The philosophy of sensation explains sentiment, as well as the idea of the beautiful, only by changing its nature. It confounds it with agreeable sensation, and, consequently, for it the love of beauty can be nothing but desire. There is no theory more contradicted by facts.

What is desire? It is an emotion of the soul which has, for its avowed or secret end, possession. Admiration is in its nature respectful, whilst desire tends to profane its object.

Desire is the offspring of need. It supposes, then, in him who experiences it, a want, a defect, and, to a certain point, suffering. The sentiment of the beautiful is to itself its own satisfaction.

Desire is burning, impetuous, sad. The sentiment of the beautiful, free from all desire, and always without fear, elevates and warms the soul, and may transport it even to enthusiasm, without making it know the troubles of passion. The artist sees only the beautiful where the sensual man sees only the alluring and the frightful. On a vessel tossed by a tempest, while the passengers tremble at the sight of the threatening waves, and at the sound of the thunder that breaks over their heads, the artist remains absorbed in the contemplation of the sublime spectacle. Vernet has himself lashed to the mast in order to contemplate for a longer time the storm in its majestic and terrible beauty. When he knows fear, when he participates in the common feeling, the artist vanishes, there no more remains any thing but the man.

The sentiment of the beautiful is so far from being desire, that each excludes the other. Let me take a common example. Before a table loaded with meats and delicious wines, the desire of enjoyment is awakened, but not the sentiment of the beautiful. Suppose that if, instead of thinking of the pleasures which all these things spread before my eyes promise me, I only take notice of the manner in which they are arranged and set upon the table, and the order of the feast, the sentiment of the beautiful might in some degree be produced; but surely this will be neither the need nor the desire of appropriating this symmetry, this order.

It is the property of beauty not to irritate and inflame desire, but to purify and ennoble it. The more beautiful a woman is,—I do not mean that common and gross beauty which Reubens in vain animates with his brilliant coloring, but that ideal beauty which antiquity and Raphael understood so well,—the more, at the sight of this noble creature is desire tempered by an exquisite and delicate sentiment, and is sometimes even replaced by a disinterested worship. If the Venus of the Capitol, or the Saint Cecilia, excites in you sensual desires, you are not made to feel the beautiful. So the true artist addresses himself less to the senses than to the soul; in painting beauty he only seeks to awaken in us sentiment; and when he has carried this sentiment as far as enthusiasm, he has obtained the last triumph of art.

The sentiment of the beautiful is, therefore, a special sentiment, as the idea of the beautiful is a simple idea. But is this sentiment, one in itself, manifested only in a single way, and applied only to a single kind of beauty? Here again—here, as always—let us interrogate experience.

When we have before our eyes an object whose forms are perfectly determined, and the whole easy to embrace,—a beautiful flower, a beautiful statue, an antique temple of moderate size,—each of our faculties attaches itself to this object, and rests upon it with an unalloyed satisfaction. Our senses easily perceive its details; our reason seizes the happy harmony of all its parts. Should this object disappear, we can distinctly represent it to ourselves, so precise and fixed are its forms. The soul in this contemplation feels again a sweet and tranquil joy, a sort of efflorescence.

Let us consider, on the other hand, an object with vague and indefinite forms, which may nevertheless be very beautiful: the impression which we experience is without doubt a pleasure still, but it is a pleasure of a different order. This object does not call forth all our powers like the first. Reason conceives it, but the senses do not perceive the whole of it, and imagination does not distinctly represent it to itself. The senses and the imagination try in vain to attain its last limits; our faculties are enlarged, are inflated, thus to speak, in order to embrace it, but it escapes and surpasses them. The pleasure that we feel comes from the very magnitude of the object; but, at the same time, this magnitude produces in us I know not what melancholy sentiment, because it is disproportionate to us. At the sight of the starry heavens, of the vast sea, of gigantic mountains, admiration is mingled with sadness. These objects, in reality finite, like the world itself, seem to us infinite, in our want of power to comprehend their immensity, and, resembling what is truly without bounds, they awaken in us the idea of the infinite, that idea which at once elevates and confounds our intelligence. The corresponding sentiment which the soul experiences is an austere pleasure.

In order to render the difference which we wish to mark more perceptible, examples may be multiplied. Are you affected in the same way at the sight of a meadow, variegated in its rather limited dimensions, whose extent the eye can easily take in, and at the aspect of an inaccessible mountain, at the foot of which the ocean breaks? Do the sweet light of day and a melodious voice produce upon you the same effect as darkness and silence? In the intellectual and moral order, are you moved in the same way when a rich and good man opens his purse to the indigent, and when a magnanimous man gives hospitality to his enemy, and saves him at the peril of his own life? Take some light poetry in which measure, spirit, and grace, everywhere predominate; take an ode, and especially an epistle of Horace, or some small verses of Voltaire, and compare them with the Iliad, or those immense Indian poems that are filled with marvellous events, wherein the highest metaphysics are united to recitals by turns graceful or pathetic, those poems that have more than two hundred thousand verses, whose personages are gods or symbolic beings; and see whether the impressions that you experience will be the same. As a last example, suppose, on the one hand, a writer who, with two or three strokes of the pen, sketches an analysis of intelligence, agreeable and simple, but without depth, and, on the other, a philosopher who engages in a long labor in order to arrive at the most rigorous decomposition of the faculty of knowing, and unfolds to you a long chain of principles and consequences,—read the Traité des Sensations and the Critique of Pure Reason, and, even leaving out of the account the truth and the falsehood they may contain, with reference solely to the beautiful, compare your impressions.

These are, then, two very different sentiments; different names have also been given them: one has been more particularly called the sentiment of the beautiful, the other that of the sublime.

In order to complete the study of the different faculties that enter into the perception of beauty, after reason and sentiment, it remains to us to speak of a faculty not less necessary, which animates them and vivifies them,—imagination.

When sensation, judgment, and sentiment have been produced by the occasion of an external object, they are reproduced even in the absence of this object; this is memory.

Memory is double:—not only do I remember that I have been in the presence of a certain object, but I represent to myself this absent object as it was, as I have seen, felt, and judged it:—the remembrance is then an image. In this last case, memory has been called by some philosophers imaginative memory. Such is the foundation of imagination; but imagination is something more still.

The mind, applying itself to the images furnished by memory, decomposes them, chooses between their different traits, and forms of them new images. Without this new power, imagination would be captive in the circle of memory.

The gift of being strongly affected by objects and reproducing their absent or vanished images, and the power of modifying these images so as to compose of them new ones,—do they fully constitute what men call imagination? No, or at least, if these are indeed the proper elements of imagination, there must be something else added, to wit, the sentiment of the beautiful in all its degrees. By this means is a great imagination preserved and kindled. Did the careful reading of Titus Livius enable the author of the Horaces to vividly represent to himself some of the scenes described, to seize their principal traits and combine them happily? From the outset, sentiment, love of the beautiful, especially of the morally beautiful, were requisite; there was required that great heart whence sprang the word of the ancient Horace.

Let us be well understood. We do not say that sentiment is imagination, we say that it is the source whence imagination derives its inspirations and becomes productive. If men are so different in regard to imagination, it is because some are cold in presence of objects, cold in the representations which they preserve of them, cold also in the combinations which they form of them, whilst others, endowed with a particular sensibility, are vividly moved by the first impressions of objects, preserve strong recollections of them, and carry into the exercise of all their faculties this same force of emotion. Take away sentiment and all else is inanimate; let it manifest itself, and every thing receives warmth, color, and life.

It is then impossible to limit imagination, as the word seems to demand, to images properly so called, and to ideas that are related to physical objects. To remember sounds, to choose between them, to combine them in order to draw from them new effects,—does not this belong to imagination, although sound is not an image? The true musician does not possess less imagination than the painter. Imagination is conceded to the poet when he retraces the images of nature; will this same faculty be refused him when he retraces sentiments? But, besides images and sentiments, does not the poet employ the high thoughts of justice, liberty, virtue, in a word, moral ideas? Will it be said that in moral paintings, in pictures of the intimate life of the soul, either graceful or energetic, there is no imagination?

You see what is the extent of imagination: it has no limits, it is applied to all things. Its distinctive character is that of deeply moving the soul in the presence of a beautiful object, or by its remembrance alone, or even by the idea alone of an imaginary object. It is recognized by the sign that it produces, by the aid of its representations, the same impression as, and even an impression more vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If beauty, absent and dreamed of, does not affect you as much as, and more than, present beauty, you may have a thousand other gifts,—that of imagination has been refused you.

In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in comparison with its own fictions. One may feel that imagination is his master by the ennui that real and present things give him. The phantoms of imagination have a vagueness, an indefiniteness of form, which moves a thousand times more than the clearness and distinctness of actual perceptions. And then, unless we are wholly mad,—and passion does not always render this service,—it is very difficult to see reality otherwise than as it is not, that is to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes of an image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses it, embellishes it to his own liking. There is at the bottom of the human soul an infinite power of feeling and loving to which the entire world does not answer, still less a single one of its creatures, however charming. All mortal beauty, viewed near by, does not suffice for this insatiable power which it excites and cannot satisfy. But from afar, its effects disappear or are diminished, shades are mingled and confounded in the clear-obscure of memory and dream, and the objects please more because they are less determinate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is, that they represent men and things otherwise than as they are, and that they have a passion for such fantastic images. Those that are called positive men, are men without imagination, who perceive only what they see, and deal with reality as it is instead of transforming it. They have, in general, more reason than sentiment; they may be seriously, profoundly honest; they will never be either poets or artists. What makes the poet or artist is, with a foundation of good sense and reason—without which all the rest is useless—a sensitive, even a passionate heart; above all, a vivid, a powerful imagination.

If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagination returns with usury to sentiment what it gives.

This pure and ardent passion, this worship of beauty that makes the great artist, can be found only in a man of imagination. In fact, the sentiment of the beautiful may be awakened in each one of us before any beautiful object; but, when this object has disappeared, if its image does not subsist vivaciously retraced, the sentiment which it for a moment excited is little by little effaced; it may be revived at the sight of another object, but only to be extinguished again,—always dying to be born again at hazard; not being nourished, increased, exalted by the vivacious and continuous reproduction of its object in the imagination, it wants that inspiring power, without which there is no artist, no poet.

A word more on another faculty, which is not a simple faculty, but a happy combination of those which have just been mentioned,—taste, so ill treated, so arbitrarily limited in all theories.

If, after having heard a beautiful poetical or musical work, admired a statue or a picture, you are able to recall what your senses have perceived, to see again the absent picture, to hear again the sounds that no longer exist; in a word, if you have imagination, you possess one of the conditions without which there is no true taste. In fact, in order to relish the works of imagination, is it not necessary to have taste? Do we not need, in order to feel an author, not to equal him, without doubt, but to resemble him in some degree? Will not a man of sensible, but dry and austere mind, like Le Batteux or Condillac, be insensible to the happy darings of genius, and will he not carry into criticism a narrow severity, a reason very little reasonable—since he does not comprehend all the parts of human nature,—an intolerance that mutilates and blemishes art while thinking to purify it?

On the other hand, imagination does not suffice for the appreciation of beauty. Moreover, that vivacity of imagination so precious to taste, when it is somewhat restrained, produces, when it rules, only a very imperfect taste, which, not having reason for a basis, carelessly judges, runs the risk of misunderstanding the greatest beauty,—beauty that is regulated. Unity in composition, harmony of all the parts, just proportion of details, skilful combination of effects, discrimination, sobriety, measure, are so many merits it will little feel, and will not put in their place. Imagination has doubtless much to do with works of art; but, in fine, it is not every thing. Is it only imagination that makes the Polyeucte and the Misanthrope, two incomparable marvels? Is there not, also, in the profound simplicity of plan, in the measured development of action, in the sustained truth of characters, a superior reason, different from imagination which furnishes the superior colors, and from sensibility that gives the passion?

Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste ought to possess an enlightened but ardent love of beauty; he must take delight in meeting it, must search for it, must summon it. To comprehend and demonstrate that a thing is not beautiful, is an ordinary pleasure, an ungrateful task; but to discern a beautiful thing, to be penetrated with its beauty, to make it evident, and make others participate in our sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a generous task. Admiration is, for him who feels it, at once a happiness and an honor. It is a happiness to feel deeply what is beautiful; it is an honor to know how to recognize it. Admiration is the sign of an elevated reason served by a noble heart. It is above a small criticism, that is skeptical and powerless; but it is the soul of a large criticism, a criticism that is productive: it is, thus to speak, the divine part of taste.

After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, shall we say nothing of genius which makes it live again? Genius is nothing else than taste in action, that is to say, the three powers of taste carried to their culmination, and armed with a new and mysterious power, the power of execution. But we are already entering upon the domain of art. Let us wait, we shall soon find art again and the genius that accompanies it.

LECTURE VII.

THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.

The history of philosophy offers many theories on the nature of the beautiful: we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them all; we will designate the most important.[103]

There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that which pleases the senses, that which procures an agreeable impression. We will not stop at this opinion. We have sufficiently refuted it in showing that it is impossible to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.

A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the place of the agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of the same principle. Neither is the beautiful the object which procures for us in the present moment an agreeable but fugitive sensation, it is the object which can often procure for us this same sensation or others similar. No great effort of observation or reasoning is necessary to convince us that utility has nothing to do with beauty. What is useful is not always beautiful. What is beautiful is not always useful, and what is at once useful and beautiful is beautiful for some other reason than its utility. Observe a lever or a pulley: surely nothing is more useful. Nevertheless, you are not tempted to say that this is beautiful. Have you discovered an antique vase admirably worked? You exclaim that this vase is beautiful, without thinking to seek of what use it may be to you. Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful things, and at the same time, are useful things, because they economize space, because objects symmetrically disposed are easier to find when one wants them; but that is not what makes for us the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately seize this kind of beauty, and it is often late enough before we recognize the utility that is found in it. It even sometimes happens, that after having admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to divine its use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely different from the beautiful, far from being its foundation.

A celebrated and very ancient[104] theory makes the beautiful consist in the perfect suitableness of means to their end. Here the beautiful is no longer the useful, it is the suitable; these two ideas must be distinguished. A machine produces excellent effects, economy of time, work, etc.; it is therefore useful. If, moreover, examining its construction, I find that each piece is in its place, and that all are skilfully disposed for the result which they should produce; even without regarding the utility of this result, as the means are well adapted to their end, I judge that there is suitableness in it. We are already approaching the idea of the beautiful; for we are no longer considering what is useful, but what is proper. Now, we have not yet attained the true character of beauty; there are, in fact, objects very well adapted to their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench without ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, provided all the parts are firmly connected, provided one may sit down on it with safety, provided it may be for this purpose suitable, agreeable even, may give an example of the most perfect adaptation of means to an end; it will not, therefore, be said that this bench is beautiful. There is here always this difference between suitableness and utility, that an object to be beautiful has no need of being useful, but that it is not beautiful if it does not possess suitableness, if there is in it a disagreement between the end and the means.

Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, and this is, in fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it is not the only one. It is very certain, that an object ill-proportioned cannot be beautiful. There is in all beautiful objects, however far they may be from geometric form, a sort of living geometry. But, I ask, is it proportion that is dominant in this slender tree, with flexible and graceful branches, with rich and shady foliage? What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what makes that of a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime ode? It is not, I know, wanting in law and rule, neither is it law and rule: often, even what at first strikes us is an apparent irregularity. It is absurd to pretend that what makes us admire all these things and many more, is the same quality that makes us admire a geometric figure, that is to say, the exact correspondence of parts.

What we say of proportion may be said of order, which is something less mathematical than proportion, but scarcely explains better what is free, varied, and negligent in certain beauties.

All these theories which refer beauty to order, harmony, and proportion, are at foundation only one and the same theory which in the beautiful sees unity before all. And surely unity is beautiful; it is an important part of beauty, but it is not the whole of beauty.

The most probable theory of the beautiful is that which composes it of two contrary and equally necessary elements, unity and variety. Behold a beautiful flower. Without doubt, unity, order, proportion, symmetry even, are in it; for, without these qualities, reason would be absent from it, and all things are made with a marvellous reason. But, at the same time, what a diversity! How many shades in the color, what richness in the least details! Even in mathematics, what is beautiful is not an abstract principle, it is a principle carrying with itself a long chain of consequences. There is no beauty without life, and life is movement, is diversity.

Unity and variety are applied to all orders of beauty. Let us rapidly run over these different orders.

In the first place, there are beautiful objects, to speak properly, and sublime objects. A beautiful object, we have seen, is something completed, circumscribed, limited, which all our faculties easily embrace, because the different parts are on a somewhat narrow scale. A sublime object is that which, by forms not in themselves disproportionate, but less definite and more difficult to seize, awakens in us the sentiment of the infinite.

There are two very distinct species of beauty. But reality is inexhaustible, and in all the degrees of reality there is beauty.

Among sensible objects, colors, sounds, figures, movements, are capable of producing the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful. All these beauties are arranged under that species of beauty which, right or wrong, is called physical beauty.

If from the world of sense we elevate ourselves to that of mind, truth, and science, we shall find there beauties more severe, but not less real. The universal laws that govern bodies, those that govern intelligences, the great principles that contain and produce long deductions, the genius that creates, in the artist, poet, or philosopher,—all these are beautiful, as well as nature herself: this is what is called intellectual beauty.

Finally, if we consider the moral world and its laws, the idea of liberty, virtue, and devotedness, here the austere justice of an Aristides, there the heroism of a Leonidas, the prodigies of charity or patriotism, we shall certainly find a third order of beauty that still surpasses the other two, to wit, moral beauty.

Neither let us forget to apply to all these beauties the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. There are, then, the beautiful and the sublime at once in nature, in ideas, in sentiments, in actions. What an almost infinite variety in beauty!

After having enumerated all these differences, could we not reduce them? They are incontestable; but, in this diversity is there not unity? Is there not a single beauty of which all particular beauties are only reflections, shades, degrees, or degradations?

Plotinus, in his treatise On the Beautiful,[105] proposed to himself this question. He asks—What is the beautiful in itself? I see clearly that such or such a form is beautiful, that such or such an action is also beautiful; but why and how are these two objects, so dissimilar, beautiful? What is the common quality which, being found in these two objects, ranges them under the general idea of the beautiful?

It is necessary to answer this question, or the theory of beauty is a maze without issue; one applies the same name to the most diverse things, without understanding the real unity that authorizes this unity of name.

Either the diversities which we have designated in beauty are such that it is impossible to discover their relation, or these diversities are especially apparent, and have their harmony, their concealed unity.

Is it pretended that this unity is a chimera? Then physical beauty, moral beauty, and intellectual beauty, are strangers to each other. What, then, will the artist do? He is surrounded by different beauties, and he must make a work; for such is the recognized law of art. But if this unity that is imposed upon him is a factitious unity, if there are in nature only essentially dissimilar beauties, art deceives and lies to us. Let it be explained, then, how falsehood is the law of art. That cannot be; the unity that art expresses, it must have somewhere caught a glimpse of, in order to transport it into its works.

We neither retract the distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, nor the other distinctions just now indicated; but it is necessary to re-unite after having distinguished them. These distinctions and these re-unions are not contradictory: the great law of beauty, like that of truth, is unity as well as variety. All is one, and all is diverse. We have divided beauty into three great classes—physical beauty, intellectual beauty, and moral beauty. We must now seek the unity of these three sorts of beauty. Now, we think that they resolve themselves into one and the same beauty, moral beauty, meaning by that, with moral beauty properly so called, all spiritual beauty.

Let us put this opinion to the proof of facts.

Place yourself before that statue of Apollo which is called Apollo Belvidere, and observe attentively what strikes you in that master-piece. Winkelmann, who was not a metaphysician, but a learned antiquarian, a man of taste without system, made a celebrated analysis of the Apollo.[106] It is curious to study it. What Winkelmann extols before all, is the character of divinity stamped upon the immortal youth that invests that beautiful body, upon the height, a little above that of man, upon the majestic altitude, upon the imperious movement, upon the ensemble, and all the details of the person. The forehead is indeed that of a god,—an unalterable placidity dwells upon it. Lower down, humanity reappears somewhat; and that is very necessary, in order to interest humanity in the works of art. In that satisfied look, in the distension of the nostrils, in the elevation of the under lip, are at once felt anger mingled with disdain, pride of victory, and the little fatigue which it has cost. Weigh well each word of Winkelmann: you will find there a moral impression. The tone of the learned antiquary is elevated, little by little, to enthusiasm, and his analysis becomes a hymn to spiritual beauty.

Instead of a statue, observe a real and living man. Regard that man who, solicited by the strongest motives to sacrifice duty to fortune, triumphs over interest, after an heroic struggle, and sacrifices fortune to virtue. Regard him at the moment when he is about to take this magnanimous resolution; his face will appear to you beautiful, because it expresses the beauty of his soul. Perhaps, under all other circumstances, the face of the man is common, even trivial; here, illuminated by the soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an imposing character of beauty. So, the natural face of Socrates[107] contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian beauty; but look at him on his death-bed, at the moment of drinking the hemlock, convening with his disciples on the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to you sublime.[108]

At the highest point of moral grandeur, Socrates expires:—you have before your eyes no longer any thing but his dead body; the dead face preserves its beauty, as long as it preserves traces of the mind that animated it; but little by little the expression is extinguished or disappears; the face then becomes vulgar and ugly. The expression of death is hideous or sublime,—hideous at the aspect of the decomposition of the matter that no longer retains the spirit,—sublime when it awakens in us the idea of eternity.

Consider the figure of man in repose: it is more beautiful than that of an animal, the figure of an animal is more beautiful than the form of any inanimate object. It is because the human figure, even in the absence of virtue and genius, always reflects an intelligent and moral nature, it is because the figure of an animal reflects sentiment at least, and something of soul, if not the soul entire. If from man and the animal we descend to purely physical nature, we shall still find beauty there, as long as we find there some shade of intelligence, I know not what, that awakens in us some thought, some sentiment. Do we arrive at some piece of matter that expresses nothing, that signifies nothing, neither is the idea of beauty applied to it. But every thing that exists is animated. Matter is shaped and penetrated by forces that are not material, and it obeys laws that attest an intelligence everywhere present. The most subtile chemical analysis does not reach a dead and inert nature, but a nature that is organized in its own way, that is neither deprived of forces nor laws. In the depths of the earth, as in the heights of the heavens, in a grain of sand as in a gigantic mountain, an immortal spirit shines through the thickest coverings. Let us contemplate nature with the eye of the soul as well as with the eye of the body:—everywhere a moral expression will strike us, and the forms of things will impress us as symbols of thought. We have said that with man, and with the animal even, the figure is beautiful on account of the expression. But, when you are on the summit of the Alps, or before the immense Ocean, when you behold the rising or setting of the sun, at the beginning or the close of the day, do not these imposing pictures produce on you a moral effect? Do all these grand spectacles appear only for the sake of appearing? Do we not regard them as manifestations of an admirable power, intelligence, and wisdom? And, thus to speak, is not the face of nature expressive like that of man?

Form cannot be simply a form, it must be the form of something. Physical beauty is, then, the sign of an internal beauty, which is spiritual and moral beauty; and this is the foundation, the principle, the unity of the beautiful.[109]

All the beauties that we have just enumerated and reduced compose what is called the really beautiful. But, above real beauty, is a beauty of another order—ideal beauty. The ideal resides neither in an individual, nor in a collection of individuals. Nature or experience furnishes us the occasion of conceiving it, but it is essentially distinct. Let it once be conceived, and all natural figures, though never so beautiful, are only images of a superior beauty which they do not realize. Give me a beautiful action, and I will imagine one still more beautiful. The Apollo itself is open to criticism in more than one respect. The ideal continually recedes as we approach it. Its last termination is in the infinite, that is to say, in God; or, to speak more correctly, the true and absolute ideal is nothing else than God himself.

God, being the principle of all things, must for this reason be that of perfect beauty, and, consequently, of all natural beauties that express it more or less imperfectly; he is the principle of beauty, both as author of the physical world and as father of the intellectual and moral world.

Is it not necessary to be a slave of the senses and of appearances in order to stop at movements, at forms, at sounds, at colors, whose harmonious combinations produce the beauty of this visible world, and not to conceive behind this scene so magnificent and well regulated, the orderer, the geometer, the supreme artist?

Physical beauty serves as an envelope to intellectual and moral beauty.

What can be the principle of intellectual beauty, that splendor of the true, except the principle of all truth?

Moral beauty comprises, as we shall subsequently see,[110] two distinct elements, equally but diversely beautiful, justice and charity, respect and love of men. He who expresses in his conduct justice and charity, accomplishes the most beautiful of all works; the good man is, in his way, the greatest of all artists. But what shall we say of him who is the very substance of justice and the exhaustless source of love? If our moral nature is beautiful, what must be the beauty of its author! His justice and goodness are everywhere, both in us and out of us. His justice is the moral order that no human law makes, that all human laws are forced to express, that is preserved and perpetuated in the world by its own force. Let us descend into ourselves, and consciousness will attest the divine justice in the peace and contentment that accompany virtue, in the troubles and tortures that are the invariable punishments of vice and crime. How many times, and with what eloquence, have men celebrated the indefatigable solicitude of Providence, its benefits everywhere manifest in the smallest as well as in the greatest phenomena of nature, which we forget so easily because they have become so familiar to us, but which, on reflection, call forth our mingled admiration and gratitude, and proclaim a good God, full of love for his creatures!

Thus, God is the principle of the three orders of beauty that we have distinguished, physical beauty, intellectual beauty, moral beauty.

In him also are reunited the two great forms of the beautiful distributed in each of these three orders, to wit, the beautiful and the sublime. God is, par excellence, the beautiful—for what object satisfies more all our faculties, our reason, our imagination, our heart! He offers to reason the highest idea, beyond which it has nothing more to seek; to imagination the most ravishing contemplation; to the heart a sovereign object of love. He is, then, perfectly beautiful; but is he not sublime also in other ways? If he extends the horizon of thought, it is to confound it in the abyss of his greatness. If the soul blooms at the spectacle of his goodness, has it not also reason to be affrighted at the idea of his justice, which is not less present to it? God is at once mild and terrible. At the same time that he is the life, the light, the movement, the ineffable grace of visible and finite nature, he is also called the Eternal, the Invisible, the Infinite, the Absolute Unity, and the Being of beings. Do not these awful attributes, as certain as the first, produce in the highest degree in the imagination and the soul that melancholy emotion excited by the sublime? Yes, God is for us the type and source of the two great forms of beauty, because he is to us at once an impenetrable enigma and still the clearest word that we are able to find for all enigmas. Limited beings as we are, we comprehend nothing in comparison with that which is without limits, and we are able to explain nothing without that same thing which is without limits. By the being that we possess, we have some idea of the infinite being of God; by the nothingness that is in us, we lose ourselves in the being of God; and thus always forced to recur to him in order to explain any thing, and always thrown back within ourselves under the weight of his infinitude, we experience by turns, or rather at the same time, for this God who raises and casts us down, a sentiment of irresistible attraction and astonishment, not to say insurmountable terror, which he alone can cause and allay, because he alone is the unity of the sublime and the beautiful.

Thus absolute being, which is both absolute unity and infinite variety,—God, is necessarily the last reason, the ultimate foundation, the completed ideal of all beauty. This is the marvellous beauty that Diotimus had caught a glimpse of, and thus paints to Socrates in the Banquet:

"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty, it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and, the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself.

"O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty.... What would be the destiny of a mortal to whom it should be granted to contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity, no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"[111]

LECTURE VIII

ON ART.

Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called taste,—imagination, sentiment, reason.

These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses, analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels, that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly, like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius; at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially, the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination, consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.

If genius creates it does not imitate.

But genius, it is said, is then superior to nature, since it does not imitate it. Nature is the work of God; man is then the rival of God.

The answer is very simple. No, genius is not the rival of God; but it is the interpreter of him. Nature expresses him in its way, human genius expresses him in its own way.

Let us stop a moment at that question so much discussed,—whether art is any thing else than the imitation of nature.

Doubtless, in one sense, art is an imitation; for absolute creation belongs only to God. Where can genius find the elements upon which it works, except in nature, of which it forms a part? But does it limit itself to the reproduction of them as nature furnishes them to it, without adding any thing to them which belongs to itself? Is it only a copier of reality? Its sole merit, then, is that of the fidelity of the copy. And what labor is more sterile than that of copying works essentially inimitable on account of the life with which they are endowed, in order to obtain an indifferent image of them? If art is a servile pupil, it is condemned never to be any thing but an impotent pupil.

The true artist feels and profoundly admires nature; but every thing in nature is not equally admirable. As we have just said, it has something by which it infinitely surpasses art—its life. Besides that, art can, in its turn, surpass nature, on the condition of not wishing to imitate it too closely. Every natural object, however beautiful, is defective on some side. Every thing that is real is imperfect. Here, the horrible and the hideous are united to the sublime; there, elegance and grace are separated from grandeur and force. The traits of beauty are scattered and diverse. To reunite them arbitrarily, to borrow from such a face a mouth, eyes from such another, without any rule that governs this choice and directs these borrowings, is to compose monsters; to admit a rule, is already to admit an ideal different from all individuals. It is this ideal that the true artist forms to himself in studying nature. Without nature, he never would have conceived this ideal; but with this ideal, he judges nature herself, rectifies her, and dares undertake to measure himself with her.

The ideal is the artist's object of passionate contemplation. Assiduously and silently meditated, unceasingly purified by reflection and vivified by sentiment, it warms genius and inspires it with the irresistible need of seeing it realized and living. For this end, genius takes in nature all the materials that can serve it, and applying to them its powerful hand, as Michael Angelo impressed his chisel upon the docile marble, makes of them works that have no model in nature, that imitate nothing else than the ideal dreamed of or conceived, that are in some sort a second creation inferior to the first in individuality and life, but much superior to it, we do not fear to say, on account of the intellectual and moral beauty with which it is impressed.

Moral beauty is the foundation of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art disengages it, and gives to it forms more transparent. On this account, art, when it knows well its power and its resources, institutes with nature a contest in which it may have the advantage.

Let us establish well the end of art: it is precisely where its power lies. The end of art is the expression of moral beauty, by the aid of physical beauty. The latter is only a symbol of the former. In nature, this symbol is often obscure: art in bringing it to light attains effects that nature does not always produce. Nature may please more, for, once more, it possesses in an incomparable degree what makes the great charm of imagination and sight—life; art touches more, because in expressing, above all, moral beauty, it addresses itself more directly to the source of profound emotions. Art can be more pathetic than nature, and the pathetic is the sign and measure of great beauty.

Two extremes are equally dangerous—a lifeless ideal, or the absence of the ideal. Either we copy the model, and are wanting in true beauty, or we work de tête, and fall into an ideality without character. Genius is a ready and sure perception of the right proportion in which the ideal and the natural, form and thought, ought to be united. This union is the perfection of art: chefs-d'œuvre are produced by observing it.

It is important, in my opinion, to follow this rule in teaching art. It is asked whether pupils should begin with the study of the ideal or the real. I do not hesitate to answer,—by both. Nature herself never offers the general without the individual, nor the individual without the general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it has general traits which constitute what is called the human figure. These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of design to trace. It would also be good, I believe, in order to preserve him from the dry and abstract, to exercise him early in copying some natural object, especially a living figure. This would be putting pupils to the true school of nature. They would thus become accustomed never to sacrifice either of the two essential elements of the beautiful, either of the two imperative conditions of art.

But, in uniting these two elements, these two conditions, it is necessary to distinguish them, and to know how to put them in their place. There is no true ideal without determinate form, there is no unity without variety, no genus without individuals, but, in fine, the foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all, the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a particular form.

At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a prize for the best answer to the following question: What were the causes of the perfection of the antique sculpture, and what would be the best means of attaining it? The successful competitor, M. Emeric David,[112] maintained the opinion then dominant, that the assiduous study of natural beauty had alone conducted the antique art to perfection, and that thus the imitation of nature was the only route to reach the same perfection. A man whom I do not fear to compare with Winkelmann, the future author of the Olympic Jupiter,[113] M. Quatremère de Quincy, in some ingenious and profound disquisitions,[114] combated the doctrine of the laureate, and defended the cause of ideal beauty. It is impossible to demonstrate more decidedly, by the entire history of Greek sculpture, and by authentic texts from the greatest critiques of antiquity, that the process of art among the Greeks was not the imitation of nature, either by a particular model, or by several, the most beautiful model being always very imperfect, and several models not being able to compose a single beauty. The true process of the Greek art was the representation of an ideal beauty which nature scarcely possessed more in Greece than among us, which it could not then offer to the artist. We regret that the honorable laureate, since become a member of the Institute, pretended that this expression of ideal beauty, if it had been known by the Greeks, would have meant visible beauty, because ideal comes from εἶδος, which signifies only, according to M. Emeric David, a form seen by the eye. Plato would have been much surprised at this exclusive interpretation of the word εἶδος. M. Quatremère de Quincy confounds his unequal adversary by two admirable texts, one from the Timæus, where Plato marks with precision in what the true artist is superior to the ordinary artist, the other at the commencement of the Orator, where Cicero explains the manner in which great artists work, in referring to the manner of Phidias, that is to say, the most perfect master of the most perfect epoch of art.

"The artist,[115] who, with eye fixed upon the immutable being, and using such a model, reproduces its idea and its excellence, cannot fail to produce a whole whose beauty is complete, whilst he who fixes his eye upon what is transitory, with this perishable model will make nothing beautiful."

"Phidias,[116] that great artist, when he made the form of Jupiter or Minerva, did not contemplate a model a resemblance of which he would express; but in the depth of his soul resided a perfect type of beauty, upon which he fixed his look, which guided his hand and his art."

Is not this process of Phidias precisely that which Raphael describes in the famous letter to Castiglione, which he declares that he followed himself for the Galatea?[117] "As," he says, "I am destitute of beautiful models, I use a certain ideal which I form for myself."

There is another theory which comes back, by a circuit, to imitation: it is that which makes illusion the end of art. If this theory be true, the ideal beauty of painting is a tromp-l'œil,[118] and its master-piece is the grapes of Zeuxis that the birds came and pecked at. The height of art in a theatrical piece would be to persuade you that you are in the presence of reality. What is true in this opinion is, that a work of art is beautiful only on the condition of being life-like, and, for example, the law of dramatic art is not to put on the stage pale phantoms of the past, but personages borrowed from imagination or history, as you like, but animated, endowed with passion, speaking and acting like men and not like shades. It is human nature that is to be represented to itself under a magic light that does not disfigure it, but ennobles it. This magic is the very genius of art. It lifts us above the miseries that besiege us, and transports us to regions where we still find ourselves, for we never wish to lose sight of ourselves, but where we find ourselves transformed to our advantage, where all the imperfections of reality have given place to a certain perfection, where the language that we speak is more equal and elevated, where persons are more beautiful, where the ugly is not admitted, and all this while duly respecting history, especially without ever going beyond the imperative conditions of human nature. Has art forgotten human nature? it has passed beyond its end, it has not attained it; it has brought forth nothing but chimeras without interest for our soul. Has it been too human, too real, too nude? it has fallen short of its end; it has then attained it no better.

Illusion is so little the end of art, that it may be complete and have no charm. Thus, in the interest of illusion, theatrical men have taken great pains in these latter times to secure historical accuracy of costume. This is all very well; but it is not the most important thing. Had you found, and lent to the actor who plays the part of Brutus, the very costume that of old the Roman hero wore, it would touch true connoisseurs very little. This is not all; when the illusion goes too far, the sentiment of art disappears in order to give place to a sentiment purely natural, sometimes insupportable. If I believed that Iphegenia were in fact on the point of being immolated by her father at a distance of twenty paces from me, I should leave the theatre trembling with horror. If the Ariadne that I see and hear, were the true Ariadne who is about to be betrayed by her sister, in that pathetic scene where the poor woman, who already feels herself less loved, asks who then robs her of the heart, once so tender, of Theseus, I would do as the young Englishman did, who cried out, sobbing and trying to spring upon the stage, "It is Phèdre, it is Phèdre!" as if he would warn and save Ariadne.

But, it is said, is it not the aim of the poet to excite pity and terror? Yes; but at first in a certain measure; then he must mix with them some other sentiment that tempers them, or makes them serve another end. If the aim of dramatic art were only to excite in the highest degree pity and terror, art would be the powerless rival of nature. All the misfortunes represented on the stage are very feeble in comparison with those sad spectacles which we may see every day. The first hospital is fuller of pity and terror than all the theatres in the world. What should the poet do in the theory that we combat? He should transfer to the stage the greatest possible reality, and move us powerfully by shocking our senses with the sight of frightful pains. The great resort of the pathetic would then be the representation of death, especially that of the greatest torture. Quite on the contrary, there is an end of art when sensibility is too much excited. To take, again, an example that we have already employed, what constitutes the beauty of a tempest, of a shipwreck? What attracts us to those great scenes of nature? It is certainly not pity and terror,—these poignant and lacerating sentiments would much sooner keep us away. An emotion very different from these is necessary, which triumphs over us, in order to retain us by the shore; this emotion is the pure sentiment of the beautiful and the sublime, excited and kept alive by the grandeur of the spectacle, by the vast extent of the sea, the rolling of the foaming waves, and the imposing sound of the thunder. But do we think for a single instant that there are in the midst of the sea the unfortunate who are suffering, and are, perhaps, about to perish? From that moment the spectacle becomes to us insupportable. It is so in art. Whatever sentiment it proposes to excite in us, must always be tempered and governed by that of the beautiful. If it only produces pity or terror beyond a certain limit, especially physical pity or terror, it revolts, and no longer charms; it loses the effect that belongs to it in exchange for a foreign and vulgar effect.

For this same reason, I cannot accept another theory, which, confounding the sentiment of the beautiful with the moral and religious sentiment, puts art in the service of religion and morals, and gives it for its end to make us better and elevate us to God. There is here an essential distinction to be made. If all beauty covers a moral beauty, if the ideal mounts unceasingly towards the infinite, art, which expresses ideal beauty, purifies the soul in elevating it towards the infinite, that is to say, towards God. Art, then, produces the perfection of the soul, but it produces it indirectly. The philosopher who investigates effects and causes, knows what is the ultimate principle of the beautiful and its certain, although remote, effects. But the artist is before all things an artist; what animates him is the sentiment of the beautiful; what he wishes to make pass into the soul of the spectator is the same sentiment that fills his own. He confides himself to the virtue of beauty; he fortifies it with all the power, all the charm of the ideal; it must then do its own work; the artist has done his when he has procured for some noble souls the exquisite sentiment of beauty. This pure and disinterested sentiment is a noble ally of the moral and religious sentiments; it awakens, preserves, and develops them, but it is a distinct and special sentiment. So art, which is founded on this sentiment, which is inspired by it, which expands it, is in its turn an independent power. It is naturally associated with all that ennobles the soul, with morals and religion; but it springs only from itself.

Let us confine our thought strictly within its proper limits. In vindicating the independence, the proper dignity, and the particular end of art, we do not intend to separate it from religion, from morals, from country. Art draws its inspirations from these profound sources, as well as from the ever open source of nature. But it is not less true that art, the state, religion, are powers which have each their world apart and their own effects; they mutually help each other; they should not serve each other. As soon as one of them wanders from its end, it errs, and is degraded. Does art blindly give itself up to the orders of religion and the state? In losing its liberty, it loses its charm and its empire.

Ancient Greece and modern Italy are continually cited as triumphant examples of what the alliance of art, religion, and the state can do. Nothing is more true, if the question is concerning their union; nothing is more false, if the question is concerning the servitude of art. Art in Greece was so little the slave of religion, that it little by little modified the symbols, and, to a certain extent, the spirit itself, by its free representations. There is a long distance between the divinities that Greece received from Egypt and those of which it has left immortal exemplars. Are those primitive artists and poets, as Homer and Dedalus are called, strangers to this change? And in the most beautiful epoch of art, did not Æschylus and Phidias carry a great liberty into the religious scenes which they exposed to the gaze of the people, in the theatre, or in front of the temples? In Italy as in Greece, as everywhere, art is at first in the hands of priesthoods and governments; but, as it increases its importance and is developed, it more and more conquers its liberty. Men speak of the faith that animated the artists and vivified their works; that is true of the time of Giotto and Ciambuë; but after Angelico de Fiesole, at the end of the fifteenth century, in Italy, I perceive especially the faith of art in itself and the worship of beauty. Raphael was about to become a cardinal;[119] yes, but always painting Galatea, and without quitting Fornarine. Once more, let us exaggerate nothing; let us distinguish, not separate; let us unite art, religion, and country, but let not their union injure the liberty of each. Let us be thoroughly penetrated with the thought, that art is also to itself a kind of religion. God manifests himself to us by the idea of the true, by the idea of the good, by the idea of the beautiful. Each one of them leads to God, because it comes from him. True beauty is ideal beauty, and ideal beauty is a reflection of the infinite. So, independently of all official alliance with religion and morals, art is by itself essentially religious and moral; for, far from wanting its own law, its own genius, it everywhere expresses in its works eternal beauty. Bound on all sides to matter by inflexible laws, working upon inanimate stone, upon uncertain and fugitive sounds, upon words of limited and finite signification, art communicates to them, with the precise form that is addressed to such or such a sense, a mysterious character that is addressed to the imagination and the soul, takes them away from reality, and bears them sweetly or violently into unknown regions. Every work of art, whatever may be its form, small or great, figured, sung, or uttered,—every work of art, truly beautiful or sublime, throws the soul into a gentle or severe reverie that elevates it towards the infinite. The infinite is the common limit after which the soul aspires upon the wings of imagination as well as reason, by the route of the sublime and the beautiful, as well as by that of the true and the good. The emotion that the beautiful produces turns the soul from this world; it is the beneficent emotion that art produces for humanity.