PART THREE

BERGSON’S GENIUS

BERGSON’S GENIUS

Logical soundness is never amiss, and is notably desirable in a philosopher; but Professor Bergson is assuredly right in thinking that it is no measure of a philosopher’s genius. One’s feeling about the fallacies of Spinoza and Berkeley and Kant may pale almost into indifference, in the enthusiasm of following such heroic feats of insight.

But then, it would seem, their greatness is their _insight_, and not their logic, and insight therefore, after all, is philosophical genius.

We have seen that this is Professor Bergson’s conclusion. It can be interpreted in a sense that is valid, of course: all depends on the meaning of “insight.” I have insisted sufficiently on the reasons why I cannot think Professor Bergson’s interpretation of it is valid. It is a case in which the etymological and the actual meaning of a word, in a certain context, differ and so give rise to ambiguity. The word “intuition,” etymologically, means just “insight.” But then it means consciousness functioning most completely, least abstractly. Now, Bergsonian “intuition” is a conception so far from concrete completeness that almost the primary object of his philosophy is the demarcation of intuition from any actual state of which consciousness is normally capable. It is true that Bergson insists that consciousness, in a supernormal effort, is capable of the purely intuitive act, and that in the capacity for this feat of knowing lies all the hope of metaphysics. This is the ground principle of Bergsonism, and I have nothing to add here, concerning its merits. In a word, its fallacy is the fallacy of reification. No such feat of consciousness is possible, not because it is more than the limited power of actual mind can compass, but because it is a contradiction, since it is consciousness without object, which is consciousness of nothing.

The Bergsonian will object that, if Bergsonian “intuition” is abstract, no less abstract is intellect; and, if philosophy is insight,--consciousness most complete,--the thesis contrary to intuitionism, that philosophy is intellectual judgment, is a case of the same fallacy that has been charged to intuitionism, and is inconsistent with the admission that philosophy is essentially an insight which involves more than intellect.

The answer is first, that intellectualism, unlike intuitionism, regards philosophy as indeed an abstract interest, and for that reason as not separable from the living of a life which supports this interest in a larger total interest; but, also for that reason, as not possibly identical, either with life entire or with any interest, such as the æsthetic, of like abstractness with philosophy. The answer to the second part of the objection is that an insight which is more than intellect is not for that reason without its intellectual aspect. Consciousness is always significant, certainly; but if it has any meaning, if it _is_ significant, it is, in that fact, intellectual. And insight without meaning is a contradiction, and is assuredly not philosophy. The appearance of inconsistency arises from the unconscious identifying of insight with intuition in the falsely reified sense. Insight in any such sense philosophy certainly is not. And yet the intellectualist may properly attribute the greatness of a philosophy to its insight rather than to its logical cogency, since cogent logic may be dull and shallow and therefore not great. It is great if it is far-seeing and deep. There is analytic insight, as well as intuitive.

After all is said, the feeling that even serious lapse of logic may not be sufficient to destroy the value of a great philosophy is not the same as the opinion that logic is immaterial to that value. No one, I dare say,--intuitionist, intellectualist or anyone else--ever thought this. The genius of a great philosophy is a superior perspicacity in the recognition of the significance of problems, a superior discernment of the problematic as such. “The earliest philosophers” says Professor James,[151] “... were just men curious beyond immediate practical needs, and no particular problems, but rather the problematic generally, was their specialty.” But the perspicacity which sees the meaning and bearings of a problem cannot fail to attack its further interpretation with a superior freshness and originality. And the interpretation of a problem, carried to the end, is its only solution. Genius in philosophy thus also turns into superior richness of suggestion in the solutions which it invents. Inasmuch as the problem-putting and the problem-solving processes are continuous with each other, and in this important sense one and the same thing, it should be expected that philosophical genius would possess both virtues, in any actual instance. And no doubt this is the historical fact. On any view it is suggestiveness, fertility, which is the measure of philosophical genius. And it seems to the intellectualist that the possibility of philosophical fertility depends on a discursive, intellectual co-implication of the parts of the realm of truth.

But although these two phases of philosophical genius--the problem-putting and the problem-solving phases--have so intimate a relation with each other, they can and do appear in different emphases in different philosophers. The emphasis in any particular case is undoubtedly determined in part from without, notably by the philosopher’s epochal relations. Thales is greater, as well as more momentous historically, in his _quest_ of an ἀρχή than in the consummation of the quest. With Hegel’s material to work upon, the emphasis in Thales’ genius would have been proportionately modified. And if Bergson has not, like Thales, unearthed new problems, that is nothing, for the question of the value of his work.

Indeed, the historical momentousness of a philosophy is quite largely independent of its intrinsic merit in either of these senses, or in any sense. Conditions which contribute to the vogue and influence of a philosophy are many, some obvious enough, others more recondite. The question of historical momentousness is thus only partly germane to an estimate of a philosophy’s own intrinsic worth; and, in the case of a contemporary philosophy, is in the nature of things (while the history is yet to be made) an almost unmitigated speculation. Such speculation regarding Bergson is no part of the present purpose.

One word more--before undertaking to appraise the genius of Bergson--as to the motive of such an undertaking in this particular essay. It is no part of the primary object of the essay. That object is the very impersonal one of understanding his doctrine. If logical fallacies are in any sense or degree irrelevant to the value of a philosophy, it is nevertheless a method of studying a philosophical work which is not without its value, to square it with logical principles. When the philosophy under criticism is already a classic, the omission of appreciative comment needs no apology, just because the merit of the work is beyond dispute. On Platonism and on Kantism much valuable light has been thrown in this severe way. In studies so occupied, disquisition on the immortal inspiration of the vision bequeathed to mankind in syllogisms which sometimes halt would not have enhanced the value of the study.

When our philosopher is a contemporary, the case is different in that then personal predilection and prejudice are without the regulation imposed by historical perspective; and injustice, even negative or privative, either to the living philosopher or to his living antagonists, has a certain human import of which the conditions are removed with mere temporal remoteness of the subject of study, when history has placed him in a setting which includes an “after” as well as a “before.”

* * * * *

Professor A. D. Lindsay has pointed out[152] that, in one important respect, Bergson’s genius is of the Kantian kind. It is capacity for such interpretation of old problems that they become veritably renewed. “It is a great and essential proof of cleverness or insight,” said Kant, “to know how to ask reasonable questions.” Now, comments Professor Lindsay (without suggesting any comparison in importance between Kant and Bergson), there is this resemblance between them, that much of the interest of Bergson’s work, as of Kant’s, consists in statement and exposition of antinomies in philosophy. Like Kant’s, Bergson’s philosophy is interesting because it is a new method, and, in the same sense as Kant’s, is a critical philosophy, for it consists in finding the main source of previous difficulties in uncriticized false assumptions.

Such criticism of the question (“interpretation of the problem” I called it above) is just the proper business of the philosopher. For, every question is also an unconditional assertion. Falseness in this implied assertion is a case of the fallacy of “many questions,” which, accordingly, may be regarded as the philosopher’s first concern.

Bergson is a philosopher preeminently in this sense. He is a philosopher also (in spite of the cavalier denial of Sir. E. Ray Lankester)[153] in that he is a man with an articulate conviction concerning the nature of being and of knowledge. In the aspersion of Bergson’s thought by the above writer and by Mr. Hugh S. R. Elliot,[154] there is a rancour which, in spite of much valid criticism in detail, produces an impression of ill-regulated prejudice.

This impression is no more than fairly counterbalanced by the contrary enthusiasm of such whole-souled votaries of Bergsonism as Edouard LeRoy, William James and H. Wildon Carr.

“There is a thinker,” writes M. LeRoy, “who is deemed by acknowledged philosophers worthy of comparison with the greatest.... Beyond any doubt, and by common consent, Mr. Henri Bergson’s work will appear to future eyes among the most characteristic, fertile and glorious of our era. It marks a never-to-be-forgotten date in history; it opens up a phase of metaphysical thought, it lays down a principle of development the limits of which are indeterminable; and it is after cool consideration, with full consciousness of the exact value of words, that we are able to pronounce the revolution which it effects equal in importance to that effected by Kant, or even by Socrates.”[155] It is a “profoundly original doctrine.” And of endless fertility: “There is no doctrine ... which is more open, and none which ... lends itself to further extension.” Again: “... a doctrine which admits of infinite development ... a work of such profound thought that the least passing example employed takes its place as a particular study.”[156] And so on _ad libitum_.

These are the glowing words of an ardent disciple (even though not a pupil) and may be expected to be not, after all, altogether regulated by a “full consciousness of the exact value of words.” Such phrases as “worthy of comparison with the greatest,” “beyond any doubt,” “by common consent,” are pleasantly vague, and should not offend any judgment that is not literal in season and out of season. As to the Bergsonian “revolution,” it should offend no one at all who can put up with an expression of purely speculative relish. So far, on the other hand, as this revolution is accomplished fact in the prime of our philosopher’s middle age, the mention of Socrates and Kant does savour of the ornate!

Bergson is at least preeminent over all other living philosophers as the expression of a very revolutionary _Zeitgeist_. The generation of Taine and Renan (LeRoy goes on to say) was characterized by the positivistic presumption that any object whatever could be ‘inserted in the thread of one and the same unbroken connection.’ But rationalistic arrogance has never failed to arouse an answering voice of protest and dissent; and of our own generation such anti-intellectualism is one of the controlling ideas. It is primarily the reactionary conviction that the analytic method of philosophy is abstract and empty. It is, says LeRoy, a demand for “_complete_ experience, anxious to neglect no aspect of being nor any resource of mind.” “Everything is regarded from the point of view of life, and there is a tendency more and more to recognize the primacy of spiritual activity.” “That the attitude and fundamental procedure of this new spirit are in no way a return to skepticism or a reaction against thought cannot be better demonstrated than by this resurrection of metaphysics, this renaissance of idealism, which is certainly one of the most distinctive features of our epoch.” “But ... we wish to think with the whole of thought, and go to the truth with the whole of our soul ... And what is that, really, but realism? By realism I mean the gift of ourselves to reality, the work of concrete realization ... to live what we think and think what we live. But that is positivism, you will say; certainly it is positivism. But how changed! For, from considering as positive only that which can be an object of sensation or calculation, we begin by treating the great spiritual realities with this title.”

“A new philosophy was required to answer this new way of looking at things. Already, in 1867, Ravaisson, in his celebrated _Report_, wrote these prophetic lines: ‘Many signs permit us to forsee in the near future a philosophical epoch of which the general character will be the predominance of what may be called spiritualist realism or positivism, having as generating principle the consciousness which the mind has in itself of an existence recognized as being the source and support of every other existence, being none other than its action.’

“... What Ravaisson had only anticipated, Mr. Bergson himself accomplishes, with a precision which gives body to the impalpable and floating breath of first inspiration, with a depth which renews both proof and theses alike, with a creative originality which prevents the critic who is anxious for justice and precision from insisting on any researches establishing connection of thought.”

“... Mr. Bergson has contributed more than anyone else to awaken the very tendencies of the _milieu_ in which his new philosophy is produced, to determine them and make them become conscious of themselves.”[157]

In the new and significant relation which LeRoy and others find in Bergson to motives of thought so distinct as idealism, realism, and positivism, he is a writer of the fertility of genius; in the skill of his transfusion of these motives into a type of conception underlying a very deep and widely extended tendency of the age, he is the foremost expression of that tendency. In a very limited way, only, can such enthusiasm as LeRoy’s, in a mind of his excellent discernment, be reasonably discounted. Trimmed of all its abounding fervours its fighting weight is still sufficiently impressive: how resonant to motives and convictions of actually controlling interest that mind must be which can elicit such response, needs no better proof than the response itself. No one else is so well attuned as Bergson to that demand for complete experience which, if anything, is the spirit of our time. No one else has carried so far in theory the possibilities of an intense instinctive living, as the answer to the riddle of the universe. What can be said for instinct as an organ of philosophy, Bergson has said.

All philosophers of immediacy hold Bergson as chief. Carr, like LeRoy, thinks Bergson’s doctrine as momentously original as those of the greatest classics. “Great scientific discoveries,” he writes,[158] “are often so simple that the greatest wonder about them is that humanity has had to wait so long for them.” Thus with Berkeley’s “_esse est percipi_” and Kant’s autonomy of the intellectual categories. And equally so with Bergson’s interpretation of reality as life, “living creative evolution,” as distinct both from solid matter and thinking mind.

James, while others find quite determinate differences between him and Bergson, was far less cognizant, himself, of differences than of agreement. He was one of the keenest of Bergsonians, and regarded himself, certainly with a great deal of genial modesty, as a follower, a disciple. “... if I had not read Bergson,” he says,[159] “I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper privately, in the hope of making ends meet that were never meant to meet ... It is certain that without the confidence which being able to lean on Bergson’s authority gives me, I should never have ventured to urge these particular views of mine ... In my opinion he has killed intellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery.”

* * * * *

The quantity and quality of the study of Bergson’s problems by others, which his own treatment of them has stimulated, is already an enviable monument to that best quality of philosophic genius in his work, its fertility of suggestion. Speaking, as the present writer must, from the point of view of critical reaction, the value of Bergson is indeed incalculable. This is no conventional phrase. His theoretical opponent is almost inclined to feel that the stimulus which Bergson’s lucid exposition affords, to a mind of contrary conviction, to understand itself, must be a more precious good even than the quickening which his followers so eloquently confess.

The fact is that this eloquence is always more than eloquence; it is a fervour almost like religious fervour. Witness the words just quoted from James. Every true Bergsonian testifies in the same tone. Thus LeRoy:[160] “Mr. Bergson’s readers will undergo at almost every page they read an intense and singular experience. The curtain drawn between ourselves and reality, enveloping everything, including ourselves, in its illusive folds, seems of a sudden to fall, dissipated by enchantment, and display to the mind depths of light till then undreamt, in which reality itself, contemplated face to face for the first time, stands fully revealed. The revelation is overpowering, and, once vouchsafed, will never afterwards be forgotten.

“Nothing can convey to the reader the effects of this direct and intimate mental vision. Everything which he thought he knew already finds new birth and vigor in the clear light of morning; on all hands, in the glow of dawn, new intuitions spring up and open out; we feel them big with infinite consequences, heavy and saturated with life. Each of them is no sooner blown than it appears fertile forever. And yet there is nothing paradoxical or disturbing in the novelty. It is a reply to our expectation, an answer to some dim hope....

“... whether, in the long run, we each of us give or refuse complete or partial adhesion, all of us at least have received a regenerating shock, an internal upheaval ... henceforth a new leaven works and ferments in us; we shall no longer think as we used to think.” As for the attitude of mind proper to bring to the reading of Bergson, “where the end is to understand rather than to judge, criticism ought to take second place. It is more profitable to attempt to feel oneself into the heart of the teaching, to relive its genesis, to perceive the principle of organic unity, to come at the mainspring. Let our reading be a course of meditation which we live.”

And Gaston Rageot: “... the reading of a work of Bergson’s requires at the very beginning a sort of inner catastrophe; not everyone is capable of such a logical revolution.”[161] A little further on he speaks of this preparation of the mind to receive the Bergsonian doctrine as “_cette volte-face psychologique_.”

Conversion to Bergsonism, indeed, suggests religious conversion. Compare James’ words with the above. “... if, as Bergson shows, [the conceptual or discursive form of reality] cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life’s inner nature is or ought to be; why, then we can turn a deaf ear to its accusations. The resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or ‘catastrophe’ of which [M. Rageot] spoke ... [This] comes very hard. It is putting off our proud maturity of mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of reason. But difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, I believe, to the possession of reality.”[162]

Is not this experience very suggestive of the “regeneration” of Christianity? I think it is, indeed; and I think this fact is suggestive of the essential nature of Bergsonism. One may turn a deaf ear to reason, one may execute a _volte-face psychologique_; but, whatever the rewards, it seems unlikely (to the unregenerate, of course!) that among them will be included a better comprehension of the _meaning_ of reality.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] _Creative Evolution_ p. 176. I have italicized “reflecting” and “object” to indicate the contradiction of “instinct.” And since, for Bergson, intuition is philosophic consciousness, this reflectiveness which he imputes to it is no accident, no inadvertence. Intuition must, indeed, in order to be philosophic, be reflective; that is to say, it must absolutely contradict its own nature. (In all of the references to Bergson’s works, the pages mentioned are those of the English translation.)

[93] See especially _Creative Evolution_, pp. 191-2 and 266.

[94] Cf. R. B. Perry’s _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, the first two sections of Chapter XI.

[95] J. W. Scott, _Pessimism of Bergson, Hibbert Journal_. XI. 90-116. See also below p. 94.

[96] _Creative Evolution_, p. xi.

[97] _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods._ Volume V. No. 22

[98] Cf. the second sentence of the present essay.

[99] _Henri Bergson: The Philosophy of Change_, p. 14.

[100] This title has been given to the English translation of the _Essai sur les donnes_, etc.

[101] Possibly this representation of Leibniz’s thought requires a word of explanation. Leibniz expresses the nature of reality in terms of force, on one hand, and of consciousness on the other. The monad or elemental reality is a unit of perception and also a unit of force. It is a living unit; as in Bergsonism, reality is life, though life in Leibniz’s philosophy is ultimately plural instead of a simple impetus. It is true that will is not a characteristic Leibnizian term, but existence is always, I think, conceived by him very clearly as _conation_. The self-realization of the monad is at the same time an intensification of its perceptiveness and of its dynamic. Cf. the following passages from Rogers’ _Student’s History of Philosophy_, pp. 307-8: “Leibniz was led by various motives to substitute, for extension, _power of resistance_, as the essential quality of matter.... But when, instead of extension, we characterize matter as _force_, a means of connection [between matter and mind] is opened up. For force has its analogue in the conscious life; corresponding to the activity of matter is conscious activity or will. Indeed, are there any positive terms in which we can describe the nature of force, unless we conceive it as identical with that conscious activity which we know directly in ourselves?” This activity, then, “Is at bottom, when we interpret it, a spiritual or perceptual activity.” In short, it is will.

Leibniz is properly regarded as the first modern spiritualist. Leibnizian matter is real, if you like, but then it is continuous, and of essentially identical nature, with spirit. Matter is spirit in a low stage of development. Bergson has no such clear and unambiguous conception of matter as this, when you consider the whole or his doctrine; but there are passages in Bergson which might almost have been written by Leibniz himself. For instance: ... “if, in fact, the humblest function of spirit is to bind together the successive moments of the duration of things, if it is by this that it comes into contact with matter and by this also that it is first of all distinguished from matter, we can conceive an infinite number of degrees between matter and fully developed spirit--a spirit capable of action which is not only undetermined, but also reasonable and reflective.” (_Matter and Memory_, pp. 295-6.)

[102] There is a good discussion of this point in an article reviewing the _Essai_, by L. Levy-Bruhl, in the _Revue Philosophique_, Vol. XXIX (1890), pp. 513-538.

[103] Cf. below, pp. 57, 58.

[104] Pages 72, 73, 97. Professor Perry’s analysis of the conception of immediacy (_Present Philosophical Tendencies_, Chapter X) has a result that is similar in principle to the above.

[105] _Op. cit._, p. 525.

[106] _Time and Free Will_, pp. 118-119.

[107] But Bergson apparently does not see that even the word “interpenetrate” falls to express anything radically different in temporal “multiplicity” from a certain character of spatial multiplicity. Cf. pp. 62, 101. In this, as in all its argument, intuitionism arguing is inevitably intuitionism contradicting itself. It is ineffable philosophy (see _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, Vol. IV, p. 123.)

[108] The living ego is a fact-in-the-accomplishing. You cannot really discourse about it! If psychology ever seems to manage this (and if this present book of Bergson’s seems to manage it), the ego discoursed about is, in that fact, proven to be not the concrete and living ego at all, but the impersonal and objective one.

[109] The attitude, that is, of intuition, which we have called the temporal attitude. The terms “spatial,” “logical,” “conceptual,” applied here so often to the word “thought,” are epithets of thought generally. There is no thought, in any meaning of the word more specific than “consciousness,” that is not logical, conceptual and spatial in this Bergsonian sense.

If we cannot conceptualize our psychic facts, we cannot think them, then--the meaning is the same. But if we say that anything (which we name and, in the saying, define and think) is unnamable, indefinable and cannot be thought, we contradict ourselves. The doctrine, if true, must mean something that is not a self-contradiction. Does it mean that what we name and discourse about is only the spatialized symbol of the psychic fact? There can be little doubt. I think, that this is Bergson’s meaning; but then the psychic fact is of such a nature as to be symbolized; and the distinction between a symbol and a name, by virtue of which a thing which can be symbolized may not be namable, requires explanation.

[110] _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, pp. 232-4.

[111] Pp. 42, 43. Cf. also below, p. 93.

[112] _Op. cit._, p. 128.

[113] _Time and Free Will_, p. 98.

[114] _Time and Free Will_, p. 113.

[115] Cf. above, p. 58.

[116] In order to give any meaning to the term “compenetrating” or “interpenetration” (which I take to be mutually equivalent, in Bergson’s use), I am compelled to interpret them as synonymous with the “compactness” of a continuum--as synonymous. In fact, with “continuity.” Bergson does not make clear how these terms can mean anything else (cf. below, p. 101.)

[117] Bergson himself, of course, is perfectly aware--_in other connections_--of the continuity of space!

[118] _Creative Evolution_, p. 1.

[119] _Ibid._, p. 4.

[120] _Ibid._, p. 208.

[121] _Ibid._, p. 248.

[122] _Ibid._, p. 247.

[123] _Jour. Phil. Psy. and Sci. Meth._, Vol. V, No. 22.

[124] _Creative Evolution_, p. 251.

[125] _Ibid._, p. 269.

[126] Cf. Perry’s comment, _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 235.

[127] _Creative Evolution_, p. 175.

[128] _Ibid._, p. 144.

[129] _Ibid._, pp. 176, 177.

[130] _Matter and Memory_, pp. 6, 7.

[131] _Ibid._, p. 8.

[132] _Ibid._, p. 10.

[133] Hugh S. R. Elliot’s _Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson_, pp. 98 ff.

[134] _Une theorie nouvelle de la liberte (Les donnees immediates)_, in the _Revue Philosophique_, Vol. XXIX (1890), pp. 361-392.

[135] _Op. cit._, p. 368.

[136] The feeling of guilt, and, so, of responsibility and freedom, can be crushing in dreams, as anyone knows who is given to appearing in dream public indecently clothed, or not clothed at all.

[137] _Time and Free Will_, p. 158.

[138] _Matter and Memory_, p. x: also an article entitled _Le paralogisme psycho-physiologique_ in the _Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale_, Vol. XII (1904), pp. 895-908. This article is also in the _Rapports et comptes rendus du deuxieme congres international de philosophie_, 1905, Part I.

[139] The causal relation between mental and cerebral states--_i. e._ interaction--would be an alternative “condition of freedom;” but this relation is included in Bergson’s denial of any sort of correspondence or equivalence (such as the quantitative equivalence of causation) between states of brain and states of mind.

[140] _Time and Free Will_, p. 34.

[141] _Ibid._, p. 172.

[142] _Ibid._, p. 208.

[143] _Ibid._, p. 215.

[144] _Time and Free Will_, p. 83.

[145] _Present Philosophical Tendencies_, Chapter X, section 6.

[146] _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 236. Quoted from Professor Perry’s work, named above.

[147] _Creative Evolution_, p. 3.

[148] The analogy holds even in the oppositeness of direction in which the evanishment, in the limiting cases, occurs (cf. above, pp. 72, 80).

[149] Cf. Perry’s analysis of subjective privacy, in Chapter XII of _Present Philosophical Tendencies_.

[150] _Time and Free Will_, p. 88.

[151] _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 10.

[152] _The Philosophy of Bergson_, pp. 1, 2, 3.

[153] _Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson_, pp. vii, viii.

[154] _Op. cit., passim._

[155] _The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson_, pp. 1 and 2.

[156] _Ibid._, pp. 120, 230.

[157] _Op. cit._, pp. 128 ff.

[158] _Henri Bergson: The Philosophy of Change_, p. 12.

[159] _A Pluralistic Universe_, pp. 214, 215.

[160] _Op. cit._, pp. 3, 4, 5, 6.

[161] _Revue Philosophique_, Ann. 32, No. 7 (July 1907), p. 85.

[162] _Op. cit._, pp. 272-3.

BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HUMANISTIC STUDIES

_Vol. I_ _May 15, 1914_ _No. 3_

BROWNING AND ITALIAN ART AND ARTISTS

BY

PEARL HOGREFE, A. M.

_Instructor in Mansfield College, Mansfield, Louisiana_

LAWRENCE, MAY, 1914 PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY

To G. A. L.

WHO MADE POSSIBLE MY COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY TRAINING

PREFACE

This paper has been prepared with the understanding that while much has been printed concerning a few individual art poems of Browning, such as _Abt Vogler_, _Andrea del Sarto_ and _Fra Lippo Lippi_, no complete, systematic survey of the place of Italian art in Browning’s text has appeared; and in the belief that such a survey might be worth while.

Much of Browning’s treatment of art is of course omitted in the discussion; for he introduces art data from other countries than Italy, and has much to say of the nature and purpose of art in general.

Within the limits chosen, the purpose has been to make a practically complete survey for each of the five fine arts, sculpture, music, poetry, architecture and painting, in the order here given. The attempt has also been made, based on data from letters and biographies, to trace to some extent the chronological perspective of Browning’s interest in the individual arts, and to indicate the apparent sources of that interest. Chapter VII deals with “comparative aesthetics” (within the limits of our title), the poetic values Browning finds in the arts, the causes determining the relative emphasis upon each art, and the relations of these data to Browning’s dominant concern as a poet--human personality.

That the study has been brought to its present form is due, in part, to help and encouragement given by Professor S. L. Whitcomb. The manuscript has been carefully read by Professor D. L. Patterson and Professor Margaret Lynn. The former has given valuable suggestions concerning the historical aspects of the paper, and the latter, helpful criticism based on her special knowledge of Browning’s text. To these three instructors in the University of Kansas, and to all others who have given assistance, including fellow students, a grateful acknowledgement of indebtedness is here made.

PEARL HOGREFE. Mansfield, Louisiana, May 1, 1914.

CONTENTS