A General View of Positivism by Auguste Comte (learn to read books TXT) 📕

under the discreditable influence of men who were evidently not competent for any but subordinate positions, and whose preponderance has proved as injurious to Art as it has been to Philosophy and Morality. A fatal facility of giving expression to what is neither believed nor felt, gives temporary reputation to men who are as incapable of originality in Art as they are of grasping any new principle in science. It is the most remarkable of all the political anomalies caused by our revolutionary position; and the moral results are most deplorable, unless when, as rarely happens, the possessor of these undeserved honours has a nature too noble to be injured by them. Poets are more exposed to these dangers than other artists, because their sphere is more general and gives wider scope for ambition. But in the special arts we find the same evil in a still more degrading form; that of avarice, a vice by which so much of our highest talent is now tainted. Another signal proof of the childish vanity and uncontrolled ambition of the class is, that those who are merely interpreters of other men’s productions claim the same title as those who have produced original works.

Such are the results of the extravagant pretensions which artists and literary men have gradually developed during the last five centuries. I have dwelt upon them because they constitute at present serious impediments to all sound views of the nature and purposes of Art. My strictures will not be thought too severe by really aesthetic natures, who know from personal experience how fatal the present system is to all talent of a high order. Whatever the outcry of those personally interested, it is certain that in the true interest of Art the suppression of mediocrity is at least as important as the encouragement of talent. True taste always implies distaste. The very fact that the object is to foster in us the sense of perfection, implies that all true connoisseurs will feel a thorough dislike for feeble work. Happily there is this privilege in all masterpieces, that the admiration aroused by them endures in its full strength for all time; so that the plea which is often put forward of keeping up the public taste by novelties which in reality injure it, falls to the ground. To mention my own experience, I may say that for thirteen years I have been induced alike from principle and from inclination, to restrict my reading almost entirely to the great Occidental poets, without feeling the smallest curiosity for the works of the day which are brought out in such mischievous abundance.

Guarding ourselves, then, against errors of this kind, we may now proceed to consider the aesthetic character of Positivism. In the first place, it furnishes us with a satisfactory theory of Art; a subject which has never been systematically explained; all previous attempts to do so, whatever their value, having viewed the subject incompletely. The theory here offered is based on the subjective principle of the new philosophy, on its objective dogma, and on its social purpose; as set forward in the two first chapters of this work.

Art may be defined as an ideal representation of Fact; and its object is to cultivate our sense of perfection. Its sphere therefore is coextensive with that of Science. Both deal in their own way with the world of Fact; the one explains it, the other beautifies it. The contemplations of the artist and of the man of science follow the same encyclopædic law; they begin with the simple objects of the external world; they gradually rise to the complicated facts of human nature. I pointed out in the second chapter that the scientific scale, the scale, that is, of the True, coincided with that of the Good: we now see that it coincides with that of the Beautiful. Thus between these three great creations of Humanity, Philosophy, Polity, and Poetry, there is the most perfect harmony. The first elements of Beauty, that is to say, Order and Magnitude, are visible in the inorganic world, especially in the heavens; and they are there perceived with greater distinctness than where the phenomena are more complex and less uniform. The higher degrees of Beauty will hardly be recognized by those who are insensible to this its simplest phase. But as in Philosophy we only study the inorganic world as a preliminary to the study of Man; so, but to a still greater extent, is it with Poetry. In Polity the tendency is similar but less apparent. Here we begin with material progress; we proceed to physical and subsequently to intellectual progress; but it is long before we arrive at the ultimate goal, moral progress. Poetry passes more rapidly over the three preliminary stages, and rises with less difficulty to the contemplation of moral beauty. Feeling, then, is essentially the sphere of Poetry. And it supplies not the end only, but the means. Of all the phenomena which relate to man, human affections are the most modifiable, and therefore the most susceptible of idealization. Being more imperfect than any other, by virtue of their higher complexity, they allow greater scope for improvement. Now the act of expression, however imperfect, reacts powerfully upon these functions, which from their nature are always seeking some external vent. Everyone recognizes the influence of language upon thoughts: and surely it cannot be less upon feelings, since in them the need of expression is greater. Consequently all aesthetic study, even if purely imitative, may become a useful moral exercise, by calling sympathies and antipathies into healthy play. The effect is far greater when the representation, passing the limits of strict accuracy, is suitably idealized. This indeed is the characteristic mission of Art. Its function is to construct types of the noblest kind, by the contemplation of which our feelings and thoughts may be elevated. That the portraiture should be exaggerated follows from the definition of Art; it should surpass realities so as to stimulate us