Certainly, such questions as to the beauty of nature and the beauty of geometry, like others analogous as to the historically beautiful and human beauty, seem less absurd in the Æsthetic of the sympathetic, which really means by the words "æsthetic beauty" the representation of the pleasing. But the claim to determine scientifically what are sympathetic contents and what are irremediably antipathetic is none the less erroneous, even in the sphere of that doctrine and after laying down those premises. One can only answer such questions by repeating with an infinitely long postscript the Sunt quos of the first ode of the first book of Horace, and the Havvi chi of Leopardi's letter to Carlo Pepoli. To each man his beautiful (= sympathetic), as to each man his fair one. Philography is not science.
Criticism of another aspect of the imitation of nature.
The artist sometimes has naturally existing facts before him, in producing the artificial instrument, or physically beautiful. These are called his models: bodies, stuffs, flowers and so on. Let us run over the sketches, studies and notes of artists: Leonardo noted down in his pocket-book, when he was working on the Last Supper: "Giovannina, weird face, is at St. Catherine's, at the Hospital; Cristofano di Castiglione is at the Pietà, he has a fine head; Christ, Giovan Conte, of Cardinal Mortaro's suite." And so on. From this comes the illusion that the artist imitates nature, when it would perhaps be more exact to say that nature imitates the artist, and obeys him. The illusion that art imitates nature has sometimes found ground and support in this illusion, as also in its variant, more easily maintained, which makes of art the idealizer of nature. This last theory presents the process out of its true order, which indeed is not merely upset but actually inverted; for the artist does not proceed from external reality, in order to modify it by approximating it to the ideal; he goes from the impression of external nature to expression, that is to say, his ideal, and from this passes to the natural fact, which he employs as instrument of reproduction of the ideal fact.
Criticism of the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful.
Another consequence of the confusion between the æsthetic fact and the physical fact is the theory of the elementary forms of the beautiful. If expression, if the beautiful, be indivisible, the physical fact on the contrary, in which it externalizes itself, can easily be divided and subdivided: for example, a painted surface, into lines and colours, groups and curves of lines, kinds of colours, and so on; a poem, into strophes, verses, feet, syllables; a piece of prose, into chapters, paragraphs, headings, periods, phrases, words and so on. The parts thus obtained are not æsthetic facts, but smaller physical facts, arbitrarily divided. If this path were followed and the confusion persisted in, we should end by concluding that the true elementary forms of the beautiful are atoms.
The æsthetic law, several times promulgated, that beauty must have bulk, could be invoked against the atoms. It cannot be the imperceptibility of the too small, or the inapprehensibility of the too large. But a greatness determined by perceptibility, not by measurement, implies a concept widely different from the mathematical. Indeed, what is called imperceptible and inapprehensible does not produce an impression, because it is not a real fact, but a concept: the demand for bulk in the beautiful is thus reduced to the actual presence of the physical fact, which serves for the reproduction of the beautiful.
Criticism of the search for the objective conditions of the beautiful.
Continuing the search for the physical laws or for the objective conditions of the beautiful, it has been asked: To what physical facts does the beautiful correspond? To what the ugly? To what unions of tones, colours, sizes, mathematically determinable? Such inquiries are as if in Political Economy one were to seek for the laws of exchange in the physical nature of the objects exchanged. The persistent fruitlessness of the attempt should have given rise before long to some suspicion of its vanity. In our times, especially, necessity for an inductive Æsthetic has been often proclaimed, of an Æsthetic starting from below, proceeding like natural science and not jumping to its conclusions. Inductive? But Æsthetic has always been both inductive and deductive, like every philosophical science; induction and deduction cannot be separated, nor can they separately avail to characterize a true science. But the word "induction" was not pronounced here by chance. The intention was to imply that the æsthetic fact is really nothing but a physical fact, to be studied by the methods proper to the physical and natural sciences.
With such a presupposition and in such a faith did inductive Æsthetic or Æsthetic from below (what pride in this modesty!) begin its labours. It conscientiously began by making a collection of beautiful things, for example, a great number of envelopes of various shapes and sizes, and asked which of these give the impression of beauty and which of ugliness. As was to be expected, the inductive æstheticians speedily found themselves in a difficulty, for the same objects that appeared ugly in one aspect appeared beautiful in another. A coarse yellow envelope, which would be extremely ugly for the purpose of enclosing a love-letter, is just what is wanted for a writ served by process on stamped paper, which in its turn would look very bad, or seem at any rate an irony, enclosed in a square envelope of English paper. Such considerations of simple common sense should have sufficed to convince inductive æstheticians that the beautiful has no physical existence, and cause them to desist from their vain and ridiculous quest. But no: they had recourse to an expedient, as to which we should hardly like to say how far it belongs to the strict method of natural science. They sent their envelopes round and opened a referendum, trying to settle in what beauty or ugliness consists by the votes of the majority.
The Astrology of Æsthetic.