Chapter III: Part I: On the Nature of the Work of Art

§ I.

Object of this Study--The Method employed--The search for Aggregates on which the Work of Art depends.

First Aggregate, the Entire Production of the Artist--Second Aggregate, the School to which he belongs; examples, Shakespeare, Rubens. Third Aggregate, Contemporary Society; examples, Greece, Spain, in the Sixteenth Century.

Conditions determining appearance and character of Works of Art; examples, Greek Tragedy, Gothic Architecture, Dutch Painting, French Tragedy--Comparison of Climate and Natural Productions with a Moral Temperature, and its effect--Application of this method to Italian Art.

Objects and method of Æsthetics--Opposition of the Historic and Dogmatic Methods--Laws--Sympathy for all Schools--The Analogy between Æsthetics and Botany, and between the Natural and the Moral Sciences 19

§ II.

What is the Object of Art--The Research Experimental and not Ideal--Comparisons and Eliminations of Works of Art sufficient.

Division of the Arts into two groups--On the one hand, Painting, Sculpture and Poesy; and, on the other, Architecture and Music. First group--Imitation apparently the end of Art--Reasons for this derived from ordinary experience, and from the lives of great men; Michael Angelo, Corneille--Reasons derived from the History of Art and Literature; Pompeii and Ravenna--Classic Style under Louis XIV., and Academic Style under Louis XV 39

§ III.

Exact Imitation not the end of Art--Illustrations derived from Casting, Photography, and Stenography--Comparison between Denner and Van Dyck--Certain Arts purposely Inexact--Comparison between Antique Statues and Draped Figures in the Churches of Naples and Spain--Comparison between Prose and Verse--The Two Iphigenias of Goethe

§ IV.

Relationships of Parts the true object of Imitation--Illustrations derived from Drawing and Literature . . 58

§ V.

A Work of Art not confined to Imitating Relationships of Parts--Modification of the Principle in the greatest Schools; Michael Angelo, Rubens--The Medici Tomb--The 'Kermesse.'

Definition of Essential Character: Examples of the Lion and the Netherlands.

Importance of Essential Character; Nature imperfectly expressing it, Art supplies her place--Flanders in the time of Rubens, and Italy in the time of Raphael.

Artistic Imagination--Spontaneous Impressions, and their power of Transformation.

Retrospect; successive steps of the Method, and Definition of a Work of Art 62

§ VI.

Two Parts in this Definition--How Music and Architecture enter into it--Opposition of the first and second group of Arts--The first copies Organic and Moral Dependencies; the second combines Mathematical Dependencies.

Mathematical Relationships perceived by the sense of sight--Different classes of these Relationships--Principle of Architecture.

Mathematical Relationships perceived by the sense of Hearing--Different classes of these Relationships--Principle of Music--The second Principle of Music, Analogy of the Sound and the Cry--Music, on this side, enters into the first group of Arts.

The definition given is applicable to all the Arts 83

§ VII.

The Value of Art in Human Life--Selfish Acts for the preservation of the Individual--Social Acts tending to preserve the Species--Disinterested Acts having for object the contemplation of Causes and Essentials--Two ways for attaining this end; Science and Art--Advantages of Art 89