Mystical æsthetic aim at a like result, when they create fictions and fables.1 Lucretius, in Roman literature, gives us the well-known comparison of the boys for whom the doctors" prius oras pocula circum Contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore," in order to administer the bitter wormwood.2 Horace, in certain verses of the Epistle to the Pisones which have become proverbial (perhaps his source for them was the Greek of Neoptolemus of Paros ?), offers both views (that of art as courtesan and of art as pedagogue) in his "Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae . . . omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.” 3 in antiquity. Thus looked at, the office of the poet was confounded with that of the orator, for he too was a practical man aiming at practical effects; hence there arose discussions as to whether Virgil was to be considered as a poet or as an orator (" Virgilius poeta an orator?"). To both was assigned the triple end of delectare, movere, docere; in any case this tripartition was very empirical, for we clearly perceive that the delectare is here a means and the docere a simple part of the movere to move in the direction of the good, and therefore, among other goods, towards that of instruction. In like manner, it was said of the orator and poet (recording the meretricious basis of their task, and with a metaphor significant in its naïveté) that they were bound to avail themselves of the allurements (lenocinium) of form. The mystical view, which considers art as a special mode of self-beatification, of entering into relation with the Absolute, with the Summum Bonum, with the ultimate root of things, appeared only in late antiquity, almost at the entrance to the Middle Ages. Its representative is the founder of the neo-Platonic school, Plotinus. It is strange that Plato should be usually selected as the founder and head of this æsthetic tendency, and that for this very reason to him should be attributed the honour of being the father of Esthetic. But how could he, who had expounded with such great limpidity and 1 Plutarch, De aud. poetis, chs. 1-4, 14. 3 De rerum natura, i. 935-947 3 Ad Pisones, 333-334 clearness the reasons for which he was not able to accord to art a high place among the activities of the spirit, be credited with having accorded to it one of the highest places, equal, if not superior, to philosophy itself? This misunderstanding has evidently arisen out of the enthusiastic effusions about the Beautiful that we read in the Gorgias, the Philebus, the Phaedrus, the Symposium, and other Platonic dialogues. It is well to dissipate it by declaring that the Beauty of which Plato discourses has nothing to do with art or with artistic beauty. as to the The search for the meaning and scientific content of Investigations the word "beautiful " beautiful" could not but early attract Beautiful. the attention of the subtle and elegant Greek dialecticians. Indeed, we find Socrates engaged in discussing this question in one of the discourses that have been preserved for us by Xenophon; and we find him disposed to stop for the moment at the conclusion that the beautiful is that which is convenient and which answers to the end desired, or at the other conclusion that it is that which one loves.1 Plato too examines this sort of problem and proposes various sorts of solutions or attempts at solutions of it. He sometimes speaks of a beauty that dwells not only in bodies, but also in laws, in actions, in the sciences; sometimes he seems to conjoin and almost to identify it with the true, the good and the divine; now he returns to the view of Socrates and confuses it with the useful; now he distinguishes between a beautiful in itself (καλὰ καθ' αυτά) and a relatively beautiful (πρός Tɩ Kaλá); or he makes true beauty consist in pure pleasure (dový kaðaρá), free from all shadow of pain; or he places it in measure and proportion (μerpiótηs kai Evμμeтpía); or talks of colours and sounds as possessing a beauty in themselves.2 It was impossible to find an independent dominion for the beautiful, if the artistic or mimetic activity were deserted. This explains his wandering among so many different conceptions, among which it is just possible to say that the identification of 1 Memorab. iii. ch. 8; iv. ch. 6. * Texts collected in Müller, op. cit. ii. pp. 84-107. the Beautiful with the Good prevails. Nothing better so insistently in the course of the dialogue: what is the beautiful? (Ti éσTI Tò Kaλóv;) remains unanswered.1 Later writers also conducted inquiries into the beautiful, and we possess the titles of several treatises upon the theme, which have been lost. Aristotle shows himself changeable and uncertain upon the point. In the scanty references which he makes to it, he at one time confounds the beautiful with the good, defining it as that which is both good and pleasing; 2 at another he notes that the good consists of action (ev πpáže) and the beautiful also in things that are immoveable (ἐν τοῖς ἀκινήτοις), drawing from this the argument that mathematics should be studied in order to determine its characters, order, symmetry and limit; 3 sometimes he places it in bigness and in order (ev μeyébeɩ kai тáže); at others he was led to look upon it as something apparently indefinable.5 Antiquity also established canons of beautiful things, such as that attributed to Polycletus on the proportions of the human body. And Cicero said of the beauty of bodies that they were quaedam apta figura membrorum cum coloris quadam suavitate." & All these affirmations, even when they are not mere empirical observations, o verbal glosses and substitutions, meet with unsurmountable obstacles. 3 between the theory of Art and the theory of the Beautiful. In any case, not only is the conception of the beautiful, Distinction taken as a whole, identified with art in none of them; but sometimes art and beauty, mimesis and pleasing or displeasing material of mimesis, are clearly distinguished. Aristotle notes in his Poetics that it pleases us to see the most faithful images of things that are repugnant to us in reality, such, for instance, as the most contemptible forms of animals, or corpses (τὰς εἰκόνας τὰς μάλιστα ἠκριβωμένας χαίρομεν θεωροῦντες). Plutarch demonstrates at length that works of art please us not as beautiful but as resembling (οὐχ ὡς καλόν, ἀλλ' ὡς ὅμοιον) ; he affirms that Fusion of the two by Plotinus. if the artist beautified things that are ugly in nature he It is only with Plotinus that the two divided territories are united and the beautiful and art are fused into a single concept, not by means of a beneficial absorption of the equivocal Platonic conception of beauty into the unequivocal conception of art, but by absorption of the clear into the confused, of imitative art in the socalled beautiful. And thus we reach an altogether new view the beautiful and art are now both alike melted into a mystical passion and elevation of the spirit. Beauty, observes Plotinus, resides chiefly in things visible; but it is also to be found in things audible, such as verbal and musical compositions, and it is not lacking in things supersensible, such as works, offices, actions, 1 De aud. poetis, ch. 3. |