The word taste or good taste was equally widespread and fashionable, signifying the faculty of judgement brought to bear on the beautiful, distinct to some extent from intellectual power, and sometimes divided into active and passive, so that it was usual to speak of one kind of taste as "productive" or "fertile" (thus coinciding with "wit"), and of another as "sterile."

From the rough notes which we possess as to the history of the concept of taste, several meanings of the word, not all of equal importance as indications of the development of ideas, detach themselves in a somewhat confused manner. "Taste," meaning "pleasure" or "delight," was an old-established word in Italy and Spain, as is shown in such phrases as "to have a taste for, to be to one's taste"; when Lope di Vega and other Spaniards speak continually of the drama of their country as seeking to please the popular taste ("deleita el gusto"; "para darle gusto") they mean only the "pleasure" of the populace. In Italy there was a very ancient use of the word in the metaphorical sense of "judgement," either literary, scientific, or artistic; numberless examples of this use occur in writers of the sixteenth century (Ariosto, Varchi, Michæl Angelo, Tasso). To take but one of these: the lines in Orlando Furioso where it is said of the Emperor Augustus, "L' aver avuto in poesia buon gusto La proscrizione iniqua gli perdona," "For having had good taste in poetry he shall be forgiven his iniquitous proscriptions"; or the remark of Ludovico Dolce that' some person "had such exquisite taste, he sang no verses save those of Catullus and Calvus."[7] The word "taste," in the sense of a special faculty or attitude of mind, appears to have been used for the first time in Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century by Gracian,[8] the moralist and political writer already quoted. It is evidently to him that the Italian author Trevisano alludes in a preface to a book by Muratori (1708) when he speaks of "Spaniards, above all others cunning in metaphor," who express themselves in "that eloquent and laconic phrase, good taste"; touching further on taste and genius he quotes, "that ingenious Spaniard," Gracian,[9] who gave the word the sense of "practical wit," enabling one to perceive the "true signification" of things; his "man of good taste" becomes in our language "a man of tact" in the affairs of life.[10]

The transference of the word to the domain of æsthetic seems to have taken place in France during the last quarter of the century. "Il y a dans l'art un point de perfection, comme de bonté ou de maturité dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime a le goût parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deçà ou au delà, a le goût défectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais goût, et l'on dispute des goûts avec fondement," writes La Bruyère[11] (1688). As attributes or variants of taste it was usual to mention delicacy and variety or variability. Bearing its fresh critical—literary content, but not freed from the encumbrance of its earlier practical and moral significance, the word spread from France into other European countries. Thomasius introduced it into Germany in 1687;[12] and in England it becomes "good taste." In Italy it appears as early as 1696 as title of a large book written by Camillo Ettori, the Jesuit, Il buon gusto ne' componimenti rettorici.[13] The preface notes: "The expression 'good taste,' proper to those who rightly distinguish good from bad flavour in foods, is now in general use and claimed by every one as a title in connexion with literature and the humanities"; it reappears in 1708 at the beginning of Muratori's[14] book already quoted: Trevisano treats of it philosophically: Salvini discusses it in his note upon the Perfetta Poesia of Muratori above mentioned, where the subject of good taste occupies several pages,[15] and finally it gives its name to the Academy of Good Taste founded at Palermo in 1718.[16] Scholars of the day who took up the discussion of the theme, recollecting some passages scattered throughout the ancient classics, placed the new concept in relation with the "tacitus quidam sensus sine ulla ratione et arte" of Cicero; and with the "indicium" which "nec magis arte traditur quam gustus aut odor" of Quintilian.[17] More particularly Montfaucon de Villars (1671)[18] wrote a book on "Delicacy"; Ettori strove to find some definition more satisfactory than those current at the time (e.g. "it is the finest invention of wit, the flower of wit and extract of beauty's self," and similar conceits);[19] Orsi made it the subject of his Considerazioni written in reply to Bouhours' book.

In Italy in the seventeenth century we find imagination or fancy placed on a pinnacle. What do you mean by talking of probability and historical truth (asks Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino in 1644), of false or true in connexion with poetry; which deals not with fiction, fact or historical probability but with primary apprehensions which assert neither truth nor falsehood? Following this line of argument, imagination takes the place of that probable, neither true nor false, advocated by some commentators of Aristotle; a theory strongly criticized by Pallavicino, here agreeing with Piccolomini, whom however he does not name, and in opposition to Castelvetro whom he explicitly mentions. He who goes to the play (continues Pallavicino) knows quite well that the scenes acted on the stage are not real; although he has no belief in them yet they please him greatly. For "if poetry desired to be mistaken for truth, the end she had in view would be a he, by the laws of nature and of God doomed inevitably to perish: for a lie is nothing but an untruth uttered in the hope that it may be mistaken for truth. How then should an art so tainted be allowed to flourish in the best-regulated republics? How should it be commended and used by the very writers of Holy Scripture?" Ut pictura poësis: poetry is like painting, which is a "diligent imitation" aiming at a close copy of the features, colours, acts, nay, even the hidden motives, of the objects it represents: and it "does not pretend that fiction is truth." The sole aim of poetic tales is "to adorn our understanding with imagery, that is to say, with sumptuous, novel, marvellous and splendid appearances. And this is known to diffuse so useful an influence on mankind that humanity insists on rewarding poets with praise more glorious than is bestowed on any other men; their books are protected from the ravages of time with greater solicitude than is shown to scientific treatises or productions of any other art; in the end the names of poets are crowned with adoring veneration. See how the world thirsts for beautiful first apprehensions, although these are neither laden with science nor are they vehicles of truth."[20]

Sixty years later these ideas, although expressed by a Cardinal, seemed all too daring to Muratori, who could not bring himself to allow poets so much latitude, or to enfranchize them from their obligations to the probable. Nevertheless Muratori allows a large space to imagination, "an inferior apprehensive faculty" which, without caring whether things be false or true, confines itself to apprehending them, and "represents" the truth merely, leaving the task of "cognition" to the "superior apprehensive faculty" or intellect.[21] Even the stony heart of Gravina yields to the charm of imagination: he admits it occupies a considerable place in the realm of poetry and suffers his own arid prose to describe it as "a sorceress, but beneficent," "a delirium which cures madness."[22]

Earlier than either of these, Ettori commended it to the good rhetorician, "who in order that he may awaken images" must "familiarize himself with whatever is subject to bodily feeling" and "encounter the genius of imagination, which is a sensuous faculty," to these ends using "species rather than genera (since the latter, being more universal than the former, are less sensible), individuals rather than species, effects than causes, the number of the greater rather than the number of the less."[23]

As far back as 1578 the Spaniard Huarte had maintained that eloquence is the product of imagination rather than of intellect or reason.[24] In England Bacon (1605) ascribed science to intellect, history to memory and poetry to imagination or fancy:[25] Hobbes inquired into the procedure of poetry:[26] Addison (1712) devoted several numbers of his Spectator to analysis of the "pleasures of imagination."[27] Somewhat later, the importance of imagination was felt in Germany, where it found advocates in Bodmer, Breitinger and other writers of the Swiss school, who owed much to the influence of the Italians (Muratori, Gravina, Calepio) and the English: acting in their turn as teachers of Klopstock and the new German critical school.[28]

It was at this same period that opposition became clearly marked between those accustomed "à juger par le sentiment" and those used to "raisonner par principes."[29] The Frenchman, Du Bos, author of Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et la peinture (1719), upholds the theory of feeling; according to him art is simply a self-abandonment "aux impressions que les objets étrangers font sur nous," setting aside all reflective labour. He laughs at those philosophers who deny the force of imagination, and Malebranche's eloquent discourse founded on this denial draws from Du Bos the remark, "c'est à notre imagination qu'il parle contre l'abus de l'imagination." He refuses to see any intellectual nucleus in the productions of the arts, saying that art consists not in instruction but in style: nor is he too respectful towards the probable: he says he finds himself unable to set limits between it and the marvellous, and leaves to "born poets" the task of thus miraculously uniting opposites. For Du Bos there is no criterion of art save feeling, which he calls a "sixième sens," against which dispute is vain since in such matters popular opinion invariably wins the day over the dogmatic pronouncements of artists and men of letters: all the ingenious conceits of the greatest metaphysicians, though unimpeachable in themselves, will not in the slightest degree diminish the lustre of poetry or despoil it of one single attraction. Attempts to discredit Ariosto and Tasso in the eyes of Italians were as vain as those made against the Cid in France. Other people's arguments can never persuade us of the contrary of what we feel.[29] These notions were adopted by many French writers: for example Cartaut de la Villate[30] observes, "Le grand talent d'un écrivain qui veut plaire, est de tourner ses réflexions en sentiments;" and Trublet, "C'est un principe sûr, que la poésie doit être une expression de sentiment."[30] Nor were the English slow in emphasizing the concept of "emotion" in their theories of literature.

In the writings of this period imagination was often identified with wit, wit with taste, taste with feeling, and feeling with first apprehensions or imagination;[31] we have already noted that taste is sometimes critical and sometimes productive: this fusion, identification and subordination of terms apparently distinct shows how they gravitate round one single concept.

A German critic, one of the very few who have sought to penetrate the darkness surrounding the origins of modern Æsthetic, considers the concept of taste (which we owe, he thinks, to Gracian) "the most important æsthetic doctrine which remained for modern times to discover."[32] But without going so far as to say that taste is the chief doctrine of the science, and the foundation of all the rest, instead of only a particular doctrine, and without recapitulating what we have already said of Gracian's relation to the theory of taste, it is well to repeat that taste, wit, imagination, feeling, and so on, instead of new concepts scientifically grasped, were simply new words corresponding to vague impressions: at most they were problems, not concepts: apprehensions of ground still to be conquered, not yet annexed and brought into subjection. It must not be forgotten that the very men who made use of these terms could scarcely grope after the ideas they suggested without falling back into the old traditions, the only ones on which they had an intellectual grasp. To them the new words were shades, not bodies: when they tried to embrace them their arms returned empty to their own breasts.

Certainly wit differs to a certain extent from intellect. Yet Pellegrini and Tesauro, with other writers of treatises, never fail to point out that intellectual truth lies at the root of wit. Trevisano defines it as "an internal virtue of the soul which invents methods for expressing and executing its own concepts: it is recognizable now in the arrangement of things we invent, now in the clear expression of them: sometimes in cunning reconciliations of matters seemingly opposed, sometimes in tracing analogies but faintly discernible." To sum up, one must not "allow the actions of wit to go unaccompanied by those of intellect," or even by those of practical morality.[33] More ingenuously Muratori says, "Wit is that virtue and active force with which the intellect is able to assemble, unite and discover the similarities, relations and reasons of things."[34] In this manner wit, after having been distinguished from intellect, eventually becomes a part or a manifestation of it. By a somewhat different path the same conclusion is reached by Alexander Pope when he counsels that wit be reined in like a mettlesome horse, and observes:

For wit and judgement often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid like man and wife.[35]

Similar vicissitudes befell the word "taste," outcome of a metaphor (as was noted by Kant) whose effect was to stand in opposition to intellectualistic principles, as if to say that the judgement governing the choice of food destined solely for the delectation of the palate is of the same nature as that which decides opinions in matters of art.[36] Nevertheless, the very definition of this anti-intellectualistic concept contained a reference to intellect and reason; the implicit comparison with the palate was ultimately taken as signifying an anticipation of reflexion: as Voltaire wrote in the following century: "De même que la sensation du palais anticipe la réflexion."[37] Intellect and reason glimmer through all the definitions of taste belonging to this period. Mme. Dacier wrote in 1684, "Une harmonie, un accord de l'esprit et de la raison."[38] "Une raison éclairée qui, d'intelligence avec le cœur, fait toujours un juste choix parmi des choses opposées ou semblables," wrote the author of Entretiens galants.[39] According to another writer quoted by Bonhours, "taste" is "a natural feeling implanted in the soul, independent of any science that can possibly be acquired"; it is practically "an instinct of right reason."[40] The same Bouhours, whilst deprecating this interpretation of one metaphor by another, says, "Taste is more nearly allied to judgement than wit."[41] The Italian Ettori thinks that it may generally be described as "judgement regulated by art,"[42] and Baruffaldi (1710) identifies it with "discernment" reduced from theory to practice.[43] De Crousaz (1715) observes: "Le bon goût nous fait d'abord estimer par sentiment ce que la raison aurait approuvé, après qu'elle se serait donné le temps de l'examiner assez pour en juger par des justes idées."[44] And somewhat prior to him Trevisano considered it "a sentiment always willing to conform to whatsoever reason accepts," and in conjunction with divine grace, a powerful help to man in revealing the true and good, no longer able to circulate freely among mankind owing to original sin. For König (1727) in Germany taste was "a power of the intellect, product of a healthy mind and acute judgement which makes one able to feel the true, good and beautiful"; and for Bodmer in 1736 (after lengthy correspondence on the subject with his Italian friend Calepio) "a practised reflexion, prompt and penetrating into the smallest details, by which intellect is able to distinguish the true from the false, the perfect from the imperfect." Calepio and Bodmer were opponents of pure feeling, and made a distinction between "taste" and "good taste."[45] Traversing the same intellectualistic path, Muratori speaks of "good taste" in "erudition" and others of "good taste in philosophy."

Perhaps those authors were wise who preferred to remain vague and to identify taste with an indefinable Something, a je ne sais quoi; a nescio quid: a new expression which expressed nothing new, but at least called attention to the problem. Bouhours (1671) discusses it at length: "Les Italiens, qui font mystère de tout, emploient en toutes rencontres leur non so che: on ne voit rien de plus commune dans leurs poètes," and quotes Tasso and others in confirmation.[45] A note upon it is found in Salvini: "This 'good taste' has but recently come to the front; it seems a vague term applicable to nothing particular, and is equivalent to the non so che, to a happy or successful turn of wit."[46] Father Feijóo, who wrote on the Razón del gusto and on El no se qué (1733), says very wisely: "En muchas producciones no solo de la naturaleza, sino del arte, y aun mas del arte que de la naturaleza, encuentran los hombres, fuera di aquellas perfecciones sujetes á su comprehension racional, otro genero de primor misterioso que, lisonjeando el gusto, atormenta el entendemento. Los sentidos le palpan, pero no le puede dissipar la razon, y así, al querer explicarle, no se encuentran voces ni conceptos que cuadren á su idea, y salimos del paso con decir que hay un non se qué, que agrada, que enamora que hechiza, sin que pueda encontrarse revelacion mas clara da este natural misterio."[47] And President Montesquieu: "Il y a quelquefois dans les personnes ou dans les choses un charme invisible, une grâce naturelle, qu'on n'a pu définir, et qu'on a été forcé d'appeler le je ne sais quoi. Il me semble que c'est un effet principalement fondé sur la surprise."[48] Some writers rebelled against the subterfuge of the je ne sais quoi, saying, rightly enough, that it was a confession of ignorance: but they knew not how to escape that ignorance without falling into confusion between taste and intellectual judgement.

If the attempt to define "wit" and "taste" usually resulted in intellectualism, it was easy to transform imagination and feeling into sensationalistic doctrines. We have seen how earnestly Pallavicino insisted on the non-intellectuality of the fantasies and inventions of the imagination. "Nothing presents itself to the admirer of the beautiful (he writes) to enable him to verify his cognition and satisfy himself that the object recognized is or is not that for which he takes it; if either by vision or by strong apprehension he is led to think it actually present by an act of judgement, his taste for beauty as beauty does not arise from such act of judgement, but from the vision or lively apprehension which might remain in ourselves even when the deception of belief was corrected"; just as happens when we are drowsy and know ourselves to be but half awake, yet are unwilling to tear ourselves from sweet dreams. For Pallavicino imagination cannot err; he assimilates it wholly to the sensations, which are incapable of truth or falsity. And if imaginative knowledge pleases, it is not because it holds a special truth (imaginative truth), but because it creates objects which "though false are pleasing": the painter makes not likenesses but images which, all resemblance apart, are pleasing to the sight: the poet awakens apprehensions "sumptuous, novel, marvellous, splendid."[49] His opinion coincides, if we mistake not, with Marino's sensationalism: "The poet should aim only at the marvellous ... he who cannot amaze his hearers is not worth a straw":[50] he applauds the oft-repeated dictum of "Gabriel Chiabrera, that Pindar of Savona, that poetry should cause the eyebrows to arch themselves."[51] But in the Treatise upon Style written later (1646) he repents of his youthful achievement and appears willing to return to the pedagogic theory: "And forasmuch as I theorized concerning poetry in the basest manner, treating it solely as a minister of that delight which the mind enjoys in the less noble operation of imagination or apprehension arising from imagination; and, therefore, in consequence I somewhat relaxed the strings which bind it to the probable: I now wish to demonstrate that poetry has other functions more exalted and fruitful, while remaining in strict servitude to the probable: which office is to guide our minds in the noble exercise of judgement; thus it becomes the nurse of philosophy which it nourishes with sweet milk."[52] The Jesuit Ettori, while inculcating the use of imagination and recommending orators to go to school with the "actors," points out that imagination should fulfil the simple office of "interpreter" between intellect and truth, never assuming dominion, otherwise the orator would be treating his audience or readers "not as men, to whom intellect is proper, but as beasts whom imagination satisfies."[53]

The conception of imagination as purely sensuous shows strongly in Muratori, who is so convinced that the faculty, if left to itself, would deteriorate into a riot of dreams and intoxication, that he links it to intellect as to "an authoritative friend" who shall influence the choice and combination of images.[54] The problem of the nature of imagination had strong attraction for Muratori, and, while traducing and vilifying, he returns to it again in his Della forza della fantasia umana;[55] describing it as a material faculty essentially different from the mental or spiritual, and denying it the validity of knowledge. Although he had observed that the aim of poetry is distinct from that of science, in that the latter seeks to "know," and the former to "represent" truth,[56] he persisted in counting Poetry as an "art of delectation" subordinate to Moral Philosophy, of whom she was one of the three servants or ministers.[57] Very similarly Gravina held that along with novelty and delight in the marvellous, poetry should endow the mind of the vulgar with "truth and universal cognitions."[58]

Outside Italy the same movement was going on. Bacon, although he assigned poetry to imagination, yet considered it as something intermediary between history and science, approximating epic to history and the most lofty style, the parabolic, to science: ("poēsis parabolica inter reliquas eminet".) Elsewhere he calls poetry somnium or declares absolutely that "scientias fere non parit," and that "pro lusu potius ingenii quam pro scientia est habenda": music, painting and sculpture are voluptuous arts.[59] Addison identified the pleasures of the imagination with those produced by visible objects or the ideas to which they give rise: such pleasures are not so strong as those of the senses nor so refined as those of the intellect: he groups together the pleasures experienced respectively in comparing imitations with the objects imitated, and in sharpening by this means the faculty of observation.[60]

[Sidenote Feeling and Sensationalism.]

The sensationalism of Du Bos and other upholders of feeling appears very clearly. For Du Bos art is a pastime whose pleasantness consists in the fact that it occupies the mind without fatigue, and has affinities with the pleasure provoked by gladiatorial contests, bullfights and tourneys.[61]

For these reasons, whilst noting the importance, in the prehistory of Æsthetic, of these new words and the new views they express; and while recognizing their value as a ferment in the discussion of the æsthetic problem, taken up by thinkers of the Renaissance at the point at which it had been left by the ancients; we yet cannot discern in their apparition the true origin of our science. By these words and the discussions they aroused, the æsthetic fact clamoured even louder and more insistently for its own philosophical justification; but this it was not yet to attain either by this means or by any other.