The Aesthetic Experience Aesthetics and History. By Bernard Berenson. (Constable.
us.) OLD admirers of Mr. Berenson's early publications, say Florentine Painters and The Golden Urn, may gladly recognise in this latest book his two characteristics, a fine art-scholarship, deepened now and widened, but still illuminated by living enthusiasm, and an agreeable tang of mischief only mellowed by time. In his introduction he says, " I wish indeed that I had contradicted myself more." He has, in fact, only confessed to " seeming " contradictions, but at least, if one should " seem " to differ, one will also be either agreeing or remedying an oversight. We are, then, not to expect any very rigid logic or very precise use of terms—such as value, intuition, ideation —in fact not an aesthetic philosophy at all. What we get/ is the most solid material for founding or criticising such philosophy, a material abounding in media axiomata admirably grounded. The two purposes of the book ae, first, to claim that a very powerful influence on the development of our race is that of artists, and, second, to discover what styles of art'may use that power most favourably for the " civilisation and humanising " of mankind. The latter attempt furnishes a refutation of the theory expounded in T. E. Hulme's Speculations, though the book is not mentioned, Mr. Berenson preferring to go to its sources. This theory was that there are two different kinds of art, one Mediterranean, Hellenist, Renais- sance, humanist, where the forms are flowing and vital, the other Eastern or primitive, where they are geometrical and abstract. The former puts perfection in the human 'plane, the second " where it should be," in an unchanging other world.
To me Mr. Berenson's criticism of this preference is substantially conclusive, though it suffers, in comparison with Hulme's terse lucidity, by some rich diffusiveness and consequent obscurity of logic. It consists in a version of the " Empathy " theory—that we delight, as Wordsworth says, to contemplate our own passions and volitions in the goings-on of the universe, and are habitually compelled to create them where we do not find them. At first this version still seems nearer to the variant of " Vernon Lee " than to Lipps' original doctrine, concentrating rather on localised sensations of breathing, grasp or muscular effort than on emotions, but this is later modified in a more Crocean sense.
The title of the fourth chapter, " History," seems to promise a support for the first thesis propounded, that artists exercise a powerful influence on the development of our race. But we are disappointed ; for its subject is hardly distinguishable from that of the fifth, " Art-History Specifically," being largely devoted to the methodology of the history of art. These two chapters seem less carefully written or corrected for the press than the earlier. The book is briefly summarised on the last page :— " History is the story of how man is being humanised.
" Art-history is the story of what art has contributed to that end. " No history can be written without axiomatic values, consciously manifested, or unconsciously assumed. " Values cannot exist without a valuer. We know no valuer but man."
For the fourth aphorism I should have preferred to say less con- troversially, " We have no experience of values except in life." And I feel that we have a more worthy summary on pp. 102-3.
"The subject, the illustration, is so necessary to the arts of visual representation, that without it these arts cannot exist. Without spiritual significance the work of art may sink to the level of an object engaging the interest of the wine taster. . .. There are those who love a picture as they love a friend, a child, a landscape, a noble action, the heroic dead, as they love magnificence, simplicity, dreaming and musing and talking, but each in a distinct way, not to be confused one with another. It may be argued that they alone fully and wholly appreciate the work of art, even if they are more Interested in the content than the form, without thinking of either."
In his mischievous mood Mr. Berenson professes a " fear of trespassing on the preserves of the incorporated schoolmen," but I could wish he had ventured to explore them more deeply. I have never been prosecuted for my own excursions ; and, if he had disregarded the notice-boards, I think he would have found behind the law of trespass less of a corporation than a chimaera. I should have wished to be made sure whether, like Plato, he really thinks of aesthetic experiences as a potent means of educating mankind for a political and social Utopia. or, which I believe he does, as a valuable end in itself, not as means only but as one constituent of the good life, sometimes conflicting with others. If he had made this clear he might have been more sympathetic with Croce's " expressionism " and found a half-truth, to which his own is com- plementary, even in Hulme. But I am deeply grateful for his book as it stands, indispeiAable both for art criticism -and for the
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