Читать книгу Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic - Benedetto Croce - Страница 13

Criticism of the negations of this thesis.

That thought cannot exist without speech, is a truth generally admitted. The negations of this thesis are all founded on equivocations and errors.

The first of the equivocations is that of those who observe that one can likewise think with geometrical figures, algebraical numbers, ideographic signs, without any word, even pronounced silently and almost insensibly within one; that there are languages in which the word, the phonetic sign, expresses nothing, unless the written sign also be examined, and so on. But when we said "speak," we intended to employ a synecdoche, by which was to be understood "expression" in general, for we have already remarked that expression is not only so-called verbal expression. It may or may not be true that certain concepts may be thought without phonetic manifestations. But the very examples adduced to show this also prove that those concepts never exist without expressions.

Others point out that animals, or certain animals, think and reason without speaking. Now as to how, whether, and what animals think, whether they be rudimentary men, like savages who refuse to be civilized, rather than physiological machines, as the old spiritualists maintained, are questions that do not concern us here. When the philosopher talks of animal, brutal, impulsive, instinctive nature and the like, he does not base himself on such conjectures as to dogs or cats, lions or ants; but upon observations of what is called animal and brutal in man: of the animal side or basis of what we feel in ourselves. If individual animals, dogs or cats, lions or ants, possess something of the activity of man, so much the better, or so much the worse, for them. This means that in respect to them also we must talk, not of "nature" as a whole, but of its animal basis, as being perhaps larger and stronger in them than the animal basis of man. And if we suppose that animals think and form concepts, what kind of conjecture would justify the assertion that they do so without corresponding expressions? Analogy with man, knowledge of the spirit, human psychology, the instrument of all our conjectures as to animal psychology, would constrain us on the contrary to suppose that if they think in any way, they also somehow speak.

Another objection is derived from human psychology, and indeed literary psychology, to the effect that the concept can exist without the word, for it is certainly true that we all know books well thought and ill written: that is to say, a thought which remains beyond the expression, or notwithstanding faulty expression. But when we talk of books well thought and ill written, we cannot mean anything but that in such books are parts, pages, periods or propositions well thought and well written, and other parts (perhaps the least important) ill thought and ill written, not really thought and so not really expressed. Where Vico's Scienza nuova is really ill written, it is also ill thought. If we pass from the consideration of big books to a short sentence, the error or inaccuracy of such a contention will leap to the eyes. How could a single sentence be clearly thought and confusedly written?

All that can be admitted is that sometimes we possess thoughts (concepts) in an intuitive form, which is an abbreviated or rather peculiar expression, sufficient for us, but not sufficient to communicate it easily to any other given person or persons. Hence it is incorrect to say that we have the thought without the expression; whereas we should rather say that we have, indeed, the expression, but in such a form that it is not easy to communicate it to others. This, however, is a very variable, relative fact. There are always those who catch our thought on the wing, prefer it in this abbreviated form, and would be wearied by the greater development of it required by others. In other words, the thought considered abstractly and logically will be the same; but æsthetically we are dealing with two different intuition-expressions, into which different psychological elements enter. The same argument suffices to destroy, that is, to interpret correctly, the altogether empirical distinctior between an internal and an external language.

Art and science.

The most lofty manifestations, the summits of intellectual and of intuitive knowledge shining from afar, are called, as we know, Art and Science. Art and Science, then, are different and yet linked together; they meet on one side, which is the æsthetic side. Every scientific work is also a work of art. The æsthetic side may remain little noticed when our mind is altogether taken up with the effort to understand the thought of the man of science and to examine its truth. But it is no longer unnoticed when we pass from the activity of understanding to that of contemplation and see that thought either develop itself before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous or insufficient words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes called great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less fragmentary writers even if their fragments have the scientific value of harmonious, coherent, and perfect works.

We pardon thinkers and men of science their literary mediocrity. The fragments, the flashes, console us for the whole, because it is far easier to recover the well-arranged composition from the fragmentary work of genius, to liberate the flame latent in the spark, than to achieve the discovery of genius. But how can we pardon mediocre expression in pure artists? "Mediocribus esse poetis non di, non homines, non concessere columnae" The poet or painter who lacks form, lacks everything, because he lacks himself. Poetical material permeates the souls of all: the expression alone, that is to say, the form, makes the poet. And here appears the truth of the view which denies all content to art, just the intellectual concept being understood as content. In this sense, when we take "content" as equal to "concept" it is most true, not only that art does not consist of content, but also that it has no content.

Content and form: another meaning. Prose and poetry.

The distinction between poetry and prose also cannot be justified, save as that between art and science. It was seen in antiquity that such distinction could not be founded on external elements, such as rhythm and metre, or on rhymed or unrhymed form; that it was, on the contrary, altogether internal. Poetry is the language of feeling, prose of the intellect; but since the intellect is also feeling, in its concreteness and reality, all prose has its poetical side.

The relation of first and second degree.

The relation between intuitive knowledge or expression and intellectual knowledge or concept, between art and science, poetry and prose, cannot be otherwise defined than by saying that it is one of double degree. The first degree is the expression, the second the concept: the first can stand without the second, but the second cannot stand without the first. There is poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry. Expression, indeed, is the first affirmation of human activity. Poetry is "the mother tongue of the human race"; the first men "were by nature sublime poets." We assert this in another way, when we observe that the passage from soul to spirit, from animal to human activity, is effected by means of language. And this should be said of intuition or expression in general. But to us it appears somewhat inaccurate to define language or expression as an intermediate link between nature and humanity, as though it were a mixture of both. Where humanity appears, the other has already disappeared; the man who expresses himself, certainly emerges from the state of nature, but he really does emerge: he does not stand half within and half without, as the use of the phrase "intermediate link" would imply.

Non-existence of other forms of knowledge.

The cognitive spirit has no form other than these two. Expression and concept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man is spent in passing from one to the other and back again.

Historicity. Its identity with and difference from art.

Historicity is incorrectly held to be a third theoretical form. Historicity is not form, but content: as form, it is nothing but intuition or æsthetic fact. History does not seek for laws nor form concepts; it employs neither induction nor deduction; it is directed ad narrandum, non ad demonstrandum; it does not construct universals and abstractions, but posits intuitions. The this and here, the individuum omnimode determinatum, is its domain, as it is the domain of art. History, therefore, is included in the universal concept of art.

As against this doctrine, in view of the impossibility of conceiving a third mode of knowledge, objections have been brought forward which would lead to the affiliation of history to intellectual or scientific knowledge. The greater portion of these objections is animated by the prejudice that in refusing to history the character of conceptual science something of its value and dignity has been taken from it. This really arises from a false idea of art, conceived not as an essential theoretic function, but as an amusement, a superfluity, a frivolity. Without reopening a long debate, which so far as we are concerned is finally closed, we will mention here one sophism which has been and still is widely repeated. Its purpose is to show the logical and scientific nature of history. The sophism consists in admitting that historical knowledge has for its object the individual; but not the representation, it is added, but rather the concept of the individual. From this it is argued that history is also a logical or scientific form of knowledge. History, in fact, is supposed to work out the concept of a personage such as Charlemagne or Napoleon; of an epoch, like the Renaissance or the Reformation; of an event, such as the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy. This it is held to do in the same way as Geometry works out the concepts of spatial forms, or Æsthetic that of expression. But all this is untrue. History cannot do otherwise than represent Napoleon and Charlemagne, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Unification of Italy as individual facts with their individual physiognomy: that is, in the sense in which logicians use the word "represent" when they say that one cannot have a concept of the individual, but only a representation. The so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or general concept, full of characteristics, supremely full, if you like, but however full it be, incapable of attaining to that individuality to which historical knowledge, as æsthetic knowledge, alone attains.

To show how the content of history comes to be distinguished from that of art in the narrow sense, we must recall what has already been observed as to the ideal character of the intuition or first perception, in which all is real and therefore nothing is real. Only at a later stage does the spirit form the concepts of external and internal, of what has happened and what is desired, of object and subject, and the like: only at this later stage, that is, does it distinguish historical from non-historical intuition, the real from the unreal, real imagination from pure imagination. Even internal facts, what is desired and imagined, castles in the air, and countries of Cockaigne, have their reality, and the soul, too, has its history. His illusions form part of the biography of every individual as real facts. But the history of an individual soul is history, because the distinction between the real and the unreal is always active in it, even when the illusions themselves are the real. But these distinctive concepts do not appear in history like the concepts of science, but rather like those that we have seen dissolved and melted in the æsthetic intuitions, although in history they stand out in a manner altogether special to themselves. History does not construct the concepts of the real and unreal, but makes use of them. History, in fact, is not the theory of history. Mere conceptual analysis is of no use in ascertaining whether an event in our lives was real or imaginary. We must mentally reproduce the intuitions in the most complete form, as they were at the moment of production. Historicity is distinguished in the concrete from pure imagination as any one intuition is distinguished from any other: in memory.

Historical criticism.

Where this is not possible, where the delicate and fleeting shades between the real and unreal intuitions are so slight as to mingle the one with the other, we must either renounce for the time being at least the knowledge of what really happened (and this we often do), or we must fall back upon conjecture, verisimilitude, probability. The principle of verisimilitude and of probability in fact dominates all historical criticism. Examination of sources and authorities is devoted to establishing the most credible evidence. And what is the most credible evidence, save that of the best observers, that is, of those who best remember and (be it understood) have not wished to falsify, nor had interest in falsifying the truth of things?

Historical scepticism.

From this it follows that intellectualistic scepticism finds it easy to deny the certainty of any history, for the certainty of history differs from that of science. It is the certainty of memory and of authority, not that of analysis and demonstration. To speak of historical induction or demonstration is to make a metaphorical use of these expressions, which bear a quite different meaning in history to that which they bear in science. The conviction of the historian is the undemonstrable conviction of the juryman, who has heard the witnesses, listened attentively to the case, and prayed Heaven to inspire him. Sometimes, without doubt, he is mistaken, but the mistakes are in a negligible minority compared with the occasions when he grasps the truth. That is why good sense is right against the intellectualists in believing in history, which is not a "fable agreed upon," but what the individual and humanity remember of their past. We strive to enlarge and to render as precise as possible this record, which in some places is dim, in others very clear. We cannot do without it, such as it is, and taken as a whole it is rich in truth. Only in a spirit of paradox can one doubt that there ever was a Greece or a Rome, an Alexander or a Cæsar, a feudal Europe overthrown by a series of revolutions, that on the 1st of November 1517 the theses of Luther were fixed to the door of the church at Wittemberg, or that the Bastile was taken by the people of Paris on the 14th of July 1789.

"What proof hast thou of all this?" asks the sophist, ironically. Humanity replies: "I remember it."

Philosophy as perfect science. The so-called natural sciences, and their limits.

The world of what has happened, of the concrete, of historical fact, is the world called real, natural, including in this definition both the reality called physical and that called spiritual and human. All this world is intuition; historical intuition, if it be shown as it realistically is; imaginary or artistic intuition in the narrow sense, if presented in the aspect of the possible, that is to say, of the imaginable.

Science, true science, which is not intuition but concept, not individuality but universality, cannot be anything but science of the spirit, that is, of what reality has of universal: Philosophy. If natural sciences be spoken of, apart from philosophy, we must observe that these are not perfect sciences: they are aggregates of cognitions, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. The so-called natural sciences indeed themselves recognize that they are surrounded by limitations, and these limitations are nothing but historical and intuitive data. They calculate, measure, establish equalities and uniformities, create classes and types, formulate laws, show in their own way how one fact arises out of other facts; but while doing this they are constantly running into facts known intuitively and historically. Even geometry now states that it rests altogether on hypotheses, since threedimensional or Euclidean space is but one of the possible spaces, selected for purposes of study because more convenient. What is true in the natural sciences is either philosophy or historical fact. What of properly naturalistic they contain, is abstraction and caprice. When the natural sciences wish to become perfect sciences, they must leave their circle and enter philosophy. They do this when they posit concepts which are anything but naturalistic, such as those of the unextended atom, of ether or vibration, of vital force, of non-intuitional space, and the like. These are true and proper attempts at philosophy, when they are not mere words void of meaning. The concepts of natural science are, without doubt, most useful; but one cannot obtain from them that system which belongs only to the spirit.

These historical and intuitive data which cannot be eliminated from the natural sciences furthermore explain not only how, with the advance of knowledge, what was once believed to be true sinks gradually to the level of mythological belief and fantastic illusion, but also how among natural scientists some are to be found who call everything in their sciences upon which reasoning is founded mythical facts, verbal expedients, or conventions. Natural scientists and mathematicians who approach the study of the energies of the spirit without preparation, are apt to carry thither such mental habits and to speak in philosophy of such and such conventions as "decreed by man." They make conventions of truth and morality, and a supreme convention of the Spirit itself! But if there are to be conventions, something must exist which is no convention, but is itself the author of conventions. This is the spiritual activity of man. The limitation of the natural sciences postulates the illimitability of philosophy.

The phenomenon and the noumenon.

These explications have firmly established that the pure or fundamental forms of knowledge are two: the intuition and the concept—Art, and Science or Philosophy. With these are to be included History, which is, as it were, the product of intuition placed in contact with the concept, that is, of art receiving in itself philosophic distinctions, while remaining concrete and individual. All other forms (natural sciences and mathematics) are impure, being mingled with extraneous elements of practical origin. Intuition gives us the world, the phenomenon; the concept gives us the noumenon, the Spirit.