The works of Zimmermann seem to have given satisfaction to nobody save himself. Even Lotze, by no means an adversary of Herbartianism, blames him severely in his History of Æsthetic in Germany (1868) and other writings. Still, Lotze was unable to offer any better substitute for æsthetic formalism than of a variant of the old idealism. "Can any one persuade us," he wrote in criticism of the formalists, "that a spiritual discord expressed by a corresponding discord in external appearances may have a value equal to that of the harmonious expression of a harmonious content solely because, in both cases, the formal relation of accord is respected? Can any one persuade us that the human form is pleasing solely for its formal stereometric relations, irrespective of the spiritual life by which it is animated? In empirical reality the three domains of laws, facts and values invariably appear as divided; and although they are united in the Highest Good, in Goodness in itself, in the living Love of a Personal God, in the Ought which is the basis of Being, our reason is unable to attain or to know such union. Beauty alone can reveal it to us: it is in close connexion with the Good and the Holy and reproduces the rhythm of the divine ordinance and the moral government of the universe. Æsthetic fact is neither intuition nor concept; it is idea, which presents the essential of an object in the form of an end referred to the ultimate end. Art, like beauty, must include the world of values in the world of forms."[3] The war between the Æsthetic of content and that of form, having Zimmermann, Vischer and Lotze as protagonists, reached its culminating point between 1860 and 1870.
Efforts to reconcile Æsthetic of form and Æsthetic of content.
Several people were in favour of a reconciliation. But the reconciliations they offered were not the right one, which was at least glimpsed by a certain young Johann Schmidt, who in his thesis for doctorate observed (1875) that, with all respect for Zimmermann and Lotze, it seemed to him they were both wrong in confusing the various meanings of the word "beauty," and discussed such an absurdity as a beauty or ugliness of natural objects, that is to say, of things external to the spirit; that Lotze, following Hegel, added the second absurdity of an intuitive concept or conceptual intuition: lastly, that neither of them grasped the fact that the æsthetic problem does not turn upon the beauty or ugliness of the abstract content or of form understood as a system of mathematical relations, but with the beauty or ugliness of representation. Form undoubtedly must exist, but "concrete form, full of content."[4] These utterances of Schmidt met with a hostile reception: it is easy (he was told in reply) to identify beauty with artistic perfection, but the whole crux of the matter lies in finding whether, beside this perfection, there exists another beauty dependent on a supreme cosmic or metaphysical principle: otherwise one is guilty of a naïve petitio principii.[5] It was thought better, therefore, to seek other modes of reconciliation, which consisted in cooking up an appetizing dish in which a little formalism and a little contentism were mixed to taste, the latter as a rule giving the predominant flavour.
Some Herbartians were found in the ranks of the mediating or conciliatory party. Hardly had Zimmermann's rigid formalism appeared, when Nahlowsky jumped up to protest that it had never entered the master's head to exclude content from Æsthetic;[6] but even the ablest of the school, men such as Volkmann and Lazarus, chose a middle course.[7] In the opposite camp Carrière,[8] and even Vischer himself (in a criticism of his own old Æsthetic), began to concede a larger part to the consideration of form; thus for Vischer beauty became "life appearing harmoniously," which when it appears in space is called form, and must always possess form, i.e. limitation (Begrenzung ) in space and time, measure, regularity, symmetry, proportion, propriety (these characters constituting its quantitative moments) and harmony (qualitative moment), which includes variety and contrast and is therefore the most important characteristic.[9]
K. Köstlin.
A conciliatory Æsthetic in which formalism prevailed was attempted by Karl Köstlin, a professor at Tübingen and formerly collaborator in the musical section of the works of Vischer. Köstlin[10] had been influenced by Schleiermacher, Hegel, Vischer and Herbart, but, truth to tell, does not seem to have perfectly understood the teaching of any one of his predecessors. According to him, the æsthetic object presented three requirements: richness and variety of imagery (anregende Gestaltenfülle), interesting content and beautiful form. Under the first we recognize, with no little difficulty, a distorted reflexion of Schleiermacher's "inspiration" (Begeisterung). Interesting content he defined as that which concerns man; that which he knows or does not know; that which he loves or hates (it is thus always relative to the individual and the conditions in which he exists); and he asserted that interest of content is joined to value of form, that is, he conceived content as a second value, the same of which we have heard Herbart speak. He also agreed with Herbart that form is absolute, and that its general character is determined as being easily perceptible by intuition (anschaulich), and by its power of giving satisfaction, pleasure and delight, in fact, as being beautiful. Its particular characteristics for Köstlin were, according to quantity, circumscription, simplicity (Einheitlichkeit), extensive and intensive size, and equilibrium (Gleichmass); according to quality, determination (Bestimmtheit), unity (Einheit), importance (Bedeutung) extensive and intensive, and harmony. But when Köstlin sets himself to the empirical verification of his categories, he falls into hopeless confusion. Greatness is pleasing, but so is smallness; unity is pleasing, but so is variety; regularity is pleasing, but so, confound it, is irregularity: uncertainties and contradictions at every step; he was aware of them and made no effort to conceal them; but they should have convinced him that the abstraction of "beautiful form," whose qualities and quantities he had so laboriously collected, is a ghostly shape without body, since that alone gives æsthetic pleasure which fulfils an expressive function. But having illustrated the three demands of the æsthetic object, Köstlin wasted all his remaining breath in constructing a kingdom of intuitive imagination in the manner of Vischer, i.e. beauty of organic and inorganic nature; of civil life; of morality; of religion; of science; of games; of conversations; of feasts and banquets; and lastly of history, reviewing and passing æsthetic comment on its three periods, patriarchal, heroic and historical.
Æsthetic of content. M. Schasler.
Schasler, who had written as vast a history on Æsthetic as Zimmermann's own, found a starting-point for a movement toward formalism in absolute idealism, or realism-idealism, as he called it. He began by defining Æsthetic as "the science of the beautiful and of art" (a single science ill defined as having two different objects), and proceeded to justify his unmethodical definition by saying that beauty does not exist in art alone, nor does art concern itself solely with beauty. The sphere of Æsthetic he defines as that of intuition (Anschauung) in which knowledge assumes a practical character and will a theoretical: the sphere of indivisible unity and absolute reconciliation of the theoretical and practical spirit, in which in a certain sense the highest human activities are developed. Beauty is the ideal, but the concrete ideal; this is why there is no ideal of a human body in abstraction from sex, no ideal of a mammal in general, but only of such and such species, as of horse or dog, and then only of determinate kind of horse or dog. Thus by descending from the more to the less abstract genus Schasler vainly attempted to reach the concrete, which inevitably escaped his grasp. In art we pass from the typical, which is natural beauty, to the characteristic, which is the typical of human feeling; hence we can frame the ideal of an old woman, a beggar or a ruffian. The characteristic of art is in closer relationship to the ugly than to the beautiful in nature. On this head (passing over the remainder, which is on familiar lines) it is well to notice that Schasler has a bias towards that version of the romaunt of Sir Purebeauty which ascribes the birth of the "modifications of Beauty" to the influence of the Ugly.[11] "Although," he writes, "the thought may disturb our minds, it must not be forgotten that were there no world of ugliness there could be no world of beauty; for it is only when the Ugly stirs up empty abstract Beauty, that it begins to combat the enemy and thus to produce concrete Beauty."[12] He even succeeded in converting Vischer himself, the chief supporter of the other version: "Formerly I had been accustomed to think in the old-fashioned Hegelian style," Vischer confesses, "that unrest, fermentation and strife dwelt in the essence of Beauty; that the Idea prevails and thrusts the image forth into the infinite; so arises the Sublime; that the image, offended in its finitude, makes war on the Idea; whence arises the Comic; this finished the struggle; Beauty returned to itself from the conflict of the two moments, and was created." But now, he continues, "I must acknowledge that Schasler is right, and so are his predecessors Weisse and Ruge: the Ugly has a hand in the matter; this is the principle of movement, the ferment of differentiation: without such leaven we never reach the special forms of Beauty, for each single one presupposes' the Ugly."[13]
Ed. von Hartmann.
Closely allied to that of Schasler is the Æsthetic of Eduard von Hartmann (1890), preceded by a historical treatise on German Æsthetic since Kant[14] wherein with meticulous, critical and polemical study he upholds the definition of Beauty as "the appearance of the Idea" (das Scheinen der Idee). Inasmuch as he insisted on appearance (Schein) as the necessary characteristic of Beauty, Hartmann held himself justified in naming his Æsthetic the "Æsthetic of Concrete Idealism," and in ranging himself alongside Hegel, Trahndorff, Schleiermacher, Deutinger, Oersted, Vischer, Meising, Carrière and Schasler, against the abstract idealism of Schelling, Solger, Schopenhauer, Krause, Weisse and Lotze, all of whom, by placing beauty in the supersensible idea, overlooked the sensory element and reduced it to the rank of a mere accessory.[15] By his insistence on the idea as the other indispensable and determining element, Hartmann proclaimed himself as opposed to the Herbartian formalism. Beauty is truth; neither historical, scientific nor reflective, but metaphysical or idealistic, the very truth of Philosophy: "in proportion as Beauty is in opposition to every science and to realistic truth, so much nearer is it to Philosophy and metaphysical truth": "Beauty, with its own peculiar efficacy, remains the prophet of idealistic truth in an unbelieving age that abhors Metaphysic and recognizes no value in anything but realistic truth." Æsthetic truth, which leaps immediately from subjective appearance to ideal essence, is lacking in the control and method possessed by philosophical truth; in compensation, however, she possesses the fascinating power of conviction, the sole property of sensible intuition, and unattainable by gradual or reflected mediation. The higher Philosophy soars, the less does it need the gradual passage through the world of the senses and of science, and the slighter becomes the distance separating Philosophy and Art. The latter, for its part, will be well advised to start on its journey towards the ideal world as Bædeker's handbooks counsel the intending traveller, "with as little luggage as possible"; "not overloading herself with a weight which paralyses the wings and is made up of unnecessary and indifferent trifles,"[16] Logical character, the microcosmic idea, the unconscious are immanent in beauty; by means of the unconscious, intellectual intuition operates in it,[17] and, from its being rooted in the unconscious, it is a Mystery.[18]