From The Contemporary Review.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

tenths of the English people exhausts the greater part of their intellectual functions and their social energy. What is the philosophy of the British people, or rather what voice of philosophy among the British people, makes itself most audible at the present moment? Likely enough the noise which is made by the flapping of the bird's wings is not exactly a measure of the significance or the potency of its flight; but no doubt the kind of philos

THE normal Englishman certainly is not a philosophical animal. Metaphysics in his conception mean nonsense, and theory castles in the air. Even in practical matters compromise is his compass, and the assertion of a great principle apt to excite his suspicion. Nor has he any cause to be ashamed of this negative feature of his otherwise sufficiently positive character. The people that pro-ophy, or would-be philosophy, that one duced Shakespeare and Lord Bacon, and most frequently encounters in the current all that those two names imply in modern speculation of the hour, is of an extremely art and science, need not be ashamed of one-sided and inadequate character any deficiency in the complete circle of hu- what we may most fitly characterize as man perfections. It is not given to any race Baconism run mad, or Baconism divergent to be great all round. The Romans con- from its proper sphere, and rushing with quered the Greeks and all the world in an extravagant sweep into a region with one direction, but the Greeks conquered which it has nothing to do. The Baconian the Romans and all the world in another. philosophy, however catholic its concepEven in individuals, where nature is free tion might have been in the mind of its to put forth her greatest strength, many-author, has acted in this country mainly sidedness does not mean all-sidedness. as a corrective to the evil habit inherited The wonderful combination in the great from the Greeks of explaining physical German poet-thinker of poetical sensi- phenomena by constructive theories, rathbility, scientific acuteness, speculative er than by accurate observation and care. depth, practical sagacity, and knowledge ful induction; and the action of this corof affairs, is justly admired; but even rective has been so drastic and its results Goethe ignored mathematics, and turned so brilliant, and, in not a few directions, his back on the French Revolution and so useful to society, that men have al modern Liberalism in all its shapes, as lowed themselves to be run away with by decidedly as Plato did on Athenian de- this word induction, as if it were the one mocracy, and all that the word democracy talisman by which any reliable truth of implies in the history of human civiliza- great human value could be attained. tion. But whatever divine and generally | And not only induction in the widest incompatible excellencies may be heaped sense of the word, but the special kind of on a few individuals, the masses of men, induction that is active in physical scigrowing up into nations, are always ence- viz., induction ab extra, or by finmoulded after a more or less one-sided gering, weighing, and measuring of pontype. In this region the maxim of Spi- derable materials or measurable forces noza applies with unqualified force - om has been allowed to usurp the province nis affirmatio est negatio. The affirma- that in the nature of things belongs to tion of one tendency in any associated deduction; while that which lies at the body of men implies the negative of its root both of induction and deduction opposite; and so a people predominantly viz., mind or λóyos, eternal, self-existent, practical and political, like the ancient self-energizing, self-plastic reason, recog. Romans and the modern English, will not nized alike by the wise Greeks and the shine in speculation. Curiously, the Ger-inspired Hebrews has been disregarded mans owed the great glory which they and altogether thrown aside. It is in the have gained as the leaders of speculative thought in Europe to their having been shut out, till quite recently, from the sphere of political action, which to nine

domain of morals and aesthetics that the inadequacy and absurdity of the inductive method comes most prominently into view. Not from any fingering induction

of external details, but from “the inspira- | cently been made, the Scotch stood below tion of the Almighty," cometh all true un- even the lowest standard that ever prederstanding in matters of religion, morals, vailed in England. The beauty of church and beauty. All moral apostleship and all architecture in England, even during the high art come directly from above and supremacy of pseudo-classicality, kept from within, and their laws are not to be alive amongst the people a genuine native proved by an external collection of facts, taste for the graces of stone-work; but in but by the emphatic assertion of the di- Scotland ecclesiastical architecture exvine vitality from which they proceed. isted only in a few elegant minds, used as These remarks apply to Great Britain an occasional stimulant to a sentimental generally, England as well as Scotland, verse, but not as a living fount of healthy but there is a specialty in regard to this action. We must consider also that the latter country which, in a general estimate extreme form of Protestantism, which of British æsthetical philosophy, cannot struck such deep root in the Scottish be omitted. Scotland, as is well known, soil, is in its nature, if not doctrinally had its school of philosophy, illustrated by antagonistic, practically averse to any ac the name of Reid and Stewart, Hume and knowledgment of the divine right of the Hamilton, not indeed standing in the van beautiful. The majority of Scotsmen of modern speculative thought, like the even at the present hour, we apprehend, army of great thinkers, represented by would object to paintings in the churches, Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel; but still of for the same reason that they object to sufficient significance to warrant the hope instrumental music — viz., because both of a reasonable philosophy of the fine arts sacred pictures and instrumental music to have been promulgated there. But, are largely patronized by the pope. Not however satisfactory it may be to think to mention a certain ethical hardness that the large and capacious intellect of which long-continued religious persecuSir W. Hamilton, in a quiet way, protested tions under the Stuarts worked into the against the shallow aesthetics so long bones of the nation, the theology of Calvin fashionable in his native city, it is none impressed on the piety of the people the the less true that the Scotch philosophy, type of stern volition rather than of elein its general action, has tended rather to vated enjoyment. The religion of the degrade than to elevate the theory of the Scot at its best rejoiced in producing fine arts as an independent domain of strength of character, exhibited in an speculative inquiry. The fact is, the earnest life, rather than in the apprecia Scotch are, of all modern peoples who tion of the beautiful in nature issuing in have obtained any fame in poetry, per- works of art. To the Scotch Calvinist haps the most unæsthetical; they have nature has no sacredness, art no divinity, produced some writers of first-class excel- and this not only among vulgar religionlence, and in these latter days landscape ists, but to a great extent among the bestpainters not unworthy of the picturesque educated classes. The proof of this lies country which gave them birth; but, tak-in the once largely current association ing the people overhead, there can be no theory of beauty, which had its birth in doubt that a certain prosaic practicality the first decade of the present century and hard realism give the dominant tone under Alison, an Episcopal clergyman, to their character; and whatever of the the father of the historian, and Jeffrey, a beautiful in art, or the tasteful in decora- clever barrister and reviewer, in the me tion, may now be visible amongst them, tropolis of the north, and which, even always excepting their lyric poetry and now, may be found haunting the back their landscape painting, is imported and chambers of the brain of some old Edinartificial, not the natural growth of the burgh Whigs, who take their notions on soil. In one department — architecture | æsthetical subjects from the old edition -in which notable improvement has re- of the "Encyclopædia Britannica."✶

*

See the evidence in the preface to my book on Beauty. Edinburgh, 1858.

In the old edition of this great work, under the article "Beauty," seven distinct reasons for the pleas

This theory was merely a revival, under | creepers decorating its porch, especially the depressing influences of the last half if it has been the scene of bright youthful century, of the sceptical doctrine taught memories, may appear beautiful by virtue by the Greek sophists in the fifth century B.C., to the effect that rò kaλóv in art, as in morals, was merely a matter of individual feeling, local convention, or arbitrary fashion; a doctrine which, as every one knows, was effectively opposed by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and all the great leaders of Hellenic thought. Looked at as a contribution to mental philosophy, it is one of the most transparent sophisms that ever sprung out of a shallow soil, and waved its crop of twinkling leaflets for an hour and a day in the sun of ignorant applause. The function of association in the domain of poetry and the arts is obvious enough. Associations of every kind, some necessary, some accidental, some noble and elevating, some low and degrading, cling to words as naturally as the snow clings to the roof when it is drifted by the blast; and it is part of the art, or, as we should prefer to say, of the cultivated and trained inspiration of the poet, so to handle his words, as constantly to select those which are most rich in noble associations, and to avoid those which cannot be used without calling up a coarse, trite, vulgar, or too heinous adjunct. And here we see at a glance how it is that men of great talent and undoubted genius sometimes fail in making the desired impression on their audience; they are destitute of the fine perception of the humorous which teaches a man in his serious addresses to steer clear of images and expressions which, being deeply seated in the popular ear, are ever at hand to jump up and turn the sublime into the ridiculous. In actual life, association often plays the very pleasant and profitable part of making ugly things appear less ugly, or even, if the associating force be very strong, quite beautiful. A very plain cottage, for instance, with not a single architectural feature to raise it from the category of mere masonry, if pleasantly situated, under the shade of graceful leafage, and with roses or wild

of its accompaniments and associations; but neither the accompaniments nor the associations can change its nature: if ugly, it remains ugly, only the ugliness is masked; and it receives from the superficial observer the praise of beauty by an altogether illegitimate transference of the beauty of the adjuncts to the object itself; as if a plain women exceedingly well dressed, should be called beautiful by a person whose eyes had been taken captive and his judgment tricked by the grace and brilliancy of her attire. One of the most popular arguments of the association sophists is taken from the diver sity of tastes existing amongst men, with regard, for instance, to female beauty. The Venus, who is the horror of the Greeks, is the admiration of the Hottentot. But to observations of this kind it is sufficient to reply that, in a vast and various world, peopled with divers creatures of limited capacity, all sorts of false and inadequate sentiments and judgments will be found somewhere; that custom in aesthetics, as in morals, often deadens the sense to the perception of excellence; and that in no case can it be allowed to make an induction of the truth of things from low and degenerate types, but rather samples from types which are the growth of the finest instincts and the highest culture. It may be that a wandering Highland tramp, with a screeching bagpipe under his arm, honestly believes that his reels and Strathspeys, which grate so cuttingly on a cultivated ear, are more sweet and pleasing than the most honeyed airs of Bellini, or the subtle harmonies of Beethoven; but no association sophist has yet been mad enough to bring forward such a case as a proof that the divine art of music has no concords, against which a Highland tramp with a broken bagpipe, or an Italian boy with a hurdygurdy, may not legitimately protest. The fact is that, where there is a fundamental want of seriousness in the mind, any sophism, however superficial, and how

ing effect of Greek architecture are given, of which ever contrary to the healthy instinct symmetry is not one!

which guides common life, will pass for

an argument; and, as for Scotland, it lies | which any beauty of feature or complexion on the surface of its intellectual history, would appear as much out of place as fine that at the time when Alison and Jeffrey lace on a coarse gown; but no excellence gained an ephemeral celebrity by the of such basis could relieve a female form setting forth of their association theory, from the charge of ugliness, if mere perthe Edinburgh mind, in the whole de- fection of mechanically well-compacted partment of aesthetics, was a sheet of limbs constituted her only claim to blank paper on which any ingenious theo- beauty. Let this sophism, therefore, go rist could write any nonsense that he to Limbo with the association juggle, withpleased with applause. out further discussion. We shall suppose our rude Highland hut or Indian wigwam of the most primitive structure, and note by what steps of unnecessary and purely ornamental addition the rude masonry is elevated into architecture. The first step in this process is one in regard to which it may be doubtful whether it has its ori

Let us now take one of our best-known and most easily appreciated of the fine arts viz., architecture and see how in this case the beautiful arises out of the necessary and the useful, by an obvious law of natural gradation and necessary subordination. A building erected so as to achieve the primary necessity of all habit-gin in the wish for increased utility, or in able domiciles, protection from wind and weather, fulfils the laws of mere masonry; it may be the most crude, like the masonry of the lowest style of Irish crofters; or the most finished, like the masonry of the pyramids, still it is not a fine art. It is perfect as masonry when it serves a useful purpose; only when beauty is contemplated in addition to utility does it become architecture. The distinction thus stated between utility and beauty exists in every healthy mind; and yet, as is well known, even in ancient times there existed a class of sophists, even more shallow than the association-mongers, who taught that beauty is simply utility, a fitness to attain a useful object.* If any person is inclined to talk such nonsense at the present day, he need not travel far to find his confutation; for there is not a railway line in the country which has not sinned against the most obvious laws of æsthetical science, by erecting the ugliest possible bridges, which are in every respect as useful as if they had been altogether beautiful. To confound two such manifestly diverse ideas is the most wretched quibbling. Utility, of course, and fitness to attain a practical end must be in architecture, as in all the useful arts; but it is there as a basis on which the beautiful is erected, or as a stem out of which it grows. It is the same obviously with beauty in women. No woman could be beautiful who could not walk well, or stand well, or sit well, because her joints had either been clumsily formed, or unskilfully put together. Her skilful construction, as an animal capable of rest or locomotion, is an essential basis of her womanly beauty; a basis without

See this sophism humorously handled by Socrates in Xenophon's Symposium, ch. v.

the delight of superadded beauty. If the
original hut or wigwam has been con-
structed of stone or wood, or a mixture of
both, in a rude and haphazard style, with-
out either shapeliness in the individual
pieces, or fair order in the structure of
the work; and if, after having inhabited
for some time this modest dwelling, the
savage builder should rise in his ideas,
as civilized builders are wont to do, and
erect a more imposing structure with fair
tiers of shapely stone, it may be doubtful
whether this advance in the style of the
masonry arose from utilitarian considera-
tions or from an æsthetical instinct. The
utilitarian consideration might be to give
greater solidity and permanence to the
structure; the aesthetical delight, pro-
duced by an inborn instinct, might be
exactly of the same nature as that which
a child feels, when it arranges pebbles or
shells on the beach in a circle or other
pattern. In the case of the savage builder,
the utilitarian and æsthetic forces might
act so spontaneously together that it might
be impossible to say which was dominant;
but, in the case of the child, utility dis-
appears altogether, and a delight in the
creation of ORDER by a selective energy
is the sole force to which the calculated
distribution of the shells or pebbles can
be ascribed. Nor is it of any consequence
in this question whether the child or the
savage
supposing him to have acted
from æsthetical instinct - ever saw any
other person arranging pebbles in a circle,
or stones in ordered tiers. The instinct
of imitation, under which we all grow up
from babyhood into manhood in various
ways, is not arbitrary or indifferent, it is
eminently selective, and by his special
selection the imitative artist shows that
he is guided by a special innate preference
for the particular sphere in which he