As to the method to be followed, two exclusive and opposite courses present themselves. The one, empiric and historic, seeks to draw from the study of the master-pieces of art, the laws of criticism and the principles of taste. The other, rational and a priori, rises immediately to the idea of the beautiful, and deduces from it certain general rules. Aristotle and Plato represent these two methods. The first reaches only a narrow theory, incapable of comprehending art in its universality; the other, isolating itself on the heights of metaphysics, knows not how to descend therefrom to apply itself to particular arts, and to appreciate their works. The true method consists in the union of these two methods, in their reconciliation and simultaneous employment. To a positive acquaintance with works of art, to the discrimination and delicacy of taste necessary to appreciate them, there should be joined philosophic reflection, and the capacity of seizing the Beautiful in itself, and of comprehending its characteristics and immutable laws.
What is the nature of art? The answer to this question can only be the philosophy of art itself; and, furthermore, this again can be perfectly understood only in its connection with the other philosophic sciences. One is here compelled to limit himself to general reflections, and to the discussion of received opinions.
In the first place, art is a product of human activity, a creation of the mind. What distinguishes it from science is this, that it is the fruit of inspiration, not of reflection. On this account it can not be learned or transmitted; it is a gift of genius. Nothing can possibly supply a lack of talent in the arts.
Let us guard ourselves meanwhile from supposing that, like the blind forces of nature, the artist does not know what he does, that reflection has no part in his works. There is, in the first place, in the arts a technical part which must be learned, and a skill which is acquired by practice. Furthermore, the more elevated art becomes, the more it demands an extended and varied culture, a study of the objects of nature, and a profound knowledge of the human heart. This is eminently true of the higher spheres of art, especially in Poetry.
If works of art are creations of the human spirit, they are not on that account inferior to those of nature. They are, it is true, living, only in appearance; but the aim of art is not to create living beings; it seeks to offer to the spirit an image of life clearer than the reality. In this, it surpasses nature. There is also something divine in man, and God derives no less honor from the works of human intelligence than from the works of nature.
Now what is the cause which incites man to the production of such works? Is it a caprice, a freak, or an earnest, fundamental inclination of his nature?
It is the same principle which causes him to seek in science food for his mind, in public life a theatre for his activity. In science he endeavors to cognize the truth, pure and unveiled; in art, truth appears to him not in its pure form, but expressed by images which strike his sense at the same time that they speak to his intelligence. This is the principle in which art originates, and which assigns to it a rank so high among the creations of the human mind.
Although art is addressed to the sensibility, nevertheless its direct aim is not to excite sensation, and to give birth to pleasure. Sensation is changeful, varied, contradictory. It represents only the various states or modifications of the soul. If then we consider only the impressions which art produces upon us, we make abstraction of the truth which it reveals to us. It becomes even impossible to comprehend its grand effects; for the sentiments which it excites in us, are explicable only through the ideas which attach to them.
The sensuous element, nevertheless, occupies a large place in art. What part must be assigned to it? There are two modes of considering sensuous objects in their connection with our mind. The first is that of simple perception of objects by the senses. The mind then knows only their individual side, their particular and concrete form; the essence, the law, the substance of things escapes it. At the same time the desire which is awakened in us, is a desire to appropriate them to our use, to consume them, to destroy them. The soul, in the presence of these objects, feels its dependence; it cannot contemplate them with a free and disinterested eye.
Another relation of sensuous objects with spirit, is that of speculative thought or science. Here the intelligence is not content to perceive the object in its concrete form and its individuality; it discards the individual side in order to abstract and disengage from it the law, the universal, the essence. Reason thus lifts itself above the individual form perceived by sense, in order to conceive the pure idea in its universality.