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.

Esthetic.

XVI

ÆSTHETIC OF THE EPIGONI

Revival of WHEN the cry Away with metaphysic! was raised Herbartian 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 Esthetic with hedonism." Herbart himself (had he not died in 1841) would most likely have spurned 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 Esthetic 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 Esthetic (1858), at

length produced his General Esthetic as Science of Form

in 1865.1

This formalistic Esthetic, born under bad auspices, is Robert a curious example of servile fidelity in externals combined Zimmermann. with internal infidelity. Starting from unity, or rather from subordination of Ethics and Esthetic to a general Esthetic 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

1 Allgemeine Ästhetik als Formwissenschaft, Vienna, 1865; see also Meyer's Konversations - Lexikon (4th ed.), art. Asthetik, by Zimmer

mann.

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 Esthetic. Esthetic 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 Esthetic, the only section developed by Zimmermann.

Zimmermann's work was a polemic against the prin- Vischer versus cipal representative of Hegelian Esthetic, Vischer, who Zimmermann. 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 lines and colours to express things other than lines 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 Esthetic to be "a grotesque union of mysticism and mathematics." 1

1 Kritische Gänge, vi., Stuttgart, 1873, pp. 6, 21, 32.