But it remains for us to present some conclusions upon the future destiny of art—a point of highest interest, to which this review of the forms and monuments of the past must lead. The conclusions of the author, which we shall consider elsewhere, are far from answering to what we might have expected from so remarkable a historic picture.
What are, indeed, these conclusions? The first is, that the rôle of art, to speak properly, is finished—at least, its original and distinct rôle. The circle of the ideas and beliefs of humanity is completed. Art has invested them with the forms which it was capable of giving them. In the future, it ought, then, to occupy a secondary place. After having finished its independent career, it becomes an obscure satellite of science and philosophy, in which are absorbed both religion and art. This thought is not thus definitely formulated, but it is clearly enough indicated. Art, in revealing thought, has itself contributed to the destruction of other forms, and to its own downfall. The new art ought to be elevated above all the particular forms which it has already expressed. “Art ceases to be attached to a determinate circle of ideas and forms; it consecrates itself to a new worship, that of humanity. All that the heart of man includes within its own immensity—its joys and its sufferings, its interests, its actions, its destinies—become the domain of art.” Thus the content is human nature; the form a free combination of all the forms of the past. We shall hereafter consider this new eclecticism in art.
Hegel points out, in concluding, a final form of literature and poetry, which is the unequivocal index of the absence of peculiar, elevated and profound ideas, and of original forms—that sentimental poetry, light or descriptive, which to-day floods the literary world and the drawing-rooms with its verses; compositions without life and without content, without originality or true inspiration; a common-place and vague expression of all sentiment, full of aspirations and empty of ideas, where, through all, there makes itself recognized an imitation of some illustrious geniuses—themselves misled in false and perilous ways; a sort of current money, analogous to the epistolary style. Everybody is poet; and there is scarcely one true poet. “Wherever the faculties of the soul and the forms of language have received a certain degree of culture, there is no person who cannot, if he take the fancy, express in verse some situation of the soul, as any one is in condition to write a letter.”
Such a style, thus universally diffused, and reproduced under a thousand forms, although with different shadings, easily becomes fastidious.
CHAPTER II.
We hope to see those necessities of thought which underlie all Philosophical systems. We set out to account for all the diversities of opinion, and to see identity in the world of thought. But necessity in the realm of thought may be phenomenal. If there be anything which is given out as fixed, we must try its validity.
Many of the “impossibilities” of thought are easily shown to rest upon ignorance of psychological appliances. The person is not able because he does not know how—just as in other things. We must take care that we do not confound the incapacity of ignorance with the necessity of thought. (The reader will find an example of this in Sir Wm. Hamilton’s “Metaphysics,” page 527.) One of these “incapacities” arises from neglecting the following:
Among the first distinctions to be learned by the student in philosophy is that between the imaginative form of thinking and pure thinking. The former is a sensuous grade of thinking which uses images, while the latter is a more developed stage, and is able to think objects in and for themselves. Spinoza’s statement of this distinction applied to the thinking of the Infinite—his “Infinitum imaginationis” and “Infinitum actu vel rationis”—has been frequently alluded to by those who treat of this subject.
At first one might suppose that when finite things are the subject of thought, it would make little difference whether the first or second form of thinking is employed. This is, however, a great error. The Philosopher must always “think things under the form of eternity” if he would think the truth.
Imagination pictures objects. It represents to itself only the bounded. If it tries to realize the conception of infinitude, it represents a limited somewhat, and then Reflection or the Understanding (a form of thought lying between Imagination and Reason) passes beyond the limits, and annuls them. This process may be continued indefinitely, or until Reason (or pure thinking) comes in and solves the dilemma. Thus we have a dialogue resulting somewhat as follows: