eds produce under this title something
more than mere fantastic reflections upon works of art, or more or less
attractive stories about their authors and the circumstances in which
they lived. It will not be so amusing, but assuredly it will be more
profitable, and that is all for which I aspire.

Art, then, is an act whose semeiotics characterizes the forms produced
by the action of powers, which action is determined by aesthetics, and
the causes of which are sought out by ontology.

/ Ontology examines the constituent virtues of the being.
|
Art. < AEsthetics examines its powers.
|
\ Semeiotics characterizes its forces.

/ Inherent form of sentiments . . . . . . AEsthetics.
|
Art. < Metaphysical form of the principles . . Ontology.
|
\ Organic form of signs . . . . . . . . . Semeiotics.

The object of art, therefore, is to reproduce, by the action of a
superior principle (ontology), the organic signs explained by
semeiotics, and whose fitness is estimated by aesthetics.

Semeiotics is the science of the organic signs by which aesthetics must
study inherent fitness.

AEsthetics is the science of the sensitive and passional manifestations
which are the object of art, and whose psychic form it constitutes.

If semeiotics does not tell us the passion which the sign reveals, how
can aesthetics indicate to us the sign which it should apply to the
passion that it studies? In a word, how shall the artist translate the
passion which he is called upon to express?

AEsthetics determines the inherent forms of sentiment in view of the
effects whose truth of relation it estimates.

Semeiotics studies organic forms in view of the sentiment which produces
them.

It is thus that _wisdom_ and _reason_ proceed in inverse sense from the
principle to the knowledge which is the object of both. Wisdom, in fact,
studies the principle in its consequences, while reason studies the
consequences in the principle, hence it comes that wisdom and reason are
often at war with each other; hence also the obscurity which generally
prevails as to the distinction between them. Let us say that _wisdom_
and _reason_ are to intelligence what aesthetics and semeiotics are to
art. Let us add to this parallel that _wisdom_ and _reason_ are to
intelligence what aesthetics and semeiotics are to ontology; that is:--

1. If, from a certain organic form, I infe