Æsthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. Benedetto Croce
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