10

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE

The term Esthetic is not indeed perfectly satisfactory, but we have no better. Theoretic, which has been proposed and advocated as a substitute, by Mr. Ruskin, is greatly inferior, being etymologically defective, as properly applying only to intellection, and redundant, as embracing much that does not belong to Art, while it is already an English word, appropriated to an entirely different idea. Whatever may be said against Esthetic is due to its derivation, and can have no force to prevent its usage from extending to all the departments of knowledge to which it is applied. Not yet appropriated to any different or shallow sense, there is no reason why its meaning should be confined by a foreign etymology. A word yet unperverted by the popular tongue, and so completely in the hands of science to expand and shape according to her own demands, it would be foolish to reject upon the mere deficiency of its Greek original. What its parent was not to the Greek, it may become to us, as readily as a hundred others have done.

The word Art I shall also employ in a sense somewhat wider than its popular acceptation, including under it not only painting, statuary, and other departments ordinarily so designated, but also poetry, oratory, and some other productions of letters. I am aware that many will remonstrate against such a classification, because they have a confused notion of Art as something factitious, and of writing as a faculty that comes by nature. They will properly

enough praise the art of the painter and statuary, and yet never think of the word in connection with literature but as meaning something low and dishonest, and akin to the arts of the gambler, the horsejockey, and the juggler; thus confounding art with trickery, a vulgar abuse of the word, for which there is no excuse in the necessities of our language.

The word Art is properly used both to designate a kind of intellectual effort, and the results thereof. In the first case it means the conception of some worthy end, and the disposal and modification of things to answer the end designed. In the second, it is applied to the works of man, as contradistinguished from those of God, which are called nature. It is also employed, in a more limited manner, to designate the application of scientific principles, and in that case differs from science, as application from investigation. By science, we inquire into, discover, and classify principles; by art, we carry those principles into practice. The principles of science become rules of art. Thus, chemistry is a science, but pharmacy is an art; the art of making lenses has sprung from the science of optics, and the science of anatomy has instructed the art of both the surgeon and the statuary. Art is the end or object of science, and science is the foundation of art, or the fountain from which its rules are drawn. That is but a futile science, unworthy of the name, which is capable of producing no offspring in art, and it is impossible to attain an honorable rank in art without a knowledge

of the corresponding science. They lay an unnecessary and an embarrassing yoke upon their genius, who enter the lists of art without scientific preparation, expecting success in blindly following the works of others, or in confining themselves to an untutored struggle with their own crude notions.

The arts have been variously classified in different ages, and by different writers. By the ancient Romans they were all placed under the heads, liberal, and servile, from the fact that some had accidentally been cultivated from early time by freemen, and others by slaves. Merchandise and all mechanic arts were placed among the servile; among the liberal were put grammar, rhetoric, logic, and war. In later times, when freemen had turned their attention to handicrafts, and no longer esteemed it disgraceful to be mechanics, the name servile was dropped, and useful substituted, while liberal continued to be applied to the other class. More recently, the terms fine, elegant, or ornamental, have been employed. Thus, we now commonly hear the arts spoken of as the useful, and the fine or ornamental; as if the one class were not useful, and the other not fine or ornamental; while no such distinction is actually regarded in the distribution of them. For example, calico printing and carpet weaving are classed with the useful, while architecture and gardening are assigned to the fine or ornamental; yet there is as much obvious ornament in many calico and carpet patterns as would be tolerated in a house, and

more than would be deemed proper in a garden; and certainly a house is as useful as a carpet. The classification proceeds upon no intrinsic distinction or difference of objects. All the arts are useful, and ornament is not essential to any of them. For convenience in determining the bearing of my own remarks, I shall venture to arrange them in two great classes, according to the leading object contemplated by each. In the first, I would dispose all such as have for their object the improvement or comfort of man's material being, as agriculture, spinning, weaving, medicine, surgery, etc.; in the second, all those whose chief end is the cultivation of the human spirit, as painting, sculpture, music. The former are founded upon the principles of natural philosophy; the latter upon the laws of human feeling. In like manner the artist is he who designs, the mechanic he who executes according to directions. Thus the designs of the Gobelin tapestry are the works of an artist, but the hand that executes them in the loom is generally that of a mechanic. The mere exercise of acquired habits of manipulation, as well as the materiality of the ends contemplated, are mechanic, while every design, to augment the treasures of beauty, and every manual effort for the single purpose of embodying that design is Esthetic. Those arts, therefore, in which material ends are chiefly contemplated, may with propriety be designated mechanic; while the term Esthetic would mark all which address the mental taste. In the

latter, an effect upon the feelings is the single and immediate object, whereas in the former, an emotional effect is regarded, if at all, as only an incidental and non-essential thing. Objects of the one class may attain their end without being beautiful, the other only by means of beauty; and any art, no matter what its origin, when it attains such excellence as to regard beauty as a main object, becomes thereby of the Esthetic class. Consequently, literature, which has been so often excluded, has an eminent claim to a place there; for, while wielding a profound influence over the material well-being of man, it makes its address directly to the spirit, and all its effects upon the body are produced through the medium of the mind.

In the prosecution of this subject, it is proposed to treat in the first place of radical principles; of the mental faculties addressed by art exercised in criticism and in production; and thirdly, of the objects and specific character of the more eminent Esthetic Arts. -Ruskin, Modern Painters.

SECTION II.-FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF ART,

Inquiry into the nature and sources of Beauty is the most important, as well as the most difficult part of Esthetic study: the most important, as being concerned with the fundamental law of Art, and the most difficult, because forming a department of mental science in