Aesthetics; Dreams; Association of Ideas (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book Aesthetics; Dreams; Association of Ideas (Classic Reprint) written by James Sully and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Aesthetics; Dreams; Association of Ideas Omitting to notice the few valuable remarks on atsthetic subjects of the later Greeks and their Roman con temporaries, one may brie y refer to the views of the Alexandrian mys tic and neo-platonist Plotinus, not only because of their intrinsic inter est, but on account of their resem blance to certain modern systems. His theory is to be found in an essay on the Beautiful in the series of dis courses called Emcadcs. His philos ophy differs from the Platonic in the recognition of an objective mix, the direct emanation from the absolute Good, in which the ideas or notions (mm), which are the prototypes of real things, are immanent. This Reason, as self-moving, becomes the formative influence reducing matter, which in itself is dead, to form. Matter thus formed becomes a notion (mpg), and this form is beauty. Ob jects are ugly so far as they are un acted upon by Reason, and so remain formless. The creative vm't: is abso lute Beauty, and is called the more than beautiful There are three degrees or stages of the Beautiful in manifestation, namely, the beauty of subjective wig, or hu man reason, which is the highest; that of the human soul, which is less perfect through the connection of the soul with a material body; and that of real objects, which is the lowest manifestation of all. As to the char acteristic form of beauty, he sup posed, in opposition to Aristotle, that a single thing not divisible into parts might be beautiful through its unity and simplicity. He attached special worth to the beauty of colors in which material darkness is overpowered by light and warmth. In reference to artistic beauty, he said that when the artist has low as models for his crea tions, these may become more beauti ful than natural objects. This is a very curious divergence of opinion from the Platonic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."