Beautiful as such; and still more is this the case if we can require
that others should take an interest in it too. This happens as a matter
of fact when we regard as coarse and ignoble the mental attitude of
those persons who have no _feeling_ for beautiful Nature (for thus we
describe a susceptibility to interest in its contemplation), and who
confine themselves to eating and drinking--to the mere enjoyments of
sense.
§ 43. _Of Art in general_
(1). _Art_ is distinguished from Nature, as doing (_facere_) is
distinguished from acting or working generally (_agere_), and as the
product or result of the former is distinguished as _work_ (_opus_)
from the working (_effectus_) of the latter.
By right we ought only to describe as Art, production through freedom,
_i.e._ through a will that places Reason at the basis of its actions.
For although we like to call the product of bees (regularly built
cells of wax) a work of art, this is only by way of analogy: as soon
as we feel that this work of theirs is based on no proper rational
deliberation, we say that it is a product of Nature (of instinct), and
as Art only ascribe it to their Creator.
If, as sometimes happens, in searching through a bog we come upon a bit
of shaped wood, we do not say: this is a product of Nature, but, of
Art. Its producing cause has conceived a purpose to which the bit of
wood owes its form. Elsewhere too we should see art in everything which
is made so that a representation of it in its cause must have preceded
its actuality (as even in the case of the bees), though the effect
could not have been _thought_ by the cause. But if we call anything
absolutely a work of art in order to distinguish it from a natural
effect, we always understand by that a work of man.
(2). _Art_ regarded as human skill differs from _science_ (as _can_
from _know_) as a practical faculty does from a theoretical, as Technic
does from Theory (as mensuration from geometry). And so what we _can_
do, as soon as we merely _know_ what ought to be done and therefore
are sufficiently cognisant of the desired effect, is not called
Art. Only that which a man, even if he knows it completely, may not
therefore have the skill to accomplish, belongs to Art. _Camper_[75]
describes very exactly how the best shoes must be made, but he
certainly could not make one.[76]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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