The Breviary of Aesthetic 85
founding them all and contaminating one with the other.
And the most curious spectacle (though to be foreseen by
the philosopher) is that the æsthetistieians and historicians,
those irreconcilable adversaries, although they start from
opposite points, yet agree so well that they end by uttering
the same fatuities; and nothing is more amusing than to
meet again the most musty intellectualistic and moralistic
ideas in the pages of deeply moved lovers of art (so deeply
moved as to hate thought), and in the most positive histori-
ans (so positive as to fear compromising their positivity by
attempting to understand the object of their researches,
which chances this time to be called art).
True criticism of art is certainly aesthetic criticism, but not
because it disdains philosophy, like pseudo-æsthetie, but be-
cause it acts as philosophy and as conception of art; it is
historical criticism, not because, like pseudo-history, it deals
with the extrinsic of art, but because, after having availed
itself of historical data for fantastic reproduction (and till
then it is not yet history), when fantastic reproduction has
been obtained, it becomes history, by determining what is
that fact which has been reproduced in the fancy, and so
characterising the fact by means of the concept, and estab-
lishing what exactly is the fact that has occurred. Thus, the
two things at variance in spheres inferior to criticism coin-
cide in criticism; and “historical criticism of art” and “aesthet-
ic criticism” are the same: it is indifferent which word we
use, for each may have its special use solely for reasons of
convenience, as when, for instance, it is desired to call spe-
cial attention, with the first, to the necessity of the under-
standing of art; with the second, to the historical objectivity
of is consideration. Thus the problem discussed by certain
methodologists is solved, namely, whether history enter into