LECTURE VII.
THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS.
Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful: the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.—Nor to convenience.—Nor to proportion.—Essential characters of the beautiful.—Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral beauty.—Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.—God, the first principle of the beautiful.—Theory of Plato.
We have made known the beautiful in ourselves, in the faculties that perceive it and appreciate it, in reason, sentiment, imagination, taste; we come, according to the order determined by the method, to other questions: What is the beautiful in objects? What is the beautiful taken in itself? What are its characters and different species? What, in fine, is its first and last principle? All these questions must be treated, and, if possible, solved. Philosophy has its point of departure in psychology; but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it must set out from man, and reach things themselves.
The history of philosophy offers many theories on the nature of the beautiful: we do not wish to enumerate nor discuss them all; we will designate the most important.[103]
There is one very gross, which defines the beautiful as that which pleases the senses, that which procures an agreeable impression. We will not stop at this opinion. We have sufficiently refuted it in showing that it is impossible to reduce the beautiful to the agreeable.
A sensualism a little more wise puts the useful in the place of the agreeable, that is to say, changes the form of the same principle. Neither is the beautiful the object which procures for us in the present moment an agreeable but fugitive sensation, it is the object which can often procure for us this same sensation or others similar. No great effort of observation or reasoning is necessary to convince us that utility has nothing to do with beauty. What is useful is not always beautiful. What is beautiful is not always useful, and what is at once useful and beautiful is beautiful for some other reason than its utility. Observe a lever or a pulley: surely nothing is more useful. Nevertheless, you are not tempted to say that this is beautiful. Have you discovered an antique vase admirably worked? You exclaim that this vase is beautiful, without thinking to seek of what use it may be to you. Finally, symmetry and order are beautiful things, and at the same time, are useful things, because they economize space, because objects symmetrically disposed are easier to find when one wants them; but that is not what makes for us the beauty of symmetry, for we immediately seize this kind of beauty, and it is often late enough before we recognize the utility that is found in it. It even sometimes happens, that after having admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to divine its use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely different from the beautiful, far from being its foundation.
A celebrated and very ancient[104] theory makes the beautiful consist in the perfect suitableness of means to their end. Here the beautiful is no longer the useful, it is the suitable; these two ideas must be distinguished. A machine produces excellent effects, economy of time, work, etc.; it is therefore useful. If, moreover, examining its construction, I find that each piece is in its place, and that all are skilfully disposed for the result which they should produce; even without regarding the utility of this result, as the means are well adapted to their end, I judge that there is suitableness in it. We are already approaching the idea of the beautiful; for we are no longer considering what is useful, but what is proper. Now, we have not yet attained the true character of beauty; there are, in fact, objects very well adapted to their end, which we do not call beautiful. A bench without ornament and without elegance, provided it be solid, provided all the parts are firmly connected, provided one may sit down on it with safety, provided it may be for this purpose suitable, agreeable even, may give an example of the most perfect adaptation of means to an end; it will not, therefore, be said that this bench is beautiful. There is here always this difference between suitableness and utility, that an object to be beautiful has no need of being useful, but that it is not beautiful if it does not possess suitableness, if there is in it a disagreement between the end and the means.
Some have thought to find the beautiful in proportion, and this is, in fact, one of the conditions of beauty, but it is not the only one. It is very certain, that an object ill-proportioned cannot be beautiful. There is in all beautiful objects, however far they may be from geometric form, a sort of living geometry. But, I ask, is it proportion that is dominant in this slender tree, with flexible and graceful branches, with rich and shady foliage? What makes the terrible beauty of a storm, what makes that of a great picture, of an isolated verse, or a sublime ode? It is not, I know, wanting in law and rule, neither is it law and rule: often, even what at first strikes us is an apparent irregularity. It is absurd to pretend that what makes us admire all these things and many more, is the same quality that makes us admire a geometric figure, that is to say, the exact correspondence of parts.
What we say of proportion may be said of order, which is something less mathematical than proportion, but scarcely explains better what is free, varied, and negligent in certain beauties.