"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty, it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and, the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself.
"O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty.... What would be the destiny of a mortal to whom it should be granted to contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity, no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"[111]
LECTURE VIII
ON ART.
Genius:—its attribute is creative power.—Refutation of the opinion that art is the imitation of nature.—M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremère de Quincy.—Refutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity.—Nor even directly the moral and religious sentiment.—The proper and direct object of art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.—True mission of art.
Man is not made only to know and love the beautiful in the works of nature, he is endowed with the power of reproducing it. At the sight of a natural beauty, whatever it may be, physical or moral, his first need is to feel and admire. He is penetrated, ravished, as it were overwhelmed with the sentiment of beauty. But when the sentiment is energetic, he is not a long time sterile. We wish to see again, we wish to feel again what caused us so vivid a pleasure, and for that end we attempt to revive the beauty that charmed us, not as it was, but as our imagination represents it to us. Hence a work original and peculiar to man, a work of art. Art is the free reproduction of beauty, and the power in us capable of reproducing it is called genius.
What faculties are used in this free reproduction of the beautiful? The same that serve to recognize and feel it. Taste carried to the highest degree, if you always join to it an additional element, is genius. What is this element?
Three faculties enter into that complex faculty that is called taste,—imagination, sentiment, reason.
These three faculties are certainly necessary for genius, but they are not sufficient for it. What essentially distinguishes genius from taste is the attribute of creative power. Taste feels, judges, discusses, analyzes, but does not invent. Genius is, before all, inventive and creative. The man of genius is not the master of the power that is in him; it is by the ardent, irresistible need of expressing what he feels, that he is a man of genius. He suffers by withholding the sentiments, or images, or thoughts, that agitate his breast. It has been said that there is no superior man without some grain of folly; but this folly, like that of the cross, is the divine part of reason. This mysterious power Socrates called his demon. Voltaire called it the devil in the body; he demanded it even in a comedian in order to be a comedian of genius. Give to it what name you please, it is certain that there is a I-know-not-what that inspires genius, that also torments it until it has delivered itself of what consumes it; until, by expressing them, it has solaced its pains and its joys, its emotions, its ideas; until its reveries have become living works. Thus two things characterize genius; at first, the vivacity of the need it has of producing, then the power of producing; for the need without the power is only a malady that resembles genius, but is not it. Genius is above all, is essentially, the power of doing, of inventing, of creating. Taste is contented with observing, with admiring. False genius, ardent and impotent imagination, consumes itself in sterile dreams and produces nothing, at least nothing great. Genius alone has the power to convert conceptions into creations.