Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic

The English historian of Æsthetic, Bosanquet (1892) tried to find a reconciliation between content and form in unity of expression. "Beauty," says Bosanquet in the Introduction to his History, "is that which has characteristic and individual expressiveness for sensuous perception or imagination, subject to the conditions of general or abstract expressiveness by the same means." In another passage he observes: "The difficulty of real Æsthetic is to show how the combination of decorative forms in characteristic representations, by intensifying the essential character immanent in them from the beginning, subordinates them to a central signification which stands to their complex combination as their abstract signification stands to each one of them taken singly."[52] But the problem, as propounded in a way suggested by the antithesis between the two schools (contentism and formalism) of German Æsthetic, is in our opinion insoluble.

De Sanctis founded no school of æsthetic science in Italy. His thought was quickly misunderstood and mutilated by those who presumed to correct it, and, in fact, only returned to the outworn rhetorical conception of art as consisting of a little content and a little form. Only within the last ten years has there been a renewal of philosophical studies, arising out of discussions concerning the nature of history[53] and the relation in which it stands to art and science, and nourished by the controversy excited by the publication of De Sanctis' posthumous works.[54] The same problem of the relation between history and science, and their difference or antithesis, reappeared also in Germany, but without being put in its true connexion with the problem of Æsthetic.[55] These inquiries and discussions, and the revival of a Linguistic impregnated by philosophy in the work of Paul and some others, appear to us to offer much more favourable ground for the scientific development of Æsthetic than can be found on the summits of mysticism or the low plains of positivism and sensationalism.

XIX

HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF SOME PARTICULAR DOCTRINES

We have reached the end of our history. Having passed in review the travail and doubt through which the discovery of the æsthetic concept was achieved, the vicissitudes first of neglect, then of revival and rediscovery to which it was exposed, the various oscillations and failures in its exact determination, the resurrection, triumphant and overwhelming, of ancient errors supposed to be dead and buried; we may now conclude, without appearing to assert anything unproven, that of Æsthetic in the proper sense of the word we have seen very little, even including the last two centuries' active research. Exceptional intellects have hit the mark and have supported their views with energy, with logic, and with consciousness of what they were doing. It would no doubt be possible to extract many true affirmations leading to the same point of view from the works of non-philosophical writers, art-critics and artists, from commonly received opinions and proverbial sayings; such a collection would show that this handful of philosophers does not stand alone, but is surrounded by a throng of supporters and is in perfect agreement with the general mind and universal common sense. But if Schiller was right in saying that the rhythm of philosophy is to diverge from common opinion in order to return with redoubled vigour, it is evident that such divergence is necessary, and constitutes the growth of science, which is science itself. During this tedious process Æsthetic made mistakes which were at once deviations from the truth and attempts to reach it: such were the hedonism of the sophists and rhetoricians of antiquity and of the sensationalists of the eighteenth and second half of the nineteenth century; the moralistic hedonism of Aristophanes, of the Stoics, of the Roman eclectics, of the mediæval and Renaissance writers; the ascetic and logical hedonism of Plato and the Fathers of the Church, of some mediæval and even some quite modern rigorists; and finally, the æsthetic mysticism which first appeared in Plotinus and reappeared again and again until its last and great triumph in the classical period of German philosophy. In the midst of these variously erroneous tendencies, ploughing the field of thought in every direction, a tenuous golden rivulet seems to flow, formed by the acute empiricism of Aristotle, the forceful penetration of Vico, the analytical work of Schleiermacher, Humboldt, De Sanctis and others who echoed them with weaker voice. This series of thinkers suffices to remind us that æsthetic science no longer remains to be discovered; but at the same time the fact that they are so few and so often despised, ignored or controverted, proves that it is in its infancy.

The birth of a science is like that of a living being: its later development consists, like every life, in fighting the difficulties and errors, general and particular, which lurk in its path on every side. The forms of error are numerous in the extreme and mingle with each other and with the truth in complications equally numerous: root out one, another appears in its stead; the uprooted ones also reappear, though never in the same shape. Hence the necessity for perpetual scientific criticism and the impossibility of repose or finality in a science and of an end to further discussion. The errors which may be described as general, negations of the concept of art itself, have been touched on from time to time in the course of this History; whence it may be gathered a simple affirmation of the truth has not always been accompanied by any considerable recapture of enemy territory. As to what we have called particular errors, it is clear that when freed from confusing admixture of other forms and divested of fanciful expression, they reduce themselves to three heads, under which they have already been criticized in the first or theoretical part of this work. That is to say, errors may be directed (a) against the characteristic quality of the æsthetic fact; (b) against the specific; (c) against the generic: they may involve denial of the character of intuition, of theoretic contemplation, or of spiritual activity, which together constitute the æsthetic fact. Among the errors which fall into these three categories we are now to sketch in outline the history of those which have had, or have to-day, the greatest importance. Rather than a history it will be a historical essay, sufficient to show that, even in the criticism of individual errors, æsthetic science is in its infancy. If among these errors some appear to be decadent and nearly forgotten, they are not dead; they have not accomplished a legal demise at the hands of scientific criticism. Oblivion or instinctive rejection is not the same thing as scientific denial.

I

RHETORIC: OR THE THEORY OF ORNATE FORM

Proceeding according to rank in importance, we inevitably head the list of theories for examination with the theory of Rhetoric, or Ornate Form.

It will not be superfluous to observe that the meaning given in modern times to the word Rhetoric, namely, the doctrine of ornate form, differs from that which it had for the ancients. Rhetoric in the modern sense is above all a theory of elocution, while elocution (λέξις, φράσις, ἑρμηνεία, elocutio) was but one portion, and not the principal one, of ancient Rhetoric. Taken as a whole, it consisted strictly of a manual or vade-mecum for advocates and politicians; it concerned itself with the two or the three "styles" (judicial, deliberative, demonstrative), and gave advice or furnished models to those striving to produce certain effects by means of speech. No definition of the art is more accurate than that given by its inventors the earliest Sicilian rhetoricians, scholars of Empedocles (Corax, Tisias, Gorgias): Rhetoric is the creator of persuasion (πειθος δημιουργός). It devoted itself to showing the method of using language so as to create a certain belief, a certain state of mind, in the hearer; hence the phrase "making the weaker case stronger" (τὸ τὸν ἥττω λόgον κρείττω ποιεῖν); the "increase or diminution according to circumstances" (eloquentia in augendo minuendoque consistit); the advice of Gorgias to "turn a thing to a jest if the adversary takes it seriously, or to a serious matter if he takes it as a jest,"[1] and many similar well-known maxims.

He who acts in this manner is not only æsthetically accomplished, as saying beautifully that which he wishes to say; he is also and especially a practical man with a practical end in view. As a practical man, however, he cannot evade moral responsibility for his actions; this point was fastened upon by Plato's polemic against Rhetoric, that is to say against fluent political charlatans and unscrupulous lawyers and journalists. Plato was quite right to condemn Rhetoric (when dissociated from a good purpose) as blameworthy and discreditable, directed to arouse the passions, a diet ruinous to health, a paint disastrous to beauty. Even had Rhetoric allied herself to Ethics, becoming a true guide of the soul (ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ τῶν λόγον); had Plato's criticism been directed solely against her abusers (everything being liable to abuse save virtue itself, says Aristotle); had Rhetoric been purified, producing such an orator as Cicero desired, non ex rhetorum officinis sed ex academiae spatiis[2] and imposing on him, with Quintilian, the duty of being vir bonus dicendi peritus;[3] yet the unalterable fact remains that Rhetoric can never be considered a regular science, being formed of a congeries of widely dissimilar cognitions.

It included descriptions of passions and affections, comparisons of political and judicial institutions, theories of the abbreviated syllogism or enthymeme and of proof leading to a probable conclusion, pedagogic and popular exposition, literary elocution, declamation and mimicry, mnemonic, and so forth.

The rich and heterogeneous content of this ancient Rhetoric (which reached its highest development in the hands of Hermagoras of Temnos in the second century B.C.) gradually diminished in volume with the decadence of the ancient world and the change in political conditions. This is not the place to dwell on its fortunes in the Middle Ages or its partial replacement by formularies and Artes dictandi (and later by treatises upon the art of preaching), or to quote the reasons given by such writers as Patrizzi and Tassoni for its disappearance from the world of their day;[4] such history would be well worth writing, but would be out of place here. We will merely state that whilst conditions were at work on every side corroding this complex of cognitions, Louis Vives, Peter Ramus and Patrizzi himself were busy criticizing it from the point of view of systematic science.

Vives emphasized the confused methods of the ancient treatise-writers, who embraced omnia, united eloquence with morality, and insisted that the orator must be vir bonus. He rejected four-fifths of ancient Rhetoric as extraneous: namely, memory, which is necessary in all arts; invention, which is the matter of each individual art; recitation, which is external; and disposition, which belongs to invention. He retained elocution only, not that which treats of quid dicendum, but of quem ad modum, extending it beyond the three styles or kinds to include history, apologue, epistles, novels and poetry.[5] Antiquity furnishes us with few and faint attempts at such extension; now and then a Rhetorician ventures to suggest that the γένος ίστορικόν and ἐπιστολικόν be included in Rhetoric, and even (in spite of opposition) "infinite" questions, that is to say merely theoretical questions with no practical application, which amounts to a scientific or philosophical genus;[6] others agreed with Cicero[7] that when one had mastered the most difficult of all arts, forensic eloquence, all else seemed child's-play (ludus est homini non hebeti ...). Ramus and his pupil Omer Talon reproached Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian with having confused Dialectic and Rhetoric; and they assigned invention and disposition to the former, agreeing with Vives that "elocution" alone should be allowed to Rhetoric.[8] Patrizzi, on the other hand, refused the name of science to either, recognizing them as simple faculties, containing no individual matter (not even the three genera), and differentiating them only by attaching the term Dialectic to the dialogue form and proof of the necessary, and Rhetoric to connected discourse directed to persuasion in matters of opinion. Patrizzi observes that "conjoined speech" is used by historians, poets and philosophers, no less than by orators; and thus approaches the view of Vives.[9]

In spite of these opinions the body of rhetorical doctrine continued to flourish in the schools. Patrizzi was forgotten; if Ramus and Vives had some followers (such as Francisco Sanchez and Keckermann), they were generally held up to odium by the traditionalists. In the end, Rhetoric found a supporter in philosophy when Campanella made the following declaration in his Rational Philosophy: "quodammodo Magiae portiuncula, quae affectus animi moderator et per ipsos voluntatem ciet ad quaecumque vult sequenda vel fugienda."[10] Baumgarten owed to it his tripartition of Æsthetic into heuristic, methodology and semeiotic (invention, disposition and elocution), adopted later by Meier. Among Meier's numerous works is a little book entitled Theoretic Doctrine of Emotional Disturbances in General,[11] considered by him to be a psychological introduction to æsthetic doctrine. On the other hand, Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment observes that eloquence, in the sense of ars oratoria or art of persuasion by means of beautiful appearance and dialectical form, must be distinguished from beautiful speaking (Wohlredenheit); and that the art of oratory, playing upon the weakness of men to gain its own ends, "is worthy of no esteem" (gar keiner Achtungwürdig)[12] But in the schools it flourished in many celebrated compilations, including one by the French Jesuit Father Dominique de Colonne, which was in use until some few decades ago. Even to-day, in so-called Literary Institutions, we come across survivals of ancient Rhetoric, notably in chapters devoted to the art of oratory; and fresh manuals on judicial or sacred eloquence (Ortloff, Whately, etc.[13]) are actually appearing, though rarely, to-day. Still, Rhetoric in the ancient sense may be said to have disappeared from the system of the sciences; to-day no philosopher would dream of following Campanella in dedicating a special section of rational philosophy to Rhetoric.

In compensation for this process, the theory of elocution and beautiful speech has been in modern times progressively emphasized and thrown into scientific form. But the idea of such a science is ancient, as we have seen; and equally ancient is the style of exposition, consisting in the doctrine of a double form and the concept of ornate form.

The concept of "ornament" must have occurred spontaneously to the mind as soon as attention was directed to the values of speech by listening to poets reciting[14] or to oratorical contests in public gatherings. It must very early have been thought that the difference between good speaking and bad, or between that which gave more pleasure and that which gave less, between grave or solemn, and commonplace or colloquial, consisted in something additional superimposed upon the canvas of ordinary speech like an embroidery by a skilful orator. These considerations led the Græco-Roman rhetoricians to adopt the practice, like the Indians, who arrived at the distinction independently, to distinguish the bare (ψιλή) or purely grammatical form from another form containing an addition which they called ornament, κόσμος: ornatum est (Quintilian will serve, as typical of all the rest) quod perspicuo ac probabili plus est.[15]

The notion of ornament as something added on from outside forms the basis of the theory which Aristotle, the philosopher of Rhetoric, gave of the queen of ornaments, Metaphor. According to him the high pleasure aroused by metaphor arises from the collocation of different terms and the discovery of relations between species and genera, producing "learning and knowledge by means of the genus" (μαθησιν καi γνῶσιν διὰ τοῦ γένους), and that easy learning which is the greatest of human pleasures,[16] which amounts to saying that metaphor adds to the concept under consideration a group of minor incidental cognitions, as a kind of diversion and relief and pleasant instruction for the mind.

Ornaments were divided and subdivided in a number of different ways. Aristotle (and previously Isocrates, rather differently) classified the ornaments which diversify bare or nude form, under the heads of dialect forms, substitutions and epithets, prolongations, truncations and abbreviations of words, and other departures from common usage, and, finally, rhythm and harmony. Substitutions were of four classes: species for genus; genus for species; species for species; and proportionate.[17] After Aristotle, elocution was especially studied by Theophrastus and Demetrius Phalereus; these rhetoricians and their followers further solidified the classification of ornament by distinguishing tropes from figures (σχήματα) and dividing figures into figures of speech (scheimata τῆς λέχεως) and of thought (τῆς διανοίας), figures of speech into grammatical and rhetorical, and figures of thought into pathetic and ethic. Substitutions were divided into fourteen principal forms, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, antonomasia, onomatopeia, catachresis, metalepsis, epithet, allegory, enigma, irony, periphrase, hyperbaton and hyperbole; each divided into subspecies and contrasted with its relative vice. Figures of speech amounted to a score or so (repetition, anaphora, antistrophe, climax, asyndeton, assonance, etc.); figures of thought to about the same number (interrogation, prosopopœia, ætiopœia, hypotyposis, commotion, simulation, exclamation, apostrophe, aposiopesis, etc.). If these divisions have any value as aids to memory in relation to particular literary forms, considered rationally they are simply capricious, as is evidenced by the fact that many classes of the ornate appear now under the heading of tropes, now of figures; sometimes under figures of speech, then as those of thought, no reason for the alteration is given except the arbitrary caprice of an individual rhetorician which so decrees and disposes. And since one function which may be fulfilled by the rhetorical categories is to point out the divergence between two ways of expressing the same thing, one of which is arbitrarily selected as "proper,"[18] it is easy to see why the ancients defined metaphor as "verbi vel sermonis a propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio," and figure as "conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi et primum se offerenti ratione."[19]

So far as we know, antiquity raised no revolt against the theory of ornament or of double form. We do sometimes hear Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca and others saying, Ipsae res verba rapiunt, Pectus est quod disertos facit et vis mentis, Rem tene, verba sequentur, Curam verborum rerum volo esse sollicitudinem, or Nulla est verborum nisi rei cohaerentium virtus. But these maxims did not bear the weighty meanings which we moderns might attach to them; they were perhaps in contradiction with the theory of ornament, but as the contradiction was unheeded, it was ineffective: they were the protests of common sense, powerless to combat the fallacies of school doctrine. Moreover, the latter was fitted with a safety-valve, a sage contrivance to disguise its inherent absurdity. If the ornate consisted of a plus, in what degree should it be used? if it gave pleasure, must we not conclude that the more it were used, the greater the pleasure derived? would its extravagant use be attended by extravagant pleasure? Herein was peril: instinctively the rhetoricians hastened to the defence, snatching up the first weapon that came to hand, namely, the fitting (πρέπον) Ornament must be used carefully; neither too much too little; in medio virtus; as much as is fitting (ἀλλά πρέπον). Aristotle recommends a style seasoned with "a certain dose" (δεῑ ἃρα κεκρᾶσθαί πως τούτοις.) for ornament should be a condiment, not a food (ἤδυσμα, οὐκ ἒδεσμα). [20] The fitting was a concept quite inconsistent with that of ornament; it was a rival, and enemy, destined to destroy it. Fitting to what? to expression of course; but that which is fitting to expression cannot be called an ornament, an external addition; it coincides with expression itself. But the rhetoricians contented themselves with maintaining peaceful relations between the ornate and the fitting, without troubling to mediate them through a third concept. The pseudo-Longinus alone in answer to an observation of his predecessor Cæcilius that more than two or three metaphors must not be used in the same place, remarked that a larger number ought to be used where passion (τὰ πάθη) rushes headlong like a torrent, carrying with it as necessaries (ὡς ἀναγκαῑον) a multitude of such substitutions.[21]

Preserved in the compilations of later antiquity (such as the works of Donatus and Priscian and the celebrated allegorical tract of Marcianus Capella), and in the compendia of Bede, Rhabanus Maurus and others, the theory of ornament passed to the Middle Ages. Throughout this period Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic continued to form the trivium of the schools. The theory was to some extent favoured in mediæval times by the fact that writers and scholars made use of a dead language; this helped to reinforce the idea that beautiful form was not a spontaneous thing but consisted in an addition or embroidery. Under the Renaissance the theory continued to flourish and was revived by study of the best classical sources; to the works of Cicero were added the Institutiones of Quintilian and the Rhetoric of Aristotle, with the host of minor Latin and Greek rhetoricians, amongst whom was Hermogenes with his celebrated Ideas, brought into fashion by Giulio Camillo.[22]

Even those writers who dared to criticize the organism of ancient Rhetoric left the theory of ornament unassailed. Vives lamented over the "exaggerated subtlety of the Greeks" which had multiplied distinctions to infinity in this matter without diffusing light,[23] but he never took up a definite stand against the theory of ornament. Patrizzi was dissatisfied with the insufficient definition of ornament given by the ancients; but he asserted the existence of ornaments and metaphors as well as seven different modes of "conjoined speech,"—narrative, proof, amplification, diminution, ornament with its contrary, elevation and depression.[24] The school of Ramus continued to entrust Rhetoric with the "embellishment" of thought. Owing to the vast extension and intensification of life and literature in the sixteenth century, it would be easy to quote phrases, as we have done from ancient authors, asserting the strict dependence of speech upon the things it wishes to express, and lively attacks on pedants and pedantic forms and rules for beautiful speech. But what would be the use? The theory of ornament was always in the background, tacitly admitted as indisputable by all. Juan de Valdés, for instance, makes the following confession of stylistic faith: "Escribo como hablo; solamente tengo cuidado de usar de vocablos que sinifiquen bien lo que quiero decir, y dígolo cuanto más llanamente me es posible, porqué, á mi parecer, en ninguna lengua está bien la afectación." But Valdés also says that beautiful language consists "en que digais lo que quereis con las menos palabras que pudiéredes, de tal manera que ... no se pueda quitar ninguna sin ofender á la sentencia, ó al encarescimiento, ó á la elegancia."[25] Here it seems that amplification and elegance are conceived as extraneous to the meaning or content.—A gleam of truth is visible in Montaigne, who, confronted by the laboured categories into which rhetoricians divide ornament, observes: "Oyez dire Métonymie, Métaphore, Allégorie et aultres tels noms de la Grammaire; semble il pas qu'on signifie quelque forme de langage rare et pellegrin? Ce sont tiltres qui touchent le babil de vostre chambrière."[26] That is to say, they are anything but language remote from the primum se offerens ratio.