Boas- The Arts in the Ency. (Art)

8/13/2019 Boas- The Arts in the Ency. (Art)

1/12

The Arts in the "Encyclopdie"

Author(s): George BoasSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 23, No. 1, In Honor of ThomasMunro (Autumn, 1964), pp. 97-107Published by: Wileyon behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/428142.

Accessed: 15/06/2013 08:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wileyand The American Society for Aestheticsare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend

access to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 157.92.4.12 on Sat, 15 Jun 201308:55:06 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=blackhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=tasfahttp://www.jstor.org/stable/428142?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/428142?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=tasfahttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black


2/12

GEORGE BOAS

T h e A r t s n t h Encyclopedie: n c y c o p e a

THE "ENCYCLOPIDIE" ATTEMPTED to ful-fill a double role. It was both to expoundand explain the interrelations among thevarious subjects known to men and also, as a"dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts,"to point out the bases and most essential de-tails of every science and art, be the latterliberal or, in the language of the time, me-chanical. D'Alembert's Discours prelimi-naire emphasized the principle that bothare closely linked, and it is likely that justas he believed one of the main problems ofphilosophy to be the relationship betweenwhat he called our sensations and our ideas,so he maintained that the arts in some waynot fully explained were an expression ofthe former and the sciences an expression ofthe latter. We shall try to make the im-portance of this apparently innocent remarka bit clearer.

Following the familiar route of the eight-eenth-century sensationalist, D'Alembertargued that our sensations first put us incontact with an external world and revealto us in the form of pleasure and pain thegood and the bad. We soon learn to seekthose things which will produce the goodand to avoid those which will lead us intoevil. This search reveals to us the existenceof our fellowmen and we soon discover thatonly by association with them can our pro-gram be carried out. But such an associationdepends upon the communication of ourideas and out of this necessity arises theformation both of societies and of language.Both then are to be judged by their utilityas instruments of self-preservation. Thisprinciple, which is enunciated on the third

page of the Discours, is, as far as possible ina work by so many hands, the guiding prin-ciple of the entire Encyclopedie.Primarily knowledge must center aboutthe problem of preserving the body, eitherby preventing evils which might happen toit or by eliminating those which have al-ready occurred. Such arts as agriculture andmedicine are cited as the bases not only ofthe survival of primitive societies but alsoas the sources of all knowledge, even ofthose which seem remote from utility. Totrace the development of the arts and sci-ences from such useful knowledge was aproblem which both D'Alembert and hissuccessors through the nineteenth centurytook as a central problem. It was one whichwe find later in Comte and might even bethought of as the kernel of what is nowknown as the sociology of knowledge. ButD'Alembert, who was a mathematician aswell as a social reformer and knew very wellthat some knowledge seemed to have nopractical value whatsoever, said,

The mind, accustomed to meditation and hungryfor the fruits thereof, must have found a sort ofstimulation in the discovery of the properties ofbodies that were simply curious, a discoverywhich knows no bounds. In fact, if a large num-ber of agreeable bits of knowledge sufficed toconsole one for the privation of a useful truth,one could maintain that the study of Nature,when it cannot satisfy our needs, gives us atleast a profusion of pleasures... Furthermore,amongst our needs and the objects of our pas-sions, pleasure holds one of the foremost posi-tions, and curiosity is a need for him who knowshow to think, above all when this restless desireis animated by a sort of annoyance at not beingable to be completely satisfied.

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/12

98 GEORGE BOASThus a great number of things were dis-covered simply because our curiosity con-cerning the useful cannot be assuaged. Buthere too we are likely to maintain that eventhe most apparently useless knowledge willsome day prove useful. This, says the mathe-matical physicist, is the source of that vastscience known as physics.The inconsistency of this point of viewis obvious. It is an inconsistency which iscommon to the historian who does not be-lieve that an idea can itself have a history,that societies may preserve instrumentswhich originate in utility long after theyhave become obsolete, that human beingssometimes deceive themselves into thinkingthat a symbol cannot change its reference.D'Alembert's weakness was either his re-fusal to grant that simple pleasure was itselfuseful or that the human mind early in itscareer found that logically consistent sys-tems turned out to be the more useful, inthe sense of applicable, than inconsistentcollections of ideas or random practices. Inany event, as early as the fourth page of hisDiscours, he turned his back on the princi-ple of utility and from then on spoke ofboth usefulness and amusement as the twinsources of knowledge. On this basis he wasable to reconstruct the rise of all the sci-ences. But there was a second conflict in hisideas. The Encyclopedie was an instrumentof public education. One of its main pur-poses was the reform of social abuses, mostof which, its writers believed, could becured by knowledge. D'Alembert was farfrom maintaining that all men were equalin their potentialities for knowledge; on thecontrary, he was emphatic in stating thatthere was such a thing as innate genius, agift of Nature and not of Art. Speaking ofthe orators, for whom he seems to have hadgreat respect, he said,

[Eloquence] which was created to speak to ourfeelings, as Logic and Grammar speak to theintellect, imposes silence on the reason itself,and the marvels which it works in the hands ofa single man upon a whole nation are perhapsthe most brilliant testimony to the superiorityof one man over another. What is most peculiaris that it has been believed possible to replaceso rare a talent by rules. That is almost as if itwere desired to reduce genius to precept. He whofirst maintained that we owed our orators to art

was either not of that number or was most un-grateful to nature.The sciences, whatever else they may be,are reflections of our ideas about real ex-

ternal objects. There is another side to ourreflections. We sometimes compose in ourimaginations beings similar to those whichare "the object of our direct ideas." This iswhat is known as the imitation of natureor the arts. At the head of the list comepainting and sculpture, for they most ade-quately imitate the objects which they rep-resent. Architecture follows, though the ob-ject which it imitates is not so obvious,being the symmetry and order which are tobe found in every natural object. Poetrycomes next, speaking to the imaginationrather than to the senses, and creatingrather than depicting its objects, "by thewarmth, the movement, and the life whichit bestows upon them." Finally there ismusic, which is addressed to both the imagi-nation and the senses, which in originprobably represented mere noises, butwhich evolved into the condition of alanguage capable of expressing the passionsor even sensations. For though the objectsof perception may differ as they are per-ceived by our different sense-organs,all per-ceptions originating in a single object arealike in the feelings of pleasure or dis-pleasure which they cause us to experience.What now is the distinction between thearts and the sciences?

Any system of knowledge to which it ispossible to give rules which are "positive,invariable, and independent of caprice oropinion" is an art, and thus several of oursciences are arts when looked at from thepoint of view of their applicability. Someof the arts need but manual skill for theirexecution; these are called mechanical arts.Others require the force of the intellect orsoul; these are called the liberal arts.D'Alembert here continues the Renaissancetradition in his terminology, a terminologywhich roughly corresponds to the moderndistinction between the arts and crafts, orthat between the fine and the useful arts.But he was far from believing that there isin principle any inferiority in the mechani-cal artsand indeed many of the most famous



4/12

The Arts in the Encyclopedie 99articles in the Encyclopedie were given overto them. His own words follow.

The mechanical arts, depending upon manualoperations and subservient, if I may be per-mitted the term, to a sort of routine, have beengiven over to those men whom prejudice hasplaced in the lowest class. Poverty which hasforced these men to devote themselves to thiswork, rather than taste and genius, then be-came a reason for looking down on them, sogreatly does poverty harm all that accompaniesit. But the free operations of the mind havebeen the portion of those who have thoughtthemselves in this respect Nature's darlings. Theadvantage, however, which the liberal arts haveover the mechanical arts, by the work which theydemand of the mind and by the difficulty ofexcelling in them, is sufficiently balanced by themuch greater utility which the mechanical artson the whole procure for us. It is this veryutility which has reduced them forcibly to purelymechanical operations, so that the practice ofthem may be made easier for a large number ofmen. But society, while rightly respecting thegreat geniuses which enlighten it, should in nowise debase the hands which serve it. The dis-covery of the compass is no less advantageousto the human race than the explanation of theproperties of its needle would be to physics.Finally, if we consider in itself the principle ofthe distinction of which we are speaking, howmany would-be scientists are there whose scienceis really only a mechanical art and what realdifference is there between a head stuffed withunordered facts, with neither practical employ-ment nor interconnections, and the instinct of anartisan reduced to mechanical execution?

There follows a eulogy of those patient in-ventors who in a long series of tiny stepshave succeeded in perfecting some of themachines, like the watch, which modernmen accept as a matter of course.Among the fine arts there are two classes,those whose rules may be codified withexactitude, such as the arts of grammar,logic, and ethics, and those for which norules are possible, except on the mechanicalside, for they spring from natural genius.That grammar, logic, and ethics are artsand not sciences, and that precise rules fortheir formulation are possible, are twoprinciples which lie at the very foundationof the Encyclopedie's program. It is un-likely that any Frenchman of the eighteenthcentury would have rejected the idea thatgrammar and logic were susceptible of pre-cise codification, but we must not forget thedisputes about the origin of language which

were current at the time and were to playso large a part in the polemics made by theTraditionalists against these very Encyclo-pedists. That language was a human inven-tion and neither the expression of auniversal and innate logical power nor a di-vine revelation was one of the reasons whysecular education, divorced from ecclesi-astical supervision, was a plausible program.That logic was an art rather than a scienceimplied in the long run that it could beimproved, that the scholastic method wasnot uniquely fruitful, and finally that itssystematic structure was in no sense of theword a faithful portrait of the structure ofthe universe. D'Alembert had already ex-pressed his doubts about the axiomaticmethod in mathematics. He had suggested,but with some caution, that formal reason-ing was always tautological, and had asked,

What are most of those axioms of which Ge-ometry is so proud, if not the expression of asimple and single idea by two different signs orwords? Has he who says that two and two arefour more knowledge than he who would besatisfied with saying that two and two are twoand two? Are not the ideas of whole, part, ofgreater and less, properly speaking the samesimple and individual idea, since one could nothave the one without the others presenting them-selves all together at the same time?

That being so, the utility of mathematicsis evident: it is the clarification of primitiveideas, and when one thinks of what the in-fluence of the geometrical method had beenin France, one begins to see the importanceof D'Alembert's suggestions. But the great-est shock to the reader must have been de-livered by the placing of ethics among thearts. For clearly if precise rules of being anddoing good could be given, virtue could betaught from a book, and in that case all thediscipline of religion become superfluous.1This view emerges more definitely whenD'Alembert discusses the three activities ofthe human being: history which is relatedto memory, philosophy which "is the fruitof the reason," and the fine arts which owetheir birth to the imagination-hereD'Alembert drops his previous principles ofclassification. Of these three, reason has firstplace, not in the sense of its occupying anotherwise undefined higher position in a



5/12

100 GEORGE BOAShierarchy but in the sense that it should andcan control the operations of the memoryand the imagination lest they fall into error.There is no denial of the fact that both theimagination, by which D'Alembert meansthe creative imagination, and memory areneeded by the reason if it is to have any-thing to reason about, but the notion thatwas to be expressed later, that an artist hadonly to let his imagination run freely, un-controlled by either observation of fact orplausibility, was entirely foreign to D'Alem-bert's manner of thinking. Yet he neversucceeded in absorbing what he calledgenius into his system and he never deniedthat the fine arts formed a class of humanactivities which could never be completelycodified except on the manual side. Weshall find the same conflict of ideas in thevarious articles concerning the arts whichoccur in the body of the work. Yet thatworks of art must follow the prescriptionsof the reasons never fails to appear when itis a question of criticism. Thus even in theExplication du systeme des connaissanceswe find that

poetry like Nature has its monsters; here must beclassified all the productions of the ungovernedimagination (I'imagination dereglee) and suchproductions can be found in all types of art.2With these general ideas in mind, wecan consider articles on aesthetics. The arti-cle on Art, unsigned, follows the generaloutline indicated above. But art is now de-fined somewhat differently.The birth of the sciences and the arts is due tohuman industry applied to the products of na-ture either by man's needs, his sense of luxury,his amusement or his curiosity.

The differences between the sciences andthe arts are purely formal. If the object isexecuted, then the collection and technicalarrangement of the rules according to whichit is executed are called an art. If it issimply contemplated, then the same rulesof contemplation are called a science."Thus," says the author, "Metaphysics is ascience and Ethics an art. The same is trueof Theology and Pyrotechnics." The dis-tinction between the liberal and mechanicalarts is that of the Discours preliminaireand the comments which follow on the

value of the mechanical arts might wellhave been extracted from it.Put on one pan of the balance the real ad-vantages of the most lofty sciences and themost honored arts and on the other those ofthe mechanical arts, and you will find that theesteem given to the one and to the other has notbeen allotted justly, and that people have praisedmuch more highly those men who busied them-selves with making us believe that we werehappy than those engaged in making us so.How fantastic are our judgments We ask thatmen engage in useful occupations and we despiseour useful men.

The rules are a useful supplement to ourbodily forces or to our mental weakness.There follow several pages on the positionwhich the mechanical arts ought, by rightof benefits conferred on society, to hold.The fine arts are barely mentioned.It is worth noting that in the second edi-tion of the Encyclopedie (1777), this articleis extended to great length by extracts andsummaries from Sulzer'sfamous AllgemeineTheorie der schoenen Kuenste (1771-1774).The liberal arts now emerge in society afterman's needs have been cared for. Pleasure,having been once felt, also became a need.But by a strange paradox those arts whichdemand the most intelligence, rare imagi-nation, genius, and a delicacy of perceptionwith which few men are endowed, havealmost all become luxury-arts,arts without which society could be happy andwhich have brought to society merely the pleas-ures of fantasy, habit, and opinion, or those ofa necessity far removed from the natural stateof men.This article also modifies to some extentthe theory of imitation. No longer is themain purpose of the liberal artist the imita-tion of nature but the choice of details andtheir composition and even, in the case ofmusic and poetry, the embellishment ofnature. Lest one think that the reader wasbeing induced into an acceptance of artfor art's sake, the article points out that innature beauty and ugliness are signs of goodand evil. Here we are in the period of thecome'die larmoyante: the writer might beDiderot commenting on Greuze.

What is there more essential than the bonds ofsociety for leading man to happiness and to the



6/12

The Arts in the Encyclopedie 101main object of his destiny? But these ties arelinked with the mutual pleasures which menprocure for one another. That is above all trueof the happy union by which man, still isolatedamid Society, takes to himself a companion whoenters into ownership of his goods, redoubleshis pleasures by sharing them, softens his sor-rows, and alleviates his grief. And where elsehas Nature lavished her adornments as on thehuman face? There are tied the indissoluble knotsof sympathy, the most irresistible charms ofbeauty are given to it as they should be if thehappiest of unions is to be brought about. Byher admirable and wise generosity Nature hasknown how to make expressive matter which isinsensible and dumb and to give it the imprintof the perfection of mind and heart, that is tosay, the most powerful of charms.

Needless to say, Sulzer concludes his para-graph with the simple remark that every-thing which is harmful in itself has beengiven by Nature a repulsive force whichproduces aversion.The artist, working in the fine arts,should therefore not merely reproduce thebeauties of Nature but should follow hercourse by embellishing everything which isuseful and making everything harmful asugly and repulsive as possible. To savespace, it is perhaps enough to say that thearts are to be put to the service of morality,and then men will be so attracted to thegood and repelled by evil that society willbe at its best. The fine arts become, inSulzer's phrase, auxiliary troops which, alasfor the metaphor, scatter flowers along theroad to human felicity, the agreeable per-fume of which attracts the traveler and in-vigorates his every step.3 It is clear that theemphasis of D'Alembert has shifted, as ifthe main purpose of the first edition hadbeen to point out the importance of thecrafts, which purpose, once achieved, couldthen be supplemented by lengthier remarksabout the so-called fine arts.One would imagine that if this theory ofSulzer's had been anticipated in the firstedition of the Encyclope'die, the article onbeauty would give some evidence of it. Onthe contrary, though there are several pageson the subject, there is no indication thatnatural or any other kind of beauty is asignpost to virtue. The perception of beautyis simply the perception of proportion andharmony in nature, a perception which in-

creaseswith an individual's knowledge. Theword knowledge must be understood lit-erally: the perception of order, proportion,and harmony are, in the words of the arti-cle, ideas "which pass through our senses toarrive in our understanding in the sameway as les notions les plus viles." Moreover,there is no absolute beauty identical in allbeautiful objects. Anticipating Delacroix,the article maintains that each species ofthing has its own kind of beauty. "Thereare several relative beauties and a tulip canbe beautiful or ugly as a tulip, beautiful orugly as a flower, beautiful or ugly as a plant,beautiful or ugly as a product of nature."The degrees of beauty are measured by thecomplexity of relationships perceived;wherefore a beautiful face is more beautifulthan a beautiful sky. But no two men per-ceive the same relationships. This article,since it is unsigned, should be by Diderot,but its emphasis upon the cognitive aspectsof the perception of beauty and particularlythe phrase indicating that it is perceivedin exactly the same way as the meanest no-tions would seem to indicate that D'Alem-bert was either its author or its inspiration.When it is compared with the article ongoodness (Bon), the contrast between thefirst and the second editions is more strik-ing. For here goodness is said to have twobranches, "one of which is the goodnesswhich is beautiful, the other the goodnesswhich is useful." The former is said toappeal to the mind (esprit), the latter tothe heart. The former wins our esteem andour admiration, the latter our tendresse.

A being which would be merely beautiful to uswould be merely esteemed and admired by us.Even God, God though He be, would in vainspread out before our minds all His infinite per-fections; He would never find the road to ourhearts, did He not show us His benefactions. Hisgoodness to us is His sole attribute which canwin the homage of our hearts. And what endwould the spectacle of His divinity serve, if Hedid not render us happy?4It would not have been difficult to take thestep of identifying the sense of goodnesswhich charms the heart with the sense ofbeauty. But the step was not taken.

In fact the authors of the various subjectsconcerning the arts maintain an uneasy bal-



7/12

102 GEORGE BOASance between what one might call the ra-tionalistic and sentimentalistic points ofview, differences which are sometimes asso-ciated in histories of philosophy with Vol-taire and Rousseau respectively. Thus inthe article Eclectisme (V, 276) Diderotwrote,

I shall make the passing remark that it is im-possible to achieve anything sublime in poetry,painting, eloquence, or music without enthusi-asm. Enthusiasm is a violent emotion (mouve-ment violent de 'dime) by which we are trans-ported into the heart of the objects which wewish to represent. At that time we see an entirescene take place in our imagination as if it wereexternal to us. It is external in fact, for as longas this illusion lasts, all things before us areannihilated, and our ideas are made real in theirplace. It is our ideas alone which we perceive.While our hands are touching material objects,our eyes are seeing animated beings, our earshearing voices. If this state is not one of madness,it is very close to it. That is why one needs greatgood sense to balance enthusiasm.

For that reason poets should always controlthemselves rationally. If they don't, therewill be a predominance of enthusiasm intheir works which will eventuate in some-thing gigantic, incredible, and enormous-a prophecy which would be fulfilled, onemight think, in some of the work of VictorHugo. But while Diderot is making thesestrictures upon enthusiasm, Cahusac5in hisarticle on that very subject maintains that italone gives life to the masterpieces of art,that it is not madness but reason itself. Itis a kind of emotion which accompaniesreason, an emanation, as he says, of theSupreme Being, who presumably is a cre-ative reason. Thus one can be an excellentpoet, a sublime musician without being con-sidered mad.This interplay between reason and en-thusiasm is paralleled by one between unityand variety. In the article on the passions(XII, 142), which did not appear until1765, we find Diderot dwelling on what hecalls the pleasures of the mind and theimagination, which are stimulated by thesight of beauty in the more general sense,that is, by the beauty of universal truths,general laws, secondary causes. This kind ofbeauty is of course a perception of the unitywhich underlies the variety of natural ob-jects. We are first confronted by an enor-

mous collection of things which seem hope-lessly unorganized. But as soon as we seethat they are all subject to a single law, areordered in accordance with an underlyingpattern, grasped only by the reason, we arestruck by their beauty. This, says Diderot,is exemplified in all experience, in music bythe variety of sounds organized accordingto the laws of harmony, in architecture bythe balance between a boring uniformityand an extreme variety qui fait le goiutgotique, in sculpture by the harmony be-tween the parts of a human body which inthemselves are various. The unity, it wouldseem, is the gift of reason, the variety ofsensory perception. It is very tempting tocorrelate these remarks with those ofD'Alembert in the Discours preliminaireon the rules which are always mechanicaland the element contributed by geniuswhich is above instruction. The temptationshould be resisted, for Diderot does notsay, nor does he imply, that there is any-thing superrational in the perception ofthe underlying unity.In Diderot's article the unity is one ofscientific law paralleled by what is vaguelycalled balance and harmony of perceptualelements. Jaucourt,6 who wrote many ofthe articles on the special arts, in his articleon La Belle Nature (XI, 42 if.), points outthat what the artist is seeking is not a simplereproduction of natural things but an em-bellishment of nature. Like Parrhasius inthe conversation with Socrates, the artistselects from various objects their mostbeautiful parts and unites them togetherin a single whole. Thus he follows naturein his selection of detail but improves uponnature in bestowing them upon one body.Though this article appeared at the sametime as Diderot's on the passions, theeditor apparently overlooked this discrep-ancy of opinion. Moreover, Jaucourt alsomoved away from D'Alembert's theory ofthe relation between the arts and crafts, forhe maintains in a brief historical sketch ofthe rise of the fine arts that at the time whenmen were solely occupied with preservingtheir life and were only husbandmen andsoldiers, there were no fine arts. It was onlyafter men grew tired of mutual maleficenceand learned that happiness is to be found



8/12

The Arts in the Encyclopedie 103only in virtue and justice, that societiesarose under law and men gave themselvesover to the pleasures of innocence. Thesepleasures were found in singing and dancing.In the third stage of history some geniuscast his eyes on Nature and then upon him-self. Jaucourt says,

He recognized that he had an innate taste forthe relations which he had observed; that theygave him an agreeable emotion. He understoodthat the order, the variety, the proportion dis-played with such brilliance in the works of na-ture should not only elevate us to a knowledgeof the supreme intelligence, but that they mightbe looked upon also as lessons in conduct, di-rected to the profit of human society.Here is the union of the agreable and utile,in its clearest expression. Neither is theagreable necessarily utile, nor the utilenecessarily agreable. Moreover, one cannotsay how man discovers the useful which canbe united with the agreeable, for the vagueword experience is scarcely of any help.These terms were apparently clear enoughat the time to require no further definition.When one turns to comments which in-volve criticisms of specific works of art orarts, the same swing between what wouldhave been called emotion and reason isemphasized. Thus Jaucourt in the articleTableau (XV, 804) argues against allegori-cal pictures on the ground that picturesshould appeal to the mind through the eyes,whereas allegorical pictures please the eyesonly after the mind has guessed theirenigma. But in an earlier part of this articlehe maintains that many of the beauties ofa picture can be discovered only after longstudy. And artist, he says, demands that apicture observe the three unities: that itrepresent (1) only what is taking place at agiven moment, (2) what can be easilygrasped from a single point of view, (3)what is enclosed in the space which thepicture seems to cover. This is the applica-tion of "good sense" to pictorial composi-tion, demanding the acceptance of certainprinciples which are prior to painting.Their perception is thus analogous to thatof the allegorical principle, and one nomore appeals to the mind before appealingto the eye than the other. Again, in thearticle on Narration, Mallet7 returns to

Cicero for his standards and points out (1)that one should follow the temporal order,using only common and appropriate terms,should recount the action without inter-ruption and thus achieve clarity; (2) thatone should include nothing contrary tocommon sense or received opinion, shouldselect precise details, be simple and sincere,and thus achieve probability; (3) that oneshould follow Horace and not begin thestory of the Trojan War gemino ab ove, inother words, be brief; and (4) that oneshould achieve agrement by using agreeableand gentle expressions, avoiding hiatus anddissonance, choosing for the subject-matterdeeds which are new, great, and unexpected,embellishing the diction with tropes andfigures, keeping up the suspense, and excit-ing-Mallet says nothing about catharsishere-the emotions of sadness or joy, terroror pity. What now has become of the moralquestion? Finally we discover the same atti-tude in regard to such an art as the opera,which Saint-Evremond had called "a wildunion of poetry and music in which the poetand the musician mutually torture eachother" (Opera, XI, 494). But, says Jaucourt,the author of this article, since music is auniversal language, it will express the sameemotions to all men. If it seems strange thata man should describe his sadness in musicand then kill himself while singing, oneshould remember that the essence of singingis simply an arrangement of differentsounds, and it will seem no more extraor-dinary that the sounds of a hero in anopera be sung to measure than that a princein a play speak to his counselors in verse.It is thus assumed by Jaucourt that his taskis to make opera seem reasonable. So inhis article Duo (V, 166), Rousseau tries tomake sense out of duets, pointing out thatnothing is less natural than to see two peo-ple talking both together for a certain time,either to say the same thing or to contradicteach other, without ever listening or reply-ing to what the other has to say. And evenif this might be granted in certain cases,it is certain that it should never happenin a tragedy, in which such lack of decorumis fitting neither to the dignity of the per-sons speaking nor to the upbringing whichthey are supposed to have. He at once as-



9/12

104 GEORGE BOASsumes that he must propose some solutionfor this problem and maintains that oneshould treat the duet as a dialogue and havethe singers sing alternately. When they haveto sing together, they should do so in thirdsand sixths. He says,

One should preserve the harshness of dissonances,the piercing and magnified sounds, the fortis-simo of the orchestra for moments of transportand disorder in which the actors seem to forgetthemselves and carry their frenzy into the soulof every sensitive spectator, making him feel thepower of harmony soberly composed.But such moments should be infrequent.For otherwise they will exceed the boundsof nature and whatsoever "is beyond natureno longer affects us."But the most unmistakable example ofthe use of good sense as a critical principleis found in the article Poeme lyrique byGrimm. He opens with a long tirade againstthe French opera because of its silliness,its lack of naturalness. After pointing outwhat he believes to be an excessive use ofthe ballet in such spectacles, he says,"French opera has become a spectacle inwhich all the happiness and all the unhap-piness of the characters are reduced towatching people dance around." The trou-ble, he continues, is that an attempt hasbeen made to combine in a single work ofart two ways of imitating nature, an attemptwhich is contrary both to good sense andtrue taste. He asks,

Would not such be a barbarity worthy of thatgothic period in which the front of a picture wasexecuted in relief, in which a beautiful statuewas daubed with paint to give it black eyes orchestnut hair? Should it be permitted to confusetwo different principles in the same poem and tocarry them out half by people who say thatthey can speak only in song and half by peoplewho pretend to have no other language than thatof gesture and movement?The best solution, he suggests in anticipa-tion of Fokine's production of Le Coq d'orin New York in the 1920's, is to have allthe action performed by dancers and to con-sider the singers simply as musical instru-ments, parts of the orchestra.8

Thus our castrati who are usually such excellentsingers and such mediocre actors would bemerely speaking instruments placed in the or-chestra.... They would do the singing with a

superiority from which nothing could distractthem, while an accomplished mime would do theacting with the same warmth and the same ex-pressiveness.Here "good sense" would seem to mean akind of consistency of technique, not dis-similar to Ruskin's truth of material. Thetechnical problem of the artist would ap-pear to be the execution of his design in asingle medium. He should recognize thelimitations of that medium and never at-

tempt to go beyond them. But he shouldalso refrain from using mixed media. Thisis precisely what the Baroque artists haddone and that for which they were mostharshly criticized by the academic critics ofthe nineteenth century as well as by theirNeo-Classic predecessors. Objections topolychrome sculpture, to the supplanting ofgrace by passion, to the introduction ofviolent movement into a material whichappears to be, let us say, essentially heavy,were all based on the pseudo-logical princi-ple that one could deduce the legitimateaim of an art from the material which ituses. That it might also be legitimate toattempt to escape from such limitationsseemed impossible to critics of this sort. Itwas clear too that such an escape wouldusually, if not always, be made by mixingtechniques or materials, for instance, bymixing the technique of painting with thatof sculpture, of poetry with that of music.Consequently the two principles hung to-gether historically, if not logically, and theapplication of what Grimm and his fellowscalled good sense in effect meant both resig-nation to the limitations of one's materialsand consistency in technique.It was undeniable that if artists in eachof the arts had accepted the prescriptions ofthe Encyclope'die, the task of the criticwould have been much easier. Works of artwould then fall into well-defined classes,each of course with its clear differentia,and the definition of the class would pro-vide a criterion of excellence for its mem-bers. It would not be expected that anymember of an artistic class would perfectlyexemplify the class-traits, for even Aristotlewas willing to admit that Nature herselfhad not succeeded in bringing that about inher productions. But the class-traits would



10/12

The Arts in the Encyclopddie 105at least stand for an aim which the artistwould strive to reach, though doomed toapproximate it only. In other words, sucha critical theory would bring works of artinto line with the subject-matters of scienceand one could apply all the various devicesof logic to the exercises of one's criticalfaculties. One could deduce by reasoningalone and prior to looking at any work ofart just what its purpose should be and onehad a measure of excellence all ready foruse implicit in one's logical method. Thatwas quite in line with the general programof the Encyclopedie. It would tend to in-duce artists to conform to rules which weresupposedly analyses of generic characters,and where the program was applied, as itwas in some of the historical paintings ofDavid and later those of Ingres and hisschool, it produced a series of works whichwere about as similar to one another asthe productions of several human beingscould be.There was always a fringe of differenceand that difference was excused not merelyon the basis of personal peculiarities but onthe basis of genius which, as we have seen,rose above all rules. We have here obviouslyprecisely what we had in Plato, where inthe Phaedrus (245) he has Socrates say thatthe poet who would gain admittance to thetemple of the Muses through techne alone,without the aid of inspiration, will findthe door closed before him. Though thisconflict may seem to us the abandonmentof the attempt to formulate a rationalaesthetics, and indeed it does prevent sucha formulation, it is analogous to Aristotle'sadmission that pure science never quite fitsthe material world, and one may hazardthe guess that the reason why the Encyclo-pedists made no attempt to reconcile geniusand enthusiasm with the rules was simplythe historical reason that they were so usedto the conflict that it presented no problemto their minds. The manual work of theartist, it had been said, can be submittedto rules; his imagination escapes them.It would be folly to try to harmonizethese various conflicts. In the first place,some of them were resident in the tradi-tional ways of thinking of the time, othersarose because of the variety of authors who

were responsible for the articles printed.In the second place, such dualities presentlogical problems only if one has alreadyassumed the exclusive legitimacy of unity.There is nothing inconsistent in concludingafter a thorough investigation of things thatthey arise from the interplay of two or evenmore causes. We are so accustomed to uni-tary theories of the origin of works of artthat pluralistic theories seem not merelyuntrue but logically fallacious. It is clearlynot the business of a historian to substanti-ate the theories whose history he is describ-ing and I shall make no attempt to writean apologia of this one. But it should beunderstood that the editors of the Encyclo-pedie were more interested in observingthe practice of artists, in explaining whatthey had observed, and in integrating theirpractice into the total pattern of society,than in deducing an aesthetics from meta-physics in the manner later to be followedby Hegel at a time when artists were alreadybeginning to assert their complete inde-pendence from society and its claims. Con-scious of the social duties of artists, theysaw no reason why they should not empha-size them. At the same time they wereconscious of the technical problems of ful-filling those duties. Thus the fusion be-tween good sense and good taste. Jaucourtsays (XV, 33),

Good sense and good taste are but a single thingconsidered as faculties. Good sense is a certainrectitude (droiture) of soul which sees the trueand the just and is drawn to it. Good taste isthis same rectitude by which the soul sees thegood and approves of it. The difference betweenthem is found only on the side of their objects.Good sense is ordinarily restricted to things whichare sensible, good taste to more refined and ele-vated objects. Thus good taste, understood in thisway, is nothing but good sense refined and di-rected towards delicate and elevated objects. Andgood sense is but good taste limited to moresensible and material objects. The true is theobject of taste as well as the good; and the mindhas its taste as well as the heart.

This being so, one might conclude that artdid not grow out of any special aestheticfaculty and that the conflict between knowl-edge and emotion, which was symbolizedin the two words, mind and heart, was re-duced to a minimum. It also meant thatthe function of the artist was the presenta-



11/12

106 GEORGE BOAStion of the truth. This presentation couldbe successful only if the artist had bothgood sense and good taste, and since bothdepend on accurate perceptions, technicalrules could be devised and followed.9 Butnowhere is there any suggestion that learn-ing the rules will take the place of geniusor insight.In general, then, one might conclude thatthe aesthetics of the Encyclopedie was basedupon the following principles.1. All the arts, fine as well as useful,serve a useful purpose.2. That purpose is to make men morallybetter.3. They accomplish this purpose by pre-senting virtue agreeably and vice disagreea-bly.4. But only a man of keen perceptioncan see in nature those things which arefitted to accomplish this end.5. Training in technique is necessary toenable him to put into artistic form thethings which he perceives.It will be observed that no training seemsneeded for the perceiver of works of art.On the contrary, it appears that the spec-tator will spontaneously get the point of apicture or poem or any other work of artsimply by looking at it. Moreover, therewere frequent attempts made by the editorsto insert articles on new arts which couldproduce new pleasures for human beings.One of the most interesting of these is thearticle on the color-organ (Clavecin ocu-laire) by Diderot. This instrument, inventedby Castel, a Jesuit, in 1725, is described indetail. The rules of its harmonies, its scale,its relation to the auditory clavecin are alldescribed, and its purpose is given as merelythat of "giving to the soul through the eyesthe same agreeable sensations of melody andharmony... as the ordinary clavecin givesthrough the ear." Not a word is said of itsmoral effect. Again, in D'Alembert's arti-cle on schools of painting (Ecole) we find apassage on the decline of painting in Italyin the eighteenth century. One might imag-ine that he would attribute this supposeddecline to a lack of moral earnestness onthe part of such artists as Tiepolo, Cana-letto, and Guardi. But on the contrary, not

a word is said about the social influence ofsuch painters and the matter is left sus-pended in doubt. D'Alembert says,Might it not be rather a caprice on the part ofnature which, as far as talent and genius areconcerned, delights in opening from time totime new mines, which she then closes tightly forseveral centuries? Several of the great paintersof Italy and Flanders lived and died in poverty;some were persecuted, far from being encour-aged. But nature laughs at both the injustice offortune and of men. She produces rare geniusesamid a people of barbarians, as she brings tobirth precious plants amid savages who knownothing of their virtues.

This is far from the kind of praise whichJaucourt pours out on Poussin for his Etin Arcadia Ego,10 the same Jaucourt whoin his article on modern painting (XII, 275)says that painting in Italy in 1450 was stillcrude and gross, for the artists were excel-lent draughtsmen but merely copied naturewithout ennobling her. He says,

No one had as yet imagined the beauty one mightfind in nude bodies in action; no one had dis-covered anything about chiaroscuro; no one knewanything about aerial perspective or the lovelymovement of drapery. Painters knew how to ar-range figures in a picture without knowing any-thing of how to dispose them according to therules of pictorial composition so well known to-day.

All this is simply technical criticism. Againwhen Jaucourt grows enthusiastic, indeedecstatic, over the work of the later Lom-bard School, Correggio, Parmigiano, theCarracci,Guido Reni, and their fellows, thebest he can do is to point out the charm,the grace, the originality, the poetry of thesemen without a word about their morallessons. And finally when he comes to speakof the Venetian School (V, 330), he throwsup the sponge. He says,It is useless to debate the question of the primacyof color or drawing or expression [three of thefour criteria of Roger de Piles] never will peopleof opposing views agree on this question ofprimacy which is always judged in relation tooneself. If one has more or less voluptuous vision,one will be more or less sensitive to color; ifone's heart is more or less easily moved by pic-torial poetry, one will rank the colorist above thepoet or the poet above the colorist. The greatestpainter in our opinion, as Abbe du Bos has said



12/12

The Arts in the Encyclopddie 107so well, "is he whose works give us most pleasure.Men are not equally affected by color and ex-pression, because their senses are not equallydelicate, although they always imagine thatothers are affected in the same way as they are."It would be absurd to extend this dis-cussion and to heap up examples whichwould illustrate the discrepancy betweenthe aesthetic principles which would seem tobe basic, allowing for a certain waveringhere and there, and the actual critical judg-ments made by the authors of the variousarticles. One will find, I think, that in gen-eral these writers, whether they are discuss-ing painting or poetry or architecture orany other art, forget the program whichD'Alembert had laid down in his Discours

preliminaire and simply consider the pleas-ures which works of art can produce in anonlooker as these pleasures are stimulatedby a perception of technical skill. This isquite in keeping with what one can onlyloosely call the technological interest ofthe Encyclopedists. They were on the wholemen who were captivated by the materialprogress which could be made in society,if only people could be taught to guidetheir manual skill by applying scientificknowledge to the solution of human prob-lems. But they yielded to the very humaninterest in virtuosity and the intrinsic valueof the processes of artistry seems at times, ifnot always, to have captivated them morethan the moral value of works of art. Thisis of course only a rough generalization,for it must not be forgotten that the variouswriters differed and that before the Encyclo-pedie was finished numerous schisms oc-curred. It is not hard, however, to seeemerging from the program as describedthus freely the duality of such a man as

David, the David of the fetes revolution-naires and the David of the portraits.The Johns Hopkins University

1It should not be forgotten that la morale in-cluded economics, politics, and jurisprudence, de-fined respectively as la science des devoirs del'homme en famille, celle des devoirs de l'hommeen socie'te, et celle des devoirs de l'homme seul(Encycl. (1751), I, xlix). All translations in textare mine.2Cf. Diderot's description of two paintings,one made according to the rules, the other by agenius, in the article on Manicheeism (X, 25). Itoccurs in a discussion of Leibniz.sThough the comedie larmoyante and thetragedie bourgeoise flourished in the middle ofthe century, Diderot's Fils naturel, written in1757, was not publicly performed until 1771.Signed X. I have used the English mind foresprit, but the Encylopedists were only too awareof its ambiguity. In the article Esprit (V, 973)Voltaire wrote, "Ce mot...est un de ces termesvagues, auxquels tous ceux qui les prononcentattachent presque toujours des sens differents. Ilexprime autre chose que jugement, genie, gouit,talent, penetration, etendue, grace, finesse; et ildoit tenir de tous ces merites: on pourrait ledefinir, raison ingenieuse."Louis de Cahusac (d.1759), author of variousworks on poetry, drama, and the dance.6Louis de Jaucourt (1704-1779), studied atCambridge and Leyden, a practicing physicianas well as a writer.

7Edme Mallet (1713-1751), author of severalbooks on literature and history.8 A practice which approximates that of Wag-ner.9Cf. the articles Passion (peinture) (XII, 150),by Jaucourt based on Watelet; Sujet (XV, 644),also by Jaucourt; Drame (V, 105), by Mallet; Elo-quence (V, 529), by Voltaire; Fable (VI, 346), byMarmontel; Choreographie (III), by Goussier; Clair-obscur (III, 499), by Landois, among others. These

articles deal almost exclusively with the technicalside of artistry.10Art. Paysagiste (XII, 212).

Date post:	04-Jun-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	vuelvelonganiza
View:	217 times
Download:	0 times

Boas- The Arts in the Ency. (Art)

Documents