The æsthetic conditions are twofold:—
The abundant and generous, as opposed to the seeking and the desiring.
844.
A romanticist is an artist whose great dissatisfaction with himself makes him productive—; who looks away from himself and his fellows, and sometimes, therefore, looks backwards.
845.
Is art the result of dissatisfaction with reality? or is it the expression of gratitude for happiness experienced? In the first case, it is romanticism; in the second, it is glorification and dithyramb (in short, apotheosis art): even Raphael belongs to this, except for the fact that he was guilty of the duplicity of having defied the appearance of the Christian view of the world. He was thankful for life precisely where it was not exactly Christian.
With a moral interpretation the world is insufferable; Christianity was the attempt to overcome the world with morality: i.e. to deny it. In praxi such a mad experiment—an imbecile elevation of man above the world—could only end in the beglooming, the dwarfing, and the impoverishment of mankind: the only kind of man who gained anything by it, who was promoted by it, was the most mediocre, the most harmless and gregarious type.
Homer as an apotheosis artist; Rubens also. Music has not yet had such an artist.
The idealisation of the great criminal (the feeling for his greatness) is Greek; the depreciation, the slander, the contempt of the sinner, is Judæo-Christian.
846.