The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28 by Project Gutenberg - Pages 990-1484
(download Open eBook Format)
The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia Volume 1 of 28
The merchant who turns to these pages for practical suggestions concerning the advertising of his own business, can be given no better advice than to betake himself to an established advertising agent of good repute, and be guided by his counsels. The chief part that he can himself play with advantage is to note from day to day whether the agent is obtaining advantageous positions for his announcements. Every advertiser will naturally prefer a right-hand page to a left-hand page, and the right side of the page to the left side of the page; while the advertiser who most indefatigably urges his claims upon the agent will, in the long run, obtain the largest share of the favours to be distributed. To the merchant who inclines to consider advertising in connexion with the broader aspects of his calling, it may be suggested that a new channel of trade demands very serious attention. What is called in England “postal trade,” and in America “mail order business,” is growing very rapidly. Small dealers in both countries have complained very bitterly of the competition they suffer from the general dealers and from stores made up of departments which, under one roof, offer to the consumer every imaginable sort of merchandise. This general trading, which, on the one hand, seriously threatens the small trader, and on the other hand offers greater possibilities of profit to the proportionately small number of persons who can undertake business on so large a scale, becomes infinitely more formidable when the general dealer endeavours not only to attract the trade of a town, but to make his place of business a centre from which he distributes by post his goods to remote parts of the country. In America, where the weight of parcels carried by post is limited to 4 lb., and where the private carrying companies are forced to charge a very much higher rate for carriage from New York to California than for shorter distances, the centralization of trade is necessarily limited; but it is no secret that, at the present moment, persons residing in those parts of the United Kingdom most remote from London habitually avail themselves of the English parcel post, which carries packages up to 11 lb. in order to procure a great part of their household supplies direct from general dealers in London. A trading company, which conducts its operations upon such a scale as this, can afford to spend an almost unlimited sum in advertising throughout the United Kingdom, and even the trader who offers only one specific class of merchandise is beginning to recognize the possibility of appealing to the whole country.
Legal regulation.
The following is a brief summary of the laws and regulations dealing with advertisements in public places in certain of the countries of Continental Europe and in the United States of America, the chief authority for which is an official return issued by the British Home Office in 1903.
France.–The permission of the owner is alone required for the placing of advertisements on private buildings; but buildings, walls, &c., belonging to the government or local authorities are reserved exclusively for official notices, &c.; these alone can be printed on white paper, all others must be on coloured paper. Municipal authorities control the size, construction, &c., of hoardings used for advertising purposes, and the police have full powers over the exhibition of indecent or other objectionable advertisements. The Societe pour la protection des paysages, founded in 1901, has for one of its objects the prevention of advertisements which disfigure the scenery or are otherwise objectionable.
Germany.–By sec. 43 of the Imperial Commercial Ordinance permission to post any trade advertisement in a public street, square, &c., must be first obtained from the local police. The police also control (by sec. 55 of the Imperial Press Law 1874) advertisements which are not of a trade character, but this regulation does not affect the right of the federal legislatures to make regulations in regard to them (sec. 30). It would be impossible to give in any detail the police regulations as to advertisements which exist, e.g. in Prussia, but the following rules in force in Berlin may be given:–Public advertisements in public streets and places may be posted only on the appliances, such as pillar posts, &c., provided for the purpose. Owners of property may post advertisements on their own property but only such as concern their own interests. Advertisements on public conveyances are forbidden. In 1902 a Prussian law was passed authorizing the police to forbid all advertisement hoardings, &c., which would disfigure particularly beautiful landscapes in rural districts. The Hesse-Darmstadt Act of 1902 prohibits the placing of any advertisements, posters, &c., on a monument officially protected under the act, if it would be likely to injure the appearance of the monument. As instances of the numerous local provisions against the abuse of advertising may be cited provisions against the abuse of advertising may be cited those of Augsburg and Lubeck, by Which any advertisement that would injure the Stadtbild or appearance of the town may be prohibited and removed by the local authority (see G. Baldwin Brown, The Care of Ancient Monuments, 1905). Full powers exist under the Imperial Criminal Code for the suppression of indecent or objectionable advertisements.
Austria.—Permission of the police is required for the exhibition of printed notices in public places other than such as are of purely local or industrial interest, such as notices of entertainment, leases, sales, &c., or theatre programmes, and these can only be shown in places approved by the local authorities (Press Law 1862). The press-police act as advertisement censors and determine whether an advertisement can be allowed or not. In Hungary there are no general laws or regulations, but the municipalities have power to issue ordinances dealing with the question.
Italy.–All control rests with the municipal and communal authorities, who may decide on the places where advertisements may or may not be posted, and can prevent hoardings being placed on or near ancient monuments or public buildings. Switzerland.—The Federal Government has no authority to deal with this question; certain of the cantons have regulations, e.g. Lucerne prohibits the public advertising of inferior goods by means of a false description, Basel-Stadt gives the police the power of censoring all advertisements. Many of the communal authorities throughout Switzerland have special restrictions and regulations. In Zurich the police choose the advertising stations, in Berne the municipality possesses a monopoly of the right of erecting advertisements. The Society known as the Ligue pour la conservation de la Suisse pittoresque or Schweitzerischer Heimatschutz has for one of its objects the preservation of scenery from disfiguring advertisements.
United States.—There is no federal legislation on the subject, the matter being one for regulation by the states, which in most cases have left it to the various municipalities and other local authorities. With regard to indecent and objectionable advertisements some states have special legislation on the matter, others are content with the ordinary criminal laws or police powers or with the law of nuisance or of trespass. Thus control can be exercised over such advertisements as are dangerous to public safety, health or morals. The state of New York prohibits advertisements of lotteries. It would be impossible to give in detail the different laws and regulations passed in the various states or by municipalities. The following are some of the more striking measures adopted in certain of the states. In Massachusetts no advertising signs or devices are allowed on the public highways. Power has been granted to city and town authorities to regulate advertisements in, near or visible from public parks. In the District of Columbia no advertisement is allowed which obstructs a highway, and all distribution of handbills, circulars, &c., in public streets, parks, &c., is prohibited. This prohibition against what are generally known as “dodgers” is very general in the local regulations throughout the states. In Illinois, city councils are empowered on the incorporation of the city to regulate and prevent the use of streets, sidewalks and public grounds for signs, handbills and advertisements, &c., and also the exhibition of banners, placards, in the streets or sidewalks. Chicago has a body of most stringent rules, but they apparently have been found impossible to enforce; thus no advertisement board more than 12 ft. square within 400 ft. of a public park or boulevard, no advertisements other than small ones relating to the business carried on in the premises where the advertisement is posted, or of sales, &c., are allowed in streets where three-quarters of the houses are “residences” only. Prohibition is also extended to the advertisements of those professing to cure diseases or giving notice of the sale of medicines. In Boston there are regulations prohibiting projecting or overhanging signs in the streets, and special rules as to the height at which street signs and advertisements must be placed. The distribution of “dodgers” in the streets is prohibited. Advertisements for places of amusement must be approved by the committee on licences.
Taxation.
France, Belgium, Italy and certain of the cantons in Switzerland impose a tax on advertisements, as do certain of the United States of America, where the form is usually that of a licence duty on billposters or advertising agencies. In many cases in the United States this is imposed by the municipalities. In every case both in Europe and America advertisements in newspapers are not subject to any tax. With regard to the literature of advertising, in addition to the historical article in the Edinburgh Review for February 1843, already mentioned, and that in the Quarterly Review for June 1855, the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising issue a journal, A Beautiful World. The Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation (N.S. xvi. 1906) contains an article by W.J.B. Byles on Foreign Law and the Control of Advertisements in Public Places. The advertisers’ handbooks, issued by the leading advertising agents, will also be found to contain practical information of great use to the advertiser. (H. R. H.*; C. WE.)
ADVICE (Fr. avis, from Lat. ad, to, and visum, viewed), counsel given after consideration, or information from a distance giving particulars of something prospective ( e.g. “advice” of an imminent battle, or of a cargo due). In commerce it is a common word for a formal notice from one person concerned in a transaction to another.
ADVOCATE (Lat. advocatus, from advocare, to summon, especially in law to call in the aid of a counsel or witness, and so generally to summon to one’s assistance), a lawyer authorized to plead the causes of litigants in courts of law. The word is used technically in Scotland (see ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF) in a sense virtually equivalent to the English term barrister, and a derivative from the same Latin source is so used in most of the countries of Europe where the civil law is in force. The word advocatus is not often used among the earlier jurists, and appears not to have had a strict meaning. It is not always associated with legal proceedings, and might apparently be applied to a supporter or coadjutor in the pursuit of any desired object. When it came to be applied with a more specific limitation to legal services, the position of the advocatus was still uncertain. It was different from, and evidently inferior to, that of the juris-consultus, who gave his opinion and advice in questions of law, and may be identified with the consulting counsel of the present day. Nor is the merely professional advocate to be confounded with the more distinguished orator, or patronus, who came forward in the guise of the disinterested vindicator of justice. This distinction, however, appears to have arisen in later times, when the profession became mercenary. By the lex Cineia, passed about two centuries B.C., and subsequently renewed, the acceptance of remuneration for professional assistance in lawsuits was prohibited. This law, like all others of the kind, was evaded. The skilful debater was propitiated with a present; and though he could not sue for the value of his services, it was ruled that any honorarium so given could not be demanded back, even though he died before the anticipated service was performed. The traces of this evasion of a law may be found in the existing practice of rewarding counsel by fees in anticipation of services. The term advocatus came eventually to be the word employed when the bar had become a profession, and the qualifications, admission, numbers and fees of counsel had become a matter of state regulation, to designate the pleaders as a class of professional men, each individual advocate, however, being still spoken of as patron in reference to the litigant with whose interest he was entrusted. The advocatus fisci, or fiscal advocate, was an officer whose function, like that of a solicitor of taxes at the present day, was connected with the collection of the revenue. The lawyers who practised in the English courts of common law were never officially known as advocates, the word being reserved for those who practised in the courts of the civil and canon law (see DOCTORS’ COMMONS). There was formerly an important official termed his majesty’s advocate-general, or more shortly, the king’s advocate, who was the principal law officer of the crown in the College of Advocates or Doctors’ Commons, and in the admiralty and ecclesiastical courts. He discharged for these courts the duties which correspond to those of the solicitor of the treasury (see SOLICITOR). His opinion was taken by the foreign office on international matters, and on high ecclesiastical matters he was also consulted; all orders in council were submitted to him for approval. The office may now be said to be obsolete, for after the resignation of Sir Travers Twiss, the last holder, in 1872, it was not filled up. There was also a second law officer of the crown in the admiralty court called the admiralty advocate. This office has long been vacant. Advocate is also the title still in use in some of the British colonies to denote the chief law officer of the crown there. For instance, in Sierra Leone (until 1896), Lagos and Cyprus he is called the king’s advocate; in Malta, crown advocate; in Mauritius, procureur and advocate-general, and in the provinces of India advocate-general. In France, the avocats, as a body, were reorganized under the empire by a decree of the 15th of December 1830. There is, however, a distinction between avocats and avoues. The latter, whose number is limited, act as procurators or agents, representing the parties before the tribunals, draft and prepare for them all formal acts and writings, and prepare their lawsuits for the oral debates. The office of the avocat, on the other hand, consists in giving advice as to the law, and conducting the causes of his clients by written and oral pleadings. The number of avocats is not limited; every licentiate of law being entitled to apply to the corporation of avocats attached to each court, and after presentation to the court, taking the oath of office and passing three years in attendance on some older advocate, to have himself recognised as an advocate.
In Germany the advocat no longer forms a distinct class of lawyer. Since 1879, when a sweeping judicature act (Deutsche Justizgesetzgebung) reconstituted the judicial system, the advocat in his character of adviser, as distinguished from the procurator, who formerly represented the client in the courts, has become merged in the Rechtsanwalt, who has the dual character of counsellor and pleader.
The advocates ecclesiae.
In the middle ages the word advocatus (Fr. avoue, Ger. Vogt) was used on the continent as the title of the lay lord charged with the protection and representation in secular matters of an abbey. The office is traceable as early as the beginning of the 5th century in the Roman empire, the churches being allowed to choose defensores from the body of advocates to represent them in the courts. In the Frankish kingdom, under the Merovingians, these lay representatives of the churches appear as agentes, defensores and advocati; and under the Carolingians it was made obligatory on bishops, abbots and abbesses to appoint such officials in every county where they held property. The office was not hereditary, the advocatus being chosen, either by the abbot alone, or by the abbot and bishop concurrently with the count. The same causes that led to the development of the feudal system also affected the advocatus. In times of confusion churches and abbeys needed not so much a legal representative as an armed protector, while as feudal immunities were conceded to the ecclesiastical foundations, these required a representative to defend their rights and to fulfil their secular obligations to the state, e.g. to lead the ecclesiastical levies to war. A new class of advocatus thus arose, whose office, commonly rewarded by a grant of land, crystallized into a fief, which, like other fiefs, had by the beginning of the 11th century become hereditary.
The French avoue.
In France the advocati (avoues) were of two classes.–(1) great barons, who held the advocateship of an abbey or abbeys rather as an office than a fief, though they were indemnified for the protection they afforded by a domain and revenues granted by the abbey: thus the duke of Normandy was adpoeatus of nearly all the abbeys in the duchy; (2) petty seigneurs, who held their avoueries as hereditary fiefs and often as their sole means of subsistence. The avoue of an abbey, of this class, corresponded to the vidame (q.v.) of a bishop. Their function was generally to represent the abbot in his capacity as feudal lord; to act as his representative in the courts of his superior lord; to exercise secular justice in the abbot’s name in the abbatial court; to lead the retainers. Of the abbey to battle under the banner of the patron saint.
In England.
In England the word advocatus was never used to denote an hereditary representative of an abbot; but in some of the larger abbeys there were hereditary stewards whose functions and privileges were not dissimilar to those of the continental advocati. The word advocatus, however, was in constant use in England to denote the patron of an ecclesiastical benefice, whose sole right of any importance was an hereditary one of presenting a parson to the bishop for institution. In this way the hereditary right of presentation to a benefice came to be called in English an “advowson” (advocatio). The advocatus played a more important part in the feudal polity of the Empire and of the Low Countries than in France, where his functions, confined to the protection of the interests of religious houses, were superseded from the 13th century onwards by the growth of the central power and the increasing efficiency of the royal administration. They had, indeed, long ceased to be effective for their original purpose; and from the time when their office became a fief they had taken advantage of their position to pillage and suppress those whom it was their function to defend. The medieval records, not in France only, are full of complaints by abbots of their usurpations, exactions and acts of violence.
The German Vogt.
In Germany the title of advocatus ( Vogt) was given not only to the advocati of churches and abbeys, but to the officials appointed, from early in the middle ages, by the emperor to administer their immediate domains, in contradistinction to the counts, who had become hereditary princes of the Empire. The territory so administered was known as Vogtland (terra advocatorum), a name still sometimes employed to designate the strip of country which embraces the principalities of Reuss and adjacent portions of Saxony, Prussia and Bavaria. These imperial advocati tended in their turn to become hereditary. Sometimes the emperor himself assumed the title of Vogt of some particular part of his immediate domain. In the Netherlands as well as in Germany advocati were often appointed in the cities, by the overlord or by the emperor, sometimes to take the place of the bailiff (Ger. Schultheiss, Dutch schout, Lat. scultetus), sometimes alongside this official.
See Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1883, Niort), s. “Advocati”; A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutions francaises (Paris, 1892); Herzog Hauck, Realencyklopadie (ed. Leipzig, 1896), s. “Advocatus ecclesiae,” where further references will be found.
ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF, the collective term by which what in England are called barristers are known in Scotland. They professionally attend the supreme courts in Edinburgh; but they are privileged to plead in any cause before the inferior courts, where counsel are not excluded by statute. They may act in cases of appeal before the House of Lords; and in some of the British colonies, where the civil law is in force, it is customary for those who practise as barristers to pass as advocates in Scotland. This body has existed by immemorial custom. Its privileges are constitutional, and are founded on no statute or charter of incorporation. The body formed itself gradually, from time to time, on the model of the French corporations of avocats, appointing like them by a general vote, a dean or doyen, who is their principal officer. It also differs from the English and Irish societies in that there is no governing body similar to the benchers, nor is there any resemblance to the quasi-collegiate discipline and the usages and customs prevailing in an inn of court. No curriculum of study, residence or professional training was, until 1856, required on entering this profession; but the faculty have always had the power, believed to be liable to control by the Court of Session, of rejecting any candidate for admission. The candidate undergoes two private examinations –the one in general scholarship, in lieu of which, however, he may produce evidence of his having graduated as master of arts in a Scottish university, or obtained an equivalent degree in an English or foreign university; and the other, at the interval of a year, in Roman, private international and Scots law, He must, before the latter examination, produce evidence of attendance at classes of Scots law and conveyancing in a Scottish university, and at classes of civil law, public or international law, constitutional law and medical jurisprudence in a Scottish or other approved university. He has then to undergo the old academic form of the public impugnment of a thesis on some title of the pandects; but this ceremony, called the public examination, has degenerated into a mere form. A large proportion of the candidate’s entrance fees (amounting to L. 339) is devoted to the magnificent library belonging to the faculty, which literary investigators in Edinburgh find so eminently useful.
ADVOCATUS DIABOLI, devil’s advocate, the name popularly given to the promoter of the Faith (promotor fidei), and officer of the Sacred Congregation of Rites at Rome, whose duty is to prepare all possible arguments against the admission of any one to the posthumous honours of beatification and canonization. This functionary is first formally mentioned under Leo X.(1513- 1521) in the proceedings in connexion with the canonization of St Lorenzo Giustiniani. In 1631 Urban VIII. made his presence, either in person or by deputy, necessary for the validity of any act connected with the process of beatification or canonization (see CANONISATION). The phrase, “devil’s advocate,” has by an easy transference come to be used of any one who puts himself up, or is put up, for the sake of promoting debate, to argue a case in which he does not necessarily believe.
ADVOWSON, or @ADVOWZEN (through O. Fr. advouson, from Lat. advocatio, a summons to), the right of presentation to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice, so called because the patron defends or advocates the claims of the person whom he presents. At what period the right of advowson arose is uncertain; it was probably the result of gradual growth. The earliest trace of the practice is found in the decree of the council of Orange, A.D. 441, which allowed a bishop, who had built a church in the diocese of another bishop, to nominate the clerk, but not to consecrate the church. The 123rd Novel of Justinian, promulgated about the end of the 5th century, decreed “that if any man should erect an oratory, and desire to present a clerk thereto by himself or his heirs, if they furnish a competency for his livelihood, and nominate to the bishop such as are worthy, they may be ordained.” The 57th Novel empowered the bishop to examine them and judge of their qualifications, and, where those were sufficient, obliged him to admit the clerk. In England, for quite two centuries after its conversion, the clergy administered only pro tempore in the parochial churches, receiving their maintenance from the cathedral church, all the appointments within the diocese lying with the bishop. But in order to promote the building and endowment of parochial churches those who had contributed to their erection either by a grant of land, by building or by endowment, became entitled to present a clerk of their own choice to the bishop, who was invested with the revenues derived from such contribution. After the Norman Conquest, when the boundaries between church and state were more clearly marked, it became usual for patrons to appoint to livings not only without the consent, but even against the will, of the bishops.
Advowsons are divided into two kinds, appendant and in gross. Originally the right of nominating1 or presenting was annexed to the person who built or endowed the church, but the right gradually became annexed to the manor in which it was built, for the endowment was considered parcel of the manor, the church being built for the use of the inhabitants, and the tithes of the manor being attached to the church. Consequently where the right of patronage (the right of the patron to present to the bishop the person whom he has nominated to become rector or vicar of the parish to the benefice of which he claims the right of advowson) remains attached to the manor, it is called an advowson appendant, and passes with the estate by inheritance or sale without any special conveyance. But where, as is often the case, the right of presentation has been sold by itself, and so separated from the manor, it is called an advowson in gross. An advowson may also be partly appendant, and partly in gross, e.g. if an owner granted to another every second presentment, the advowson would be appendant for the grantor’s turn and in gross for the grantee’s.
Advowsons are further distinguished into presentative and collative. In a presentative advowson, the patron presents a clergyman to the bishop, with the petition that he be instituted into the vacant living. The bishop is bound to induct if he find the clergyman canonically qualified, and a refusal on his part is subject to an appeal to an ecclesiastical court either by patron or by presentee. In a collative advowson the bishop is himself the patron, either in his own right or in the right of the proper patron, which has lapsed to him through not being exercised within the statutory period of six months after the vacancy occurred. No petition is necessary in this case, and the bishop is said to collate to the benefice. Before 1898 there were also donative advowsons, but the Benefices Act 1898 made all donations with cure of souls presentative. In a donative advowson, the sovereign, or any subject by special licence from the sovereign, conferred a benefice by a simple letter of gift, without any reference to the bishop, and without presentation and institution. The incumbent of such a living was to a great extent free from the jurisdiction of the bishop, who could only reach him through the action of an ecclesiastical court. The Benefices Act of 1898 did not make any substantial change in the legal character of advowsons, which remain practically the same as before the act. Briefly, it prevents the dealing with the right of presentation as a thing apart from the advowson itself; increases the power of the bishops to refuse the presentation of unfit persons, and removes several abuses which had arisen in the transfer of patronage. Under the previously existing law, simony, or “the corrupt presentation of any person to an ecclesiastical benefice for gift, money or reward,” renders the presentation void, and subjects the persons privy or party to it to penalties; a presentation to a vacant benefice cannot be sold, and no clerk in holy orders can purchase for himself a next presentation. An advowson may, however, be sold during a vacancy, though that will not give the right to present to that vacancy; and a clerk may buy an advowson even though it be only an estate for life, and present himself on the next vacancy. Under the Benefices Act, advowsons may not be sold by public auction except in conjunction with landed property adjacent to the benefice; transfers of patronage must be registered in the registry of the diocese, and no such transfers can be made within twelve months after the last admission or institution to the benefice. Restrictions had also been imposed on the transfer of patronage of churches built under the Church Building Acts and New Parishes Acts, and on that of benefices in the gift of the lord chancellor, and sold by him in order to augment others; but agreements may be made as to the patronage of such churches in favour of persons who have contributed to their building or enlargement without being void for simony.
The right of presentation may be exercised by its owner whether he be an infant, executors, trustees, coparceners (who, if they cannot agree, present in turn in order of age) or mortgagee (who must present the nominee of the mortgagor), or a bankrupt (who, although the advowson belongs to his creditors, yet has the right to present to a vacancy). Certain owners of advowsons are temporarily or permanently disabled from exercising the right which devolves upon other persons; and the crown as patron paramount of all benefices can fill all churches not regularly filled by other patrons. It thus presents to all vacancies caused by simoniacal presentations, or by the incumbent having been presented to a bishopric or in benefices belonging to a bishopric when the see is vacant by the bishop’s death, translation or deprivation. Where a presentation belongs to a lunatic, the lord chancellor presents for him. Where it belongs to a Roman Catholic the right is exercised in his behalf by the University of Oxford if the benefice be situate south of the river Trent, and by that of Cambridge if it be north of that river. Besides the qualifications required of a presentee by canon law, such as being of the canonical age, and in priest’s orders before admission, sufficient learning and proper orthodoxy or morals, the Benefices Act requires that a year shall have elapsed since a transfer of the right of patronage, unless it can be shown that such transfer was not made in view of a probable vacancy; that the presentee has been a deacon for three years; and that he is not unfit for the discharge of his duties by reason of physical or mental infirmity or incapacity, grave pecuniary embarrassment, grave misconduct or neglect of duty in an ecclesiastical office, evil life, or conduct causing grave scandal concerning his moral character since his ordination, or being party to an illegal agreement with regard to the presentation; that notice of the presentation has been given to the parish of the benefice. Except by leave of the bishop or sequestrator, the incumbent of a sequestered benefice cannot be presented. The act also gives to both patron and presentee an alternative mode of appeal against a bishop’s refusal to institute or admit, except on a ground of doctrine or ritual, to a court composed of an archbishop of the province and a judge of the High Court nominated for that purpose by the lord chancellor, a course which, however, bars resort being had to the ordinary suits of duplex querela or action of quare impedit. In case of refusal of one presentee, a lay patron may present another, and a clerical patron may do so after an unsuccessful appeal against the refusal. Upon institution the church is full against everybody except the crown, and after six months’ peaceable possession the clerk is secured in possession of the benefice, even though he may have been presented by a person who is not the proper patron. The true patron can, however, exercise his right to present at the next vacancy, and can reserve the advowson from an usurper at any time within three successive incumbencies so created adversely to his right, or within sixty years. Collation, which otherwise corresponds to institution, does not make the church full, and the true patron can dispossess the clerk at any time, unless he is a patron who collates. Possession of the benefice is completed by induction, which makes the church full against any one, including the crown. If the proper patron fails to exercise his right within six calendar months from the vacancy, the right devolves or lapses to the next superior patron, e.g. from an ordinary patron to the bishop, and if he makes similar default to the archbishop, and from him on similar default to the crown. If a bishopric becomes vacant after a lapse has accrued to it, it goes to the metropolitan; but in case of a vacancy of a benefice during the vacancy of the see the crown presents. Until the right of presentation so accruing to a bishop or archbishop is exercised, the patron can still effectually present but not if lapse has gone to the crown.
(See also BBNEFICE; GLEBE; INCUMBENT; VICAR.)
AUTHORITIES.—Burn, Ecclesiastical Law; Bingham’s Origines Ecclesiasticae, or, the Antiquities of the English Church; Mirehouse, On Advowson; Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law.
1 The distinction between nomination to a living and presentation is to be noted. Nomination is the power, by virtue of a manor or otherwise, to appoint a clerk to the patron of a benefice, to be by him presented to the ordinary. Presentation is the act of a patron in offering his clerk to the bishop, to be instituted in a benefice of his gift. Nomination and presentation, though generally used in law lor the same thing must be so distinguishnd, for it is possible that the rights of nomination may be in one person, and the rights of presentation in another.
ADYE, SIR JOHN MILLER (1819-1900), British general, son of Major James P. Adye, was born at Sevenoaks, Kent, on the 1st of November 1819. He entered the Royal Artillery in 1836, was promoted captain in 1846, and served throughout the Crimean War as brigade-major and assistant adjutant-general of artillery (C.B., brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel). In the Indian Mutiny he served on the staff in a similar capacity. Promoted brevet-colonel in 1860, he was specially employed in 1863 in the N.W. frontier of India campaign, and was deputy adjutant-general, Bengal, from 1863 to 1866, when he returned home. From 1870 to 1875 Adye was director of artillery and stores at the War Office. He was made a K.C.B. in 1873, and was promoted to be major-general and appointed governor of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1875, and survey or general of the ordnance in 1880. In 1882 he was chief of staff and second in command of the expedition to Egypt, and served throughout the campaign (G.C.B. and thanks of parliament). He held the government of Gibraltar from 1883 to 1886. Promoted lieutenant-general in 1879, general and colonel commandant of the Royal Artillery in 1884, he retired in 1886. He unsuccessfully contested Bath in the Liberal interest in 1892. He died on the 26th of August 1900. He was author of A Review of The Crimean War; The Defense of Cawnpore; A Frontier Campaign in Afghanistan; Recollections of a Military Life; and Indian Frontier Policy.
ADYTUM, the Latinized form of aduton (not to be entered), the innermost sanctuary in ancient temples, access to which was forbidden to all but the officiating priests. The most famous adytum in Greece was in the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
ADZE (from the Old Eng. adesa, of which the origin is unknown), a tool used for cutting and planing. It is somewhat like an axe reversed, the edge or the blade curving inward and placed at right angles to the handle. This shape is most suitable for planing uneven timber, as inequalities are “hooked off” by the curved blade. (See TOOLS.)
AEACUS, in Greek legend, ancestor of the Aeacidae, was the son of Zeus and Aegina, daughter of the river-god Asopus. His mother was carried off by Zeus to the island of Oenone, which was afterwards called by her name. The island having been depopulated by a pestilence, Zeus changed the ants upon it into human beings (Ovid, Met. vii. 520), who were called Myrmidones (murmekes = ants) . Aeacus ruled over his people with such justice and impartiality that after his death he was made judge of the lower world together with Minos and Rhadamanthus. By his wife Endeis he was the father of Telamon and Peleus. His successful prayer to Zeus for rain at a time of drought (Isocrates, Evagoras, 14) was commemorated by a temple at Aegina (Pausanias ii. 29). He himself erected a temple to Zeus Panhellenios and helped Poseidon and Apollo to build the walls of Troy. See Hutchinson, Aeacus, 1901.
AECLANUM, an ancient town of Samnium, Italy, 15 m. E.S.E. of Beneventum, on the Via Appia (near the modern Mirabella). It became the chief town of the Hirpini after Beneventum had become a Roman colony. Sulla captured it in 89 B.C. by setting on fire the wooden breastwork by which it was defended, and new fortifications were erected. Hadrian, who repaired the Via Appia from Beneventum to this point, made it a colony; it has ruins of the city walls, of an aqueduct, baths and an amphitheatre; nearly 400 inscriptions have also been discovered. Two different routes to Apulia diverged at this point, one (Via Aurelia Aeclanensis) leading through the modern Ariano to Herdoniae, the other (the Via Appia of the Empire) passing the Lacus Ampsanctus and going on to Aquilonia and Venusia; while the road from Aeclanum to Abellinum (mod. Avellini) may also follow an ancient line. H. Nissen (Italische Landes kunde, Berlin, 1902, ii. 819) speaks of another road, which he believes to have been that followed by Horace, from Aeclanum to Trevicum and thence to Ausculum; but Th. Monimsen (Corpus Inscrip. Lat., Berlin, 1883, ix. 602) is more likely to be right in supposing that the road taken by Horace ran directly from Beneventum to Trevicum and thence to Aquilonia (though the course of this road is not yet determined in detail), and that the easier, though somewhat longer, road by Aeclanum was of later date.
AEDESIUS (d. A.D. 355), Neoplatonist philosopher, was born of a noble Cappadocian family. He migrated to Syria, attracted by the lectures of Iamblichus, whose follower he became. According to Eunapius, he differed from Iamblichus on certain points connected with magic. He taught at Pergamum, his chief disciples being Eusebius and Maximus. He seems to have modified his doctrines through fear of Constantine.
See Ritter and Preller, 552; Ritter’s Geschichte der Philosophie; T. Whittaker, The Neoplatonists (Cambridge, 1901).
AEDICULA (diminutive of Lat. aedis or aedes, a temple or house), a small house or temple,–a household shrine holding small altars or the statues of the Lares and Penates.
AEDILE (Lat. aedilis), in Roman antiquities, the name of certain Roman magistrates, probably derived from aedis (a temple), because they had the care of the temple of Ceres, where the plebeian archives were kept. They were originally two in number, called “plebeian” aediles. They were created in the same year as the tribunes of the people (494 B.C.), their persons were sacrosanct or inviolable, and (at least after until they were elected at the Comitia Tributa out of the plebeians alone. Originally intended as assistants to the tribunes, they exercised certain police functions, were empowered to inflict fines and managed the plebeian and Roman games. According to Livy (vi. 42), after the passing of the Licinian rogations, an extra day was added to the Roman games; the aediles refused to bear the additional expense, whereupon the patricians offered to undertake it, on condition that they were admitted to the aedileship. The plebeians accepted the offer, and accordingly two “curule” aediles were appointed–at first from the patricians alone, then from patricians and plebeians in turn, lastly, from either–at the Comitia Tributa under the presidency of the consul. Although not sacrosanct, they had the right of sitting in a curule chair and wore the distinctive toga praetexta. They took over the management of the Roman and Megalesian games, the care of the patrician temples and had the right of issuing edicts as superintendents of the markets. But although the curule aediles always ranked higher than the plebeian, their functions gradually approximated and became practically identical.
Cicero (Legg. iii. 3, 7) divides these functions under three heads:–(1) Care of the city: the repair and preservation of temples, sewers and aqueducts; street cleansing and paving; regulations regarding traffic, dangerous animals and dilapidated buildings; precautions against fire; superintendence of baths and taverns; enforcement of sumptuary laws; punishment of gamblers and usurers; the care of public morals generally, including the prevention of foreign superstitions. They also punished those who had too large a share of the ager publicus, or kept too many cattle on the state pastures. (2) Care of provisions: investigation of the quality of the articles supplied and the correctness of weights and measures; the purchase of corn for disposal at a low price in case of necessity. (3) Care of line games: superintendence and organization of the public games, as well as of those given by themselves and private individuals (e.g. at funerals) at their own expense. Ambitious persons often spent enormous sums in this manner to win the popula1 favour with a view to official advancement.
In 44 Caesar added two patrician aediles, called Cereales, whose special duty was the care of the corn-supply. Under Augustus the office lost much of its importance, its juridical functions and the care of the games being transferred to the praetor, while its city responsibilities were limited by the appointment of a praefectus urbi. In the 3rd century A.D. it disappeared altogether.
AUTHORITIES.–Schubert, De Romanorum Aedilibus (1828); Hoffmann, De Aedilibus Romanis (1842); Goll, De Aedilibus sub Caesarum Imperio (1860); Labatut, Les Ediles et les moeurs (1868); Marquardt Mommsen, Handbuch der romanischen Altertumer, ii. (1888); Soltau, Die ursprungliche Bedeutung und Competenz der Aediles Plebis (Bonn, 1882).
AEDUI, HAEDUI or HEDUI (Gr. Aidouoi), a Gallic people of Gallia Lugdunensis, who inhabited the country between the Arar (Saone) and Liger (Loire). The statement in Strabo (ii. 3. 192) that they dwelt between the Arar and Dubis (Doubs) is incorrect. Their territory thus included the greater part of the modern departments of Saone-et-Loire, Cote d’Or and Nievre. According to Livy (v. 34), they took part in the expedition of Bellovesus into Italy in the 6th century B.C. Before Caesar’s time they had attached themselves to the Romans, and were honoured with the title of brothers and kinsmen of the Roman people. When the Sequani, their neighbours on the other side of the Arar, with whom they were continually quarrelling, invaded their country and subjugated them with the assistance of a German chieftain named Ariovistus, the Aedui sent Divitiacus, the druid, to Rome to appeal to the senate for help, but his mission was unsuccessful. On his arrival in Gaul (58 B.C.), Caesar restored their independence. In spite of this, the Aedui joined the Gallic coalition against Caesar (B.G. vii. 42), but after the surrender of Vercingetorix at Alesia were glad to return to their allegiance. Augustus dismantled their native capital Bibracte on Mont Beuvray, and substituted a new town with a half-Roman, half-Gaulish name, Augustodunum (mod. Autun). During the reign of Tiberias (A.D. 21), they revolted under Julius Sacrovir, and seized Augustudunum, but were soon put down by Gaius Silius (Tacitus Ann. iii. 43-46). The Aedui were the first of the Gauls to receive from the emperor Claudius the distinction of juo hanorum. The oration of Eumenius (q.v.), in which he pleaded for the restoration of the schools of his native place Augustodunum, shows that the district was neglected. The chief magistrate of the Aedui in Caesar’s time was called Vergobretus (according to Mommsen, “judgment-worker”), who was elected annually, possessed powers of life and death, but was forbidden to go beyond the frontier. Certain clientes, or small communities, were also dependent upon the Aedui.
See A. E. Desjardins, Geographie de la Gaide, ii. (1876-1893); T. R. Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul (1899).
AEGADIAN ISUANDS (Ital. Isole Egati; anc. Aegales Insulae), a group of small mountainous islands off the western coast of Sicily, chiefly remarkable as the scene of the defeat of the Carthaginian fleet by C. Lutatius Catulus in 241 B.C., which ended the First Punic War. Favignana (Aegusa), the largest, pop. (1901) 6414, lies 10 m. S.W. of Trapani; Levanzo (Phorbantia) 8 m. W.; while Maritimo, the ancient iera nesos, 15 m. W. of Trapani, is now reckoned as a part of the group. They belonged to the Pallavicini family of Genoa until 1874, when they were bought by Signor Florio of Palermo.
AEGEAN CIVILIZATION, the general term for the prehistoric civilization, previously called “Mycenaean” because its existence was first brought to popular notice by Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at Mycenae in 1876. Subsequent discoveries, however, have made it clear that Mycenae was not its chief centre in its earlier stages, or, perhaps, at any period; and, accordingly, it is more usual now to adopt a wider geographical title.
I. History of Discovery and Distribution of Remains.–Mycenae and Tiryns are the two principal sites on which evidence of a prehistoric civilization was remarked long ago by the classical Greeks. The curtain-wall and towers of the Mycenaean citadel, its gate with heraldic lions, and the great “Treasury of Atreus” had borne silent witness for ages before Schliemann’s time; but they were supposed only to speak to the Homeric, or at farthest a rude Heroic beginning of purely Hellenic, civilization. It was not till Schliemann exposed the contents of the graves which lay just inside the gate (see MYCENAE), that scholars recognized the advanced stage of art to which prehistoric dwellers in the Mycenaean citadel had attained. There had been, however, a good deal of other evidence available before 1876, which, had it been collated and seriously studied, might have discounted the sensation that the discovery of the citadel graves eventually made. Although it was recognized that certain tributaries, represented e.g. in the XVIIIth Dynasty tomb of Rekhmara at Egyptian Thebes as bearing vases of peculiar forms, were of some Mediterranean race, neither their precise habitat nor the degree of their civilization could be determined while so few actual prehistoric remains were known in the Mediterranean lands. Nor did the Aegean objects which were lying obscurely in museums in 1870, or thereabouts, provide a sufficient test of the real basis underlying the Hellenic myths of the Argolid, the Troad and Crete, to cause these to he taken seriously. Both at Sevres and Neuchatel Aegean vases have been exhibited since about 1840, the provenience being in the one case Phylakope in Melos, in the other Cephalonia. Ludwig Ross, by his explorations in the Greek islands from 1835 onwards, called attention to certain early intaglios, since known as Inselsteine; but it was not till 1878 that C. T. Newton demonstrated these to be no strayed Phoenician products. In 1866 primitive structures were discovered in the island of Therasia by quarrymen extracting pozzolana for the Suez Canal works; and when this discovery was followed up in 1870, on the neighbouring Santorin (Thera), by representatives of the French School at Athens, much pottery of a class now known immediately to precede the typical late Aegean ware, and many stone and metal objects, were found and dated by the geologist Fouque, somewhat arbitrarily, to 2000 B.C., by consideration of the superincumbent eruptive stratum. Meanwhile, in 1868, tombs at Ialysus in Rhodes had yielded to M. A. Biliotti many fine painted vases of styles which were called later the third and fourth “Mycenaean”; but these, bought by John Ruskin, and presented to the British Museum, excited less attention than they deserved, being supposed to be of some local Asiatic fabric of uncertain date. Nor was a connexion immediately detected between them and the objects found four years later in a tomb at Menidi in Attica and a rock-cut “bee-hive” grave near the Argive Heraeum.
Even Schliemann’s first excavations at Hissarlik in the Troad (q.v.) did not excite surprise. But the “Burnt City” of his second stratum, revealed in 1873, with its fortifications and vases, and a hoard of gold, silver and bronze objects, which the discoverer connected with it, began to arouse a curiosity which was destined presently to spread far outside the narrow circle of scholars. As soon as Schliemann came on the Mycenae graves three years later, light poured from all sides on the prehistotic period of Greece. It was recognized that the character of both the fabric and the decoration of the Mycenaean objects was not that of any well-known art. A wide range in space was proved by the identification of the Inselsteine and the Ialysus vases with the new style, and a wide range in time by collation of the earlier Theraean and Hissarlik discoveries. A relation between objects of art described by Homer and the Mycenaean treasure was generally allowed, and a correct opinion prevailed that, while certainly posterior, the civilization of the Iliad was reminiscent of the Mycenaean. Schliemann got to work again at Hissarlik in 1878, and greatly increased our knowledge of the lower strata, but did not recognize the Aegean remains in his “Lydian” city of the sixth stratum, which were not to be fully revealed till Dr W. Dorpfeld resumed the work at Hissarlik in 1892 after the first explorer’s death (see TROAD). But by laying bare in 1884 the upper stratum of remains on the rock of Tiryns (q.v.), Schliemann made a contribution to our knowledge of prehistoric domestic life which was amplified two years later by Chr. Tsountas’s discovery of the Mycenae palace. Schliemann’s work at Tiryns was not resumed till 1905, when it was proved, as had long been suspected, that an earlier palace underlies the one he had exposed. From 1886 dates the finding of Mycenaean sepulchres outside the Argolid, from which, and from the continuation of Tsountas’s exploration of the buildings and lesser graves at Mycenae, a large treasure, independent of Schliemann’s princely gift, has been gathered into the National Museum at Athens. In that year were excavated dome-tombs, most already rifled but retaining some of their furniture, at Arkina and Eleusis in Attica, at Dimini near Volo in Thessaly, at Kampos on the west of Mount Taygetus, and at Maskarata in Cephalonia. The richest grave of all was explored at Vaphio in Laconia in 1889, and yielded, besides many gems and miscellaneous goldsmiths’ work, two golden goblets chased with scenes of bull-hunting, and certain broken vases painted in a large bold style which remained an enigma till the excavation of Cnossus. In 1890 and 1893 Staes cleared out certain less rich dome-tombs at Thoricus in Attica; and other graves, either rock-cut “bee-hives” or chambers, were found at Spata and Aphidna in Attica, in Aegina and Salamis, at the Heraeum (see ARGOS) and Nauplia in the Argolid, near Thebes and Delphi, and not far from the Thessalian Larissa. During the excavations on the Acropolis at Athens, terminated in 1888, many potsherds of the Mycenaean style were found; but Olympia had yielded either none, or such as had not been recognized before being thrown away, and the temple site at Delphi produced nothing distinctively Aegean. The American explorations of the Argive Heraeum, concluded in 1895, also failed to prove that site to have been important in the prehistoric time, though, as was to be expected from its neighbourhood to Mycenae itself, there were traces of occupation in the later Aegean periods. Prehistoric research had now begun to extend beyond the Greek mainland. Certain central Aegean islands, Antiparos, Ios, Amorgos, Syros and Siphnos, were all found to be singularly rich in evidence of the middle-Aegean period. The series of Syran built graves, containing crouching corpses, is the best and most representative that is known in the Legean. Melos, long marked as a source of early objects, but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by the British School at Athens in 1896, yielded at Phylakope remains of all the Aegean periods, except the Neolithic. A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age (such as is given by J. L. Myres and M. O. Richter in Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum) shows more than five-and-twenty settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of Salamis, has yielded the richest Aegean treasure in precious metal found outside Mycenae. E. Chantre in 1894 picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissariik, in central Phtygia and at Pteria (q.v.), and the English archaeological expeditions, sent subsequently into north-western Anatolia, have never falled to bring back ceramic specimens of Aegean appearance from the valleys of the Rhyndncus, Sangarius and Halys. In Egypt in 1887 W. M. F. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum, and farther up the Nile, at Tell el-Amarna, chanced on bits of no fewer than 800 Aegean vases in 1889. There have now been recognized in the collections at Cairo, Florence, London, Paris and Bologna several Egyptian imitations of the Aegean style which can be set off against the many debts which the centres of Aegean culture owed to Egypt. Two Aegean vases were found at Sidon in 1885, and many fragments of Aegean and especially Cypriote pottery have been turned up during recent excavations of sites in Philistia by the Palestine Fund. South-eastern Sicily, ever since P. Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, has proved a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Aegean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik. Sardinia has Aegean sites, e.g. at Abini near Teti; and Spain has yielded objects recognized as Aegean from tombs near Cadiz and from Saragossa. One land, however, has eclipsed all others in the Aegean by the wealth of its remains of all the prehistoric ages, viz. Crete, so much so that, for the present, we must regard it as the fountain-head of Aegean civilization, and probably for long its political and social centre. The island first attracted the notice of archaeologists by the remarkable archaic Greek bronzes found in a cave on Mount Ida in 1885, as well as by epigraphic monuments such as the famous law of Gortyna; but the first undoubted Aegean remains reported from it were a few objects extracted from Cnossus by Minos Kalokhairinos of Candia in 1878. These were followed by certain discoveries made in the S. plain Messara by F. Halbherr. W. J. Stillman and H. Schliemann both made unsuccessful attempts at Cnossus, and A. J. Evans, coming on the scene in 1893, travelled in succeeding years about the island picking up trifles of unconsidered evidence, which gradually convinced him that greater things would eventually be found. He obtained enough to enable him to forecast the discovery of written characters, till then not suspected in Aegean civilization. The revolution of 1897-98 opened the door to wider knowledge, and much exploration has ensued, for which see CRETE. Thus the “Aegean Area” has now come to mean the Archipelago with Crete and Cyprus, the Hellenic peninsula with the Ionian isles, and Western Anatolic. Evidence is still wanting for the Macedonian and Thracian coasts. Offshoots are found in the W. Mediterranean, in Sicily, Italy, Sardinia and Spain, and in the E. in Syria and Egypt. About the Cyrenaica we are still insufficiently informed.
II. General Nature of the Evidence.—For details of monumental evidence the articles on CRETE, MYCENAE, TIRYNS, TROAD, CYPRUS, &c., must be consulted. The most representative site explored up to now is Cnossus (see CRETE, sect. Archaeology), which has yielded not only the most various but the most continuous evidence from the Neolithic age to the twilight of classical civilization. Next in importance come Hissarlik, Mycenae, Phaestus, Hagia, Triada, Tiryns, Phylakope, Palaikastro and Gournia.
A. The internal evidence at present available comprises–
Structures.—Ruins of palaces, palatial villas, houses, built dome- or cist-graves and fortifications (Aegean isles, Greek mainland and N.W. Anatolia), but not distinct temples; small shrines, however, and temene (religious enclosures, remains or one of which were probably found at Petsofa near Palaikastro by J. L. Myres in 1904) are represented on intaglios and frescoes. From the sources and from inlay-work we have also representations of palaces and houses.
(2) Structural Decoration.–Architectural features, such as columns, friezes and various mouldings; mural decoration, such as fresco-paintings, coloured reliefs and mosaic inlay.
(3) Furniture.–(a) Domestic, such as vessels of all sorts and in many materials, from huge store-jars down to tiny unguent-pots; culinary and other implements; thrones, seats, tables, &c., these all in stone or plastered terra-cotta. (b) Sacred, such as models or actual examples of ritual objects; of these we have also numerous pictorial representations. (c) Funerary, e.g. coffins in painted terra-cotta.
(4) Artistic fabrics, e.g. plastic objects, carved in stone or ivory, cast or beaten in metals (gold, silver, copper and bronze), or modelled in clay, faience, paste, &c. Very little trace has yet been found of large free sculpture, but many examples exist of sculptors’ smaller work. Vases of all kinds, carved in marble or other stones, cast or beaten in metals or fashioned in clay, the latter in enormous number and variety, richly ornamented with coloured schemes, and sometimes bearing moulded decoration. Examples of painting on stone, opaque and transparent. Engraved objects in great numberr e.g. ring-bezels and gems; and an immense quantity of clay impressions, taken from these.
(5) Weapons, tools and implements, in stone, clay and bronze, and at the last iron, sometimes richly ornamented or inlaid. Numerous representations also of the same. No actual body-armour, except such as was ceremonial and buried with the dead, like the gold breastplates in the circle-graves at Mycenae.
(6) Articles of personal use, e.g. brooches efbulae), pins, razors, tweezers, &c., often found as dedications to a deity, e.g. in the Dictaean Cavern of Crete. No textiles have survived.
(7) Written documents, e.g. clay tablets and discs (so far in Crete only), but nothing of more perishable nature, such as skin, papyrus, &c.; engraved gems and gem impressions; legends written with pigment on pottery (rare); characters incised on stone or pottery. These show two main systems of script (see CRETE).
(8) Excavated tombs, of either the pit or the grotto kind, in which the dead were laid, together with various objects of use and luxury, without cremation, and in either coffins or loculi or simple wrappings.
(9) Public works, such as paved and stepped roadways, bridges, systems of drainage, &c.
B. There is also a certain amount of external evidence to be gathered from–(1) Monuments and records of other contemporary civilizations, e.g. representations of alien peoples in Egyptian frescoes; imitation of Aegean fabrics and style in non-Aegean lands; allusions to Mediterranean peoples in Egyptian, Semitic or Babylonian records.
(2) Literary traditions of subsequent civilizations, especially the Hellenic; such as, e.g., those embodied in the Homeric poems, the legenda concerning Crete, Mycenae, &c.; statements as to the origin of gods, cults and so forth, transmitted to us by Hellenic antiquarians such as Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, &c.
(3) Traces of customs, creeds, rituals, &c., in the Aegean area at a later time, discordant with the civilization in which they were practised and indicating survival from earlier systems. There are also possible linguistic and even physical survivals to be considered.
III General Features of Aegean Civalization.–The leading features of Aegean civilization, as deduced from the evidence, must be stated very briefly.
(1) Political Organisation.–The great Cretan palaces and the fortified citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarlik, each containing little more than one great residence, and dominating lower towns of meaner houses, point to monarchy at all periods. Independent local developments of art before the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. suggest the early existence of independent units in various parts, of which the strongest was the Cnossian. After that date the evidence goes strongly to show that one political dominion was spread for a brief period, or for two brief periods, over almost all the area (see later). The great number of tribute-tallies found at Cnossus perhaps indicates that the Centre of power was always there.
(2) Religion.–The fact that shrines have so far been found within palaces and not certainly anywhere else indicates that the kings kept religious power in their own hands; perhaps they were themselves high-priests. Religion in the area seems to have been essentially the same everywhere from the earliest period, viz. the cult of a Divine Principle, resident in dominant features of nature (sun, stars, mountains, trees, &c.) and controlling fertility. This cult passed through an aniconic stage, from which fetishes survived to the last, these being rocks or pillars, trees, weapons (e.g. bipennis, or double war-axe, shield), etc. When the iconic stage was reached, about 2000 B.C., we find the Divine Spirit represented as a goddess with a subordinate young god, as in many other E. Mediterranean lands. The god was probably son and mate of the goddess, and the divine pair represented the genius of Reproductive Fertility in its relations with humanity. The goddess sometimes appears with doves, as uranic, at others with snakes, as chthonic. In the ritual fetishes, often of miniature form, played a great part: all sorts of plants and animals were sacred: sacrifice (not burnt, and human very doubtful), dedication of all sorts of offerings and simulacra, invocation, &c., were practised. The dead, who returned to the Great Mother, were objects of a sort of hero-worship. This early nature-cult explains many anomalous features of Hellenic religion, especially in the cults of Artemis and Aphrodite. (See CRETE.)
(3) Social Organization.—There is a possibility that features of a primeval matriarchate long survived; but there is no certain evidence. Of the organization of the people under the monarch we are ignorant. There are so few representations of armed men that it seems doubtful if there can have been any professional military Class. Theatral structures found at Cnossus and Phaestus, within the precincts of the palaces, were perhaps used for shows or for sittings of a royal assize, rather than for popular assemblies. The Cnossian remains contain evidence of an elaborate system of registration, account-keeping and other secretarial work, which perhaps indicates a considerable body of law. The line of the ruling class was comfortable and even luxurious from early times. Fine stone palaces, richly decorated, with separate sleeping apartments, large halls, ingenious devices for admitting light and air, sanitary conveniences and marvellously modern arrangements for supply of water and for drainage, attest this fact. Even the smaller houses, after the Neolithic period, seem also to have been of stone, plastered within. After 1600 B.C. the palaces in Crete had more than one story, fine stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, &c. In this later period, the distinction of blocks of apartments in some palaces has been held to indicate the seclusion of women in harems, at least among the ruling caste. Cnossian frescoes show women grouped apart, and they appear alone on gems. Flesh and fish and many kinds of vegetables were evidently eaten, and wine and beer were drunk. Vessels for culinary, table, and luxurious uses show an infinite variety of form and purpose. Artificers’ implements of many kinds were in use, bronze succeeding obsidian and other hard stones as the material. Seats are found carefully shaped to the human person. There was evidently olive- and vine-culture on a large scale in Crete at any rate. Chariots were in use in the later period, as is proved by the pictures of them on Cretan tablets, and therefore, probably, the horse also was known. Indeed a horse appears on a gem impression. Main ways were paved. Sports, probably more or less religious, are often represented, e.g. bullfighting, dancing, boxing, armed combats.
(4) Commerce was practised to some extent in very early times, as is proved by the distribution of Melian obsidian over all the Aegean area and by the Nilotic influence on early Minoan art. We find Cretan vessels exported to Melos, Egypt and the Greek mainland. Melian vases came in their turn to Crete. After 1600 B.C. there is very close intercourse with Egypt, and Aegean things hnd their way to all coasts of the Mediterranean (see below). No traces of currency have come to light, unless certain axeheads, too slight for practical use, had that character; but standard weights have been found, and representations of ingots. The Aegean written documents have not yet proved (by being found outside the area) epistolary correspondence with other lands. Representations of ships are not common, but several have been observed on Aegean gems, gem-sealings and vases. They are vessels of low free-board, with masts. Familiarity with the sea is proved by the free use of marine motives in decoration.
(5) Treatment or the Dead.–The dead in the earlier period wore laid (so far as we know at present) within cists constructed of upright stones. These were sometimes inside caves. After the burial the cist was covered in with earth. A little later, in Crete, bone-pits seem to have come into use, containing the remains of many burials. Possibly the flesh was boiled off the bones at once (“scarification”), or left to rot in separate cists awhile; afterwards the skeletons were collected and the cists re-used. The coffins are of small size, contain corpses with the knees drawn up to the chin and are found in excavated chambers or pits. In the later period a peculiar “bee-hive” tomb became common, sometimes wholly or partly excavated, sometimes (as in the magnificent Mycenaean “Treasuries”) constructed domewise. The shaft-graves in the Mycenae circle are also a late type, paralleled in the later Cnossian cemetery. The latest type of tomb is a flatly vaulted chamber approached by a horizontal or slightly inclined way, whose sides converge above. At no period do the Aegean dead seem to have been burned. Weapons, food, water, unguents and various trinkets were laid with the corpse at all periods. In the Mycenae circle an altar seems to have been erected over the graves, and perhaps slaves were killed to bear the dead chiefs company. A painted sarcophagus, found at Hagia Triada, also possibly shows a hero-cult of the dead.
(6) Artistic Production.–Ceramic art reached a specially high standard in fabric, form and decoration by the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. in Crete. The products of that period compare favourably with any potters’ work in the world. The same may be said of fresco-painting, and probably of metal work. Modelling in terra-cotta, sculpture in stone and ivory, engraving on gems, were following it closely by the beginning of the 2nd millennium. After 2000 B.C. all these arts revived, and sculpture, as evidenced by relief work, both on a large and on a small scale, carved stone vessels, metallurgy in gold, silver and bronze, advanced farther. This art and those of fresco- and vase-painting and of gem-engraving stood higher about the 15th century B.C. than at any subsequent period before the 6th century. The manufacture, modelling and painting of faience objects, and the making of inlays in many materials were also familiar to Aegean craftsmen, who show in all their best work a strong sense of natural form and an appreciation of ideal balance and decorative effect, such as are seen in the best products of later Hellenic art. Architectural ornament was also highly developed. The richness of the Aegean capitals and columns may be judged by those from the “Treasury of Atreus” now set up in the British Museum; and of the friezes we have examples in Mycenaean and Cnossian fragments, and Cnossian paintings. The magnificent gold work of the later period, preserved to us at Mycenae and Vaphio, needs only to be mentioned. It should be compared with stone work in Crete, especially the steatite vases with reliefs found at Hagia Triada. On the whole, Aegean art, at its two great periods, in the middle of the 3rd and 2nd millennia respectively, will bear comparison with any contemporary arts.
IV. Origin, Nature and History of Aegean Civilization.—The evidence, summarized above, though very various and voluminous, is not yet sufficient to answer all the questions which may be asked as to the origin, nature and history of this civilization, or to answer any but a few questions with absolute certainty. We shall try to indicate the extent to which it can legitimately be applied.
A. Distinctive Features.—The fact that Aegean civilization is distinguished from all others, prior or contemporary, not only by its geographical area, but by leading organic characteristics, has never been in doubt, since its remains came to be studied seriously and impartially. The truth was indeed obscured for a time by persistent prejudices in favour of certain alien Mediterranean races long known to have been in relation with the Aegean area in prehistoric times, e.g. the Egyptians and especially the Phoenicians. But their claims to be the principal authors of the Aegean remains grew fainter with every fresh Aegean discovery, and every new light thrown on their own proper products; with the Cretan revelations they ceased altogether to be considered except by a few Homeric enthusiasts. Briefly, we now know that the Aegean civilization developed these distinctive features. (i) An indigenous script expressed in characters of which only a very small percentage are identical, or even obviously connected, with those of any other script. This is equally true both of the pictographic and the linear Aegean systems. Its nearest affinities are with the “Asianic” scripts, preserved to us by Hittite, Cypriote and south-west Anatolian (Pamphyhan, Lycian and Carian) inscriptions. But neither are these affinities close enough to be of any practical aid in deciphering Aegean characters, nor is it by any means certain that there is parentage. The Aegean script may be, and probably is, prior in origin to the “Asianic”; and it may equally well be owed to a remote common ancestor, or (the small number of common characters being considered) be an entirely independent evolution from representations of natural objects (see CRETE). (2) An Art, whose products cannot be confounded with those of any other known art by a trained eye. Its obligations to other contemporary arts are many and obvious, especially in its later stages; but every borrowed form and motive undergoes an essential modification at the hands of the Aegean craftsman, and the product is stamped with a new character. The secret of this character lles evidently in a constant attempt to express an ideal in forms more and more closely approaching to realities. We detect the dawn of that spirit which afterwards animated Hellenic art. The fresco-paintings, ceramic motives, reliefs, free sculpture and toreutic handiwork of Crete have supplied the clearest proof of it, confirming the impression already created by the goldsmiths’ and painters’ work of the Greek mainland (Mycenae, Vaphio, Tiryns). (3) Architectural plans and decoration. The arrangement of Aegean palaces is of two main types. First (and perhaps earliest in time), the chambers are grouped round a central court, being engaged one with the other in a labyrinthine complexity, and the greater oblongs are entered from a long side and divided longitudinally by pillars. Second, the main chamber is of what is known as the megaron type, i.e. it stands free, isolated from the rest of the plan by corridors, is entered from a vestibule on a short side, and has a central hearth, surrounded by pillars and perhaps hypaethral; there is no central court, and other apartments form distinct blocks. For possible geographical reasons for this duality of type see CRETE. In spite of many comparisons made with Egyptian, Babylonian and “Hittite” plans, both these arrangements remain incongruous with any remains of prior or contemporary structures elsewhere. Whether either plan suits the “Homeric palace” does not affect the present question. (4) A type of tomb, the dome or “bee-hive,” of which the grandest examples known are at Mycenae. The Cretan “larnax” coffins, also, have no parallels outside the Aegean. There are other infinite singularities of detail; but the above are more than sufficient to establish the point.
B. Origin and Continuity.–With the immense expansion of the evidence, due to the Cretan excavations, a question has arisen how far the Aegean civilization, whose total duration covers at least three thousand years, can be regarded as one and continuous. Thanks to the exploration of Cnossus, we now know that Aegean civilization had its roots in a primitive Neolithic period, of uncertain but very long duration, represented by a stratum which (on that site in particular) is in places nearly 20 ft. thick, and contains stone implements and sherds of handmade and hand-polished vessels, showing a progressive development in technique from bottom to top. This Cnossian stratum seems to be throughout earlier than the lowest layer at Hissarlik. It closes with the introduction of incised, white-filled decoration on pottery, whose motives are presently found reproduced in monochrome pigment. We are now in the beginning of the Bronze Age, and the first of Evans’s “Minoan” periods (see CRETE). Thereafter, by exact observation of stratification, eight more periods have been distinguished by the explorer of Cnossus, each marked by some important development in the universal and necessary products of the potter’s art, the least destructible and therefore most generally used archaeological criterion. These periods fill the whole Bronze Age, with whose close, by the introduction of the superior metal, iron, the Aegean Age is conventionally held to end. Iron came into general Aegean use about 1000 B.C., and possibly was the means by which a body of northern invaders established their power on the ruins of the earlier dominion. The important point is this, that throughout the nine Cnossian periods, following the Neolithic Age (named by Evans, “Minoan I. 1, 2, 3; II. 1, 2, 3; III. 1, 2, 3”; see CRETE), there is evidence of a perfectly orderly and continuous evolution in, at any rate, ceramic art. From one stage to another, fabrics, forms and motives of decoration develop gradually; so that, at the close of a span of more than two thousand years, at the least, the influences of the beginning can still be clearly seen and no trace of violent artistic intrusion can be detected. This fact, by itself, would go far to prove that the civilization continued fundamentally and essentially the same throughout. It is, moreover, supported by less abundant remains of other arts. That of painting in fresco, for instance, shows the same orderly development from at any rate Period II. 2 to the end. About institutions we have less certain knowledge, there being but little evidence for the earlier periods; but in the documents relating to religion, the most significant of all, it can at least be said that there is no trace of sharp change. We see evidence of a uniform Nature Worship passing through all the normal stages down to the anthropism in the latest period. There is no appearance of intrusive deities or cult-ideas. We may take it then (and the fact is not disputed even by those who, like Dorpfeld, believe in one thorough racial change, at least, during the Bronze Age) that the Aegean civilization was indigenous, firmly rooted and strong enough to persist essentially unchanged and dominant in its own geographical area throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. This conclusion can hardly entail less than a belief that, at any rate, the mass of those who possessed this civilization continued racially the same.
There are, however, in certain respects at certain periods, evidences of such changes as might be due to the intrusion of small conquering castes, which adopted the superior civilization of the conquered people and became assimilated to the latter. The earliest palace at Cnossus was built probably in Period II. 1 or 2. It was of the type mentioned first in the description of palace-plans above. Before Period III. 1 it was largely rebuilt, and arguments have been brought forward by Dorpfeld to show that features of the second type were then introduced. A similar rebuilding took place at the same epoch at Phaestus, and possibly at Hagia Triada. Now the second type, the “megaron” arrangement, characterizes peculiarly the palaces discovered in the north of the Aegean area, at Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarllk, where up to the present no signs of the first type, so characteristic of Crete, have been observed. These northern “megara” are all of late date, none being prior to Minoan III. 1. At Phylakope, a “megaron” appears only in the uppermost Aegean stratum, the underlying structures being more in conformity with the earlier Cretan. At the same epoch a notable change took place in the Aegean script. The pictographic characters, found on seals and discs of Period II. in Crete, had given way entirely to a linear system by Period III. That system thenceforward prevailed exclusively, suffering a slight modification again in III. 2 and 3. These and other less well marked changes, say some critics, are signs of a racial convulsion not long after 2000 B.C. An old race was conquered by a new, even if, in matters of civilization, the former capta victorem cepit. For these races respectively Dorpfeld suggests the names “Lycian” and “Carian,” the latter coming in from the north Aegean, where Greek tradition remembered its former dominance. These names do not greatly help us. If we are to accept and profit by Dorpfeld’s nomenclature, we must be satisfied that, in their later historic habitats, both Lycians and Carians showed unmistakable signs of having formerly possessed the civilizations attributed to them in prehistoric times–signs which research has hitherto wholly failed to find. The most that can be said to be capable of proof is the infiltration of some northern influence into Crete at the end of Minoan Period II.; but it probably brought about no change of dynasty and certainly no change in the prevailing race. A good deal of anthropometric investigation has been devoted to human remains of the Aegean epoch, especially to skulls and bones found in Crete in tombs of Period II. The result of this, however, has not so far established more than the fact that the Aegean races, as a whole, belonged to the dark, long-headed Homo Mediterraneus, whose probable origin lay in mid-eastern Africa—a fact only valuable in the present connexion in so far as it tends to discredit an Asiatic source for Aegean civilization. Not enough evidence has been collected to affect the question of racial change during the Aegean period. From the skullforms studied, it would appear, as we should expect, that the Aegean race was by no means pure even in the earlier Minoan periods. It only remains to be added that there is some ground for supposing that the language spoken in Crete before the later Doric was non-Hellenic, but Indo-European. This inference rests on three inscriptions in Greek characters but non-Greek language found in E. Crete. The language has some apparent affinities with Phrygian. The inscriptions are post-Aegean by many centuries, but they occur in the part of the island known to Homer as that inhabited by the Eteo-Cretans, or aborigines. Their language may prove to be that of the Linear tablets.
C. History of Aegean Civilization.—History of an inferential and summary sort only can be derived from monuments in the absence of written records. The latter do, indeed, exist in the Case of the Cretan civilization and in great numbers; but they are undeciphered and likely to remain so, except in the improbable event of the discovery of a long bi-lingual text, partly couched in some familiar script and language. Even in that event, the information which would be derived from the Cnossian tablets would probably make but a small addition to history, since in very large part they are evidently mere inventories of tribute and stores. The engraved gems probably record divine or human names. (See CRETE.)
(1) Chronology.–The earliest chronological datum that we possess is inferred from a close similarity between certain Cretao hand-made and polished vases of Minoan Period I. 1 and others discovered by Petrie at Abydos in Egypt and referred by him to the Ist Dynasty. He goes so far as to pronounce the latter to be Cretan importations, their fabric and forms being unlike anything Nilotic. If that be so, the period at which stone implements were beginning to be superseded by bronze in Crete must be dated before 4000 B.C. But it will be remembered that below all Evans’s “Minoan” strata hes the immensely thick Neolithic deposit. To date the beginning of this earliest record of human production is impossible at present. The Neolithic stratum varies very much in depth, ranging from nearly 20 ft. to 3 ft., but is deepest on the highest part of the hillock. Its variations may be due equally to natural denudation of a stratum once of uniform depth, or to the artificial heaping up of a mound by later builders. Even were certainty as to these alternatives attained, we could only guess at the average rate of accumulation, which experience shows to proceeb very differently on different sites and under different social and climatic conditions. In later periods at Cnossus accumulation seems to have proceeded at a rate of, roughly, 3 ft. per thousand years. Reckoning by that standard we might push the earliest Neolithic remains back behind 10,000 B.C.; but the calculation would be worthy of little credence.
Passing by certain fragments of stone vessels, found at Cnossus, and coincident with forms characteristic of the IVth Pharaonic Dynasty, we reach another fairly certain date in the synchronism of remains belonging to the XIIth Dynasty (c. 2500 B.C. according to Petrie, but later according to the Berlin School) with products of Minoan Period II. 2. Characteristic Cretan pottery of this period was found by Petrie in the Fayum in conjunction with XIIth Dynasty remains, and various Cretan products of the period show striking coincidences with XIIth Dynasty styles, especially in their adoption of spiraliform ornament. The spiral, however, it must be confessed, occurs so often in natural objects (e.g. horns, climbing plants, shavings of wood or metal) that too much stress must not be laid on the mutual parentage of spiraliform ornament in different civilizations. A diorite statuette, referable by its style and inscription to Dynasty XIII., was discovered in deposit of Period II. 3 in the Central Court, and a cartouche of the “Shepherd King,” Khyan, was also found at Cnossus. He is usually dated about 1900 B.C. This brings us to the next and most certain synchronism, that of Minoan Periods III. 1, 2, with Dynasty XVIII. (c. 1600-1400 B.C.). This coincidence has been observed not only at Cnossus, but previously, in connexion with discoveries of scarabs and other Egyptian objects made at Mycenae, Ialysus, Vaphio, &c. In Egypt itself. Refti tributaries, bearing Vases of Aegean form, and themselves similar in fashion of dress and arrangement of hair to figures on Cretan frescoes and gems of Period III., are depicted under this and the succeeding Dynasties (e.g. Rekhmara tomb at Thebes). Actual vases of late Minoan style have been found with remains of Dynasty XVIII., especially in the town of Amenophis IV. Akhenaton at Tell el-Amarna; while in the Aegean area itself we have abundant evidence of a great wave of Egyptian influence beginning with this same Dynasty. To this wave were owed in all probability the Nilotic scenes depicted on the Mycenae daggers, on frescoes of Hagia Triada and Cnossus, on pottery of Zakro, on the shell-relief of Phaestus, &c.; and also many forrus and fabrics, e.g. certain Cretan coffins, and the faience industry of Cnossus. These serve to date, beyond all reasonable question, Periods III. 1-2 in Crete, the shaft-graves in the Mycenae circle, the Vaphio tomb, &c., to the 16th and 15th centuries B.C., and Period III. 3 with the lower town at Mycenae, the majority of the sixth stratum at Hissarlik, the Ialysus burials, the upper stratum at Phylakope, &c., to the century immediately succeeding.
The terminus ad quem is less certain—iron does not begin to be used for weapons in the Aegean till after Period III. 3, and then not exclusively. If we fix its introduction to about 1000 B C. and make it coincident with the incursion of northern tribes, remembered by the classical Greeks as the Dorian Invasion, we must allow that this incursion did not altogether stamp out Aegean civilization, at least in the southern part of its area. But it finally destroyed the Cnossian palace and initiated the “Geometric” Age, with which, for convenience at any rate, we may close the history of Aegean civilization proper.
(2) Annals.–From these and other data the outlines of primitive history in the Aegean may be sketched thus. A people, agreeing in its prevailing skull-forms with the Mediterranean race of N. Africa, was settled in the Aegean area from a remote Neolithic antiquity, but, except in Crete, where insular security was combined with great natural fertility, remained in a savage and unproductive condition until far into the 4th millennium B.C. In Crete, however, it had long been developing a certain civilization, and at a period more or less contemporary with Dynasties XI. and XII. (2500 B.C.?) the scattered communities of the centre of the island coalesced into a strong monarchical state, whose capital was at Cnossus. There the king, probably also high priest of the prevailing nature-cult, built a great stone palace, and received the tribute of feudatories, of whom, probably, the prince of Phaestus, who commanded the Messara plain, was chief. The Cnossian monarch had maritime relations with Egypt, and presently sent his wares all over the S. Aegean (e.g. to Melos in the earlier Second City Period of Phylakope) and to Cyprus, receiving in return such commodities as Melian obsidian knives. A system of pictographic writing came into use early in this Palace period, but only a few documents, made of durable material, have survived. Pictorial art of a purely indigenous character, whether on ceramic material or phster, made great strides, and from ceramic forms we may legitimately infer also a high skill in metallurgy. The absence of fortifications both at Cnossus and Phaestus suggest that at this time Crete was internally peaceful and externally secure. Small settlements, in very close relation with the capital, were founded in the east of the island to command fertile districts and assist maritime commerce. Gournia and Palaikastro fulfilled both these ends: Zakro must have had mainly a commercial purpose, as the starting-point for the African coast. The acme of this dominion was reached about the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., and thereafter there ensued a certain, though not very serious, decline. Meanwhile, at other favourable spots in the Aegean, but chiefly, it appears, on sites in easy relation to maritime commerce, e.g. Tiryns and Hissarlik, other communities of the early race began to arrive at civilization, but were naturally influenced by the more advanced culture of Crete, in proportion to their nearness of vicinity. Early Hissarlik shows less Cretan influence and more external (i.e. Asiatic) than early Melos. The inner Greek mainland remained still in a backward state. Five hundred years later–about 1600 B.C.—-we observe that certain striking changes have taken place. The Aegean remains have become astonishingly uniform over the whole area; the local ceramic developments have almost ceased and been replaced by ware of one general type both of fabric and decoration. The Cretans have stayed their previous decadence, and are once more possessors of a progressive civilization. They have developed a more convenient and expressive written character by stages of which one is best represented by the tablets of Hagia Triada. The art of all the area gives evidence of one spirit and common models; in religious representations it shows the same anthropomorphic personification and the same ritual furniture. Objects produced in one locality are found in others. The area of Aegean intercourse has widened and become more busy. Commerce with Egypt, for example, has increased in a marked degree, and Aegean objects or imitations of them are found to have begun to penetrate into Syria, inland Asia Minor, and the central and western Mediterranean lands, e.g. Sicily, Sardinia and Spain. There can be little doubt that a strong power was now fixed in one Aegean centre, and that all the area had come under its political, social and artistic influence.
How was this brought about, and what was the imperial centre? Some change seems to have come from the north; and there are those who go so far as to say that the centre henceforward was the Argolid, and especially “golden” Mycenae, whose lords imposed a new type of palace and a modification of Aegean art on all other Aegean lands. Others again cite the old established power and productivity of Crete; the immense advantage it derived from insularity, natural fertility and geographical relation to the wider area of east Mediterranean civilizations; and the absence of evidence elsewhere for the gradual growth of a culture powerful enough to dominate the Aegean, They point to the fact that, even in the new period, the palm for wealth and variety of civilized production still remained with Crete. There alone we have proof that the art of writing was commonly practised, and there tribute-tallies suggest an imperial organization; there the arts of painting and sculpture in stone were most highly developed; there the royal residences, which had never been violently destroyed, though remodelled, continued unfortified; whereas on the Greek mainland they required strong protective works. The golden treasure of the Mycenae graves, these critics urge, is not more splendid than would have been found at Cnossus had royal burials been spared by plunderers, or been happened upon intact by modern explorers. It is not impossible to combine these views, and place the seat of power still in Crete, but ascribe the renascence there to an influx of new blood from the north, large enough to instil fresh vigour, but too small to change the civilization in its essential character.
If this dominance was Cretan, it was short-lived. The security of the island was apparently violated not long after 1500 B.C., the Cnossian palace was sacked and burned, and Cretan art suffered an irreparable blow. As the comparatively lifeless character which it possesses in the succeeding period (III. 3) is coincident with a similar decadence all over the Aegean area, we can hardly escape from the conclusion that it was due to the invasion of all the Aegean lands (or at least the Greek mainland and isles) by some less civilized conquerors, who remained politically dominant, but, like their forerunners, having no culture of their own, adopted, while they spoiled, that which they found. Who these were we cannot say; but the probability is that they too came from the north, and were precursors of the later “Hellenes.” Under their rule peace was re-established, and art production became again abundant among the subject population, though of inferior quality. The Cnossian palace was re-occupied in its northern part by chieftains WHO have left numerous rich graves; and general commercial intercourse must have been resumed, for the uniformity of the decadent Aegean products and their wide distribution become more marked than ever.
About 1000 B.C. there happened a final catastrophe. The palace at Cnossus was once more destroyed, and never rebuilt or re-inhabited. Iron took the place of Bronze, and Aegean art, as a living thing, ceased on the Greek mainland and in the Aegean isles including Crete, together with Aegean writing. In Cyprus, and perhaps on the south-west Anatolian coasts, there is some reason to think that the cataclysm was less complete, and Aegean art continued to languish, cut off from its fountain-head. Such artistic faculty as survived elsewhere issued in the lifeless geometric style which is reminiscent of the later Aegean, but wholly unworthy of it. Cremation took the place of burial of the dead. This great disaster, which cleared the ground for a new growth of local art, was probably due to yet another incursion of northern tribes, more barbarous than their predecessors, but possessed of superior iron weapons—those tribes which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as the Dorians. They crushed a civilization already hard hit; and it took two or three centuries for the artistic spirit, instinct in the Aegean area, and probably preserved in suspended animation by the survival of Aegean racial elements, to blossom anew. On this conquest seems to have ensued a long period of unrest and popular movements, known to Greek tradition as the Ionian Migration and the Aeolic and Dorian “colonizations”; and when once more we see the Aegean area clearly, it is dominated by Hellenes, though it has not lost all memory of its earlier culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.–Much of the evidence is contained in archaeological periodicals, especially Annual of the British School at Athens (1900–); Monumenti Antichi and Rendiconti d. R. Ac. d. Lincei (1901–); Ephemeris Archaiologike (1885- ); Journal of Hellenic Studies, Athenische Mittheilungen, Bulletin de correspondance hellenique, American Journal of Archaeology, &c. (all since about 1885). SPECIAL WORKS: H. Schliemann’s books (see SCHLIEMANN), summarized by C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann’s Excavations (1891); Chr. Tsountas, Mukenai (1893); Chr. Tsountas and J. I. Manatt, the Mycenaean Age (1897); G. Perrot and Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquite, vol. vi. (1895); W. Dorpfeld, Troja (1893) and Troja und Ilios (1904); A. Furtwangler and G. Loschke, Mykenische Vasen (1886); A. S. Murray, Excavations in Cyprus (1900); W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece (1901 foll.); H. R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece (1901); A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult” in Journ. Hell. Studies (1901) and “Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos,’ in Archaeologia (1905) F. Noack, Homerische Palaste (1903); Excavations at Phylakopi, by members of the British School at Athens (1904); Harriet A. Boyd (Mrs Hawes), Excavations at Gournia (1901) . D. G. Hogarth, “Aegean Religion” in Hastings’ Dict. of Religions (1906) For a recent view of the place of Aegean civilization in the history of Hellenic culture see Die Hellenische Kultur by F. Baumgarten, &c. (1905). Various summaries, controversial articles, &c., formerly quoted, are now superseded by recent discoveries. See also CRETE, MYCENAE, TROAD, CERAMICS, PLATE, &c. (D. G. H.)
AEGEAN SEA, a part of the Mediterranean Sea, being the archipelago between Greece on the west and Asia Minor on the east, bounded N. by European Turkey, and connected by the Dardanelles with the Sea of Marmora, and so with the Black Sea. The name Archipelago (q.v.) was formerly applied specifically to this sea. The origin of the namo Aegean is uncertain. Various derivations are given by the ancient grammarians–one from the town of Aegae; another from Aegea, a queen of the Amazons who perished in this sea; and a third from Aegeus, the father of Theseus, who, supposing his son dead, drowned himself in it. The following are the chief islands: Thasos, in the extreme north, off the Macedonian coast; Samothrace, fronting the Gulf of Saros; Imbros and Lemnos, in prolongation of the peninsula of Gallipoli ( Thracian Chersonese); Euboea, the largest of all, lying close along the east coast of Greece; the Northern Sporades, including Sciathos, Scopelos and Halonesos, running out from the southern extremity of the Thessalian coast, and Scyros, with its satellites, north-east of Euboea; Lesbos and Chios; Samos and Nikaria; Cos, with Calymnos to the north; all off Asia Minor, with the many other islands of the Sporades; and, finally, the great group of the Cyclades, of which the largest are Andros and Tenos, Naxos and Paros. Many of the Aegean islands, or chains of islands, are actually prolongations of promontories of the mainland. Two main chains extend right across the sea—the one through Scyros and Psara (between which shallow banks intervene) to Chios and the hammer-shaped promontory east of it; and the other running from the southeastern promontory of Euboea and continuing the axis of that island, in a southward curve through Andros, Tenos, Myconos, Nikaria and Samos. A third curve, from the south easternmost promontory of the Peloponnese through Cerigo, Ctete, Carpathos and Rhodes, marks off the outer deeps of the open Mediterranean from the shallow seas of the archipelago, but the Cretan Sea, in which depths occur over 1000 fathoms, intervenes, north of the line, between it and the Aegean proper. The Aegotu itself is naturally divided by the island-chains and the ridges from which they rise into a series of basins or troughs, the 8leepest of which is that in the north, extending from the coast of Thessaly fo the Gulf of Saros, and demarcated southward by the Northern Sporades, Lemnos, Imbros and the peninsula of Gallipoli. The greater part of ths trough is over 600 fathoms deep. The profusion of islands and their usually bold elevation give beauty and picturesqueness to the sea, but its navigation is difficult and dangerous, notwithstanding the large number of safe and commodious gulfs and bays. Many of the islands are of volcanic formation; and a well-defined volcanic chain bounds the Cretan Sea on the north, including Milo and foimolos, Santorin (Thera) and Therasia, and extends to Nisyros. Others, such as Paros, are mainly composed of marble, and iron ore occurs in some. The larger islands have some fertile and well-watered valleys and plains. The chief productions are wheat, wine, oil, mastic, figs, raisins, honey, wax, cotton and silk. The people are employed in fishing for coral and sponges, as well as for bream, mullet and other fish. The men are hardy, well built and handsome; and the women are noted for their beauty, the ancient Greek type being well preserved. The Cyclades and Northern Sporades, with Euboea and small islands under the Greek shore, belong to Greece; the other islands to Turkey.
AEGEUS, in Greek legend, son of Pandion and grandson of Cecrops, was king of Athens and the father of Theseus. He was deposed by his nephews, but Theseus defeated them and reinstated his father. When Theseus set out for Crete to deliver Athens from the tribute to the Minotaur he promised Aegeus that, if he were successful, he would change the black sail carried by his ship for a white one. But, on his return, he forgot to hoist the white sail, and his father, supposing that his son had lost his life, threw himself from a high rock on which he was, keeping watch into the sea, which was afterwards called the Aegean. The Athenians honoured him with a statue and a shrine, and one of the Attic demes was named after him. Plutarch, Theseus; Pausanias i. 22; Hyginus, Fab. 43; Catullus lxiv. 207.
AEGINA (EGINA or ENGIA), an island of Greece in the Saronic Gulf, 20 m. from the Peiraeus Tradition derives the name from Aegina, the mother of Aeacus, who was born in and ruled the island. In Shape Aegina is triangular, 8 m. long from N.W. to S.E., and 6 m. broad, with an area of about 41 sq. m. The western side consists of stony but fertile plains, which are well cultivated and produce luxuriant crops of grain, with some cotton, vines, almonds and figs. The rest of the island is rugged and mountainous. The southern end rises in the conical Mount Oros, and the Panhellenian ridge stretches northward with narrow fertile valleys on either side. From the absence of marshes the climate is the most healthy in Greece. The island forms part of the modern Uomos of Attica and Boeotia, of which it forms an eparchy. The sponge fisheries are of considerable importance. The chief town is Aegina, situated at the north-west end of the island, the summer residence of many Athenian merchants. Capo d’Istria, to whom there is a statue in the principal square, erected there a large building, intended for a barracks, which was subsequently used as a museum, a library and a school. The museum was the first institution of its kind in Greece, but the collection was transferred to Athens in 1834.
Antiquities.–The archaeological interest of Aegina is centred in the well-known temlple on the ridge near the northern corner of the island. Excavations were made on its site in 1811 by Baron Haller von Hallerstein and the English architect C. R. Cockerell, who discovered a considerable amount of sculpture from the pediments, which was bought in 1812 by the crown prince Louis of Bavaria; the groups were set up in the Glyptothek at Munich after the figures had been restored by B. Thorvaldsen. Their restoration was somewhat drastic, the ancient parts being cut away to allow of additions in marble, and the new parts treated in imitation of the ancient weathering. Various conjectures were made as to the arrangement of the figures. That according to which they were set up at Munich was in the main suggested by Cockerell; in the middle of each pediment was a figure of Athena, set well back, and a fallen warrior at her feet; on each side were standing spearmen, kneel ing spearmen and bowmen, all facing towards the centre of the composition; the corners were filled with fallen warriors. In 1901 Professor Furtwangler began a more systematic excavation of the site, and the new discoveries he then made, together with a fresh and complete study of the figures and fragments in Munich, have led to a rearrangement of the whole, which, if not certain in all details, may be regarded as approaching finality. According to this the figures of combatants do not all face towards the centre, but are broken up, as in other early compositions, into a series of groups of two or three figures each. A figure of Athena still occupies the centre of each pediment, but is set farther forward than in the old reconstruction. On each side of this, in the western pediment, is a group of two combatants over a fallen warrior; in the eastern pediment, a warrior whose opponent is falling into the arms of a supporting figure; other figures also–the bowmen especially—face towards the angles, and so give more variety to the composition. The western pediment, which is more conservative in type, represents the earlier expedition of Heracles and Telamon against Troy; the eastern, which is bolder and more advanced, probably refers to episodes in the Trojan war. There are also remains of a third pediment, which may have been produced in competition, but never placed on the temple. For the character of the sculptures see GREEK ART. The plan of the temple is chiefly remarkable for the unsymmetrically placed door leading from the back of the cella into the opisthodomus. This opisthodomus was completely fenced in with bronze gratings; and the excavators believe it to have been adapted for use as an adytum (shrine). It was disputed in earlier times whether the temple was dedicated to Zeus or Athena. Inscriptions found by the recent excavations seem to prove that it must be identified as the shrine of the local goddess Aphaea, identified by Pausanias with Britomartis and Dictynna.
The excavations have laid bare several other buildings, including an altar, early propylaea, houses for the priests and remains of an earlier temple. The present temple probably dates from the time of the Persian wars. In the town of Aegina itself are the remains of another temple, dedicated to Aphrodite; one column of this still remains standing, and its foundations are fairly preserved.
AUTHORITIES.–Antiquities of Ionia (London, 1797), ii. pl. ii.-vii.; C. R. Cockerell, The Temples of Jupiter Panhellenius at Aegina, &c. (London, 186O); Ch. Gareier, Le Temple de Jupiter Panhellenien a Egine (Paris, 1884); Ad. Furtwangler and others, Aegina, Heiligtum der App Munich, 1906), where earlier authorities are collected and discussed. (E. GR.)
History.–(1) Ancient. Aegina, according to Herodotus (v. 83), was a colony of Epidaurus, to which state it was originally subject. The discovery in the island of a number of gold ornaments belonging to the latest period of Mycenaean art suggests the inference that the Mycenaean culture held its own in Aegina for some generations after the Dorian conquest of Argos and Lacedaemon (see A. J. Evans, in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xiii. p. 195). It is probable that the island was not dorized before the 9th century B.C. One of the earliest facts known to us in its history is its membership in the League of Cabauria, which included, besides Aegina, Athens, the Minyan (Boeotian) Orchomenos, Troezen, Hermione, Nauplia and Prasiae, and was probably an organization of states which were still Mycenaean, for the oppression of the piracy which had sprung up in the Aegean as a result of the decay of the naval supremacy of the Mycenaean princes. It follows, therefore, that the maritime importance of the island dates back to pre-Dorian times. It is usually stated on the authority of Ephorus, that Pheidon (q.v.) of Argos established a mint in Aegina. Though this statement is probably to be rejected, it may be regarded as certain that Aegina was the first state of European Greece to coin money. Thus it was the Aeginetans who, within thirty or forty years of the invention of coinage by the Lydians (c. 700 B.C.), introduced to the western world a system of such incalculable value to trade. The fact that the Aeginetan scale of coins, weights and measures was one of the two scales in general use in the Greek world is sufficient evidence of the early commercial importance of the island. It appears to have belonged to the Eretrian league; hence, perhaps, we may explain the war with Samos, a leading member of the rival Chalcidian league in the reign of King Amphicrates (Herod. iii. 59), i.e. not later than the earlier half of the 7th century B.C. In the next century Aegina is one of the three principal states trading at the emporium of Naucratis (q.v.), and it is the only state of European Greece that has a share in this factory (Herod. ii. 178). At the beginning of the 5th century it seems to have been an entrepot of the Pontic grain trade, at a later date an Athenian monopoly (Herod. vii. 147). Unlike the other commercial states of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., e.g. Corinth, Chalcis, Eretria and Miletus, Aegina founded no colonies. The settlements to which Strabo refers (viii. 376) cannot be regarded as any real exceptions to this statement.
The history of Aegina, as it has come down to us, is almost exclusively a history of its relations with the neighbouring state of Athens. The history of these relations, as recorded by Herodotus (v. 79-89; vi. 49-51, 73, 85-94), involve critical problems of some difficulty and interest. He traces back the hostility of the two states to a dispute about the images of the goddesses Damia and Auxesia, which the Aeginetans had carried off from Epidaurus, their parent state. The Epidaurians had been accustomed to make annual offerings to the Athenian deities Athena and Erechtheus in payment for the Athenian olive-wood of which the statues were made. Upon the refusal of the Aeginetans to continue these offerings, the Athenians endeavoured to carry away the images. Their design was miraculously frustrated—according to the Aeginetan version, the statues fell upon their knees—and only a single survivor returned to Athens, there to fall a victim to the fury of his comrades’ widows, who pierced him with their brooch-pins. No date is assigned by Herodotus for this “old feud”; recent writers, e.g. J. B. Bury and R. W. Macan, suggest the period between Solon and Peisistratus, c. 570 B.C.. It may be questioned, however, whether the whole episode is not mythical. A critical analysis of the narrative seems to reveal little else than a series of aetiological traditions (explanatory of cults and customs, e.g. of the kneeling posture of the images of Damia and Auxesia, of the use of native ware instead of Athenian in their worship, and of the change in women’s dress at Athens from the Dorian to the Ionian style. Thc account which Herodotus gives of the hostilities between the two states in the early years of the 5th century B.C. is to the following effect. Thebes, after the defeat by Athens about 507 B.C., appealed to Aegina for assistance. The Aeginetans at first contented themselves with sending the images of the Aeacidae, the tutelary heroes of their island. Subsequently, however, they entered into an alliance, and ravaged the sea-board of Attica. The Athenians were preparing to make reprisals, in spite of the advice of the Delphic oracle that they should desist from attacking Aegina for thirty years, and content themselves meanwhile with dedicating a precinct to Aeacus, when their projects were interrupted by the Spartan intrigues for the restoration of Hippias. In 401 B.C. Aegina was one of the states which gave the symbols of submission (“earth and water”) to Persia. Athens at once appealed to Sparta to punish this act of medism, and Cleomenes I. (q.v.), one of the Spartan kings, crossed over to the island, to arrest those who were responsible for it. His attempt was at first unsuccessful; but, after the deposition of Demaratus, he visited the island a second time, accompanied by his new colleague Leotychides, seized ten of the leading citizens and deposited them at Athens as hostages. After the death of Cleomenes and the refusal of the Athenians to restore the hostages to Leotychides, the Aeginetans retaliated by seizing a number of Athenians at a festival at Sunium. Thereupon the Athenians concerted a plot with Nicodromus, the leader of the democratic party in the island, for the betrayal of Aegina. He was to seize the old city, and they were to come to his aid on the same day with seventy vessels. The plot failed owing to the late arrival of the Athenian force, when Nicodromus had already fled the island. An engagement followed in which the Aeginetans were defeated. Subsequently, however, they succeeded in winning a victory over the Athenian fleet. Alf the incidents subsequent to the appeal of Athens to Sparta are expressly referred by Herodotus to the interval between the sending of the heralds in 491 B.C. and the invasion of Datis and Artaphernes in 490 B.C. (cf. Herod. vi. 49 with 94). There are difficulties in this story, of which the following are the principal:–(i.) Herodotus nowhere states or implies that peace was concluded between the two states before 481 B.C., nor does he distinguish between different wars during this period. Hence it would follow that the war lasted from shortly after 507 B.C. down to the congress at the Isthmus of Corinth in 481 B.C. (ii.) It is only for two years (490 and 491) out of the twenty-five that any details are given. It is the more remarkable that no incidents are recorded in the period between Marathon and Sabamis, seeing that at the time of the Isthmian Congress the war is described as the most important one then being waged in Greece (Herod. vii. 145). (iii.) It is improbable that Athens would have sent twenty vessels to the aid of the Ionians in 498 B.C. if at the time she was at war with Aegina. (iv.) There is an incidental indication of time, which points to the period after Marathon as the true date for the events which are referred by Herodotus to the year before Marathon, viz. the thirty years that were to elapse between the dedication of the precinct to Aeacus and the final victory of Athens (Herod. v. 89). As the final victory of Athens over Aegina was in 458 B.C., the thirty years of the oracle would carry us back to the year 488 B.C. as the date of the dedication of the precinct and the outbreak of hostilities. This inference is supported by the date of the building of the 200 triremes “for the war against Aegina” on the advice of Themistocles, which is given in the Constitutiom of Athens as 483-482 B.C. (Herod. vii. 144; Ath. Pol. r2. 7). It is probable, therefore, that Herodotus is in error both in tracing back the beginning of hostilities to an alliance between Thebes and Aegina (c. 507) and in putting the episode of Nicodromus before Marathon. Overtures were unquestionably made by Thebes for an alliance with Aegina c. 507 B.C., but they came to nothing. The refusal of Aegina was veiled under the diplomatic form of “sending the Aeacidae.” The real occasion of the outbreak of the war was the refusal of Athens to restore the hostages some twenty years later. There was but one war, and it lasted from 488 to 481. That Athens had the worst of it in this war is certain. Herodotus had no Athenian victories to record after the initial success, and the fact that Themistocles was able to carry his proposal to devote the surplus funds of the state to the building of so large a fleet seems to imply that the Athenians were themselves convinced that a supreme effort was necessary. It may be noted, in confirmation of this view, that the naval supremacy of Aegina is assigned by the ancient writers on chronology to precisely this period, i.e. the years 490-480 (Eusebius, Chron. Can. p. 337).
In the repulse of Xerxes it is possible that the Aeginetans played a larger part than is conceded to them by Herodotus. The Athenian tradition, which he follows in the main, would naturally seek to obscure their services. It was to Aegina rather than Athens that the prize of valour at Salamis was awarded, and the destruction of the Persian fleet appears to have been as much the work of the Aeginetan contingent as of the Athenian (Herod. viii. 91). There are other indications, too, of the importance of the Aeginetan fleet in the Greek scheme of defence. In view of these considerations it becomes difficult to credit the number of the vessels that is assigned to them by Herodotus (30 as against 180 Athenian vessels, cf. GREEK HISTORY, sect. Authorities). During the next twenty years the Philo-laconian policy of Cimon (q.v.) secured Aegina, as a member of the Spartan league, from attack. The change in Athenian foreign policy, which was consequent upon the ostracism of Cimon in 461, led to what is sometimes called the First Peloponnesian War, in which the brunt of the fighting fell upon Corinth and Aegina. The latter state was forced to surrender to Athens after a siege, and to accept the position of a subject-ally (c. 456 B.C.). The tribute was fixed at 30 talents. By the terms of the Thirty Years’ Truce (445 B.C.) Athens covenanted to restore to Aegina her autonomy, but the clause remained a dead letter. In the first winter of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) Athens expelled the Aeginetans, and established a cleruchy in their island. The exiles were settled by Sparta in Thyreatis, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argolis. Even in their new home they were not safe from Athenian rancour.1 A force landed under Nicias in 424, and put most of them to the sword. At the end of the Peloponnesian War Lysander restored the scattered remnants of the old inhabitants to the island, which was used by the Spartans as a base for operations against Athens in the Corinthian War. Its greatness, however, was at an end. The part which it plays henceforward is insignificant.
It would be a mistake to attribute the fall of Aegina solely to the development of the Athenian navy. It is probable that the powor of Aegina had steadily declined during the twenty years after Sabamis, and that it had declined absolutely, as well as relatively, to that of Athens. Commerce was the source of Aegina’s greatness, and her trade, which appears to have been principally with the Levant, must have suffered seriously from the war with Persia. Her medism in 491 is to be explained by her commercial relations with the Persian Empire. She was forced into patriotism in spite of herself, and the glory won by Salamis was paid for by the loss of her trade and the decay of her marine. The completeness of the ruin of so powerful a state–we should look in vain for an analogous case in the history of the modern world–finds an explanation in the economic conditions of the island, the prosperity of which rested upon a basis of slave-labour. It is impossible, indeed, to accept Aristotle’s (cf. Athenaeus vi. 272) estimate of 470,000 as the
1Pericles called Aegina the “eye-sore” (leme) of the Peiraeus.
number of the slave-population; it is clear, however, that the number must have been out of all proportion to that of the free inhabitants. In this respect the history of Aegina does but anticipate the history of Greece as a whole. The constitutional history of Aegina is unusually simple. So long as the island retained its independence the government was an oligarchy. There is no trace of the heroic monarchy and no tradition of a tyrannis. The story of Nicodromus, while it proves the existence of a democratic party, suggests, at the same time, that it could count upon little support.
(2) Modern.—Aegina passed with the rest of Greece under the successive dominations of Macedon, the Aetolians, Attalus of Pergamum and Rome. In 1537 the island, then a prosperous Venetian colony, was overrun and ruined by the pirate Barbarossa (Khair-ed-Din). One of the last Venetian strongholds in the Levant, it was ceded by the treaty of Passarowitz (1718) to the Turks. In 1826-1828 the town became for a time the capital of Greece and the centre of a large commercial population (about 10,000), which has dwindled to about 4300.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Herodotus loc. cit.; Thucydides i. 105, 108, ii. 27, iv. 56, 57. For the criticism of Herodotus’s account of the relations of Athens and Aegina, Wilamowitz, Aristoteles und Athen, ii. 280-288, is indispensable. See also Macan, Herodotus iv.-vi., ii. 102-120. (E. M. W.)
AEGINETA, PAULUS, a celebrated surgeon of the island of Aegina, whence he derived his name. According to Le Clerc’s calculation, he lived in the 4th century of the Christian era; but Abulfaragius (Barhebraeus) places him with more probability in the 7th. The title of his most important work, as given by Suidas, is Epitomes ‘Iatrikes Biblia ‘Epta (Synopsis of Medicine in Seven Books), the 6th book of which, treating of operative surgery, is of special interest for surgical history. The whole work in the original Greek was published at Venice in 1528, and another edition appeared at Basel in 1538. Several Latin translations have been published, and an excellent English version, with commentary, by Dr F. Adams (1844-1848).
AEGIS (Gr. Aigis), in Homer, the shield or buckler of Zeus, fashioned for him by Hephaestus, furnished with tassels and bearing the Gorgon’s head in the centre. Originally symbolical of the storm-cloud, it is probably derived from aisso, signifying rapid, violent motion. When the god shakes it, Mount Ida is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are smitten with fear. He sometimes lends it to Athene and (rarely) to Apollo. In the later story (Hyginus, Poet. Astronom. ii. 13) Zeus is said to have used the skin of the goat Amaltheia (aigis=goat-skin) which suckled him in Crete, as a buckler when he went forth to do battle against the giants. Another legend represents the aegis as a fire-breathing monster like the Chimaera, which was slain by Athene, who afterwards wore its skin as a cuirass (Diodorus Siculus iii. 70) It appears to have been really the goat’s skin used as a belt to support the shield. When so used it would generally be fastened on the right shoulder, and would partially envelop the chest as it passed obliquely round in front and behind to be attached to the shield under the left arm. Hence, by transference, it would be employed to denote at times the shield which it supported, and at other times a cuirass, the purpose of which it in part served. In accordance with this double meaning the aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal’s skin thrown over the shoulders and arms, sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon’s head in the centre. It is often represented on the statues of Roman emperors, heroes and warriors, and on cameos and vases.
See F. G. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre (1857); L. Freller, Griechische Mythologie, i. (1887); articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopadie, Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des Antiquites, and Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890).
AEGISTHUS, in Greek legend, was the son of Thyestes by his Own daughter Pelopia. Having been exposed by his mother to conceal her shame, he was found by shepherds and suckled by a goat-whence his name. His uncle Atreus, who had married Pelopia, took him to Mycenae, and brought him up as his own son. When he grew up Aegisthus slew Atreus, and ruled jointly with his father over Mycenae, until they were deposed by Agamemnon on his return from exile. After the departure of Agamemnon to the Trojan war, Aegisthus seduced his wife Clytaemnestra (more correctly Clytaemestra) and with her assistance slew him on his return. Eight years later his murder was avenged by his son Orestes.
Homer, Od. iii. 263, iv. 517; Hyginus, Fab. 87.
AEGOSPOTAMI (i.e. “Goat Streams”), a small creek issuing into the Hellespont, N.E. of Sestos, the scene of the decisive battle in 405 B.C. by which Lysander destroyed the last Athenian armament in the Peloponnesian War (q.v.). The township of that name, whose existence is attested by coins of the 5th and 4th centuries, must have been quite insignificant.
AEFRIC, called the “Grammarian” (c. 955-1020?), English abbot and author, was born about 955. He was educated in the Benedictine monastery at Winchester under AEthelwold, who was bishop there from 963 to 984. AEthelwold had Carried on the tradition of Dunstan in his government of the abbey of Abingdon, and at Winchester he continued his strenuous efforts. He seems to have actually taken part in the work of teaching. AElfric no doubt gained some reputation as a scholar at Winchester, for when, in 987, the abbey of Cernel (Cerne Abbas, Dorsetshire) was finished, he was sent by Bishop AElfheah (Alphege), AEthelwold’s successor, at the request of the chief benefactor of the abbey, the ealdorman AEthelmaer, to teach the Benedictine monks there. He was then in priest’s orders. AEthelmaer and his father AEthelweard were both enlightened patrons of learning, and became AElfric’s faithful friends. It was at Cernel, and partly at the desire, it appears, of AEthelweard, that he planned the two series of his English homilies (ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 1844–1846, for the AElfric Society), come piled from the Christian fathers, and dedicated to Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990-994). The Latin preface to the first series enumerates some of AElfric’s authorities, the chief of whom was Gregory the Great, but the short hst there given by no means exhausts the authors whom he consulted. In the preface to the first volume he regrets that except for Alfred’s translations Englishmen had no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin fathers. Professor Earle (A.S. Literature, 1884) thinks he aimed at correcting the apocryphal, and to modern ideas superstitious, teaching of the earlier Blickling Homilies. The first series of forty homilies is devoted to plain and direct exposition of the chief events of the Christian year; the second deals more fully with church doctrine and history, AElfric denied the immaculate birth of the Virgin (Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 466), and his teaching on the Eucharist in the Canons and in the Sermo de sacrificio in die pascae (ibid. ii. 262 seq.) was appealed to by the Reformation writers as a proof that the early English church did not hold the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.1 His Latin Grammar and Glossary 2 were written for his pupils after the two books of homilies. A third series of homilies, the Lives of the Saints, dates from 906 to 997. Some of the sermons in the second series had been written in a kind of rhythmical, alliterative prose, and in the Lives of the Saints (ed. W. W. Skeat, 1881-1900, for the Early English Text Society) the practice is so regular that most of them are arranged as verse by Professor Skeat. By the wish of AEthelweard he also began a paraphrase 3 of parts of the Old Testament, but under protest, for the stories related in it were not, he thought, suitable for simple minds. There is no certain proof that he remained at Cernel. It has been suggested that this part of his life was chiefly spent at Winchester; but his writings for the patrons of Cernel, and the fact that he wrote in 998 his Canons 4 as a pastoral letter for Wulfsige, the bishop of Sherborne, the diocese in which the abbey was situated, afford presumption of continued residence there. He became in 1005 the first abbot of Eynsham or Ensham, near Oxford, another foundation of AEthelmaer’s. After his elevation he wrote an abridgment for his monks of AEthelwold’s De consuetudine monachorum5, adapted to their rudimentary ideas of monastic life; a letter to Wulfgeat of Ylmandun6; an introduction to the study of the Old and New Testaments (about 1008, edited by William L’Isle in 1623); a Latin life of his master AEthelwold7; a pastoral letter for Wulfstan, archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester, in Latin and English; and an English version of Bede’s De Temporibus8. The Colloquium9, a Latin dialogue designed to serve his scholars as a manual of Latin conversation, may date from his life at Cernel. It is safe to assume that the original draft of this, afterwards enlarged by his pupil, AElfric Bata, was by AElfric, and represents what his own scholar days were like. The last mention of AElfric Abbot, probably the grammarian, is in a will dating from about 1020.
There have been three suppositions about AElfric. (1) He was identified with AElfric (995–1005), archbishop of Canterbury. This view was upheld by John Bale (III. Maj. Bril. Scriptorum 2nd ed., Basel, 1557-1559; vol. i. p. 149, s.v, Alfric); by Humphrey Wanley (Catalogus librorum septentrionalium, &c., Oxford, 1705, forming vol. ii. of George Hickes’s Antiquae literaturae septemtrionalis); by Elizabeth Elstob, The English Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St Gregory (1709; new edition, 1839); and by Edward Rowe Mores, AElfrico, Dorobernensi, archiepiscopo, Commentarius (ed. G. J. Thorkelin, 1789), in which the conclusions of earlier writers on AElfric are reviewed. Mores made him abbot of St Augustine’s at Dover, and finally archbishop of Canterbury. (2) Sir Henry Spelman, in his Concina . . .(1639, vol. i. p. 583), printed the Canones ad Wulsinum episcopum, and suggested AElfric Putta or Putto, archbishop of York, as the author, adding some note of others bearing the name. The identity of AElfric the grammarian with AElfric archbishop of York was also discussed by Henry Wharton, in Anglia Sacra (1691, vol. i. pp. 125-134), in a dissertation reprinted in J. P. Migne’s Patrologia (vol. 139, pp. 1459-70, Paris, 1853). (3) William of Malmesbuty (De gestis pontificum Anglorum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870, p. 406) suggested that he was abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Crediton. The main facts of his career were finally elucidated by Eduard Dietrich in a series of articles contributed to C. W. Niedner’s Zeitschrift fur historische Theologie (vols. for 1855 and 1856, Gotha), which have formed the basis of all subsequent writings on the subject.
Sketches of AElfric’s career are in B. Ten Brink’s Early English Literature (to Wiclif) (trans. H. M. Kennedy, New York, 1883, pp. 105-112), and by J. S. Westlake in The Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. i., 1907, pp. 116-129). An excellent bibliography and account of the critical apparatus is given in Dr R. Wulker’s Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsachsischen Litteratur (Leipzig, 1885; pp. 452-480). See also the account by Professor Skeat in Pt. iv. pp. 8-61 of his edition of the Lives of the Saints, already cited, which gives a full account of the MSS., and a discussion of AElfric’s sources, with further bibliographical references; and AElfric, a New Study of his Life and Writings, by Miss C. L. White (Boston, New York and London, 1898) in the “Yale Studies in English.” Alcuini Interrogationes Sigewulfi Presebyteri in Genesin (ed. G. E. McLean, Halle, 1883) is attributed to AElfric by its editor. There are other isolated sermons and treatises by AElfric, printed in vol. iii. of Grein’s Bibl. v. A.S. Prosa.
1 See A Testimonie of Antiquitie, shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached, printed by John Day (1567). It was quoted in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (ed. 1610)) 2 Ed. J. Zupitza in Sammlung englischer Denkmaler (vol. i., Berlin, 1880). 3 Edited by Edward Thwaites as Heptateuchus (Oxford 1698); modern edition in Grein’s Bibliothek der A. S. Prosa (vol. i. Cassel and Gottingen, 1872). See also B. Assmann, Abt AElfric’s . . . Esther (Halle, 1885), and Abt AElfric’s Judith (in Anglia, vol. x.). 4 Printed by Benjamin Thorpe in Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (1840), with the later pastoral for Wulfstan. 5 See E. Breck, A Fragment of AElfric; translation of AEthelwold’s De Consuetudine Monachorum and its relation to other MSS. (Leipzig 1887). 6 Ilmington, on the borders of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. 7 Included by J. Stevenson in the Chron. Monast. de Abingon (vol. ii. pp. 253-266, Rolls Series, 1858). 8 See Oswald Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft (vol. iii., 1866, pp. xiv.-xix. and pp. 233 et. seq.) in the Rolls Series. 9 See an article by J. Zupitza in the Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum (vol. xix., new series, 1887).
AELIA CAPITOLINA, the city built by the emperor Hadrian, A.D. 131, and occupied by a Roman colony, on the site of Jerusalem (q.v.), which was in ruins when he visited his Syrian dominions. Aelia is derived from the emperor’s family name, and Capilolina from that of Jupiter Capitolinus, to whom a temple was built on the site of the Jewish temple.
AELIAN (AELIANUS TACTICUS), Greek military writer of the 2nd century A.D., resident at Rome. He is sometimes confused with Claudius Aelianus, the Roman writer referred to below. Aelian’s military treatise, Taktike Theoria, is dedicated to Hadrian, though this is probably a mistake for Trajan, and the date A.D. 106 has been assigned to it. It is a handbook of Greek, i.e. Macedonian, drill and tactics as practised by the Hellenistic successors of Alexander the Great. The author claims to have consulted all the best authorities, the chief of which was a lost treatise on the subject by Polybius. Perhaps the chief value of Aelian’s work lies in his critical account of preceding works on the art of war, and in the fulness of his technical details in matters of drill. Critics of the 18th century—Guichard Folard and the prince de Ligne–were unanimous in thinking Aelian greatly inferior to Arrian, but both on his immediate successors, the Byzantines, and on the Arabs, who translated the text for their own use, Aelian exercised a great influence. The emperor Leo VI. incorporated much of Aelian’s text in his own work on the military art. The Arabic version of Aelian was made about 1350. In spite of its academic nature, the copious details to be found in the treatise rendered it of the highest value to the army organizers of the 16th century, who were engaged in fashioning a regular military system out of the semi-feudal systems of previous generations. The Macedonian phalanx of Aelian had many points of resemblance to the solid masses of pikemen and the “squadrons” of cavalry of the Spanish and Dutch systems, and the translations made in the 16th century formed the groundwork of numerous books on drill and tactics. Moreover, his works, with those of Xenophon, Polybius, Aeneas and Arrian, were minutely studied by every soldier of the 16th and 17th centuries who wished to be master of his profession. It has been suggested that Aellan was the real author of most of Arrian’s Tactica, and that the Taktike Theoria is a later revision of this original, but the theory is not generally accepted.
The first edition of the Greek text is that of Robortelli (Venice, 1552); the Elzevir text (Leiden, 1613) has notes. The text in W. Rustow and H. Kochly’s Gricchische Kriegsschriftsteller (1855) is accompanied by a translation, notes and reproductions of the original illustrations. A Latin translation by Theodore Gaza of Thessalonica was included in the famous collection Veteres de re mililari scriptores (Rome and Venice, 1487, Cologne, 1528, &c.). The French translation of Machault, included in his Milices des Grecs et Romains (Paris, 1615) and entitled De la Sergenterie des Grecs, a German translation from Theodore Gaza (Cologne, 1524), and the English version of Jo. B(ingham), which includes a drill-manual of the English troops in the Dutch service, Tacticks of Aelian (London, 1616) are of importance in the military literature of the period. A later French translation by Bouchard de Bussy. La Milice des Grecs on Tactique d’Elien (Paris 1737 and 1757); Baumgartner’s German translation in his incomplete Sammlung aller Kriegsschriftsteller der Griechen (Mannheim and Frankenthal, 1779), reproduced in 1786 as Von Schlachtordnungen, and Viscount Dillon’s English version (London, 1814) may also be mentioned. See also R. Forster, Studien zu den griechischen Taktikern (Hermes, xii., 1877, pp. 444-449); F. Wustenfeld, Das Heerwesen der Muhammedaner und die arabische Uebersetzung der Taktik des Aelianus (Gottingen, 1880); M. Jahns, Gesch. der Kriegswissenscharen, i. 95-97 (Munich, 1889); Rustow and Kochly, Gesch. des griechischen Kriegswesens (1852). A. de Lort-Serignan, La Phalange (1880); P. Serre, Etudes sur L’histoire militaire et maritime des Grecs et des Romains (1887); K. K. Muller, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie (Stuttgart, 1894).
AELIAN (CLAUDIUS AELIANUS), Roman author and teacher of rhetoric, born at Praeneste, flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus (d. 222). He spoke Greek so perfectly that he was called “honey-tongued” (meliglossos); Although a Roman he preferred Greek authors, and wrote in Greek himself. His chief works are: On the Nature of Animals, curious and interesting stories of animal life, frequently used to convey moral lessons (ed. Schneider, 1784; Jacobs, 1832); Various History-for the most part preserved only in an abridged form–consisting mainly of anecdotes of men and customs (ed. Lunemann, 1811). Both works are valuable for the numerous excerpts from older writers. Considerable fragments of two other works On Providence and Divine Manifestations are preserved in Suidas; twenty Peasants’ Letters, after the manner of Alciphron but inferior, are also attributed to him.
Editio princeps of complete works by Gesner, 1556; Hercher, 1864-1866. English translation of the Various History only by Fleming, 1576, and Stanley, 1665; of the Letters by Quillard (French), 1895.
AELRED, AILRED, ETHELRED (1100-1166), English theologian, historical writer and abbot of Rievaulx, was born at Hexham about the year 1109. In his youth he was at the court of Scotland as an attendant of Henry, son of David I. He was in high favour with that sovereign, but renounced the prospect of a bishopric to enter the Cistercian house of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, which was founded in 1131 by Walter Espec. Here AElred remained for some time as master of the novices, but between the years 1142 and 1146 was elected abbot of Revesby in Lincolnshire and migrated thither. In 1146 he became abbot of Rievaulx. He led a life of the severest asceticism, and was credited with the power of working miracles; owing to his reputation the numbers of Rievaulx were greatly increased. In 1164 he went as a missionary to the Picts of Galloway. He found their religion at a low ebb, the regular clergy apathetic and sensual, the bishop little obeyed, the laity divided by tho family feuds of their rulers, unchaste and ignorant. He induced a Galwegian chief to take the habit of religion, and restored the peace of the country. Two years later he died of a decline, at Rievaulx, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. In the year 1191 he was canonized. His writings are voluminous and have never been completely published. Amongst them are homilies “on the burden of Babylon in Isaiah”; three books “on spiritual friendship”; a life of Edward the Confessor; an account of miracles wrought at Hexham, and the tract called Relatio de Standardo. This last is an account of the Battle of the Standard (1138), better blown than the similar account by Richard of Hexham, but less trustworthy, and in places obscured by a peculiarly turgid rhetoric.
See the Vita Alredi in John of Tynemouth’s Nova Legenda Anglie (ed. C. Horstmann, 1901, vol. i. p. 4i), whence it was taken by Capgrave. From Capgrave the work passed into the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum (Jan. ii p. 30). This life is anonymous, but of an early date. The most complete printed collection of AElred’s works is in Migne’s Patrologia Latina, vol. cxcv.; but this does not include the Miracula Hagulstatdensis Ecclesiae which are printed in J. Raine’s Priory of Hexham, vol. i. (Surtees Society, 1864).–A complete list of works attributed to AElred is given in T. Tanner’s Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica (1748), pp. 247,248. The Relatio de Standardo has been critically edited by R. Howlett in Chronicles, &c., of Stephen, Henry II. and Richard I., vol. iii. (Rolls Series, 1886). . (H. W. C. D.)
AEMILIA VIA, or AEMILIAN WAY. (1) A highroad of Italy, constructed in 187 B.C. by the consul M. Aemilius Lepidus, from whom it taves its name; it ran from Ariminum to Placentia, a distance of 176 m. almost straight N.W., with the plain of the Po (Padus) and its tributaries on the right, and the Apennines on the left. The 79th milestone from Ariminum found in the bed of the Phenus at Bononia records the restoration of the road by Augustus from Ariminum to the river Trebia in 2 B.C. (Notiz. Scav., 1902, 539). The bridge by which it crossed the Sillaro was restored by Trajan in A.D. 100 (Notizie degli Scavi, 1888, 621). The modern highroad follows the ancient line, and some of the original bridges still exist. After Augustus, the road gave its name to the district which formed the eighth region of Italy (previously known as Gallia or Provincia Ariminum), at first in popular usage (as in Martial), but in official language as early as the 2nd century; it is still in use (see EMILIA). The district was bounded on the N. by the Padus, E. by the Adriatic, S. by the river Crustumium (mod. Conca), and W. by the Apennines and the Ira (mod. Staffora) at Iria (mod. Voghera), and corresponds approximately with the modern district.
(2) A road constructed in 109 B.C. by the censor M. Aemillus Scaurus from Vada Volaterrana and Luna to Vada Sabatia and thence over the Apennines to Ilertona (Tortona), where it joined the Via Postumia from Genua to Cremona. We must, however (as Mommsen points out in C.I.L. v. p. 885), suppose that the portion of the coast road from Vada Volaterrana to Genua at least must have existed before the construction of the Via Postumia in 148 B.C. Indeed Polybius (iii. 39. 8) tells us (and this must refer to the time of the Gracchi if not earlier) that the Romans had in his time built the coast road from the Rhone to Carthago Nova; and it is incredible that the coast road in Italy itself should not have been constructed previously. It is, however, a very different thing to open a road for traffic, and so to construct it that it takes its name from that construction in perpetuity. (, As.)
AEMILIUS, PAULUS (PAOLO EMILIO ) (d. 1529), Italian historian, was born at Verona. He obtained such reputation in his own country that he was invited to France in the reign of Charles VIII., in order to write in Latin the history of the kings of France, and was presented to a canonry in Notre Dame. He enjoyed the patronage and support of Louis XII. He died at Paris on the 5th of May 1529. His De Rebus gestis Francorum was translated into French in 1581, and has also been translated into Italian and German.
AENEAS, the famous Trojan hero, son of Anchises and Aphrodite, one of the most important figures in Greek and Roman legendary history. In Homer, he is represented as the chief bulwark of the Trojans next to Hector, and the favourite of the gods, who frequently interpose to save him from danger (Iliad, v. 311). The legend that he remained in the country after the fall of Troy, and founded a new kingdom (Iliad, xx. 308; Hymn to Aphrodite, 196) is now generally considered to be of comparatively late origin. The story of his emigration is post-Homeric, and set forth in its fullest development by Virgil in the Aeneid. Carrying his aged father and household gods on his back and leading his little son Ascanius by the hand, he makes his way to the coast, his wife Creusa being lost during the confusion of the flight. After a perilous voyage to Thrace, Delos, Crete and Sicily (where his father dies), he is cast up by a storm, sent by Juno, on the African coast. Refusing to remain with Dido, queen of Carthage, who in despair puts an end to her life, he sets sail from Africa, and after seven years’ wandering lands at the mouth of the Tiber. He is hospitably received by Latinus, king of Latium, is betrothed to his daughter Lavinia, and founds a city called after her, Lavinium. Turnus, king of Rutuli, a rejected suitor, takes up arms against him and Latinus, but is defeated and slain by Aeneas on the river Numicius. The story of the Aeneid ends with the death of Turnus. According to (i. 1. 2), Aeneas, after reigning a few years over Latium, is slain by the Rutuli; after the battle, his body cannot be found, and he is supposed to have been carried up to heaven. He receives divine honours, and is worshipped under the name of Jupiter Indiges (Dionysius Halle. i. 64).
See J. A. Hild, La Legende d’Enee avant Vergile (1883); F. Cauer, De Fabuls Graecis ad Romam conditum pertinentibus (1884) and Die Romische Aeneassage, von Naevius bis Vergilius (1886); G. Boissier, “La Legende d’Enee” in Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1883; A. Forstemann, Zur Geschichte des Aeneasmythus (1894); articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopadie (new ed., 1894); Roscher’s Lexicon der Mythologie; Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquites; Preller’s Griechische und romische Mythologie; and especially Schwegler, Romische Geschichte (1867).
Romances.—The story of Aeneas, as a sequel to the legend of Troy, formed the subject of several epic romances in the middle ages. The Roman d’Eneas (c. 1160, or later), of uncertain authorship (attributed by some to Benoit de Sainte-More), the first French poem directly imitated from the Aeneid, is a fairly close adaptation of the oriinal. The trouvere, however, omits the greater part of the wanderings of Aeneas, and adorns his narrative with gorgeous descriptions, with accounts of the marvellous properties of beasts and stones, and of single combats among the knights who figure in the story. He also elaborates the episodes most attractive to his audience, notably those of Dido and Aeneas and Lavinia, the last of whom plays a far more important part than in the Aeneid. Where possible, he substitutes human for divine intervention, and ignores the idea of the glorification of Rome and Augustus, which dominates the Virgilian epic. On this work were founded the Eneide or Eneit (between 1180 and 1190) of Heinrich von Veldeke, written in Flemish and now only extant in a version in the Thuringian dialect, and the Eneydos, written by William Caxton in 1490. See Eneas, ed. J. Salverdo de Grave (Halle, 1891); see also A. Litteraire de la France, xix.; Veldeke’s Encide, ed. Ettmuller (Leipzig, 1852) and O. Behaghel (Heilbronn, 1882); Eneydos, ed. F. J. Furnivall (1890). For Italian versions see E. G. Parodi in Studi di filologia romanza (v. 1887).
AENEAS TACTICUS (4th century B.C.), one of the earliest Greek writers on the art of war. According to Aelianus Tacticus and Polybius, he wrote a number of treatises (Upomnemata) on the subject; the only one extant deals with the best methods of defending a fortified city. An epitome of the whole was made by Cineas, minister of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. The work is chiefly valuable as containing a large number of historical illustrations. Aeneas was considered by Casaubon to have been a contemporary of Xenophon and identical with the Arcadian general Aeneas of Stymphalus, whom Xenophon (Hellenica, vii. 3) mentions as fighting at the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.). Editions in I. Casaubon’s (1619), Gronovius’ (1670) and Ernesti’s (1763) editions of Polybius; also.separately, with notes, by J. C. Orelli (Leipzig, 1818). Other texts are those of W. Rustow and H. Kochly (Griechische Kriegsschriftsteller, vol. i. Leipzig, 183S) and A. Hug, Prolegomena Critica ad Aeneae editionem (Zurich University, 1874). See also Count Beausobre, Commentaires sur la defense des places d’Aeneas (Amsterdam, 1757); A. Hug, Aeneas von Stymphalos (Zurich, 1877); C. C. Lange, De Aeneae commentario poliorcetico (Berlin, 1879); M. H. Meyer, Observationes in Aeneam Tacticum (Halle, 1835) ; Haase, in Jahns Jahrbuch, 1835, xiv. 1 ; Max Jahns, Gesch. der Kriegswissenschaften, i. pp. 26-28 (Munich, 1889) ; Ad. Bauer, in Zeitschrift fur allg. Geschichte, &c., 1886, i.; T. H. Williams in American Journal of Philology, xxv. 4; E. Schwartz in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie (Stuttgart, 1894).
AENESIDEMUS, Greek philosopher, was born at Cnossus in Crete and taught at Alexandria, probably during the first century B.C. He was the leader of what is sometimes known as the third sceptical school and revived to a great extent the doctrine of Pyrrho and Timon. His chief work was the Pyrrhonian Principles addressed to Lucius Tubero. His philosophy consisted of four main parts, the reasons for scepticism and doubt, the attack on causality and truth, a physical theory and a theory of morality. Of these the two former are important. The reasons for doubt are given in the form of the ten “tropes”: (1) different animals manifest different modes of perception; (2) similar differences are seen among individual men; (3) even for the same man, sense-given data are self-contradictory, (4) vary from time to time with physical changes, and (5) accord- ing to local relations; (6) and (7) objects are known only in- directly through the medium of air, moisture, &c., and are in a condition of perpetual change in colour, temperature, size and motion; (8) all perceptions are relative and interact one upon another; (9) Our impressions become less deep by repetition and custom; and (10) all men are brought up with different beliefs, under different laws and social conditions. Truth varies infinitely under circumstances whose relative weight cannot be accurately gauged. There is, therefore, no absolute knowledge, for every man has different perceptions, and, further, arranges and groups his data in methods peculiar to himself; so that the sum total is a quantity with a purely subjective validity. The second part of his work consists in the attack upon the theory of causality, in which he adduces almost entirely those considerations which are the basis of modern scepticism. Cause has no existence apart from the mind which perceives; its validity is ideal, or, as Kant would have said, subjective. The relation between cause and effect is unthinkable. If the two things are different, they are either simultaneous or in succession. If simultaneous, cause is effect and effect cause. If not, since effect cannot precede cause, cause must precede effect, and there must be an instant when cause is not effective, that is, is not itself. By these and similar arguments he arrives at the fundamental principle of Scepticism, the radical and universal opposition tion of causes; panti logo logos antikeitai. Having reached this conclusion, he was able to assimilate the physical theory of Heraclitus, as is explained in the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empiricus. For admitting that contraries co-exist for the perceiving subject, he was able to assert the co-existence of contrary qualities in the same object. Having thus disposed of the ideas of truth and causality, he proceeds to undermine the ethical criterion, and denies that any man can aim at Good, Pleasure or Happiness as an absolute, concrete ideal. All actions are product of pleasure and pain, good and evil. The end of ethical endeavour is the conclusion that all endeavour is vain and illogical. The main tendency of this destructive scepticism is essentially the same from its first crystallization by Aenesidemus down to the most advanced sceptics of to-day (ree SCEPTICISM). For the immediate successors of Aenesidemus see AGRIPPA, SEXTUS EMPIRICUS. See also CARNEADES and ARCESILAUS. Of the Porroneioi logoi nothing remains; we have, however, an analysis in the Myriobiblion of Photius. See Zeller’s History of Greek Philosophy; F. Saisset, AEnesideme, Pascal, Kant; Ritter and Preller, sec. sec. 364-87O.
AEOLIAN HARP (Fr. harpe eolienne; Ger. Aolsharfe, Windharfe; Ital. arpa d’Eolo), a stringed musical instrument, whose name is derived from Aeolus, god of the wind. The aeolian harp consists of a sound-box about 3 ft long, 5 in. wide, and 3 in. deep, made of thin deal, or preferably of pine, and having beech ends to hold the tuning-pins and hitch-pins. A dozen or less catgut strings of different thickness, but tuned in exact unison, and left rather slack, are attached to the pins, and stretched over two narrow bridges of hard wood, one at each end of the sound-board, which is generally provided with two rose sound-holes. To ensure a proper passage for the wind, another pine board is placed over the strings, resting on pegs at the ends of the sound-board, or on a continuation of the ends raised from 1 to 3 in. above the strings. Kaufmann of Dresden and Heinrich Christoph Koch, who improved the aeolian harp, introduced this contrivance, which was called by them Windfang and Windflugel; the upper board was prolonged beyond the sound-box in the shape of a funnel, in order to direct the current of air on to the strings. The aeolian harp is placed across a window so that the wind blows obliquely across the strings, causing them to vibrate in aliquot parts, i.e. (the fundamental note not being heard) the half or octave, the third or interval of the twelfth, the second Octave, and the third above it, in fact the upper partials of the strings in regular succession. With the increased pressure of the wind, the dissonances of the 11th and 13th overtones are heard in shrill discords, only to give place to beautiful harmonies as the force of the wind abates. The principle of the natural vibration of strings by the pressure of the wind was recognized in ancient times; King David, we hear from the Rabbinic records, used to hang his kinnor (kithara) over his bed at night, when it sounded in the midnight breeze. The same is related of St Dunstan of Canterbury, who was in consequence charged with sorcery. The Chinese at the present day fly kites of various sizes, having strings stretched across apertures in the paper, which produces the effect of an aerial chorus.
See Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, where the aeolian harp is first described (1602-1608), p. 148; Mathew Young, Bishop of Clonfert, Enquiry into the Principal Phenomena of Sounds and Musical Strings pp. 170-182 (London, 1784); Gottingen Pocket Calendar (1792); Mendel’s Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon, article “Aeolsharfe.’, An illustration is given in Rees’ Encyclopedia, plates, vol. ii. Misc. pl. xxv (K. S.)
AEOLIS (AEOLIA), an ancient district of Asia Minor, colonized at a very early date by Aeolian Greeks. The name was applied to the coast from the river Hermus to the promontory of Lecture, i.o. between Ionia to S. and Troas to N. The Aeolians founded twelve cities on the mainland, including Cyme, and numerous towns in Mytilene: they were said also to have settled in the Troad and even within the Hellespont.
AEOLUS, in Greek mythology, according to Homer the son of Hippotes, god and father of the winds, and ruler of the island of Aeolia. In the Odyssey (x. I) he entertains Odysseus, gives him a favourable wind to help him on his journey, and a bag in which the unfavourable winds have been confined. Out of curiosity. or with the idea that it contains valuable treasures, Odysseus’ companions open the bag; the winds escape and drive them back to the island, whence Aeolus dismisses them with bitter reproaches. According to Virgil, Aeolus dwells on one of the Aeolian islands to the north of Sicily, Lipara or Strongyle (Stromboll), where he keeps the winds imprisoned in a vast cavern (Virgil, Aen. i. 52). Another genealogy makes him the son of Poseidon and Arne, granddaughter of Hippotes, and a descendant of Aeolus, king of Magnesia in Thessaly, the mythical ancestor of the tribe of the Aeolians (Diodorus iv. 67).
AEON, a term often used in Greek (aion) to denote an indefinite or infinite duration of time; and hence, by metonymy, a being that exists for ever. In the latter sense it was chiefly used by the Gnostic sects to denote those eternal beings or manifestations which emanated from the one incomprehensible and ineffable God. (See GNOSTICISM.)
AEPINUS, FRANZ ULRICH THEODOR (1724-1802), German natural philosopher, was born at Rostock in Saxony on the 13th of December 1724. He was descended from John Aepinus (1499-1553), the first to adopt the Greek form (aipernos) of the family name Hugk or Huck, and a leading theologian and controversialist at the time of the Reformation. After studying medicine for a time, Franz Aepinus devoted himself to the physical and mathematical sciences, in which he soon gained such distinction that he was admitted a member of the Berlin academy of sciences. In 1757 he settled in St Petersburg as member of the imperial academy of sciences and professor of physics, and remained there till his retirement in 1798. The rest of his life was spent at Dorpat, where he died on the 10th of August 1802. He enjoyed the special favour of the empress Catherine II., who appointed him tutor to her son Paul, and endeavoured, without success, to establish normal schools throughout the empire under his direction. Aepinus is best known by his researches, theoretical and experimental, in electricity and magnetism, and his principal work, Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi, published at St Petersburg in 1759, was the first systematic and successful attempt to apply mathematical reasoning to these subjects. He also published a treatise, in 176I, De distributione caloris per tellurem, and he was the author of memoirs on different subjects in astronomy, mechanics, optics and pure mathematics, contained in the journals of the learned societies of St Petersburg and Berlin. His discussion of the effects of parallax in the transit of a planet over the sun’s disc excited great interest, having appeared (in 1764) between the dates of the two transits of Venus that took place in the 18th century.
AEQUI, an ancient people of Italy, whose name occurs constantly in Livy,s first decade as hostile to Rome in the first three Centuries of the city’s existence. They occupied the upper reaches of the valleys of the Anio, Tolenus and Himella; the last two being mountain streams runing northward to join the Nar. Their chief centre is said to have been taken by the Romans about 484 B.C. (Diodorus xi. 40) and again about ninety years later (id. xiv. 106), but they were not finally subdued Until the end of the second Samnite war (Livy ix. 45,; x. 1; Diod. xx. 101), when they seem to have received a limited form of franchise (Cic. Off. i. II, 35). All we know of their subsequent political condition is that after the Social war the folk of Cliternia and Nersae appear united in a res Publica Aequiculorum, which was a municipium of the ordinary type (C.I.L. ix. p. 388). The Latin colonies of Alba Fucens (304 B.C.) and Carsioll (298 B.C.) must have spread the use of Latin (or what passed as such) all over the district; through it by the chief (and for some time the only) route (Pia Valeria) to Luceria and the south. Of the language spoken by the Aequi before the Roman conquest we have no record; but since the Marsi (q.v.), who lived farther east, spoke in the 3rd century B.C. a dialect closely akin to Latin, and since the Hernici (q.v.), their neighbours to the south-west, did the same, we have no ground for separating any of these tribes from the Latian group (see LATINI). If we could be certain of the origin of the a in their name and of the relation between its shorter and its longer form (note that the i in Aequicidus is long–Virgil, Aen. vii. 74—-which seems to connect it with the locative of aequum “a plain,” so that it would mean “dwellers in the plain”; but in the historical period they certainly lived mainly in the hills), we should know whether they were to be grouped with the q or the p dialects, that is to say, with Latin on the one hand, which preserved an original q, or with the dialect of Velitrae, commonly called Volscian (and the Volsci were the constant allies of the Aequi), on the other hand, in which, as in the Iguvine and Samnite dialects, an original q is changed into p. There is no decisive evidence to show whether the q in Latin aequus represents an Indo-European q as in Latin quis, Umbro-Volsc. pis, or an Indo-European k+u as in equus, Umb. ekvo-. The derivative adjective Aequicus might be taken to range them with the Volsci rather than the Sabini, but it is not clear that this adjective was ever used as a real ethnicon; the name of the tribe is always Aeqai, or Aequicoli. At the end of the Republican period the Aequi appear, under the name Aequiculi or Aequicoh, organized as a municipium, the territory of which seems to have comprised the upper part of the valley of the Salto, still known as Cicolano. It is probable, however, that they continued to live in their villages as before. Of these Nersae (mod. Nesce) was the most considerable. The polygonal terrace walls, which exist in considerable numbers in the district, are shortly described in Romische Mitteilungen (1903), 147 seq., but require further study. See further the articles MARSI, VOLSCI, LATINI, and the references there given; the place-names and other scanty records of the dialect are collected by R. S. Conway. The Italic Dialects, pp. 300 ff. (R. S. C.)
AERARII (from Lat. aes, in its subsidiary sense of “polltax”), originally a class of Roman citizens not included in the thirty tribes of Servius Tullius, and subject to a poll-tax arbitrarily fixed by the censor. They were (1) the inhabitants of conquered towns which had been deprived of local self-government, who possessed the jus eonubii and ius commercii, but no political rights; Caere is said to have been the first example of this (353 B.C.); hence the expression “in tabulas Caeritum referre” came to mean “to degrade to the status of an aerarius”: (2) full citizens subjected to civil degradation (infamia) as the result of following certain professions (e.g. acting), of dishonourable acts in private life (e.g. bigamy) or of conviction for certain crimes; (3) persons branded by the censor. Those who were thus excluded from the tribes and centuries had no vote, were incapable of filling Roman magistracies and could not serve in the army. According to Mommsen, the aerarii were originally the non-assidui (non-holders of land), excluded from the tribes, the comitia and the army. By a reform of the censor Appius Claudius in 312 B.C. these non-assidui were admitted into the tribes, and the aerarii as such disappeared. But in 304, Fabius Rullianus limited them to the four city tribes, and from that time the term meant a man degraded from a higher (country) to a lower (city) tribe, but not deprived of the right of voting or of serving in the army. The expressions “tribu movere” and “aerarium facere,’: regarded by Mommsen as identical in meaning (“to degrade from a higher tribe to a lower,’), are explained by A. H. J. Greenidge—the first as relegation from a higher to a lower tribe or total exclusion from the tribes, the second as exclusion from the centuries. Other views of the original aerarii are that they were–artisans and freedmen (Niebuhr); inhabitants of towns united with Rome by a hospitium publicum, who had become domiciled on Roman territory (Lange); only a class of degraded citizens, including neither the cives sine suffragio nor the artisans (Madvig); identical with the capite censi of the Servian constitution (Belot, Greenidge). See A. H. J. Greenidge, Infamia in Roman Law (1894), where Mommsen’s theory is criticized; E. Belot, Histoire des chevaliers romains, i. p. 200 (Paris, 1866); L. Pardon, De Aerariis (Berlin, 1853); P. Willems, Le Droit public romain (1883); A. S. Wilkins in Smith’s Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 189I); and the usual handbooks of antiquities.
AERARIUM (from Lat. aes, in its derived sense of “money”) the name (in full, aerarium stabulum, treasure-house) given in ancient Rome to the public treasury, and in a secondary sense to the public finances. The treasury contained the moneys and accounts of the state, and also the standards of the legions; the public laws engraved on brass, the decrees of the senate and other papers and registers of importance. These public treasures were deposited in the temple of Saturn, on the eastern slope of the Capitoline hill, and, during the republic, were in charge of the urban quaeators (see QUAESTOR), under the superintendence and control of the senate. This arrangement continued (except for the year 45 B.C., when no quaestors were chosen) until 28 B.C., when Augustus transferred the aerarium to two praojecti aerarii, chosen annually by the senate from ex-praetors; in 23 these were replaced by two praetors (praetores aerarii or ad aerarium), selected by lot during their term of office; Claudius in A.D. 44 restored the quaestors, but nominated by the emperor for three years, for whom Nero in 56 substituted two ex-praetors, under the same conditions. In addition to the common treasury, supported by the general taxes and charged with the ordinary expenditure, there was a special reserve fund, also in the temple of Saturn, the aerarium sanctum (or sanctius), probably originally consisting of the spoils of war, afterwards maintained chiefly by a 5% tax on the value of all manumitted slaves, this source of revenue being established by a lex Manlia in 357. This fund was not to be touched except in cases of extreme necessity (Livy vii. 16, xxvii. 10). Under the emperors the senate continued to have at least the nominal management of the aerarium, while the emperor had a separate exchequer, called fiseus. But after a time, as the power of the emperors increased and their jurisdiction extended till the senate existed only in form and name, this distinction virtually ceased. Besides creating the fiscus, Augustus also established in A.D. 6 a military treasury (aerarium militare), containing all moneys raised for and appropriated to the maintenance of the army, including a pension fund for disabled soldiers. It.was largely endowed by the emperor himself (see Monumentum Ancyranum, iii. 35) and supported by the proceeds of the tax on public sales and the succession duty. Its administration was in the hands of three praefecti aerarii militaris, at first appointed by lot, but afterwards by the emperor, from senators of praetorian rank, for three years. The later emperors had a separate aerarium privatum, containing the moneys allotted for their own use, distinct from the fiscus, which they administered in the interests of the empire.
The tribuni aerarii have been the subject of much discussion. They are supposed by some to be identical with the curatores tribuum, and to have been the officials who, under the Servian organization, levied the war-tax (tributum) in the tribes and the poil-tax on the aerarii (q.v.). They also acted as paymasters of the equites and of the soldiers on service in each tribe. By the lex Aurella (70 B.C.) the list of judices was composed, in addition to senators and equites, of tribuni aerarii. Whether these were the successors of the above, or a new order closely connected with the equites, or even the same as the latter, is uncertain. According to Mommsen, they were persons who possessed the equestrian census, but no public horse. They were removed from the list of judices by Caesar, but replaced by Augustus. According to Madvig, the original tribuni aerarii were not officials at all, but private individuals of considerable means, quite distinct from the curatores tribuuin, who undertook certain financial work connected with their own tribes. Then, as in the case of the equites, the term was subsequently extended to include all those who possessed the property qualification that would have entitled them to serve as tribuni aerarii. See Tacitus, Annals, xiii. 29, with Furneaux’s notes; O. Hirschfeld, “Das Aerarium militare in der romischen Kaiserzeit,” in Fleckeisen’s Jahrbuch, vol. xcvii. (1868); S. Herrlich, De Aerario et Fisco Romanorum (Berlin, 1872); and the usual handbooks and dictionaries of antiquities. On the tribuni aerarii see E. Belot, Hist. des chevaliers romains, ii. p. 276; J. N. Madvig, Opuscula Academica, ii. p. 242; J. B. Mispoulet, Les Institutions politiques des Romains (1883), ii. p. 208; Mommsen, Romisches Staatsrecht, iii. p. 189; A. S. Wilkins in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed., 1890).
AERATED WATERS. Waters charged with a larger proportion of carbon dioxide than they will dissolve at ordinary atmospheric pressure occur in springs in various parts of the world (see MINERAL WATERS). Such waters, which also generally hold in solution a considerable percentage of saline constituents, early acquired a reputation as medicinal agents, and when carbon dioxide (“fixed air”) became familiar to chemists the possibility was recognized, as by Joseph Priestley (Directions for impregnating water with fixed air . . . to communicate the peculiar Spirit and Virtues of Pyrmont water, 1772), of imitating them artificially. Many of the ordinary aerated waters of commerce, however, do not pretend to reproduce any known natural water; they are merely beverages owing their popularity to their effervescing properties and the flavour imparted by a small quantity of some salt such as sodium bicarbonate or a little fruit syrup. Their manufacture on a considerable scale was begun at Geneva so far back as 1790 by Nicholas Paul, and the excellence of the soda water prepared in London by J. Schweppe, who had been a partner of Paul’s, is referred to by Tiberius Cavallo in his Essay on the Medicinal Properties of Factitious Airs, published in 1798. Many forms of apparatus are employed for charging the water with the gas. A simple machine for domestic use, called a gasogene or seltzogene, consists of two strong glass globes connected one above the other by a wide glass tube which rises nearly to the top of the upper and smaller globe. Surmounting the small globe there is a spring valve, fitted to a narrow tube that passes through the wide tube to the bottom of the large globe. To use the machine, the lower vessel is filled with water, and in the upper one, round the base of the wide tube, is placed a mixture, commonly of sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid, which with water yields carbon dioxide. The valve head is then fastened on, and by tilting the apparatus some water is made to flow through the wide tube from the lower to the upper vessel. The water in the lower globe takes up the gas thus produced, and when required for use is withdrawn by the valve, being forced up the narrow tube by the pressure of the gas. In another arrangement the gas is supplied compressed in little steel capsules, and is liberated into a bottle containing the water which has to be aerated. On a large scale, use is made of continuously acting machinery which is essentially of the type devised by Joseph Bramah. The gas is prepared in a separate generator by the action of sulphuric acid on sodium bicarbonate or whiting, and after being washed is collected in a gas-holder, whence it is forced with water under pressure into a receiver or saturator in which an agitator is kept moving. Some manufacturers buy their gas compressed in steel cylinders. The water thus aerated or carbonated passes from the receiver, in which the pressure may be 100-200 lb. on the square inch, to bottling machines which fill and close the bottles; if beverages like lemonade are being made the requisite quantity of fruit syrup is also injected into the bottles, though sometimes the fruit syrup mixture is aerated in bulk. For soda water sodium bicarbonate should be added to the water before aeration, in varying proportions up to about 15 grains per pint, but the simple carbonated water often does duty instead. Potash water, lithia water and many others are similarly prepared, the various salts being used in such amounts as are dictated by the experience and taste of the manufacturer. Aerated waters are sent out from the factories either in siphons (q.v.) or in bottles; the latter may be closed by corks, or by screw-stoppers or by internal stoppers consisting of a valve, such as a glass ball, held up against an indiarubber ring in the neck by the pressure of the gas. For use in “soda-fountains” the waters are sent out in large cylinders.
See W. Kirkby, Evolution of artificial Mineral Waters (Manchester, 1902).
AERONAUTICS, the art of “navigating” the “air.” It is divisible into two main branches–aerostation, dealing properly with machines which like balloons are lighter than the air, and aviation, dealing with the problem of artificial flight by means of flying machines which, like birds, are heavier than the air, and also with attempts to fly made by human beings by the aid of artificial wings fitted to their limbs.
Historically, aviation is the older of the two, and in the legends of gods or myths of men or animals which are supposed to have travelled through the air, such as Pegasus, Medea’s dragons and Daedalus, as well as in Egyptian bas-reliefs, wings appear as the means by which aerial locomotion is effected. In later times there are many stories of men who have attempted to fly in the same way. John Wilkins (1614-1672), one of the founders of the Royal Society and bishop of Chester, who in 1640 discussed the possibility of reaching the moon by volitation, says in his Mathematical Magick (1648) that it was related that “a certain English monk called Elmerus, about the Confessor’s time,” flew from a town in Spain for a distance of more than a furlong; and that other persons had flown from St Mark’s, Venice, and at Nuremberg. Giovanni Battista Dante, of Perugia, is said to have flown several times across Lake Trasimene. At the beginning of the 16th century an Italian alchemist who was collated to the abbacy of Tungland, in Galloway, Scotland, by James IV., undertook to fly from the walls of Stirling Castle through the air to France. He actually attempted the feat, but soon came to the ground and broke his thigh-bone in the fall–an accident which he explained by asserting that the wings he employed contained some fowls’ feathers, which had an “affinity” for the dung-hill, whereas if they had been composed solely of eagles’ feathers they would have been attracted to the air. This anecdote furnished Dunbar, the Scottish poet, with the subject of one of his rude satires. Leonardo da Vinci about the same time approached the problem in a more scientific spirit, and his notebooks contain several sketches of wings to be fitted to the arms and legs. In the following century a lecture on flying delivered in 1617 by Fleyder, rector of the grammar school at Tubingen, and published eleven years later, incited a poor monk to attempt to put the theory into practice, but his machinery broke down and he was killed.
In Francis Bacon’s Natural History there are two passages which refer to flying, though they scarcely bear out the assertion made by some writers that he first published the true principles of aeronautics.
The first is styled Experiment Solitary, touching Flying in the Air –“Certainly many birds of good wing (as kites and the like) would bear up a good weight as they fly; and spreading leathers thin and close, and in great breadth, will likewise bear up a great weight, being even laid, without tilting up on the sides. The further extension of this experiment might be thought upon.” The second passage is more diffuse, but less intelligible; it is styled Experiment Solitary, touching unequal weight (as of wool and lead or bone and lead); if you throw it from you with the light end forward, it will turn, and the weightier end will recover to be forwards, unless the body be over long. The cause is, for that the more dense body hath a more violent pressure of the parts from the first impulsion, which is the cause (though heretofore not found out, as hath been often said) of all violent motions; and when the hinder part moveth swifter (for that it less endureth pressure of parts) that the forward part can make way for it, it must needs be that the body turn over; for (turned) it can more easily draw forward the lighter part.” The fact here alluded to is the resistance that bodies experience in moving through the air, which, depending on the quantity of surface merely. must exert a proportionally greater effect on rare substances. The passage itself, however, after making every allowance for the period in which it was written, must be deemed confused, obscure and unphilosophical. In his posthumous work, De Motu Animalium, published at Rome in 1680-1681, G.A.Borelli gave calculations of the enormous strength of the pectoral muscles in birds; and his proposition cciv. (vol. i. pp. 322-326), entitled Est impossibile ut homines pro priis viribus artificiose volare possint, points out the impossibility of man being able by his muscular strength to give motion to wings of sufficient extent to keep him suspended in the air. But during his lifetime two Frenchmen, Allard in 1660 and Besnier about 1678, are said to have succeeded in making short flights. An account of some of the modern attempts to construct flying machines will be found in the article FLIGHT AND FLYING; here we append a brief consideration of the mechanical aspects of the problem.
The very first essential for success is safety, which will probably only be attained with automatic stability. The underlying principle is that the centre of gravity shall at all times be on the same vertical line as the centre of pressure. The latter varies with the angle of incidence. For square planes it moves approximately as expressed by Joessel’s formula, C + (0.2 + 0.3 sin a) L, in which C is the distance from the front edge, L the length fore and aft, and a the angle of incidence. The movement is different on concave surfaces. The term aeroplane is understood to apply to flat sustaining surfaces, but experiment indicates that arched surfaces are more efficient. S. P. Langley proposed the word aerodrome, which seems the preferable term for apparatus with wing-line surfaces. This is the type to which results point as the proper one for further experiments. With this it seems probable that, with well-designed apparatus, 40 to 50 lb. can be sustained per indicated h.p., or about twice that quantity per resistance or “thrust” h.p., and that some 30 or 40 k of the weight can be devoted to the machinery, thus requiring motors, with their propellers, shafting, supplies, &c., weighing less than 20 lb. per h.p. It is evident that the apparatus must be designed to be as light as possible, and also to reduce to a minimum all resistances to propulsion. This being kept in view, the strength and consequent section required for each member may be calculated by the methods employed in proportioning bridges, with the difference that the support (from air pressure) will be considered as uniformly distributed, and the load as concentrated at one or more points. Smaller factors of safety may also have to be used. Knowing the sections required and unit weights of the materials to be employed, the weight of each part can be computed. If a model has been made to absolutely exact scale, the weight of the full-sized apparatus may approximately be ascertained by the formula
$$W’ = W\sqrt{\left({S’\over S}\right)}^3,$$
in which W is the weight of the model, S its surface, and W’ and S’ the weight and surface of the intended apparatus. Thus if the model has been made one-quarter size in its homologous dimensions, the supporting surfaces will be sixteen times, and the total weight sixty-four times those of the model. The weight and the surface being determined, the three most important things to know are the angle of incidence, the “lift,” and the required speed. The fundamental formula for rectangular air pressure is well known: P=KV2S, in which P is the rectangular normal pressure, in pounds or kilograms, K a coefficient (0.0049 for British, and 0.11 for metric measures), V the velocity in miles per hour or in metres per second, and S the surface in square feet or in square metres. The normal on oblique surfaces, at various angles of incidence, is given by the formula P = KV2Se, which latter factor is given both for planes and for arched surfaces in the subjoined table:–.
PERCENTAGES OE AIR PRESSURE AT VARIOUS ANGLES OF INCIDENCE
PLANES (DUCHEMIN FORMULA, VERIFIED BY LANGLEY). WINGS (LILIENTHAL). N = P(2sina/(1+sin2a)). Concavity 1 in 12 Angle. Normal. Lift. Drift. Normal. Lift. Drift. Tangential a e ecosa esina e ecosa esina force a -9 deg. 0.0 0.0 0.0 +0.070 -8 deg. 0.040 0.0396 -0.0055 +0.067 -7 deg. 0.080 0.0741 -0.0097 +0.064 -6 deg. 0.120 0.1193 -0.0125 +0.060 -5 deg. 0.160 0.1594 -0.0139 +0.055 -4 deg. 0.200 0.1995 -0.0139 +0.049 -3 deg. 0.242 0.2416 -0.0126 +0.043 -2 deg. 0.286 0.2858 -0.0100 +0.037 -1 deg. 0.332 0.3318 -0.0058 +0.031 0 deg. 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.381 0.3810 -0.0 +0.024 +1 deg. 0.035 0.035 0.000611 0.434 0.434 +0.0075 +0.016 +2 deg. 0.070 0.070 0.00244 0.489 0.489 +0.0170 +0.008 +3 deg. 0.104 0.104 0.00543 0.546 0.545 +0.0285 0.0 +4 deg. 0.139 0.139 0.0097 0.600 0.597 +0.0418 -0.007 +5 deg. 0.174 0.173 0.0152 0.650 0.647 +0.0566 -0.014 +6 deg. 0.207 0.206 0.0217 0.696 0.692 +0.0727 -0.021 +7 deg. 0.240 0.238 0.0293 0.737 0.731 +0.0898 -0.028 +8 deg. 0.273 0.270 0.0381 0.771 0.763 +0.1072 -0.035 +9 deg. 0.305 0.300 0.0477 0.800 0.790 +0.1251 -0.042 10 deg. 0.337 0.332 0.0585 0.825 0.812 +0.1432 -0.050 11 deg. 0.369 0.362 0.0702 0.846 0.830 +0.1614 -0.058 12 deg. 0.398 0.390 0.0828 0.864 0.845 +0.1803 -0.064 13 deg. 0.431 0.419 0.0971 0.879 0.856 +0.1976 -0.070 14 deg. 0.457 0.443 0.1155 0.891 0.864 +0.2156 -0.074 15 deg. 0.486 0.468 0.1240 0.901 0.870 +0.2332 -0.076
The sustaining power, or “lift” which in horizontal flight must be equal to the weight, can be calculated by the formula L=KV2Secosa, or the factor may be taken direct from the table, in which the “lift” and the “drift” have been obtained by multiplying the normal e by the cosine and sine of the angle. The last column shows the tangential pressure on concave surfaces which O. Lilienthal found to possess a propelling component between 3 deg. and 32 deg. and therefore to be negative to the relative wind. Former modes of computation indicated angles of 10 to 15 as necessary for support with planes. These mere prohibitory in consequence of the great “drift”; but the present data indicate that, with concave surfaces, angles of 2 deg. to 5 will produce adequate “lift.” To compute the latter the angle at which the wings are to be set must first be assumed, and that of @ will generally be found preferable. Then the required velocity is next to be computed by the formula
$$V = \sqrt{L\over KS\eta\cos\alpha};$$
or for concave wings at +3 deg. :
$$V = \sqrt{W\over 0.545KS}.$$
Having thus determined the weight, the surface, the angle of incidence and the required seed for horizontal support, the next step is to calculate the power required. This is best accomplished by first obtaining the total resistances, which consist of the “drift” and of the head resistances due to the hull and framing. The latter are arrived at preferably by making a tabular statement showing all the spars and parts offering head resistance, and applying to each, the coefficient appropriate to its “master section,” as ascertained by experiment. Thus is obtained an “equivalent area” of resistance, which is to be multiplied by the wind pressure due to the speed. Care must be taken to resolve all the resistances at their proper angle of application, and to subtract or add the tangential force, which consists in the surface S, multiplied by the wind pressure, and by the factor in the table, which is, however, 0 for 3 and 32, but positive or negative at other angles. When the aggregate resistances are known, the “thrust h.p.” required is obtained by multiplying the resistance by the speed, and then allowing for mechanical losses in the motor and propeller, which losses will generally be 50% of indicated h.p. Close approximations are obtained by the above method when applied to full sized apparatus. The following example will make the process clearer. The weight to he carried by an apparatus was 189 lb. on concave wings of 143.5 sq. ft. area, set at a positive angle of 3 deg. There were in addition rear wings of 29.5 sq. ft., set at a negative angle of 3 deg. ; hence, L= 189=.o.oo5XV2X143.5X0.545. Whence
$$V = \sqrt{189\over 0.005\times 143.5\times 0.545 = 22\hbox{ miles per hour},$$
at which the air pressure would be 2.42 lb. per sq. ft. The area of spars and man was 17.86 sq. ft., reduced by various coefficients to an “equivalent surface” of 11.70 sq. ft., so that the resistances were:– Drift front wings, 143.5X0.0285X2.42 . . . .= 9.90 lb. Drift rear wings, 29.5X(o.o43-0.242X0.05235)X2.42 = 2.17 lb. Tangential force at 3 deg. . . . . . . . . = 0.00 lb. Head resistance, 11.70X2.43 . . . . . = 28.31
Total resistance . . . . . . . .= 40.38
Speed 22 miles per hour. Power = (40.38X22)/375 = 2.36 h.p. for the “thrust” or 4.72 h.p. for the motor. The weight being 189 lb., and the resistance 40.38 lb., the gliding angle of descent was 40.38/189 = tangent of 12 deg. , which was verified by many experiments.
The following expressions will be found useful in computing such projects, with the aid of the table above given:
1. Wind force, F = KV2. 8. Drift, D = KSV2esina 2. Pressure, P = KV2S. 9. Head area E, get an equivalent 3. Velocity, V = sqrt. (W/(KSecosa)) 10. Head resistance, H = EF. 4. Surface S varies as 1/V2. 11. Tangential force, T = Pa 5. Normal, N = KSV2e. 12. Resistance, R = D + H (+ or -) T. 6. Lift, L = KSV2ecsoa. 13. Ft. lb., M = RV. 7. Weight, W = L = Ncosa. 14. Thrust, h.p., = RV/factor.
AEROSTATION.—Possibly the flying dove of Archytas of Tarentum is the earliest suggestion of true aerostation. According to Aulus Genius (Noctes Atticae) it was a “model of a dove or pigeon formed in wood and so contrived as by a certain mechanical art and power to fly: so nicely was it balanced by weights and put in motion by hidden and enclosed air.” This “hidden and enclosed air” may conceivably represent an anticipation of the hot-air balloon, but it is at least as probable that the apparent flight of the dove was a mere mechanical trick depending on the use of fine wires or strings invisible to the spectators. In the middle ages vague ideas appear of some ethereal substance so light that vessels containing it would remain suspended in the air. Roger Bacon (1214-1294) conceived of a large hollow globe made of very thin metal and filled with ethereal air or liquid fire, which would float on the atmosphere like a ship on water. Albert of Saxony, who was bishop of Halberstadt from 1366 to 1390, had a similar notion, and considered that a small portion of the principle of fire enclosed in a light sphere would raise it and keep it suspended. The same speculation was advanced by Francis Mendoza, a Portuguese Jesuit, who died in 1626 at the age of forty-six, and by Gaspar Schott (1608-1666), also a Jesuit and professor of mathematics at Wurzburg, though for fire he substituted the thin ethereal fluid which he believed to float above the atmosphere. So late as 1755 Joseph Galien (1699-1782), a Dominican friar and professor of philosophy and theology in the papal university of Avignon, proposed to collect the diffuse air of the upper regions and to enclose it in a huge vessel extending more than a mile every way, and intended to carry fifty-four times as much weight as did Noah’s ark. A somewhat different but equally fantastic method of making heavy bodies rise is quoted by Schott from Lauretus Laurus, according to whom swans’ eggs or leather balls filled with nitre, sulphur or mercury ascend when exposed to the sun. Laurus also stated that hens’ eggs filled with dew will ascend in the same circumstances, because dew is shed by the stars and drawn up again to heaven by the sun’s heat during the day. The same notion is utilized by Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) in his romances describing journeys to the moon and sun, for his French traveller fastens round his body a multitude of very thin flasks filled with the morning’s dew, whereby through the attractive power of the sun’s heat on the dew he is raised to the middle regions of the atmosphere, to sink again, however, on the breaking of some of the flasks.
A distinct advance on Schott is marked by the scheme for aerial navigation proposed by the Jesuit, Francis Lana (1631-1687), in his book, published at Brescia in 1670, Prodromo ovvero Saggio di alcune invenzioni nuove promesso all’ Arte Maestra. His idea, though useless and unpractical in so far that it could never be carried out, is yet deserving of notice, as the principles involved are sound; and this can be said of no earlier attempt. His project was to procure four copper balls of very large dimensions (fig. 1), yet so extremely thin that after the air was exhausted from them they would be lighter than the air they displaced and so would rise; and to those four balls he proposed to attach a boat, with sails, &c., which would carry up a man. He submitted the whole matter to calculation, and proposed that the globes should be about 25 ft. in diameter and 1/225th of an inch in thickness; this would give from all four balls a total ascensional force of about 1200 lb., which would be quite enough to raise the boat, sails, passengers, &c. But the obvious objection to the whole scheme is, that it would be quite impossible to construct a globe of so large a size and of such small thickness which would even support its own weight without collapsing if placed on the ground, much less bear the external atmospheric pressure when the internal air was removed. Lana himself noticed this objection, but he thought that the spherical form of the copper shell would, notwithstanding its extreme thinness, enable it, after the exhaustion was effected, to sustain the enormous pressure, which, acting equally on every point of the surface, would tend to consolidate rather than to break the metal. His proposal to exhaust the air from the globes by attaching to each a tube 36 ft. long, fitted with a stopcock, and so producing a Torricellian vacuum, suggests that he was ignorant of the invention of the air-pump by Otto von Guericke about 1650.
We now come to the invention of the balloon, which was due to Joseph Michel Montgolfier (1740-1810) and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier (1745-1799), sons of Pierre Montgolfier, a large and celebrated papermaker at Annonay, a town about 40 m. from Lyons. The brothers had observed the suspension of clouds in the atmosphere, and it occurred to them that if they could enclose any vapour of the nature of a cloud in a large and very light bag, it might rise and carry the bag with it into the air. Towards the end of 1782 they inflated bags with smoke from a fire placed underneath, and found that either the smoke or some vapour emitted from the fire did ascend and carry the bag with it. Being thus assured of the correctness of their views, they determined to have a public ascent of a balloon on a large scale. They accordingly invited the States of Vivarais, then assembled at Annonay, to witness their aerostatic experiment; and on the 5th of June 1783, in the presence of a considerable concourse of spectators, a linen globe of 105 ft. in circumference was inflated over a fire fed with small bundles of chopped straw. When released it rapidly rose to a great height, and descended, at the expiration of ten minutes, at the distance of about 1 1/2m. This was the discovery of the balloon. The brothers Montgolfier imagined that the bag rose because of the levity of the smoke or other vapour given forth by the burning straw; and it was not till some time later that it was recognized that the ascending power was due merely to the lightness of heated air compared to an equal volume of air at a lower temperature. In this balloon, no source of heat was taken up, so that the air inside rapidly Cooled, and the balloon soon descended.
The news of the experiment at Annonay attracted so much attention at Paris that Barthelemi Faujas de Saint-Fond (1741-1819), afterwards professor of geology at the Musee d’Histoire Naturelle, set on foot a subscription for paying the expense of repeating the experiment. The balloon was constructed by two brothers of the name of Robert, under the superintendence of the physicist, J. A. C. Charles. The first suggestion was to copy the process of Montgolfier, but Charles proposed the application of hydrogen gas, which was adopted. The filling of the balloon, which was made of thin silk varnished with a solution of elastic gum, and was about 13 ft. in diameter, was begun on the 23rd of August 1783, in the Place des Victoires. The hydrogen gas was obtained by the action of dilute sulphuric acid upon iron filings, and was introduced through leaden pipes; but as the gas was not passed through cold water, great difficulty. was experienced in filling the balloon completely; and altogether about 300 lb. of sulphuric acid and twice that amount of iron filings were used (fig. 2). Bulletins were issued daily of the progress of the inflation; and the crowd was so great that on the 26th the balloon was moved secretly by night to the Champ de Mars, a distance of 2 m. On the next day an immense concourse of people covered the Champ de Mars, and every spot from which a view could be ob obtained was crowded. About five o’clock a cannon was discharged as the signal for the ascent, and the balloon when liberated rose to the height of about 3000 ft. with great rapidity. A shower of rain which began to fall directly after it had left the earth in no way checked its progress; and the excitement was so great, that thousands of well-dressed spectators, many of them ladies, stood exposed, watching it intently the whole time it was in sight and were drenched to the skin, The balloon, after remaining in the air for about three-quarters of an hour, fell in a field near Gonesse, about 15 m. off, and terrified the peasantry so much that it was torn into shreds by them. Hydrogen gas was at this time known by the name of inflammable air; and balloons inflated with gas have ever since been called by the people air-balloons, the kind invented by the Montgolfiers being designated fire-balloons. French Writers have also very frequently styled them after their inventors, Charlieres and Montgolfieres. On the 19th of September 1783 Joseph Montgolfier repeated the Annonay experiment at Versailles, in the presence of the king, the queen, the court and an immense number of spectators. The inflation was begun at one o’clock, and completed in eleven minutes, when the balloon rose to the height of about 1500 ft., and descended after eight minutes, at a distance of about 2 m., in the wood of Vaucresson. Suspended below the balloon: in a cage, had been placed a sheep, a cock and a duck, which were thus the first aerial travellers. They were quite uninjured, except the cock, which had its right wing hurt in consequence of a kick it had received from the sheep; but this took place before the ascent. The balloon, which was painted with ornaments in oil colours, had a very showy appearance (fig. 3). Francois Pilatre de Rozier (1756-1785), a native of Metz, who was appointed superintendent of the natural history collections of Louis XVIII. On the 15th of October 1783, and following days, he made several ascents (generally alone, but once with a companion, Girond de Villette) in a captive balloon (i.e. one attached by ropes to the ground), and demonstrated that there was no difficulty in taking up fuel and feeding the fire, which was kindled in a brazier suspended under the balloon, when in the air. The way being thus prepared for aerial navigation, on the 21st of November 1783, Pilatre de Rozier and the marquis d’Arlandes first trusted themselves to a free fire-balloon. The experiment was made from the Jardin du Chateau de la Muette, in the Bois de Boulogne. A large fire-balloon was inflated at about two o’clock, rose to a height of about 500 ft., and passing over the Invalides and the Ecole Mililaire, descended beyond the Boulevards, about 9000 yds. from the place of ascent, having been between twenty and twenty-five minutes in the air. Only ten days later, viz. on the 1st of December 1783, Charles ascended from Paris in a balloon inflated with hydrogen gas. The balloon, as in the case of the small one of the same kind previously launched from the Champ de Mars, was constructed by the brothers Robert, one of whom took part in the ascent. It was 27 ft. in diameter, and the car was suspended from a hoop surrounding the middle of the balloon, and fastened to a net, which covered the upper hemisphere. The balloon ascended very gently from the Tuileries at a quarter to two o’clock, and after remaining for some time at an elevation of about 2000 ft., it descended in about two hours at Nesle, a small town about 27 m. from Paris, when Robert left the car, and Charles made a, second ascent by himself. He had intended to have replaced the weight of his companion by a nearly equivalent quantity of ballast; but not having any suitable means of obtaining such at the place of descent, and it being just upon sunset, he gave the word to let go, and the balloon being thus so greatly lightened, ascended very rapidly to a height of about 2 m. After staying in the air about half an hour, he descended 3 m. from the place of ascent, although he believed the distance traversed, owing to different currents, to have been about 9 m. In this second journey he experienced a violent pain in his right ear and jaw, no doubt produced by the rapidity of the ascent. He also witnessed the phenomenon of a double sunset on the same day; for when he ascended, the sun had set in the valleys, and as he mounted he saw it rise again, and set a second time as he descended.
All the features of the modern balloon as now used are more or less due to Charles, who invented the valve at the top, suspended the car from a hoop, which was itself attached to the balloon by netting, &c. With regard to his use of hydrogen gas, there are anticipations that must be noticed. As early as 1766 Henry Cavendish showed that this gas was at least seven times lighter than ordinary air, and it immediately occurred to Dr Joseph Black, of Edinburgh, that a thin bag filled with hydrogen gas would rise to the ceiling of a room. He provided, accordingly, the allantois of a calf, with the view of showing at a public lecture such a curious experiment; but for some reason it seems to have failed, and Black did not repeat it, thus allowing a great discovery, almost within his reach, to escape him. Several years afterwards a similar idea occurred to Tiberius Cavallo, who found that bladders, even when carefully scraped, are too heavy, and that China paper is permeable to the gas. But in 1782, the year before the invention of the Montgolfiers, he succeeded in elevating soap-bubbles by inflating them with hydrogen gas. Researches on the use of gas for inflating balloons seem to have been carried on at Philadelphia nearly simultaneously with the experiments of the Montgolfiers; and when the news of the latter reached America, D. Rittenhouse and F. Hopkinson, members of the Philosophical Society at Philadelphia; constructed a machine consisting of forty-seven small hydrogen gas-balloons attached to a car or cage. After several preliminary experiments, in which animals were let up to a certain height by a rope, a carpenter, one James Wilcox, was induced to enter the car for a small sum of money; the ropes were cut, and he remained in the air about ten minutes, and only then effected his descent by making incisions in a number of the balloons, through fear of falling into the river, which he was approaching.
First Ascents in Great Britain.
Although the news of the Annonay and subsequent experiments in France rapidly spread all over Europe, and formed a topic of general discussion, still it was not till five months after the Montgolfiers had first publicly sent a balloon into the air that any aerostatic experiment was made in England. In November 1783 Count Francesco Zambeccari (1756-1812), an Italian who happened to be in London, made a balloon of oil-silk, 10 ft. in diameter, and weighing 11 lb. It was publicly shown for several days, and on the 25th it was three-quarters filled with hydrogen gas and launched from the Artillery ground at one o’clock. It descended after two hours and a half near Petworth, in Sussex, 48 m. from London. This was the first balloon that ascended from English ground. On the 22nd of February 1784 a hydrogen gas balloon, 5 ft. in diameter, was let up from Sandwich, in Kent, and descended at Warneton, in French Flanders, 75 m. distant. This was the first balloon that crossed the Channel. The first person who rose into the air from British ground appears to have been J. Tytler1, who ascended from the Comely Gardens, Edinburgh, on the 27th of August 1784, in a fire-balloon of his own construction. He descended on the road to Restalrig, about half a mile from the place where he rose.
But it was Vincent Lunardi who practically introduced aerostation into Great Britain. Although Tytler had the precedence by a few days still his attempts and partial success were all but unknown; whereas Lunardi’s experiments excited an enormous amount of enthusiasm in London. He was secretary to Prince Caramanico, the Neapolitan ambassador, and his published letters to his guardian, the chevalier Compagni, written while he was carrying out his project, and detailing all the difficulties, &c., he met with as they occurred, give an interesting and vivid account of the whole matter. His balloon was 33 ft. in circumference (fig.4), and was exposed to the public view at the Lyceum in the Strand, where it was visited by upwards of 20,000 people. He originally intended to ascend from Chelsea Hospital, but the conduct of a crowd at a garden at Chelsea, which destroyed the fire-balloon of a Frenchman named de Moret, who announced an ascent on the 11th of August, but was unable to keep his word, led to the withdrawal of the leave that had been granted. Ultimately he was permitted to ascend from the Artillery ground, and on the 15th of September 1784 the inflation with hydrogen gas took place. It was intended that an English gentleman named Biggin should accompany Lunardi; but the crowd becoming impatient, the latter judged it prudent to ascend with the balloon only partially full rather than risk a longer delay, and accordingly Mr Biggin was obliged to leave the car. Lunardi therefore ascended alone, in presence of the prince of Wales and an enormous crowd of spectators. He took up with him a pigeon, a dog and a cat, and the balloon was provided with oars, by means of which he hoped to raise or lower it at pleasure. Shortly after starting the pigeon escaped, and one of the oars became broken and fell to the ground. In about an hour and a half he descended at South Mimms, in Hertfordshire, and landed the cat, which had suffered from the cold: he then ascended again, and descended, after the lapse of about three-quarters of an hour, at Standon, near Ware, where he had great difficulty in inducing the peasants to come to his assistance; but at length a young woman, taking hold of one of the cords, urged the men to follow her example, which they then did. The excitement caused by this ascent was immense, and Lunardi at once became the star of the hour. He was presented to the king, and was courted and flattered on all sides. To show the enthusiasm displayed by the people during his ascent, he tells himself, in his sixth letter, how a lady, mistaking the oar which fell for himself, was so affected by his supposed destruction that she died in a few days; but, on the other hand, he says he was told by the judges “that he had certainly saved the life of a young man who might possibly be reformed, and be to the public a compensation for the death of the lady”; for the jury were deliberating on the fate of a criminal, whom they must ultimately have condemned, when the balloon appeared, and to save time they gave a verdict of acquittal, and the whole court came out to view the balloon. The king also was in conference with his ministers; but on hearing that the balloon was passing, he broke up the discussion, and with them watched the balloon through telescopes. The balloon was afterwards exhibited in the Pantheon. In the latter part of the following year (1785) Lunardi made several successful ascents from Kelso, Edinburgh and Glasgow (in one of which he traversed a distance of 110 m.); these he described in a second series of letters. The first ascent from Ireland was made on the 19th of January 1785 by a Mr Crosbie, who on the following 19th of July attempted to cross St George’s Channel to England but fell into the sea. The second person who ascended from Ireland was Richard Maguire. Mr Crosbie had inflated his balloon on the 12th of May 1785, but it was unable to take him up. Maguire in these circumstances offered himself as a substitute, and his offer being accepted he made the ascent. For this he was knighted by the Lord-Lieutenant. Another attempt to cross St George’s Channel was made by James Sadler on the 1st of October 1812, and he had nearly succeeded when in consequence of a change of wind he was forced to descend into the sea off Liverpool, whence he was rescued by a fishing-boat. But on the 22nd of July 1817 his second son, Windham Sadler, succeeded in crossing from Dublin to Holyhead.
The first balloon voyage across the English Channel was accomplished by Jean Pierre Blanchard (1753-1809) and Dr. J. Jeffries, an American physician, on the 7th of January 1785. In the preceding year, on the 2nd of March, Blanchard, who was one of the most celebrated of the earlier aeronauts, made his first voyage from Paris in a balloon 27 ft. in diameter (fig. 5), and descended at Billancourt near Sevres. Just as the balloon was about to start, a young man jumped into the car and drawing his sword declared his determination to ascend with Blanchard. He was ultimately removed by force. It has sometimes been incorrectly stated that he was Napoleon Bonaparte; his name in reality was Dupont de Chambon. In their Channel crossing Blanchard and his companion, who started from Dover, when about one-third across found themselves descending, and threw out every available thing from the boat or car. When about three- quarters across they were descending again, and had to throw out not only the anchor and cords, but also to strip and throw away their clothing, which they found they were rising, and their last resource, viz. to cut away the car, was rendered unnecessary. As they approached the shore the balloon rose, describing a magnificent arch high over the land. They descended in the forest of Guinnes. On the 15th of June 1785, Pilatre de Rozier made an attempt to repeat the exploit of Blanchard and Jeffries in the reverse direction, and cross from Boulogne to England. For this purpose he contrived a double balloon, which he expected would combine the advantages of both kinds—a fire-balloon, 10 ft. in diameter, being placed underneath a gas-balloon of 37 ft. in diameter, so that by increasing or diminishing the fire in the former it might be possible to ascend or descend without waste of gas. Rozier was accompanied by P. A. Romain, and for rather less than half an hour after the aerostat ascended all seemed to be going on well, when suddenly the whole apparatus was seen in flames, and the unfortunate adventurers came to the ground from the supposed height of more than 3000 ft. Rozier was killed on the spot, and Romain only survived about ten minutes. A monument was erected on the place where they fell, which was near the sea-shore, about 4 m. from the starting-point.
Early large balloons.
The largest balloon on record (if the contemporary accounts are correct) ascended from Lyons on the 19th of January 1784. It was more than 100 ft. in diameter, about 130 ft. in height, and when distended had a capacity, it is said, of over half a million cubic feet. It was called the “Flesselles” (from the name of its proprietor, we believe), and after having been inflated from a straw fire in seventeen minutes, it rose with seven persons in the car to the height of about 3000 ft., but descended again after the lapse of about a quarter of an hour from the time of starting, in consequence of a rent in the upper part. Another large fire-balloon, 68 ft. in diameter, was constructed by the chevalier Paul Andreani of Milan, and on the 25th of February he ascended in it from Milan, remaining in the air for about twenty minutes. This is usually regarded as the first ascent in Italy (but see Monck Mason’s Aeronautica, p. 247). On the 7th of November 1836, at half-past one o’clock, a large balloon containing about 85,000 cub. ft. of gas ascended from Vauxhall Gardens, London, carrying Robert Hollond, M.P., Monck Mason and Charles Green, and descended about two leagues from Weilburg, in the duchy of Nassau, at half-past seven the next morning, having thus traversed a distance of about 500 m. in 18 hours; Liege was passed in the course of the night, and Coblentz in the early morning. In consequence of this journey the balloon became famous as the “Nassau Balloon” (fig. 6). Charles Green (1785-1870), who constructed it and subsequently became its owner, was the most celebrated of English aeronauts, and made an extraordinary number of ascents. His first, made from the Green Park, London, on the 19th of July 1821 at the coronation of George IV., was distinguished for the fact that for the first time coal-gas was used instead of hydrogen for inflating the balloon. In 1828 he made an equestrian ascent from the Eagle Tavern, City Road, London, seated on his favourite pony. Such ascents have since been repeated; in 1852 Madame Poitevin made one from Cremorne Gardens, but was prevented from giving a second performance by police interference, the exhibition outraging public opinion. It was in descending from the “Nassau Balloon” in a parachute that Robert Cocking was killed in 1837 (see PARACHUTE) . Green was the inventor of the guide-rope, which consists of a long rope trailing below the car. Its function is to reduce the waste of gas and ballast required to keep the balloon at a proper altitude. When a balloon sinks so low that a good deal of the guide-rope rests on the ground, it is relieved of so much weight and therefore tends to rise; if on the other hand it rises so that most of the rope is lifted off the ground, it has to bear a greater weight and tends to sink.
In 1863 A. Nadar, a Paris photographer, constructed “Le Geant,” which was the largest gas-balloon made up to that time and contained over 200,000 cub. ft. of gas. Underneath it was placed a smaller balloon, called a compensator, the object of which was to prevent loss of gas during the voyage. The car had two stories, and was, in fact, a model of a cottage in wicker-work, 8 ft. in height by 13 ft. in length, containing a small printing-office, a photographic department, a refreshment-room, a lavatory, &c. The first ascent took place at five o’clock on Sunday the 4th of October 1863, from the Champ de Mars. There were thirteen persons in the car, including one lady, the princess de la Tour d’Auvergne, and the two aeronauts Louis and Jules Godard. In spite of the elaborate preparations that had been made and the stores of provisions that were taken up, the balloon descended at nine o’clock, at Meaux, the early descent being rendered necessary, it was said, by an accident to the valve-line. At a second ascent, made a fortnight later, there were nine passengers, including Madame Nadar. The balloon descended at the expiration of seventeen hours, near Nienburg in Hanover, a distance of about 400 m. A strong wind was blowing, and it was dragged over the ground for 7 or 8 m. All the passengers were bruised, and some seriously hurt. The balloon and car were then brought to England, and exhibited at the Crystal Palace at the end of 1863 and beginning of 1864. The two ascents of Nadar’s balloon excited an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm and interest, vastly out of proportion to what they were entitled to. Nadar’s idea was to obtain sufficient money, by the exhibition of his balloon, to carry out a plan of aerial locomotion he had conceived possible by means of the principle of the screw; in fact, he spoke of “Le Geant” as “the last balloon.” He also started L’Aeronaute, a newspaper devoted to aerostation, and published a small book, which was translated into English under the title The Right to Fly. Directly after Nadar’s two ascents, Eugene Godard constructed a fire-balloon of nearly half a million cubic feet capacity–more than double that of Nadar’s and only slightly less than that attributed to the “Flesselles” of 1783. The air was heated by an 18-ft. stove, weighing, with the chimney, 980 lb. This furnace was fed by straw; and the “car” consisted of a gallery surrounding it. Two ascents of this balloon, the first fire-balloon seen in London, were made from Cremorne Gardens in July 1864. After the first journey the balloon descended at Greenwich, and after the second at Walthamstow, where it was injured by being blown against a tree. Notwithstanding its enormous size, Godard asserted that it could be inflated in half an hour, and the inflation at Cremorne did not occupy more than an hour. In spite of the rapidity with which the inflation was effected, few who saw the ascent could fail to receive an impression unfavourable to the fire-balloon in the matter of safety, as a rough descent, with a heated furnace as it were in the car, could not be other than most dangerous.
Long balloon voyages.
In the summer of 1873 the proprietors of the New York Daily Graphic, reviving a project discussed by Green in 1840, determined to construct a very large balloon, and enable the American aeronaut, John Wise, to realize his favourite scheme of crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, by taking advantage of the current from west to east which was believed by many to exist constantly at heights above 10,000 ft. The project came to nothing owing to the quality of the material of which the balloon was made. When it was being inflated in September 1873 a rent was observed after 325,000 cub. ft. of gas had been put in, and the whole rapidly collapsed. The size was said to be such as to contain 400,000 cub. ft., so that it would lift a weight of 14,000 lb. No balloon voyage has yet been made of a length comparable to the breadth of the Atlantic. In fact only two voyages exceeding 1000 m. are on record–that of John Wise from St Louis to Henderson, N.Y., 1120 m., in 1859, and that of Count Henry de la Vaulx from Paris to Korosticheff in Russia, 1193 m., in 1900. On the 11th of July 1897 Salomon Andree, with two companions, Strendberg and Frankel, ascended from Spitzbergen in a daring attempt to reach the North Pole, about 600 m. distant. One carrier pigeon, apparently liberated 48 hours after the start, was shot, and two floating buoys with messages were found, but nothing more was heard of the explorers.
Scientific Ascents.
At an early date the balloon was applied to scientific purposes. as far back as 1784, Dr Jeffries made an ascent from London in which he carried out barometric, thermometric and hygrometric observations, also collecting samples of the air at different heights. In 1803 the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, entertaining the opinion that the experiments made on mountain-sides by J. A. Deluc, H. B. de Saussure, A. von Humboldt and others must give results different from those made in free air at the same heights, resolved to arrange a balloon ascent. Accordingly, on the 30th of January 1808, .Sacharof, a member of the academy, ascended in a gas balloon, in company with a French aeronaut, E. G. Robertson, who at one time gave conjuring entertainments in Paris. The ascent was made at a quarter past seven, and the descent effected at a quarter to eleven. The height reached was less than 1 1/2 m. The experiments were not very systematically made, and the chief results were the filling and bringing down of several flasks of air collected at different elevations, and the supposed observation that the magnetic dip was altered. A telescope fixed in the bottom of the car and pointing vertically downwards enabled the travellers to ascertain exactly the spot over which they were floating at any moment. Sacharof found that, on shouting downwards through his speaking-trumpet, the echo from the earth was quite distinct, and at his height was audible after an interval of about ten seconds (Phil. Mag., 1805, 21, p. 193).
Some of the results reported by Robertson appearing doubtful, Laplace proposed to the members of the French Academy of Sciences that the funds placed by the government at their disposal for the prosecution of useful experiments should be utilized in sending up balloons to test their accuracy. The proposition was supported by J. A. C. Chaptal, the chemist, who was then minister of the interior, and accordingly the necessary arrangements were speedily effected, the charge of the experiments being given to L. J. Gay-Lussac and J. B. Biot. The principal object of this ascent was to determine whether the magnetic force experienced any appreciable diminution at heights above the earth’s surface. On the 24th of August 1804, Gay-Lussac and Biot ascended from the Conservatoire des Arts at ten o’clock in the morning. Their magnetic experiments were incommoded by the rotation of the balloon, but they found that, up to the height of 13,000 ft., the time of vibration of a magnet was appreciably the same as on the earth’s surface. They found also that the air became drier as they ascended. The height reached was about 13,000 ft., and the temperature declined from 63 deg. to 51 deg. F. The descent was effected about half-past one, at Meriville, 18 leagues from Paris.
In a second experiment, which was made on the 16th of September 1804, Gay-Lussac ascended alone. The balloon left the Conservatoire des Arts at 9.40 A.M., and descended at 3.45 P.M. between Rouen and Dieppe. The chief result obtained was that the magnetic force, like gravitation, did not experience any sensible variation at heights from the earth’s surface which we can attain to. Gay-Lussac also brought down air collected at the height of nearly 23,000 ft., and on analysis it appeared that its composition was the same as that of air collected at the earth’s surface. At the time of leaving the earth the thermometer stood at 82 deg. F., and at the highest point reached (23,000 ft.) it was 14.9 deg. F. Gay-Lussac remarked that at his highest point there were still clouds above him.
From 1804 to 1850 there is no record of any scientific ascents in balloons having been undertaken. In the latter year J. A. Bixio (1808-1865) and A. Barral (1819-1884) made two ascents of this kind. In the first they ascended from the Paris observatory on the 29th of June 1850, at 10.27 A.M., the balloon being inflated with hydrogen gas. The day was a rough one, and the ascent took place without any previous attempt having been made to test the ascensional force of the balloon. When liberated, it rose with great rapidity, and becoming fully inflated it pressed upon the network, bulging out at the top and bottom. The ropes by which the car was suspended being too short, the balloon soon covered the travellers like an immense hood. In endeavouring to secure the valve-rope, they made a rent in the balloon, and the gas escaped so close to their faces as almost to suffocate them. Finding that they were descending then too rapidly, they threw overboard everything available, including their coats and only excepting the instruments. The ground was reached at 10h. 45m., near Lagny. Of course no observations were made. Their second ascent was made on the 27th of July, and was remarkable on account of the extreme cold met with. At about 20,000 ft. the temperature was 15 deg. F., the balloon being enveloped in cloud; but on emerging from the cloud, at 23,000 ft., the temperature sank to –38 deg. F., no less than 53 deg. F. below that experienced by Gay-Lussac at the same elevation. The existence of these very cold clouds served to explain certain meteorological phenomena that were observed on the earth both the day before and the day after the ascent. Some pigeons were taken up in this, as in most other high ascents; when liberated, they showed a reluctance to leave the car, and then fell heavily downwards.
In July 1852 the committee of the Kew Observatory resolved to institute a series of balloon ascents, with the view of investigating such meteorological and physical phenomena as require the presence of an observer at a great height in the atmosphere. John Welsh (1824-1859) of the Kew Observatory was the observer, and the great “Nassau Balloon” was employed, with Green himself as the aeronaut. Four ascents were made in 1852, viz. on the 17th and 26th of August, the 31st of October and the 10th of November. The heights attained were 19,510, 19,100, 12,680 and 22,930 ft., and the lowest temperatures met with in the four ascents were 8.7 deg. F. (19,380 ft.), 12.4 deg. F. (18,370 ft.), 16.4 deg. F. (12,640 ft.) and 10.5 deg. F. (22,370 ft.). The decline of temperature was very regular. A siphon barometer, dry and wet bulb thermometers, aspirated and free, and a Regnault hygrometer were taken up. Some air collected at a considerable height was found on analysis not to differ appreciably in its composition from air collected near the ground. For the original observations see Phil. Trans., 1853, pp. 311-346.
Glaisher’s ascents.
At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Aberdeen in 1859, a committee was appointed for the purpose of making observations in the higher strata of the atmosphere by means of the balloon. For two years nothing was effected, owing to the want both of an observer and of a suitable balloon. After its reappointment at the Manchester meeting of 1861, the committee communicated with Henry Tracey Coxwell (1819-1900), an aeronaut who had made a good many ascents, and he agreed to construct a new balloon, of 90,000 cub. ft. capacity, on the condition that the committee would undertake to use it, and pay L. 25 for each high ascent made especially on its behalf, defraying also the cost of gas, &c., so that the expense of each high ascent amounted to nearly L. 50. An observer being still wanted, James Glaisher, a member of the committee, offered himself to take the observations, and accordingly the first ascent was made on the 17th of July 1862, from the gas-works at Wolverhamiton, this town being chosen on account of its central position in the country. Altogether, Glaisher made twenty-eight ascents, the last being on the 26th of May 1866. Of these only seven were specially high ascents, although six others were undertaken for the objects of the committee alone. . On the ether occasions he availed himself of public ascents from the Crystal Palace and other places of entertainment, merely taking his place like the other passengers. In the last six ascents another aeronaut and a smaller balloon were employed. The dates, places of ascent and greatest heights (in feet) attained in the twenty-eight ascents were–1862: July 17, Wolverhampton, 26,177; July 30, Crystal Palace, 6937; August 18, Wolverhampton, 23,377; August 20, Crystal Palace, 5900; August 21, Hendon, 14,355; September 1, Crystal Palace, 4190; September 5, Wolverhampton, 37,000; September 8, Crystal Palace, 5428. 1863: March 31, Crystal Palace, 22,884; April 18, Crystal Palace, 24,163; June 26, Wolverton, 23,200; July 11, Crystal Palace, 6623; July 21, Crystal Palace, 3298; August 31, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 8033; September 29, Wolverhampton, 16,590; October 9, Crystal Palace, 7310. 1864: January 12, Woolwich, 11,897; April 6, Woolwich, 11,075; June 13, Crystal Palace, 3543; June 20, Derby, 4280; June 27, Crystal Palace, 4898; August 29, Crystal Palace, 14,581; December 1, Woolwich, 5431; December 30, Woolwich, 3735. 1865: February 27, Woolwich, 4865; October 2, Woolwich, 1949; December 2, Woolwich, 4628. 1866: May 26, Windsor, 6325.
The primary object of the ascents was to determine the temperature of the air, and its hygrometrical state at different elevations to as great a height as could be reached; and the secondary objects were-(1) to determine the temperature of the dew-point by Daniell’s and Regnault’s hygrometers, as well as by the dry and wet bulb thermometers, and to compare the results; (2) to compare the readings of an aneroid barometer with those of a mercurial barometer up to the height of 5 m.; (3) to determine the electrical state of the air, (4) the oxygenic condition of the atmosphere, and (5) the time of vibration of a magnet; (6) to collect air at different elevations; (7) to note the height and kind of clouds, their density and thickness; (8) to determine the rate and direction of different currents in the atmosphere; and (9) to make observations on sound. The instruments used were mercurial and aneroid barometers, dry and wet bulb thermometers, Daniell’s dew-point hygrometer, Regnault’s condensing hygrometer, maximum and minimum thermometers, a magnet for horizontal vibration, hermetically sealed glass tubes exhausted of air, and an electrometer. In one or two of the ascents a camera was taken up.
The complete observations, both as made and after reduction, are printed in the British Association Reports, 1862-1866; here only a general account of the results can he given. It appeared that the rate of the decline of temperature with elevation near the earth was very different according as the sky was clear or cloudy; and the equality of temperature at sunset and increase with height after sunset were very remarkable facts which were not anticipated. Even at the height of 5 m., cirrus clouds were seen high in the air, apparently as far above as they seem when viewed from the earth. The results of the observations differed very much, and no doubt the atmospheric conditions depended not only on the time of day, but also on the season of the year, and were such that a vast number of ascents would be requisite to determine the true laws with anything approaching to certainty and completeness. It was also clear that England is a most unfit country for the pursuit of such investigations, as, from whatever place the balloon started, it was never safe to be more than an hour above the clouds for fear of reaching the sea. It appeared from the observations that an aneroid barometer could be trusted to read as accurately as a mercurial barometer to the heights reached. The time of vibration of a horizontal magnet was taken in very many of the ascents, and the results of ten different sets of observations indicated that the time of vibration was longer than on the earth. In almost all the ascents the balloon was under the influence of currents of air in different directions which varied greatly in thickness. The direction of the wind on the earth was sometimes that of the whole mass of air up to 20,000 ft., whilst at other times the direction changed within 500 ft. of the earth. Sometimes directly opposite currents were met with at different heights in the same . ascent, and three or four streams of air were encountered moving in different directions. The direct distances between the places of ascent and descent, apart from the movements of the balloon under the influence of these various currents, were always very much greater than the horizontal movement of the air as measured by anemometers. For example, on the 12th of January 1862, the balloon left Woolwich at 2h. 8m. P.M., and descended at Lakenheath, 70 m. distant from the place of ascent, at 4h. 19m. P.M. At the Greenwich Observatory, by a Robinson anemometer, during this time the motion of the air was 6 m. only. With regard to physiological observations, Glaisher found that the frequency of his pulse increased with elevation, as also did the number of inspirations. The number of his pulsations was generally 76 per minute before starting, about 90 at 10,000 ft., 100 at 20,000 ft., and 110 at higher elevations. But a good deal depended on the temperament of the individual. This was also the case in respect to colour; at 10,000 ft. the faces of some would be a glowing purple, whilst others would be scarcely affected; at 4 m. high Glaisher found the pulsations of his heart distinctly audible, and his breathing was very much affected, so that panting was produced by the slightest exertion; at 29,000 ft. he became insensible. In reference to the propagation of sound, it was at all times found that sounds from the earth were more or less audible according to the amount of moisture in the air. When in clouds at 4 m. high, a railway train was heard; but when clouds were far below, no sound ever reached the ear at this elevation. The discharge of a gun was heard at 10,000 ft. The barking of a dog was heard at the height of 2 m., while the shouting of a multitude of people was not audible at heights exceeding 4000 ft. In his ascent of the 5th of September 1862, Glaisher considered that he reached a height of 37,000 ft. But that figure was based, not on actual record, but on the circumstances that at 29,000 ft., when he became insensible, the balloon was rising 1000 ft. a minute, and that when he recovered consciousness thirteen minutes later it was falling 2000 ft. a minute, and the accuracy of his conclusions has been questioned. Few scientific men have imitated Glaisher in making high ascents for meteorological observations. In 1867 and 1868 Camille Flammarion made eight or nine ascents from Paris for scientific purposes. The heights attained were not great, but the general result was to confirm the observations of Glaisher; for an account see Voyages aeriens, Paris, 1870, or Travels in the Air, London, 1871, in which also some ascents by W. de Fonvielle are noticed. On the 15th of April 1875, H. T. Sivel, J. E. Croce-Spinelli and Gaston Tissandier ascended from Paris in the balloon “Zenith,” and reached a height of 27,950 ft.; but only Tissandier came down alive, his two companions being asphyxiated. This put an end to such attempts for a time. But Dr A. Berson and Lieut. Gross attained 25,840 ft. on the 11th of May 1894; Berson, ascending alone from Strassfurt on the 4th of December 1894, attained about 31,500 ft. and recorded a temperature of –54 deg. F.; and Berson and Stanley Spencer are stated by the latter to have attained 27,500 ft. on the 15th of September 1898 when they ascended in a hydrogen balloon from the Crystal Palace, the thermometer registering –29 deg. F. On the 31st of July 1901, Berson and R. J. Suring, ascending at Berlin, actually noted a barometric reading corresponding to a height of 34,500 ft., and possibly rose 1000 or 1500 ft. higher, though in spite of oxygen inhalations they were unconscious during the highest portion of the ascent.
The personal danger attending his ascents led Gustave Hermite and Besancon in November 1892 to inaugurate the sending up of unmanned balloons (ballons sondes) equipped with automatic recording instruments, and kites (q.v.) have also been employed for similar meteorological purposes. (See also METEOROLOOY.)
Military balloons.
The balloon had not been discovered very long before it received a military status, and soon after the beginning of the French revolutionary war an aeronautic school was founded at Meudon, in charge of Guyton de Morveau, the chemist, and Colonel J. M. J. Coutelle (1748-1835). Four balloons were constructed for the armies of the north, of the Sambre and Meuse, of the Rhine and Moselle, and of Egypt. In June 1794 Coutelle ascended with the adjutant and general to reconnoitre the hostile army just before the battle of Fleurus, and two reconnaissances were made, each occupying four hours. It is generally stated that it was to the information so gained that the French victory was due. The balloon corps was in constant requisition during the campaign, but it does not appear that, with the exception of the reconnaissances just mentioned, any great advantages resulted, except in a moral point of view. But even this was of importance, as the enemy were much disconcerted at having their movements so completely watched, while the French were correspondingly elated at the superior information it was believed they were gaining. An attempt was made to revive the use of balloons in the African campaign of 1830, but no opportunity occurred in which they could be employed. It is said that in 1849 a reconnoitring balloon was sent up from before Venice, as also were small balloons loaded with bombs to be exploded by time-fuses. In the French campaign against Italy in 1859 the French had recourse to the use of balloons, but this time there was not any aerostatic corps, and their management was entrusted to the brothers Godard. Several reconnaissances were made, and one of especial interest the day before the battle of Solferino. No information of much importance seems, however, to have been gained thereby. In the American Civil War (1861) balloons were a good deal used by the Federals. There was a regular balloon staff attached to Mcclellan’s army, with a captain, an assistant-captain and about 50 non-commissioned officers and privates. The apparatus consisted of two generators, drawn by four horses each; two balloons, drawn by four horses each, and an acid-cart, drawn by two horses. The two balloons used contained about 13,000 and 26,000 ft. of gas, and the inflation usually occupied about three hours. (See Royal Engineers’ Papers, vol. xii.) By their aid useful information was gained about the enemy round Richmond and in other places, but eventually difficulties of transport and the topography of the theatre of war made ballooning impracticable; and little was heard of it after the first two years of the war.
The balloon proved itself very valuable during the siege of Paris (1870-71). It was by it alone that communication was kept up between the besieged city and the external world, as the balloons carried away from Paris the pigeons which afterwards brought back to it the news of the provinces. The total number of balloons that ascended from Paris during the siege, conveying persons and despatches, was sixty-four–the first having started on the 23rd of September 1870, and the last on the 28th of January 1871. Gambetta effected his escape from Paris, on the 7th of October, in the balloon “Armand-Barbes,’, an event which doubtless led to the prolongation of the war. Of the sixty-four balloons only two were never heard of; they were blown out to sea. One of the most remarkable voyages was that of the “Ville d’Orleans,” which, leaving Paris at eleven o’clock on the 21st of November, descended fifteen hours afterwards near Christiania, having crossed the North Sea. Several of the balloons on their descent were taken by the Prussians, and a good many were fired at while in the air. The average size of the balloons was from 2000 to 2050 metres, or from 70,000 to 72,000 cub. ft. The above facts are extracted from Les Ballons du siege de Paris, a sheet published by Buila and Sons, Paris, and compiled by the brothers Tissandier, well-known French aeronauts, which gives the name, size and times of ascent and descent of every balloon that left Paris, with the Da.mes of the aeronaut and generally also of the passengers, the weight of despatches, the number of pigeons, &c. Only those balloons, however, are noticed in which some person ascended. The balloons were manufactured and despatched (generally from (the platforms of the Orleans or the Northern railway) under the direction of the Post Office. The aeronauts employed were mostly sailors, who did their work very well. No use whatever was made in the war of balloons for purposes of reconnaissance.
Ballooning, however, as a recognized military science, only dates back to about the year 1883 or 1884, when most of the powers organized regular balloon establishments. In 1884-85 the French found balloons very useful during their campaign in Tongking; and the British government also despatched balloons with the Bechuanaland expedition, and also with that to Suakin in those years. During the latter campaign several ascents were made in the presence of the enemy, on whom it was said that a great moral effect was produced. The employment of balloons has been common in nearly all modern wars.
We may briefly describe the apparatus used in military operations. The French in the campaigns of the 19th century used varnished silk balloons of about 10,000 cub. ft. capacity. The Americans in the Civil War used much larger ones. those of 26,000 cub. ft. being found the most suitable. These were also of varnished silk. In the present day most nations use balloons of about 20,000 cub. ft., made of varnished cambric; but the British war balloons, made of goldbeater skin, are usually of comparatively small size, the normal capacity being 10,000 cub. ft., though others of 7000 and 4500 cub. ft. have also been used, as at Suakin. The usual shape is spherical; but since 1896 the Germans, and now other nations, have adopted a long cylindrical-shaped balloon, so affixed to its cable as to present an inclined surface to the wind and thus act partly on the principle of a kite. Though coal-gas and even hot air may occasionally be used for inflation, hydrogen gas is on account of its lightness fat preferable. In the early days of ballooning this had to be manufactured in the field, but nowadays it is almost universally carried compressed in steel tubes. About 100 such tubes, each weighing 75lb., are required to fill a 10,000-ft. balloon. Tubes of greater capacity have also been tried.
The balloon is almost always used captive. If allowed to go free it will usually be rapidly carried away by the wind and the results of the observations cannot easily be transmitted back. Occasions may occur when such ascents will be of value, but the usual method is to send up a captive balloon to a height of somewhere about 1000 ft. With the standard British balloon two officers are sent up, one of whom has now particularly to attend to the management of the balloon, while the other makes the observations.
With regard to observations from captive balloons much depends on circumstances. In a thickly wooded country, such as that in which the balloons were used in the American Civil War, and in the war in Cuba (in which the balloon merely served to expose the troops to severe fire), no very valuable information is, as a rule, to be obtained; but in fairly open country all important movements of troops should be discernible by an experienced observer at any point within about four or five miles of the balloon. The circumstances, it may be mentioned, are such as would usually preclude one unaccustomed to ballooning from affording valuable reports. Not only is he liable to be disturbed by the novel and apparently hazardous situation, but troops and features of the ground often have so peculiar an appearance from that point of view, that a novice will often have a difficulty in deciding whether an object be a column of troops or a ploughed field. Then again, much will depend on atmospheric conditions. Thus, in misty weather a balloon is well-nigh useless; and in strong winds, with a velocity of anything over 20 m. an hour, efficient observation becomes a matter of difficulty. When some special point has to be reported on, such as whether there is any large body of troops behind a certain hill or wood, a rapid ascent may still be mace in winds up to 30 m. an hour, but the balloon would then be so unsteady that no careful scouting could be made. It is.usually estimated that a successful captive ascent can only be made in England on half the days of the year. As a general rule balloon ascents would be made for one of the following objects– to examine the country for an enemy; to reconnoitre the enemy’s position; to ascertain the strength of his force, number of guns and exact situation of the various arms; also to note the plan of his earthworks or fortifications. During an action the aerial observer would be on the look-out for any movements of the enemy and give warning of flank attacks or surprises. Such an observer could also keep the general informed as to the progress of various detached parties of his own force, as to the advance of reinforcements, or to the conduct of any fighting going on at a distance. Balloon observations are also of especial use to artillery in correcting their aim. The vulnerability of a captive balloon to the enemy’s fire has been tested by many experiments with variable results. One established fact is that the range of a balloon in mid-air is extremely difficult to judge, and, as its altitude can he very rapidly altered, it becomes a very difficult mark for artillery to hit. A few bullet-holes in the fabric of a balloon make but little difference, since the size of the perforation is very minute as compared with the great surface of material, but on the other hand, a shrapnel bursting just in front of may cause a rapid fall. It is therefore considered prudent to keep the balloon well away from an enemy, and two miles are laid down as the nearest approach it should make habitually.
Besides being of use on land for war purposes, balloons have been tried in connexion with the naval service. In France especially regular trials have been made of inflating balloons on board ships, and sending them aloft as a look-out; but it is now generally contended that the difficulties of storing the gas and of manoeuvring the balloon are so great on board ship as to be hardly worth the results to be gained.
A very important development of military ballooning is the navigable balloon. If only a balloon could be sent up and driven in any required direction, and brought back to its starting-point, it is obvious that it would be of the very greatest use in war.
Dirigible balloons.
From the very first invention of balloons the problem has been how to navigate them by propulsion. General J. B. M. C. Meusnier (1754-1793) proposed an elongated balloon in 1784. It was experimented on by the brothers Robert, who made two ascensions and claimed to have obtained a deviation of 22 deg. from the direction of a light wind by means of aerial oars worked by hand. The relative speed was probably about 3 m. an hour, and it was so evident that a very much more energetic light motor than any then known was required to stem ordinary winds that nothing more was attempted till 1832, when Henri Giffard (1825-1882) as ascended with a steam-engine of then unprecedented lightness. The subjoined table exhibits some of the results subsequently obtained :—
Year. Inventor. Length. Dia- Con- Lifting Weight Weight H.P. Speed meter. tents. Capa- of of per city. Ballon. Motor. hour. Ft. Ft. Cub.ft. lb. lb. lb. Miles 1852 Giffard 144 39 88,300 3,978 2,794 462 3.0 6.71 1872 Dupuy de Lome 118 49 120,088 8,358 4,728 2000 0.8 6.26 1884 Tissandier 92 30 37,439 2,728 933 616 1.5 7.82 1885 Renard and Krebs 165 27 65,836 4,402 2,449 1174 9.0 14.00 1897 Schwarz 157 {46 39} 130.500 8,133 6,800 800? 16.0 17.00 1900 Zeppelin I 420 39 400,000 25,000 19,000 1500 32.0 18.00 1901 Santos Dumont VI. 108 20 22,200 .. .. .. 16.20 19.00 1908 “Repub- lique” 195 35 130,000 3,100 .. .. 80 30 1908 Zeppelin IV 446 42 1/2 450,000 .. .. .. 220 ..
Giffard, the future inventor of the injector, devised a steam-engine weighing, with fuel and water for one hour, 154 lb. per horse-power, and was bold enough to employ it in proximity to a balloon inflated with coal gas. He was not able to stem a medium wind, but attained some deviation. He repeated the experiment in 1855 with a more elongated spindle, which proved unstable and dangerous. During the siege of Paris the French Government decided to build a navigable balloon, and entrusted the work to the chief naval constructor, Dupuy de Lome. He went into the subject very carefully, made estimates of all the strains, resistances and speeds, and tested the balloon in 1872. Deviations of 12 deg. were obtained from the course of a wind blowing 27 to 37 m. per hour. The screw propeller was driven by eight labourers, a steam-engine being deemed too dangerous; but it was estimated that had one been used, weighing as much as the men, the speed would have been doubled. Tissandier and his brother applied an electric motor, lighter than any previously built, to a spindle-shaped balloon, and went up twice in 1883 and 1884. On the latter occasion he stemmed a wind of 7 m. per hour. The brothers abandoned these experiments, which had been carried on at their own expense, when the French War Department took up the problem. Renard and Krebs, the Officers in charge of the War Aeronautical Department at Heudon, built and experimented with in 1884 and 1885 the fusiform balloon “ La France,” in which the “ master” or maximum section was about one-quarter of the distance from the stem. The propelling screw was at the front of the car and driven by an electric motor of unprecedented lightness. Seven ascents were made on very calm days, a maximum speed of 14 m. an hour was obtained, and the balloon returned to its starting-point on five of the seven occasions. Subsequently another balloon was constructed, said to be capable of a speed of 22 to 28 m. per hour, with a different motor. After many years of experi- ment Dr Wolfert built and experimented with in Berlin, in 1897, a cigar-shaped balloon driven by a gasoline motor. An explosion took place in the air, the balloon fell and Dr Wolfert and his assistant were killed. It was also in 1897 that an aluminium balloon was built from the designs of D. Schwarz and tested in Bedin. It was driven by a Daimler benzine motor, and attained a greater speed than “La France”; but a driving belt slipped, and in coming down the balloon was injured beyond repair.
From 1897 onwards Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, of the German army, was engaged in constructing an immense balloon, truly an airship, of most careful and most intelligent design, to carry five men. It consisted of an aluminium framework containing sixteen gas bags with a total capacity of nearly 400,000 cub. ft., and it had two cars, each containing a 16 h.p. motor. It was first tested in June 1900, when it attained a speed of 18 m. an hour and travelled a distance of 3 1/2 m. before an accident to the steering gear necessitated the discontinuance of the experiment. In 1905 Zeppelin built a second airship which had a slightly smaller capacity but much greater power, its two motors each developing 85 h.p. This, after making some successful trips, was wrecked in a violent gale, and was succeeded by a third airship, which, at its trial in October 1906, travelled round Lake Constance and showed itself able to execute numerous curves and traverses. At a second series of trials in September 1907, after some alterations had been effected, it attained a speed of 36 m. an hour, remaining in the air for many hours and carrying nine or eleven passengers. A fourth vessel of similar design, but with more powerful motors, was tried in 1908, and succeeded in travelling 250 m. in 11 hours, but owing to a storm it was wrecked when on land and burnt at Echterdingen on the 5th of August. Subscriptions, headed by the emperor, were at once raised to enable Zeppelin to build another. Meanwhile in 1901 Alberto Santos Dumont had begun experiments with dirigible balloons in Paris, and on the 19th of October won the Deutsch prize by steering a balloon from St Cloud round the Eiffel tower and back in half an hour, encountering on his return journey a wind of nearly 5 metres a second. An airship constructed by Pierre and Paul Lebaudy in 1904 also made a number of successful trials in the vicinity of Paris; with a motor of 40 h.p., its speed was about 25 m. an hour, and it regularly carried three passengers. In October 1907 the “Nulli Secundus,” an airship constructed for the British War Office, sailed from Farnborough round St Paul’s Cathedral, London, to the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, a distance of about 50 m., in 3 hours 35 minutes. The weight carried, including two occupants, was 3400 lb., and the maximum speed was 24 m. an hour, with a following wind of 8 m. an hour.
Thus the principles which govern the design of the dirigible balloon may be said to have been evolved. As the lifting power crows as the cube of the dimensions, and the resistance approximately as the square, the advantage lies with the larger sizes of balloons, as of ocean steamers, up to the limits within which they may be found practicable. Count Zeppelin gained an advantage by attaching his propellers to the balloon, instead of to the car as heretofore; but this requires a rigid framework and a great increase of weight. Le Compagnon endeavoured, in 1892, to substitute flapping wings for rotary propellers, as the former can be suspended near the centre of resistance. C. Danilewsky followed him in 1898 and 1899, but without remarkable results. Dupuy de Lome was the first to estimate in detail the resistances to balloon propulsion, but experiment showed that in the aggregate they were greater than he calculated. Renard and Krebs also found that their computed resistances were largely exceeded, and after revising the results they gave the formula R=0.01685 D2V2, R being the resistance in kilograms, D the diameter in metres and V the velocity in metres per second. Reduced to British measures, in pounds, feet and miles per hour, R=0.0006876 D2V2, which is somewhat in excess of the formula computed by Dr William Pole from Dupuy de Lome’s experiments. The above coefficient applies only to the shape and rigging of the balloon “La France,” and combines all resistances into one equivalent, which is equal to that of a flat plane 18% of the “master section.” This coefficient may perhaps hereafter be reduced by one-half through a better form of hull and car, more like a fish than a spindle, by diminished sections of suspension lines and net, and by placing the propeller at the centre of resistance. To compute the results to be expected from new projects, it will be preferable to estimate the resistances in detail. The following table shows how this was done by Dupuy de Lome, and the probable corrections which should have been made by him:–
RESISTANCES–DUPUY DE LOME’S BALLOON
Computed by Dupuy de Lome. More Probable Values. V = 2.22 m. per sec. V = 2.82 m. per sec. Area Coeffici- Air Resist- Coeffici- Air Resist- Part. Sq. ent. Pres- ance, ent. Pres- ance, Metres sure. Kg. sure Kg. Hull, without net 172.96 1/30 0.665 3.830 1/15 0.875 10.091 Car 3.25 1/5 ,, 0.432 1/5 ,, 0.569 Men’s bodies 3.00 1/5 ,, 0.400 1/5 ,, 1.312 Gas tubes 6.40 1/5 ,, 0.850 1/2 ,, 2.750 Small cords 10.00 1/2 ,, 3.325 1/2 ,, 4.375 Large cords 9.90 1/3 ,, 2.194 1/3 ,, 2.887 11.031 21.984
When the resistances have been reduced to the lowest minimum by careful design, the attainable speed must depend upon the efficiency of the propeller and the relative lightness of the motor. The commercial uses of dirigible balloons, however, will be small, as they must remain housed when the wind aloft is brisk. The sizes will be great and costly, the loads small, and the craft frail and short-lived, yet dirigible balloons constitute the obvious type for governments to evolve, until they are superseded by efficient flying machines. (See further, as to the latter, the article FLIGHT AND FLYING.)
Practice of aerostation.
The chief danger attending ballooning lles in the descent; for if a strong wind be blowing, the grapnel will sometimes trail for miles over the ground at the rate of ten or twenty miles an hour, catching now and then in hedges, ditches, roots of trees, &c.; and, after giving the balloon a terrible jerk, breaking loose again, till at length some obstruction, such as the wooded bank of a stream, affords a firm hold. This danger, however, has been much reduced by the use of the “ripping-cord,” which enables a panel to be ripped open and the balloon to be completely deflated in a few seconds, just as it is reaching the earth. But even a very rough descent is usually not productive of any very serious consequences; as, although the occupants of the car generally receive many bruises and are perhaps cut by the ropes, it rarely happens that anything worse occurs. On a day when the wind is light (supposing that there is no want of ballast) nothing can be easier than the descent, and the aeronaut can decide several miles off on the field in which he will alight. It is very important to have a good supply of ballast, so as to be able to check the rapidity of the descent, as in passing downwards through a wet cloud the weight of the balloon is enormously increased by the water deposited on it; and if there is no ballast to throw out in compensation, the velocity is sometimes very great. It is also convenient, if the district upon which the balloon is descending appear unsuitable for landing, to be able to rise again. The ballast consists of fine baked sand, which becomes so scattered as to be inappreciable before it has fallen far below the balloon. It is taken up in bags containing about 1/2 cwt. each. The balloon at starting is liberated by a spring catch which the aeronaut releases, and the ballast should be so adjusted that there is nearly equilibrium before leaving, else the rapidity of ascent is too great, and has to be checked by parting with gas. It is almost impossible to liberate the balloon in such a way as to avoid giving it a rotary motion about a vertical axis, which continues during the whole time it is in the air. This rotation makes it difficult for those in the car to discover in what direction they are moving; and it is only by looking down along the rope to which the grapnel is suspended that the motion of the balloon over the country below can be traced. The upward and downward motion at any instant is at once known by merely dropping over the side of the car a small piece of paper: if the paper ascends or remains on the same level or stationary, the balloon is descending; while, if it descends, the balloon is ascending. This test is exceedingly delicate.
REPERENCES.–Tiberius Cavallo, Treatise on the Nature and Properties of Air and other permanently Elastic Fluids (London, 1781); Idem, History and Practice of Aerostation (London, 1785); Vincent Lunardi, Account of the First Aerial, Voyage in England, in a Series of letters to his Guardian (London, 1785); T. Forster, Annals of some Remarkable aerial and alpine Voyages (London, 1832); Monck Mason, Aeronautica (London, 1908; John Wise, A System of Aeronautics, comprehending its Earliest Investigations (Philadelphia, 1850); Hatton Tumor, Astra Castra, Experiments and Adventures in the Atmosphere (London, 1863); J. Glaisher, C. Flammarion, W. de Fonvielle and G. Tissandier, Voyages aeriens (Paris, 1870) (translated and edited by James Glaisher under the title Travels in the Air (London, 1871); O. Chanute, Progress in Flying Machines (New York, 1894); W. de Fonvielle, Les Ballons sondes (Paris, 1899); Idem, Histoire de la navigation aerienne (Paris, 1907); F. Walker, Aerial Navigation (London, 1902); J. Lecornu, La Navigation aerienne (Paris, 1903); M. L. Marchis, Lecons sur la navigation aerienne (Paris, 1904), containing many references to books and periodicals on pp. 701-704; Navigating the Air (papers collected by the Aero Club of America) (New York, 1907); A. Hildebrandt, Airships past and present (London, 1908).
1 Mr Tytler contributed largely to, and, indeed, appears to have been virtually editor of, the second edition (1778-1783) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
AEROTHERAPEUTICS, the treatment of disease by atmospheric air: a term which of late has come to be used somewhat more loosely to include also pneumotherapeutics, or the treatment of disease by artificially prepared atmospheres. The physical and chemical properties of atmospheric air, under ordinary pressure or under modified pressure, may be therapeutically utilized either on the external surface of the body, on the respiratory surface, or on both surfaces together. Also modifications may be induced in the ventilation of the lungs by general gymnastics or respiratory gymnastics. The beneficial effects of air under ordinary pressure are now utilized in line open-air treatment of phthisical patients, and the main indications of benefit resulting therefrom are reduction of the fever, improvement of appetite and the induction of sleep. The air, however, may be modified in composition or in temperature. Inhalation is the most common and successful method of applying it–when modified in composition–to the human body. The methods in use are as follows: (1) Inhalation of gases, as oxygen and nitrous oxide. The dyspnoea and cyanosis of pneumonia, capillary bronchitis, heart failure, &c., are much relieved by the inhalation of oxygen; and nitrous oxide is largely used as an anaesthetic in minor operations; (2) Certain liquids are used as anaesthetics, which volatilize at low temperatures, as chloroform and ether. (3) Mercury and sulphur, both of which require heat for volatilization, are very largely used. In a mercurial or sulphur bath, the patient, enveloped in a sheet, sits on a chair beneath which a spirit lamp is placed to vaporize the drug, the best resuits being obtained when the atmosphere is surcharged with steam at the same time. The vapour envelops the patient and is absorbed by the skin. This method is extensively used in the treatment of syphilis, and also for scabies and other parasitic affections of the skin. (4) Moist inhalations are rather losing repute in the light of modern investigations, which tend to show that nothing lower than the larger bronchial tubes is affected. Complicated apparatus has been devised for the application, although a wide-mouthed jug filled with boiling water, into which the drug is thrown, is almost equally efficacious.
Artificial atmospheres may be made for invalids by respirators which cover the mouth and nose, the air being drawn through tow or sponge, on which is sprinkled the disinfectant to be used. This is most valuable in the intensely offensive breath of some cases of bronchiectasis.
The air may be modified as to temperature. Cold air at 32–33 deg. F. has been used in chronic catarrhal conditions of the lungs, with the result that cough diminishes, the pulse becomes fuller and slower and the general condition improves. The more recent observations of Pasquale di Tullio go far to show that this may be immensely valuable in the treatment of haemoptysis. The inspiration of superheated dry air has been the subject of much investigation, but with very doubtful results.
Hot air applied to the skin is more noteworthy in its therapeutic effects. If a current of hot air is directed upon healthy skin, the latter becomes pale and contracts in consequence of vaso-constriction. But if it is directed on a patch of diseased skin, as in lupus, an inflammatory reaction is set up and the diseased part begins to undergo necrosis. This fact has been used with good results in lupus, otorrhoea, rhinitis and other nasal and laryngeal troubles.
Lastly the air may be either compressed or rarefied. The physiological effects of compressed air were first studied in diving-bells, and more recently in caissons. Caisson workers at first enjoy increased strength, vigour and appetite; later, however, the opposite effect is produced and intenbe debility supervenes. In addition, caisson workers suffer from a series of troubles which are known as accidents of decompression. (See CAISSON DISEASE.) But, therapeutically, compressed air has been utilized by means of pneumatic chambers large enough to hold one or more adults at the time, in which the pressure of the atmosphere can be exactly regulated. This form of treatment has been found of much value in the treatment of emphysema, early pulmonary tuberculosis (not in the presence of persistent high temperature, haemorrhage, softening or suppuration), delayed absorption of pleural effusions, heart disease, anaemia and chlorosis. But compressed air is contra-indicated in advanced tubercle, fever, and in diseases of kidneys, liver or intestines.
Rarefied air was used as long ago as 1835, by V. T. Junod, who utilized it for local application by inventing the Junod Boot. By means of this the blood could be drawn into any part to which it was applied, the vessels of which became gorged with blood at the expense of internal organs. More recently this method of treatment has undergone far-reaching developments and is known as the passive hyperaemic treatment.
There are also various forms of apparatus by means of which air at greater or lesser pressures may be drawn into the lungs, and for the performance of lung gymnastics of various kinds. Mr Ketchum of the United States has invented one which is much used. A committee of the Brompton Hospital, London, investigating its capabilities, decided that its use brought about (1) an increase of chest circumference, and (2) in cases of consolidation of the lung a diminution in the area of dulness.
AERTSZEN (or AARTSEN), PIETER (1507-1573), called “Long Peter” on account of his height, Dutch historical painter, was born and died at Amsterdam. When a youth he distinguished himself by painting homely scenes, in which he reproduced articles of furniture, cooking utensils, &c., with marvellous fidelity, but he afterwards cultivated historical painting. Several of his best works—altar-pieces in various churches—were destroyed in the religious wars of the Netherlands. An excellent specimen of his style on a small scale, a picture of the crucifixion, may be seen in the Antwerp Museum. Aertszen was a member of the Academy of St Luke, in whose books he is entered as Langhe Peter, schilder. Three of his sons attained to some note as painters.
AESCHINES (389-314 B.C.), Greek statesman and orator, was born at Athens. The statements as to his parentage and early life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. After assisting his father in his school, he tried his hand at acting with indifferent success, served with distinction in the army, and held several clerkships, amongst them the office of clerk to the Boule. The fall of Olynthus (348) brought Aeschines into the political arena, and he was sent on an embassy to rouse the Peloponnesus against Philip. In 347 he was a member of the peace embassy to Philip of Macedon, who seems to have won him over entirely to his side. His dilatoriness during the second embassy (346) sent to ratify the terms of peace led to his accusation by Demosthenes and Timarchus on a charge of high treason, but he was acquitted as the result of a powerful speech, in which he showed that his accuser Timarchus had, by his immoral conduct, forfeited the right to speak before the people. In 343 the attack was renewed by Demosthenes in his speech On the False Embassy; Aeschines replied in a speech with the same title and was again acquitted. In 339, as one of the Athenian deputies (pylagorae) in the Amphictyonic Council, he made a speech which brought about the Sacred War. By way of revenge, Aeschines endeavoured to fix the blame for these disasters upon Demosthenes. In 336, when Ctesiphon proposed that his friend Demosthenes should be rewarded with a golden crown for his distinguished services to the state, he was accused by Aeschines of having violated the law in bringing forward the motion. The matter remained in abeyance till 330, when the two rivals delivered their speeches Against Ctesiphon and on the crown. The result was a complete victory for Demosthenes. Aeschines went into voluntary exile at Rhodes, where he opened a school of rhetoric. He afterwards removed to Samos, where he died in the seventy-fifth year of his age. His three speeches, called by the ancients “the Three Graces,” rank next to those of Demosthenes. Photius knew of nine letters by him which he called the Nine Muses; the twelve published under his name (Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci) are not genuine.
ANCIENT AUTHORITIES.—Demosthenes, De Corona and De Falsa Legatione; Aeschines, De Falsa Legatione and In Ctesiphontem; Lives by Plutarch, Philostratus and Libanius; the Exegesis of Apollonius. EDITIONS.–Benseler (1855-1860) (trans. and notes), Weidner (1872), Blass (1896); Against Ctesiphon, Weidner (1872, 1878), G.A.and W.H. Simcox (1866), Drake (1872), Richardson(1889), Gwatkin and Shuckburgh (1890). ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS.–Leland (1771). Biddle (1881), and others. See also Stechow, Aeschinis Oratoris vita (1841); Marchand, Charakteristik des Redners Aschines (1876): Castets, Eschine, l’Orateur (1875); for the political problems see histories of Greece, esp. A. Holm, vol. iii. (Eng. trans., 1896); A. Schofer, Demosth. und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1856-1858); also DEMOSTHENES.
AESCHINES (5th century B.C.), an Athenian philosopher. According to some accounts he was the son of a sausage-maker, but others say that his father was Lysanias (Diog. Laert. ii. 60; Suidas, q.v..) He was an intimate friend of Socrates, who is reported to have said that the sausage-maker’s son alone knew how to honour him. Diogenes Laertius preserves a tradition that it was he, not Crito, who offered to help Socrates to escape from prison. He was always a poor man, and Socrates advised him “to borrow from himself, by diminishing his expenditure.” He started a perfumery shop in Athens on borrowed capital, became bankrupt and retired to the Syracusan court, where he was well received by Aristippus. According to Diog. Laert. (ii. 61), Plato, then at Syracuse, pointedly ignored Aeschines, but this does not agree with Plutarch, De adulatore et amico (c. 26). On the expulsion of the younger Dionysius, he returned to Athens, and, finding it impossible to profess philosophy publicly owing to the contempt of Plato and Aristoue, was Compelled to teach privately. He wrote also forensic speeches; Phrynichus, in Photius, ranks him amongst the best orators, and mentions his orations as the standard of the pure Attic style. Hermogenes also spoke highly of him (Peri ideon.) He wrote several philosophical dialogues: (1) Concerning virtue, whether it can be taught; (2) Eryxias, or Erasistratust concerning riches, whether they are good; (3) Axiochus: concerning death, whether it is to be feared,–but those extant on the several subjects are not genuine remains. J. le Clerc has given a Latin translation of them, with notes and several dissertations, entitled Silvae Philologicae, and they have been edited by S. N. Fischer (Leipzig, 1786), and K. F. Hermann, De Aeschin. Socrat. relig. (Gott. 1850). The genuine dialogues appear to have been marked by the Socratic irony; an amusing passage is quoted by Cicero in the De inventione (i. 31).
See Hirzel, Der Dialog. i. 129-140; T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. iii. p. 342 (Eng. trans. G. G. Berry, London, 1905).
AESCHYLUS (525-456 B.C.), Greek poet, the first of the only three Attic Tragedians of whose work entire plays survive, and in a very real sense (as we shall see) the founder of the Greek drama, was born at Eleusis in the year 525 B.C.
Life.
His father, Euphorion, belonged to the “Eupatridae” or old nobility of Athens, as we know on the authority of the short Life of the poet given in the Medicean Manuscript (see note on “authorities” at the end). According to the same tradition he took part as a soldier in the great struggle of Greece against Persia; and was present at the battles of Marathon, Artemisium, Salamis and Plataea, in the years 490-479. At least one of his brothers, Cynaegirus, fought with him at Marathon, and was killed in attempting a conspicuous act of bravery; and the brothers’ portraits found a place in the national picture of the battle which the Athenians set up as a memorial in the Stoa Poecile (or “Pictured Porch”) at Athens.
The vigour and loftiness of tone which mark Aeschylus’ poetic work was not only due, we may be sure, to his native genius and gifts, powerful as they were, but were partly inspired by the personal share he took in the great actions of a heroic national uprising. In the same way, the poet’s brooding thoughtfulness on deep questions—the power of the gods, their dealings with man, the dark mysteries of fate, the future life in Hades–though largely due to his turn of mind and temperament, was doubtless connected with the place where his childhood was passed. Eleusis was the centre of the most famous worship of Demeter, with its processions, its ceremonies, its mysteries, its impressive spectacles and nocturnal rites; and these were intimately connected with the Greek beliefs about the human soul, and the underworld.
His dramatic career began early, and was continued for more than forty years. In 499, his 26th year, he first exhibited at Athens; and his last work, acted during his lifetime at Athens, was the trilogy of the Oresteia, exhibited in 458. The total number of his plays is stated by Suidas to have been ninety; and the seven extant plays, with the dramas named or nameable which survive only in fragments, amount to over eighty, so that Suidas’ figure is probably based on reliable tradition. It is well known that in the 5th century each exhibitor at the tragic contests produced four plays; and Aeschylus must therefore have competed (between 499 and 458) more than twenty times, or once in two years. His first victory is recorded in 484, fifteen years after his earliest appearance on the stage; but in the remaining twenty-six years of his dramatic activity at Athens he was successful at least twelve times. This clearly shows that he was the most commanding figure among the tragedians of 500-458; and for more than half that time was usually the victor in the contests. Perhaps the most striking evidence of his exceptional position among his contemporaries is the well-known decree passed shortly after his death that whosoever desired to exhibit a play of Aeschylus should “receive a chorus,” i.e. be officially allowed to produce the drama at the Dionysia. The existence of this decree, mentioned in the Life, is strongly confirmed by two passages in Aristophanes: first in the prologue of the Acharnians (which was acted in 425, thirty-one years after the poet’s death), where the citizen, grumbling about his griefs and troubles, relates his great disappointment, when he took his seat in the theatre “expecting Aeschylus,” to find that when the play came on it was Theognis; and secondly in a scene of the Frogs (acted 405 B.C.), where the throne of poetry is contested in Hades between Aeschylus and Euripides, the former complains (Fr. 860) that “the battle is not fair, because my own poetry has not died with me, while Euripides’ has died, and therefore he will have it with him to recite”-a clear reference, as the scholiast points out, to the continued production at Athens of Aeschylus’ plays after his death.
Apart from fables, guesses and blunders, of which a word is said below, the only other incidents recorded of the poet’s life that deserve mention are connected with his Sicilian visits, and the charge preferred against him of revealing the “secrets of Demeter.” This tale is briefly mentioned by Aristotle (Eth. iii. 2), and a late commentator (Eustratius, 12th century) quotes from one Heraclides Pontius the version which may be briefly given as follows:–
The poet was acting a part in one of his own plays, where there was a reference to Demeter. The audience suspected him of revealing the inviolable secrets, and rose in fury; the poet fled to the altar of Dionysus in the orchestra and so saved his life for the moment; for even an angry Athenian crowd respected the inviolable sanctuary. He was afterwards charged with the crime before the Areopagus; and his plea “that he did not know that what he said was secret” was accepted by the court and secured his acquittal. The commentator adds that the prowess of the poet (and his brother) at Marathon was the real cause of the leniency of his judges. The story was afterwards developed, and embellished by additions; but in the above shape it dates back to the 4th century; and as the main fact seems accepted by Aristotle, it is probably authentic.
As to his foreign travel, the suggestion has been made that certain descriptions in the Persae, and the known facts that he wrote a trilogy on the story of the Thracian king Lycurgus, persecutor of Dionysus, seem to point to his having a special knowledge of Thrace, which makes it likely that he had visited it. This, however, remains at best a conjecture. For his repeated visits to Sicily, on the other hand, there is conclusive ancient evidence. Hiero the First, tyrant of Syracuse, who reigned about twelve years (478-467), and amongst other efforts after magnificence invited to his court famous poets and men of letters, had founded a new town, Aetna, on the site of Catana which he captured, expelling the inhabitants. Among his guests were Aeschylus, Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides. About 476 Aeschylus was entertained by him, and at his request wrote and exhibited a play called The Women of Aetna in honour of the new town. He paid a second visit about 472, the year in which he had produced the Persae at Athens; and the play is said to have been repeated at Syracuse at his patron’s request. Hiero died in 467, the year of the Seven against Thebes; but after 458, when the Oresteia was exhibited at Athens, we find the poet again in Sicily for the last time. In 456 he died, and was buried at Gela; and on his tomb was placed an epitaph in two elegiac couplets saying: “Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian, who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela; of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, or the long-haired Persian who knows it well.” The authorship of this epitaph is uncertain, as the Life says it was inscribed on his grave by the people of Gela, while Athenaeus and Pausanias attribute it to Aeschylus. Probably most people would agree that only the poet himself could have praised the soldier and kept silence about the poetry.
Of the marvellous traditions which gathered round his name little need be said. Pausanias’ tale, how Dionysus appeared to the poet when a boy, asleep in his father’s vineyard, and bade him write a tragedy—or the account in the Life, how he was killed by an eagle letting fall on his head a tortoise whose shell the bird was unable to crack—clearly belong to the same class of legends as the story that Plato was son of Apollo, and that a swarm of bees settled upon his infant lips as he lay in his mother’s arms. Less supernatural, but hardly more historical, is the statement in the Life that the poet left Athens for Sicily in consequence of his defeat in the dramatic contest of 468 by Sophocles; or the alternative story of the same authority that the cause of his chagrin was that Simonides’ elegy on the heroes slain at Marathon was preferred to his own. Apart from the inherent improbability of such pettiness in such a man, neither story fits the facts; for in 467, the next year after Sophocles’ success, we know that Aeschylus won the prize of tragedy with the Septem; and the Marathon elegy must have been written in 490, fourteen years before his first visit to Sicily.
Work.
In passing from Aeschylus’ life to his work, we have obviously far more trustworthy data, in the seven extant plays (with the fragments of more than seventy others), and particularly in the invaluable help of Aristotle’s Poetics. The real importance of our poet in the development of the drama (see DRAMA: Greek) as compared with any of his three or four known predecessors–who are at best hardly more than names to us–is shown by the fact that Aristotle, in his brief review of the rise of tragedy (Poet. iv. 13), names no one before Aeschylus. He recognizes, it is true, a long process of growth, with several stages, from the dithyramb to the drama; and it is not difficult to see what these stages were. The first step was the addition to the old choric song of an interlude spoken, and in early days improvised, by the leader of the chorus (Poet. iv. 12). The next was the introduction of an actor (upokrites or “answerer”), to reply to the leader; and thus we get dialogue added to recitation. The “answerer” was at first the poet himself (Ar. Rhet. iii. 1). This change is traditionally attributed to Thespis (536 B.C.), who is, however, not mentioned by Aristotle. The mask, to enable the actor to assume different parts, by whomsoever invented, was in regular use before Aeschylus’ day. The third change was the enlarged range of subjects. The lyric dithyramb-tales were necessarily about Dionysus, and the interludes had, of course, to follow suit. Nothing in the world so tenaciously resists innovation as religious ceremony; and it is interesting to learn that the Athenian populace (then, as ever, eager for “some new thing”) nevertheless opposed at first the introduction of other tales. But the innovators won; or other-wise there would have been no Attic drama.
In this way, then, to the original lyric song and dances in honour of Dionysus was added a spoken (but still metrical) interlude by the chorus-leader, and later a dialogue with one actor (at first the poet), whom the mask enabled to appear in more than one part.
But everything points to the fact that in the development of the drama Aeschylus was the decisive innovator. The two things that were important, when the 5th century began, if tragedy was to realize its possibilities, were (1) the disentanglement of the dialogue from its position as an interlude in an artistic and religious pageant that was primarily lyric; and (2) its general elevation of tone. Aeschylus, as we know on the express authority of Aristotle (Poet. iv. 13), achieved the first by the introduction of the second actor; and though he did not begin the second, he gave it the decisive impulse and consummation by the overwhelming effect of his serious thought, the stately splendour of his style, his high dramatic purpose, and the artistic grandeur and impressiveness of the construction and presentment of his tragedies.
As to the importance of the second actor no argument is needed. The essence of a play is dialogue; and a colloquy between the coryphaeus and a messenger (or, by aid of the mask, a series of messengers), as must have been the case when Aeschylus began, is in reality not dialogue in the dramatic sense at all, but rather narrative. The discussion, the persuasion, the instruction, the pleading, the contention—in short, the interacting personal influences of different characters on each other–are indispensable to anything that can be called a play, as we understand the word; and, without two “personae dramatis” at the least, the drama in the strict sense is clearly impossible. The number of actors was afterwards increased; but to Aeschylus are due the perception and the adoption of the essential step; and therefore, as was said above, he deserves in a very real sense to be called the founder of Athenian tragedy.
Of the seven extant plays, Supplices, Persae, Septem contra Thebas, Prometheus, Agamemnon, Choephoroe and Eumenides, five can fortunately be dated with certainty, as the archon’s name is preserved in the Arguments; and the other two approximately. The dates rest, in the last resort, on the didaskaliai, or the official records of the contests, of which we know that Aristotle (and others) compiled catalogues; and some actual fragments have been recovered. The order of the plays is probably that given above; and certainly the Persae was acted in 472, Septem in 467, and the last three, the trilogy, in 458. The Supplices is generally, though not unanimously, regarded as the oldest; and the best authorities tend to place it not far from 490. The early date is strongly confirmed by three things: the extreme simplicity of the plot, the choric (instead of dramatic) opening, and the fact that the percentage of lyric passages is 54, or the highest of all the seven plays. The chief doubt is in regard to Prometheus, which is variously placed by good authorities; but the very low percentage of lyrics (only 27, or roughly a quarter of the whole), and still more the strong characterization, a marked advance on anything in the first three plays, point to its being later than any except the trilogy, and suggest a date somewhere about 460, or perhaps a little earlier. A few comments on the extant plays will help to indicate the main points of Aeschylus’ work.
Supplices.—The exceptional interest of the Supplices is due to its date. Being nearly twenty years earlier than any other extant play, it furnishes evidence of a stage in the evolution of Attic drama which would otherwise have been unrepresented. Genius, as Patin says, is a “puissance libre,” and none more so than that of Aeschylus; but with all allowance for the “uncontrolled power” of this poet, we may feel confident that we have in the Supplices something resembling in general structure the lost works of Choerilus, Phrynichus, Pratinas and the 6th century pioneers of drama.
The plot is briefly as follows: the fifty daughters of Danaus (who are the chorus), betrothed by the fiat of Aegyptus (their father’s brother) to his fifty sons, flee with Danaus to Argos, to escape the marriage which they abhor. They claim the protection of the Argive king, Pelasgus, who is kind but timid; and he (by a pleasing anachronism) refers the matter to the people, who agree to protect the fugitives. The pursuing fleet of suitors is seen approaching; the herald arrives (with a company of followers), blusters, threatens, orders off the cowering Danaids to the ships and finally attempts to drag them away. Pelasgus interposes with a force, drives off the Egyptians and saves the suppliants. Danaus urges them to prayer, thanksgiving and maidenly modesty, and the grateful chorus pass away to the shelter offered by their protectors.
It is clear that we have here the drama in its nascent stage, just developing out of the lyric pageant from which it sprang. The interest still centres round the chorus, who are in fact the “protagonists” of the play. Character and plot—the two essentials of drama, in the view of all critics from Aristotle downwards–are both here rudimentary. There are some fluctuations of hope and fear; but the play is a single situation, The stages are: the appeal; the hesitation of the king, the resolve of the people; the defeat of insolent violence; and the rescue. It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the play is one of a trilogy—an act, therefore, rather than a complete drama. But we have only to compare it with those later plays of which the same is true, to see the difference. Even in a trilogy, each play is a complete whole in itself, though also a portion of a larger whole.
Persae.—The next play that has survived is the Persae, which has again a special interest, viz. that it is the only extant Greek historical drama. We know that Aeschylus’ predecessor, Phrynichus, had already twice tried this experiment, with the Capture of Miletus and the Phoenician Women; that the latter play dealt with the same subject as the Persae, and the handling of its opening scene was imitated by the younger poet. The plot of the Persae is still severely simple, though more developed than that of the Suppliants. The opening is still lyric, and the first quarter of the play brings out, by song and speech, the anxiety of the people and queen as to the fate of Xerxes’ huge army. Then comes the messenger with the news of Salamis, including a description of the sea-fight itself which can only be called magnificent. We realize what it must have been for the vast audience—30,000, according to Plato (Symp. 175 E)– to hear, eight years only after the event, from the supreme poet of Athens, who was himself a distinguished actor in the war, this thrilling narrative of the great battle. But this reflexion at once suggests another; it is not a tragedy in the true Greek sense, according to the practice of the 5th-century poets. It may be called in one point of view a tragedy, since the scene is laid in Persia, and the drama forcibly depicts the downfall of the Persian pride. But its real aim is not the “pity and terror” of the developed drama; it is the triumphant glorification of Athens, the exultation of the whole nation gathered in one place, over the ruin of their foe. This is best shown by the praise of Aeschylus’ great admirer and defender Aristophanes, who (Frogs, 1026-1027) puts into the poet’s mouth the boast that in the Persae he had “glorified a noble exploit, and taught men to be eager to conquer their foe.”
Thus, both as an historic drama and in its real effect, the Persae was an experiment; and, as far as we know, the experiment was not repeated either by the author or his successors. One further point may be noted. Aeschylus always has a taste for the unseen and the supernatural; and one effective incident here is the raising of Darius’s ghost, and his prophecy of the disastrous battle of Plataea. But in the ghost’s revelations there is a mixture of audacity and naivete, characteristic at once of the poet and the early youth of the drama. The dead Darius prophesies Plataea, but has not heard of Salamis; he gives a brief (and inaccurate) list of the Persian kings, which the queen and chorus, whom he addresses, presumably know; and his only practical suggestion, that the Persians should not again invade Greece, seems attainable without the aid of superhuman foresight.
Septem contra Thebas.—Five years later came the Theban Tragedy. It is not only, as Aristophanes says (Frogs, 1024), “a play full of the martial spirit,” but is (like the Supplices) one of a connected series, dealing with the evil fate of the Theban House. But instead of being three acts of a single story like the Supplices, these three plays trace the fate through three generations, Laius, Oedipus and the two sons who die by each other’s hands in the fight for the Theban sovereignty. This family fate, where one evil deed leads to another after many years, is a larger conception, strikingly suited to Aeschylus’ genius, and constitutes a notable stage in the development of the Aeschylean drama. And just as here we have the tragedy of the Theban house, so in the last extant work, the Oresteia, the poet traces the tragedy of the Pelopid family, from Agamemnon’s first sin to Orestes’ vengeance and purification. And the names of several lost plays point to similar handling of the tragic trilogy.
The Seven against Thebes is the last play of its series; and again the plot is severely simple, not only in outline, but in detail. Father and grandfather have both perished miserably; and the two princes have quarrelled, both claiming the kingdom. Eteocles has driven out Polynices, who fled to Argos, gathered a host under seven leaders (himself being one), and when the play opens has begun the siege of his own city. The king appears, warns the people, chides the clamour of women, appoints seven Thebans, including himself, to defend the seven gates, departs to his post, meets his brother in battle and both are killed. The other six chieftains are all slain, and the enemy beaten off. The two dead princes are buried by their two sisters, who alone are left of the royal house.
Various signs of the early drama are here manifest. Half the play is lyric; there is no complication of plot; the whole action is recited by messengers; and the fatality whereby the predicted mutual slaughter of the princes is brought about is no accidental stroke of destiny, but the choice of the king Eteocles himself. On the other hand, the opening is no longer lyric (like the two earlier plays) but dramatic; the main scene, where the messenger reports at length the names of the seven assailants, and the king appoints the seven defenders, each man going off in silence to his post, must have been an impressive spectacle. One novelty should not be overlooked. There is here the first passage of dianoia or general reflexion of life, which later became a regular feature of tragedy. Eteocles muses on the fate which involves an innocent man in the company of the wicked so that he shares unjustly their deserved fate. The passage (Theb. 597-608) is interesting; and the whole part of Eteocles shows a new effort of the poet to draw character, which may have something to do with the rise of Sophocles, who in the year before (468) won with his first play, now lost, the prize of tragedy.
There remain only the Prometheus and the Oresteia, which show such marked advance that (it may almost be said) when we think of Aeschylus it is these four plays we have in mind.
Prometheus.—The Prometheus-trilogy consisted of three plays: Prometheus the Fire-bringer, Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound. The two last necessarily came in that order; the Fire-bringer is probably the first, though recently it has been held by some scholars to be the last, of the trilogy. That Prometheus sinned against Zeus, by stealing fire from heaven; that he was punished by fearful tortures for ages; that he finally was reconciled to Zeus and set free,–all this was the ancient tale indisoutably. Those who hold the Fire-bringer (Purforos) to be the final play, conjecture that it dealt with the establishment of the worship of Prometheus under that title, which is known to have. existed at Athens. But the other order is on all grounds more probable; it keeps the natural sequence—crime, punishment, reconciliation, which is also the sequence in the Oresteia. And if the reconciliation was achieved in the second play, no scheme of action sufficing for the third drama seems even plausible.1
However that may be, the play that survives is a poem of unsurpassed force and impressiveness. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the development of drama, there seems at first sight little scope in the story for the normal human interest of a tragedy, since the actors are all divine, except Io, who is a distracted wanderer, victim of Zeus’ cruelty; and between the opening where Prometheus is nailed to the Scythian rock, and the close where the earthquake engulfs the rock, the hero and the chorus, action in the ordinary sense is ipso facto impossible. This is just the opportunity for the poet’s bold inventiveness and fine imagination. The tortured sufferer is visited by the Oceanic Nymphs, who float in, borne by an (imaginary) winged car, to console; Oceanus (riding a griffin, doubtless also imaginary) follows, kind but timid, to advise submission; then appears Io, victim of Zeus’ love and Hera’s jealousy, to whom Prometheus prophesies her future wanderings and his own fate; lastly Hermes, insolent messenger of the gods, who tries in vain to extort Prometheus’ secret knowledge of the future. Oceanus, the well-meaning palavering old mentor, and Hermes, the blustering and futile jack-in-office, gods though they be, are vigorous, audacious and very human character-sketches; the soft entrance of the consoling nymphs is unspeakably beautiful; and the prophecy of Io’s wanderings is a striking example of that new keen interest in the world outside which was felt by the Greeks of the 5th century, as it was felt by the Elizabethan English in a very similar epoch of national spirit and enterprise two thousand years later. Thus, though dramatic action is by the nature of the case impossible for the hero, the visitors provide real drama.
Another important point in the development of tragedy is what we may call the “balanced issue.” The question in Suppliants is the protection of the threatened fugitives; in Persae the humiliation of overweening pride. So far the sympathy of the audience is not doubtful or divided. In the Septein there is an approach to conflict of feeling; the banished brother has a personal grievance, though guilty of the impious crime of attacking his own country. The sympathy must be for the defender Eteocles; but it is at least somewhat qualified by his injustice to his brother. In Prometheus the issue is more nearly balanced. The hero is both a victim and a rebel. He is punished for his benefits to man; but though Zeus is tyrannous and ungrateful, the hero’s reckless defiance is shocking to Greek feeling. As the play goes on, this is subtly and delicately indicated by the attitude of the chorus. They enter overflowing with pity. They are slowly chilled and alienated by the hero’s violence and impiety; but they nobly decline, at the last crisis, the mean advice of Hermes to desert Prometheus and save themselves; and in the final crash they share his fate.
Oresteia.—The last and greatest work of Aeschylus is the Oresteia, which also has the interest of being the only complete trilogy preserved to us. It is a three-act drama of family fate, like the Oedipus-trilogy; and the acts are the sin, the revenge, the reconciliation, as in the Prometheus-trilogy. Again, as in Prometheus, the plot, at first sight, is such that the conditions of drama seem to exclude much development in character-drawing. The gods are everywhere at the root of the action. The inspired prophet, Calchas, has demanded the sacrifice of the king’s daughter Iphigenia, to appease the offended Artemis. The inspired Cassandra, brought in as a spear-won slave from conquered Troy, reveals the murderous past of the Pelopid house, and the imminent slaughter of the king by his wife. Apollo orders the son, Orestes, to avenge his father by killing the murderess, and protects him when after the deed he takes sanctuary at Delphi. The Erinnyes (“Furies”) pursue him over land and sea; and at last Athena gives him shelter at Athens, summons an Athenian council to judge his guilt, and when the court is equally divided gives her casting vote for mercy. The last act ends with the reconciliation of Athena and the Furies; and the latter receive a shrine and worship at Athens, and promise favour and prosperity to the great city. The scope for human drama seems deliberately restricted, if not closed, by such a story so handled. Nevertheless, as a fact, the growth of characterization is, in spite of all, not only visible but remarkable. Clytemnestra is one of the most powerfully presented characters of the Greek drama. Her manly courage, her vindictive and unshaken purpose, her hardly hidden contempt for her tool and accomplice, Aegisthus, her cold scorn for the feebly vacillating elders, and her unflinching acceptance (in the second play) of inevitable fate, when she faces at last the avowed avenger, are all portrayed with matchless force–her very craft being scornfully assumed, as needful to her purpose, and contemptuously dropped when the purpose is served. And there is one other noticeable point. In this trilogy Aeschylus, for the first time, has attempted some touches of character in two of the humbler parts, the Watchman in Agameninoni, and the Nurse in the Choephoroe. The Watchman opens the play, and the vivid and almost humorous sententiousness of his language, his dark hints, his pregnant metaphors drawn from common speech, at once give a striking touch of realism, and form a pointed contrast to the terrible drama that impends. A very similar effect is produced at the crisis of the Choephoroe by the speech of the Nurse, who coming on a message to Aegisthus pours out to the chorus her sorrow at the reported death of Orestes and her fond memories of his babyhood—with the most homely details; and the most striking realistic touch is perhaps the broken structure and almost inconsequent utterance of the old faithful slave’s speech. These two are veritable figures drawn from contemporary life; and though both appear only once, and are quite unimportant in the drama, the innovation is most significant, and especially as adopted by Aeschylus.
It remains to say a word on two more points, the religious ideas of Aeschylus and some of the main characteristics of his poetry.
The religious aspect of the drama in one sense was prominent from the first, owing to its evolution from the choral celebration of the god Dionysus. But the new spirit imported by the genius of Aeschylus into the early drama was religious in a profounder meaning of the term. The sadness of human lot, the power and mysterious dealings of the gods, their terrible and inscrutable wrath and jealousy (aga and pthonos), their certain vengeance upon sinners, all the more fearful it delayed.—Such are the poet’s constant themes, delivered with strange solemnity and impressiveness in the the songs, especially in the Oresteia. And at times, particularly in the Trilogy, in his reference to the divine power of Zeus, he almost approaches a stern and sombre monotheism. “One God above all, who directs all, who is the cause of all” (Ag. 163, 1485); the watchfulness of this Power over human action (363-367), especially over the punishment of their sins; and the mysterious law whereby sin always begets new sin (Ag. 758-760):—these are ideas on which Aeschylus dwells in the Agamemnon with peculiar force, in a strain at once lofty and sombre. One specially noteworthy point in that play is his explicit repudiation of the common Hellenic view that prosperity brings ruin. In other places he seems to share the feeling; but here (Ag. 730) he goes deeper, and declares that it is not olbos but always wickedness that brings about men’s fall. All through there is a recurring note of fear in his view of man’s destiny, expressed in vivid images—the “death that lurks behind the wall” (Ag. 1004), the “hidden reef which wrecks the bark, unable to weather the headland” (Eum. 561-565). In one remarkable passage of the Eumenides (517-525) this fear is extolled as a moral power which ought to be enthroned in men’s hearts, to deter them from impious or violent acts, or from the pride that impels them, to such sins.
Of the poetic qualities of Aeschylus’ drama and diction, both in the lyrics and the dialogue, no adequate account can be attempted; the briefest word must here suffice. He is everywhere distinguished by grandeur and power of conception, presentation and expression, and most of all in the latest works, the Prometheus and the Trilogy. He is pre-eminent in depicting the slow approach of fear, as in the Persae; the imminent horror of impending fate, as in the broken cries and visions of Cassandra in the Agamemnon (1072-1177), the long lament and prayers to the nether powers in the Choephoroe (313-478), and the gradual rousing of the slumbering Furies in the Eumenides (117-139). The fatal end in these tragedies is foreseen; but the effect is due to its measured advance, to the slowly darkening suspense which no poet has more powerfully rendered. Again, he is a master of contrasts, especially of the Beautiful with the Tragic: as when the floating vision of consoling nymphs appears to the tortured Prometheus (115-135); or the unmatched lyrics which tell (in the Agamemnon, 228-247) of the death of Iphigenia; or the vision of his lost love that the night brings to Menelaus (410-426). And not least noticeable is the extraordinary range, force and imaginativeness of his diction. One example of his lyrics may be given which will illustrate more than one of these points. It is taken from the long lament in the Septem, sung by the chorus and the two sisters, while following the funeral procession of the two princes. These laments may at times be wearisome to the modern reader, who does not see, and imperfectly imagines, the stately and pathetic spectacle; but to the ancient feeling they were as solemn and impressive as they were ceremonially indispensable. The solemnity is here heightened by the following lines sung by one of the chorus of Theban women (Sept. 854-860):–
Nay, with the wafting gale of your sighs, my sisters, Beat on your heads with your hands the stroke as of oars, The stroke that passes ever across Acheron, Speeding on its way the black-robed sacred bark,– The bark Apollo comes not near, The bark that is hidden from the sunlight– To the shore of darkness that welcomes all! AUTHORITIES.—The chief authority for the text is a single MS. at Florence, of the early 11th century, known as the Medicean or M., written by a professional scribe and revised by a contemporary scholar, who corrected the copyist’s mistakes, added the scholia, the arguments and the dramatis personae of three plays (Theb., Agam, Eum.), and at the end the Life of Aeschylus and the Catalogue of his dramas. The MS. has also been further corrected by later hands. In 1896 the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction published the MS. in photographic facsimile, with an instructive preface by Signor Rostagno. Besides M. there are some eight later MSS. (13th to 15th century), and numerous copies of the three select plays (Sept., Pers., Prom.) which were most read in the later Byzantine period, when Greek literature was reduced to gradually diminishing excerpts. These later MSS. are of little value or authority. The editions, from the beginning of the 15th century to the present are very numerous, and the text has been further continuously improved by isolated suggestions from a host of scholars. The three first printed copies (Aldine, 1518; Turnebus and Robortello, 1552) give only those parts of Agamemnon found in M., from which MS. some leaves were lost; in 1557 the full text was restored by Vettori (Victorius) from later MSS. After these four, the chief editions of He seven plays were those of Schutz, Porson, Burler, Wellauer, Dindorf, Bothe, Ahrens, Paley, Hermann, Hartung, Weil, Merkel, Kirchhoff and Wecklein. Besides these, over a hundred scholars have thrown light on the corruptions or obscurities of the text, by editions of separate plays, by emendations, by special studies of the poet’s work, or in other ways. Among recent writers who have made such contributions may be mentioned Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Enger, Conington, Blaydes, Cobet, Meineke, Madvig, Ellis, W. Headlam, Davies, Tucker, Verrall and Haigh. The Fragments have been edited by Nauck and also by Wecklein. The Aeschylean staging is discussed in Albert Muller’s Lehrbuch der griechischen Buhnenalterhumer; in “Die Buhne des Aeschylos,” by Wilamowitz (Hermes, xxi.); in Smith’s Dict. of Antiquities, art. “Theatrum” (R. C. Jebb); in Dorpfeld and Reisch (Das griechische Theater), Haigh’s Attic Theatre, and Gardner and Jevons’ Manual of Greek Antiquities. English Verse Translations: Agamemnon, Milman and R. Browning; Oresteia, Suppliants, Persae, Seven against Thebes, Prometheus Vinctus, by E. D. A. Morshead; Prometheus, E. B. Browning; the whole seven plays, Lewis Campbell. (A. SI.)
1 The Eumenides is quoted as a parallel, because there the establishment of this worship at Athens concludes the whole trilogy; but it is forgotten that in Eumenides there is much besides–the pursuit of Orestes, the refuge at Athens, the trial, the acquittal, the conciliation by Athena of the Furies; while here the story would be finished before the last play began.
AESCULAPIUS (Gr. `Asklepios), the legendary Greek god of medicine, the son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis. Tricca in Thessaly and Epidaurus in Argolis disputed the honour of his birthplace, but an oracle declared in favour of Epidaurus. He was educated by the centaur Cheiron, who taught him the art of healing and hunting. His skill in curing disease and restoring the dead to life aroused the anger of Zeus, who, being afraid that he might render all men immortal, slew him with a thunderbolt (Apollodorus iii. 10; Pindar, Phthia, 3; Diod. Sic. iv. 71). Homer mentions him as a skilful physician, whose sons, Machaon and Podalirius, are the physicians in the Greek camp before Troy (Iliad, ii. 731). Temples were erected to Aesculapius in many parts of Greece, near healing springs or on high mountains. The practice of sleeping (incubatio) in these sanctuaries was very common, it being supposed that the god effected cures or prescribed remedies to the sick in dreams. All who were healed offered sacrifice—especially a cock—and hung up votive tablets, on which were recorded their names, their diseases and the manner in which they had been cured. Many of these votive tablets have been discovered in the course of excavations at Epidaurus. Here was the god’s most famous shrine, and games were celebrated in his honour every five years, accompanied by solemn processions. Herodas (Mimes, 4) gives a description of one of his temples, and of the offerings made to him. His worship was introduced into Rome by order of the Sibylline books (293 B.C.), to avert a pestilence. The god was fetched from Epidaurus in the form of a snake and a temple assigned him on the island in the Tiber (Livy x. 47; Ovid, Metam. xv. 622). Aesculapius was a favourite subject of ancient artists. He is commonly represented standing, dressed in a long cloak, with bare breast; his usual attribute is a club-like staff with a serpent (the symbol of renovation) coiled round it. He is often accompanied by Telesphorus, the boy genius of healing, and his daughter Hygieia, the goddess of health. Votive reliefs representing such groups have been found near the temple of Aesculapius at Athens. The British Museum possesses a beautiful head of Aesculapius (or possibly Zeus) from Melos, and the Louvre a magnificent statue.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.–L. Dyer, The Gods in Greece (1891); Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); R. Caton, Examples and Ritual of A. at Epidaurus and Athens (1900); articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Encyclopadie, Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie; T. Panofka, Asklepios und die Asklepiaden (1846); Alice Welton, “The Cult of Asklepios,” in Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, iii. (New York, 1894); W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings (1902).
AESERNIA (mod. Isernia), a Samnite town on the road from Beneventum to Corfinium, 58 m. to the north-east of the former, at the junction of a road going past Venafrum to the Via Latina. These routes are all followed by modern railways—the lines to Campobasso, Sulmona and Caianello. A Roman colony was established there in 263 B.C. It became the headquarters of the Italian revolt after the loss of Corfinium, and was only recovered by Sulla at the end of the war, in 80 B.C. Remains of its fortifications are still preserved—massive cyclopean walls, which serve as foundation to the walls of the modern town and of a Roman bridge, and the subterranean channel of an aqueduct, cut in the rock, and dating from Roman times.
AESOP (Gr. Aisopos), famous for his Fables, is supposed to have lived from about 620 to 560 B.C. The place of his birth is uncertain—Thrace, Phrygia, Aethiopia, Samos, Athens and Sardis all claiming the honour. We possess little trustworthy information concerning his life, except that he was the slave of Iadmon of Samos and met with a violent death at the hands of the inhabitants of Delphi. A pestilence that ensued being attributed to this crime, the Delphians declared their willingness to make compensation, which, in default of a nearer connexion, was claimed and received by Iadmon, the grandson of his old master. Herodotus, who is our authority for this (ii. 134), does not state the cause of his death; various reasons are assigned by later writers–his insulting sarcasms, the embezzlement of money entrusted to him by Croesus for distribution at Delphi, the theft of a silver cup.
Aesop must have received his freedom from Iadmon, or he could not have conducted the public defence of a certain Samian demagogue (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). According to the story, he subsequently lived at the court of Croesus, where he met Solon, and dined in the company of the Seven Sages of Greece with Periander at Corinth. During the reign of Peisistratus he is said to have visited Athens, on which occasion he related the fable of The Frogs asking for a King, to dissuade the citizens from attempting to exchange Peisistratus for another ruler. The popular stories current regarding him are derived from a life, or rather romance, prefixed to a book of fables, purporting to be his, collected by Maximus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century. In this he is described as a monster of ugliness and deformity, as he is also represented in a well-known marble figure in the Villa Albani at Rome. That this life, however, was in existence a century before Planudes, appears from a 13th-century MS. of it found at Florence. In Plutarch’s Symposium of the Seven Sages, at which Aesop is a guest, there are many jests on his original servile condition, but nothing derogatory is said about his personal appearance. We are further told that the Athenians erected in his honour a noble statue by the famous sculptor Lysippus, which furnishes a strong argument against the fiction of his deformity. Lastly, the obscurity in which the history of Aesop is involved has induced some scholars to deny his existence altogether.
It is probable that Aesop did not commit his fables to writing; Aristophanes (Wasps, 1259) represents Philocleon as having learnt the “absurdities” of Aesop from conversation at banquets) and Socrates whiles away his time in prison by turning some of Aesop’s fables “which he knew” into verse (Plato, Phaedo, 61 b). Demetrius of Phalerum (345-283 B.C.) made a collection in ten books, probably in prose (Lopson Aisopeion sunagogai) for the use of orators, which has been lost. Next appeared an edition in elegiac verse, often cited by Suidas, but the author’s name is unknown. Babrius, according to Crusius, a Roman and tutor to the son of Alexander Severus, turned the fables into choliambics in the earlier part of the 3rd century A.D. The most celebrated of the Latin adapters is Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus. Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The collections which we possess under the name of Aesop’s Fables are late renderings of Babrius’s Version or Progumnasmata, rhetorical exercises of varying age and merit. Syntipas translated Babrius into Syriac, and Andreopulos put the Syriac back again into Greek. Ignatius Diaconus, in the 9th century, made a version of 55 fables in choliambic tetrameters. Stories from Oriental sources were added, and from these collections Maximus Planudes made and edited the collection which has come down to us under the name of Aesop, and from which the popular fables of modern Europe have been derived.
For further information see the article FABLE; Bentley, Dissertation on the Fables of Aesop; Du Meril, Poesies inedites du moyen age (1854); J. Jacobs, The Fables of Aesop (1889): i. The history of the Aesopic fable; ii. The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by William Caxton, 1484, from his French translation; Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins (1893-1899). Before any Greek text appeared, a Latin translation of 100 Fabulae Aesopicae by an Italian scholar named Ranuzio (Renutius) was published at Rome, 1476. About 1480 the collection of Planudes was brought out at Milan by Buono Accorso (Accursius), together with Ranuzio’s translation. This edition, which contained 144 fables, was frequently reprinted and additions made from time to time from various MSS.–the Heidelberg (Palatine), Florentine, Vatican and Augsburg—by Stephanus (1547), Nevelet (1610), Hudson (1718), Hauptmann (1741), Furia (1810), Coray (1810), Schneider (1812) and others. A critical edition of all the previously known fables, prepared by Carl von Halm from the collections of Furia, Coray and Schneider, was published in the Teubner series of Greek and Latin texts. A Fabularum Aesopicarum sylloge (233 in number) from a Paris MS., with critical notes by Sternbach, appeared in a Cracow University publication, Rozprawy akademii umiejetinosci (1894).
AESOPUS, a Greek historian who wrote a history of Alexander the Great, a Latin translation of which, by Julius Valerius, was discovered by Mai in 1816.
AESOPUS, CLODIUS, the most eminent Roman tragedian, flourished during the time of Cicero, but the dates of his birth and death are not known. The name seems to show that he was a freedman of some member of the Clodian gens. Cicero was on friendly terms with both him and Roscius, the equally distinguished comedian, and did not disdain to profit by their instruction. Plutarch (Cicero, 5) mentions it as reported of Aesopus, that, while representing Atreus deliberating how he should revenge himself on Thyestes, the actor forgot himself so far in the heat of action that with his truncheon he struck and killed one of the servants crossing the stage. Aesopus made a last appearance in 55 B.C.—when Cicero tells us that he was advanced in years–on the occasion of the splendid games given by Pompey at the dedication of his theatre. In spite of his somewhat extravagant living, he left an ample fortune to his spendthrift son, who did his best to squander it as soon as possible. Horace (Sat. iii. 3. 239) mentions his taking a pearl from the ear-drop of Caecilia Metella and dissolving it in vinegar, that he might have the satisfaction of swallowing eight thousand pounds’ worth at a draught.
Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 37; pro Sestio, 56, 58; Quint., Instit. xi. 3, iii; Macrobius, Sat. iii. 14.
AESTHETICS, a branch of study variously defined as the philosophy or science of the beautiful, of taste or of the fine arts.
Preliminary definition.
The name is something of an accident. In its original Greek form (aisthetikos) it means what has to do with sense-perception as a source of knowledge; and this is still its meaning in Kant’s philosophy (“Transcendental Aesthetic”). Its limitation to that function of sensuous perception which we know as the contemplative enjoyment of beauty is due to A. G. Baumgarten. Although the subject does not readily lend itself to precise definition at the outset, we may indicate itsscope and aim, as undeibtood by recent writers, by saying that it deals successively with one great department of human experience, viz. the pleasurable activities of pure contemplation. By pure contemplation is here understood that manner of regarding objects of sense-perception, and more particularly sights and sounds, which is entirely motived by the pleasure of the act itself. The term “object” means whatever can be perceived through one of the senses, e.g. a flower, a landscape, the flight of a bird, a sequence of tones. The contemplation may be immediate when (as mostly happens) the object is present to sense; or it may be mediate, when as in reading poetry we dwell on images of objects of sense. Whenever we become interested in an object merely as presented for our contemplation our whole state of mind may be described as an aesthetic attitude, and our experience as an aesthetic experience. Other expressions such as the pleasure of taste, the enjoyment and appreciation of beauty (in the larger sense of this term), will serve less precisely to mark off this department of experience.
Differentiation of aesthetic experience. Its characteristics as feeling.
Aesthetic experience is differentiated from other kinds of experience by a number of characteristics. We commonly speak of it as enjoyment, as an exercise and cultivation of feeling. The appreciation of beauty is pervaded and sustained by pleasurable feeling. In aesthetic enjoyment our capacities of feeling attain their fullest and most perfect development. Yet, as its dependence on a quiet attitude of contemplation might tell us, aesthetic experience is characterized by a certain degree of calmness and moderation of feeling. Even when we are moved by a tragedy our feeling is comparatively restrained. A rare exhibition of beauty may thrill the soul for a moment, yet in general the enjoyment of it is far removed from the excitement of passion. On the other hand, aesthetic pleasure is pure enjoyment. Even when a disagreeable element is present, as in a musical dissonance or in the suffering of a tragic hero, it contributes to a higher measure of enjoyment. It is, moreover, free from the painful elements of craving, fatigue, conflict, anxiety and disappointment, which are apt to accompany other kinds of enjoyment; such as the satisfaction of the appetites and other needs. To this purity of aesthetic pleasure must be added its refinement, which implies not merely a certain remoteness from the bodily needs, but the effect of a union of sense and mind in giving amplitude as well as delicacy to our enjoyment of beauty.
Marked off from practical activity,
As the region of most pure and refined feeling, aesthetic experience is clearly marked off from practical life, with its urgent desires and the rest. In aesthetic contemplation desire and will as a whole are almost dormant.
also from intellectual activity.
This detachment from the daily life of practical needs and aims is brought out in Kant’s postulate that aesthetic enjoyment must be disinterested (“ohne Interesse”), that when we regard an object aesthetically we are not in the least concerned with its practical significance and value: one cannot, for example, at the same moment aesthetically enjoy looking at a painting and desire to be its possessor. In like manner, even if less aoparently, aesthetic contemplation is marked off from the arduous mental work which enters into the pursuit of knowledge. In contemplating an aesthetic object we are mentally occupied with the concrete, whereas all the more serious intellectual work of science involves the difficulties of the abstract. The contemplation is, moreover, free from those restraints which are imposed on our mental activity by the desire to obtain knowledge.
Uniformity of aestetic experience.
While as the highest phase of feeling aesthetic experience appears to belong to our subjective life, the hidden region of the soul, it is connected just as clearly, through the act of sense-perception, with the world of objects which is our common possession. Being thus dependent on a contemplation of things in this common world it raises the question whether, like the perception of these objects, it is a uniform experience, the same for others as for myself. We touch here on the last characteristic of aesthetic experience which needs to he noted at this stage, its uniformity or subjection to law. It is a common idea that men’s judgments about matters of taste disagree to so large an extent that each individual is left very much to his subjective impressions. With regard to many of the subtler matters of aesthetic appreciation, at any rate, there is undoubtedly on a first view the appearance of a want of agreement.
The aesthetic judgment.
Contrasted with logical judgments or even with ethical ones, aesthetic judgments may no doubt look uncertain and “subjective.” The proposition “this tree is a birch” seems to lend itself much better to critical discussion and to general acceptance or rejection than the proposition “this tree is beautiful.” This circumstance, as Kant shrewdly suggests, helps to explain why we have come to employ the word “taste” in dealing with aesthetic matters; for the pronouncements of the sense of taste are recognized as among the most uncertain and “subjective” of our senseimpressions. Yet viewed as a species of pleasurable feelings, aesthetic experiences will be found to exhibit a large amount of uniformity, of objective agreement as between different experiences of the same person and experiences of different persons. This general agreement appears to be clearly implied in the ordinary form of our aesthetic judgments. To say “this rose is beautiful” means more than to say “the sight of this rose affects me agreeably.” It means that the rose has a general power of so affecting me (at different times) and others as well.
Logical judgment and judgment of value.
The judgment is not the same as a logical one. It does not say simply that as a matter of fact it always does please—even if we add the limitation those who for, as we know, our varying mood and state of receptivity make a profound difference in the fulness of the aesthetic enjoyment. It is a “judgment of value” which claims for the rose aesthetic rank as an object properly qualified to please contemplative subjects. This value, it is plain, is relative to conscious subjects; yet since it is relative to all competent ones, it may be regarded as “objective”—that is to say, as belonging to the object.1
Late development of the science.
This slight preliminary inspection of the subject will prepare one for the circumstance that the scientific treatment of it has begun late, and is even now far from being complete. This slowness of development is in part explained by the detachment of aesthetic experience from the urgent needs of life. In a comparatively early stage of human progress some thought had to be bestowed on such pressing problems as to how to cope with the forces of nature and to turn them to useful account; how to secure in human communities obedience to custom and law. But the problem of throwing light on our aesthetic pleasures had no such urgency.2 To this it must be added that aesthetic experience (in all but its simpler and cruder forms) has been, and still is confined to a small number of persons; so that the subject does not appeal to a wide popular interest; while, on the other hand, the subjects of this experience not infrequently have a strong sentimental dislike to the idea of introducing into the region of refined feeling the cold light of scientific investigation. Lastly, there are special difficulties inherent in the subject. One serious obstacle to a scientific theory of aesthetic experience is the illusive character of many of its finer elements—for example, the subtle differences of feeling-tone produced by the several colours as well as by their several tones and shades, by the several musical intervals, and so forth. Finally, there is the circumstance just touched on that much of this region of experience, instead of at once disclosing uniformity, seems to be rather the abode of caprice and uncertainty. The variations in taste at different levels of culture, among different races and nations and among the individual members of the same community are numerous and striking, and might at first seem to bar the way to a scientific treatment of the subject. These considerations suggest that an adequate theory of aesthetic experience could only be attempted after the requisite scientific skill had been developed in other and more pressing departments of inquiry.
Inadequate theories of subject.
If we glance at the modes of treating the subject up to a quite recent date we find that little of serious effort to apply to it a strictly scientific method of investigation. The whole extent of concrete experience has not been adequately recognized, still less adequately examined. For the greater part thinkers have been in haste to reach some simple formula of beauty which might seem to cover the more obvious facts. This has commonly been derived deductively from some more comprehensive idea of experience or human life as a whole. Thus in German treatises on aesthetics which have been largely thought out under the influence of philosophic idealism the beautiful is subsumed under the idea, of which it is regarded as one special manifestation, and its place in human experience has been determined by defining its logical relations to the other great co-ordinate concepts, the good and the true. These attempts to reach a general conception of beauty have often led to one-sidedness of view. And this one-sidedness has sometimes characterized the theories of those who, like Alison, have made a wider survey of aesthetic facts.
Aesthetics as a normative science.
Aesthetics, like Ethics, is a Normative Science, that is to say, concerned with determining the nature of a species of the desirable or the good (in the large sense). It seeks one or more regulative principles which may help us to distinguish a real from an apparent aesthetic value, and to set the higher and more perfect illustrations of beauty above the lower and less perfect. As a science it will seek to realize its normative function by the aid of a patient, methodical investigation of facts, and by processes of observation, analysis and induction similar to those carried out in the natural sciences.
Aestetics not a practical science.
In speaking of aesthetics as a normative science we do not mean that it is a practical one in the sense that it supplies practical rules which may serve as definite guidance for the artist and the lover of beauty, in their particular problems of selecting and arranging elements of aesthetic value. It is no more a practical science than logic. The supposition that it is so is probably favoured by the idea that aesthetic theory has art for its special subject. But this is to confuse a general aesthetic theory–what the Germans call “General Aesthetics”—with a theory of art (Kunstwissenschaft). The former, with which we are here concerned, has to examine aesthetic experience as a whole; which, as we shall presently see, includes more than the enjoyment and appreciation of art.
Problems of the science.
We may now indicate with more fulness the main problems of our science, seeking to give them as precise a form as possible.
Is beauty a single quality in objects?
At the outset we are confronted with an old and almost baffling question: “Is beauty a single quality inherent in objects of perception like form or colour?” Common language certainly suggests that it is. Aesthetics, too, began its inquiry at the same point of view, and its history shows how much pains men have taken in trying to determine the nature of this attribute, as well as that of the faculty of the soul by which it is perceived. Yet a little examination of the facts suffices to show that the theory is beset with serious difficulties. Whatever beauty may be it is certainly not a quality of an object in the same way in which the colour or the form of it is a quality. These are physical qualities, known to us by soecific modifications of our sensations.
Beauty not a physical quality.
The beauty of a rose or of a peach is clearly not a physical quality. Nor do we in attributing beauty to some particular quality in an object, say colour, conceive of it as a phase of this quality, like depth or brilliance of colour, which, again, is known by a special modification of the sensations of colour. Hence we must say that beauty, though undoubtedly referred to a physical object, is extraneous to the group of qualities which makes it a physical object.
Beauty attributed to different qualities in objects.
Beauty is frequently attributed to a concrete object as a whole—to a flower or shell, for example, as a visible whole. Our everydav aesthetic judgments are wont to leave the attributes thus vaguely referred to the concrete object. Yet it is equally certain that we not infrequently speak of the beauty of some definable aspect to, or quality of an object, as when we pronounce the contour of a mountain or of a vase to be beautiful. And it may be asked whether, in thus localizing beauty, so to speak, in one of the constituent qualities of an object, we always place it in the same quality. A mere glance at the facts will suffice to convince us that we do not. We call the facade of a Greek temple beautiful with special reference to its admirable form; whereas in predicating beauty of the ruin of a Norman castle we refer rather to what the ruin means—to the effect of an imagination of its past proud strength and slow vanquishment by the unrelenting strokes of time.
Formalists and expressionalists.
This fact that beauty appertains now more to one quality, now more to another, helps us to understand why certain theorists, known as formalists, regarded beauty as formal or residing in form, whereas others, the idealists or expressionalists, view it as residing in ideal content or expression. These theories. however, like other attempts to find an adequate single principle of beauty, are unsatisfactory. Form and ideal content are each a great source of aesthetic enjoyment, and either can be found in a degree of supremacy which practically renders the co-operation of the other unimportant. The two buildings cited above, two human faces, two musical compositions, may exhibit in an impressive and engrossing way the beauty of form and of expression respectively.
Three ultimate modes of beauty.
Nor is this all. Beauty refuses to be confined even to these two. There are the various beauties of colour, for example, as exhibited in such familiar phenomena of nature as sea and sky, autumn moors and woods. A slight analysis of the constituents of objects to which we attribute beauty shows that there are at least three distinct modes of this attribute, namely (1) sensuous beauty, (2) beauty of form and (3) beauty of meaning or expression, nor do these appear to be reducible to any higher or more comprehensive principle. It requires a certain boldness to attempt to effect a rapprochement between the formal and the expressional factor.3 An apparent unification of the three seems at present only possible by substituting for beauty another concept at least equally vague, such as perfection,4 which seems to imply the idea of purposiveness, and to apply clearly only to certain domains of beauty, e.g. organic form.
Beauty and allied conceptions.
We may now take another step and say that beauty appears to be a quality in objects which is not sharply differentiated from other and allied qualities. If we look at the usages of speech we shall find that beauty has its kindred conceptions, such as gracefulness, prettiness and others. Writers on aesthetics have spent much time on these “Modifications of the Beautiful.” The point emphasized here is the difficulty of drawing the line between them. Even an expert may hesitate long before saying whether a human face, a flower or a cameo should be called beautiful or pretty. Must we postulate as many allied qualities as there are names for these pleasing aspects of objects? Or must we do violence to usage and so stretch the word “Beauty” as to make it cover all qualities or aspects of objects which have aesthetic value, including those “modifications of the beautiful” which we know as the sublime, the comic and the rest? But the wider we try in this way to make the denotation of the term the vaguer grows the connotation. We are thus left equally incapable of saying what the quality is, and in which aspect or attribute of the object it inheres.5
Assumption of objective qualityt of beauty dispensed with.
It seems to follow that in constructing a scientific theory we do well to dispense with the assumption of an objective quality of beauty. Aesthetics will return to Kant and confine itself to the examination of objects called beautiful in their relation to, and in their manner of affecting our minds.6 The aesthetic value of such an object will be viewed as consisting in the possession of certain assignable characteristics by means of which it is fitted to affect us in a certain desirable way, to draw us into the enjoyable mood of aesthetic contemplation.
Aesthetic qualities.
These characteristics may conveniently be called aesthetic qualities.7 Objects which are found to possess one or more of these qualities in the required degree of fulness claim a certain aesthetic value, even though they fall short of being “beautiful,” in the more exacting use of this word. They are in the direction—“im Sinne,” as Fechner says—-of beauty, conceived as something fuller and richer, answering to a higher standard of aesthetic enjoyment and a severer demand on our part. The word “beauty” may still be used occasionally, where no ambiguity arises, as a convenient expression for aesthetic value in all its degrees. Yet it is better to keep the term applicable to the objects commonly denoted by it by making it represent the fuller aesthetic satisfactions which flow from a rare and commanding exhibition of one or more of these qualities, from what may be described as an appreciable excellence of aesthetic quality.
By thus dispensing with the concept of beauty as some occult undefinable quality, we get rid of much of the contradiction which appears to inhere in our aesthetic experience. For example, a bit of brilliant colour in a bonnet which pleases the wearer but offends her superior in aesthetic matters takes its place as something which per se has a certain degree of aesthetic value even though the particular relations into which it has now thrust itself, palpable to the trained eye, may practically rob it of its value. In thus substituting the relative idea of aesthetic value for the absolute idea of beauty we may no doubt seem to be destroying the reality of the object of aesthetic perception. This point may more conveniently be taken up later when we consider the whole question of aesthetic illusion.
Problem of aesthetic effect.
This new way of envisaging aesthetic objects requires us to make the study of their effect a prominent part of our investigation. In all the valuable recent work on the subject, attention has been largely concentrated on this effect. More particularly we have to investigate and illumine scientifically the pleasurable side of the experience.
Aesthetics and laws of pleasure.
In doing this we shall make use of all the light we can obtain from a study of known laws of Pleasure. Thus we shall avail ourselves not only of the theory of the pleasure-tones of sensation but of that of the conditions of an agreeable exercise of the attention upon objects more particularly of the characteristics of objects which adequately stimulate the attention without confusing or burdening it.
Problem of aesthetic enjoyment a special one.
Yet this does not require that we should treat the aesthetic problem as a part of the more general science of pleasure, as has been attempted by some, e.g. Grant Allen (Physiological Aesthetics) and Rutgers Marshall (Pain, Pleasure and Aesthetics, and Aesthetic Principles.) To do so would be to run the risk of considering only the more general aspects and conditions of aesthetic enjoyment, whereas what we need is a theory of it as a specific kind of pleasurable experience.
The attitude of aesthetic contemplation.
What is required at the present stage of development of the science is a deeper investigation of the aesthetic attitude of mind as a whole, of what we may call the aesthetic psychosis. We need to probe the act of contemplation itself, the mode of activity of attention involved in this calm, half-dreamlike gazing on the mere look of things unconcerned with their ordinary and weightier imports. We need further to determine the effect of this contemplative attitude upon the several mental processes involved, the act of perception itself, with its grasp of manifold relations, the flow of ideas, the partial resurgence and transformation of emotion. In examining these effects we must keep in view the double side of the contemplative attitude, the wide range of free movement which perception and imagination claim and enjoy, and the willing subjection of the contemplative mind to the spell of the object.
Intellectual and aesthetic activity further differentiated.
A deeper inspection of the contemplative mood may be expected to render clearer the difference between the mental activity employed in aesthetic perception and imagination and intellectual activity proper; between. say, the differencing of allied tints involved in the finer aesthetic enjoyment of colour and the sharper, clearer discrimination of tints required in scientific observation, and between such a grasp of relations as is required for a just appreciation of beautiful form and that severe analysis and measurement of formal elements and their relations which is insisted upon by science. As a result of a finer distinction here we may probably be in a better position to determine the point—touched on more than once in recent works on aesthetics—how far intellectual pleasure proper, e.g. that of recognizing and classifying objects, enters as a subordinate element into aesthetic enjoyment. Is aesthetic enjoyment essentially social?
One point in the characterization of aesthetic experience has been reserved, namely, the question whether it is essentially a form of social enjoyment. No one doubts that a man often enjoys beauty, e.g. that of a landscape, when alone; yet at such a moment he not only recognizes that his pleasure is a possible one for others, but is probably aware of a sub-conscious wish that others were present to share his enjoyment. Kant went so far as to say that on a desert island a man would adorn neither his hut nor his person. However this be, it seems certain that as a rule we tend to indulge our aesthetic tastes in company with others. This habit of making aesthetic enjoyment a social experience would in itself tend to develop the sympathies and the sympathetic intelligence and thus to promote exchanges of aesthetic experience. The content, too, of our aesthetic experiences would be favourable to such conjoint acts of aesthetic contemplation, and to the mutual sharing of aesthetic experiences; for, as disinterested and universal modes of enjoyment detached from personal interests, they are clearly free from the egoistic exclusiveness which characterizes our private enjoyments which at best can only be participated in by one or two closely attached friends. Our aesthetic enjoyments are thus eminently fitted to be social ones; and as such they become greatly amplified by sympathetic resonance.
The aesthetic senses.
We are now in a position to consider a point much discussed of late, namely, the special connexion of aesthetic enjoyment with the two senses, sight and hearing. Two questions arise here: (1) Do the other and “lower” senses take any part in aesthetic experience? (2) What are the “higher” ones? With regard to the first it is coming to be recognized that aesthetic pleasure is not strictly confined to the two senses in question. Common language suggests that we find in certain odours and even in certain flavours a value analogous to that implied in calling an object beautiful.
Aesthetic claims of touch.
Hegel excluded the other senses–even touch—-on the ground that aesthetics had to do only with art, in which there was no place for perceptions of touch. A closer examination has shown that this important sense plays a considerable part in art-effects. And even if this were not so, Hegel’s exclusion of touch from the rank of aesthetic senses would be a striking illustration of the narrowing effect on scientific theory of the identification of aesthetic objects with productions of art. To say that the experience of exploring with the fingers a velvety petal or the smooth surface of a sea-rounded pebble has no aesthetic element savours of a perverse arbitrariness. Touch is no doubt wanting in a prerogative of hearing and sight which we shall presently see to be important, namely, that being acted on by objects at a distance they admit of a simultaneous perception by a number of persons–as indeed even the sense of smell does in a measure. This is probably the chief reason why, according to certain testimony, the blind receive but little aesthetic enjoyment from tactual experience.8 Yet this drawback is compensated to some extent by the fact that agreeable tactual experience may be taken up as suggested meaning into our visual perceptions.
Prerogatives of sight and hearing.
The two privileged senses, sight and hearing, owe their superiority to a number of considerations. They are the farthest removed from the necessary life functions, with the pressing needs and disturbing cravings which belong to these. Even touch, though imoortant as a source of knowledge, has for its primary function to examine the things which approach our organisms in their relation to this as injurious or harmless. The two higher senses present to us material objects in their least aggressive and menacing manner: visible forms and colours, tones and their combinations, appear when compared with objects felt to be in contact with our body, to be rather semblances or distant signs of material realities than these realities themselves; and this circumstance fits these senses to be in a special way the organs of aesthetic perception with its calm, dreamlike detachment and its enjoyable freedom of movement. They are, moreover, the two senses by the use of which a number of persons may join most perfectly in a common act of aesthetic contemplation. This distinction strengthens their claims to be in a special manner the aesthetic senses, and this for a double reason. (1) It makes them sense-avenues by which each of us obtains the most immediate and most impressive conviction that aesthetic experience is a common possession of the many, and is largely similar in the case of different individuals. (2) It marks them off as the senses by the exercise of which perceptual enjoyment may most readily and certainly be increased through the resonant effects of sympathy. The experiences of the theatre and of the concert-hall sufficiently illustrate these distinguishing functions of the two senses. Other distinguishing prerogatives of sight and hearing flow from the characteristics of their sensations and perceptions, a point to be touched on later.9
Aesthetic activity and play. (a) Points of affinity between them.
Our determination of the characteristics of the aesthetic attitude has now been carried far enough to enable us to consider another point much discussed in recent aesthetic literature, viz. the relation of this attitude to that of play. The affinities of the two are striking and are disclosed in everyday language, as when we speak of the “play” of imagination or of “playing” on a musical instrument. Both play and aesthetic contemplation are activities which are controlled by no extraneous end, which run on freely directed only by the intrinsic delight of the activity. Hence they both contrast with the serious work imposed on us and controlled by what we mark off as the necessities of life, such as providing for bodily wants, or rearing a family. They each add a sort of luxurious fringe to life. In aesthetic enjoyment our senses, our intelligence and our emotions are alike released from the constraint of these necessary ends, and may be said to refresh themselves in a kind of play. Finally, they are both characterized by a strong infusion of make-believe, a disposition to substitute productions of the imagination for everyday realities. In this respect, again, they form a contrast to that serious concern with fact and practical truth which the necessary aims of life impose on us. Little wonder, then, that Plato recognized in the contrast between the representative and the useful arts an analogy between play and earnest,10 and that since the time of Schiller so much use has been made of the analogy in aesthetic works.
(b) Points of difference.
Yet though similar. the two kinds of activity are distinguishable in important respects. For one thing, aesthetic contemplation pure and simple is a comparatively tranquil and passive attitude, whereas play means doing something and commonly involves some amount of strenuous exertion, either of body or of mind. A closer analogy might be drawn between play and artistic production. Yet even when the parallel is thus narrowed, pretty obvious differences disclose themselves. It is only in their more primitive phases that the two attitudes exhibit a close similarity. As they develop, striking divergences begin to appear. The play mood, instead of approaching the calm contemplative mood of the lover of beauty, involves feelings and impulses which lie at the roots of our practical interests, viz. ambition, rivalry and struggle. It has, moreover, in all its stages a palpable utility—even though this is not realized by the player—serving for the exercise and development of body, intelligence and character. Beauty and art rise high above play in purity of the disinterested attitude, in placid detachment from the serviceable and the necessary, and, still more, in range and variety of refined interest, comprehended in “the love of beauty.” Finally, aesthetic activities are directed by ideal conceptions and standards to which hardly anything corresponds in play save where games of skill take on something of the dignity of a fine art.11
Methods of research in aesthetics.
So far as to the preliminary delimiting work in aesthetic science. Only a bare indication can be made as to the methods of research by which its advance can be furthered, and as to the several directions of inquiry which it will have to follow. With regard to the former the method of investigation will consist in a careful inquiry into two orders of fact: (1) Objects which common testimony or the history of art show to be widely recognized objects of aesthetic value; (2) records of the aesthetic experience of individuals, whether artists or amateurs.
Examination of aesthetic objects.
Since aesthetic experience is brought about and its modes determined by objects possessing certain qualities, it seems evident that scientific aesthetics must make an examination and comparison of these a fundamental part of its problem. These objects will, as already hinted, include both natural ones in the inorganic and organic worlds, and works of art which can be shown to be objects of general or widely recognized aesthetic value.
Nature as supplying aesthetic objects.
Without attempting here to discuss adequately the relation of natural beauty to that of art we may note one or two points. Some contemplation and appreciation of the beautiful aspects of nature is not only prior in time to art, but is a condition of its genesis. The enjoyment of the pleasing aspects of land and sea, of mountain and dale, of the innumerable organic forms, has steadily grown with the development of culture; and this growth, though undoubtedly aided by that of the feeling for art—especially painting and poetry—is to a large extent independent of it.12 Some of the finest insight into the secrets of beauty has been gained by those who had only a limited acquaintance with art. What is still more important in the present connexion is that the aesthetic experience gained by the direct contemplation of nature includes varieties which art cannot reproduce. It is enough to recall what Helmholtz and others have told us about the limitations of the powers of pictorial art to represent the more brilliant degrees of light; the admissions of painters themselves as to the limits of their art when it seeks to render the finer gradations of light and colour in such common objects as a tree-trunk or a bit of old wall. Nature, moreover, in spreading out her spaces of earth, sea and sky, and in exhibiting the action of her forces, does so on a scale which seems to make sublimity her prerogative in which art vainly endeavours to participate.
Use of works of art by the theorist.
On the other hand, it is coming to be seen that the construction of a theory of aesthetic values must be assisted by a much more precise examination than aestheticists are commonly content to make, of works of art. The importance of including these is that they are well-defined objective expressions of what the aesthetic consciousness approves and prefers. In inquiring, for example, into the pleasing relations of colour we might have to wait long for a theory if we were dependent on what even so gifted a writer as Ruskin can tell us about nature’s juxtapositions: whereas if it can be shown that throughout the history of chromatic art or during its better period there has been a tendency to prefer certain combinations, this fact becomes a piece of convincing evidence as to their aesthetic value.
Difficulties in using works of art as material.
Even here, however, there are sources of uncertainty. It is not true to say that a work of art is a pure outcome of the aesthetic feeling of the artist. even if we take this in a comprehensive sense. It is subject to the influence of all the temporary feelings and tendencies of the time which produced it. The aesthetic motive which is supposed to originate it is apt to be complicated and disguised by other motives, e.g. utility in architecture,13 an impulse to instruct if not to reform in modern fiction.
Effects of custom on artistic preference.
Again, if it is said that a certain degree of permanence assures us of the aesthetic value of a feature of art, we are met by the difficulty that custom plays an important part in art, the result of convention fixed by tradition often simulating the aspect of a deep-seated aesthetic preference. In this connexion it is to be remarked that even so permanent an element as symmetry may owe its quasiaesthetic value to custom, by which is understood its wide and impressive display in the organic and even the inorganic world.14 Yet the influence of custom taken in this larger sense need not greatly disturb us. In aesthetics, as in ethics, the question of validity has to be kept distinct from that of origin. If symmetry (in general) is appreciated as aesthetically pleasing, the question of its genesis becomes immaterial. Another difficulty, not peculiar to aesthetic investigation, is that of reconstructing the modes of aesthetic consciousness represented by forms of art which differ widely from those of our own age and type of culture.
Value of primitive art for aesthetics.
In utilizing art material for aesthetic theory the theorist will need to note the work recently done by English and German writers on primitive art. And this not merely because of the value of the early forms of art for a theory of the evolution of the aesthetic consciousness; but because the embryonic stages of art are likely to have a peculiar interest as illustrating in a comparatively isolated form some of the simpler modes of aesthetic appreciation, e.g. in the grouping of colours, in the mode of covering a surface with linear ornament. Yet it is not necessary to give primitive art a considerable place in a general aesthetics. As a normative science, it is to be remembered, this is much more immediately concerned with the higher stages of aesthetic culture. In seeking to establish norms or regulative principles, we must, it is evident, make a special study of objects of art which belong to our own level of culture. For these reasons it would appear necessary to include in a general aesthetic theory some reference to the evolution of art and of the aesthetic consciousness.
Evolution as criterion of aesthetic height.
A further reason for including it is that the evolution of art supplies a most valuable auxiliary criterion of degree or height of aesthetic value. Provided that we distinguish what is a real process of evolution from one of mere change of fashion in taste, and that we confine ourselves to the larger features of the process, we may make the principle of evolution a serviceable one by regarding those forms and features of art as higher in respect of aesthetic value which grow distinct and relatively fixed in the later and better stages of the evolution of art.15
Exact measurement of characteristics of art-work.
This part of aesthetic investigation should be made as exact as possible.Thus in dealing with the triads of colour said to be most frequently employed in the best period of Italian painting the observer should note and record as far as this is possible not only the precise tints, but also the precise degrees of their several luminosities. With regard to elements of form in art, the judicious use of photography and careful measurement would probably help us to understand the practices of art in its better periods. This examination of art material by the aesthetic theorist should be supplemented by a study of what artists have written about their methods, of the rules laid down for students of art, and lastly of the generalizations reached by the more scientific kind of writer upon art.16
Aesthetic inductions.
A proper methodical inquiry into aesthetic objects aided by a knowledge of the practices of art would lead to inductions of such characteristics are aesthetically valuable.”17
Germs of aesthetic preference in children, etc.
This preliminary work of aesthetic science in collecting and analysing facts may be extended in two directions: by an examination (a) of the earlier and simpler forms of aesthetic experience, and (b) of the fuller and more complex experiences of those specially trained in the perception and enjoyment of beauty. (a) The former would be illustrated by a more methodical investigation into the rudimentary aesthetic likings of children and of the lower races. Such inquiries may be expected to add to our knowledge of the simpler and more universal forms of aesthetic enjoyment. Some attention has been paid by Darwin and others to germs of taste in birds and other animals. Yet this line of inquiry, though of some value for a theory of the evolution of taste, seems to throw but little light on aesthetic preferences as found in man.18
Aesthetic experiment.
An important feature in this new investigation into simpler modes of aesthetic preference is that it proceeds by way of experiment, that is to say, a methodical testing of the aesthetic preferences of a number of individuals. Fechner introduced the method of experiment into aesthetics in his researches on the preferability (according to Zeising) of the proportion known as the “golden section.”19 Since his time other experimental inquiries have been made, both as to what forms (e.g. what variety of rectangle) and what combinations of colours are most pleasing. The results of these experiments are distinctly promising, though they have not yet been carried far enough to be made the basis of perfectly trustworthy generalizations.20
Experience and judgments of experts.
A valuable portion of the data for a science of aesthetics lies in the recorded experiences of artists, art critics, and others who have specially developed their tastes; This source of information has certainly never been made use of in a complete and methodical manner by theorists, a quotation now and again from writers like Goethe and Ruskin having been deemed sufficient. Yet it is safe to say that an adequate understanding of the finer effects of beauty, both in nature and in art, presupposes the assimilation of what is best in these records. And this not only because they commonly supply us with new and valuable varieties of experience of the more refined kind, but because the aesthetic judgments on nature and art of men in whom the feeling of beauty has been specially cultivated have a greater value than those of others.21 It may be added that these records are wont to contain reflexions which, though wanting in scientific precision, can be utilized by science.
Psychological analysis of material.
We now come to the work of scientific construction proper. The finer analysis of the objects which please aesthetically as well as of the agreeable type of consciousness to which they minister belongs to the psychologist, and it is noteworthy that the best recent contributions to the science have been made by men who were either known as psychologists or at least had trained themselves in psychological analysis. A word or two must suffice to indicate the more important directions of the theoretic interpretation. We may in illustrating this set out from the convenient triple division of the factors in aesthetic experience: (A) the sensuous, (B) the perceptual or formal, (C) the imaginative, including all that is suggested by the aesthetic presentation, its meaning and expressiveness.
The sensuous factor. Physiological aesthetics.
(A) In dealing with the sensuous factor the psychologist is materially aided by the physiologist. It is sufficient to point to the contribution made to the analysis of musical sensations by the classical researches of Helmholtz (see below). Yet the application of a knowledge of physiological conditions seems as yet to be of little service when we come to the finer aspects of this sensuous experience, to the subtle effects of colour combination, for example, and to the nuances of feeling-tone attaching to different tints. In the finer analysis of the sensuous material of aesthetic enjoyment it is the psychologist who counts.22
Psychological problems.
Among the valuable contributions recently made in this domain one may instance the careful determination of the aesthetically important characteristics of the sensations of sight and hearing, such as the finely graduated variety of their qualities (colour and tone), their capability of entering into combinations in which they preserve their individuality, including the important combinations of time and space form. With these are to be included the distinguishing characteristics of the concomitant feeling-tones, e.g. their comparative calmness and their clear separation from the sensations which they accompany. These characteristics help us to understand the greater refinement of these senses and also the more prolonged as well as varying enjoyment which they contribute, as well as the extension of this enjoyment by imaginative reproduction.23 Next to this determination of important aesthetic characteristics of the two senses may be named a finer probing of the nuances of pleasurable tone exhibited by the several colours and tones. A point still needing special investigation is extent of the sensuous factor in aesthetic enjoyment. There has been a tendency in aesthetic theory to over-intellectualize aesthetic experience and to find the value even of the sensuous factor in some intellectual principle, as when it is said (by Plato and Hegel among others) that a smooth or level tone and a uniform mass of colour owe their value to the principle of unity. But such prolongation (within obvious limits) in time or space is a condition of the full enjoyment of the distinctive quality of an individual tone or colour, and as such has a sensuous value. Aesthetics has to prove the sensuous value, the pleasure which is due not only to the feeling-tones of the several sensations but to those of their variods combinations. Spite of a tendency of late to disparage the co-operation of the “motor sensations” connected with movements of the eye in the aesthetic appreciation of linear form, e.g. curves, evidence suggests that certain curves, like fine gradations of colour, may owe a considerable part of their value to a mode of varying the sensuous experience which is in a peculiar manner agreeable. On the other hand, this theoretic investigation of sense-material will need to determine with care the added value due to the action of experience in giving something of meaning to particular colours and tones and their combinations, e.g. warmth of colour, height of tone.
The perceptual factor.
(B) Under the scientific treatment of the perceptual or formal factor in aesthetic experience we have many special problems, of which only a few can be touched on here. Taking this factor to include all combinations of elements in which there is a more or less distinct perception of pleasing relations, we meet here with such work as that of C. Stumpf (Ton-psychologie) in determining the way in which tones combine and tend to fuse. Later experiments have added to our knowledge of the obscure subject of colour harmony, enabhng us to distinguish pleasing contrasts of colour from the more restful combinations of nearly allied tints. Our knowledge of pleasing form in the narrower sense, that is to say, space and time form, has been advanced by a number of recent inquiries. The value of symmetry, the meaning of proportion and the aesthetic value to be set on certain proportions, the forms of these are some of the points dealt with in more central and in special works24. In the case of forms, still more than in that of sensuous elements, it is needful to determine the extent to which the value of the formal aspect is modified by experience and the acquisition of meaning. This is pretty certainly the source of the aesthetic value claimed for certain proportions, whether in the human figure or other organic forms or in the freer constructions of form in art.25 Another problem is to determine the influence of the feeling-tones of the combining elements on the pleasing character of the whole. It is probable that a particular combination of colours owes something of its pleasure value to a harmony of the feeling-tones of the elements. This is pretty certainly the case where the feeling-tones of the elements are closely akin, as in the case of a number of low tones of colours, or of architectural or other forms where one formal element–say, a vertical line, a rectangle of a certain proportion or a particular variety of arch–repeats itself and becomes a dominating feature of the whole.
The imaginative factor.
(C) The imaginative factor—which corresponds with what Fechner calls the “indirect”—includes all that imaginative activity adds to our enjoyment when we contemplate an aesthetic object. It may consist first of all in recalling concrete experiences firmly associated with the object, as when the sight of wild-flowers in a London street calls up an image of fields and lanes. In order that these images may add to the aesthetic value of the object they must correspond to our common associations, as distinguished from accidental individual ones. A large increase of aesthetic enjoyment comes to us through such suggested images. Although in general it is images of concrete objects which are called up, ideas of a more abstract character may take part though they tend in this case to assume a concrete aspect. This is illustrated in the appreciation of “typical beauty” in which a concrete form represents in an exceptional way the common form of a species, and in that of symbolic representation. An important part of this work of association is to render objects expressive of mental states, as when we read off the particular shade of feeling expressed by a natural scene.26
Freer play of imagination.
In the poetic contemplation of nature, her forces, her gladness and other moods, this imaginative activity, though still deriving leading to an investment of natural objects with a new and more fanciful meaning, as when we “apperceive” a willow drooping over a pond or the front of an old cottage under a quasi-human form, endowing it with something akin to our own feelings and memories. What, it may be asked, is the whole range of this freer play of a life-giving fancy in our aesthetic enjoyment? Some recent theorists have attempted to answer this question by saying that it constitutes a vital element in all aesthetic contemplation. Th. Lipps and others who follow him seek to show that this vitalizing activity of the fancy, which produces a new and illusory object, is the essential ingredient in the aesthetic enjoyment of the forms of material objects. According to this theory, when in the aesthetic mood I enjoy the form of a tree, of a church steeple or of the front of a Greek temple, I am not only ascribing life and feeling to it, but am projecting myself in fancy into the object thus constructed, feeling for the moment that I am the tree or the steeple. The process of vivification is carried out as follows. Lines represent certain movements, and in the aesthetic mood we translate all lines and so all forms back into the corresponding movements, which may be merely imagined (as Lipps himself thinks, or may be realized in part by sensuous elements, viz. motor sensations; which again may be regarded either as concomitants of eye movements, or as arising from an organically connected impulse to move the hand along the lines followed by the eye.27 Thus the columns of a temple represent upward movement, and are apperceived as striving upwards so as to resist the downward pressure of the entablature. Since movements are the great means of expression in man, this imaginative reading of movement into motionless and even massive and stable forms enables us to endow them with quasi-human feelings. In looking, for example, at the weighty masses of a building we enter sympathetically into the successful strivings of the supporting structures to resist the downward thrust of gravity in the supported masses. The theory here briefly indicated28 is interesting as illustrating an attempt from the psychological side to find a scientific support for philosophic idealism or expressionalism. It is already beginning to be recognized in Germany as an exaggeration. It may be enough to say that as applied to forms generally, including those of sculpture and architecture, the theory is opposed by our ordinary way of speaking, which implies quite another point of view in the aesthetic contemplation of form, namely, that of a spectator external to the object contemplated. When our eye glides over the beauties of a statue, our imaginative activity so far from transporting us within the object carries us as tactual feelers outside the surface. Similarly, when we delight in the divided spaces of a Gothic roof, so far from being imaginatively engaged in taking part in the efforts and strains of pillar, arch and the rest, we move in fancy along the pathways defined by the designer, tactually feeling and appreciating each dimension, each detail of form. The attempt to force a theory fitted for poetry on sculpture and architecture would rob these of their distinctive aesthetic values; in the one case, of the plastic beauty of finely moulded marble surfaces as realized by imaginative excursions of the hand; and in the other case, of the perfect stillness and stability which give to great structures their solemn and quieting aspect.29
Aesthetic Illusion.
The theory of a vitalizing play of imagination (Einfuhlung) running through all modes of aesthetic contemplation is an exaggeration of the element of illusion which certainly characterizes this contemplation. As suggested above, by blotting out for the moment the perception of all save that which pleases it substitutes a new for the more solid reality of our practical mood. Moreover, as a state of perceptual absorption in which one loses consciousness of the ordinary self and its world, it has a certain resemblance to the state of ecstasy and of the hypnotic trance.30 It is favourable to the play-like indulgence in a fanciful transformation of what is seen or heard, which may be described as a “willing self-deception,” more or less complete. Yet as we have seen, something of the real everyday world survives even in our freer aesthetic contemplation of form. Hence there is much to be said for the idea that we have in aesthetic illusion to do with a kind of double consciousness, a tendency to an illusory acceptance of the product of our fancy as the reality, restrained by a subconscious recognition of the everyday tangible reality behind.31
Variations of imaginative activity.
It is evident that both in the more confined and in the freer form the element of imaginative activity in aesthetic experience will vary greatly among individuals and among peoples. Differences in past experience leading to diverse habits of association, as well as in those natural dispositions which prompt one person to prefer motor images, another visual, another audile, will modify the process in this enjoyable enlargement and transformation of what is presented to sense. It is for aesthetics at once to recognize these variations of imaginative activity and to determine the more common and universal directions which it follows.
Form and expression not absolutely distinct.
The recent inquiry into our way of contemplating form is, in spite of exaggeration, valuable as showing that our distinctions of form and expression are not absolute. Just as there is the rudiment of ideal significance in colour, not so form, even in its more abstract and elementary aspects, is not wholly expressionless, but may be be endowed with something of life by the imagination. The recognition of this truth does not, however, affect the validity of our treating form and expression as two broadly distinguishable factors of aesthetic pleasure. A line may be pleasing to sense-perception, and in addition illustrate expressional value by suggested ease of movement or pose. Similarly, a concrete form, e.g. that of a sculptured human figure in repose, or of a graceful birch or fern, owes its aesthetic value to a happy combination of pleasing lines and of interesting ideas.
Aesthetic emotion.
In close connexion with the determination of the imaginative factor in aesthetic contemplation, the psychologist is called on to define the soecial characteristics of aesthetic emotion. That our attitude when we watch a beautiful object, say the curl of a breaker as it falls, or some choice piece of sculpture, is an emotional one is certain, and ingenious attempts have been made by Home (Lord Kames) and others to equip the emotion with a full accompaniment of corporeal activity, such as heightened respiratory activity.32 Yet aesthetic emotion is to be contrasted with the more violent and passionate state of love and other emotions, and this difference calls for further investigation. A closer inquiry into the features of that calm yet intense emotion which a rapt state of aesthetic contemplation induces is a necessary preliminary to a scientific demarcation of the sphere of beauty in the narrow or more exclusive sense, from that of the sublime, the tragic and the comic. Each of these departments of aesthetic experience has well-marked emotional characteristics; and the definition of these “modifications of the beautiful” has in the main been reached through an analysis of the emotional states involved. This chapter in the psychological treatment of aesthetic experience has to consider two points which have occupied a prominent place in aesthetic theory. The first is the nature of “revived” or “ideal” emotion, such as is illustrated in the feeling excited sympathetically when we witness or hear of another’s sorrow or joy. The second point is the nature of those mixed emotional states which are illustrated in our aesthetic enjoyment of the sublime and the other “modifications,” in all of which we can recognize a kind of double emotional consciousness in which painful elements accompany and modify pleasurable ones, in such a manner that in the end the latter appear to be rather strengthened than weakened.33
Limits of analysis in aesthetics.
The psychological treatment of aesthetic data here sketched out cannot stop at an analysis of the aesthetic state or attitude into a number of recoenizable elements each of which contributes its own quantum of pleasurableness. Our enjoyment in contemplating, say, a green alp set above dark crags, is an indivisible whole. And it is a consciousness of this fact which makes men disposed to resent the dissection of their aesthetic enjoyment into a number of constituent pleasures. Nor is this all. Every aesthetic object is something unique, differing in individual characteristics from all others; and as the object, so the mood of the contemplator. One may almost say that there are as many modes of musical delight as there are worthy compositions. It would seem either that this feeling of a unique indivisible whole must be dismissed as an illusion, or that we have to admit an unexplained residue in our aesthetic experience, which may some day be explained by help of a larger and more exact conception of aesthetic harmony, of the laws of interaction and of fusion of psychical elements.34
Construction of aesthetic norms.
We may now glance at the ideal purpose of this scientific analysis and interpretation, namely, the construction of norms or regulative principles corresponding to the severally essential elements of aesthetic value ascertained. The later psychological treatment of the subject has led up to the formulation of certain ideal requirements in beautiful objects. The work of Fechner in this direction (Vorschule der Asthetik) was a noteworthy contribution to this kind of construction, at once scientific and directed to the construction of ideal demands, and is still a model for workers in the same field. He has taught us how the attempt to formulate one all-comprehensive principle–e.g. unity in variety, has led to a barren abstractedness, and that we need in its place a number of more concrete principles. In formulating these principles care must be taken to determine their respective scopes and their mutual relations—to decide, for example, whether expression, to which our modern feeling undoubtedly ascribes a high value, is a universal demand in the same sense as unity or harmony of parts is admitted to be. A system of norms must further supply some comprehensive criterion by help of which degrees of aesthetic value may be determined, as determined by the degrees of completeness of the several pleasurable activities, –sensuous, perceptual and imaginative,–and justify the form of judgment “this object is more beautiful (or of a higher kind of beauty) than that.” Such regulative principles and standards of comparison will, it is clear, fail us just at the point where analysis stops. Edmund Gurney urges that an aesthetic principle such as unity in variety is complied with equally well by musical compositions which are commonplace and leave us cold and by those which evoke the full thrill of aesthetic delight, and he concludes that the special beauty of form in the latter instance is appreciated by a kind of intuition which cannot be analysed (see The Power of sound, ix.). The argument is hard to combat. It would seem that after all our efforts to define aesthetic qualities and enumerate corresponding ideal requirements we are left with an unexplained remainder. This can only be tentatively defined as the concrete object itself in its wholeness, which is not only a perfectly harmonized combination of sensuous, formal and expressional values, but impresses us as something which has a fresh individuality and the distinction of aesthetic excellence.
Connexion between aesthetic and other experience: (a) with intellectual interests.
Aesthetics is wont to treat of a certain kind of experience as if it were a closed compartment. Yet there is in reality no such perfect seclusion. Our enjoyment of beauty, though to be distinguished from our intellectual and our practical interests, touches and interacts with these. With regard to intellectual interests it is clear that much of the mental activity which enters into our aesthetic enjoyment is intellectual–e.g. in the perception of the relations of form. even though it stood short of the abstract analysis of scientific observation. Again, in appreciating beauty of type which involves according to Taine a recognition of the most important characters of the species, we are, it is evident, close to the scientific point of view. Similarly, when scientific knowledge enables us in the mood of aesthetic contemplation to retrace imaginatively the mode of formation of a cloud or a mountain form, or the mode in which a climbing plant finds its way upwards. It is for aesthetics to recognize the fact, and to discriminate a legitimate aesthetic function of scientific ideas when they enlarge the scope of a pleasurable play of the imagination, and are freed from the control of a serious purpose of explaining what is seen.
(b) with practical interests.
A similar remark applies to the contacts of our aesthetic with our practical interests. While as dominant factors the latter influence our feeling for beauty in an indirect and subordinate way. This is recognized by those (e.g. Home) who insist on a particular kind of aesthetic value under the name of relative beauty, or the pleasing aspect of fitness for a purpose. If a drinking-vessel please in part because of its perfect adaptation to its purpose, the aesthetic value ascribed to it seems to derive something from a feeling of respect for utility itself. In another way beauty reasserts in modern aesthetics that kinship with utility on which it insisted in the days of Socrates. The idea that typical beauty coincides with what is vigorous and conducive to the conservation of the species is as old as Hobbes.35
Biological treatment of beauty.
Darwin and his followers have developed the biological conception that sexual selection tends to develop aesthetic preferences along lines which correspond to what subserves the maintenance of the species or tribe. Recent writers have shown how the rude germs of aesthetic activity in primitive types of community would subserve necessary tribal ends–e.g. musical rhythm by exercising members of the tribe in concerted war-like action.36 Yet these interesting speculations have to do rather with the earlier stages of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty than with its functions in the higher stages.
Aesthetics and ethics.
An idea of a social utility in aesthetic experience which does demand the attention of the theorist is that the culture of beauty and art has a socializing influence, helping to give to our emotional experience new forms of expression whereby our sympathies are deepened and enlarged.37 The further elucidation of this element of humanizing influence in aesthetic enjoyment may be expected to throw new light on the question, much discussed throughout the history of aesthetics, of the relation of the science to ethics, by showing that they have a common root in our sympathetic nature and interest in humanity.
Aesthetic theory and problems of art.
In order to complete the outline of aesthetic theory we need to glance at the relation of general aesthetics to the special problems of Fine Art. It is evident that the definition of the aims and methods of art, both as a whole and in its several forms, involving as it does special technical knowledge, may with advantage be treated apart from a general theory. (See FINE ARTS.) At the same time the study of art raises larger problems which require to be dealt with to some extent by this theory. We may instance the group of problems which have to do with the relation of art to “beauty” in its narrower sense, such as the function of the painful and of the ugly in art, the meaning of artistic imitation and truth to nature, of idealization, and the nature of artistic illusion; also the question of the didactic and of the moral function of art. Even more special problems of art, such as the effect of the tragic, the nature of musical expression, can only be adequately treated in the light of a general aesthetic theory.
In conclusion, it may be pointed out that the psychological theorist has of late been busy in an outlying region of art-lore, inquiring into the nature of the artistic impulse and temperament, and into the processes of imaginative creation. These inquiries have been carried out to some extent in connexion with studies of the origin of art, and of the relation of art to the social environment. Their importance for aesthetics lies in the circumstance that they are fitted to throw light upon the aesthetic consciousness as it is developed in those who are not only in a special sense cultivators of it, but represent in a peculiar manner the ideas and the aims of art.38
HISTORY OF THEORIES In the following summary of the most important contributions to aesthetic doctrine, only such writings will be recognized as contribute to a general conception of aesthetic objects or experience. These include the more systematic treatment of the subject in philosophic works as well as the more thoughtful kind of discussion of principles to be met with in writings on art by critics and others.
Greek Speculations.—Ancient Greece supolies us with the first important contributions to aesthetic theory, though these are scarcely, in quality or in quantity, what one might nave expected from a people which had so high an appreciation of beauty and so strong a bent for philosophic speculation. The first Greek thinker of whose views on the subject we really know something is Socrates. We learn from Xenophon’s account of him that he regarded the beautiful as coincident with the good, and both of them are resolvable into the useful. Every beautiful object is so called because it serves came rational end, whether the security or the gratification of man. Socrates appears to have attached little importance to the immediate gratification which a beauriful object affords to perception and contemplation, but to have emphasized rather its power of furthering the more necessary ends of life. The really valuable point in his doctrine is the relativity of beauty. Unlike Plato, he recognized no self-beauty (auto to kalon) existing absolutely and out of all relation to a percipient mind.
Plato.
Of the views of Plato on the subject, it is hardly less difficult to gain a clear conception from the Dialogues, than it is in the case of ethical good. In some of these, various definitions of the beautiful are rejected as inadequate by the Platonic Socrates. At the same time we may conclude that Plato’s mind leaned decidedly to the conception of an absolute beauty, which took its place in his scheme of ideas or self-exisiing forms. This true beauty is nothing discoverable as an attribute in another thing, for these nre only beautiful things, not the beautiful itself. Love (Eros) produces aspiration towards this pure idea. Elsewhere the soul’s intuition of the self-beautiful is said to be a reminiscence of its prenatal existence. As to the precise forms in which the idea of beauty reveals itself, Plato is not very decided. His theory of an absolute beauty does not easily adjust itself to the notion of its contributing merely a variety of sensuous pleasure, to which he appears to lean in some dialogues. He tends to identify the self-beautiful with the conceptions of the true and the good, and thus there arose the Platonic formula kalokagathia. So far as his writings embody the notion of any common element in beautiful objects, it is proportion, harmony or unity among their parts. He emphasizes unity in its simplest aspect as seen in evenness of line and purity of colour. He recognizes in places the beauty of the mind, and seems to think that the highest beauty of proportion is to be found in the union of a beautiful mind with a beautiful body. He had but a poor opinion of art, regarding it as a trick of imitation (mimesis) which takes us another step farther from the luminous sphere of rational intuition into the shadowy region of the semblances of sense. Accordingly, in his scheme for an ideal republic, he provided for the most inexorable censorship of poets, &c., so as to make art as far as possible an instrument of moral and political training.
Aristotle.
Aristotle proceeded to a more serious investigation of the aesthetic phenomena so as to develop by scientific analysis certain principles of beauty and art. In his treatises on poetry and rhetoric he gives us, along with a theory of these arts, certain general principles of beauty; and scattered among his other writings we find many valuable suggestions on the same subject. He seeks (in the Metaphysics) to distinguish the good and the beautiful by saying that the former is always in action (`en praxei) whereas the latter may exist in motionless things as well (`en akinetois.) At the same time he had as a Greek to allow that though essentially different things the good might under certain conditions be called beautiful. He further distinguished the beautiful from the fit, and in a passage of the Politics set beauty above the useful and necessary. He helped to determine another characteristic of the beautiful, the absence of all lust or desire in the pleasure it bestows. The universal elements of beauty, again, Aristotle finds (in the Metaphysics) to be order (taxis), symmetry and definiteness or determinateness (to orismenon). In the Poetics he adds another essential, namely, a certain magnitude; it being desirable for a synoptic view of the whole that the object should not be too large, while clearness of perception requires that it should not be too small. Aristotle’s views on art are an immense advance on those of Plato. He distinctly recognized (in the Politics and elsewhere) that its aim is immediate pleasure, as distinct from utility, which is the end of the mechanical arts. He took a higher view of artistic imitation than Plato, holding that so far from being an unworthy trick, it implied knowledge and discovery, that its objects not only comprised particular things which happen to most, but contemplated what is probable and what necessarily exists. The celebrated passage in the Poetics, where he declares poetry to be more philosophical and serious a matter (spoudaiteron) than philosophy, brings out the advance of Aristotle on his predecessor. He gives us no complete classification of the fine arts, and it is doubtful how far his principles, e.g. his celebrated idea of a purification of the passions by tragedy, are to be taken as applicable to other than the poetic art.
Plotinus.
Of the later Greek and Roman writers the Neo-Platonist Plotinus deserves to be mentioned. According to him, objective reason (nous) as self-moving, becomes the formative influence which reduces dead matter to form. Matter when thus formed becomes a notion (logos), and its form is beauty. Objects are ugly so far as they are unacted upon by reason, and therefore formless. The creative reason is absolute beauty, and is called the more than beautiful. There are three degrees or stages of manifested beauty: that of human reason, which is the highest; of the human soul, which is less perfect through its connexion with a material body; and of real objects, which is the lowest manifestation of all. As to the precise forms of beauty, he supposed, in opposition to Aristotle, that a single thing not divisible into parts might be beautiful through its unity and simplicity. He gives a high place to the beauty of colours in which material darkness is overpowered by light and warmth. In reference to artistic beauty he said that when the artist has notions as models for his creations, these may become more beautiful than natural objects. This is clearly a step away from Plato’s doctrine towards our modern conception of artistic idealization.
German writers. (a) Systematic treatises; Baumgarten.
2. German Writers.—We may pass by the few thoughts on the subject to be found among medieval writers and turn to modern theories, beginning with those of German writers as the most numerous and most elaborately set forth. The best of the Germans who attempted to develop an aesthetic theory as part of a system of philosophy was Baumgarten (Aesthetica) . Adopting the Leibnitz-Wolffian theory of knowledge, he sought to complete it by setting over against the clear scientific or “logical” knowledge of the understanding, the confused knowledge of the senses, to which (as we have seen) he gave the name “aesthetic.” Beauty with him thus corresponds with perfect sense-knowledge. Baumgarten is clearly an intellectualist in aesthetics, reducing taste to an intellectual act and ignoring the element of feeling. The details of his aesthetics are mostly unimportant. Arguing from Leibnitz’s theory of the world as the best possible, Baumgarten concluded that nature is the highest embodiment of beauty, and that art must seek its supreme function in the strictest possible imitation of nature.
Kant.
The next important treatment of aesthetics by a philosopher is that of Kant. He deals with the “Judgment of Taste” in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (J. H. Bernard’s translation 1892), which treatise supplements the two better-known critiques (vide KANT), and by investigating the conditions of the validity of feeling mediates between then respective subjects, cognition and desire (volition). He takes an imoortant step in denying objective existence to beauty. Aesthetic value for him is fitness to please as object of pure contemplation. This aesthetic satisfaction is more than mere agreeableness, since it must be disinterested and free–that is to say, from all concern about the real existence of the object, and about our dependence on it. He appears to concede a certain formal objectivity to beauty in his doctrine of an appearance of purposiveness (Zweckmassigkeit) in the beautiful object, this being defined as its harmony with the cognative faculties involved in an aesthetic judgment (imagination and understanding); a harmony the consciousness of which underlies our aesthetic pleasure. Yet this part of his doctrine is very imperfectly developed. While beauty thus ceases with Kant to have objective validity and remains valid only for the contemplator, he claims for it universal subjective validity, since the object we pronounce to be beautiful is fitted to please all men. We know that this must be so from reflecting on the disinterestedness of our pleasure, on its entire independence of personal inclination. Kant insists that the aesthetic judgment is always, in logical phrase, an “individual” i.e. a singular one, of the form “This object (e.g. rose) is beautiful.” He denies that we can reach a valid universal aesthetic judgment of the form “All objects possessine such and such qualities are beautiful.” (A judgment of this form would, he considers, be logical, not aesthetic.) in dealing with beauty Kant is thinking of nature, ranking this as a source of aesthetic pleasure high above art, for which he shows something of contempt. He seems to retreat from his doctrine of pure subiectivity when he says that the highest significance of beauty is to symbolize moral good; going further than Ruskin when he attaches ideals of modesty, frankness, courage, &c., to the seven primary colours of Newton’s system. He has made a solid contribution to the theory of the sublime, and has put forth a suggestive and a rather inadequate view of the ludicrous. But his main service to aesthetics consists in the preliminary critical determination of its aim and its fundamental problems.
Schelling.
Schelling is the first thinker to attempt a Philosophy of Art. He develops this as the third part of his system of transcendental idealism following theoretic and practical philosophy. (See SCHELLING;–also Schelling’s Werke, Bd. v., and J. Watson, Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism, ch. vii., Chicago, 1882.) According to Schelling a new philosophical significance is given to art by the doctrine that the identity of subject and object–which is half disguised in ordinary perception and volition–is only clearly seen in artistic perception. The perfect perception of its real self by intelligence in the work of art is accompanied by a feeling of infinite satisfaction. Art in thus effecting a revelation of the absolute seems to attain a dignity not merely above that of nature but above that of philosophy itself. Schelling throws but little light on the concrete forms of beauty. His classification of the arts, based on his antithesis of object and subject, is a curiosity in intricate arrangement. He applies his conception in a suggestive way to classical tragedy.
Hegel.
In Hegel’s system of philosophy art is viewed as the first stage of the absolute spirit. (See HEGEL; also Werke, Bd. x., and Bosanquet’s Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art.) In this stage the absolute is immediately present to sense-perception, an idea which shows the writer’s complete rupture with Kant’s doctrine of the “subjectivity” of beauty. The beautiful is defined as the ideal showing itself to sense or through a sensuous medium. It is said to have its life in show or semblance (Schein) and so differs from the true, which is not really sensuous, but the universal idea contained in sense for thought. The form of the beautiful is unity of the manifold. The notion (Begriff gives necessity in mutual dependence of parts (unity), while the reality demands the semblance (Schein) of liberty in the parts. He discusses very fully the beauty of nature as immediate unity of notion and reality, and lays great emphasis on the beauty of organic life. But it is in art that, like Schelling, Hegel finds the highest revelation of the beautiful. Art makes up for the deficiencies of natural beauty by bringing the idea into clearer light, by showing the external world in its life and spiritual animation. The several species of art in the ancient and modern worlds depend on the various combinations of matter and form. He classifies the individual arts according to this same principle of the relative supremacy of form and matter, the lowest being architecture, the highest, poetry.
Dialectic of the Hegelians.
Curious developments of the Hegelian conception are to be found in the dialectical treatment of beauty in its relation to the ugly, the sublime, &c., by Hegel’s disciples, e.g. C. H. Weisse and J. K. F. Rosenkranz. The most important product of the Hegelian School is the elaborate system of aesthetics published by F. T. Vischer (Esthetik, 3 Theile, 1846–1834). It illustrates the difficulties of the Hegelian thought and terminology; yet in dealing with art it is full of knowledge and highly suggestive.
Schopenhauer.
The aesthetic prbolem is also treated by two other philosophers whose thought set out from certain tendencies in Kant’s system, viz. Schopenhauer and Herbart. Schopenhauer (see SCHOPENHAUER, also The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane, esp. vol. i. pp. 219-346), abandoning also Kant’s doctrine of the subjectivity of beauty, found in aesthetic contemplation the perfect emancipation of intellect from will. In this contemplation the mind is filled with pure intellectual forms, the “Platonic Ideas” as he calls them, which are objectifications of the will at a certain grade of completeness of representation. He exalts the state of artistic contemplation as the one in which, as pure intellect set free from will, the misery of existence is surmounted and something of blissful ecstasy attained. He holds that all things are in some degree beautiful, ugliness being viewed as merely imoerfect manifestation or objectification of will. In this way the beauty of nature, somewhat slighted by Schelling and Hegel, is rehabilitated.
Herbart.
J. F. Herbart (q.v.) struck out another way of escaping from Kant’s idea of a purely subjective beauty (Kerbach’s edition of Werke, Bd. ii. pp. 339 et seq.; Bd. iv. pp. 105 et seq., and Bd. ix. pp. 92 et seq..) He did, indeed, adopt Kant’s view of the aesthetic Judgment as singular (“individual”); though he secures a certain degree of logical universality for it by emphasizing the point that the predicate (beauty) is permanently true of the same aesthetic object. At the same time, by referring the beauty of concrete objects to certain aesthetic relations, he virtually accepted the possibility of universal aesthetic judgments (cf. supra.) Since he thus reduces beauty to abstract relations he is known as a formalist, and the founder of the formalistic school in aesthetics. He sets out with the idea that only relations please–in the Kantian sense of producing pleasure devoid of desire; and his aim is to determine the “aesthetic elementary relations”, or the simplest relations which produce this pleasure. These include those of will, so that, as he aomits, ethical judgments are in a manner brought under an aesthetic form. His typical example of aesthetic relations of objects of sense-perception is that of harmony between tones. The science of thorough-bass has, he thinks, done for music what should be done also for other departments of aesthetic experience. This doctrine of elementary relations is brought into connexion with the author’s psychological doctrine of presentarions with their tendencies to mutual inhibition and to fusion, and of the varying feeling-tones to which these processes give rise. This mode of treating the problem of beauty and aesthetic perception has been greatly developed and worked up into a comrlete system of aesthetics by one of Herbart’s disciples, Robert Zimmermann (Asthetik, 1838).
Lessing.
Lessing, in his Laocoon and elsewhere, sought to deduce the special function of an art from a consideration of the means at its disposal. He took pains to define the boundaries of poetry and upon the ends and appliances of art. Among these his distinction between arts which employ the coexistent in space and those which employ the successive (as poetry and music) is of lasting value. In his dramatic criticisms he similarly endeavoured to develop clear general principles on such points as poetic truth, improving upon Aristotle, on whose teachina he mainly relies.
Goethe. Schiller.
Goethe wrote several tracts on aesthetic topics, as well as many aphorisms. He attempted to mediate between the claims of ideal beauty, as taught by J. J. Winckelmann, and the aims of dualization. Schiller (q.v.) discusses, in a number of disconnected essays and letters some of the main questions in the philosophy of art. He looks at art from the side of culture and the forces of human nature, and finds in an aesthetically cultivated soul the reconciliation of the sensual and rational. His letters on aesthetic education (Uber die asthetische Erzichung des Menschen, trans. by J. Weiss, Boston, 1845) are valuable, bringing out among other points the connexion between aesthetic activity and the universal impulse to play (Spieltrieb.) Schiller’s thoughts on aesthetic subjects are pervaded with the spirit of Kant’s philosophy.
Jean Paul.
Another example of this kind of reflective discussion of art by literary men is afforded us in the Vorschule der Asthetik of Jean Paul Richter. This is a rather ambitious discussion of the sublime and ludicrous, which, however, contains much valuable matter on the nature of humour in romantic poetry. Among other writers who reflect more or less philosophically on the problems to which modern poetry gives rise are Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two Schlegels and Gervinus.
Contributions by German savants.
A word may be said in conclusion on the attempts of German savants to apply a knowledge of physiological conditions to the investigation of the sensuous elements of aesthetic effect, as well as to introduce into the study of the simpler aesthetic forms the methods of natural science. The classic work of Helmholtz on “Sensations of Tone” is a highly musical composition on physics and physiology. The endeavour to determine with a like degree of precision the physiological conditions of the pleasurable effects of colours and their combinations by E. W. Brucke, Ewald Hering and more recent investigators, has so far failed to realize the desideratum laid down by Herbart, that there should be a theory of colour-relations equal in completeness and exactness to that of tone-relations. The experimental inquiry into simple aesthetically pleasing forms was begun by G. T. Fechner in seeking to test the soundness of Adolf Zeising’s hypothesis that the most pleasing proportion in dividing a line, say the vertical part of a cross, is the “golden section,” where the smaller division is to the larger as the latter to the sum. He describes in his work on “Experimental Aesthetics” (Auf experimentalen Asthetik) a series of experiments carried out on a large number of persons, bearing on this point, the results of which he considers to be in favour of Zeising’s hypothesis.
Discussions of more concrete problems.
3. French Writers.–In France aesthetic speculation grew out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of modern art, and Boileau in the 17th century, the development of the the dispute between the “ancients” and the `moderns” at the end of the 17th century by B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle and Charles Perrault, and the continuation of the discussion as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the 18th century by Voltaire, Bayle, Diderot and others, not only offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. A more systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding to that of Lessing) is to be found in the Cours de belles lettres of Charles Batteux (1765), in which the meaning and value of the imitation of nature by art are further elucidated, and the arts are classified (as by Lessing) according as they employ the forms of space or those of time.
Theories of organic beauty. Buffier.
The beginning of a more scientific investigation of beauty in general is connected with the name of Pere Buffier (see First Truths), form, and illustrates his theory by the human face. A A beautiful face is at once the most common and most rare among members of the species. This seems to be a clumsy way of saying that it is a clear expression of the typical form of the species.
Taine.
This idea of typical beauty (which was adopted by Reynolds) has been worked out more recently by H. Taine. In his work, The Ideal in Art (trans. by i. Durand), he proceeds in the manner of a botanist to determine a scale of characters in the physical and moral man. The degree of the universality or importance of a character, and of its beneficence or adaptation to the ends of life, determine the measure of its aesthetic value, and render the work of art, which seeks to represent it in its purity, an ideal work.
French systems of aesthetics: The spiritualistes.
The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French literature are those constructed by the spiritualistes, the philosoohic writers who under the influence of German thinkers effected a reaction against the crude sensationalism of the 18th century they aim at elucidating the higher and spiritual element in aesthetic impressions, appearing to ignore any capability in the sensuous material of affording a true aesthetic delight. J. Cousin and Jean Charles Leveque are the principal writers of this school. The latter developed an elaborate system of the subject (La Science du beau.) All beauty is regarded as spiritual in its nature. The several beautiful characters of an organic body–of which the principal are magnitude, unity and variety of parts, intensity of colour, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to environment–may be brought under the conception of the ideal grandeur and order of the species. These are perceived by reason to be the manifestations of an invisible vinal force. Similarly the beauties of inorganic nature are to be viewed as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial ohvsical force. Thus all beauty is in its objective essence either spirit or unconscious force acting with fulness and in order.
4. English Writers.–There is nothing answering to the German conception of a system of aesthetics in English literature. The inquiries of English thinkers have been directed for the most part to such modest problems as the psychological process by which we perceive the beautiful–discussions which are apt to be regarded by German historians as devoid of real philosophical value. The writers may be conveniently arranged in two divisions, answering to the two opposed directions of English thought: (i) the Intuitionalists, those who recognize the existence of an objective beauty which is a simple unanalysable attribute or principle of things: and (2) the Analytical theorists, those who follow the analytical and psychological method, concerning themselves with the sentiment of beauty as a complex growth out of simpler elements.
The Intuitionists. Shaftesbury.
Shaftesbury is the first of the intuitional writers on beauty. In his Characteristics the beautiful and the good are combined in one ideal conception, much as with Plato. Matter in itself is ugly. The order of the world, wherein all beauty really resides, is a spiritual principle, all motion and life being the product of spirit. The principle of beauty is perceived not with the outer sense, but with an internal or moral sense which apprehends the good as well. This perception yields the only true delight, namely, spiritual enjoyment.
Hutcheson.
Francis Hutchinson, in his System of Moral Philosophy, though he adopts many of Shaftesbury’s ideas, distinctly disclaims any independent self-existing beauty in objects. “All beauty,” he says, “is relative to the sense of some mind perceiving it.” One cause of beauty is to be found not in a simple sensation such as colour or tone, but in a certain order among the parts, or “uniformity amidst variety.” The faculty by which this principle indiscerned is an internal sense which is defined as “a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity in variety.” This inner sense resembles the external senses in the immediateness of the pleasure which its activity brings: and further in the necessity of its impressions: a beautiful thing being always, whether we will or no, beautiful. He distinguishes two kinds of beauty, absolute or original, and relative or comparative. The latter is discerned in an object which is regarded as an imitation or semblance of another. He distinctly states that “an exact imitation may still be beautiful though the original were entirely devoid of it.” He seeks to prove the universality of this sense of beauty, by showing that all men, in proportion to the enlargement of their intellectual capacity, are more delighted with uniformity than the opposite.
Reid.
In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers (viii. “Of Taste”) Thomas Reid applies his principle of common sense to the problem of beauty saying that objects of beauty agree not only in producing a certain agreeable emotion, but in the excitation along with this emotion of a belief that they possess some perfection or excellence, that beauty exists in the objects independently our minds. His theory of beauty is severely spiritual. All beauty resides primarily in the faculties of the mind, intellectual and moral. The beauty which is spread over the face of visible nature is an emanation from this spiritual beauty, and is beauty because it symbolizes and expresses the latter. Thus the beauty of a plant resides in its perfect adapration to its end, a perfection which is an expression of the wisdom of its Creator.
Hamilton.
In his Lectures on Metaphysics Sir W. Hamilton gives a short account of the sentiments of taste, which (with a superficial resemblance to Kant) he regards as subserving both the subsidiary and the elaborative faculties in cognition, that is, the imagination and the understanding. The activity of the former corresponds to the element of variety in a beautiful object, that of the latter with its unity. He explicitly excludes all other kinds of pleasure, such as the sensuous, from the proper gratification of beauty. He denies that the attribute of beauty belongs to fitness.
Ruskin.
John Ruskin’s well-known speculations on the nature of beauty in Modern Painters (“Of ideas of beauty”), though sadly wanting in scientific precision, have a certain value in the history of divine attributes. Its true nature is appreciated by the theoretic faculty which is concerned in the moral conception and appreciation of ideas of beauty, and must be distinguished from the imaginative or artistic faculty, which is employed in regarding in a certain way and combining the ideas received from external nature. He distinguishes between typical and vital beauty. The former is the external quality of bodies which typifies some divine attribute. The latter consists in “the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things.” The forms of typical beauty are:–(1) infinity, the type of the divine incomprehensibility; (2) unity, the type of the divine comprehensiveness; (3) repose, the type of the divine permanence; (4) symmetry, the type of the divine justice; (5) purity, the type of the divine energy; and (6) moderation, the type of government by law. Vital beauty, again, is regarded as relative when the degree of exaltation of the function is estimated, or generic if only the degree of conformity of an individual to the appointed functions of the species is taken into account. Ruskin’s writings illustrate the extreme tendency to identify aesthetic with moral perception.
The analytical theorists. Addison.
Addison’s “Essays on the Imagination”’ contributed to the Spectator, though they belong to popular literature, contain the germ of scientific analysis in the statement that the pleasures of imagination (which arise originally from sight) fall into two classes–(1) primary pleasures, which entirely proceed from objects before our eyes; and (2) secondary pleasures, flowing frm the ideas of visible objects. The latter are greatly extended by the addition of the proper enjoyment of resemblance, which is at the basis of all mimicry and wit. Addison recognizes, too, to some extent, the influence of association upon our aesthetic preferences.
Home.
In the Elements of Criticism of Home (Lord Kames) another attempt is made to resolve the pleasure of beauty into its elements. Beauty and ugliness are simply the pleasant and unappears to admit no general characreristic of beautiful objects beyond this power of yielding pleasure. Like Hutcheson, he divides beauty into intrinsic and relative, but understands by the latter the appearance of fitness and utility, which is excluded from the beautiful by Hutcheson.
Hogarth.
Passing by the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose theory of beauty closely resembles that of Pere Buffier, we come to the articulations of another artist and painter, William Hogarth. He discusses, in his Analysis of Beauty, all the elements of visual beauty. He finds in this the following elements:—(1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye “a wanton kind of chase”; (6) quantity or magnitude, which draws our attention and produces admiration and awe. The beauty of proportion he resolves into the needs of fitness. Hogarth applies these principles to the determination of the degrees of beauty in lines, figures and groups of forms. Among lines he singles out for special honour the serpentine (formed by drawing a line once round from the base to the apex of a long slender cone).
Burke.
Burke’s speculations, in his Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, illustrate the tendency of English writers to treat the problem as a psychological one and to introduce physiological considerations. He finds the elements of beauty to be:– (1) smallness; (2) smoothness; (3) gradual variation of direction in gentle curves; (4) delicacy, or the appearance of fragility; (5) brightness, purity and softness of colour. The sublime is rather crudely resolved into astonishment, which he thinks always retains an element of terror. Thus “infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with a delightful horror.” Burke seeks what he calls “efficient causes” for these aesthetic impressions in certain affections of the the nerves of sight analogous to those of other senses, namely, the soothing effect of a relaxation of the nerve fibres. The arbitrariness and narrowness of this theory cannot well escape the reader’s attention.
Alison.
Alison, in his well-knwon Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, proceeds by a method exactly the opposite to that of Hogarth and Burke. He seeks to analyse the mental process when finds that this consists in a peculiar operation of the imagination, namely, the flow of a train of ideas through the mind, which ideas always correspond to some simple affection or emotion (e.g. cheerfulness, sadness, awe) awakened by the object. He thus makes association the sole source of aesthetic delight, and denies the existence of a primary source in sensations themselves. He illustrates the working of the principle of association at great length, and with much skill; yet his attempt to make it the unique source of aesthetic pleasure fails completely. Francis Jeffrey’s Essays on Beauty (in the Edinburgh Review, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th edition) are little more than a modification of Alison’s theory. Philosophical Essays consists in pointing out the unwarranted assumption lurking in the doctrine of a single quality running through all varieties of beautiful object. He seeks to show how the successive changes in the meaning of the term “beautiful” have arisen. He suggests that it originally connoted the pleasure of colour. The value of his discussion resides more in the criticism of his predecessors than in the contribution of new ideas. His conception of the sublime, suggested by the etymology of the word, emphasizes the element of height in objects.
Of the assoication psychologists James Mill did little more towards the analysis of the sentiments of beauty than re-state Alison’s doctrine. Alexander Bain, in his treatise, The Emotions and the Will (“Aesthetic Emotions”), carries this examination considerably further. He seeks to differentiate aesthetic from other varieties of pleasurable emotion by three characteristics:–(1) their freedom from life-serving uses, being gratifications sought for their own sakes; (2) their purity from all disagreeable concomitants; (3) their eminently sympathetic or shareable nature. He takes a comprehensive view of the constituents of aesthetic enjoyment, including the pleasures of sensation and of its revived or its “ideal” form; of revived emotional states; and lastly the satisfaction of those wide-ranging susceptibilities which we call the love of novelty, of contrast and of harmony. The effect of sublimity is connected with the manifestation of superior power in its highest degrees, which manifestation excites a sympathetic elation in the beholder. The ludicrous, again, is defined by Bain, improving on Aristotle and Hobbes, as the degradation of something possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion.
Herbert Spencer, in his First Principles, Principles of Psychology and Essays, has given an interesting turn to the psychology of aesthetics by the application of his doctrine of evolution. Adopting Schiller’s idea of a connexion between aesthetic activity and play, he seeks to make it the starting-point in tracing the evolution of aesthetic activity. Play is defined as the outcome of the superfluous energies of the organism: as the activity of organs and faculties which, owing to a prolonged period of inactivity, have become specially ready to discharge their function, and as a consequence vent themselves in simulated actions. Aesthetic activities supply a similar mode of self-relieving discharge to the higher organs of perception and emotion; and they further agree with play in not directly subserving any processes conducive to life; in being gratifications sought for their own sake only. Spencer seeks to construct a hierarchy of aesthetic pleasures according to the degree of complexity of the faculty exercised: from those of sensation up to the revived emotional experiences which constitute the aesthetic sentiment proper. Among the more vaguely revived emotions Spencer includes more permanent feelings of the race transmitted by heredity; as when he refers the deep and indefinable emotion excited by music to associations with vocal tones expressive of feeling built up during the past history of our species. This biological treatment of aesthetic activity has had a wide influence, some e.g. Grant Allen) being content to develop his evolutional method. Yet, as suggested above, his theory is now recognized as taking us only a little way towards an adequate understanding of our aesthetic experience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.39–.a) Works on General Aesthetics. which deal with the whole subject. The following will be found helpful: Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, pt. viii. c. 9, “Aesthetic Sentiments,” and the papers on “Use and Beauty,” “Origin and Function of Music” and others in the Essays; A. Bain, Emotions and Will, “Aesthetic Emotions”; J Sully, Human Mind, ii. “Aesthetic Sentiment”: (Grant Allen, “Physiological Aesthetics” (Meth., Pl., Senses, Play); Rutgers Marshall, Pain, Pleasure and Aesthetics, and Aesthetic Principles (Meth., Pl., Play).
French and Italian Works.–M. Guyau, Les problemes de l’esthetique contemporaine (1884) (Pl., Play); E. Veron, L’Esthetique (1890) (slight Pl.); L. Bray, Du Beau (1902). (Pl., Play); P. Saurian, La Beaute rationnelle (1904) (Meth., Pl., Senses, Einf.); M. Pilo, Estetica (Pl., Senses): A. Rolla, Storia delle idee estetiche in Italia (1905) (full account of ideas of Dante and other medieval writers, as well as of modern systems).
German Works.—K. Kostlin, Prolegomena zur Asthetik (1889) (good introduction to subject); K. Groos, Der asthetische Genuss (1902) (Meth., Judg., Play, Senses, Einf. and Ill.); J. Volkelt, System der Asthetik (1905) (very full and clear) (Meth., Norm., Evol., Senses, Einf.); J. Cohn, Allgemeine Asthetik (1901) (Val., Play, Einf.); K. Lange, Das Wesen der Kunst (1901) (Meth., Einf., Ill., Play).
(b) Works on History on. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Asthetik in Deutschland; M. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Asthetik (full and elaborate, dealing with ancient and modern theories); E. von Hartmann, Die deutsche asthetik seit Kant (Ausgewahlte Werke, iii.); K. H. von Stein, Die Entstehung der neueren Asthetik (theories of French critics, &c.); F. Brunetiere, L’Evolution des genres (History of critical discussions in the 17th and 18th centuries); B. Bosanquet, History of Aesthetics (very full, especially on ancient theories and German systems); W. Knight, Philosophy of the Beautiful, pt. i. “History” (Univ. Extension Manuals, a popular resume with quotations). (J. S.)
1 See below for Kant’s view of the aesthetic judgment, as having subjective universal validity. On the meaning of judgments of value see J. Cohn, Allgem. Asthetik, Einleitung, pp. 7 ff., and Teil i., Kap. 2 and 3.
2 Cf. Larid, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 330, 361.
3 For example, that hinted at by Bosanquet in his definition of the beautiful, History of aesthetic, p. 5.
4 Beauty is defined as perfection by P. Souriau, La Beaute rationnelle, 2eme partie.
5 K. Groos argues well against this violent stretching of the word beautiful, Einleitung in die Asthetik, pp. 46 seq.
6 Kant, in developing his idea of beauty as subjective, was probably influenced by Hume, who wrote: “Beauty is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them” (Essays, xxii.).
7 On the nature of these qualities see S. Witasek, Grundzuge der Allgem. Asthetik, p. 11.
8 See J. Cohn; Allgem. Esthetik, P. 96
9 Originally, as pointed out by Home and others, sight was regarded as the sense by which we received impressions of beauty. The recognition of the claims of hearing date back to Plato. (See Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesth. pp. 51-52). For recent discussions of the claims of sight and hearing see article by J. Volkelt, “Der Aesth. Werth der niederen Sinne,” in Zeitschrift fur Psych. u. Phys. der Sinnesorgane, vol. xxix. pp. 402 ff.; see also below, Bibliography.
10 Laws, 880 (see Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 54).
11 Plato had a glimpse of the resemblance of art to play (see Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 54). Among modern writers the idea is specially connected with the names of Schiller and Herbert Spencer. In recent works the subject is touched on by S. Wittasek, Grundzuge der allgem. Asthetik, pp. 223 fl.; Bray, Du Beau, pp. 62 ff., and by Rutgers Marshall and others referred to below in Bibliography.
12 Hence to say, as Bosanquet says (op. cit. pp. 3-4), that art is to nature as the scientific conception of the world to that of the ordinary observer, seems wide of the mark.
13 K. Lange goes very far in attributing a practical motive to features of architecture commonly supposed to have aesthetic value, e.g. a regular series of similar forms (Das Wesen der Kunst, Bd. i. pp. 277 ff.).
14 K. Lange thinks that even symmetry probably has a technical origin (op. cit. pp. 283-284).
15 The question of the place of the historical development of art in aesthetic theory is carefully considered by J. Volkelt, System der Asthetik, Bd. i. 5es Kap.
16 See, for example, a little work, The Genesis of Art-From, by G. L. Raymond.
17 Kant, stopping short of an analysis of the beauty of a concrete object, said there were no aesthetic judgments of this universal form see below). On the importance of these inductions see K. H. von Stein, Vorlesungen uber Asthetik (Einleitung).
18 Curiously enough Thomas Reid recognized a germ of aesthetic taste in animals. Essays, Of Taste, ch. v. The aesthetic importance of the observations made on animals is dealt with by L. Bray, Du Beau, pp. 233 ff.
19 See below, and Bosanquet, op. cit. pp. 382 ff.
20 The chief lines of experimental aesthetics are indicated by W. Wundt in his Physiol. Psychologie (5e Auflage), Bd. iii. pp. 142 ff. and 147 ff.
21 On the value of the judgments of experts see K. Groos, Der asth. Genuss, p. 149.
22 Examples of a forcina of the physiological method in aesthetics may be found in the Physiological Aesthetics of Grant Allen, and the Aufgabe der Kunstphysialogie, by Georg Hirsch.
23 These aesthetic prerogatives of the sensations of hearing and sight have been well brought out in the article by J. Volkelt, already referred to.
24 On the later investigations into musical consonance and harmony, harmony of colours, rhythmic and pleasing spatial forms, see Wundt, op..cit. Bd. ii. pp. 419 ff., and iii. 135 g., 140 ff., 147 ff. and 154 ff. Time-form in music is specially discussed by E. Gurney, The Power of Sound, v.
25 K. Lange, who recognizes the influence of nature and custom here denies that proportion is an aesthetic principle (Das Wesen der Kunst, 11es Kap.).
26 Alison and other English Associationists have emphasized the aesthetic importance of the principle of association. Among more recent advocates of it is G. T. Fechner. Vorschule der Asthetik, and O. Kulpe, “Uber den associativ Factor des asthet. Eindrucks”, Fierteljahrsschrift fur wissensch. Philosophie, xxiii. pp. 145 ff.
27 This idea of imitative hand-movement in contemplating form is supported by K. Groos, Der asth. Genuss, pp. 49 ff.
28 It is commonly spoken of as “feeling oneself into” Einfuhlen), or as“sympathetic feeling” (Mitempfinden.)
29 Lipps theory is developed in a number of works, the chief of which is Asthetik: Psychologie des Schonen und der Kunst, see esp. 1er Theil, 1er to 3er Abschnitt; cf. Paul Stern, Einfuhlung und Association, in which is to be found an historical sketch of the theory, and A. Hildebrand, Form in der bildenden Kunst. The play of imagination in the contemplation of form is discussed also by P. Souriau, L’Esthetique du mouvement, 3eme part., and La Suggestion dans l’art, pp. 300 ff. Cf. works of Karl Groos and K. Lange named below (Bibliography.) .
30 See P. Souriau, La Suggestion dans l’art (1ere partie).
31 Cf. K. Lange, op. cit. lfh. i. p. 208.
32 See a curious passage in Home’s Elements of Criticism, chap iv., in which the emotions excited by great and elevated objects are said to express themselves externally by a special inflating inspiration, and by stretching upward and standing “a-tiptoe” respectively; also an article on “Recent Aesthetics’, by Vernon Lee in the Quarterly Review, 1904, part i. pp. 420-443.
33 See Hume, Essays, “Essay of Tragedy,” and the important discussions on the meaning of Aristotle’s doctrine of the emotions of tragedy and of emotional purification or “alleviating discharge’, (kathansis) touched on by Bosanquet, op. cit. pp. 64 ff. and 234 ff.
34 That beauty implies a peculiar blending of formal and spiritual (geistige) factors is recognized by H. Riegel, Die bildende Kunste; pp. 16 ff.
35 Human Nature (first part of Tripos), ch. viii. sec. 5 (Molesworth’s edition of Works, vol. iv. p. 38).
36 See among others R. Wallascheck, Primitve Music, pp. 270 ff., and Y. Hirn, The Origin of Art, pp. 9 ff.; cf. W. Jerusalem, Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 116, 117.
37 The idea of this social utility in aesthetic enjoyment is touched on by Kant, Criticue of Judgment (Bernard’s trans.), p. 174; and is more fully worked out by Guyau, L’Art au point de vue sociologique, ch. ii. and iii.; cf. Rutgers Marshall, Aesthetic Principles, pp. 81-82.
38 On the nature of the primitive art-culture, see Rutgers Marshall, Aesthetic Principles, ch. iii.; M. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 151 ff: Y. Hirn, The Origin of Art, ch. ii. On artistic genius and its creative process, see H. Taine, The Philosophy of Art, Part ii.; P. Souriau, L’Imagination de l’artiste; G. Seailles, Essai sur la genie dans l’art; E. Grosse, Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien iii.; Arreat, Psychologie du peintre; L. Dauriac, Essai sur l’esprit musical.
39 Only recent works are included. Important points in each are indicated by abbreviations, namely:–
Einf., Einfuhlung (expressional element in form). Evol., for bearings of evolution. Ill., for aesthetic illusion. Judg., for aesthetic judgment. Meth., for method of aesthetics. Norm., for the normative function of aesthetics Pl., for theory of pleasure Play, for Play and aesthetic enjoyment Senses, for aesthetic value of higher senses. Val., for aesthetic value.
AESTIVATION (from Lat. aestivare, to spend the aestas, or summer; the word is sometimes spelled “estivation”), literally “summer residence,” a term used in zoology