In this field, art has sometimes been confused with two
facts which accompany it there: these are sentient consciousness (that
is, the feelings of pleasure and of pain) and religion. Schleiermacher
here alludes to the sensualistic aestheticians of the eighteenth
century, and to Hegel, who had almost identified art and religion. He
refutes both points of view by pointing out that sentient pleasure and
religious sentiment, however different they may be from other points of
view, are yet both determined by an objective fact; while art, on the
contrary, is free productivity.
Dream is the best parallel and proof of this free productivity. All the
essential elements of art are found in dream, which is the result of
free thoughts and of sensible intuitions, consisting simply of images.
But dream, as compared with art, is chaotic: when measure and order is
established in dream, it becomes art. Thoughts and images are alike
essential to art, and to both is necessary ponderation, reflexion,
measure, and unity, because otherwise every image would be confused with
every other image. Thus the moments of inspiration and of ponderation
are both necessary to art.
Schleiermacher's thought, so firm and lucid up to this point, begins to
become less secure, with the discussion of typicity and of the extent to
which the artist should follow Nature. He says that ideal figures, which
Nature would give, were she not impeded by external obstacles, are the
products of art.
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