from being a substitute for ethics, needs the latter as a guide.

As all things were created by God and must tend towards Him as their end, He is both first cause and final cause (xix 422). Hence there are as it were 'two cosmic cycles, the procession of existences by the creative act of being-not by emanation-from God, and their return, without being absorbed, to Him as their final cause or end.' (Ibid.) The precise position of art is that it copies at an infinite distance, of course,' this first cycle, the creative activity of God. (Ibid.) Art, to be true, must bear the stamp of that which it imitates; it must aim to give exterior form to the ideal beauty that is present to the intuitive apprehension of all men. (Ibid.) Now human nature considered physically is indeed good, but considered morally is corrupt (xix 322); and art must rise above nature, triumph over it, and reach a higher beauty. In so far as art appeals then to mere nature, it is actually irreligious (xix 232); it addresses only fallen human nature. Whatever truth it does attain, under those circumstances, is truth only for man in the fallen, abnormal state; and this after all is false, far from being either good or beautiful (xix 326). We have said before that no cultivation of natural powers brings us nearer to God; we must aim higher; 'all that is not for this supernatural life is against it' (xix 233, 234). Our aim must therefore go beyond the profane, or merely natural. Of course the artist cannot help embodying also sensible beauty. But he may not present it in the form that carries it merely in a natural direction; 'he must clothe it with a higher beauty, a beauty not sensible, but ideal, spiritual, moral, celestial' (xix 328). Such beauty is truly an image of God, and in it rests the truth, beauty, and goodness of all things. Anything that leads away from this image or obscures it also obscures the beautiful (xix 321). Thus all beauty has its origin in God. Even when presented as created beauty, it must be indeed 'distinguishable' from God, but still inseparable' from Him, like all reality (xix 320). Art therefore imitates nature 'in her creative energy,' and tries to realize 'with its own forms, the beautiful, which the soul of the artist beholds' (xix 420).

No genuine art is possible as long as the mind and the heart turn merely to outward nature and regard only sensible and material objects (xix 313). But is not this demanding that all

art be religious art? In the sense of what was said above, Yes. Religious art and secular art, both being forms of one genus, must have much in common. Both portray the beautiful, aim to move and please, and address the same elements of human nature (xix 228). They differ, however, in this that religious art expresses directly the religious life, supernatural beauty; while secular art presents natural beauty in its higher form (xix 228, 230). While religious art represents therefore a beauty that is superhuman, above nature, and tends to lift man entirely out of the natural order, secular art takes beauty in the natural order and tends to direct it towards the supernatural, 'to exalt and endear' it (xix 228). Religious art, then, while not excluding the senses and imagination, abstracts from sensible pleasure (xix 228, 229); whereas secular art addresses the sensible faculties of man with a higher motive.

Just herein, however, lies the great danger of secular art, the pitfall of many an artist. There are those who try to steer a middle course. They condemn all art that is purely sensuous as being contrary to true beauty. At the same time they proclaim that the artist can up to a certain point directly employ the 'sensitive emotions, passions, affections, tendencies' as long as he guards against excess (xix 321). Such persons proceed on the assumption that nature is essentially good, and that they can properly use all its tendencies provided they do not exceed a set limit. But such theorists are the most dangerous of all, as they 'soothe and lull the conscience while they delight the flesh' (xix 321, 322). It matters not, therefore, in what degree sensuous delight is appealed to; a compromise is impossible, and the attempt to employ the natural affections or passions in their natural order is always immoral and consequently inartistic (xix 323).

3. THE ARTIST

In order to produce a work of art, to express the true and the good under the form of the beautiful, the artist must be able to distinguish true from false beauty. He must therefore be imbued with firm principles that will guide him aright in all conditions. He must have a sound knowledge and ever be able to discern well what is true from what is false (xix 312), to detect

that which is true of human nature in a broader sense from a whim of his own (xix 429). He must be not only an artist, but a great theologian, philosopher, and moralist at the same time, and never lose sight of the great religious truths that underlie the mystery of the universe (xix 230, 303-4). Not that he sould dogmatize, 'or indulge in didactic teaching;' his proper sphere must always be before his mind, and he must recognize simply that a false philosophy and false morality are insurmountable obstacles to the attainment of the ideal beauty which it is his sphere to portray (xix 109, 304, 313).

The ideal which the artist is to seek must be apprehended by him in such a way that he speaks from his inner self. He must assimilate his ideals to such an extent that it becomes a part of his inward experience (xix 429, 494). He who merely imitates the ideals and sentiments of others is simply a copyist. The 'common and universal nature,' which is the source of art, exists in every fully developed man; and the more truly anyone 'expresses what is truest, richest and broadest in human nature' the more truly is that person an artist (xix 494). No man can express what he has not within himself. Every artist paints first of all himself; he projects himself into his work, and his work is the expression of his interior life (xix 229).

It thus becomes evident how well the artist must make the beauty he sees a part of his life; and how the assimilation of the highest form of beauty will result in the highest form of art (xix 312, 429). Only when his ideal becomes one with him, will his work have the fresh and living spontaneity of true art; only thus will he be capable of a 'spontaneous and free expression of the inward spirit' (xix 589). The clothing of his ideal with an adequate form, the outward realization of what has already been realized within (xix 229), gives to artistic genius its high rank. Art thus becomes, faintly of course, an imitation of the creative act of God-an imitation of the first cycle mentioned above, of the productive activity of the Creator (xix 422). No wonder then that the artistic genius is considered by all to be 'the sublimest, the most beautiful, and the most godlike' (xix 423). No wonder then that this genius is so rare. It is not given to everyone to behold 'the ideal present to his intuitive apprehension' far more clearly than other men, and to embody it under the form of the beautiful. It is a gift that must be

given by nature and is present only in the greatest masters (xix 313, 332, 328).

4.-PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEAUTIFUL

It has been mentioned several times that the artist, to be truly successful, must be a man of sound philosophical principles. The artist really obtains his materials from science and philosophy (xix 313). It has likewise been stated that the artist practices art without philosophizing about it. This implies naturally that there is a philosophy of the beautiful, a firmly grounded system of aesthetic principles. It is from this philosophy of art that the critic or the teacher of aesthetics draws his inspiration. There can be no good literary or artistic criticism without a definite philosophy of art (xix 419). The intimate relation between beauty and goodness and truth has often been mentioned. Just what this relation is it should be the province of a philosophy of aesthetics to search into and explain.

The beautiful as such, says Brownson, does not appeal to the intellect, but to the sensibility (xix 126), and by the latter term he means the emotional element in man. Such is the peculiar nature of man that the emotions are moved immediately upon the intuition or apprehension of the beautiful. But the apprehension must exist before the attraction or delight takes place. (Ibid.) It is therefore through the intellect, or rather the imagination, that beauty pleases and moves the will. The imagination is generally considered a mixed faculty; it belongs to the whole man, rational and animal. But the rational must of course always predominate; and beauty, to be true, will address the instinctive nature of man, the passions and emotions, only from the higher, the rational side (xix 319, 328). Beauty, then, although its appeal is to the emotional element, addresses no special faculty of aesethetic perception, though some claim it does, but rather the combined faculties of the rational soul. The emotional element is integral in man as well as the rational; but they are not separated. Man 'never acts as intellect and will without sensibility, or as sensibility without some affectation of reason' (xix 327); for man's soul is essentially one and rational. For this reason the man that beholds a work of art views it not only as an imaginative, but also as a reason

able and moral agent; and it cannot satisfy the demands of his soul, if it fails under the aspect of reason or will any more than if it fails under that of the imagination (xix 190).1

Thus we can understand how that beauty which charms only the irrational side of man's nature and leaves the faculty of reason unsatisfied degrades man and is not beauty in the strict sense (xix 190, 319). Since art must address all three relations of man's soul, understanding, will, and imagination, the object it presents must appeal to the reason as true, to the will as good, and to the imagination as beauty (xix 318-9). Beauty can therefore be conceded to be distinguishable from the true and the good, but in reality it is inseparable from them; and only that is properly the object of the imagination which is also rational and intelligible and belongs also to the order of the true and the good, is in fact identical with these. (Ibid.) Since beauty thus depends on truth, the error of those persons is obvious who claim that it depends solely on an internal state of the soul, that it is merely psychological and not ontological (xix 190, 419). Beauty is not self-sufficient, it needs a further prop. Only 'truth has a bottom of its own, and can stand by itself; but beauty cannot, for it exists only in the relation of the true to our sensibility or imagination, as a combination of intellect and sense' (xix 502). True beauty in this sense is therefore not merely a creation of the human soul; it is not merely subjective but objective. Although it appeals to what is 'common to all men, and inseparable and indistinguishable from the essential nature of man,' its true source is higher-the universal and the permanent, in other words, God (xix 190-1). Thus all beauty rests ultimately in the Supreme Being—who is at the same time the Supreme Good, the Supreme Truth, and the Supreme Beautiful—and is distinguishable from Him only as the splendor is from the resplendent (xix 420). The science of aesthetics itself cannot give an analysis that is final, but in turn rests on the science of being, ontology. 'A true science of art must have an ontological basis, and is not possible without a true and adequate ontology.' (Ibid.) If the latter is false, naturally the principles of art deduced from it will

1 By imagination Brownson sometimes seems to mean the emotional faculty in man, at times rightly called sensibility by him.