COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL. WHENCE arises our perception of
the beautiful ? or what is beauty? has been answered in different ways by different schools of philosophy. Hume, and others after him, consider that beauty is not a quality in itself, but exists only in the individual's mind : one person admires, another is au' owed, and the ultimate question admits of no further resolution than the old axiom "de gustibus non est disputandum." Other theorists 00nnect beauty with i : health, for example, would in their theory be essential to beauty; so would strength, iu proportion to the function of the parts and the character of the person—an over delicate woman would not be beautiful : the most beautiful architecture is that which has the greatest amount of use in proportion to the means employed ; and so in similar things. Reynolds (whom M. Cousin passes by for Emeric David, who wrote in 1807) considered that universality is beauty—that the most beautiful is the most general form ; and the difference between the schools of Hume and Reynolds is perhaps less in substance than in mode or terms : Hume would attribute the perception of beauty to association of ideas, which may be passive or accidental; Reynolds, to cultivated observation and comparison. Fichte and some of his Germans have a theory which Cousin has modified into a less transcendental form : in that theory, the school of Hume are erroneous only in their terms—though they talk of the beautiful they mean the agreeable ; in which sense Cousin holds that their opinion is true : the agreeable is a personal thing, of which each individual must judge for himself. From the utilitarian standard of beauty he altogether dissents. He excludes the useful not only from the beautiful but from art. Eloquence, history, and philosophy, in M. Cousin's theory, are not arts, for their first aim is utility : art is confined to poetry, music, paint- ing, architecture, and gardening ; excluding the useful branch. With those who think the beautiful must be sought in nature M. Cou- sin differs and yet agrees. General beauty must be sought in nature, but when found it will not be the ideal beauty that art must realize : in M. Cousin's language, "the ideal is a bridge uniting the finite and the infinite,"—a point never to be reached by man, but still to be approached closer than if he confines himself to mere nature. He concludes, that there is an idea of beauty in the mind, which not only cannot be found in nature, but cannot by any comparative or abstracting process be drawn out of nature. This theory he illustrates, not from art, but mathe- matics.
"I have agreed provisionally to call triangles natural figures which possess imperfectly the triangular form; but the geometrical triangle is that which satisfies the rigour of its definition. Now there is no perfect triangle in na- ture, that is to say, a triangle which fulfils the conditions of the mathe- matical definition. If any natural -figure cannot legitimately be called a tri- angle, how by the comparison and collection of natural figures will you build up the idea of a perfect triangle? When I have arrived at the geometrical con- ception of a triangle or of a circle, I can trace with a compass figures which seem to satisfy the demand of the definition; but it is because I have constructed them according to the definition of a triangle or of a circle. Such is not the case with him who observes natural figures, and who seeks in them the idea of a circle or a
le. Moreover, I am not sue by the help of rule and compass to rigorously satis the demand of a geometrical definition. Geometricians in their demon- strations appeal neither to natural figures, nor even to artificial ones which they have drawn with the greatest care according to the ideal conception; but they keep to the ideal conception, which the artificial figure is merely a mnemonic sign of So that geometry is called a science which constructs its own object: the figures it speaks of are called geometrical constructions. It disdains nature; de- stroys it, effaces it; and substitutes for the gross forms of experience, the pure and exact conceptions which Art herself can only distantly copy. If there are no natural figures which are strictly geometrical, how are you able to fulfil the conditions required by geometry? Your collection will never be composed of _pro- perties which are not common to all the individuals; and since there is nothing more in one figure than in the other, you cannot draw from the second what the first has not given you already. From the imperfect, considered in a number of examples, you cannot draw the perfect."
Still, in M. Cousin's view, nature is essential to art, and even to the beautiful. Without the natural the ideal will be cold and lifeless; as the natural without the ideal will be narrow, gross, or physical. If we understand M. Cousin, this ideal is a thing as definite, if not so ob- vious, as a mathematical figure, and not more difficult to discover in its original; but beauty, being more various, and less palpably distinct, Cannot be realized so permanently. Imagination is necessary to the ex- pression of the ideal, but not to its discovery. Unless we misinter- pret M. Cousin, he would deny that the beautiful of which he is in quest is akin to genius—to that faculty by which the poet, or any other artist, vivifies the materials he has collected, and impresses upon them the character of his own mind. To gather together as briefly as we can M. Cousin's theory in his own words, it would stand thus. Natural beauty exists in the object, ideal in the human mind ; art is the general of the ideal, and is perfected nature. To exhibit this ideality or art to others, two things are requisite--expression as its essence, composition as its Mode.
"Expression is the supreme law of art. All art that expresses nothing is not art. The second law of art is composition, or the employment of material means in order to produce expression. I do not include anything in composition which has not this end in view. If, for instance, I had to paint the figure of a woman who has just given birth to an infant, I should dispose every line of her body, every attitude, in such a manner as to express the joy and sadness which filled her soul: I should make everything which surrounded her concur in the same unity of expression: I should see in all the attendant circumstances, as in her, merely symbolic forms, hieroglyphic signs given me that I might make the moral idea shins forth above all, the idea of which she is the manifestation. We perceive from this illustration the vast importance of composition. But if the painter is content with mere light and shade, with such an arrangement of lines as will please the eye only, composition then becomes the destruction of art. Expression, the unfolding of the moral idea, must be the exalted aim of the artist."
will who wish to investigate the abstract principles of criticism will derive much pleasure and advantage from The Philosophy of the Beautiful. It will compel them to inquire more closely into the essential elements of art, and elevate their minds above the gross and material ideas that too much prevail in modern art and literature; sub- stituting a lofty, if a rather indefinite conception of art and the artist, for the vulgar notions that prevail. As regards originality, we incline to limit the claims of this work to the manner iu which the au- thor's idiosyncracy enforces and illustrates the theory, rather than to allow a claim to absolute novelty in the theory itself. Abstracting the French loftiness of conception, which is apt to pass from the universal into the vague, and the felicity and clearness with which the author illustrates his views, they have been presented, though with less of system, by critics and rhetoricians of ancient and modern times. We cannot, indeed, see much real difference between the ideal and natural schools, though a follower of one or the other might deny the resemblance. The necessity of studying nature is admitted by Cousin ; the necessity of rising above nature is enforced by Reynolds, though with less of vivacity than by the Frenchman. The Third Lecture on Painting, which is de- voted to the subject of beauty, has a passage that seems to us to contain the germ of M. Cousin's theory ; the only difference being in the manner of expressing it, or in views not essential to the conclusion.
" The painter's eye," says Sir Joshua, "being enabled to distinguish the acci- dental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and, what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by draw- ing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which-the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of genius are conducted."
" This is the idea which has acquired, and which seems to have a right to, the epithet of divine; as it may be said to preside, like a supreme judge, over all the productions of nature, appearing to be possessed of the will and intention of the Creator, as far as they regard the external form of living beings. When a man once possesses this idea in its perfection, there is no danger but that he will be sufficiently, warmed by it himself, and be able to warm and ravish every one else.
" Thu it is from reiterated experience, and a close comparison of the objects in nature, that an artist becomes possessed of the idea of that central form, if I may so express it, from which every deviation is deformity."
We might pursue this comparison of the two schools further into that imagination which elevates and vivifies, and (though less distinctly) into that genius which pervades the whole of a work of art ; but we have said enough to enable those who feel =Interest in the question to examine it for themselves. Many of our readers, indeed, may be already familiar with the original ; for the work is old, though the translation is new. M. Cousin's theory was first promulgated as long ago as 1818, in a series of lectures which he delivered on-the Tree, the Beautiful, and the Good ; in which combination is expressed the author's idea of God.
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