Passion Of Signs. Signs of Passion.
These two terms at first sight seem very similar. It is not so. They express two wholly distinct things. Therefore to know the meaning of words by no means proves one capable of finding words and fitting them to the meaning.
It is clearly easier to translate a language than to write it, and just as we must learn to translate before we can compose, so we must become thoroughly familiar with semeiotics before trying to work at æsthetics; and, as the science of semeiotics is still wholly incomplete, it is, therefore, absolutely impossible that that which is called æsthetics should in the least resemble the science which I have just defined.
I have shown you æsthetics as a science. I have given you its definition. I have fixed its special part in the sum total of knowledge which goes to make up art; moreover, I have pointed out what this science is intended to teach you. I have, by so doing, assumed serious obligations toward you. I must needs produce under this title something more than mere fantastic reflections upon works of art, or more or less attractive stories about their authors and the circumstances in which they lived. It will not be so amusing, but assuredly it will be more profitable, and that is all for which I aspire.
Art, then, is an act whose semeiotics characterizes the forms produced by the action of powers, which action is determined by æsthetics, and the causes of which are sought out by ontology.
| Art. | { | Ontology examines the constituent virtues of the being. |
| Æsthetics examines its powers. | ||
| Semeiotics characterizes its forces. | ||
| Art. | { | Inherent form of sentiments . . . . . . Æsthetics. |
| Metaphysical form of the principles . . Ontology. | ||
| Organic form of signs . . . . . . . . . Semeiotics. |
The object of art, therefore, is to reproduce, by the action of a superior principle (ontology), the organic signs explained by semeiotics, and whose fitness is estimated by æsthetics.
Semeiotics is the science of the organic signs by which æsthetics must study inherent fitness.
Æsthetics is the science of the sensitive and passional manifestations which are the object of art, and whose psychic form it constitutes.
If semeiotics does not tell us the passion which the sign reveals, how can æsthetics indicate to us the sign which it should apply to the passion that it studies? In a word, how shall the artist translate the passion which he is called upon to express?
Æsthetics determines the inherent forms of sentiment in view of the effects whose truth of relation it estimates.
Semeiotics studies organic forms in view of the sentiment which produces them.
It is thus that wisdom and reason proceed in inverse sense from the principle to the knowledge which is the object of both. Wisdom, in fact, studies the principle in its consequences, while reason studies the consequences in the principle, hence it comes that wisdom and reason are often at war with each other; hence also the obscurity which generally prevails as to the distinction between them. Let us say that wisdom and reason are to intelligence what æsthetics and semeiotics are to art. Let us add to this parallel that wisdom and reason are to intelligence what æsthetics and semeiotics are to ontology; that is:--
1. If, from a certain organic form, I infer a certain sentiment, that is Semeiotics.
2. If, from a certain sentiment, I deduce a certain organic form, that is Æsthetics.
3. If, after studying the arrangement of an organic form whose inherent fitness I am supposed to know, I take possession of that arrangement under the title of methods, invariably to reproduce that form by substituting my individual will for its inherent cause, that is Art.
4. If I determine the initial phenomena under the impulsion of which the inherent powers act upon the organism, that is Ontology.
5. If I tell how that organism behaves under the inherent action, that is Physiology.
6. If I examine, one by one, the agents of that organism, it is Anatomy.
7. If, amid these different studies, I seek by means of analogy and generalization for light to guide my steps toward my advantage, that is System.
8. If I make that light profitable to my material and spiritual interests, that is Reason.
9. If I add to all this the loving contemplation of the Supreme Author in His work, that is Wisdom.
Let us now leave the abstractions to which you have kindly lent your attention. I cannot here avoid casting a rapid glance at those sources of science and art, the sources whence I desire to draw applications which I am assured will interest you as they interest me. May they afford you the same delight!
By listening to me thus far you have passed through the proofs requisite for your initiation into science as well as art; into science, whose very definition is unknown to the learned bodies, since they have never studied aught of it but its specialties; into art, whose very fundamental basis is unsuspected by the School of Fine Arts, as I have elsewhere demonstrated. Therefore, I now desire in the course of these lectures to set aside the terms of a technology which I could not avoid at the outset, and by the recital of my labors and my researches, my disappointments and my discoveries, to show you the painful birth of a science, whose possession entitles me to the honor of addressing you to-day.