CRITIQUE OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT 185 



ascend from heterogeneous structures^ which are elementary or relatively 

 simple and natural, to their superstructure of a polyphonic type, which is 

 relatively complex and artificial. "^ 26 Por Taine, the facts are complex, 

 but the universal elements in them, which determine their degrees 

 of value, are simple; for Lalo, 'Aesthetic value is the degree of 

 Prdgnanz of a superstructure.' 27 



Does this indicate that both these approaches are arbitrary, 

 and that other hierarchies are equally possible and equally 

 valuable? More probably, these two types of scales, one advocating 

 simplicity and the other complexity, represent the two perennial 

 possibilities of Classicism and Romanticism. Despite his strong Roman- 

 tic streak, 28 many of Taine's basic criteria in The Ideal in Art, at 

 least until the Hegelian concluding section, were classical and 

 even Aristotelian, starting as he did from a conception of art as 

 'imitation of reality'. Thus, Taine was trying to strike a balance 

 between the Classical and the Romantic, by means of a formula 

 which combined both the concreteness and the universality 

 characteristic of natural types. The concrete is characterized by 

 complexity and development; the universal, by simplicity and 

 force; and Taine fused both in his description of a masterpiece as 

 a work in which 'the greatest force receives the greatest 

 development'. 29 



We believe that such a combination, organically conceived, 

 would indeed provide a truly fundamental and all-embracing 

 criterion for aesthetic value. It supplies the philosophic basis, to 

 cite a familiar example, for Coleridge's praise of Shakespeare's 

 'union and interpenetration of the universal and particular', 30 

 and cuts under more superficial classifications: 'A neo-classicist 

 like Pope, in The Rape of the Lock, will be as particular as any 

 romantic poet, only about different things, as Hazlitt so well 

 describes his poetry, not about tempests but about tea-cups. All 

 great poetry would seem to be alike in respect to the concrete and the 

 universal ; it is a balance.' ^^ 



Finally, this formula recalls the issues raised earlier by the 

 metaphysics of Absolute Idealism. 32 As in the sciences, both the 

 concrete individual and the abstract universal serve chiefly as 

 limits, and thus perfect 'concrete universality' might be taken as 

 indicating the unattainable ideal towards which all great works of 

 art may be said to strive. Also, the concept gains in usefulness by 

 being seen as another instance of the more general principle of 

 polarity: neither extreme, either of particularity or generality. 



