Part 11

The qualities of works that are failures may be of various degrees. They may even be very great. The beautiful does not possess degrees, for there is no conceiving a more beautiful, that is, an expressive that is more expressive, an adequate that is more than adequate. Ugliness, on the other hand, does possess degrees, from the rather ugly (or almost beautiful) to the extremely ugly. But if the ugly were complete, that is to say, without any element of beauty, it would for that very reason cease to be ugly, because in it would be absent the contradiction which is the reason of its existence. The disvalue would become nonvalue; activity would give place to passivity, with which it is not at war, save when there effectively is war.

And because the distinctive consciousness of the beautiful and of the ugly is based on the contrasts and contradictions in which aesthetic activity is developed, it is evident that this consciousness becomes attenuated to the point of disappearing altogether, as we descend from the more complicated to the more simple and to the simplest cases of expression. From this arises the illusion that there are expressions which are neither beautiful nor ugly, those which are obtained without sensible effort and appear easy and natural being so considered.

The whole mystery of the beautiful and the ugly is reduced to these henceforth most easy definitions. Should any one object that there exist perfect aesthetic expressions before which no pleasure is felt, and others, perhaps even failures, which give him the greatest pleasure, it is necessary to advise him to pay great attention, as regards the aesthetic fact, to that only which is truly aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure is sometimes reinforced by pleasures arising from extraneous facts, which are only casually found united with it. The poet or any other artist affords an instance of purely aesthetic pleasure, during the moment in which he sees (or has the intuition of) his work for the first time; that is to say, when his impressions take form and his countenance is irradiated with the divine joy of the creator. On the other hand, a mixed pleasure is experienced by any one who goes to the theatre, after a day's work, to witness a comedy: when the pleasure of rest and amusement, and that of laughingly snatching a nail from the gaping coffin, is accompanied at a certain moment by real aesthetic pleasure, obtained from the art of the dramatist and of the actors. The same may be said of the artist who looks upon his labour with pleasure, when it is finished, experiencing, in addition to the aesthetic pleasure, that very different one which arises from the thought of self-love satisfied, or of the economic gain which will come to him from his work. Examples could be multiplied.

A category of apparent aesthetic feelings has been formed in modern Aesthetic. These have nothing to do with the aesthetic sensations of pleasure arising from the form, that is to say from the work of art. On the contrary, they arise from the content of the work of art. It has been observed that "artistic representations arouse pleasure and pain in their infinite variety and gradations. We tremble with anxiety, we rejoice, we fear, we laugh, we weep, we desire, with the personages of a drama or of a romance, with the figures in a picture, or with the melody of music. But these feelings are not those that would give occasion to the real fact outside art; that is to say, they are the same in quality, but they are quantitively an attenuation. Aesthetic and apparent pleasure and pain are slight, of little depth, and changeable." We have no need to treat of these apparent feelings, for the good reason that we have already amply discussed them; indeed, we have treated of them alone. What are ever feelings that become apparent or manifest, but feelings objectified, intensified, expressed? And it is natural that they do not trouble and agitate us passionately, as do those of real life, because those were matter, these are form and activity; those true and proper feelings, these intuitions and expressions. The formula, then, of apparent feelings is nothing but a tautology. The best that can be done is to run the pen through it.

CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC HEDONISM

As we are opposed to hedonism in general, that is to say, to the theory which is based on the pleasure and pain intrinsic to Economy and accompanies every other form of activity, confounding the content and that which contains it, and fails to recognize any process but the hedonistic; so we are opposed to aesthetic hedonism in particular, which looks upon the aesthetic at any rate, if not also upon all other activities, as a simple fact of feeling, and confounds the pleasurable of expression, which is the beautiful, with the pleasurable and nothing more, and with the pleasurable of all sorts.

The aesthetic-hedonistic point of view has been presented in several forms. One of the most ancient conceives the beautiful as that which pleases the sight and hearing, that is to say, the so-called superior senses. When analysis of aesthetic facts first began, it was, in fact, difficult to avoid the mistake of thinking that a picture and a piece of music are impressions of sight or of hearing: it was and is an indisputable fact that the blind man does not enjoy the picture, nor the deaf man the music. To show, as we have shown, that the aesthetic fact does not depend upon the nature of the impressions, but that all sensible impressions can be raised to aesthetic expression and that none need of necessity be so raised, is an idea which presents itself only when all the other ways out of the difficulty have been tried. But whoso imagines that the aesthetic fact is something pleasing to the eyes or to the hearing, has no line of defence against him who proceeds logically to identify the beautiful with the pleasurable in general, and includes cooking in Aesthetic, or, as some positivist has done, the viscerally beautiful.

The theory of play is another form of aesthetic hedonism. The conception of play has sometimes helped towards the realization of the actifying character of the expressive fact: man (it has been said) is not really man, save when he begins to play; that is to say, when he frees himself from natural and mechanical causality and operates spiritually; and his first game is art. But since the word play also means that pleasure which arises from the expenditure of the exuberant energy of the organism (that is to say, from a practical act), the consequence of this theory has been, that every game has been called an aesthetic fact, and that the aesthetic function has been called a game, in so far as it is possible to play with it, for, like science and every other thing, Aesthetic can be made part of a game. But morality cannot be provoked at the intention of playing, on the ground that it does not consent; on the contrary, it dominates and regulates the act of playing itself.

Finally, there have been some who have tried to deduce the pleasure of art from the reaction of the sexual organs. There are some very modern aestheticians who place the genesis of the aesthetic fact in the pleasure of conquering, of triumphing, or, as others add, in the desire of the male, who wishes to conquer the female. This theory is seasoned with much anecdotal erudition, Heaven knows of what degree of credibility! on the customs of savage peoples. But in very truth there was no necessity for such important aid, for one often meets in ordinary life poets who adorn themselves with their poetry, like cocks that raise their crests, or turkeys that spread their tails. But he who does such things, in so far as he does them, is not a poet, but a poor devil of a cock or turkey. The conquest of woman does not suffice to explain the art fact. It would be just as correct to term poetry economic, because there have been aulic and stipendiary poets, and there are poets the sale of whose verses helps them to gain their livelihood, if it does not altogether provide it. However, this definition has not failed to win over some zealous neophytes of historical materialism.

Another less vulgar current of thought considers Aesthetic to be the science of the sympathetic, of that with which we sympathize, which attracts, rejoices, gives us pleasure and excites admiration. But the sympathetic is nothing but the image or representation of what pleases. And, as such, it is a complex fact, resulting from a constant element, the aesthetic element of representation, and from a variable element, the pleasing in its infinite forms, arising from all the various classes of values.

In ordinary language, there is sometimes a feeling of repugnance at calling an expression beautiful, which is not an expression of the sympathetic. Hence the continual contrast between the point of view of the aesthetician or of the art critic and that of the ordinary person, who cannot succeed in persuading himself that the image of pain and of turpitude can be beautiful, or, at least, can be beautiful with as much right as the pleasing and the good.

The opposition could be solved by distinguishing two different sciences, one of expression and the other of the sympathetic, if the latter could be the object of a special science; that is to say, if it were not, as has been shown, a complex fact. If predominance be given to the expressive fact, it becomes a part of Aesthetic as science of expression; if to the pleasurable content, we fall back to the study of facts which are essentially hedonistic (utilitarian), however complicated they may appear. The origin, also, of the connexion between content and form is to be sought for in the Aesthetic of the sympathetic, when this is conceived as the sum of two values.

In all the doctrines just now discussed, the art fact is posited as merely hedonistic. But this view cannot be maintained, save by uniting it with a philosophic hedonism that is complete and not partial, that is to say, with a hedonism which does not admit any other form of value. Hardly has this hedonistic conception of art been received by philosophers, who admit one or more spiritual values, of truth or of morality, than the following question must necessarily be asked: What should be done with art? To what use should it be put? Should a free course be allowed to its pleasures? And if so, to what extent? The question of the end of art, which in the Aesthetic of expression would be a contradiction of terms, here appears in place, and altogether logical.

Now it is evident that, admitting the premisses, but two solutions of such a question can be given, the one altogether negative, the other restrictive. The first, which we shall call rigoristic or ascetic, appears several times, although not frequently, in the history of ideas. It looks upon art as an inebriation of the senses, and therefore, not only useless, but harmful. According to this theory, then, it is necessary to drive it with all our strength from the human soul, which it troubles. The other solution, which we shall call pedagogic or moralistico-utilitarian, admits art, but only in so far as it concurs with the end of morality; in so far as it assists with innocent pleasure the work of him who leads to the true and the good; in so far as it sprinkles with dulcet balm the sides of the vase of wisdom and of morality.

It is well to observe that it would be an error to divide this second view into intellectualist and moralistico-utilitarian, according to whether the end of leading to the true or to what is practically good, be assigned to art. The task of instructing, which is imposed upon it, precisely because it is an end which is sought after and advised, is no longer merely a theoretical fact, but a theoretical fact become the material for practical action; it is not, therefore, intellectualism, but pedagogism and practicism. Nor would it be more exact to subdivide the pedagogic view into the pure utilitarian and the moralistico-utilitarian; because those who admit only the individually useful (the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ulterior justification for art.

But to enunciate these theories at the point to which we have attained is to confute them. We therefore restrict ourselves to observing that in the pedagogic theory of art is to be found another of the reasons why it has been erroneously claimed that the content of art should be chosen with a view to certain practical effects.

The thesis, re-echoed by the artists, that art consists of pure beauty, has often been brought forward against hedonistic and pedagogic Aesthetic: "Heaven places All our joy in pure beauty, and the Verse is everything." If it is wished that this should be understood in the sense that art is not to be confounded with sensual pleasure, that is, in fact, with utilitarian practicism, nor with moralism, then our Aesthetic also must be permitted to adorn itself with the title of Aesthetic of pure beauty. But if (as is often the case) something mystical and transcendental be meant by this, something that is unknown to our poor human world, or something spiritual and beatific, but not expressive, we must reply that while applauding the conception of a beauty, free of all that is not the spiritual form of expression, we are yet unable to conceive a beauty altogether purified of expression, that is to say, separated from itself.

XII

THE AESTHETIC OF THE SYMPATHETIC AND PSEUDO-AESTHETIC CONCEPTS

The doctrine of the sympathetic (very often animated and seconded in this by the capricious metaphysical and mystical Aesthetic, and by that blind tradition which assumes an intimate connection between things by chance treated of together by the same authors and in the same books), has introduced and rendered familiar in systems of Aesthetic, a series of concepts, of which one example suffices to justify our resolute expulsion of them from our own treatise.

Their catalogue is long, not to say interminable: tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic, humoristic, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble, decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac, cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting, dreadful, nauseating; the list can be increased at will.

Since that doctrine took as its special object the sympathetic, it was naturally unable to neglect any of the varieties of this, or any of the combinations or gradations which lead at last from the sympathetic to the antipathetic. And seeing that the sympathetic content was held to be the beautiful and the antipathetic the ugly, the varieties (tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, etc.) constituted for it the shades and gradations intervening between the beautiful and the ugly.

Having enumerated and defined, as well as it could, the chief among these varieties, the Aesthetic of the sympathetic set itself the problem of the place to be assigned to the ugly in art. This problem is without meaning for us, who do not recognize any ugliness save the anti-aesthetic or inexpressive, which can never form part of the aesthetic fact, being, on the contrary, its antithesis. But the question for the doctrine which we are here criticizing was to reconcile in some way the false and defective idea of art from which it started, reduced to the representation of the agreeable, with effective art, which occupies a far wider field. Hence the artificial attempt to settle what examples of the ugly (antipathetic) could be admitted in artistic representation, and for what reasons, and in what ways.

The answer was: that the ugly is admissible, only when it can be overcome, an unconquerable ugliness, such as the disgusting or the nauseating, being altogether excluded. Further, that the duty of the ugly, when admitted in art, is to contribute towards heightening the effect of the beautiful (sympathetic), by producing a series of contrasts, from which the pleasurable shall issue more efficacious and pleasure-giving. It is, in fact, a common observation that pleasure is more vividly felt when It has been preceded by abstinence or by suffering. Thus the ugly in art was looked upon as the servant of the beautiful, its stimulant and condiment.

That special theory of hedonistic refinement, which used to be pompously called the surmounting of the ugly, falls with the general theory of the sympathetic; and with it the enumeration and the definition of the concepts mentioned above remain completely excluded from Aesthetic. For Aesthetic does not recognize the sympathetic or the antipathetic In their varieties, but only the spiritual activity of the representation.

However, the large space which, as we have said, those concepts have hitherto occupied in aesthetic treatises makes opportune a rather more copious explanation of what they are. What will be their lot? As they are excluded from Aesthetic, in what other part of Philosophy will they be received?

Truly, in none. All those concepts are without philosophical value. They are nothing but a series of classes, which can be bent in the most various ways and multiplied at pleasure, to which it is sought to reduce the infinite complications and shadings of the values and disvalues of life. Of those classes, there are some that have an especially positive significance, like the beautiful, the sublime, the majestic, the solemn, the serious, the weighty, the noble, the elevated; others have a significance especially negative, like the ugly, the horrible, the dreadful, the tremendous, the monstrous, the foolish, the extravagant; in others prevails a mixed significance, as is the case with the comic, the tender, the melancholy, the humorous, the tragi-comic. The complications are infinite, because the individuations are infinite; hence it is not possible to construct the concepts, save in the arbitrary and approximate manner of the natural sciences, whose duty it is to make as good a plan as possible of that reality which they cannot exhaust by enumeration, nor understand and surpass speculatively. And since Psychology is the naturalistic discipline, which undertakes to construct types and plans of the spiritual processes of man (of which, in fact, it is always accentuating in our day the merely empirical and descriptive character), these concepts do not appertain to Aesthetic, nor, in general, to Philosophy. They must simply be handed over to Psychology.

As is the case with all other psychological constructions, so is it with those concepts: no rigorous definitions are possible; and consequently the one cannot be deduced from the other and they cannot be connected in a system, as has, nevertheless, often been attempted, at great waste of time and without result. But it can be claimed as possible to obtain, apart from philosophical definitions recognised as impossible, empirical definitions, universally acceptable as true. Since there does not exist a unique definition of a given fact, but innumerable definitions can be given of it, according to the cases and the objects for which they are made, so it is clear that if there were only one, and that the true one, this would no longer be an empirical, but a rigorous and philosophical definition. Speaking exactly, every time that one of the terms to which we have referred has been employed, or any other of the innumerable series, a definition of it has at the same time been given, expressed or understood. And each one of these definitions has differed somewhat from the others, in some particular, perhaps of very small importance, such as tacit reference to some individual fact or other, which thus became especially an object of attention and was raised to the position of a general type. So it happens that not one of such definitions satisfies him who hears it, nor does it satisfy even him who constructs it. For, the moment after, this same individual finds himself face to face with a new case, for which he recognizes that his definition is more or less insufficient, ill-adapted, and in need of remodelling. It is necessary, therefore, to leave writers and speakers free to define the sublime or the comic, the tragic or the humoristic, on every occasion, as they please and as may seem suitable to their purpose. And if you insist upon obtaining an empirical definition of universal validity, we can but submit this one:--The sublime (comic, tragic, humoristic, etc.) is everything that is or will be so called by those who have employed or shall employ this word.