But the philosopher of art, the æsthetician in De Sanctis is less great than the critic and historian of literature. The critic is primary, the philosopher a mere accessory. The æsthetic observations scattered in aphorisms up and down his essays and monographs take various colours from various occasions, and are expressed in uncertain and often metaphorical language; this has led to his being accused of contradictions and inexactitudes which had no existence in his inmost thought and whose very appearance vanishes as soon as one takes into account the particular cases with which he was dealing. But form, forms, content, the living, the beautiful, natural beauty, ugliness, fancy, feeling, imagination, the real, the ideal, and all the other terms which he used with varying signification, demand a science both on which to rest and from which to derive. Meditation on these words stirs up doubts and problems on every side and reveals everywhere gaps and discontinuities. Compared with the few philosophical æstheticians, De Sanctis seems wanting in analysis, in order and in system, and vague in his definitions. But these defects are outweighed by the contact he establishes between the reader and real concrete works of art, and by the feeling for truth which never leaves him. He has, too, the attraction possessed by those writers who lead one on to suspect and to divine new treasures in store beyond what they themselves reveal—living thought, which stimulates living men to pursue and prolong it.

XVI

ÆSTHETIC OF THE EPIGONI

When the cry "Away with metaphysic!" was raised in Germany, and a furious reaction began against the kind of Walpurgis-night to which the later Hegelians had reduced the life of science and history, the disciples of Herbart came to the front and seemed to ask, with an insinuating air: "What is all this? a rebellion against Idealism and Metaphysic? why, it is exactly what Herbart wished and undertook all by himself half a century ago! Here we stand, his legitimate descendants, and we offer you our services as allies. We shall not find it hard to agree. Our Metaphysic accords with the atomic theory, our Psychology with mechanism, and our Ethics and Æsthetic with hedonism." Herbart himself (had he not died in 1841) would most likely have spumed these disciples of his who pandered to popularity, cheapened metaphysics and gave naturalistic interpretations to his reals, his representations, his ideas, and all his highest conceptions.

With the school thus coming into fashion, the Herbartian Æsthetic too tried to put on flesh and acquire a pleasing plumpness so as not to cut too miserable a figure beside the well-nourished corpora of science launched upon the world by idealists. The feeding-up process was accomplished by Robert Zimmermann, professor of philosophy at Prague and later at Vienna, who, after years of laborious effort and an introductory sample in the shape of an ample history of Æsthetic (1858), at length produced his General Æsthetic as Science of Form in 1865.[1]

This formalistic Æsthetic, born under bad auspices, is a curious example of servile fidelity in externals combined with internal infidelity. Starting from unity, or rather from subordination of Ethics and Æsthetic to a general Æsthetic defined as "a science which treats of the modes by which any given content may acquire the right to arouse approval or disapproval" (thereby differing from Metaphysic, science of the real, and from Logic, science of right thinking), Zimmermann places such modes in form, that is to say, in the reciprocal relation of elements. A simple mathematical point in space, a simple impression of hearing or sight, a simple note, is in fact neither pleasing nor displeasing: music shows that the judgement of beauty or ugliness always depends on the relation between two notes at least. Now these relations, i.e. forms universally pleasing, cannot be empirically collected by induction; they must be developed by deduction. By the deductive method it can be demonstrated that the elements of an image, which in themselves are representations, may enter into relations either according to their force (quantity), or according to their nature (quality); whence we have two groups—æsthetic forms of quantity, and æsthetic forms of quality. According to the first, the strong (large) is pleasing in comparison with the weak (small), and these latter are displeasing when set beside the former; according to the other form, that pleases which is substantially identical in quality (the harmonious), and that displeases which is on the whole diverse (the discordant).

But the substantial identity must not be pushed to the point of absolute identity, for in that case the harmony itself would cease to be. From harmonious form is deduced the pleasure of the characteristic or expression; for what is the characteristic but a relation of prevalent identity between the thing itself and its model? But while similarity prevailing in the distinction produces accord (Einklang), qualitative disharmony is as such disagreeable, and demands a resolution. (It is easy to detect the sleight of hand with which Zimmermann first slips the characteristic into the relations of pure form, thereby entirely altering Herbart's original thought; and how, by a second trick, he here introduces into pure beauty the variations and modifications of the beautiful, by the help of the despised Hegelian dialectic.) If such resolution is effected by the skilful substitution of something other than the unpleasant image, we shall certainly have removed the cause of offence and established quietude (not accord: Eintracht, nicht Einklang), but we shall have gained the mere form of correctness: it is better, then, to supersede this by means of the true image so as to reach the form of compensation (Ausgleichung); and, when the true image is also pleasing in itself, the final form of definitive compensation (abschliessende Ausgleich,) with which we exhaust the series of possible forms. And, in conclusion, what is Beauty? It is a conjunction of all these forms: a model (Vorbild) which has grandeur, plenitude, order, accord, correctness, definitive compensation; all this appears in a copy (Nachbild) in the form of the characteristic.

Putting on one side the artificial connexion Zimmermann makes between the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the ironic, the humorous and the æsthetic forms, notice must be taken (so that we may recognize into which of the seven heavens he is wafting us) that these general æsthetic forms concern art equally with nature and morality, whose individual spheres are differentiated solely by the application of the general æsthetic forms to particular contents. These forms, applied to nature, give us natural beauty, the cosmos; applied to representation, beauty of wit (Schöngeist) or imagination; applied to feeling, the beautiful soul (schöne Seele) or taste; applied to the will, character or virtue. On one side, then, is natural beauty, on the other human beauty, in which (latter), on one hand, we have the beauty of representation, that is to say æsthetic fact in the strict sense (art); on the other, we have the beauty of will, or morality; and between the two, lastly, we have taste, common to Ethics and Æsthetic. Æsthetic in the narrow sense, as the theory of beautiful representation, determines the beauty of representations, divided into the three classes of the beauty of temporal and spatial connexion (figurative arts); the beauty of sensitive representation (music); and the beauty of thoughts (poetry). This tripartition of beauty into figurative, musical and poetical brings to a conclusion theoretical Æsthetic, the only section developed by Zimmermann.

Zimmermann's work was a polemic against the principal representative of Hegelian Æsthetic, Vischer, who had little difficulty in defending his own position and counter-attacking that of his assailant. He held Zimmermann up to ridicule, for example, in connexion with his view of symbolism. Zimmermann defined a symbol as the object "round which beautiful forms adhere." A painter depicts a fox simply for the sake of painting a part of animal nature. Nothing of the sort: this is a symbol, because the painter "makes use of fines and colours to express things other than fines and colours." "You think I'm a fox," says the animal in the picture, "but you make a great mistake: I'm a clothes-peg: I'm an appearance created by the painter with gradations of grey, white, yellow and red." Even easier was it to make game of Zimmermann's enthusiastic praises of the æsthetic quality of the sense of touch. It was a pity, the latter had written, that the pleasures of this sense were so difficult to attain; since "to touch the back of the Resting Hercules and the sinuous limbs of the Venus of Melos or the Barberini Faun would give to the hand a delight comparable only with that felt by the ear when listening to the majestic fugues of Bach or the suave melodies of Mozart." Vischer does not seem to be far wrong in declaring formalistic Æsthetic to be "a grotesque union of mysticism and mathematics."[2]

The works of Zimmermann seem to have given satisfaction to nobody save himself. Even Lotze, by no means an adversary of Herbartianism, blames him severely in his History of Æsthetic in Germany (1868) and other writings. Still, Lotze was unable to offer any better substitute for æsthetic formalism than of a variant of the old idealism. "Can any one persuade us," he wrote in criticism of the formalists, "that a spiritual discord expressed by a corresponding discord in external appearances may have a value equal to that of the harmonious expression of a harmonious content solely because, in both cases, the formal relation of accord is respected? Can any one persuade us that the human form is pleasing solely for its formal stereometric relations, irrespective of the spiritual life by which it is animated? In empirical reality the three domains of laws, facts and values invariably appear as divided; and although they are united in the Highest Good, in Goodness in itself, in the living Love of a Personal God, in the Ought which is the basis of Being, our reason is unable to attain or to know such union. Beauty alone can reveal it to us: it is in close connexion with the Good and the Holy and reproduces the rhythm of the divine ordinance and the moral government of the universe. Æsthetic fact is neither intuition nor concept; it is idea, which presents the essential of an object in the form of an end referred to the ultimate end. Art, like beauty, must include the world of values in the world of forms."[3] The war between the Æsthetic of content and that of form, having Zimmermann, Vischer and Lotze as protagonists, reached its culminating point between 1860 and 1870.

Several people were in favour of a reconciliation. But the reconciliations they offered were not the right one, which was at least glimpsed by a certain young Johann Schmidt, who in his thesis for doctorate observed (1875) that, with all respect for Zimmermann and Lotze, it seemed to him they were both wrong in confusing the various meanings of the word "beauty," and discussed such an absurdity as a beauty or ugliness of natural objects, that is to say, of things external to the spirit; that Lotze, following Hegel, added the second absurdity of an intuitive concept or conceptual intuition: lastly, that neither of them grasped the fact that the æsthetic problem does not turn upon the beauty or ugliness of the abstract content or of form understood as a system of mathematical relations, but with the beauty or ugliness of representation. Form undoubtedly must exist, but "concrete form, full of content."[4] These utterances of Schmidt met with a hostile reception: it is easy (he was told in reply) to identify beauty with artistic perfection, but the whole crux of the matter lies in finding whether, beside this perfection, there exists another beauty dependent on a supreme cosmic or metaphysical principle: otherwise one is guilty of a naïve petitio principii.[5] It was thought better, therefore, to seek other modes of reconciliation, which consisted in cooking up an appetizing dish in which a little formalism and a little contentism were mixed to taste, the latter as a rule giving the predominant flavour.

Some Herbartians were found in the ranks of the mediating or conciliatory party. Hardly had Zimmermann's rigid formalism appeared, when Nahlowsky jumped up to protest that it had never entered the master's head to exclude content from Æsthetic;[6] but even the ablest of the school, men such as Volkmann and Lazarus, chose a middle course.[7] In the opposite camp Carrière,[8] and even Vischer himself (in a criticism of his own old Æsthetic), began to concede a larger part to the consideration of form; thus for Vischer beauty became "life appearing harmoniously," which when it appears in space is called form, and must always possess form, i.e. limitation (Begrenzung ) in space and time, measure, regularity, symmetry, proportion, propriety (these characters constituting its quantitative moments) and harmony (qualitative moment), which includes variety and contrast and is therefore the most important characteristic.[9]

A conciliatory Æsthetic in which formalism prevailed was attempted by Karl Köstlin, a professor at Tübingen and formerly collaborator in the musical section of the works of Vischer. Köstlin[10] had been influenced by Schleiermacher, Hegel, Vischer and Herbart, but, truth to tell, does not seem to have perfectly understood the teaching of any one of his predecessors. According to him, the æsthetic object presented three requirements: richness and variety of imagery (anregende Gestaltenfülle), interesting content and beautiful form. Under the first we recognize, with no little difficulty, a distorted reflexion of Schleiermacher's "inspiration" (Begeisterung). Interesting content he defined as that which concerns man; that which he knows or does not know; that which he loves or hates (it is thus always relative to the individual and the conditions in which he exists); and he asserted that interest of content is joined to value of form, that is, he conceived content as a second value, the same of which we have heard Herbart speak. He also agreed with Herbart that form is absolute, and that its general character is determined as being easily perceptible by intuition (anschaulich), and by its power of giving satisfaction, pleasure and delight, in fact, as being beautiful. Its particular characteristics for Köstlin were, according to quantity, circumscription, simplicity (Einheitlichkeit), extensive and intensive size, and equilibrium (Gleichmass); according to quality, determination (Bestimmtheit), unity (Einheit), importance (Bedeutung) extensive and intensive, and harmony. But when Köstlin sets himself to the empirical verification of his categories, he falls into hopeless confusion. Greatness is pleasing, but so is smallness; unity is pleasing, but so is variety; regularity is pleasing, but so, confound it, is irregularity: uncertainties and contradictions at every step; he was aware of them and made no effort to conceal them; but they should have convinced him that the abstraction of "beautiful form," whose qualities and quantities he had so laboriously collected, is a ghostly shape without body, since that alone gives æsthetic pleasure which fulfils an expressive function. But having illustrated the three demands of the æsthetic object, Köstlin wasted all his remaining breath in constructing a kingdom of intuitive imagination in the manner of Vischer, i.e. beauty of organic and inorganic nature; of civil life; of morality; of religion; of science; of games; of conversations; of feasts and banquets; and lastly of history, reviewing and passing æsthetic comment on its three periods, patriarchal, heroic and historical.

Schasler, who had written as vast a history on Æsthetic as Zimmermann's own, found a starting-point for a movement toward formalism in absolute idealism, or realism-idealism, as he called it. He began by defining Æsthetic as "the science of the beautiful and of art" (a single science ill defined as having two different objects), and proceeded to justify his unmethodical definition by saying that beauty does not exist in art alone, nor does art concern itself solely with beauty. The sphere of Æsthetic he defines as that of intuition (Anschauung) in which knowledge assumes a practical character and will a theoretical: the sphere of indivisible unity and absolute reconciliation of the theoretical and practical spirit, in which in a certain sense the highest human activities are developed. Beauty is the ideal, but the concrete ideal; this is why there is no ideal of a human body in abstraction from sex, no ideal of a mammal in general, but only of such and such species, as of horse or dog, and then only of determinate kind of horse or dog. Thus by descending from the more to the less abstract genus Schasler vainly attempted to reach the concrete, which inevitably escaped his grasp. In art we pass from the typical, which is natural beauty, to the characteristic, which is the typical of human feeling; hence we can frame the ideal of an old woman, a beggar or a ruffian. The characteristic of art is in closer relationship to the ugly than to the beautiful in nature. On this head (passing over the remainder, which is on familiar lines) it is well to notice that Schasler has a bias towards that version of the romaunt of Sir Purebeauty which ascribes the birth of the "modifications of Beauty" to the influence of the Ugly.[11] "Although," he writes, "the thought may disturb our minds, it must not be forgotten that were there no world of ugliness there could be no world of beauty; for it is only when the Ugly stirs up empty abstract Beauty, that it begins to combat the enemy and thus to produce concrete Beauty."[12] He even succeeded in converting Vischer himself, the chief supporter of the other version: "Formerly I had been accustomed to think in the old-fashioned Hegelian style," Vischer confesses, "that unrest, fermentation and strife dwelt in the essence of Beauty; that the Idea prevails and thrusts the image forth into the infinite; so arises the Sublime; that the image, offended in its finitude, makes war on the Idea; whence arises the Comic; this finished the struggle; Beauty returned to itself from the conflict of the two moments, and was created." But now, he continues, "I must acknowledge that Schasler is right, and so are his predecessors Weisse and Ruge: the Ugly has a hand in the matter; this is the principle of movement, the ferment of differentiation: without such leaven we never reach the special forms of Beauty, for each single one presupposes' the Ugly."[13]

Closely allied to that of Schasler is the Æsthetic of Eduard von Hartmann (1890), preceded by a historical treatise on German Æsthetic since Kant[14] wherein with meticulous, critical and polemical study he upholds the definition of Beauty as "the appearance of the Idea" (das Scheinen der Idee). Inasmuch as he insisted on appearance (Schein) as the necessary characteristic of Beauty, Hartmann held himself justified in naming his Æsthetic the "Æsthetic of Concrete Idealism," and in ranging himself alongside Hegel, Trahndorff, Schleiermacher, Deutinger, Oersted, Vischer, Meising, Carrière and Schasler, against the abstract idealism of Schelling, Solger, Schopenhauer, Krause, Weisse and Lotze, all of whom, by placing beauty in the supersensible idea, overlooked the sensory element and reduced it to the rank of a mere accessory.[15] By his insistence on the idea as the other indispensable and determining element, Hartmann proclaimed himself as opposed to the Herbartian formalism. Beauty is truth; neither historical, scientific nor reflective, but metaphysical or idealistic, the very truth of Philosophy: "in proportion as Beauty is in opposition to every science and to realistic truth, so much nearer is it to Philosophy and metaphysical truth": "Beauty, with its own peculiar efficacy, remains the prophet of idealistic truth in an unbelieving age that abhors Metaphysic and recognizes no value in anything but realistic truth." Æsthetic truth, which leaps immediately from subjective appearance to ideal essence, is lacking in the control and method possessed by philosophical truth; in compensation, however, she possesses the fascinating power of conviction, the sole property of sensible intuition, and unattainable by gradual or reflected mediation. The higher Philosophy soars, the less does it need the gradual passage through the world of the senses and of science, and the slighter becomes the distance separating Philosophy and Art. The latter, for its part, will be well advised to start on its journey towards the ideal world as Bædeker's handbooks counsel the intending traveller, "with as little luggage as possible"; "not overloading herself with a weight which paralyses the wings and is made up of unnecessary and indifferent trifles,"[16] Logical character, the microcosmic idea, the unconscious are immanent in beauty; by means of the unconscious, intellectual intuition operates in it,[17] and, from its being rooted in the unconscious, it is a Mystery.[18]

In his employment of the exciting or reactionary influence of the Ugly, Hartmann exceeded Schasler himself. Lowest among the degrees of Beauty, indeed forming the lower limit of æsthetic fact, lies sensuous pleasure, which is unconscious formal beauty; its first true degree is formal beauty of the first order, or the mathematically pleasing (unity, variety, symmetry, proportion, the golden section, etc.); its second degree is formal beauty of the second order, the dynamically pleasing; its third is formal beauty of the third order, the passive teleological, as in the case of utensils or machinery. Indeed it may here be noted that among machines and utensils, on a level with jars, plates and cups, Hartmann placed language: it is a dead thing, said he; receiving the appearances of life (Scheinleben)[19] only at the very instant of utterance. Language a "dead thing," an "utensil" for the philosopher of the Unconscious, in the land of Humboldt, with a Steinthal still living! There follow, as formal beauty of the fourth order, the active teleological or living, and as formal beauty of the fifth order, conformity to species (das Gattungsmässige): lastly and above all, since the individual idea is superior to the specific, is beauty concrete beauty or the microcosmic individual, which is no longer formal, but beauty of content. As is to be expected, the passage from lower to Higher degrees is made by means of the Ugly: nobody has laboured like Hartmann to recount in detail the services rendered by Ugliness to Beauty. From ugliness, in the form of the destruction of the beauty of equality, arises symmetry: from ugliness in the case of the circle arises the ellipse; the beauty of a waterfall tumbling over rocks is caused by the mathematically ugly; destruction, that is to say, of a fall in a parabolic curve; beauty of spiritual expression is achieved through the introduction of an ugliness relative to fleshly perfection. Beauty of a higher degree is founded on ugliness at a lower degree. When the highest degree is reached, that of individual beauty beyond which there can be nothing, even then elemental ugliness continues its work of beneficent irritation. The later phases thus produced are well known to us as the famous Modifications of the Beautiful: in this section also, nobody is so copious or detailed as Hartmann. He certainly does admit, side by side with simple or pure beauty, certain modifications free from conflict, such as the sublime or graceful; but the more important modifications can arise only through conflict. There are four cases, because the resolution must be either immanent, logical, transcendent or combined: immanent in the idyllic, the melancholy, the sad, the cheerful, the moving, the elegiac; logical in the comic in all its varieties; transcendent in the tragic; combined in the humorous with the tragi-comic and its other varieties. When none of these resolutions is possible, there arises ugliness; when an ugliness of content is expressed by an ugliness of form, we have the maximum of ugliness, the real æsthetic devil.

Hartmann is the last considerable representative of the old æsthetic school in Germany; he inspires terror by the mass of his literary production, like many others of the school, who seem to accept it as a dogma that art cannot be dealt with except in several volumes a thousand pages long. Those who are not afraid of giants and are able to attack this sort of Æsthetic, will find it a fat good-humoured Magog full of vulgar prejudices, and so constituted that, despite his apparent strength, a little blow will kill him.

In other countries metaphysical Æsthetic had few followers. In France the celebrated competition of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1857 crowned with their approval and presented to the world the Science of Beauty by Levêque;[20] of which nobody now thinks or speaks, only remembering the author (who attitudinized as a disciple of Plato) by his eight characteristics of Beauty, derived by him from examination of a lily. The eight characteristics were as follows:—sufficient size of form, unity, variety, harmony, proportion, normal vivacity of colour, grace and propriety; ultimately reducible to two, size and order. As supplementary proof of the truth of his theory, Levêque applied it to three beautiful things: a child playing with its mother, a symphony of Beethoven and the life of a philosopher (Socrates). Really, it is somewhat difficult (says one of his fellow-spiritualists, venturing to comment on this doctrine though speaking with the utmost deference) to imagine what may be the normal vivacity of colour in the life of a philosopher.[21] Translations and explanatory articles by Charles Bénard[22] and books by various writers belonging to French Switzerland (Töpffer, Pictet, Cherbuliez) were not successful in popularizing the German systems of Æsthetic in France.

England showed even less disposition to interest herself, although John Ruskin may have some claim to be considered a metaphysical æsthetician with a distinctive national stamp. But it is difficult to treat of Ruskin in a history of science, for his temperament was wholly opposed to the scientific. His disposition was that of the artist, impressionable, excitable, voluble, rich in feeling; a dogmatic tone and the appearance of theoretical form veil, in his exquisite and enthusiastic pages, a texture of dreams and fancies. The reader who recalls those pages will regard as irreverent any detailed and prosaic review of Ruskin's æsthetic thought, which must inevitably reveal its poverty and incoherence. Suffice it to say that, following a finalistic, mystical intuition of nature, he considered beauty as a revelation of divine intentions, the seal "God sets on his works, even upon the smallest." For him the faculty which perceives the beautiful is neither intellect nor sensibility, but a particular feeling which he names the theoretic faculty. Natural beauty, which reveals itself to a pure heart when contemplating any object untouched and unspoiled by the hand of man, asserts itself for this reason as immeasurably superior to any work of art. Ruskin was too hasty in analysis to understand the complicated psychological and æsthetic process which went on in his mind when he was moved to an artist's ecstasy by contemplating some humble natural object such as a bird's nest or a flowing rivulet.[23]

In Italy the Abate Tornasi wrote a half-Hegelian, half-Catholic Æsthetic, wherein the beautiful is identified with the second person of the Trinity, the Word made man;[24] by this means he hoped to raise a bank of opposition against the liberal criticism of De Sanctis, whom he considered, from the sublime height of his own philosophy, as "a subtle grammarian." Combined Giobertian and German, especially Hegelian, influence produced several works of secondary importance; De Meis developed at length the thesis of the death of Art in the historical world.[25] Somewhat later Gallo also treated Æsthetic from the Hegelian point of view,[26] and others repeated, nearly word for word, the doctrines of Schasler and Hartmann on the overcoming of the Ugly.[27]

The only genuine Italian teacher of metaphysical Æsthetic according to the Germans was Antonio Tari, who lectured on this very subject in Naples University from 1861 to 1884. He had a meticulous and superstitiously minute knowledge of everything that issued from German printing-presses, and was the author of an Ideal Æsthetic as well as essays on style, taste, serious work and play (Spiel,) music and architecture, wherein he tried to keep the mean between the idealism of Hegel and the formalism of Herbart:[28] his lectures on Æsthetic attracted huge throngs and were one of the regular sights in the noisy, crowded Neapolitan university. Tari divided his treatment under three heads, Æsthesinomy, Æsthesigraphy and Æsthesipraxis, corresponding to the Metaphysic of the beautiful, to the doctrine of beauty in nature, and to that of beauty in art; like the German idealists, he defined the æsthetic sphere as intermediate between the theoretical and practical: he says emphatically that "in the world of spirit the temperate zone is equidistant from the glacial, peopled by the Esquimaux of thought, and from the torrid, peopled by the giants of action." He pulled Beauty from her throne, substituting in her stead the Æsthetic, of which Beauty is but an initial moment, the simple "beginning of æsthetic life, eternal mortality, flower and fruit in one," whose successive moments are represented by the Sublime, the Comic, the Humorous, and the Dramatic.

But the most attractive part of Tari's lectures was that devoted to Æsthesigraphy, subdivided into Cosmography, Physiography and Psychography, in the course of which he frequently quoted Vischer with great devotion; "the great Vischer" as he called him, in imitation of whom he constructed his own "æsthetic physics," brightening it with much varied erudition and enlivening it with quaint comparisons. Is he speaking of beauty in inorganic nature—water, for example? He says in his fanciful manner, "When water ripples in the sunshine, in that act it has its smile; it has its frown in the breaking wave, its caprice in the fountain, its majestic fury in the foam." Is he speaking of geological configuration? "The vale, cradle perchance of the human race, is idyllic; the plain, monotonous but fat, is didactic." Of metals? "Gold is born great; iron, the apotheosis of human toil, achieves greatness; the former boasts of its cradle when it does not bring it to dishonour; the latter causes it to be forgotten." He looked on vegetable life as a dream, repeating Herder's fine saying that the plant is "the new-born babe that hangs sucking upon the breast of mother nature." He divided vegetables into three types: foliaceous, ramified and umbelliferous: "the foliaceous type," he says, "attains gigantic proportions in the tropics, where the queen of monocotyledons, the Palm-tree, represents despotism, the human scourge of those desert regions. Of that solitary pinnacle, all crown, the negro may well be identified as the reptile that crawls round its base." Amongst flowers, the carnation is "symbol of betrayal, by reason of the variegation of its colours and its deeply-dissected petals"; the celebrated comparison by Ariosto of a rose with a young girl is permissible only when the flower is still in bud, because "when it has unfolded its petals, disdaining the protection of thorns, displaying itself in all the pomp of its full colour, and boldly asking to be plucked by any hand, then it is woman, all woman, to call it by no harsher name, giving pleasure without feeling it, simulating love by its perfume and modesty by the crimson of its petals." He searches for and comments upon analogies between certain fruits and certain flowers; between the strawberry, for instance, and the violet; between the orange and the rose; he admired "the luxuriant spirals and the delicate architecture of a bunch of grapes": the mandarin-orange reminded him of the nobleman qui s'est donné la peine de naître; the fig, on the contrary, was the great country bumpkin, "rough, rude, but profitable." In the animal kingdom, the spider symbolized primitive isolation; the bee, monasticism; the ant, republicanism. He noted, with Michelet, that the spider is a living paralogism; it cannot feed itself without its web, and it cannot spin its web without feeding. Fish he condemns as un-æsthetic: "they are of stupid appearance with their wide—open eyes and incessant gaping, which makes them look voraciously gluttonous." Not so with amphibians, for which he entertains a sympathy: the frog and the crocodile, "alpha and omega of the family, start from the comical, or even the scurrilous, and attain the sublimity of the horrid." Birds are especially æsthetic by nature, "possessing the three most genial attributes of a living being: love, song, and flight"; moreover, they present contrasts and antitheses: "opposite to the eagle, queen of the skies, stands the swan, the mild king of the marshes; the libertine vainglorious cock has its contrast in the humble uxorious turtle-dove; the magnificent peacock is balanced by the rude and rustic turkey." Amongst mammals, nature compensates for defects of pure beauty by dramatic value; if they cannot throw their song into the air, they have the rudiments of speech; if they have no variegated, myriad-hued plumage, they have dark, heavily-marked colouring, instinct with life; if they cannot fly, they have many other modes of powerful progression; and, the higher they go, the more do they attain individuality in appearance and life. "The epic of animal life is comedy in the donkey, iniquae mentis asellus; idyl in the great wild beasts; downright tragedy in the Kaffir bull, that cloven-hoofed Codrus, who gives himself voluntarily to the lion in order to save the herd." As amongst birds, so amongst beasts attractive contrasts are to be made:—the lamb and the kid seem to typify Jesus and the devil; dog and cat, abnegation and egoism; hare and fox, the foolish simpleton and crafty villain. Many quaint and subtle observations does Tari let fall on human beauty and the relative beauty of the sexes, allowing the female to have charm, not beauty: "bodily beauty is poise, and woman's body is so ill-poised that she falls easily when running; made for child-bearing, she has knock-kneed legs, adapted to support the large pelvis; her shoulders have a curve compensating the convexity of the chest." He describes the various parts of the body: "curly hair expresses physical force; straight hair, moral"; "blue, napoleonic eyes have sometimes a depth like the sea; green eyes have a melancholy fascination; grey eyes are wanting in individuality; black eyes are the most intensely individual"; "a lovely mouth has been best described by Heine; two lips evenly matched; to lovers the mouth will rather seem a shell whose pearl is the kiss."[29]

How could we better take a smiling leave of metaphysical Æsthetic in the German manner than by recording this quaint vernacular version of it made by Tari, that kindly little old man, "the last jovial high-priest of an arbitrary and confused Æsthetic"?[30]