Note 2 — ANALYSIS OF HEGEL’S ÆSTHETICS. [Translated from the French of M. Ch. Bénard, by J. A. Martling.] Part II. OF THE GENERAL FORMS OF ART AND ITS HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT.

One cannot but be astonished not to see, in this review of the principal forms of oriental art, Chinese art at least mentioned. The reason is, that, according to Hegel, art—the fine arts, properly speaking—have no existence among the Chinese. The spirit of that people seems to him anti-artistic and prosaic. He thus characterizes Chinese art in his philosophy of history: “This race, in general, has a rare talent for imitation, which is exercised not only in the things of daily life, but also in art. It has not yet arrived at the representation of the beautiful as beautiful. In painting, it lacks perspective and shading. European images, like everything else, it copies well. A Chinese painter knows exactly how many scales there are on the back of a carp, how many notches a leaf has; he knows perfectly the form of trees and the curvature of their branches; but the sublime, the ideal, and the beautiful, do not belong at all to the domain of his art and his ability.”—(Philosophie der Geschichte.)