The _orator_, then, promises a serious business, and in order to
entertain his audience conducts it as if it were a mere _play_ with
Ideas. The _poet_ merely promises an entertaining play with Ideas,
and yet it has the same effect upon the Understanding as if he had
only intended to carry on its business. The combination and harmony of
both cognitive faculties, Sensibility and Understanding, which cannot
dispense with one another, but which yet cannot well be united without
constraint and mutual prejudice, must appear to be undesigned and so
to be brought about by themselves: otherwise it is not _beautiful_
art. Hence, all that is studied and anxious must be avoided in it, for
beautiful art must be free art in a double sense. It is not a work like
that of a tradesman, the magnitude of which can be judged, exacted, or
paid for, according to a definite standard; and again, though the mind
is occupied, still it feels itself contented and stimulated, without
looking to any other purpose (independently of reward.)
The orator therefore gives something which he does not promise, viz.
an entertaining play of the Imagination; but he also fails to supply
what he did promise, which is indeed his announced business, viz. the
purposive occupation of the Understanding. On the other hand, the poet
promises little and announces a mere play with Ideas; but he supplies
something which is worth occupying ourselves with, because he provides
in this play food for the Understanding, and by the aid of Imagination
gives life to his concepts. [Thus the orator on the whole gives less,
the poet more, than he promises.][89]
(2) The FORMATIVE arts, or those by which expression is found for Ideas
in _sensible intuition_ (not by representations of mere Imagination
that are aroused by words), are either arts of _sensible truth_ or
of _sensible illusion_. The former is called _Plastic_, the latter
_Painting_. Both express Ideas by figures in space; the former makes
figures cognisable by two senses, sight and touch (although not by
the latter as far as beauty is concerned); the latter only by one,
the first of these. The aesthetical Idea (the archetype or original
image) is fundamental for both in the Imagination, but the figure which
expresses this (the ectype or copy) is either given in its bodily
extension (as the object itself exists), or as it paints itself on the
eye (according to its appearance when projected on a flat surface). In
the first case[90] the condition given to reflection may be either the
reference to an actual purpose or only the semblance of it.