Naturalism. C. Lombroso.
Naturalistic is the best term with which to qualify the Æsthetic derived from that identification of genius with degeneracy which made the fortune of Lombroso and his school. This identification derives its chief strength from the following piece of reasoning. Great mental efforts, total absorption in one dominating thought, often bring about physiological disorders in the bodily organism and weakness or atrophy of various vital functions. But such derangements come under the head of the pathological concept of illness, degeneration, madness. Therefore genius is identical with illness, degeneration and madness. A syllogism from particular to general, in which case, according to traditional Logic, non est consequentia. But with sociologists such as Nordau, Lombroso and company, we almost overstep the line separating respectable error from that grosser form which we call a blunder.
A mere confusion between scientific analysis and historical inquiry or description is visible in the works of certain sociologists and anthropologists. Thus one of them, Carl Bücher, in studying the life of primitive peoples, asserts that poetry, music and work were originally fused in one single act; that poetry and music were used to regulate the rhythms of labour.[36] This may be historically true or false, important or no: it has nothing whatever to do with æsthetic science. In the same way Andrew Lang maintains that the doctrine concerning the origin of art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty finds no confirmation from what we know of primitive art, which is decorative rather than expressive:[37] as though primitive art, which is a mere fact awaiting interpretation, could ever be converted into a criterion for the interpretation of art in general.
Decline of Linguistic.
The same vague naturalism exercised a baneful influence on Linguistic, which of late years has been wholly lacking in such profound research as that inaugurated by Humboldt and followed up by Steinthal. But Steinthal never succeeded in founding a school. Max Müller, popular and inaccurate, maintained the indivisibility of speech and thought, confounding, or at least not distinguishing, æsthetic and logical thought; although at one time he had noted that the formation of names had a closer connexion with wit, in the sense of Locke, than with judgement. He maintained, moreover, that the science of language is not a historical but a natural science, because language is not the invention of man: the dilemma of "historical" and "natural" was canvassed and resolved over and over again with little result.[38] Another philologist, Whitney, attacked the "miraculous" theory of Müller and denied that thought is indivisible from speech: "The deaf-mute does not speak, but he can think," he observes; "thought is not function of the acoustic nerve." By this means Whitney relapsed into the ancient doctrine that speech is a symbol or means of expression, of human thought, subject to the will, the result of a synthesis of faculties and of a capacity for intelligent adaptation of means to end.[39]
Signs of revival. H. Paul.
Philosophical spirit reappeared in Paul's Principles of the History of Language (1880),[40] though the author's efforts to defend himself from the terrifying accusation of being a philosopher led him to hunt out a fresh title to replace the scandalous "Philosophy of Language." But if Paul is vague about the relation of Logic to Grammar, he must be given every credit for identifying, as Humboldt had already done, the question of the origin of language with that of its nature; and reasserting that language is created afresh whenever we speak. He must also be given credit for having conclusively criticized the Ethnopsychology (Völkerpsychologie) of Steinthal and Lazarus, showing that there is no such thing as collective psyche and that there can be no language other than of the individual.
The linguistic of Wundt.
Wundt[41] on the other hand attached the study of language, mythology and customs to this non-existent science of Ethnopsychology; in his latest work, on this very subject of language,[42] he foolishly echoes Whitney's gibes and denounces as a "miracle theory" (Wundertheorie) that glorious doctrine inaugurated by Herder and Humboldt, whom he accuses of "mystical obscurity" (mystiche Dunkel): he observes that this view may have had some justification before the principle of evolution had reached its triumphant application to organic nature in general and to man in particular. He has not the faintest notion of the function of imagination, or of the true relation between thought and expression; he finds no substantial difference between expression in the naturalistic, and expression in the spiritual and linguistic sense; he considers language as a special highly developed form of the vital psychophysical manifestations and of the expressive movements of animals. Out of these facts language is developed by imperceptible gradations; so that, beyond the general concept of expressive movement (Ausdrucksbewegung) "there is no specific mark by which language can be distinguished in any but an arbitrary manner."[43] The philosophy of Wundt betrays its own weakness by showing its inability to master the problem of language and art. In his Ethics æsthetic facts are presented as a complex of logical and ethical elements; the existence of æsthetic as a special normative science is denied, not for the good and sufficient reason that there are no such things as "normative sciences," but because this special science is said by him to be absorbed by the two sciences of Logic and Ethics,[44] which amounts to denying the existence of Æsthetic and the originality of art.