One of the great intellectual themes of the late eighteenth century is the doctrine of perfectibility. In most cases it took on an evolutionary form, embodying the belief that man and the universe must become steadily more nearly perfect either through the work of natural law or through divine plan. But the period was also haunted by the conviction that time was inexorably moving toward an apocalyptic consummation. By the early nineteenth century the notion of "immanent finality" took precedence over theories of gradual, successive creation.[66]
The unstated foundation for a doctrine of perfectibility is the science that investigates, philosophically and etymologically, the beginnings of things.[67] Vico and Hegel stand at the antipodes both of this thought and of this period. The former finds the meaning of all human endeavor to be hidden at the beginning of the world, whereas the latter discovers it lodged at the end. The Neapolitan jurist is interested in the developmental process of nature; the German philosopher values nature in its perfection, that is, the moment at which each state realizes its authentic finality. [68] Vico shares with Lucretius, Dante, and numerous other later thinkers the belief in man's evolution from chaos to logos. The myth of the forest primeval provides the legendary site where beastlike giants, the degenerate remnants of mankind after the flood, started their evolution toward civilization under the hidden guidance of divine providence. Metaphorically stated, man makes his own world in history and, in the process, creates himself.[69]
Intimately connected with the question of origins was the idea of civilization, which became the main theme of historical investigations during the eighteenth century.[70] By the early nineteenth century a heavy sense of civilization's history dominated the entire mentality of the West.[71] The conviction that one could know the spirit of the age of heroic barbarism or what the world was like ab initio was fostered by those who, like Vico, believed that the cycle of history was imbedded in the human psyche. Each individual, through his personal history, evolves from primitivism to rationalism by progressing from infancy to adulthood. Moreover, vestiges of primitive mentality were still seen to be very much in evidence in savage countries. Thus it was possible to project oneself backwards, to intuit the primitive mode of perception, which assumed a radically different form the further removed one was from the world's beginnings.
Since the more philosophical spirits of the eighteenth century like De Brosses, Dupuis, Boulanger, and Court de Gébelin were constantly reflecting on principles and formulating general theories about the origins of religion, myth, and language,[72] the debate on the inception of art could not lag far behind. It began in earnest in the second half of the century. Travelers explored the ruins of ancient Eastern and other non European civilizations. India's growing reputation as the first nation on earth was largely created by the image of its great antiquity fostered by Niebuhr, Sonnerat, and Anquetil-Duperron.[73] The question haunting many thinkers was one of monogenesis or polygenesis, namely, was it possible for different nations to develop art independently? Herder made Asia the nexus of art's diffusion; Caylus attributed its invention to Egypt.[74] Among such early ethnologists monogenesis was more influential until the late eighteenth century. This view claimed that all societies derived their existence from a single society, usually believed to be Egyptian, Indian, or Hebrew. Antiquarians held that the fine arts were "invented" by the first nation to escape from barbarism.[75] This supposition rested upon the influential eighteenth-century doctrine that evolution invariably proceeded from the simple to the complex. And, of necessity, architecture was the irst art to emerge from the chaos of prehistory since it was closely tied to human needs.[76] A corollary of this thesis, to be developed fully only by Hegel, was the belief that certain arts corresponded to, and attained perfection in, specific historical epochs.
As we shall see,the aesthetic theory of Humbert, like so many eighteenth-century cultural systems, contains implicitly within it the idea that the first manifestation of a thing is what makes it significant or valid.[77] Hence, like his contemporaries, he was profoundly interested in myth-the narration of a sacred history that took place in primordial time, the fabled time of the beginning; or, otherwise put, how, through the deeds of supernatural beings, reality came into existence.[78] Myth also offers a glimmer of the archaic homeland of humanity, the archetypal civilization, the primitive society that is the ultimate source of poetry, religion, art. and law.[79]
A thorough study of how the belief in the primal and autochthonous nature of mythological imagery shaped late-eighteenth-century aesthetics has yet to be made.[80] It will be the task of this study to show how poetic myth became the subject of veneration because, among other things, it permitted one to observe "physiognomic characters," the phenomena of a dramatic world impregnated with affective qualities.[81]
In the succinct view of Cassirer, myth is the expression of an emotion. In the course of this study we shall see Humbert justifying an absolute and infallible system of physiognomics on the axiom that the interpretation of human expression is based on a primordial sensibility clearly visible in primitive myth but progressively more obscure as we move away from the origin of the world. Myth tells us about man's being in the world, about what he holds in common with it.[82] Significantly, it is an irreducible representation of experience, the pure and primitive unit of perception.
During the eighteenth century man's interpretation of the world was said to have evolved through three stages: the mythic, the epic, and the historical. The mythic changes into the epic when man no longer bases his conduct on supernatural beings but on some notion of the "model" man or cult hero. The historic state emerges when man ceases to look at the exemplary past and sets up for himself rational objectives and m eans for th eir attainment. [83] This vis ion of social palingenesis leads Humbert to create certain archetypal monuments epitomizing significant stages in the evolutionary process.
The central role played by myth in the Dutch artist's theory was by no means unusual to the time. William Blake attempted to construct a complete epic poem, using elements from earlier fables, to create a psychological drama in which godlike participants seem to correspond to various human energies.[84] Even recent historic events could be perceived in legendary guise. Joseph Priestley interpreted the French Revolution inchiliastic terms, as the beginning of apocalyptic events prophesied in Revelation. [85] Further, the importance of the appearance of old Nordic and Ossianic motives in art between 1750 and 1850 consists partly in offering new symbols and allegorical material for pictorial images.[86]
In the words of A. W. Schlegel, myth, like language, is a product of the human imagination; it proffers"an archetypal poetry of the human race". [87] Thus, myth s con tain a fund of preration al patterns of thought. As we shall see, like so many thinkers of the period Humbert was convinced that the poetic characters of myth were the basic units of thought, establishing the necessary directions for the subsequent development of human consciousness. Myth tells us how primitive man hewed explicit modes of perception out of the fiux of reality. [88] Thus, each man must re-create and reenact these same thought processes, not only to regain visual innocence but to develop his own consciousness.
What was highly original for the period was that Humbert perceived this task to be one eminently suited to the rectification of the heretofore imprecise systems of physiognomics. He intimates that the interpretation of human expression can become infallible only when man has systematically proceeded back through the cycle of the evolution of human consciousness to arrive at its earliest stage. At that level the investigator must re-create the thought processes, the very sensibilité of men whose nonverbal, prelogical language represented the natural and spontaneous affective response to the problem of existence. Of further interest is his Kantian belief that nature is nothing but the proc es s of nam in g or interpreting the external world through metaphor. [89] If the artist does not imitate reality but evokes it from his own consciousness, physiognomics must explore the very nature of primitive perception because, although now overlaid with social veneer, it still holds the promise for the detection of unconditional signs that constitute the universal expressive language of art.
In sum, Humbert's system may be perceived within the larger context of Romanticism. He, like all the Romantics, faced the central need to find the significant relationship between the objective and subjective worlds. [90][next chapter: Exposition of the Essai sur les signes inconditionels dans l'art, The aesthetic signs]
