those researches which do not appear to have interest of any kind, nor to fulfil any purpose, it must be replied that the historical student must often reconcile himself to the useful but inglorious function of a collector of facts. These facts remain for the time being formless, incoherent and meaningless, but they are preserves or mines for the historian of the future and for whosoever may afterwards want them for any purpose. In the same way in a library, books which nobody asks for are placed on the shelves and catalogued, because they may be asked for at some time or other. Certainly, just as an intelligent librarian gives the preference to the acquisition and cataloguing of those books which he foresees may be of more or better service, so intelligent students possess an instinct as to what is or may more probably be of use among the material of facts which they are examining; while others less well endowed, less intelligent or more hasty in producing, accumulate useless rubbish, refuse and sweepings, and lose themselves in details and petty discussions. But this appertains to the economy of research, and does not concern us. It concerns at most the master who selects the subjects, the publisher who pays for the printing, and the critic who is called upon to praise or to blame the research workers.

On the other hand, it is clear that historical research directed to illuminate a work of art does not alone suffice to bring it to birth in our spirit and place us in a position to judge it, but presupposes taste, that is to say, an alert and cultivated imagination. The greatest historical erudition may accompany a gross or otherwise defective taste, a slow imagination, or, as they say, a cold hard heart closed to art. Which is the lesser evil, great erudition with defective taste, or natural taste and much ignorance? The question has often been asked, and perhaps it will be best to deny that it has any meaning, because one cannot tell which of two evils is the less, or what exactly that means. The merely learned man never succeeds in entering into direct communion with

K

Literary and

Its distinction

great spirits; he keeps wandering for ever about the outer courts, the staircases and antechambers of their palaces; but the gifted ignoramus either passes by masterpieces to him inaccessible, or instead of understanding works of art as they really are, invents others with his fancy. Now, the labour of the former may at least serve to enlighten others; but the genius of the latter remains altogether sterile in relation to knowledge. How then can we in a certain respect fail to prefer the conscientious learned man to the inconclusive though gifted man, who is not really gifted, if he resign himself and in so far as he resigns himself, to his inconclusiveness?

We must accurately distinguish the history of art and artistic history. literature from those historical labours where works of from historical art are used, but for extraneous purposes (such as biography, civil, religious and political history, etc.), and also from historical erudition directed to the preparation of the æsthetic synthesis of reproduction.

criticism and from the

æsthetic

judgement.

The difference of the first two is obvious. The history of art and literature has the works of art themselves as its principal subject; those other labours invoke and interrogate works of art, but only as witnesses from whom to discover the truth of facts which are not æsthetic. The second difference to which we have referred may seem less profound. It is, however, very great. Erudition directed to illuminate the understanding of works of art aims simply at calling into existence a certain internal fact, an æsthetic reproduction. Artistic and literary history, on the other hand, does not appear until after such reproduction has been obtained. It implies, therefore, a further stage of labour.

Like all other history, its object is to record precisely such facts as have really taken place, in this case artistic and literary facts. A man who, after having acquired the requisite historical erudition, reproduces in himself and tastes a work of art, may remain simply a man of taste, or at the most express his own feeling with an exclamation of praise or condemnation. This does not

suffice for the making of a historian of literature and art. Something else is needed, namely, that a new mental operation succeed in him the simple reproduction. This new operation is in its turn an expression: the expression of the reproduction; the historical description, exposition or representation. There is this difference, then, between the man of taste and the historian: the first merely reproduces in his spirit the work of art; the second, after having reproduced it, represents it historically, or applies those categories by which, as we know, history is differentiated from pure art. Artistic and literary history is therefore a historical work of art founded upon one or more works of art.

The name artistic" or or "literary" critic is used in various senses: sometimes it is applied to the scholar who devotes his services to literature; sometimes to the historian who reveals the works of art of the past in their reality; more often to both. By critic is sometimes understood in a more restricted sense he who judges and describes contemporary literary works, and by historian, he who treats of those less recent. These are linguistic uses and empirical distinctions, which may be neglected; because the true difference lies between the scholar, the man of taste and the historian of art. These words designate three successive stages of work, each one independent relatively to the one that follows, but not to that which precedes. As we have seen, a man may be a mere scholar, and possess little capacity for understanding works of art; he may even both be learned and possess taste, yet be unable to portray them by writing a page of artistic and literary history. But the true and complete historian, while containing in himself both the scholar and the man of taste as necessary pre-requisites, must add to their qualities the gift of historical comprehension and representation.

The method

of artistic and literary

The theory of artistic and literary historical method presents problems and difficulties, some common to the theory of historical method in general, others peculiar to history. it, because derived from the concept of art itself.

Criticism

of the origin

of art.

man.

History is commonly divided into human history, of the problem natural history, and the mixture of both. Without examining here the question of the solidity of this distinction, it is clear that artistic and literary history belongs in any case to the first, since it concerns a spiritual activity, that is to say, an activity proper to And since this activity is its subject, the absurdity of propounding the historical problem of the origin of art becomes at once evident. We should note that by this formula many different things have in turn been included on many different occasions. Origin has often meant nature or character of the artistic fact, in which case an attempt was made to deal with a real scientific or philosophic problem, the very problem in fact which our treatise has attempted to solve. At other times, by origin has been understood the ideal genesis, the search for the reason of art, the deduction of the artistic fact from a first principle containing in itself both spirit and nature. This is also a philosophical problem, complementary to the preceding, coinciding indeed with it, although it has sometimes been strangely interpreted and solved by means of an arbitrary and semi-imaginary metaphysic. But when the object was to discover further exactly in what way the artistic function was historically formed, the result has been the absurdity which we have mentioned. If expression be the first form of consciousness, how can we look for the historical origin of what is not a product of nature and is presupposed by human history? How can we assign a historical genesis to a thing which is a category by means of which all historical processes and facts are understood? The absurdity has arisen from the comparison with human institutions, which have been formed in the course of history, and have disappeared or may disappear in its course. Between the æsthetic fact and a human institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) there exists a difference comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in chemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise they would not be

simple, and if this be discovered, they cease to be simple and become compound.

The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only justified when it is proposed to investigate, not the formation of the artistic category, but where and when art has appeared for the first time (appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or in what region of the globe and at what point or epoch of its history; when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its earliest or primitive history is the object of research. This problem forms one with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. Data for its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstract possibility of a solution, and certainly tentative and hypothetical solutions abound.

history.

Every representation of human history has the concept The criterion of progress as foundation. But by progress must not be of progress and understood the imaginary law of progress which is supposed to lead the generations of man with irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a providential plan which we can divine and then understand logically. A supposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that accidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish concrete fact from abstraction. And for the same reason, progress has nothing to do with the so-called law of evolution, which, if it mean that reality evolves (and it is only reality in so far as it evolves or becomes), cannot be called a law, and if it be given as a law, becomes identical with the law of progress in the sense just described. The progress of which we speak here is nothing but the very concept of human activity, which, working upon the material supplied to it by nature, conquers its obstacles and bends it to its own ends.

Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity applied to a given material, is the point of view of the historian of humanity. No one but a mere collector of unrelated facts, a mere antiquary. or inconsequent annalist, can put together the smallest narrative of