The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
(_β_) A profounder penetration into this correlation of the parts will,
however, in the _second_ place, tend to give us that truer insight
competent to determine from one of the parts the entire form to which
it must belong. Cuvier is a famous example of such aptitude: a man
of science, who by the examination of a single bone, whether fossil
or otherwise, was able to specify at once by its characteristics the
kind of animal to which it belonged. An excellent illustration this of
_ex ungue leonem._ So from a claw or a thigh bone we may discover the
conformation of the teeth, or _vice versa_ from the teeth that of the
hip-bone, or that of the vertebral column. Such a profound synthesis
of the type and the knowledge it implies carries us, however, beyond
habitual experience only. We must assume, to render it possible,
previous thought and the systematic arrangement of the isolated facts
of science. Our example Cuvier had no doubt secured from previous
experience a determinate content and some specific quality which
prevailed in each generic conception, and asserted itself as a unity
of principle in all particulars however distinct, and so enabled
him to recognize their affinity. Such a specific quality is that of
flesh-eating, which is then the determinating principle of the form of
the other members of the organism to which it belongs. A flesh-eating
animal requires teeth and jaws of exceptional vigour; when hunting it
will require claws to seize its prey, mere hoofs are insufficient. Here
in short is a quality which necessarily determines for us the form and
principle of affinity among all the organic members. A conception of
such a typical character is the ordinary one we form of the strength
of an eagle or a lion. We may no doubt find something both beautiful
and instructive[231] in this way of regarding the animal world, in so
far as we derive from it some unified idea of its configuration, which
is not a mere repetition of that unity in all the parts, but gives
full value to the distinctions they possess. For all that it must be
remembered the dominant factor of this survey is not the _perception
of our senses_, but the generic _thought_ of our minds with which it
is made to conform. Reviewed in this light we ought not to say that we
find the object as such _beautiful_, but rather attribute that beauty
to the _reflection_ of our own minds upon it. And if we examine these
reflections more closely we shall find they are after all a deduction
of our principle of unity from a limited aspect of the organic whole.
We concentrate our attention, for example, on the mode in which
it is nourished, _i.e._, whether such an animal is carnivorous or
herbivorous. Through such a limited determination we are still removed
from a vision of the coalescent unity of the whole we identified with
the notion, the soul itself.