The latter point must be looked at still more closely, and will best serve to clear up any remaining obscurity. As Locke showed, the words which denote sensuous qualities of bodies, as “sweet, red, soft,” have a double meaning, which in practice are treated as identical by the common human understanding without harm. In the first place, they denote the state of the mind in perception and sensation; and, secondly, that quality of external objects which is presumed as cause of this psychical state. Every sensation is in itself individual, but when the common portions are abstracted from different series of similar sensations, there are acquired the notions “sweet, red soft;” and when the objective causes of these abstract sensations are treated as qualitative elements of things already known from other effects, there arise the judgments: “Sugar is sweet, the rose is red, the fur is soft.”
The same process is at the bottom of the æsthetic judgment. The mind finds in itself a number of sensations, which, although bound up with individual peculiarities, have yet so much resemblance that an identical portion can be set apart: this receives the name Beautiful. Now when the cause of this sensation is referred to external objects which are constructed of simultaneously occurring perceptions, this cause is stamped as the quality of these objects and likewise receives the name Beautiful; thus there arises the judgment: “The tree is beautiful.” It should not surprise us that common sense almost always refers the notion only to the cause, rarely to the sensation, for the same occurs also in “sweet, red, soft,” and has its good ground in practice, since his own sensations can only be of interest to the practical man so far as they instruct him with respect to the external world.
The æsthetic judgment is either impossible to him who is lacking in æsthetic feeling, who has no joy in beauty, or it is an unemotional abstraction from acquired general rules without subjective truth. It follows from this that the æsthetic judgment is not à priori, but rather à posteriori or empirical; for both the external object and the æsthetic pleasure are given through experience, and the external cause of pleasure can only lie in the object, as the cause of the sweet sensation of taste only in the sugar. Æsthetic pleasure itself, however, which is found in consciousness as an equally inexplicable fact, as the sensation of tone, taste, colour, &c., and like this occurs in any inner experience as something ready made and given, may owe its origin only to a process in the Unconscious; this might then be called just as well as any other sensation something à priori, were not this expression merely in use for conceptions and judgments.
The ability to feel æsthetically (like the ability to feel sweet, sour, bitter, rough, &c.), called Taste, can certainly, like the taste of the tongue and of the palate, be formed and exercised to react on fine differences; it can also by powerful custom, that second nature, be alienated from its first nature, instinct, and spoiled; but in every case the sensation presents itself as a given fact, subject to no caprice. But now æsthetic sensation is distinguished from merely sensuous feelings in this, that it stands on the shoulders of the latter; that it uses them perhaps as material, also as concomitant presentations through which its special quality is in every case determined; but that as feeling it stands above them and is built upon them. If, therefore, the unconscious genesis of the sensuous qualities is an immediate reaction of the soul on the nerve irritant, the unconscious genesis of æsthetic sensation is rather a reaction of the soul on ready-made sensuous feelings,—a reaction of the second order, as it were. This is the reason why the origin of sensuous feeling will probably always remain veiled in impenetrable obscurity, whilst we have already partially, in the discursive form of conscious representation, reconstructed and comprehended, i.e., conceptually resolved, the process of origin of æsthetic sensation.
We have as little to trouble ourselves here about the essence of the Beautiful as about the essence of the Moral in the last chapter. As it there sufficed us that the predicate moral could only be applied to actions from the point of view of consciousness, but that the actions themselves, to which this predicate is given or refused, are in the last resort incalculable reactions of the Unconscious, so the only point to be considered here is the cognition that the æsthetic judgment is an empirically established judgment, but has its foundation in æsthetic feeling, whose origination falls entirely within the Unconscious.
If we now pass from the passive reception of the beautiful to its active production, a short consideration of the creative fancy, and consequently of fancy or imagination, seems in general indispensable. (Comp. also above A. Chap. vii. 1, b, pp. 174, 175.) The sensuous faculty of presentation, imagination, or fancy, in its widest sense, has very different degrees of vividness in different persons. According to Fechner’s statements, which are confirmed by my own numerous trials of others, women have this power in a higher degree than men, and of the latter, those least of all who are accustomed to think abstractly and to neglect the external world. In the lowest degree, colours cannot at all be imagined, and forms only very indistinctly, without fixity, with shifting outlines, generally only perceptible for brief moments; with higher degrees of imagination, plain, not too large images can be distinctly represented without effort, stationary, in lively colours; and by turning the head, objectively fixed or concurrently moving at will. In the highest degree, the vividness and distinctness does not at all yield to that of the sense-impression; the images can be arranged at pleasure both in the black field of vision of the shut eye, and in the field of vision filled by external sense-impressions (witness that painter who let his model sit for only a quarter of an hour, and then by an effort of will called up the image of the same sitting on the chair, and afterwards portrayed it, so that as often as he raised his eyes he saw the person quite distinctly seated on the chair). Further, whole compositions, trains of many figures, or elaborate orchestral compositions, can be carried about merely in idea for months without loss of definition, as we know of Mozart that he never recorded his compositions on paper until necessity drove him to it, but then often wrote down the several orchestral parts without the score (e.g., the overture to “Don Juan”), and this work became so mechanical to him, that he is said to have conceived other compositions at the same time. I considered these illustrations as not without utility for giving the reader, who may be lacking in this intuitive power, some idea of the practicability of framing conceptions at once vast and indivisible. Experience proves that there never was a true genius who did not possess this faculty of sensuous intuition in a large degree, at least in his own department. Moreover, there is no question that if, in our sober, rational age, such examples are still possible, that in earlier ages, when sensuous intuition was much more practised and cultivated, and was less kept under by abstract thinking, when man surrendered himself still more unreservedly to the good and evil whisperings of his genius or dæmon, it is conceivable that, as among the saints, martyrs, prophets, and mystics, so also among inspired artists, a blending of voluntary sense-intuition and involuntary hallucination may have taken place, which had nothing shocking for these children of a more fortunate Nature, not yet at variance with their august mother, but, on the contrary, was so much esteemed, as a condition of every production of the Muses, that the enthusiastic Plato has bequeathed us the declaration (Phædrus): “What an excellent man produces in divine frenzy, which is better than sober reflection, namely, the divine, in that the soul recognises as in a brightly shining after-image what it looked upon in the hour of rapture, walking in the footsteps of Deity, and which beholding, it is necessarily filled with rapture and love.” “Frenzy is not absolutely an evil, but through it the greatest goods came to Hellas.” And even at the time of Cicero poetic inspiration was called furor poeticus. In modern times, Shaftesbury in particular has laid stress upon the fundamental importance of enthusiasm for the origination of everything true, great, and beautiful.
If we now, however, look at the forms of fancy themselves, we find, on decomposing them into their elements, even when we take up the wildest productions of
Oriental extravagance, nothing which could not have been obtained by means of sensuous perception aided by a retentive memory. We can discover no new simple colour, no simple smell, taste, tone. Even in the realm of space, which allows the greatest scope for novel constructions, we find in arabesques only the familiar elements of the straight line, the circle, the ellipse, and other well-known curves; nay, even in the animals of fable we rarely find parts derived from the inorganic and vegetable world, and conversely. Invention is limited to disjoining familiar ideas and rearranging the severed parts. If, now, anybody possesses a lively imagination, at the same time a fine sense for the beautiful, and a copious store of remembered ideas ever at command, wherein the beautiful elements are particularly richly represented, it will not be difficult for him, by leaning on Nature, that is, on given sense-perceptions, by eliminating ugly and inserting beautiful elements, which yet do not offend against truth and unity, to create in an artistic fashion. E.g., when any one paints a portrait, essential truth is lost by simply rendering the chance aspect of the person. This would be a mechanical, not an artistic performance. But when the artist places the person in such a light, position, direction, and attitude that he shows himself in the most favourable manner possible; when, of the various moods and expressions during the sitting, the artist retains that which makes the finest impression; and accordingly represses or lets pass all unfavourable and non-beautiful traits and singularities, but, on the other hand, brings into the foreground and places in a favourable light all advantageous traits and details, perhaps even adding new ones so far as the truth of the idea, i.e., the likeness, allows, then he has produced a work of art, for he has idealised.
Thus works ordinary talent; it produces artistically by means of rational selection and combination, guided by its æsthetic judgment At this point stands the ordinary dilettante and the majority of professional artists. They one and all cannot comprehend that these means, supported by technical routine, may perhaps accomplish something excellent, but can never attain to anything great, can never pass out of the well-worn groove of imitation nor produce an original work; for, if they admitted that, they must perforce abjure their calling and declare their life to be a failure. Here everything is still done with conscious choice; there is wanting the divine frenzy, the vivifying breath of the Unconscious, which appears to consciousness as higher inexplicable suggestion, which it is forced to apprehend as fact without ever being able to unravel its law. Conscious combination may, in course of time, be acquired by effort of the conscious will, by industry, endurance, and practice. The creation of genius is an unwilled, passive conception; it does not come with the most earnest seeking, but quite unexpectedly, as if fallen from heaven, on journeys, in the theatre, in conversation, everywhere where it is least expected, and always suddenly and instantaneously. Conscious combination works out laboriously the smallest details, and gradually constructs a whole with painful hesitation and head-splitting, with frequent rejecting and resuming of the single parts. The conception of genius receives the whole from one mould, as gift of the gods, unearned by toil; and it is just the details which are wanting to it—must be wanting, because in the larger compositions (grouped images, poetic works) the human mind is too narrow to obtain more than the most general total impression at a single glance. Combination procures the unity of the whole by laborious adaptation and experimentation in detail, and therefore, in spite of all its labour, never accomplishes its purpose, but always allows, in its bungling work, the conglomerate of the details to be visible. Genius, in virtue of the conception from the Unconscious, has, in the necessary appropriateness and mutual relations of the several parts, a unity so perfect that it can only be compared to the unity of natural organisms, which likewise springs out of the Unconscious.
These phenomena are confirmed by all true geniuses who have instituted and communicated self-observations thereupon,1 and every one who has ever had a truly original thought in any direction can find it proved in his own person. I will here only quote an observation of the no less artistic than philosophical Schelling (Transcend. Idealism., pp. 459, 460); As the artist is urged to production involuntarily, and even with inner aversion (accordingly among the ancients the expressions pati deum, &c., and hence in general the idea of inspiration through extraneous afflation), so the objective is also added to his production as it were without his action, i.e., itself merely objectively.” [P. 454 he says: “Objective is only what arises without consciousness; the properly objective in the intuition must therefore also not be procurable with consciousness.”] “Just as the man of destiny does not execute what he wills or intends, but what he is obliged to execute through an incomprehensible fate under whose influence he stands, so the artist, however full of design he is, yet, in respect of that which is the properly objective in his production, seems to stand under the influence of a power which separates him from all other men, and compels him to declare or represent things which he himself does not completely see through, and whose import is infinite.”
In order, however, to avoid misunderstanding, I must still add the following. In the first place, it is by no means indifferent what soil the genius has prepared in his mind in order that the germs which fall into it from the Unconscious may shoot up in luxuriant organic forms, for when they fall on rock or sand they languish. That is to say, the genius must be practised and educated in his own department, have stored up in his memory a rich supply of striking images, and indeed with a selection of the beautiful, which must be effected with nice discrimination. For this material is the body in which the Idea yet in the Unconscious and formless will take shape. If the artist has corrupted his æsthetic judgment, and as a consequence has received with predilection unlovely material, this bad ground too will introduce improper elements into the seed-corn which derives it nourishment from it, and thus the plant will not thrive.
In the second place, in what has been said it is not asserted that every work of art arises from a single conception; thus episodes show in the simplest form the union of different conceptions. For the most part, however, it is a single conception which furnishes the fundamental idea; where that is not so, the unity of the work of art always suffers. The unity of the original total conception, however, by no means excludes—in greater works it even requires—support by partial conceptions, conceptions of the second order, as it were. For if rational work alone is to fill up the entire interval between the first conception and the completed work, there is a danger in the absence of all specialities, unavoidable in the first con ception of larger works, of the want of conception in the different parts of the work becoming perceptible, just as in lesser works of purely rational construction, or of the unity of the whole idea being injuriously affected by greater changes in the parts. For all that, there remains a great field for the exercise of the understanding; and if the genius is wanting in requisite energy, endurance, industry, and rational judgment, the gifted conception will bear no fruits for the artist and humanity; for the work remains either uncommenced or unfinished, or worked out only in outline and imperfectly (slovenly executed). Undoubtedly the understanding should always at the same time remain conscious of its position of service, as it were. It must not be hypercritical, and desire to treat professorially the inspirations of the Unconscious, else it spoils the work, introducing by partial improvements a deterioration in many other respects, and destroying or disturbing the organic unity and naturalness of the work of art. How far, however, the work of reason may be admitted without disturbing the conceptions of the Unconscious, this again not itself, but only the æsthetic taste or tact of the artist, i.e., his unconsciously founded feeling of beauty, has power to determine, and on that account during the entire duration of the exercise of the reasoning faculty, the Unconscious must keep guard over the conscious understanding as overseer of the marches. This is the reason why Schelling, and after him Carrière (comp. above, p. 42), were able to explain all artistic activity as a constant interfusion of unconscious and conscio
us activity, in which each side is equally indispensable to the other for bringing the result to pass.
Thirdly, the observation that the unconscious will has no influence on the carrying out of the conception must not be misunderstood. Conscious will in general is mainly just its indispensable condition; for only when the whole soul of a man lives and moves in his art do all the threads of his interest converge therein, and there is no power which would be able permanently to turn the will from this its highest endeavour; only then is the influence of the conscious mind on the Unconscious powerful enough to attain truly great, noble, and pure inspirations. On the other hand, conscious will has no influence at the moment of conception; nay, a strained conscious seeking after it, a one-sided concentration of the attention in this direction, immediately hinders the reception of the Idea from the Unconscious, because the causal nexus of the two terms in respect of such extraordinary demands of the Unconscious is so subtile, that every preoccupation of the consciousness in this direction must act disturbingly, every actual one-sided tension of the parts of the brain concerned makes the ground to be traversed uneven. Hence the occurrence of the conception, when quite other parts of the brain are occupied with quite other thoughts, as soon as through a still looser association of ideas the impulse is given to the causality of the Unconscious; but such an impulse there must be, if it is also for the most part immediately forgotten again, for the universal laws of mind can even here not be transgressed.
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