under an aesthetic form. His typical example of aesthetic relations in objects of sense-perception is that of harmony between tones. The science of thorough-bass has, he thinks, done for music what should be done also for other departments of aesthetic experience. This doctrine of elementary relations is brought into connexion with the author’s psychological doctrine of presentations with their tendencies to mutual inhibition and to fusion, and of the varying feeling-tones to which these processes give rise. This mode of treating the problem of beauty and aesthetic perception has been greatly developed and worked up into a complete system of aesthetics by one of Herbart’s disciples, Robert Zimmermann (Ästhetik, 1858).
Lessing, in his Laocoon and elsewhere, sought to deduce the special function of an art from a consideration of the means at its disposal. He took pains to define the boundaries of poetry and painting, and in so doing he reached general reflexions upon the ends and appliances of art. Among these his distinction Lessing.between arts which employ the coexistent in space and those which employ the successive (as poetry and music) is of lasting value. In his dramatic criticisms he similarly endeavoured to develop clear general principles on such points as poetic truth, improving upon Aristotle, on whose teaching he mainly relies.
Goethe wrote several tracts on aesthetic topics, as well as many aphorisms. He attempts to mediate between the claims of ideal beauty, as taught by J. J. Winckelmann, and the aims of dualization. Schiller (q.v.) discusses, in a number of disconnected essays and letters some of the main questions Goethe.
Schiller.in the philosophy of art. He looks at art from the side of culture and the forces of human nature, and finds in an aesthetically cultivated soul the reconciliation of the sensual and rational. His letters on aesthetic education (Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, trans. by J. Weiss, Boston, 1845) are valuable, bringing out among other points the connexion between aesthetic activity and the universal impulse to play (Spieltrieb). Schiller’s thoughts on aesthetic subjects are pervaded with the spirit of Kant’s philosophy.
Another example of this kind of reflective discussion of art by literary men is afforded us in the Vorschule der Ästhetik of Jean Paul Richter. This is a rather ambitious discussion of the sublime and ludicrous, which, however, contains Jean Paul.much valuable matter on the nature of humour in romantic poetry. Among other writers who reflect more or less philosophically on the problems to which modern poetry gives rise are Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two Schlegels and Gervinus.
A word may be said in conclusion on the attempts of German savants to apply a knowledge of physiological conditions to the investigation of the sensuous elements of aesthetic effect, as well as to introduce into the study of the simpler aesthetic forms the methods of natural science. The classic Contributions by German savants.work of Helmholtz on “Sensations of Tone” is a highly successful attempt to ground the known facts and laws of musical composition on physics and physiology. The endeavour to determine with a like degree of precision the physiological conditions of the pleasurable effects of colours and their combinations by E. W. Brücke, Ewald Hering and more recent investigators, has so far failed to realize the desideratum laid down by Herbart, that there should be a theory of colour-relations equal in completeness and exactness to that of tone-relations. The experimental inquiry into simple aesthetically pleasing forms was begun by G. T. Fechner in seeking to test the soundness of Adolf Zeising’s hypothesis that the most pleasing proportion in dividing a line, say the vertical part of a cross, is the “golden section,” where the smaller division is to the larger as the latter to the sum. He describes in his work on “Experimental Aesthetics” (Zur experimentalen Ästhetik) a series of experiments carried out on a large number of persons, bearing on this point, the results of which he considers to be in favour of Zeising’s hypothesis.
3. French Writers.—In France aesthetic speculation grew out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of modern art, and especially poetry, to ancient. The writings of Malherbe Boileau in the 17th century, the development of the the dispute between the “ancients” and the “moderns” at the end of the 17th century Discussions of more concrete problems.by B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle and Charles Perrault, and the continuation of the discussion as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the 18th century by Voltaire, Bayle, Diderot and others, not only offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. A more systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding to that of Lessing) is to be found in the Cours de belles lettres of Charles Batteux (1765), in which the meaning and value of the imitation of nature by art are further elucidated, and the arts are classified (as by Lessing) according as they employ the forms of space or those of time.
The beginning of a more scientific investigation of beauty in general is connected with the name of Père Buffier (see First Truths, English translation, 1780). He confines himself to organic form, and illustrates his theory by the human face. A beautiful face is at once the most common and most rare among members of the species. This seems Theories of organic beauty. Buffier.
Taine.to be a clumsy way of saying that it is a clear expression of the typical
form of the species. This idea of typical beauty (which was adopted by Reynolds) has been worked out more recently by H. Taine. In his work, The Ideal in Art (trans. by J. Durand), he proceeds in the manner of a botanist to determine a scale of characters in the physical and moral man. The degree of the universality or importance of a character, and of its beneficence or adaptation to the ends of life, determine the measure of its aesthetic value, and render the work of art, which seeks to represent it in its purity, an ideal work.
The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French literature are those constructed by the spiritualistes, the philosophic writers who under the influence of German thinkers effected a reaction against the crude sensationalism of the 18th century they aim at elucidating the higher and spiritual French systems of aesthetics: The spiritualistes.
Lévéque.element in aesthetic impressions, appearing to ignore any capability in the sensuous material of affording a true aesthetic delight. J. Cousin and Jean Charles Lévêque are the principal writers of this school. The latter developed an elaborate system of the subject (La Science du beau). All beauty is regarded as spiritual in its nature. The several beautiful characters of an organic body—of which the principal are magnitude, unity and variety of parts, intensity of colour, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to environment—may be brought under the conception of the ideal grandeur and order of the species. These are perceived by reason to be the manifestations of an invisible vital force. Similarly the beauties of inorganic nature are to be viewed as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial physical force. Thus all beauty is in its objective essence either spirit or unconscious force acting with fulness and in order.
4. English Writers.—There is nothing answering to the German conception of a system of aesthetics in English literature. The inquiries of English thinkers have been directed for the most part to such modest problems as the psychological process by which we perceive the beautiful—discussions which are apt to be regarded by German historians as devoid of real philosophical value. The writers may be conveniently arranged in two divisions, answering to the two opposed directions of English thought: (1) the Intuitionalists, those who recognize the existence of an objective beauty which is a simple unanalysable attribute or principle of things: and (2) the Analytical theorists, those who follow the analytical and psychological method, concerning themselves with the sentiment of beauty as a complex growth out of simpler elements.
Shaftesbury is the first of the intuitional writers on beauty. In his Characteristics the beautiful and the good are combined in one ideal conception, much as with Plato. Matter in itself is ugly. The order of the world, wherein all beauty really resides, is a spiritual principle, all motion and life being the The Intuitionists. Shaftesbury.product of spirit. The principle of beauty is perceived not with the outer sense, but with an internal or moral sense which apprehends the good as well. This perception yields the only true delight, namely, spiritual enjoyment.
Francis Hutcheson, in his System of Moral Philosophy, though he adopts many of Shaftesbury’s ideas, distinctly disclaims any independent self-existing beauty in objects. “All beauty,” he says, “is relative to the sense of some mind perceiving it.” The cause of beauty is to be found not in a simple sensation such as colour or tone, but in a certain Hutcheson.order among the parts, or “uniformity amidst variety.” The faculty by which this principle is discerned is an internal sense which is defined as “a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity in variety.” This inner sense resembles the external senses in the immediateness of the pleasure which its activity brings: and further in the necessity of its impressions: a beautiful thing being always, whether we will or no, beautiful. He distinguishes two kinds of beauty, absolute or original, and relative or comparative. The latter is discerned in an object which is regarded as an imitation or semblance of another. He distinctly states that “an exact imitation may still be beautiful though the original were entirely devoid of it.” He seeks to prove the universality of this sense of beauty, by showing that all men, in proportion to the enlargement of their intellectual capacity, are more delighted with uniformity than the opposite.
In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers (viii. “Of Taste”) Thomas Reid applies his principle of common sense to the problem of beauty saying that objects of beauty agree not only in producing a certain agreeable emotion, but in the excitation along with this emotion of a belief that they possess some perfectionReid. or excellence, that beauty exists in the objects independently our minds. His theory of beauty is severely spiritual. All beauty resides primarily in the faculties of the mind, intellectual and moral. The beauty which is spread over the face of visible nature is an emanation from this spiritual beauty, and is beauty because it symbolizes and expresses the latter. Thus the beauty of a plant resides in its perfect adaptation to its end, a perfection which is an expression of the wisdom of its Creator.
In his Lectures on Metaphysics Sir W. Hamilton gives a
short account of the sentiments of taste, which (with a superficial resemblance to Kant) he regards as subserving both the subsidiary and the elaborative faculties in cognition, that is, the imagination and the understanding. The activity of theHamilton.