" This doctrine related more especially
to ethics than to aesthetics--as later did that of Pierre Leroux--and it
was far from being able to direct artists in their work.
Plato often discoursed upon the True, the Beautiful, the Good. He strove
to disengage them from the concrete that he might derive some general
formulae. To do this he employed the method of "elimination," a form of
dialectics which I recommend to no one, notwithstanding its great value
and the services it may render, after all, to those minds endowed with
patience. What does he conclude in regard to art?
The Socratic and dogmatic dialogues--the _Phaedo_, the _Gorgias_, the
_Symposium, Protagoras, Ion, Phaedrus_--abound in allegories, aphorisms,
and in aspirations toward an ideal, more or less clearly defined, which
end, however, not by any means in a discussion of art, but in such
affirmations as that which closes the first _Hippias:_--"Beautiful
things are difficult."
In the _Symposium_ we have a philosophical discussion interposed between
two orgies. Socrates there maintains his title of sage, but it is surely
not wisdom which presides at the feast. What light upon my subject? Do
we here find any conclusive decision regarding art? No! We have instead
such statements as this: "It is possible for the same man to be both a
tragic and a comic poet." Then are made some reflections upon time in
music. We can as yet discover nothing like a law of aesthetics.
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