Where fine art evidences its superiority is in the beautiful descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing.The Furies, diseases, devastations of war, and the like, can (as evils) be very beautifully described, nay even represented in pictures.One kind of ugliness alone is incapable of being represented conformably to nature without destroying all aesthetic delight, and consequently artistic beauty, namely, that which excites disgust.For, as in this strange sensation, which depends purely on the imagination, the object is represented as insisting, as it were, upon our enjoying it, while we still set our face against it, the artificial representation of the object is no longer distinguishable from the nature of the object itself in our sensation, and so it cannot possibly be regarded as beautiful.The art of sculpture, again, since in its products art is almost confused with nature, has excluded from its creations the direct representation of ugly objects, and, instead, only sanctions, for example, the representation of death (in a beautiful genius), or of the warlike spirit (in Mars), by means of an allegory, or attributes which wear a pleasant guise, and so only indirectly, through an interpretation on the part of reason, and not for the pure aesthetic judgement.
So much for the beautiful representation of an object, which is properly only the form of the presentation of a concept and the means by which the latter is universally communicated.To give this form, however, to the product of fine art, taste merely is required.
By this the artist, having practised and corrected his taste by a variety of examples from nature or art, controls his work and, after many, and often laborious, attempts to satisfy taste, finds the form which commends itself to him.Hence this form is not, as it were, a matter of inspiration, or of a free swing of the mental powers, but rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement, directed to making the form adequate to his thought without prejudice to the freedom in the play of those powers.
Taste is, however, merely a critical, not a productive faculty;and what conforms to it is not, merely on that account, a work of fine art.It may belong to useful and mechanical art, or even to science, as a product following definite rules which are capable of being learned and which must be closely followed.But the pleasing form imparted to the work is only the vehicle of communication and a mode, as it were, of execution, in respect of which one remains to a certain extent free, notwithstanding being otherwise tied down to a definite end.So we demand that table appointments, or even a moral dissertation, and, indeed, a sermon, must bear this form of fine art, yet without its appearing studied.But one would not call them on this account works of fine art.A poem, a musical composition, a picture-gallery, and so forth, would, however, be placed under this head; and so in a would-be work of fine art we may frequently recognize genius without taste, and in another taste without genius.
SS 49.The faculties of the mind which constitute genius.
Of certain products which are expected, partly at least, to stand on the footing of fine art, we say they are soulless; and this, although we find nothing to censure in them as far as taste goes.Apoem may be very pretty and elegant, but is soulless.A narrative has precision and method, but is soulless.A speech on some festive occasion may be good in substance and ornate withal, but may be soulless.Conversation frequently is not devoid of entertainment, but yet soulless.Even of a woman we may well say, she is pretty, affable, and refined, but soulless.Now what do we here mean by "soul"?
Soul (Geist) in an aesthetical sense, signifies the animating principle in the mind.But that whereby this principle animates the psychic substance (Seele)-the material which it employs for that purpose-is that which sets the mental powers into a swing that is final, i.e., into a play which is self-maintaining and which strengthens those powers for such activity.
Now my proposition is that this principle is nothing else than the faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas.But, by an aesthetic idea Imean that representation of the imagination which induces much thought, yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever, i.e., concept, being adequate to it, and which language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms with or render completely intelligible.It is easily seen, that an aesthetic idea is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational idea, which, conversely, is a concept, to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.
The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.It affords us entertainment where experience proves too commonplace; and we even use it to remodel experience, always following, no doubt, laws that are based on analogy, but still also following principles which have a higher seat in reason (and which are every whit as natural to us as those followed by the understanding in laying hold of empirical nature).
By this means we get a sense of our freedom from the law of association' (which attaches to the empirical employment of the imagination), with the result that the material can be borrowed by us from nature in accordance with that law, but be worked up by us into something else-namely, what surpasses nature.
