Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from AEsthetics
No science has suffered more from metaphysical dreaming than that of AEsthetics. From the doctrines of Plato to those of our present official teachers, art has been turned into an amalgam of transcendental mysteries and fancies, finding their final expression in that absolute conception of ideal Beauty which is the unchangeable and divine prototype of the real things around us.
We have done our best to bring about a reaction against ontology so chimerical.
Art is nothing but a natural result of man's organization, which is of such a nature that he derives particular pleasure from certain combinations of forms, lines, colours, movements, sounds, rhythms, and images. But these combinations only give him pleasure when they express the sentiments and emotions of the human soul struggling with the accidents of life, or in presence of scenes of nature. The plastic arts, being addressed to the eye, manifest these impressions by the direct and more or less complete representation of objects, forms, attitudes, and of the real or imaginary scenes that they call up.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."
