CHAPTER II For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta, exhibition, picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and unwilling labour of thousands and thousands of people is needed at what is often harmful and humiliating work. It were well if artists made all they require for themselves, but, as it is, they all need the help.of workmen, not only to produce art, but also for their own usually luxurious main- tenance. And, one way or other, they get it; either through payments from rich people, or through subsidies given by Government (in Russia, for instance, in grants of millions of roubles to theatres, conservatoires and academies). This money is collected from the people, some of whom have to sell their only солѵ to pay the tax, and who never get those sesthetic pleasures which art gives.
It was all very well for a Greek or Roman artist, or even for a Russian artist of the first half of our century (when there were still slaves, and it Avas considered right that there should be), with a quiet mind to make people serve him and his art; but in our day, v/hen in all men there is at least some dim perception of the equal rights of all, it is impos- sible to constrain people to labour unwillingly for art, Avithout first deciding the question whether it is true that art is so good and so important an affair as to redeem this evil.
If not, we have the terrible probability to consider, that while fearful sacrifices of the labour and lives of men, and of morality itself, are being made to art, that same art may be not only useless but even harmful.
9 ІО WHA7 IS ART?
And therefore it is necessary for a society in which works of art arise and are supported, to find out whether all that professes to he art is really art; whether (as is presupposed in our society) all that which is art is good; and whether it is important and worth those sacrifices which it necessi- tates. It is still more necessary for every conscientious artist to know this, that he may he sure that all he does has a valid meaning; that it is not merely an infatuation of the small circle of people among whom he lives which excites in him the false assurance that he is doing a good work; and that what he takes from others for the support of his often very luxurious life, will he compensated for by those productions at which he works. And that is why answers to the above questions are especially important in our time.
What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labour, of human life, and even of goodness may be made 1 “What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and j)oetry in all its forms,” usually replies the ordinary man, the art amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining the matter about which he is talking to he perfectly clear, and uniformly understood by everybody. But in architecture, one inquires further, are there not simple buildings which are not objects of art, and buildings with artistic pretensions which are un- successful and ugly and therefore cannot he considered as works of art? wherein lies the characteristic sign of a work of art?
It is the same in sculpture, in music, and in poetry. Art, in all its forms, is hounded on one side by the practically useful and on the other by unsuccessful attempts at art. How is art to he marked off from each of these? The ordinary educated man of our circle, and even the artist who has not occupied himself especially with aesthetics.
WHAT IS ART?
will not hesitate at this question either. He thinks the solution has been found long ago, and is well known to everyone.
“Art is such activity as produces beauty,” says such a man.
If art consists in that, then is a ballet or an operetta art? you inquire. e “ Yes,” says the ordinary man, though with some hesita- tion, “a good ballet or a graceful operetta is also art, in so far as it manifests beauty.”
But without even asking the ordinary man what differen- tiates the “good” ballet and the “graceful” operetta from their opposites (a question he would have much difficulty in answering), if you ask him whether the activity of cos- tumiers and hairdressers, who ornament the figures and faces of the women for the ballet and the operetta, is art; or the activity of W orth, the tailor; of scent-makers and men- cooks, then he will, in most cases, deny that their activity belongs to the sphere of art. But in this the ordinary man makes a mistake, just because he is an ordinary man and not a specialist, aud because he has not occupied himself with aesthetic questions. Had he looked into these matters, he would have seen in the great Eenan’s book, Marc Aurele, a dissertation showing that the tailor’s work is art, and that those who do not see in the adornment of woman an affair of the highest art are very small-minded and dull. “ C^est le grand art,^^ says Eenan. Moreover, he would have known that in many aesthetic systems — for instance, in the aesthetics of the learned Professor Kralik, Weltschonheit, Versucli einer allgemeinen jEsthetih^ von Richard Kralik, and in Les problemes de VEsthetique Contemporaine, by Guyau — the arts of costume, of taste, and of touch are included.
“ Ks Folgt nun ein Fiinfblatt von Kiinsten, die der subjec- tiven Sinnlichkeit entkeimen ’’(There results then a pentafoliate of arts, growing out of the subjective perceptions), says 12 WHAT IS ART?
Kralik (p. 175). “/8ге dnd die dsthetisclie Beliandlung der fiinf ВіппеУ (They are the aesthetic treatment of the five senses.)
These five arts are the following: — Die Kunst des Gesclimacksinns — The art of the sense of Die Kunst des Geruchsinns — The art of the sense of smell Die Kunst des Tastsinns — The art of the sense of touch Die Kunst des Gehbrsinns — The art of the sense of hear- Die Kunst des Gesichtsinns — The art of the sense of sight Of the first of these — die Kunst des Gesclimacksinns — he says: “ Man halt zwar gewolinlich nur zwei oder liochstens drei Sinne fiir wilrdig^ den Staff kiinstlerischer Behandlung abzugeben^ aber ich glaube nur mit bedingtem Recht. Ich will kein allzugrosses Gewiclit darauf legen, dass der gemeine Sprachgebrauch mancli andere Kilnste, wie zum Beispiel die Kochkunst kennt” And further: Und es ist dock gewiss eine dsthetisclie Leistung^ wenn es der Kochkunst gelingt aus einem thierischen Kadaver einen Gegenstand des Geschmacks injedem Sinne zu machen. Der Grundsatz der Kunst des Gesclimacksinns {die weiter ist als die sogenannte Kochkunst) ist also dieser: Es soli alles Geniessbare als Sinnbild einer Idee behandelt werden und in jedesmaligem Einklang zur auszudriickenden Idee”^^ ^ Only two, or at most three, senses are generally held worthy to supply matter for artistic treatment, but I think this opinion is only conditionally correct. I will not lay too much stress on the fact that our common speech recognises many other arts, as, for instance, the art of cookery.
2 And yet it is certainly an aesthetic achievement when the art of cooking succeeds in making of an animal’s corpse an object in all re* WHAT IS ART!
13 This author, like Kenan, acknowledges a Kostilmkunst : (Art of Costume) (p. 200), etc.
^Buch is also the opinion of the French writer, Guyau, who is highly esteemed by some authors of our day. In his book, Les problemes de V estlietiqiie contemRoraine^ he speaks seriously of touch, taste, and smell as giving, or being сэ-раЪІе of giving, sesthetic impressions: “ Si la couleur manque au toucher, il nous fournit en revanche une notion ф>е Voeil sent ne peut nous donner, et qui a une valeur _.-^hetique considerable, celle du doux, du soyeux du poli. qui caracterise la beaute du velours, dest sa douceur au tiucher non moins que son brillant. Dans Videe que nous faisons de la beaute d^une femme, le veloute de sapeau re comme element essentielf Ghacun de nous probablement avec un peu d^ attention se % тщ>ре11ега des jouissances du gout, qui ont ete de veritables : ^ j^ ^issances esthetiquesf ^ And he recounts how a glass of ;;^ilk drunk by him in the mountains gave him sesthetic ; ^joyment.
;; So it turns out that the conception of art as consisting ' ^ making beauty manifest is not at all so simple as it seemed, Specially now, when in this conception of beauty are •-^eluded our sensations of touch and taste and smell, as ‘ they are by the latest sesthetic writers.
iteects tasteful. The principle of the Art of Taste (which goes beyond ^e so-called Art of Cookery) is therefore this: All that is eatable _^|fliould be treated as the symbol of some Idea, and always in harmony . with the Idea to be expressed.
' ^ If the sense of touch lacks colour, it gives us, on the other hand, a notion which the eye alone cannot afford, and one of considerable ^thetic value, namely, that of softness, silkiness, polish. The beauty velvet is eharacterised not less by its softness to the touch than by t ";£tg lustre. In the idea we form of a woman’s beauty, the softness of , ‘ her skin enters as an essential element.
h V-E^-ch of us probably, with a little attention, can recall pleasures of ^ kifste which have been real aesthetic pleasures.
14 WHAT IS ART?
Ч f-i But the ordinary man either does not know, or does no(t: ' wish to^know, all this, and is firmly convinced that аЙ \ questions about art may be simply and clearly solved by i acknowledging beauty to be the subject-matter of art. to him it seems clear and comprehensible that art consists Jn manifesting beauty, and that a reference to beauty serve to explain all questions about art. • ^ But what is this beauty which forms the subject-mat^r ^ of art % How is it defined? What is it? A, As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused jj^e conception conveyed by a word, with the more aplomb ^d- у self-assurance do people use that word, pretending tjj^t what is understood by it is so simple and clear that i^is not worth while even to discuss what it actu^y: \ means. ^ i This is how matters of orthodox religion are usually with, and this is how people now deal with the concej^OQ ^ of beauty. It is taken for granted that what is meanf by ", the word beauty is known and understood by every^^ja^V And yet not only is this not known, but, after wfeole' mountains of books have been written on the subject ЬугЙ^ most learned and profound thinkers during one hun^ne^^ | and fifty years (ever since Baumgarten founded aestheti^-iiit the year 1750), the question. What is beauty? remairi5S^to this day quite unsolved, and in each new work on sestli^ics' it is answered in a new way. One of the last boo]|s, J read on aesthetics is a not ill-written booklet by J^us Mithalter, called Rdtsel des Schonen (The Enigma of; Beautiful). And that title precisely expresses the postfeftii of the question. What is beauty? After thousand learned men have discussed it during one hundred and rfifty years, the meaning of the word beauty remains an enfc still. The Germans answer the question in thc’r mai though in a hundred different ways. The physioli sestheticians, especially the Englishmen: Herbert Spe!*i WHAT IS ART?
15 WHAT IS ART?
15 Grant Allen and his school, answer it, each in his own •\v{ty; the French eclectics, and the followers of Guyau and \ T aine, also each in his own way; and all these people know •alllthe preceding solutions given by Baumgarten, and Kant, I la-M Schelling, and Schiller, and Fichte, and Winckelmann, ^Md Lessing, and Hegel, and Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, Schasler, and Cousin, and Leveque and others.
5What is this strange conception “beauty,” which seems so tuple to those who talk without thinking, but in defining ich all the philosophers of various tendencies and dilferent dionalities can come to no agreement during a century and f.alhalf? What is this conception of beauty, on which the •’(|^)minant doctrine of art rests?
tin Kussian, by the word krasota (beauty) we mean only at which pleases the sight. And though latterly people ^^ave begun to speak of “an ugly deed,” or of “beautiful l^music,” it is not good Russian.
A Russian of the common folk, not knowing foreign nguages, will not understand you if you tell him that a an who has given his last coat to another, or done any- ijj^iing similar, has acted “ beautifully,” that a man who has |фleated another has done an “ ugly ” action, or that a song “beautiful.”
In Russian a deed may be kind and good, or unkind and lad. Music may be pleasant and good, or unpleasant and lad; but there can be no such thing as “beautiful” or ugly ” music.
Beautiful may relate to a man, a horse, a house, a view, or a movement. Of actions, thoughts, character, or music, if they please us, we may say that they are good, or, if they do not please us, that they are not good. But beautiful can be used only concerning that which pleases the sight. So that the word and conception “good” includes the conception of “ beautiful,” but the reverse is not the case; the conception “beauty” does not include the concep- Іб WHAT IS ART?
tion “good.” If we say “good” of an article which we value for its appearance, we thereby say that the article is beautiful; hut if we say it is “beautiful,” it does not at all mean that the article is a good one.
Such is the meaning ascribed by the Russian language, ■ and therefore by the sense of the people, to the words and conceptions “good” and “beautiful.”
In all the European languages, i.e. the languages of those nations among whom the doctrine has spread that beauty is the essential thing in art, the words “beau,” “schon,” “beautiful,” “hello,” etc., while keeping their meaning of beautiful in form, have come to also express “goodness,” “kindness,” i.e. have come to act as substitutes for tlie word “good.”
So that it has become quite natural in those languages to use such expressions as “belle ame,” “schone Gedanken,” of “beautiful deed.” Those languages no longer have suitable word wherewith expressly to indicate beauty of form, and have to use a combination of words such as “beau par la forme,” “beautiful to look at,” etc., to convey that idea.
Observation of the divergent meanings which the words “ beauty ” and “ beautiful ” have in Russian on the one hand, and in those European languages now permeated by this aesthetic theory on the other hand, shows us that the word “ beauty ” has, among the latter, acquired a special meaning, namely, that of “good.”
What is remarkable, moreover, is that since лѵе Russians have begun more and more to adopt the European view of art, the same evolution has begun to show itself in our! language also, and some people speak and write quite confidently, and without causing surprise, of beautiful music, and ugly actions, or even thoughts; whereas forty years ago, i when I was young, the expressions “ beautiful music ” and j “ ugly actions ” were not only unusual but incomprehensible, j WHAT IS ART?
17 dently this new meaning given to beauty by European aght begins to be assimilated by Eussian society.
Lnd what really is this meaning? What is this “ beauty ” t is understood by the European peoples? n order to answer this question, I must here quote at t a small selection of those definitions of beauty most erally adopted in existing aesthetic systems. I especially the reader not to be overcome by dulness, but to read зе extracts through, or, still better, to read some one of erudite aesthetic authors. Not to mention the voluminous man aestheticians, a very good book for this purpose lid be either the German book by Kralik, the English work Knight, or the French one by Leveque. It is necessary to i one of the learned aesthetic writers in order to form at b-hand a conception of the variety in opinion and the htful obscurity which reigns in this region of specula- i; not, in this important matter, trusting to another’s ert.
?his, for instance, is what the German aesthetician lasler says in the preface to his famous, voluminous, . detailed work on aesthetics: — 'Hardly in any sphere of philosophic science can we L such divergent methods of investigation and exposition, mnting even to self-contradiction, as in the sphere of betics. On the one hand we have elegant phraseology bout any substance, characterised in great part by most -sided superficiality; and on the other hand, accompany- undeniable depths of investigation and richness of ject-matter, we get a revolting awkwardness of philosophic uinology, enfolding the simplest thoughts in an apparel abstract science as though to render them worthy to ЗГ the consecrated palace of the system; and finally, veen these two methods of investigation and exposition, re is a third, forming, as it were, the transition from one be other, a method consisting of eclecticism, полѵ flaunt- 2 i8 WHAT IS ART?
ing an elegant phraseology and now a pedantic erudition A style of exposition that falls into none of these defects but it is truly concrete, and, having important i expresses it in clear and popular philosophic langua^ nowhere be found less frequently than in the dom sesthetics.” ^ It is only necessary, for instance, to read SchaslerV hook to convince oneself of the justice of this observat his.
On the same subject the French writer Veron, i; preface to his very good work on aesthetics, says, “ II rCy de science, qui ait etejplus que Vesthetique livree aux revert metaThysiciens. Depuis Platon jusqu^ aux doctrines affix de nos jours, on a fait de Vart je ne sais quel amalgan' fantaisies quint essenciees, et de mysteres transcendantai trouvent leur expression supreme dans la conception absol Beau ideal, prototype іттиаЫе et divin des cTioses ret If the reader will only be at the pains to peruse following extracts, defining beauty, taken from the ( writers on aesthetics, he may convince himself that censure is thoroughly deserved.
I shall not quote the definitions of beauty attribute* the ancients, — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., down Plotinus, — because, in reality, the ancients had not conception of beauty separated from goodness which fc the basis and aim of aesthetics in our time. By referring 1 M. Scliasler, Kritische Oeschichte der Acsthetik, 1872, vc 2 There is no seience which more than esthetics has been liai over to the reveries of the metaphysicians. From Plato down to received doctrines of our day, people have made of art a str; amalgam of quintessential fancies and transcendental mysteries, w' find their supreme expression in the conception of an absolute i Beauty, immutable and divine prototype of actual things.
WHAT IS ART?
19 judgments of the ancients on beauty to our conception of it, as is usually done in sesthetics, we give the words of the ancients a meaning which is not theirsd ^ See on this matter Benard’s admirable book, Vesthetique (TAristote, also Walter’s Qesdiichte der Aesthetih im Alter turn.
CHAPTER III I BEGIN with the founder of aesthetics, Baumgarten (1714- According to Baumgarten, 1 the object of logical knowledge is Truth, the object of aesthetic {i.e. sensuous) knowledge is Beauty. Beauty is the Perfect (the Absolute), recog- nised through the senses; Truth is the Perfect perceived through reason; Goodness is the Perfect reached by moral will.
Beauty is defined by Baumgarten as a correspondence, i.e. an order of the parts in their mutual relations to each other and in their relation to the whole. The aim of beauty itself is to please and excite a desire, “ Wolilgefallen und Erregung eines Verlangen§J^ (A position precisely the opposite of Kant’s definition of the nature and sign of beauty.)
With reference to the manifestations of beauty, Baum- garten considers that the highest embodiment of beauty is seen by us in nature, and he therefore thinks that the highest aim of art is to copy nature. (This position also is directly contradicted by the conclusions of the latest sestheticians.)
Passing over the unimportant followers of Baumgarten, — Maier, Eschenhurg, and Eberhard, — who only slightly modified the doctrine of their teacher by dividing the pleasant from the beautiful, I will quote the definitions given by writers who came immediately after Baumgarten, and defined beauty quite in another way. These writers 1 Schasler, p. 361.
20 WHAT IS ART?
21 were Sulzer, Mendelssohn, and Moritz. They, in con- tradiction to Baumgarten’s main position, recognise as the aim of art, not beauty, but goodness. Thus Sulzer (1720-1777) says that only that can be considered beautiful which contains goodness. According to his theory, the aim of the whole life of humanity is welfare in social life. This is attained by the education of the moral feelings, to which end art should be subservient. Beauty is that which evokes and educates this feeling.
Beauty is understood almost in the same way by Mendelssohn (1729-1786). According to him, art is the carrying forward of the beautiful, obscurely recognised by feeling, till it becomes the true and good. The aim of art is moral perfection.^ For the sestheticians of this school, the ideal of beauty is a beautiful soul in a beautiful body. So that these 83stheticians completely wipe out Baumgarten’s division of the Perfect (the Absolute), into the three forms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; and Beauty is again united with the Good and the True.
But this conception is not only not maintained by the later sestheticians, but the sesthetic doctrine of Winckelmann arises, again in complete opposition. This divides the mission of art from the aim of goodness in the sharpest and most positive manner, makes external beauty the aim of art, and even limits it to visible beauty.
According to the celebrated work of Winckelmann (1717- 1767), the law and aim of all art is beauty only, beauty quite separated from and independent of goodness. There are three kinds of beauty: — (1) beauty of form, (2) beauty of idea, expressing itself in the position of the figure (in plastic art), (3) beauty of expression, attainable only when the two first conditions are present. This beauty of ex- pression is the highest aim of art, and is attained in ^ Schasler, p. 369.
22 WHAT IS ART?
antique art; modern art should therefore aim at imitating ancient artd Art is similarly understood by Lessing, Herder, and after- wards by Goethe and by all the distinguished sestheticians of Germany till Kant, from whose day, again, a different conception of art commences.
Native aesthetic theories arose during this period in England, France, Italy, and Holland, and they, though not taken from the German, were equally cloudy and contra- dictory. And.all these writers, just like the German aestheticians, founded their theories on a conception of the Beautiful, understanding beauty in the sense of a something existing absolutely, and more or less intermingled with Goodness or having one and the same root. In England, almost simultaneously with Baumgarten, even a little earlier, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Hogarth, and others, лvrote on art.
According to Shaftesbury (1670-1713), “That which is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable, what is har- monious and proportionable is true, and what is at once both beautiful and true is of consequence agreeable and good.” 2 Beauty, he taught, is recognised by the mind only. God is fundamental beauty; beauty and goodness proceed from the same fount.
So that, although Shaftesbury regards beauty as being something separate from goodness, they again merge into something inseparable.
According to Hutcheson (1694-1747 — “Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue ”), the aim of art is beauty, the essence of which consists in evoking in us the perception of uniformity amid variety. In the recogni- tion of what is art we are guided by “ an internal sense.” This internal sense may be in contradiction to the ethical 2 Knight, Philosophy of the Beautiful, i. pp. 165, 166.
WHAT IS ATT?
23 one. So that, according to Hutcheson, beauty does not always correspond with goodness, hut separates from it and is sometimes contrary to it.^ According to Home, Lord Kainies (1696-1782), beauty is that which is pleasant. Therefore beauty is defined by taste alone. The standard of true taste is that the maximum of richness, fulness, strength, and variety of impression should he contained in the narrowest limits. That is the ideal of a perfect work of art.
According to Burke (1729-1797 — “Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful ”), the sublime and beautiful, which are the aim of art, have their origin in the promptings of self-preservation and of society. These feelings, examined in their source, are means for the maintenance of the race through the individual. The first (self-preservation) is attained by nourishment, defence, and war; the second (society) by intercourse and propagation. Therefore self-defence, and war, лѵЬісЬ is bound up with it, is the source of the sublime; sociability, and the sex-instinct, which is bound up with it, is the source of beauty. ^ Such were the chief English definitions of art and beauty in the eighteenth century.
During that period, in France, -the writers on art were Pere Andre and Batteux, with Diderot, D’Alembert, and, to some extent, Voltaire, following later.
According to Рёге Andre (“ Essai sur le Beau,” 1741), there are three kinds of beauty — divine beauty, natural beauty, and artificial beauty.^ According to Batteux (1713-1780), art consists in imitating the beauty of nature, its aim being enjoyment."^ Such is also Diderot’s definition of art.
^ R. Kralik, Weltsdionheit, Versuch eincr allgemeinen Aesthetilc, ^Schlaser, p. 316.
24 WHAT IS ART?
The French writers, like the English, consider that it is taste that decides what is beautiful. And the laws of taste are not only not laid down, but it is granted that they cannot be settled. The same view was held by D’Alembert and Yoltaire.^ According to the Italian sesthetician of that period, Pagano, art consists in uniting the beauties dispersed in nature. The capacity to perceive these beauties is taste, the capacity to bring them into one whole is artistic genius. Beauty commingles with goodness, so that beauty is goodness made visible, and goodness is inner beauty. ^ According to the opinion of other Italians: Muratori (1672- 1750), — Riflessioni sopra il Ъиоп gusto intorno le science e le arti” — and especially Spaletti,^ — “ Baggio sopra la bellezza^^ (1765), — art amounts to an egotistical sensation, founded (as with Burke) on the desire for self-preservation and society.
Among Dutch writers, Hemsterhuis (1720-1790), who had an influence on the German aestheticians and on Goethe, is remarkable. According to him, beauty is that which gives most pleasure, and that gives most pleasure which gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time. Enjoy- ment of the beautiful, because it gives the greatest quantity of perceptions in the shortest time, is the highest notion to which man can attain.^ Such were the aesthetic theories outside Germany during the last century. In Germany, after Winckelmann, there again arose a completely new aesthetic theory, that of Kant (1724- 1804), which more than all others clears up what this con- ception of beauty, and consequently of art, really amounts to.
The aesthetic teaching of Kant is founded as follows: — » Man has a knowledge of nature outside him and of himself in nature. In nature, outside himself, he seeks for truth; in himself he seeks for goodness. The first is an affair of pure reason, the other of practical reason (free-will). Besides WHAT IS ART?
25 these two means of perception, there is yet the judging capacity {Urteilskraft), which forms judgments without reasonings and produces pleasure without desire {Urfheil ohne Begriff und Vergnugen ohne Begehren). This capacity is the basis of aesthetic feeling. Beauty, according to Kant, in its subjective meaning is that which, in general and necessarily, without reasonings and without practical advantage, pleases. In its objective meaning it is the form of a suitable object in so far as that object is perceived without any conception of its utility.^ Beauty is defined in the same way by the followers of j^ant, among whom was Schiller (1759-1805). According to Schiller, who wrote much on aesthetics, the aim of art is, as with Kant, beauty, the source of which is pleasure with- out practical advantage. So that art may be called a game, not in the sense of an unimportant occupation, but in the sense of a manifestation of the beauties of life itself without other aim than that of beauty. ^ Besides Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant’s followers in the sphere of aesthetics was Wilhelm Humboldt, who, though he added nothing to the definition of beauty, explained various forms of it, — the drama, music, the comic, etc.^ After Kant, besides the second-rate philosophers, the writers on aesthetics were Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their followers. Fichte (1762-1814) says that perception of the beautiful proceeds from this: the world — i.e. nature — has two sides: it is the sum of our limitations, and it is the sum of our free idealistic activity. In the first aspect the world is limited, in the second aspect it is free. In the first aspect every object is limited, distorted, compressed, confined — and we see deformity; in the second we perceive its inner completeness, vitality, regeneration — and we see beauty. So that the deformity or beauty of an object, according to ^ Schasler, pp. 525-528. ^ Knight, pp. 61-63.
2б WJIAT IS ART?
Fichte, depends on the point of view of the observer. Beauty therefore exists, not in the world, hut in the beautiful soul {schoner Geist). Art is the manifestation of this beautiful soul, and its aim is the education, not only of the mind — that is the business of the savant; not only of the