436 .ESTHETICS 



It is, therefore, the duty of a general science of art to take account 

 of the broad facts of art in all its relations. ^Esthetics is not capable 

 of this task, if it is to have a determined, self-complete, and clearly 

 bounded content. We may no longer obliterate the differences 

 between the two disciplines, but must rather so sharply separate 

 them by ever finer distinctions that the really existent connections 

 become clear. The first step thereto has been taken by Hugo Spitzer. 

 The relation of earlier to current views is comparable to that between 

 materialism and positivism. While materialism ventured on a pretty 

 crude resolution of the spiritual into the corporeal, positivism set 

 up a hierarchy of forces of nature, whose order was determined 

 by the relation of dependence. Thus mechanical forces, physico- 

 chemical processes, the biological and the social-historical groups 

 of facts, are not traced back each to the preceding by an inner con- 

 nection, but are so linked that the higher orders appear as dependent 

 on the lower. In the same way is it now sought to link art methodo- 

 logically with the aesthetic. Perhaps even more closely, indeed, since 

 already aesthetics and the science of art often play into each other's 

 hands, like the tunnel- workers who pierce a mountain from opposite 

 points, to meet at its centre. 



Often it so happens, but not invariably. In many cases research is 

 carried to an end, quite irrespectively of what is going on in other 

 quarters. The field is too great, and the interests are too various. 

 Artists recount their experiences in the process of creation, con- 

 noisseurs enlighten us as to the technique of the special arts; socio- 

 logists investigate the social function, ethnologists the origin, of art; 

 psychologists explore the aesthetic impression, partly by experiment, 

 partly through conceptual analysis; philosophers expound aesthetic 

 methods and principles; the historians of literature, music, and 

 pictorial art have collected a vast deal of material - - and the sum 

 total of these scientific inquiries constitutes the most substantial 

 though not the greatest part of the published discussions, which, 

 written from every possible point of view, abound in newspapers and 

 magazines. "There is left, then, for the serious student, naught but 

 to resolve to fix a central point somewhere, and thence to find out 

 a way to deal with all the rest as outlying territory " (Goethe). 



Only by the mutual setting of bounds can a united effect be pos- 

 sible from the busy whirl of efforts. Contradictory and heterogeneous 

 facts are still very numerous. He who should undertake to construct 

 thereof a clear intelligible unity of concepts, would destroy the 

 energy which now proves itself in the encounters, crossing of swords, 

 and lively controversies of scholars, and would mutilate the fullness 

 of experience which now expresses itself in the manifold special 

 researches. System and method signify for us: to be free from one 

 system and one method. 



