rhythm are beautiful because they symbolise reason and divinity, and relate the human soul, through the perception of order, to the divine which created that order. St Thomas Aquinas even goes so far as to say that in beauty desire is quieted[2]—presumably because satisfied. We shall be led to disagree profoundly with this statement.

Of Vico (1725), to whom Croce acknowledges so great a debt, we will only here say that he was the discoverer of the creative intuition, and this discovery entitles him to the honourable position of first founder of a coherent theory of aesthetic. Vico was primarily concerned with the nature of poetry. He showed that poetry was a ‘moment’ of the spiritual consciousness, by which a man was brought into contact with reality—that it represented a stage of knowledge before reflection (and was therefore an intuition) and that it expressed this knowledge (and was therefore creative); while it was distinct from feeling, and therefore free from the stigma which Plato attached to it, and which led to his banishing it from his Republic.

Men first feel without being aware; they then become aware with troubled and affected soul; finally they reflect with pure mind. This dignity is the Principle of the poetical feelings, which are formed by the senses of passions and of affections, as distinct from the philosophical feelings, which are formed from reflection by reasoning. Hence the philosophical feelings approach more to truth, the more they rise to universals; the poetical feelings are more certain the more they approach to particulars[3].

Poetry is thus placed on the imaginative plane, says Professor Wildon Carr, as distinct from the intellective, and this imaginative plane, or as Croce calls it, degree, is furnished with positive value.

By Kant we first find the problem of aesthetic faced boldly and at close quarters. Kant’s thought had led him to the formulation of two Critiques, the one dealing with the world of abstract reason, the other with the world of concrete, practical experience; and no systematic bond yet existed between them. The unity of life itself made such a dualism intolerable, and Kant sought the unifying medium in aesthetic judgment, for judgment is pre-eminently a synthesis. The domain of aesthetic consciousness, if purely subjective by Kant’s interpretation, is yet clearly determined. It furnishes decisions on the quality, the quantity and the relation of those objects with which practical experience makes us acquainted, and with whose existence the intellect is occupied. Yet beauty is for Kant subjective, devoid of abstract conceptions, pleasing without interest, destitute of content; though he fails in achieving more than a verbal consistency in this matter[4]. Subjective or not, however, it is symbolic of the moral order, and owes its apparent rationality to the Order which it symbolises. No doubt it is through the doctrine of symbolism that Kant is led on to his discussion of the sublime as another species of the aesthetic judgment, yet more subjective, yet more abstract.

With Schelling we reach the stage of philosophical appreciation of the objectivity of beauty; and, with this objectivity, of the relation of beauty to historical continuity, both in its own expression in the mind of man, and in the sequence of objective episodes. The artist recognises the eternal idea in an individual, and expresses it outwardly, transforming the individual into a world apart, into a species, into an eternal idea[5]. The divine, successively expressing itself through man, gives a unity and absoluteness to all reality; and reality is the object of the aesthetic judgment.

We have not stayed to discuss, or even state, the many definitions of the Beautiful that have been given. Neither have we attempted to represent the contribution of countless writers to the problem. Our only object in this brief page of summary has been to indicate the changing trend of thought.

The Greeks reared their philosophic system on an unstable foundation, because they looked on Beauty as mere imitation. For them Art mimics life as crudely as a company of strolling players at a country fair mimics the doings of the great. Art is dramatic rather than true.

But with less rigorous and honest minds than Plato’s the instinctive love of beauty weighed more strongly. Beauty was, at highest, too ennobling to be wholly false; it must at least symbolise the true. And when a more disciplined thought was once more turned upon Reality, without beauty the world seemed dual—hard and cold, with theory and practice divorced. The only bond appeared to lie in the region of the judgment of values, itself essentially aesthetic. Men born out of due time there were who showed here and there flashes of deeper insight before Kant’s systematisation was effected, but to them came only sporadic glimpses of the truth. These for the most part were men deeply versed in the life and soul of man—the Dantes, the Shakespeares, the Goethes. Only one was pre-eminent in the realm of pure thought—Giambattista Vico. With other thinkers the tide rose and fell alternately, yet always moved from the neap of Platonism towards the spring.

Then, at the end, in our own time, Benedetto Croce set himself to formulate the first adequate theory of the Aesthetic.

The importance of Beauty to any system of philosophy that could pretend to completeness had been more and more recognised. It was left for Croce to grasp the truth that Beauty is not judgment, but expression: the expression of the intuition which is our first contact with Reality; and that Aesthetic is the science of expressive activity. Given this first movement of the spirit, the other modes of approach to Reality follow—or rather are involved, since no temporal series is concerned.

Croce’s philosophy as a whole, and especially his extension of the logical a priori synthesis on which it is founded, is difficult to grasp; and for the sake of those who may not have made acquaintance with his own exposition or with Professor Wildon Carr’s summary, a brief discussion of one or two salient points may be forgiven. It is only fair to state, however, that it is not possible to give a really short and clear résumé that will do justice to the most interesting and elusive of modern philosophies.

We may begin by explaining what Croce means by an intuition, what he means by the a priori synthesis, and what part the relation of the double degree plays in his system.

When you perceive an object, already you are using two mental processes, which cannot in fact be separated, or exist the one without the other. In the first place there is simple awareness of a reality. You objectify an impression without arguing as to its reality at all, or relating it to yourself or anything else. You merely characterise the thing, and are aware of it as concrete and individual. This is the Pure Intuition. It has no admixture of intellectual process. And its salient characteristic is that it is made or expressed by the mind, and is indeed identical with this expression. You cannot separate the intuition from its expression. Moreover it is aesthetic in nature. Its character is identical with the character of the mind-process which makes the vision of the artist and the poet.

But this intuition is at once generalised, and related. The process of generalisation is the formation of the Concept, and is characteristic of the logical or intellectual activity. Moreover the Pure Concept is universal, and expressive, belonging to all individuals; concrete, and therefore real. Pseudo-concepts, which fail either in universality, expressiveness or concreteness, do exist and are of great value, but this value belongs not to the theoretical, but to the practical, activity. ‘Evolution’ is a pure concept, ‘chair’ a pseudo-concept. For our purpose it is not necessary to elaborate this point.

What does interest us is the relation between the two theoretical activities of the spirit—Intuition and Concept. They are ‘moments in the unity of a single process.’ Neither takes a prior place. “We cannot think without universalising, and we cannot have an intuition without thinking[6].” In other words, they are related in a synthesis that is a priori. This means that the intellectual activity which relates and generalises the intuitions or presentations does not depend upon them, but is as much a condition of experience as are the presentations themselves. Each of the two things, the intuition and the concept, is essential to knowledge; the concept is empty of content without the intuition, but you cannot have an intuition without thinking it. The two form an indivisible, organic unity; neither able to exist without the other. You cannot think without universalising, nor intuit without thinking. This is the logical a priori synthesis discovered by Kant. But Croce proceeds to use it in a wider sense, as we shall see.

These two elements then, the intuitional and the conceptual, together constitute the whole theoretic activity of knowing.

Now the first of these elements, the intuition, is expression of a reality to the self. It is essentially aesthetic, for aesthetic is the science of expressive activity. In forming an intuition, and expressing it, we compass Beauty, for Beauty is expression.

But there is another side to the activity of the spirit. Thinking and doing, willing and acting, go hand in hand.

The Practical Activity begins as Economic, directed towards particular ends. There is individual action; but there is also action universalised: directed to general ends: and this action is Ethical. Utility passes over into goodness: there is no good action which is not in some way useful, there is no useful action which is not in some way good.

Here again, then, we have two inseparable activities, related, as are the theoretic activities, as a first and second degree, yet each involving the other. The relation is identical with that of the a priori synthesis, and the term may be extended to cover this relation also.

Finally, the two sides of the activity of the spirit, the theoretic and the practical, are themselves related in this same double degree by a relation of synthesis that we may again term a priori. The theoretic activity cannot exist apart from the practical, nor the practical apart from the theoretic. The relation is again the same as that which obtains for the relation of the elements constituting each pair of the four ‘moments,’ and for the pairs themselves. The a priori synthesis is extended to cover all these relations.

With Croce’s theory of Beauty we have already made acquaintance. As we have seen, Kant laid the foundations by his discussion of the judgment of taste; Vico, by distinguishing the imaginative from the intellectual plane, had supplied the basal idea; but it was left to Croce to see that Beauty is expression, or the form given by the spirit to its intuitions, through which it makes contact with Reality. It must, however, be borne in mind that Croce draws an absolutely definite line between the expression, which belongs to the Theoretic Activity, and the technical embodiment of that expression, which belongs to the domain of the Practical. The work of art affords simply the stimulus which enables us to recreate the artist’s expression; and it is the expression, not the work of art, that is beautiful. The Beautiful is a distinct concept; the Ugly is ugly in so far as it fails in distinctness, through failure to express. Beauty is simply aesthetic value—the value of the expressed intuition; ugliness the lack of aesthetic value, through lack of clarity in intuition and expression.

It is needless for us to follow out the rest of Croce’s system. The chief point that remains is his identification of Philosophy with History—the thought about the presentation of Reality (Philosophy) with that presentation itself as an unfolding of immanent life (History). This identification really follows from the relation of the double degree between the theoretic and the practical. In thinking past history you bring it into the present as a practical issue; and you introduce the logical element in thinking it, but you could not do so if there were not an intuitive element in it intrinsically. Philosophy is historically conditioned; without philosophy there could be no history. With this line of argument, whose affinities with the philosophy of Bergson are obvious, Croce rounds off his system, completing his demonstration that the only Reality is living Spirit, immanent and unfolding.

Thus, according to Croce, the expressive nature of the Intuition, as it objectifies itself, and so differentiates itself from mere sensation, is appreciated by the mind, and serves as the first step in the formation of the Concept or judgment of definition. For the Concept is expressive, universal, and concrete. Through the Concept we arrive at knowledge of Reality; and this Concept reacts upon the Intuition, giving rise to the individual judgment. Croce shows, by demonstrating that analysis apart from synthesis, and equally synthesis apart from analysis, in any act of thought, is inconceivable, that one must, by an extension of the logical a priori synthesis, identify the judgment of definition and the individual judgment. You cannot, like the idealists, separate the concept from the facts, nor, like the empiricists, the facts from the concept. But neither in the realm of aesthetic interest can you separate the fact from its expressive intuition, or vice versa. The whole of Croce’s system is, as he says, a philosophy of the spirit, which is itself all Reality. The activity of the spirit is twofold. In its theoretic activity there are two stages, Aesthetic and Logic, each involving the other, yet the first in a sense independent because primary, the second dependent on the first. In its practical activity there are also two degrees, the Economic and the Ethic, related to each other in the same way. Yet of these two activities, theoretic and practical, each involves the other, and in an a priori synthesis each substantiates the other.

It is not our purpose to examine the philosophy of Croce as a whole. Some points of disagreement with him will become manifest as we proceed to develop our discussion of the nature of beauty. Notably, we shall disagree with his rejection of a metaphysic and his denial of a God; since their inclusion is not really so inimical to his system as he supposes, their rejection by him would seem to be in a measure an accident of his circumstances, while their omission leaves the why? of spiritual and personal being unanswered. For the moment all we need is his discovery that Beauty is Expression, Aesthetic the Science of Expression; that to appreciate a work of art is to create it yourself by entering into the mind, and following the same path, as the original creator of it; and, first and most important of all, that our knowledge of the Real owes its possibility and its first beginnings to the movement of aesthetic intuition. It is a far cry from Plato to Croce.

If the fine arts be utterly distinct, having nothing in common save a background of emotion, this Essay is a meaningless attempt to express something which does not exist. It stands condemned; and this condemnation it shares with many nobler works. But if, as Croce urges, each art aims at presenting, through the practise of its own conventions, aspects of Truth which are suitable to that special medium, no effort to find a highest common factor of all arts is necessarily doomed to failure.

PART I
THE THEORY

What is Beauty? Many have asked it, and could find no answer because they understood their question no more than jesting Pilate understood his ‘What is Truth?’ But many beside have asked it with at least a real desire to understand. It was already in the mind of the prehistoric artist who was the first to draw a pattern or to sketch the mammoth, though no doubt he did not put the question to himself. It has been there, expressed or unexpressed, wherever a man has had vision enough to find his spirit stirred by a flower or a cathedral; a fabric or the low October sun upon a sheet of gossamer; wherever a man has tried to reproduce nature on canvas or pour out his longing and triumph in sound or written words. He has cried out that beauty dwells only in his own spirit, for there have been moods and days when he could see no beauty in that which at other times moved him deeply. Yet the agreement of civilised mankind, at all events, that this or that particular is beautiful is so widely diffused that he cannot but admit that something in the object itself must suggest the idea of beauty. Taste may change, but the sunset and the rose are universally acclaimed by all who have any aesthetic perception at all. On the other hand, faced with the vagaries of artistic fashion a man finds no absolute beauty, and is driven to a subjective theory, for he cannot admire the protruding, distorted lip so persuasive to certain savages. But no sooner is this theory constructed than he is brought up once more against the difficulty that an object is required before the sense of beauty is aroused, and that men do agree in attributing beauty to many things.

Because the perception of beauty involves a judgment (which really belongs to the intellectual process, and not properly to the aesthetic), beauty itself seems too elusive for definition. It has been left, as we have said, for Croce to formulate the first satisfactory concept of beauty. He saw what no one else had seen—that man’s first contact with the Real, the first movement of the spirit that stretched beyond a mere sensation, was a creative act, an intuition not a judgment, expressing the reality to himself. Beauty, says Croce, is expression. Afterwards the man might give his expression objective form through some technique. Hence derive pictures, sculpture, music, dancing, poetry, drama, architecture, language itself; all the arts. Or the expression of his intuition may remain simply as a formative agent of his spirit. There are many mute inglorious Miltons. But he has expressed his intuition to himself, and it has formed a new material for his conceptual activity, whether or no he brings it far into the domain of the practical, through technique, in order that it may subserve some economic or moral function for himself and other men. That he must bring it into the practical in some measure, whether he does or does not give it technical form, is clear to anyone who has grasped Croce’s main thought. The aesthetic intuition is for the individual, but he is driven to universalise it by thought (i.e. logic). It is of practical value to himself (economic motive) and it is capable of being made of use to others (ethical motive). Theoretic and practical cannot be isolated from one another.

As aesthetic is to logic, so is economic to ethic, and so is theoretic to practical; it is the relation of the double degree.

A priori synthesis unites each of the theoretic and of the practical activities with the other, and the same a priori synthesis unites the theoretic and the practical themselves, of which neither exclusively precedes the other in the circle of Real Being. This is the life of the spirit.

Now in considering this theory of Croce’s we notice at once that mind or spirit is for him a datum, and that he assumes further that spirit is active and is definable only by its activity. He gives no reason for this activity. The cause of this is not far to seek, for his whole system is confessedly anti-metaphysical, and so, of necessity, stops short of ultimate things. Life, spirit, is for him the true mystery, and this is immanent. There is no room for transcendence. All he can say is that no philosophical system is definite because Life itself is never definite[7].

Truth is always surrounded with mystery, an ascending to ever higher heights, which are without a summit, as Life is without a summit[8].

The spirit, which is infinite possibility passing into infinite actuality, has drawn and draws at every moment the cosmos from chaos, has collected diffused life into the concentrated life of the organ, has achieved the passage from animal to human life, has created and creates modes of life ever more lofty. The work of the spirit is not finished and never will be finished. Our yearning for something higher is not vain. The very yearning, the infinity of our desire, is proof of the infinity of that process. The plant dreams of the animal, the animal of man, man of superman; for this, too, is a reality, if it be reality that with every historical movement man surpasses himself. The time will come when the great deeds and the great works now our memory and our boast will be forgotten, as we have forgotten the works and the deeds, no less great, of those beings of supreme genius who created what we call human life and seem to us now to have been savages of the lowest grade, almost men-monkeys. They will be forgotten for the document of progress is in forgetting; that is, in the fact being entirely absorbed in the new fact, in which, and not in itself, it has value. But we cannot know what the future states of Reality will be, in their determined physiognomy and succession, owing to the ‘dignity’ established in the Philosophy of the Practical, by which the knowledge of the action and of the deed follows and does not precede the action and the deed. Mystery is just the infinity of evolution; were this not so, that concept would not arise in the mind of man, nor would it be possible to abuse it, as it has been abused by being transported out of its place, that is to say, into the consciousness of itself, which the spiritual activity should have and has to the fullest degree, that is, the consciousness of its eternal categories.

The neglect of the moment of mystery is the true reason of the error known as the Philosophy of History, which undertakes to portray the plan of Providence and to determine the formula of progress. In this attempt (when it does not affirm mere philosophemes, as has very often happened), it makes the effort to enclose the infinite in the finite and capriciously to decree concluded that evolution which the universal spirit itself cannot conclude, for it would thus come to deny itself. In logic that error has been gnoseologically defined as the pretension of treating the individual as though it were the universal, making the universal individual; here it is to be defined in other words as the pretension of treating the finite as though it were the infinite, of making the infinite finite.

But the unjustified transportation of the concept of mystery from history, where it indicates the future that the past prepares and does not know, into philosophy, causes to be pointed as mysteries which give rise to probabilities and conjectures, problems that consist of philosophical terms, and should therefore be philosophically solved. But if the infinite progress and the infinite perfectibility of man is to be affirmed, although we do not know the concrete forms that progress and perfectibility will assume (not knowing them, because now it imports not to know, but to do them), then there is no meaning in positing as a mystery the immortality of the individual soul, or the existence of God; for these are not facts that may or may not happen sooner or later, but concepts that must be proved to be in themselves thinkable and not contradictory. Their thinkability will indeed be a mystery, but of the kind that it is a duty to make clear, because synonymous with obscurity or mental confusion. What has so far been demonstrated has been their unthinkability in the traditional form. Nor is it true that they correspond to profound demands of the human soul. Man does not seek a god external to himself and almost a despot, who commands and benefits him capriciously, nor does he aspire to an immortality of insipid ease; but he seeks for that God which he has in himself, and aspires to that activity which is both Life and Death[9].

Thus Croce affirms that evolution, development, is demanded by the very nature of spirit. In spirit the problem of the one and the many is solved. The yearnings of man towards something higher, and towards a unity that shall lie behind and stabilise all thought, are but expressions of the nature of Life. The dissatisfaction of such a thought is due to psychological illusion, comparable to a “dream of an art so sublime that every work of art really existing would by comparison appear contemptible.” There is no intuition that cannot be clearly expressed; vague dreams of the Madonna of the Future end inevitably in an empty canvas. So too, according to Croce, is a dream of transcendence empty of content, because inexpressible; based on no clear intuition, but on a confusion between the historical judgment and some vague conception of the transcendental. And thus the life of the spirit is left a mystery.

We will not attempt any discussion of Croce’s fundamental pantheism, neither will we as yet criticise his definition of Beauty. Instead, we will begin our constructive work by considering the psychological accompaniment of a perception of beauty and from that starting-point try to reach a conception and a definition that will carry us beyond Croce’s into a region less empty of love, a region that shines with a light of its own. Dead moons are lovely, but they owe their loveliness to living light. Cold philosophies too are only beautiful when a beautiful spirit makes them seem to live.

Let us, then, turn to the psychological effects of that which appeals as beautiful to some individual mind, leaving on one side, for the time, all consideration of the reason why a particular object should rouse a sense of beauty in a particular mind.

Now unquestionably the beauty we perceive is never satisfying, or if it satisfies at all it does so but for a moment. Almost at once dissatisfaction follows, or rather unsatisfaction.

There is a yearning for something, a sense of something lacking. It is vague—so vague that the only representation of it that has ever adequately expressed at once its aspirations, its lack and its indeterminateness, is Blake’s drawing “I want—I want.” Of these three things it is compounded, of lack, of aspiration, and of self-ignorance that knows neither what it lacks nor what it desires; and these three determine its salient character—that of an impulse. That it is really an impulse becomes clear directly we examine its effects. It produces a desire to create. In the young, the uncontrolled, the illiterate, the creative impulse may be definitely sexual. Passion is undoubtedly stimulated in simple natures by the beautiful, and we shall see when we come to discuss the evolution of aesthetic sensibility that this fact is of the profoundest spiritual import. For the moment we need only note that this sex-impulse is creative. In natures artistically more developed yet not truly originative, the creative impulse is a desire to repeat the thing that has given this sense of beauty—to paint the sunset, to play the sonata, to declaim the poem. Yet even here we must note the germ of originality. The repetition is no mere reproduction. Elimination and emphasis make it in some measure a new creation. This is obvious in the less rigid arts, painting and music; but it is present even where the form is definite. Hear two different people, or the same person in two different moods, read the same poem, and see how different a thing it can be! In more artistic natures still, truly original, the desire to create is conscious, the desire to reproduce less. The thing created need not, probably will not, be of the same kind. The moon-glade on the sea enriching by contrast the blackness of the rocky headland, will inspire the musician to write, not a moonlight sonata, for true music is free from sensuous symbolism, but a pure rhythm of sound. To suggest visual symbols in sound is to prostitute music, to drive it back into the sensationalism from which it has freed itself. It is, further, to confuse the mind by attempting to combine two incompatible media of technical expression. As animal passion is to love, so is Carrier’s “La Chasse” to a Bach prelude[10].

We see, then, that the psychological effect of the beautiful is to produce a creative impulse, based on the lack and the aspiration which give rise to a sense of yearning desire. We see that it is indeterminate, for it attempts to satisfy itself in very various ways. We see that in so far as it creates successfully, it finds some satisfaction.

Now all this fits admirably with Croce’s theory of beauty. Beauty is for us the expression of that of which we have intuition. In realising the beauty of a symphony or picture we have ourselves re-created the intuition of the artist. In realising the beauty of a natural scene we have expressed an intuition of the reality that lies behind that scene; a creative act. We shall later go beyond Croce in this matter, referring our creative act to a re-creation of the intuition of God, and this will lead us to consider the aesthetic meaning of God’s creation; but for the time we need not pursue this thought.

Our next business is, clearly, to analyse the yearning which precedes the creative act. We have said that this originates in dissatisfaction. What is this dissatisfaction? One other thing produces a feeling that is not merely analogous, but absolutely identical. When you love a person intensely and are uncertain if it is reciprocated, because no sign, or no sufficient sign, is given, you experience the same dissatisfaction, the same yearning and the same creative impulse. In primitive natures the impulse may fulfil itself in sexual excitement; in higher ones it is expressed in art. It is a commonplace to say that some of the world’s greatest creative work is done under the stimulus of love. The poems of lovers furnish the most prominent example, not only their love poems, but the poems inspired by their love, like the Divina Commedia; but we need not seek far for examples in the other arts. Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony was inspired by his love for the Countess Theresa von Brunswick. Tchaikovsky found inspiration in his Platonic love for Nadejda von Meck, whom he had never seen. His sad, abnormal friendships were an inspiration to Michael Angelo.

Now in both cases, paradoxical as it may seem, the dissatisfaction is due to receiving without giving. At first sight this seems to be exactly the opposite of the truth. Surely a man is pouring out his love, and receiving no return, one is inclined to say. But a moment’s thought will convince us that the first statement is the true one. All the beauty, all the grace, all the interest and the charms of the loved one are given to us in unstinted measure, and we can give nothing in return. We may not even express our love, our desire to serve, but in the trivial services that convention allows. Yet how we prize these little services that we can render! How we seek out opportunity of rendering them! We receive; we can give no adequate return. It is that which determines our dissatisfaction. If the gift of our love is refused, dissatisfaction is most poignant. Commonly we say that the beloved refuses to give anything in such a case. Exactly the reverse is true. The beloved gives, and cannot avoid giving, but will receive nothing from us.

Now think of a perfect marriage or a perfect friendship. There is little trace of dissatisfaction there; only rest and happiness. We receive, but we give again, and our gift may be given without measure; may equal, or nearly equal what we receive; may at least be all that we can give. There is perfect reciprocity, and in reciprocity we find rest.

The creative impulse does not cease, service and gifts do not cease, but the spirit is free from longing dissatisfaction.

Turn now to the dissatisfaction produced by appreciation of the beautiful. We receive everything, we can give nothing at all (to the beautiful thing); and so dissatisfaction is at its highest. We love the thing in which we find beauty, but the love is one-sided. The cases are identical. It is no mere phrase when we speak of the love of beauty and the beauty of love. Unwittingly we express the truth of an absolute interdependence. Love is relationship, beauty the expression of relationship. In this sentence lies our thesis. Croce calls Beauty the expression of an Intuition; we shall define that intuition as the intuition of Relationship, Love being the relationship itself, intuitively known; known, that is, as Reality—as the fundamental quality of Personal Being, which is the only ultimate Reality. Because the intuition of Love is expressed, it enters immediately the domain of Aesthetic. Doubtless it is conceptualised; and hand in hand with this theoretic activity of the spirit goes the practical. Love is essentially practical, and, as Croce says, you can never separate or give priority to either the theoretic or the practical activity. The difference, then, between beauty and love that is returned lies in the fact that in the second there is reciprocity. You give, as well as receiving. In all love there is some reciprocity; the loved one cannot help being conscious of, and receiving, something of the spirit that moves out in such wise. The love of a being seen but once is purely aesthetic. Only this corresponds to the aesthetic appreciation of a scene, and even this not exactly; for the being is potentially capable of receiving, the scene is not.

It is worth noticing at this point that, though Greek thought arrived at no adequate idea of beauty, Greek Mythology did arrive at complete understanding. And this gives little cause for wonder, considering to what a level the love of the beautiful developed in ancient Greece, and considering too how myth represents the unreasoned, intuitive wishes and ideas of an infantile age[11]. We often wonder at the depths which mythology plumbs. Accepting Croce’s scheme, it is the more easy to understand. The myth of Pygmalion is subtly suggestive. Pygmalion created beauty, and longed for it to reciprocate his love, and out of his longing life and love were born. Beauty was for him one-sided love; hence his yearning and his dissatisfaction.

But we are not Pygmalions. Our Galatea never comes to life. Why then should we strive still to create? Why like the man in the old play, should we proceed with an endless task: “When will you finish Campaspe?” “Never finish, for always in absolute beauty there is somewhat above art[12].” Croce simply takes activity as the character of spirit and leaves it at that, admitting, but not really explaining, the fact that men are dissatisfied with the mystery of it all. We, approaching with a different presupposition, accepting God and not rejecting metaphysic, may hope to find some fuller explanation. We do in fact go on creating something that cannot reciprocate. Why? First of all, by our creative act we learn more of the meaning of the Reality that is around us, and the Reality that is ourself. We find the creative godhead of our personality, we exercise our self in its true function of godhead. Moreover, we create a gift to other men, whether technically or otherwise. If we cannot give to nature, we can at least give our understanding of nature to our fellows: