X ÆSTHETIC FEELINGS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY Various signi- PASSING to the study of more complex concepts, where fications of the the aesthetic activity is to be considered in conjunction word feeling. with other orders of facts, and showing the mode of their union or complication, we find ourselves first face to face with the concept of feeling and with those feelings that are called æsthetic. Feeling as activity. The word "feeling" is one of the richest in meanings in philosophic terminology. We have already had occasion to meet with it once, among those used to designate the spirit in its passivity, the matter or content of art, and so as synonym of impressions. Once again (and then the meaning was altogether different), we have met with it as designating the non-logical and non-historical character of the æsthetic fact, that is to say, pure intuition, a form of truth which defines no concept and affirms no fact. But here it is not regarded in either of these two meanings, nor in the others which have also been conferred upon it to designate other cognitive forms of the spirit, but only in that where feeling is understood as a special activity, of non-cognitive nature, having its two poles, positive and negative, in pleasure and pain. This activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have therefore attempted either to deny it as activity, or to attribute it to nature, excluding it from the spirit. But both these solutions bristle with difficulties of such a kind as to prove them finally unacceptable to any one who examines them with care. For what could a non-spiritual activity ever be, an activity of nature, when we have no other knowledge of activity save as spirituality, nor of spirituality save as activity? Nature is in this case, by definition, the merely passive, inert, mechanical, material. On the other hand, the negation of the character of activity to feeling is energetically disproved by those very poles of pleasure and of pain which appear in it and manifest activity in its concreteness, or, so to say, quivering. with economic This critical conclusion should place us especially in Identification the greatest embarrassment, for in the sketch of the of feeling system of the spirit given above we have left no room activity. for the new activity of which we are now obliged to recognize the existence. But the activity of feeling, if it is activity, is not new. It has already had its place assigned to it in the system that we have sketched, where, however, it has been given another name, economic activity. What is called the activity of feeling is nothing but that more elementary and fundamental practical activity which we have distinguished from the ethical activity and made to consist of the appetition and volition for some individual end, apart from any moral determination. If feeling has been sometimes considered to be an organic or natural activity, this has happened just because it does not coincide either with logical, æsthetic or ethical activity. Looked at from the standpoint of those three (which were the only ones admitted), it has seemed to lie outside the true and real spirit, spirit in its aristocracy, and to be almost a determination of nature, or of the soul in so far as it is nature. From this too results the truth of another thesis, often maintained, that the aesthetic activity, like the ethical and intellectual activities, is not feeling. This thesis is inexpugnable, when feeling has already been understood implicitly and unconsciously as economic volition. The view refuted in this thesis is known as hedonism. This consists in reducing all the various forms of the spirit to one, Criticism of which thus also loses its own distinctive character and hedonism. Feeling as a concomitant of every form of activity. becomes something obscure and mysterious, like "the night in which all cows are black." Having brought about this reduction and mutilation, the hedonists naturally do not succeed in seeing anything else in any activity but pleasure and pain. They find no substantial difference between the pleasure of art and that of easy digestion, between the pleasure of a good action and that of breathing the fresh air with wide-expanded lungs. But if the activity of feeling in the sense here defined must not be substituted for all the other forms of spiritual activity, we have not said that it cannot accompany them. Indeed it accompanies them of necessity, because they are all in close relation both with one another and with the elementary volitional form. Therefore each of them has for concomitants individual volitions and volitional pleasures and pains, known as feeling. But we must not confound a concomitant with the principal fact, and substitute the one for the other. The discovery of a truth, or the fulfilment of a moral duty, produces in us a joy which makes vibrate our whole being, which, by attaining the aim of those forms of spiritual activity, attains at the same time that to which it was practically tending, as its end. Nevertheless, economic or hedonistic satisfaction, ethical satisfaction, asthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, though thus united, remain always distinct. A question often asked is thus answered at the same time, one which has correctly seemed to be a matter of life or death for æsthetic science, namely, whether feeling and pleasure precede or follow, are cause or effect of the aesthetic fact. We must widen this question to include the relation between the various spiritual forms, and answer it by maintaining that one cannot talk of cause and effect and of a chronological before and after in the unity of the spirit. And once the relation above expounded is established, all necessity for inquiry as to the nature of æsthetic, moral, intellectual and even what was sometimes called economic feelings, must disappear. In this last case, it is clear that it is a question, not of two terms, but of one, and inquiry as to economic feeling must be the same as that relating to economic activity. But in the other cases also, we must attend, not to the substantive, but to the adjective: the æsthetic, moral and logical character will explain the colouring of the feelings as æsthetic, moral and intellectual, whereas feeling, studied alone, will never explain those refractions and colorations. A further consequence is, that we no longer need Meaning of cerretain the well-known distinctions between values or tain ordinary distinctions of feelings of value, and feelings that are merely hedonistic feelings. and without value; disinterested and interested feelings, objective feelings and feelings not objective but simply subjective feelings of approbation and of mere pleasure (cf. the distinction of Gefallen and Vergnügen in German). Those distinctions were used to save the three spiritual forms, which were recognized as the triad of the True, the Good and the Beautiful, from confusion with the fourth form, still unknown, and therefore insidious in its indeterminateness and mother of scandals. For us this triad has completed its task, because we are capable of reaching the distinction far more directly, by receiving also the selfish, subjective, merely pleasurable feelings among the respectable forms of the spirit; and where formerly antitheses were conceived (by ourselves and others), between value and feelings, as between spirituality and naturality, henceforth we see nothing but differences between value and value. disvalue: the As has already been said, feeling or the economic Value and activity presents itself as divided into two poles, positive contraries and and negative, pleasure and pain, which we can now their union. translate into useful and disuseful (or hurtful). This bipartition has already been noted above, as a mark of the activistic character of feeling, and one which is to be found in all forms of activity. If each of these is value, each has opposed to it antivalue or disvalue. Absence of value is not sufficient to cause disvalue, but activity and passivity must be struggling between themselves, with The Beautiful expression, or expression without qualification. out the one getting the better of the other; hence the contradiction and disvalue of the activity that is embarrassed, impeded, or interrupted. Value is activity that unfolds itself freely disvalue is its contrary. We will content ourselves with this definition of the two terms, without entering into the problem of the relation between value and disvalue, that is, the problem of contraries (that is to say, whether they are to be thought of dualistically, as two beings or two orders of beings, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, angels and devils, enemies to one another; or as a unity, which is also contrariety). This definition of the two terms will be sufficient for our purpose, which is to make clear the nature of æsthetic activity, and at this particular point one of the most obscure and disputed concepts of Esthetic: the concept of the Beautiful. Esthetic, intellectual, economic and ethical values as the value of and disvalues are variously denominated in current speech beautiful, true, good, useful, expedient, just, right and so on-thus designating the free development of spiritual activity, action, scientific research, artistic production, when they are successful; ugly, false, bad, useless, inexpedient, unjust, wrong designating embarrassed activity, the product that is a failure. In linguistic usage, these denominations are being continually shifted from one order of facts to another. Beautiful, for instance, is said not only of a successful expression, but also of a scientific truth, of an action successfully achieved, and of a moral action thus we talk of an intellectual beauty, of a beautiful action, of a moral beauty. The attempt to keep up with these infinitely varying usages leads into a trackless labyrinth of verbalism in which many philosophers and students of art have lost their way. For this reason we have thought it best studiously to avoid the use of the word "beautiful" to indicate successful expression in its positive value. But after all the explanations that we have given, all danger of misunderstanding being now dissipated, and since on the other hand we cannot fail to recognize that the prevailing |