Historical criticism in literature and art: its importance--Literary and artistic history: its distinction from historical criticism and from the æsthetic judgement--The method of artistic and literary history--Criticism of the problem of the origin of art--The criterion of progress and history--Non-existence of a single line of progress in artistic and literary history--Errors committed against this law-- Other meanings of the word "progress" in relation to Æsthetic
CONCLUSION: IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND ÆSTHETIC
Summary of the study--Identity of Linguistic with Æsthetic--Æsthetic formulation of linguistic problems--Nature of language--Origin of language and its development--Relation between Grammar and Logic--Grammatical kinds or parts of speech--The individuality of speech and the classification of languages--Impossibility of a normative Grammar--Didactic organisms--Elementary linguistic facts, or roots--Æsthetic judgement and the model language--Conclusion
Point of view of this History of Æsthetic--Mistaken tendencies, and attempts towards an Æsthetic, in Græco-Roman antiquity--Origin of the æsthetic problem in Greece--Plato's rigoristic negation--Æsthetic hedonism and moralism--Mystical æsthetic in antiquity--Investigations as to the Beautiful--Distinction between the theory of Art and the theory of the Beautiful--Fusion of the two by Plotinus--The scientific tendency: Aristotle--The concepts of imitation and of imagination after Aristotle: Philostratus--Speculations on language
ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE
Middle Ages. Mysticism: Ideas on the Beautiful--The pedagogic theory of art in the Middle Ages--Hints of an Æsthetic in scholastic philosophy--Renaissance: Philography and philosophical and empirical inquiries concerning the Beautiful--The pedagogic theory of art and the Poetics of Aristotle--The "Poetics of the Renaissance"--Dispute concerning the universal and the probable in art--G. Fracastoro--L. Castelvetro--Piccolomini and Pinciano--Fr. Patrizzi (Patricius)
FERMENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
New words and new observations in the seventeenth century--Wit--Taste--Various meanings of the word taste--Fancy or imagination--Feeling--Tendency to unite these terms--Difficulties and contradictions in their definition--Wit and intellect--Taste and intellectual judgement--The "_je ne sais quoi_"--Imagination and sensationalism: the corrective of imagination--Feeling and sensationalism