given by nature and is present only in the greatest masters (xix 313, 332, 328).

4.-PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL

It has been mentioned several times that the artist, to be truly successful, must be a man of sound philosophical principles. The artist really obtains his materials from science and philosophy (xix 313). It has likewise been stated that the artist practices art without philosophizing about it. This implies naturally that there is a philosophy of the beautiful, a firmly grounded system of aesthetic principles. It is from this philosophy of art that the critic or the teacher of aesthetics draws his inspiration. There can be no good literary or artistic criticism without a definite philosophy of art (xix 419). The intimate relation between beauty and goodness and truth has often been mentioned. Just what this relation is it should be the province of a philosophy of aesthetics to search into and explain.

The beautiful as such, says Brownson, does not appeal to the intellect, but to the sensibility (xix 126), and by the latter term he means the emotional element in man. Such is the peculiar nature of man that the emotions are moved immediately upon the intuition or apprehension of the beautiful. But the apprehension must exist before the attraction or delight takes place. (Ibid.) It is therefore through the intellect, or rather the imagination, that beauty pleases and moves the will. The imagination is generally considered a mixed faculty; it belongs to the whole man, rational and animal. But the rational must of course always predominate; and beauty, to be true, will address the instinctive nature of man, the passions and emotions, only from the higher, the rational side (xix 319, 328). Beauty, then, although its appeal is to the emotional element, addresses no special faculty of aesethetic perception, though some claim it does, but rather the combined faculties of the rational soul. The emotional element is integral in man as well as the rational; but they are not separated. Man 'never acts as intellect and will without sensibility, or as sensibility without some affectation of reason' (xix 327); for man's soul is essentially one and rational. For this reason the man that beholds a work of art views it not only as an imaginative, but also as a reason

able and moral agent; and it cannot satisfy the demands of his soul, if it fails under the aspect of reason or will any more than if it fails under that of the imagination (xix 190).1

Thus we can understand how that beauty which charms only the irrational side of man's nature and leaves the faculty of reason unsatisfied degrades man and is not beauty in the strict sense (xix 190, 319). Since art must address all three relations of man's soul, understanding, will, and imagination, the object it presents must appeal to the reason as true, to the will as good, and to the imagination as beauty (xix 318-9). Beauty can therefore be conceded to be distinguishable from the true and the good, but in reality it is inseparable from them; and only that is properly the object of the imagination which is also rational and intelligible and belongs also to the order of the true and the good, is in fact identical with these. (Ibid.) Since beauty thus depends on truth, the error of those persons is obvious who claim that it depends solely on an internal state of the soul, that it is merely psychological and not ontological (xix 190, 419). Beauty is not self-sufficient, it needs a further prop. Only 'truth has a bottom of its own, and can stand by itself; but beauty cannot, for it exists only in the relation of the true to our sensibility or imagination, as a combination of intellect and sense' (xix 502). True beauty in this sense is therefore not merely a creation of the human soul; it is not merely subjective but objective. Although it appeals to what is 'common to all men, and inseparable and indistinguishable from the essential nature of man,' its true source is higher-the universal and the permanent, in other words, God (xix 190-1). Thus all beauty rests ultimately in the Supreme Being-who is at the same time the Supreme Good, the Supreme Truth, and the Supreme Beautiful-and is distinguishable from Him only as the splendor is from the resplendent (xix 420). The science of aesthetics itself cannot give an analysis that is final, but in turn rests on the science of being, ontology. 'A true science of art must have an ontological basis, and is not possible without a true and adequate ontology.' (Ibid.) If the latter is false, naturally the principles of art deduced from it will

1 By imagination Brownson sometimes seems to mean the emotional faculty in man, at times rightly called sensibility by him.

also be vitiated.

In order to obtain a proper understanding of the aesthetic principles so far unfolded, of the idea of beauty as it existed in Brownson, it will be necessary for us to examine the ontological principles held by him. Brownson's claim that the principles of aesthetics ought to be grounded on ontological principles, finds a full realization in his own thought. And we shall see on examining his ontology-chiefly as it is expressed in the essays under consideration-that it contains, if not a vindication, then at least an explanation of his theory of aesthetics.

CHAPTER III

ONTOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

In

Brownson's ontology centers around the problem of the ideal, i.e., of that notion of the universal and necessary being which is found in the minds of all men. He seeks to learn how man acquired the general notion of necessary being, what this ideal notion is, and how it is possible for thought to originate. the first place he thinks it evident that this idea cannot arise from sense-perception. The mind, when it operates upon the senses by the method of abstraction, can never arrive at the knowledge of a real and necessary being, an 'ens necessarium et reale,' for the simple and logical reason that such a conclusion would be greater than the premises warrant (xix 489). The less cannot contain the greater; sound logic forbids that a conclusion contain what is not contained in the premises. Hence those who assert that they obtain the notion of a necessary being from sense-perception, which presents only contingent things, err, not in the fact that they have the notion, but in the method in which they claim to get it. Without knowing it they really obtain the notion of necessary being by intuition, which offers the only logical solution of the problem (xix 489).

But another question immediately arises: By the intuition of what is man enabled to arrive at the notions that he possesses? Here opinions differ, though the solution again is only one. The exclusive ontologist says we obtain all knowledge through the intuition of simple being. He is right in saying that we have this intuition, but wrong in inferring that from the intuition of simple being we can deduce the idea of existences or creatures, for from it nothing can be derived but mere being (xix 489). In the same way the intuition of existences, or created beings, cannot lead us to the intuition of necessary being; 'it is strange that this should be disputed' (xix 488). Some try to avoid all difficulties by claiming for man the intuition simply of being as ens necessarium et reale, of an allperfect being of God, if you like (xix 487-8). must point out the insufficiency of the supposition.

Again we

This no

bearing on his view of aesthetics. In a general way we hinted at this when we gave Brownson's opinion of the connection between aesthetics and ontology, and it remains only to show the particular application as found in the writings under our consideration.

Whenever Brownson mentions true beauty, he refers not to what pleases the ordinary nature of man, but to that higher ideal which is found in 'the common and universal human nature.' This higher ideal, which is given to man by intuition of the formula Ens creat existentias, is identical with God and has all the qualities of the all-perfect, supreme Being. It is all-true, all-beautiful, all-good (xix 190, 420, 494). Since the expression of the beautiful as given in this ideal alone constitutes true art, all that was said above about the necessary identity of the beautiful with the true and the good becomes self-evident. Again art imitates the creative act that is expressed in the formula 'Being-God-creates existences,' and 'will be higher or lower as it takes this act, so to speak, on the side of being or on that of existences, and imitates the divine act in its primary revelation, or only as it is copied by existences in the order of second causes' (xix 423). Much of the modern art fails just here. It copies the creative act 'only at second hand, in its pale reflex in the order of second causes,' in the order of nature. For that reason it is feeble, lacks 'grandeur of conception, freedom and boldness in execution, and is admirable only in the petty details' (xix 423). Thus, according to Brownson, the ideal of beauty is given to man in the intuitive apprehension, the ideal of the sublime comes from the contemplation of the creative act, and art must be judged by its relation to the ontological formula, Ens creat existentias. Without this formula, on which he bases his ontology, his theory of art has no value. Hence the first step in examining the various views so far expressed will be to test the validity of Brownson's ontological principles.