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it is that mode of human thought most different from Nature-poetry, from the inspired original epic of the golden heroic age. Hegel speaks slightingly of the Nibelungen (though he respects Ossian); he looks like a champion of the classics against the barbarism of the North. But he is much more liberal than he sometimes appears, and more in agreement with the tastes of the brothers Grimm. He is fond of ballads; he names Fauriel's collection of Romaic popular songs; he has higher praise for the Arabian poems of the "Ignorance"; the Cid is one of his heroes; and his descriptions of the heroic age and of the age of chivalry show his talent as an abstractor of quintessence, as well as his sympathy with the literary fashions of his time, even with the Romantic School. Hegel died nine years before the Grimms came to Berlin.

Grimm's large additions to positive science seem at times like the result of chance. They came as a precipitate from the most extraordinary vague vapour of ideas—a strange enthusiastic religion, the worship of an imaginary golden age. In details, the work of Jacob Grimm is sometimes as extravagant as the derivation of cheval from equus: Plato's Cratylus is no more antiquated in philology than some of the early papers of Jacob Grimm. But the cloud of his fancies and aspirations had fire and life in it; and the history of Jacob Grimm, his progress and his conquests, is a demonstration of the power of that great god Wish whom Jacob Grimm was the first to name.1 The moral seems to be Fay ce que voudras, when that counsel is rightly understood. It was never intended for any but honourable persons, and of such was Jacob Grimm, and Wilhelm his brother.

1 Deutsche Mythologie (1835), P. 99.

XXXIII

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART

PLATO in the Protagoras makes Socrates say that conversation about poetry and the meaning of poetry should be left to people who have not completed their education and are not able to converse freely. The vulgar like to dispute about the interpretation of the sayings of poets, who cannot come into the company to answer for themselves; men who have been well schooled prefer, in their conversation, to go on without the help or the distraction of poetry," each one in the company taking his turn to speak and listen in due order, even though they be drinking deep." To turn conversation into a wrangle about the interpretation of poetical passages is hardly less a sign of want of education than to bring in flute players in order to save the banqueters from the sound of their own voices. Socrates, before making this contemptuous speech, had criticised and explained a passage of Simonides in a way that shows how possible it is for a critic to maintain his freedom and speak his own mind while professing to draw out the hidden meaning of his author; how the sermon may be made a different thing from the text. The whole passage is characteristic of an age which has grown too old for poetry, which is determined to work out its own problems with its own understanding, not

expecting much help nor fearing much hindrance from the wisdom of bygone ages. The belief that is the centre of all Plato's theories of art is expressed here. Stated rudely, the belief is this, that art has lost its authority, that the poets and their followers are well-meaning men who would have to-day rule itself by yesterday's wisdom, whereas to-day has its own light to which yesterday's light is an impertinence. Enlightened men speak the thoughts that are in them, free from bondage to the letter of ancient wisdom; the philosopher knows clearly what the poets knew vaguely and confusedly. Plato's various theories of art are all expansions of this speech in the Protagoras. At the worst, art is a false semblance; at the best it is an education. The philosopher knows what beauty is better than they do who listen to the singers in the market-place. There cannot but be a quarrel between poetry and philosophy; poetry is weak, imperfect, and ignorant, pretends to be strong and all-seeing. Philosophy secures its own position by showing how poetry in its proper place may be the servant of truth, and how dangerous to truth it may be in its light-minded pretence of omniscience.

This dissatisfaction with art is not mere puritanic bitterness, not the caprice of a sectarian who sets himself against the common belief of the world. Plato is speaking for his age, not against it. He has no innate spite against art, he has the sincerest reverence for it, yet he cannot choose but bring it down from its height, because the age for which he is speaking knows that there are results to be gained which cannot be gained in the old ways, that the philosophers are working towards new ends of which the poets and image-makers have never dreamt. This is the way in which the

attitude of Plato towards art becomes intelligible. It seemed to him that art with all its excellence was not enough for the needs of a new age, and that it should not be allowed to claim more than its fair share of respect from men who were in search of truth, who were minded to try what they could make out themselves,

speaking and listening among themselves," without superstition or bondage to idols. Yet no one more than Plato recognised the value of poetry, of imagination, in the progress of the mind towards pure truth. He did not contradict himself in so doing. He denied that poetry was the whole of wisdom; he did not deny that it was the beginning of wisdom. It is the positive side of his theorising about art which has been best remembered. The polemic against the teaching of the poets was forgotten. The belief that the beauty of sensible things is in some way the image of an unseen beauty remained as an element of many later philosophies, the creed, of not a few poets. There is something in it which wins an assent that is not altogether founded on a critical investigation. The theory that the youth are to dwell in a place of pleasant sights and sounds, and to grow up unconsciously into the image of reason, that when reason comes they may welcome it as not alien-all this is heard at first as a story which ought to be true, which overcomes prejudice at the outset. The difficulty is to fix the details of the story. The listener wants to know more about the beauty and more about the reason, and know where, if anywhere, there is anything like this progress from the halfconscious life among beautiful things to the awakened life in reason.

This theory in the Republic and the similar theories in the Symposium and the Phædrus are the first

attempts at a philosophy of beauty. They describe in dark language a relation of the manifold beautiful things to the one unchangeable idea of beauty, and describe the progress of the soul from the beauty of the manifold things of sense to the unity of reason or of the idea of beauty. If there be such a progress, it is obviously in it that the secret of beauty lies. But how are we to conceive this progress? What is the idea in which it ends? The education which begins in art and ends in philosophy, how does this resemble or differ from other progresses of mind; for example, the progress of any mind, however ill educated or uneducated, from the unieal world of childhood to the more or less real world of common sense, or the historical progress of nations from myths to rationalism. Everyone knows that there are some progresses in which the mind rejects old fancies for new truths, turning in revolt against its old self; are there others, like this one of the Republic or this one of the Symposium, in which the old unreal things which are passed by are not falsehoods but images of the truth? And supposing that art stands in some such relation as this to philosophy, will it not be of some importance to know what is to become of the images when the reality is attained to, of the pleasant places of art when philosophy is perfected, of the manifold shapes of beauty when the one idea of beauty is revealed ? Are they to be rejected as Socrates rejected the wisdom of the elder moralists, as Plato rejected the art which was an imitation? Plato's own attitude towards art is a continual wavering between two opinions, which are both based on the one sure opinion that the poets do not at any rate contain all wisdom. Admitting this sure opinion, there are still two alternatives to Plato: sometimes he is for

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