Modern Æstheticism [pp. 148-163]

MIODERZN ESTHETI CISM.
the science by Baumgarten in the last century, the fundamental
ideas of the science were in the mind of man as a constituent
part of his original nature. In one form or another the science
and the art have been the subject of special study on the part
of all liberally educated peoples. "God has made everything
beautiful in his time," and has given to every soul that faculty
of taste through whose spontaneous exercise he comes to the
knowledge and appreciation of the beautiful. Hence history is
full of the effort of man to express in fitting external form his
innate sense of beauty, to body forth the aesthetic life within
him. To the Greek mind it was the highest ambition to represent this indwelling ideal, and the world is aware to what
marvellous success they attained in the sphere of sculpture at
the hands of Phidias and Praxiteles, and in the sphere of verse
through the creations of Homer and the great tragedians. The
names of Titian, Correggio, Angelo, and Raphael in art, and of
Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso in letters, are sufficient to
indicate the vigor of the esthetic life in Italy. In modern
Europe, in France and Germany, this esthetic taste has developed itself more conspicuously in the sphere of literature. Racine and Corneille, Goethe and Schiller, are the artists of their
respective lands.
All that is included in the term "the fine arts" takes its
origin in the centre of this esthetic nature, and from the earliest
times sculpture, painting, architecture, music, and poetry have
been the chosen media through which man has sought to approximate to his artistic ideals. In these days of visionary
theories, on the one hand, and extreme practicality, on the
other, it is too often forgotten upon what a high intellectual
and moral plane the esthetic has been placed by its leading adherents in every age. Some, indeed, have defined it with Aristotle as consisting in mere imitation, or with Socrates as identical with utility, or with Diderot as consisting in mere relation,
or with Reynolds as in mediocrity, or with the school of Burke
and Alison as altogether external and material. There is, however, another and a far truer conception of this principle. According to Schelling, it lies in character, or, as Goethe would
state it, in the expression of character; Leibnitz made it con:sist in perfection; Kant, in the ideal; while Schlegel and Schil
I49