A HISTORY OF ...ESTHETICS.*

WE must apologise to the author of this book for an inordinate delay in writing our notice of it. But a philosophical work will, perhaps, " keep " better than other books ; and we hope it is not too late to call our readers' attention to this, certainly a most solid and "matterful " contribution to its subject. The topic of general Eesthetics has been strangely neglected by English writers : the philosophers for the most part leave it alone ; and the professed critic—whether of fine art or of literature—is apt to fear nothing so much as a reasoned state- ment of the principles on which he criticises. One may well hesitate to recommend any metaphysical study to the present sceptical generation ; but it may surely be claimed that the subject of this book—the Beautiful, in Art or Nature—is one deserving serious attention and discussion, with a view to ascertaining the general principles on which the several arts are based, and on which their craftsmen unconsciously work. There are, indeed, skilled critics of our own time who deny the validity, or the existence even, of any such general principles or canons ; they would leave it all to the trained perception and intuition of the individual critic, with as large an allowance as you please for his "personal equation." If their view is the true one, then is mstheties but one more figment of the metaphysician's fertile brain, and without application or value

• A Hiatory of _Esthetic. By Bernard Bosanquet. " Library of Philosophy." London : Swan Sonnenschein and Co.

in regard to the concrete work of art; and the history of msthetics will be only a record of futile theorising. Mr.

Bosanquet's book will at least suggest a different view from this to his readers. The work has a twofold value ; it gives a history of the subject, aiming at a representative complete- ness, while it also contains much original and suggestive exposition of the main theses themselves.

The early chapters deal with Greek philosophising on msthetics. We have no space for criticism in detail; but the author does not seem to us happiest in this portion of his

book. He applies an ingenious and elaborate analysis to the dicta of Plato and Aristotle ; but the method fails, we con-

sider, to elicit the real intention of those thinkers ; we do not always feel sure that Mr. Bosanquet is attacking exactly the same problem, or making exactly the same points with them; and the shifting of the point of view goes some way towards altering the actual content of the thought. Chapter V., on the Alexandrian and Gra3co-Roman culture, is occupied more with the art than with the msthetice of that period ; it is miscellaneous, but interesting enough ; though Mr. Bosanquet is subordinating the wider msthetie truth to his own his- torical theory when he says that "we are accustomed to regard" the Roman period — the period of Cicero and Virgil !—" as a time of decadence in culture." Then follows a chapter on the Middle Ages and scholastic thought, a period more successful in producing art in the concrete than in criticising the theory thereof. Chapter VII.—" A comparison of Dante and Shakespeare in respect of some formal charac- teristics "—is in the nature of an interpolated essay. The remainder, and bulk, of the book (pp. 166-469) is more thoroughly systematic and consecutive in its handling ; it deals with modern, mainly German, thought on amitheties : with Lessing, Winckelmann, Goethe ; and the philosophers proper, from Kant to E. von Hartmann. It is with these that the author shows himself most at home; both in ex- position and in comment or suggestion of his own, he here offers much new matter for reflection to English readers. France and Italy come in for no mention have they only supplied us with art-workers, and no art-philosophers ? The last chapter discusses some of the a3sthetic theories of Mr.

Ruskin and Mr. William Morris, the strength and weakness of which are declared to lie in their restriction to the field of formative art ; and Mr. Bosanquet, having already expounded the leading ideas of the Germans, takes occasion to elucidate one or two of their conclusions, and of his own favourite

theses, by the help of the independent investigations of his countrymen.

We are ourselves no experts in German philosophy ; and we find that what is difficult in Kant and Hegel, becomes

more difficult, certainly more technical, in Zimmermann and Rosenkranz and Schasler. In some places the historical exposition gets mixed up, rather confusingly, with the author's own criticism or comment ; in others, the obscurity arises from inevitable restrictions of space. But Mr.

Bosanquet'a own style is sometimes the stumbling-block ; at least it is not always luminous to the plain Briton. He is throughout addicted to an excessive abstractness of terminology ; he often seems to avoid a plain phrase, or a concrete illustration, where the reader most needs it ; often the thought, transferred from the German, remains clothed in a very Teutonic garb. This is a saying anent Shakespeare's employment of ghosts and witches :—" Just here and there the presentation of real connections is bordered or interwoven with a playful or mysterious supernatural, which does no more than furnish a decorative heightening to the true line of causal construction" (p. 160),—surely an artificial glossing of a plain topic. It takes some time and thought to work

through a sentence of this kind, even with the help of the context :— "The crux of true festhetic is to show how the combination of decorative forms in characteristic presentations, by an intensifi- cation of the essential character immanent in them from the beginning, subjects them to a central significance which stands to their complex combination as their abstract significance stood to them in isolation." (p. 372.)

Or again :—

" We cannot but be surprised when we find that the thinkers who set out by holding tight ['holding tight' is good] to the beautiful datum in its sensuous peculiarity, are also those who attribute its peculiar effectiveness to the most abstract and isolated underlying relations. It is true that the relation is conceived as a genuine cause operating in an assignable mode, and not reducible to a mere mathematical expression, but this does not alter the fact that the operation, as defined by the rela- tion, is of so general a nature as to be void of relevancy to the individual beautiful effect in a context of art, as distinguished from that which is not beautiful in such a context." (p. 389.)

We do not admire this kind of writing; and we feel sure that Mr. Bosanquet might have greatly improved his book by giving a little more time and a little more care to methods of expression. But our criticism of the author's style is in no way intended for an impeachment of his learning or of his genuine power of thinking. His abstract vocables and curious concatenations of phrase always express some definite pro- position, some valid idea ; and very often the expression is as precise and clear as the idea itself. The book ought to be welcome to many English readers who wish to know what the systematic philosophers have thought upon the subject, and what help they offer to the serious student of art. Our own literature is deficient. Mr. Ruskin has touched on many of the problems and difficulties of art-appreciation ; but he is anything rather than a systematic thinker; his power consists in his peculiar genius and imagination, in his passionate intuition and love of beauty ; and he teaches often by allusion or paradox rather than by logical statement or analysis. Mr. Bosanquet's Germans, with their formal and elaborate handling of "the Characteristic," of the abstract elements of the Beautiful, of the relations of Art to Nature, will appear very dry and pedantic in comparison.

'Yet are we convinced that some at least of these topics are of vital interest and call for earnest consideration. If Englishmen will attack them, it will be no detriment if they can deal with them in plainer language than the Germans, and at less portentous length (Mr. Bosanquet makes pathetic mention of his sufferings on this last account). If the ultimate problems of wsthetics do, in fact, belong to philosophy, and rest upon a " metaphysical " basis, they must be discussed seriously and systematically, even, perhaps, with a certain apparatus of technical phraseology. Literary and artistic criticism may remain content with "the light of Nature" and a cultivated intuition, and continue to appreciate each individual work of art "on its merits." But the wider, and fundamental, questions are all the while waiting for their answer ; and the philosopher must take them in his wider net, undeterred by the scepticism of the professed critic.

Mr. Bosanquet's point of view, it is perhaps unnecessary to say, is Hegelian ; but he is able also to accept some of the later results of German investigation. There is so much of real interest in his book, apart from its value as a history, that we are tempted to ask him for an original treatise on [esthetics. Freed from the restrictions of the analyst and chronicler, we do not doubt that he would be successful in elucidating even the darkest and most intricate parts of his subject. On such topics, for example, as "natural" beauty, and the " ugly " in Nature and art, we should like to read a complete exposition of his own view ; more especially because he here indicates dissent from his accustomed following of Hegel. Again, the important doctrine that "all beauty is ultimately expressiveness" deserves a much fuller treatment than the author has been able to give it in his history. The art of music, let us note in passing, is unduly neglected even where, as on this topic, one would naturally expect it to fur- nish apt illustration.

Mr. Bosanquet wisely maintains the reserved attitude of the philosophic historian, and refrains from merely " sub- jective " judgments. (" It is not my business to attempt the work of the art critic. The philosopher's task begins when he has the best critical opinion before him.") Why, then, has he gone out of his way to insist upon the curious opinion that

the drama, as a literary species, is decadent, if not actually defunct (pp. 219.20, 4d4)? "Do the people" [he asks] "care for drama that has literary value Would they care for it if they could get it P" Does be then regard the "people," the profanum vulgus, as the supreme arbiter of artistic form ? Does he seriously maintain that, in the long-run,

"The boxes and the pit

Are sovereign judges of this sort of wit " ?

Unless Mr. Bosanquet has better authority than this for his opinion, we will venture still to hope for the future of the drama; and we fancy that his master, Hegel, is on our side But we have noticed this point only b(cause it is an exception to the character of the book, which is (to repeat) a solid and valuable contribution to the Philosophy of the Beautiful. Such a study will seem unfashionable to those who advocate an unlicensed "impressionism" not only in art, but in art- criticism. But it faces and attempts to solve real problems, which that impressionism entirely ignores.