A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF HELLENISM

 

4. Aesthetics.

 

The passages devoted by Plotinus to aesthetics are not lengthy, but among ancient writings that touch upon the general theory of beauty and the psychology of art, they are of exceptional value. In his early book "On the Beautiful," where he closely follows Plato, he at the same time indicates more than one new point of view. A brief summary will make this clear.

Beauty, he first argues, cannot depend wholly on symmetry, for single colors and sounds are beautiful. The same face too, though its symmetry remains, may seem at one time beautiful, at another not. And, when we go beyond sensible beauty, how do action and knowledge and virtue, in their different kinds, become beautiful by symmetry? For, though the soul in which they inhere has a multiplicity of parts, they cannot display a true symmetry like that of magnitudes and numbers.

The explanation of delight in sensible beauty, so far as it can be explained, is that when the soul perceives something akin to its own nature it feels joy in it; and this it does when indeterminate matter is brought under a form proceeding from the real being of things. Thus beauty may attach itself to the parts of anything as well as to the whole. The external form is the indivisible internal form divided in appearance by material mass. Perception seizes the unity and presents it to the kindred soul. An example of this relation is that among the elements of body fire is especially beautiful because it is the formative element.

The beauty of action and knowledge and virtue, though not seized by sense-perception, is like sensible beauty in that it cannot be explained to those who have not felt it. It is itself in the soul. What then is it that those who love beauty of soul take delight in when they become aware of it either in others or in themselves? To know this, we must set its opposite, ugliness, beside beauty, and compare them. Ugliness we find in a disorderly soul, and this disorderliness we can only understand as superinduced by matter. If beauty is ever to be regained in such a soul, it must be by purification from the admixture. The ugliness is in fact the admixture of disorderly passions derived from too close association with the body, and it is the soul itself in its unmixed nature that is beautiful. All virtue is purification. Now the soul, as it becomes pure of regard for outward and inferior things, is borne upward to intellect. In intellect accordingly is the native and not alien beauty of the soul; because only when thus borne upward is it in truth soul and nothing else. Thus beauty is being, which is one with intellect, and the nature other than being is the ugly. The good and the beautiful are therefore to be looked for together, as are the ugly and the evil. The first principle is Beauty itself, as it is the Good. Intellect is the beautiful. Soul is beautiful through intellect. All other things are beautiful through the formative soul.

A return must therefore be made again to the principle after which every soul aspires, to the Idea of the Good in itself and of Beauty in itself. This is to be reached by closing the eyes to common sights and arousing another power of vision which all have but few make use of. For such vision you must prepare yourself first by looking upon things done beautifully by other souls. Thus you will be enabled to see the beauty of the soul itself. But to see this, you must refer it to your own soul. If there is any difficulty here, then your task must be to shape your soul into accord with ideal beauty as a sculptor shapes a statue. For only by such inward reference is the beauty to be seen that belongs to souls.

At the end of this book, Plotinus suggests a distinction afterwards developed. If, he says, we speak broadly and without exact discrimination, then the first principle, which projects or radiates beauty from itself, may be called beautiful. If we distinguish more accurately, we shall assign to the Ideas "intelligible beauty"; the Good which is beyond, we shall regard as the spring and principle of beauty. Elsewhere he gives a psychological reason why beauty is in the second place. Those who apprehend the beautiful catch sight of it in a glimpse, and while they are as it were in a state of knowledge and awake. The good is always present, though unseen,—even to those that are asleep,—and, it does not astound them once they see it, nor is any pain mixed with the recognition of it. Love of the beautiful gives pain as well as pleasure, because it is at once a momentary reminiscence and an aspiration after what cannot be retained. In another place, the higher kind of beauty that transcends the rules of art is declared to be a direct impress of the good beyond intelligence. It is this, says Plotinus, that adds to the mere symmetry of beauty, which may still be seen in one dead, the living grace that sets the soul actively in motion. By this also the more lifelike statues are more beautiful even when they are less proportionate The irregularity that comes from indeterminate matter is at the opposite extreme, and is ugliness. Mere size is never beautiful. If bulk is the matter of beauty, this means that it is that on which form is to be impressed. The larger anything is, the more it is in need of beautiful order. Without order, greater size only means greater ugliness.

Discussing, in a separate book, Intellectual or Intelligible Beauty, Plotinus begins by observing that the beauty of a statue comes not from the matter of the unshapen stone, but from the form conferred by art. If any one thinks meanly of the arts because they imitate natures, first it must he pointed out that the natures of the things imitated are themselves imitations of ideal being, which precedes them in the logical order of causation. And the arts do not simply imitate the thing seen, but run back to the rational laws whence its nature is. Besides, they create much from themselves, filling up deficiencies in the visible model. Thus Phidias did not shape his Zeus after anything in perception, but from his own apprehension of the God as he might appear if he had the will to manifest himself to our eyes.

The arts themselves—which as creative ideas are in the soul of the artist—have a beauty surpassing that of the works that proceed from them; these being necessarily, from the separateness of manifestation which takes the place of the original unity, weakened resemblances of the mental conception that remains. Thus we are brought back to the thought that if we would recognize true beauty, whether seen in nature or in art, we must look within. The proper abode of beauty is the intellectual being to which the soul attains only by inward vision. Above it is the good beyond knowledge, from which it is infused. Below it is the beauty found dispersed in visible things, by which the soul, if not altogether depraved from its original nature, is awakened to the Beauty of the Ideas.