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

obviously from the heart rather than the head, and which are indications of character even in the most unimpassioned speaker. Biology at once explains this law, by teaching that the stimulus to the muscles used in expression, whether vocal or gesticulatory, comes principally from the affective region of the brain; the specu-region being too inert to produce muscular contraction for which there is no absolute necessity. Accordingly, Sociology regards every language as containing in its primitive elements all that is spontaneous and universal in the aesthetic development of Humanity; enough, that is, to satisfy the general need of communicating emotion. In this common field the special arts commence, and they ultimately widen it. But the operation is the same in its nature, whether carried on by popular instinct or by individuals. The final result is always more dependent on feeling than on reason, even in times like these, when the intellect has risen in revolt against the heart. Song, therefore, comes before Speech; Painting before Writing; because the first things we express are those which move our feelings most. Subsequently the necessities of social life oblige us to employ more frequently, and ultimately to develop, those elements in painting or in song, which relate to our practical wants and to our speculative faculties so far as they are required for supplying them; these forming the topics of ordinary communication. Thus the emotion from which the sign had originally proceeded becomes gradually effaced; the practical object is alone thought of, and expression becomes more rapid and less emphatic. The process goes on until at last the sign is supposed to have originated in arbitrary convention; though, if this were the case, its universal and spontaneous adoption would be inexplicable. Such, then, is the sociological theory of Language, on which I shall afterwards dwell more fully. I connect it with the whole class of aesthetic functions, from which in the lower animals it is not distinguished. For no animal idealizes its song or gesture so far as to rise to anything that can properly be called Art.

To complete our examination of the philosophy of Art, statically viewed, we have now only to speak of the order in which the various arts should be classified. Placed as Art is, midway between Theory and Practice, it is classified on the same principle, the principle, that is of decreasing generality, which I have long ago shown to be applicable to all Positive classifications of whatever kind. We have already obtained from it a scale of the Beautiful, answering in most points to that which was first laid down for the True, and which we applied afterwards to the Good. By following it in the present instance, we shall be enabled to range the arts in the order of their conception and succession, as was done in my Treatise on Positive Philosophy for the various branches of Science and Industry.

The arts, then, should be classified by the decreasing generality and the increasing intensity, which involves also increasing technicality, of their modes of expression. In its highest term the aesthetic scale connects itself with the scientific scale; and in its lowest with the industrial scale. This is in conformity with the position assigned to Art intermediate between Philosophy and Practical life. Art never becomes disconnected from human interests; but as it becomes less general and more technical, its relation with our higher attributes becomes less intimate, and it is more dependent on inorganic Nature, so that at last the kind of beauty depicted by it is merely material.

On these principles of classification we must give the first place to Poetry properly so called, as being the most general and least technical of the arts, and as being the basis on which all the rest depend. The impressions which it produces are less intense than those of the rest, but its sphere is evidently wider, since it embraces every side of our existence, whether individual, domestic, or social. Poetry, like the special arts, has a closer relation with actions and impulses than with thoughts. Yet the most abstract conceptions are not excluded from its sphere; for not merely can it improve the language in which they are expressed, but it may add to their intrinsic beauty. It is, on the whole, the most popular of all the arts, both on account of its wider scope, and also because, its instruments of expression being taken directly from ordinary language, it is more generally intelligible than any other. True, in the highest kind of poetry versification is necessary; but this cannot be called a special art. The language of Poetry, although distinct in form, is in reality nothing but the language of common men more perfectly expressed. The only technical element in it, prosody, is easily acquired by a few days’ practice. A proof of the identity of the language of Poetry with that of common life, is the fact that no poet has ever been able to write with effect in a foreign or a dead language. And not only is this noblest of Arts more comprehensive, more spontaneous, more popular than the rest, but it surpasses them in that which is the characteristic feature of all art, Ideality. Poetry is the art which idealizes the most, and imitates the least. For these reasons it has always held the first place among the arts; a view which will be strengthened in proportion as we attach greater importance to idealization and less to mere expression. In expression it is inferior to the other arts, which represent such subjects as fall within their compass with greater intensity. But it is from Poetry that these subjects are usually borrowed.

The first term of the series being thus determined, the other arts may at once be ranked according to the degree of their affinity with Poetry. Let us begin by distinguishing the different senses to which they appeal; and we shall find that our series proceeds on the principle which biologists, since Gall’s time,