We cannot collect any other germ of truth from the ancient writers. A philosophical Grammar, like a philosophical Poetics, remained unattainable in antiquity.
[1] See above, pp. 128-131. Quotations which give only the name of the author, or are otherwise abbreviated, refer to historical or critical works of which the complete title is given in the Bibliographical Appendix.
[2] Rosmini, _Nuovo saggio sull' origine delle idee,_ sections iii. and iv., where theories of knowledge are classified.
[7] Plutarch, _De audiendis poetis_, ch. i.
[10] Plato, _Laws,_ bk. ii.; Aristotle, _Poet._ ch. 14; _Polit,_ bk. viii.
[11] Strabo, _Geographica,_ i. ch. 2, §§ 3-9.
[12] Texts collected in E. Müller, _Gesch. d. Th. d. K._ i. pp. 57-85.
[13] Plutarch, _De aud. poetis,_ chs. 1-4, 14.
[40] Gorgias in _De Xenoph., Zen. et Gorg._ (in Aristot., ed. Didot), chs. 5-6.
[45] Steinthal, _Gesch. d. Sprachw.,_ 2nd ed., i. pp. 288, 293, 296-297.
ÆSTHETIC IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE
[Sidenote: _Middle Ages, Mysticism, Ideas on the beautiful._]
Almost all the developments of ancient Æsthetic were continued by tradition or reappeared by spontaneous generation in the course of the Middle Ages. Neo-Platonic mysticism continued, entrusted to the care of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (_De cœlesti hierarchia, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, De divinis nominibus,_ etc.), to the translations of these works made by John Scotus Eriugena, and to the divulgations of the Spanish Jews (Avicebron). The Christian God took the place of the Summum Bonum or Idea: God, wisdom, goodness, supreme beauty, source of beautiful things in nature, which are a ladder to the contemplation of the Creator. But these speculations continued to recede further and further from the consideration of art, with which Plotinus had connected them; and the empty definitions of the beautiful by Cicero and other ancient writers were often repeated. Saint Augustine defined beauty in general as unity (_omnis pulchritudinis forma unitas est,_) and that of the body as _congruentia partium cum quadam colons suavitate,_ and the old distinction between something that is beautiful in itself and relative beauty reappeared in a book of his, which has been lost, entitled _De pulchro et apto;_ the very name shows that he reasserted the old distinction between the beautiful in itself and the relatively beautiful, _quoniam apte accommodaretur alicui._ Elsewhere he notes that an image is called beautiful _si perfecte implei illud cujus imago est, et coaequatur ei._[1]