Methods of research in aesthetics.
So far as to the preliminary delimiting work in aesthetic science. Only a bare indication can be made as to the methods of research by which its advance can be furthered, and as to the several directions of inquiry which it will have to follow. With regard to the former the method of investigation will consist in a careful inquiry into two orders of fact: (1) Objects which common testimony or the history of art show to be widely recognized objects of aesthetic value; (2) records of the aesthetic experience of individuals, whether artists or amateurs.
Examination of aesthetic objects.
Since aesthetic experience is brought about and its modes determined by objects possessing certain qualities, it seems evident that scientific aesthetics must make an examination and comparison of these a fundamental part of its problem. These objects will, as already hinted, include both natural ones in the inorganic and organic worlds, and works of art which can be shown to be objects of general or widely recognized aesthetic value.
Nature as supplying aesthetic objects.
Without attempting here to discuss adequately the relation of natural beauty to that of art we may note one or two points. Some contemplation and appreciation of the beautiful aspects of nature is not only prior in time to art, but is a condition of its genesis. The enjoyment of the pleasing aspects of land and sea, of mountain and dale, of the innumerable organic forms, has steadily grown with the development of culture; and this growth, though undoubtedly aided by that of the feeling for art—-especially painting and poetry—-is to a large extent independent of it.12 Some of the finest insight into the secrets of beauty has been gained by those who had only a limited acquaintance with art. What is still more important in the present connexion is that the aesthetic experience gained by the direct contemplation of nature includes varieties which art cannot reproduce. It is enough to recall what Helmholtz and others have told us about the limitations of the powers of pictorial art to represent the more brilliant degrees of light; the admissions of painters themselves as to the limits of their art when it seeks to render the finer gradations of light and colour in such common objects as a tree-trunk or a bit of old wall. Nature, moreover, in spreading out her spaces of earth, sea and sky, and in exhibiting the action of her forces, does so on a scale which seems to make sublimity her prerogative in which art vainly endeavours to participate.
Use of works of art by the theorist.
On the other hand, it is coming to be seen that the construction of a theory of aesthetic values must be assisted by a much more precise examination than aestheticists are commonly content to make, of works of art. The importance of including these is that they are well-defined objective expressions of what the aesthetic consciousness approves and prefers. In inquiring, for example, into the pleasing relations of colour we might have to wait long for a theory if we were dependent on what even so gifted a writer as Ruskin can tell us about nature's juxtapositions: whereas if it can be shown that throughout the history of chromatic art or during its better period there has been a tendency to prefer certain combinations, this fact becomes a piece of convincing evidence as to their aesthetic value.
Difficulties in using works of art as material.
Even here, however, there are sources of uncertainty. It is not true to say that a work of art is a pure outcome of the aesthetic feeling of the artist. even if we take this in a comprehensive sense. It is subject to the influence of all the temporary feelings and tendencies of the time which produced it. The aesthetic motive which is supposed to originate it is apt to be complicated and disguised by other motives, e.g. utility in architecture,13 an impulse to instruct if not to reform in modern fiction.
Effects of custom on artistic preference.
Again, if it is said that a certain degree of permanence assures us of the aesthetic value of a feature of art, we are met by the difficulty that custom plays an important part in art, the result of convention fixed by tradition often simulating the aspect of a deep-seated aesthetic preference. In this connexion it is to be remarked that even so permanent an element as symmetry may owe its quasiaesthetic value to custom, by which is understood its wide and impressive display in the organic and even the inorganic world.14 Yet the influence of custom taken in this larger sense need not greatly disturb us. In aesthetics, as in ethics, the question of validity has to be kept distinct from that of origin. If symmetry (in general) is appreciated as aesthetically pleasing, the question of its genesis becomes immaterial. Another difficulty, not peculiar to aesthetic investigation, is that of reconstructing the modes of aesthetic consciousness represented by forms of art which differ widely from those of our own age and type of culture.
Value of primitive art for aesthetics.
In utilizing art material for aesthetic theory the theorist will need to note the work recently done by English and German writers on primitive art. And this not merely because of the value of the early forms of art for a theory of the evolution of the aesthetic consciousness; but because the embryonic stages of art are likely to have a peculiar interest as illustrating in a comparatively isolated form some of the simpler modes of aesthetic appreciation, e.g. in the grouping of colours, in the mode of covering a surface with linear ornament. Yet it is not necessary to give primitive art a considerable place in a general aesthetics. As a normative science, it is to be remembered, this is much more immediately concerned with the higher stages of aesthetic culture. In seeking to establish norms or regulative principles, we must, it is evident, make a special study of objects of art which belong to our own level of culture. For these reasons it would appear necessary to include in a general aesthetic theory some reference to the evolution of art and of the aesthetic consciousness.
Evolution as criterion of aesthetic height.
A further reason for including it is that the evolution of art supplies a most valuable auxiliary criterion of degree or height of aesthetic value. Provided that we distinguish what is a real process of evolution from one of mere change of fashion in taste, and that we confine ourselves to the larger features of the process, we may make the principle of evolution a serviceable one by regarding those forms and features of art as higher in respect of aesthetic value which grow distinct and relatively fixed in the later and better stages of the evolution of art.15
Exact measurement of characteristics of art-work.
This part of aesthetic investigation should be made as exact as possible.Thus in dealing with the triads of colour said to be most frequently employed in the best period of Italian painting the observer should note and record as far as this is possible not only the precise tints, but also the precise degrees of their several luminosities. With regard to elements of form in art, the judicious use of photography and careful measurement would probably help us to understand the practices of art in its better periods. This examination of art material by the aesthetic theorist should be supplemented by a study of what artists have written about their methods, of the rules laid down for students of art, and lastly of the generalizations reached by the more scientific kind of writer upon art.16
Aesthetic inductions.
A proper methodical inquiry into aesthetic objects aided by a knowledge of the practices of art would lead to inductions of such characteristics are aesthetically valuable.''17
Germs of aesthetic preference in children, etc.
This preliminary work of aesthetic science in collecting and analysing facts may be extended in two directions: by an examination (a) of the earlier and simpler forms of aesthetic experience, and (b) of the fuller and more complex experiences of those specially trained in the perception and enjoyment of beauty. (a) The former would be illustrated by a more methodical investigation into the rudimentary aesthetic likings of children and of the lower races. Such inquiries may be expected to add to our knowledge of the simpler and more universal forms of aesthetic enjoyment. Some attention has been paid by Darwin and others to germs of taste in birds and other animals. Yet this line of inquiry, though of some value for a theory of the evolution of taste, seems to throw but little light on aesthetic preferences as found in man.18
Aesthetic experiment.
An important feature in this new investigation into simpler modes of aesthetic preference is that it proceeds by way of experiment, that is to say, a methodical testing of the aesthetic preferences of a number of individuals. Fechner introduced the method of experiment into aesthetics in his researches on the preferability (according to Zeising) of the proportion known as the ``golden section.''19 Since his time other experimental inquiries have been made, both as to what forms (e.g. what variety of rectangle) and what combinations of colours are most pleasing. The results of these experiments are distinctly promising, though they have not yet been carried far enough to be made the basis of perfectly trustworthy generalizations.20
Experience and judgments of experts.
A valuable portion of the data for a science of aesthetics lies in the recorded experiences of artists, art critics, and others who have specially developed their tastes; This source of information has certainly never been made use of in a complete and methodical manner by theorists, a quotation now and again from writers like Goethe and Ruskin having been deemed sufficient. Yet it is safe to say that an adequate understanding of the finer effects of beauty, both in nature and in art, presupposes the assimilation of what is best in these records. And this not only because they commonly supply us with new and valuable varieties of experience of the more refined kind, but because the aesthetic judgments on nature and art of men in whom the feeling of beauty has been specially cultivated have a greater value than those of others.21 It may be added that these records are wont to contain reflexions which, though wanting in scientific precision, can be utilized by science.
Psychological analysis of material.
We now come to the work of scientific construction proper. The finer analysis of the objects which please aesthetically as well as of the agreeable type of consciousness to which they minister belongs to the psychologist, and it is noteworthy that the best recent contributions to the science have been made by men who were either known as psychologists or at least had trained themselves in psychological analysis. A word or two must suffice to indicate the more important directions of the theoretic interpretation. We may in illustrating this set out from the convenient triple division of the factors in aesthetic experience: (A) the sensuous, (B) the perceptual or formal, (C) the imaginative, including all that is suggested by the aesthetic presentation, its meaning and expressiveness.
The sensuous factor. Physiological aesthetics.
(A) In dealing with the sensuous factor the psychologist is materially aided by the physiologist. It is sufficient to point to the contribution made to the analysis of musical sensations by the classical researches of Helmholtz (see below). Yet the application of a knowledge of physiological conditions seems as yet to be of little service when we come to the finer aspects of this sensuous experience, to the subtle effects of colour combination, for example, and to the nuances of feeling-tone attaching to different tints. In the finer analysis of the sensuous material of aesthetic enjoyment it is the psychologist who counts.22
Psychological problems.
Among the valuable contributions recently made in this domain one may instance the careful determination of the aesthetically important characteristics of the sensations of sight and hearing, such as the finely graduated variety of their qualities (colour and tone), their capability of entering into combinations in which they preserve their individuality, including the important combinations of time and space form. With these are to be included the distinguishing characteristics of the concomitant feeling-tones, e.g. their comparative calmness and their clear separation from the sensations which they accompany. These characteristics help us to understand the greater refinement of these senses and also the more prolonged as well as varying enjoyment which they contribute, as well as the extension of this enjoyment by imaginative reproduction.23 Next to this determination of important aesthetic characteristics of the two senses may be named a finer probing of the nuances of pleasurable tone exhibited by the several colours and tones. A point still needing special investigation is extent of the sensuous factor in aesthetic enjoyment. There has been a tendency in aesthetic theory to over-intellectualize aesthetic experience and to find the value even of the sensuous factor in some intellectual principle, as when it is said (by Plato and Hegel among others) that a smooth or level tone and a uniform mass of colour owe their value to the principle of unity. But such prolongation (within obvious limits) in time or space is a condition of the full enjoyment of the distinctive quality of an individual tone or colour, and as such has a sensuous value. Aesthetics has to prove the sensuous value, the pleasure which is due not only to the feeling-tones of the several sensations but to those of their variods combinations. Spite of a tendency of late to disparage the co-operation of the ``motor sensations'' connected with movements of the eye in the aesthetic appreciation of linear form, e.g. curves, evidence suggests that certain curves, like fine gradations of colour, may owe a considerable part of their value to a mode of varying the sensuous experience which is in a peculiar manner agreeable. On the other hand, this theoretic investigation of sense-material will need to determine with care the added value due to the action of experience in giving something of meaning to particular colours and tones and their combinations, e.g. warmth of colour, height of tone.
The perceptual factor.
(B) Under the scientific treatment of the perceptual or formal factor in aesthetic experience we have many special problems, of which only a few can be touched on here. Taking this factor to include all combinations of elements in which there is a more or less distinct perception of pleasing relations, we meet here with such work as that of C. Stumpf (Ton-psychologie) in determining the way in which tones combine and tend to fuse. Later experiments have added to our knowledge of the obscure subject of colour harmony, enabhng us to distinguish pleasing contrasts of colour from the more restful combinations of nearly allied tints. Our knowledge of pleasing form in the narrower sense, that is to say, space and time form, has been advanced by a number of recent inquiries. The value of symmetry, the meaning of proportion and the aesthetic value to be set on certain proportions, the forms of these are some of the points dealt with in more central and in special works24. In the case of forms, still more than in that of sensuous elements, it is needful to determine the extent to which the value of the formal aspect is modified by experience and the acquisition of meaning. This is pretty certainly the source of the aesthetic value claimed for certain proportions, whether in the human figure or other organic forms or in the freer constructions of form in art.25 Another problem is to determine the influence of the feeling-tones of the combining elements on the pleasing character of the whole. It is probable that a particular combination of colours owes something of its pleasure value to a harmony of the feeling-tones of the elements. This is pretty certainly the case where the feeling-tones of the elements are closely akin, as in the case of a number of low tones of colours, or of architectural or other forms where one formal element—say, a vertical line, a rectangle of a certain proportion or a particular variety of arch—repeats itself and becomes a dominating feature of the whole.
The imaginative factor.
(C) The imaginative factor—-which corresponds with what Fechner calls the ``indirect''—-includes all that imaginative activity adds to our enjoyment when we contemplate an aesthetic object. It may consist first of all in recalling concrete experiences firmly associated with the object, as when the sight of wild-flowers in a London street calls up an image of fields and lanes. In order that these images may add to the aesthetic value of the object they must correspond to our common associations, as distinguished from accidental individual ones. A large increase of aesthetic enjoyment comes to us through such suggested images. Although in general it is images of concrete objects which are called up, ideas of a more abstract character may take part though they tend in this case to assume a concrete aspect. This is illustrated in the appreciation of ``typical beauty'' in which a concrete form represents in an exceptional way the common form of a species, and in that of symbolic representation. An important part of this work of association is to render objects expressive of mental states, as when we read off the particular shade of feeling expressed by a natural scene.26
Freer play of imagination.
In the poetic contemplation of nature, her forces, her gladness and other moods, this imaginative activity, though still deriving leading to an investment of natural objects with a new and more fanciful meaning, as when we ``apperceive'' a willow drooping over a pond or the front of an old cottage under a quasi-human form, endowing it with something akin to our own feelings and memories. What, it may be asked, is the whole range of this freer play of a life-giving fancy in our aesthetic enjoyment? Some recent theorists have attempted to answer this question by saying that it constitutes a vital element in all aesthetic contemplation. Th. Lipps and others who follow him seek to show that this vitalizing activity of the fancy, which produces a new and illusory object, is the essential ingredient in the aesthetic enjoyment of the forms of material objects. According to this theory, when in the aesthetic mood I enjoy the form of a tree, of a church steeple or of the front of a Greek temple, I am not only ascribing life and feeling to it, but am projecting myself in fancy into the object thus constructed, feeling for the moment that I am the tree or the steeple. The process of vivification is carried out as follows. Lines represent certain movements, and in the aesthetic mood we translate all lines and so all forms back into the corresponding movements, which may be merely imagined (as Lipps himself thinks, or may be realized in part by sensuous elements, viz. motor sensations; which again may be regarded either as concomitants of eye movements, or as arising from an organically connected impulse to move the hand along the lines followed by the eye.27 Thus the columns of a temple represent upward movement, and are apperceived as striving upwards so as to resist the downward pressure of the entablature. Since movements are the great means of expression in man, this imaginative reading of movement into motionless and even massive and stable forms enables us to endow them with quasi-human feelings. In looking, for example, at the weighty masses of a building we enter sympathetically into the successful strivings of the supporting structures to resist the downward thrust of gravity in the supported masses. The theory here briefly indicated28 is interesting as illustrating an attempt from the psychological side to find a scientific support for philosophic idealism or expressionalism. It is already beginning to be recognized in Germany as an exaggeration. It may be enough to say that as applied to forms generally, including those of sculpture and architecture, the theory is opposed by our ordinary way of speaking, which implies quite another point of view in the aesthetic contemplation of form, namely, that of a spectator external to the object contemplated. When our eye glides over the beauties of a statue, our imaginative activity so far from transporting us within the object carries us as tactual feelers outside the surface. Similarly, when we delight in the divided spaces of a Gothic roof, so far from being imaginatively engaged in taking part in the efforts and strains of pillar, arch and the rest, we move in fancy along the pathways defined by the designer, tactually feeling and appreciating each dimension, each detail of form. The attempt to force a theory fitted for poetry on sculpture and architecture would rob these of their distinctive aesthetic values; in the one case, of the plastic beauty of finely moulded marble surfaces as realized by imaginative excursions of the hand; and in the other case, of the perfect stillness and stability which give to great structures their solemn and quieting aspect.29
Aesthetic Illusion.
The theory of a vitalizing play of imagination (Einfuhlung) running through all modes of aesthetic contemplation is an exaggeration of the element of illusion which certainly characterizes this contemplation. As suggested above, by blotting out for the moment the perception of all save that which pleases it substitutes a new for the more solid reality of our practical mood. Moreover, as a state of perceptual absorption in which one loses consciousness of the ordinary self and its world, it has a certain resemblance to the state of ecstasy and of the hypnotic trance.30 It is favourable to the play-like indulgence in a fanciful transformation of what is seen or heard, which may be described as a ``willing self-deception,'' more or less complete. Yet as we have seen, something of the real everyday world survives even in our freer aesthetic contemplation of form. Hence there is much to be said for the idea that we have in aesthetic illusion to do with a kind of double consciousness, a tendency to an illusory acceptance of the product of our fancy as the reality, restrained by a subconscious recognition of the everyday tangible reality behind.31
Variations of imaginative activity.
It is evident that both in the more confined and in the freer form the element of imaginative activity in aesthetic experience will vary greatly among individuals and among peoples. Differences in past experience leading to diverse habits of association, as well as in those natural dispositions which prompt one person to prefer motor images, another visual, another audile, will modify the process in this enjoyable enlargement and transformation of what is presented to sense. It is for aesthetics at once to recognize these variations of imaginative activity and to determine the more common and universal directions which it follows.
Form and expression not absolutely distinct.
The recent inquiry into our way of contemplating form is, in spite of exaggeration, valuable as showing that our distinctions of form and expression are not absolute. Just as there is the rudiment of ideal significance in colour, not so form, even in its more abstract and elementary aspects, is not wholly expressionless, but may be be endowed with something of life by the imagination. The recognition of this truth does not, however, affect the validity of our treating form and expression as two broadly distinguishable factors of aesthetic pleasure. A line may be pleasing to sense-perception, and in addition illustrate expressional value by suggested ease of movement or pose. Similarly, a concrete form, e.g. that of a sculptured human figure in repose, or of a graceful birch or fern, owes its aesthetic value to a happy combination of pleasing lines and of interesting ideas.
Aesthetic emotion.
In close connexion with the determination of the imaginative factor in aesthetic contemplation, the psychologist is called on to define the soecial characteristics of aesthetic emotion. That our attitude when we watch a beautiful object, say the curl of a breaker as it falls, or some choice piece of sculpture, is an emotional one is certain, and ingenious attempts have been made by Home (Lord Kames) and others to equip the emotion with a full accompaniment of corporeal activity, such as heightened respiratory activity.32 Yet aesthetic emotion is to be contrasted with the more violent and passionate state of love and other emotions, and this difference calls for further investigation. A closer inquiry into the features of that calm yet intense emotion which a rapt state of aesthetic contemplation induces is a necessary preliminary to a scientific demarcation of the sphere of beauty in the narrow or more exclusive sense, from that of the sublime, the tragic and the comic. Each of these departments of aesthetic experience has well-marked emotional characteristics; and the definition of these ``modifications of the beautiful'' has in the main been reached through an analysis of the emotional states involved. This chapter in the psychological treatment of aesthetic experience has to consider two points which have occupied a prominent place in aesthetic theory. The first is the nature of ``revived'' or ``ideal'' emotion, such as is illustrated in the feeling excited sympathetically when we witness or hear of another's sorrow or joy. The second point is the nature of those mixed emotional states which are illustrated in our aesthetic enjoyment of the sublime and the other ``modifications,'' in all of which we can recognize a kind of double emotional consciousness in which painful elements accompany and modify pleasurable ones, in such a manner that in the end the latter appear to be rather strengthened than weakened.33
Limits of analysis in aesthetics.
The psychological treatment of aesthetic data here sketched out cannot stop at an analysis of the aesthetic state or attitude into a number of recoenizable elements each of which contributes its own quantum of pleasurableness. Our enjoyment in contemplating, say, a green alp set above dark crags, is an indivisible whole. And it is a consciousness of this fact which makes men disposed to resent the dissection of their aesthetic enjoyment into a number of constituent pleasures. Nor is this all. Every aesthetic object is something unique, differing in individual characteristics from all others; and as the object, so the mood of the contemplator. One may almost say that there are as many modes of musical delight as there are worthy compositions. It would seem either that this feeling of a unique indivisible whole must be dismissed as an illusion, or that we have to admit an unexplained residue in our aesthetic experience, which may some day be explained by help of a larger and more exact conception of aesthetic harmony, of the laws of interaction and of fusion of psychical elements.34
Construction of aesthetic norms.
We may now glance at the ideal purpose of this scientific analysis and interpretation, namely, the construction of norms or regulative principles corresponding to the severally essential elements of aesthetic value ascertained. The later psychological treatment of the subject has led up to the formulation of certain ideal requirements in beautiful objects. The work of Fechner in this direction (Vorschule der Asthetik) was a noteworthy contribution to this kind of construction, at once scientific and directed to the construction of ideal demands, and is still a model for workers in the same field. He has taught us how the attempt to formulate one all-comprehensive principle—e.g. unity in variety, has led to a barren abstractedness, and that we need in its place a number of more concrete principles. In formulating these principles care must be taken to determine their respective scopes and their mutual relations—-to decide, for example, whether expression, to which our modern feeling undoubtedly ascribes a high value, is a universal demand in the same sense as unity or harmony of parts is admitted to be. A system of norms must further supply some comprehensive criterion by help of which degrees of aesthetic value may be determined, as determined by the degrees of completeness of the several pleasurable activities, —sensuous, perceptual and imaginative,—and justify the form of judgment ``this object is more beautiful (or of a higher kind of beauty) than that.'' Such regulative principles and standards of comparison will, it is clear, fail us just at the point where analysis stops. Edmund Gurney urges that an aesthetic principle such as unity in variety is complied with equally well by musical compositions which are commonplace and leave us cold and by those which evoke the full thrill of aesthetic delight, and he concludes that the special beauty of form in the latter instance is appreciated by a kind of intuition which cannot be analysed (see The Power of sound, ix.). The argument is hard to combat. It would seem that after all our efforts to define aesthetic qualities and enumerate corresponding ideal requirements we are left with an unexplained remainder. This can only be tentatively defined as the concrete object itself in its wholeness, which is not only a perfectly harmonized combination of sensuous, formal and expressional values, but impresses us as something which has a fresh individuality and the distinction of aesthetic excellence.
Connexion between aesthetic and other experience: (a) with intellectual interests.
Aesthetics is wont to treat of a certain kind of experience as if it were a closed compartment. Yet there is in reality no such perfect seclusion. Our enjoyment of beauty, though to be distinguished from our intellectual and our practical interests, touches and interacts with these. With regard to intellectual interests it is clear that much of the mental activity which enters into our aesthetic enjoyment is intellectual—e.g. in the perception of the relations of form. even though it stood short of the abstract analysis of scientific observation. Again, in appreciating beauty of type which involves according to Taine a recognition of the most important characters of the species, we are, it is evident, close to the scientific point of view. Similarly, when scientific knowledge enables us in the mood of aesthetic contemplation to retrace imaginatively the mode of formation of a cloud or a mountain form, or the mode in which a climbing plant finds its way upwards. It is for aesthetics to recognize the fact, and to discriminate a legitimate aesthetic function of scientific ideas when they enlarge the scope of a pleasurable play of the imagination, and are freed from the control of a serious purpose of explaining what is seen.
(b) with practical interests.
A similar remark applies to the contacts of our aesthetic with our practical interests. While as dominant factors the latter influence our feeling for beauty in an indirect and subordinate way. This is recognized by those (e.g. Home) who insist on a particular kind of aesthetic value under the name of relative beauty, or the pleasing aspect of fitness for a purpose. If a drinking-vessel please in part because of its perfect adaptation to its purpose, the aesthetic value ascribed to it seems to derive something from a feeling of respect for utility itself. In another way beauty reasserts in modern aesthetics that kinship with utility on which it insisted in the days of Socrates. The idea that typical beauty coincides with what is vigorous and conducive to the conservation of the species is as old as Hobbes.35
Biological treatment of beauty.
Darwin and his followers have developed the biological conception that sexual selection tends to develop aesthetic preferences along lines which correspond to what subserves the maintenance of the species or tribe. Recent writers have shown how the rude germs of aesthetic activity in primitive types of community would subserve necessary tribal ends—e.g. musical rhythm by exercising members of the tribe in concerted war-like action.36 Yet these interesting speculations have to do rather with the earlier stages of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty than with its functions in the higher stages.
Aesthetics and ethics.
An idea of a social utility in aesthetic experience which does demand the attention of the theorist is that the culture of beauty and art has a socializing influence, helping to give to our emotional experience new forms of expression whereby our sympathies are deepened and enlarged.37 The further elucidation of this element of humanizing influence in aesthetic enjoyment may be expected to throw new light on the question, much discussed throughout the history of aesthetics, of the relation of the science to ethics, by showing that they have a common root in our sympathetic nature and interest in humanity.
Aesthetic theory and problems of art.
In order to complete the outline of aesthetic theory we need to glance at the relation of general aesthetics to the special problems of Fine Art. It is evident that the definition of the aims and methods of art, both as a whole and in its several forms, involving as it does special technical knowledge, may with advantage be treated apart from a general theory. (See FINE ARTS.) At the same time the study of art raises larger problems which require to be dealt with to some extent by this theory. We may instance the group of problems which have to do with the relation of art to ``beauty'' in its narrower sense, such as the function of the painful and of the ugly in art, the meaning of artistic imitation and truth to nature, of idealization, and the nature of artistic illusion; also the question of the didactic and of the moral function of art. Even more special problems of art, such as the effect of the tragic, the nature of musical expression, can only be adequately treated in the light of a general aesthetic theory.
In conclusion, it may be pointed out that the psychological theorist has of late been busy in an outlying region of art-lore, inquiring into the nature of the artistic impulse and temperament, and into the processes of imaginative creation. These inquiries have been carried out to some extent in connexion with studies of the origin of art, and of the relation of art to the social environment. Their importance for aesthetics lies in the circumstance that they are fitted to throw light upon the aesthetic consciousness as it is developed in those who are not only in a special sense cultivators of it, but represent in a peculiar manner the ideas and the aims of art.38
HISTORY OF THEORIES In the following summary of the most important contributions to aesthetic doctrine, only such writings will be recognized as contribute to a general conception of aesthetic objects or experience. These include the more systematic treatment of the subject in philosophic works as well as the more thoughtful kind of discussion of principles to be met with in writings on art by critics and others.
Greek Speculations.—-Ancient Greece supolies us with the first important contributions to aesthetic theory, though these are scarcely, in quality or in quantity, what one might nave expected from a people which had so high an appreciation of beauty and so strong a bent for philosophic speculation. The first Greek thinker of whose views on the subject we really know something is Socrates. We learn from Xenophon's account of him that he regarded the beautiful as coincident with the good, and both of them are resolvable into the useful. Every beautiful object is so called because it serves came rational end, whether the security or the gratification of man. Socrates appears to have attached little importance to the immediate gratification which a beauriful object affords to perception and contemplation, but to have emphasized rather its power of furthering the more necessary ends of life. The really valuable point in his doctrine is the relativity of beauty. Unlike Plato, he recognized no self-beauty (auto to kalon) existing absolutely and out of all relation to a percipient mind.
Plato.
Of the views of Plato on the subject, it is hardly less difficult to gain a clear conception from the Dialogues, than it is in the case of ethical good. In some of these, various definitions of the beautiful are rejected as inadequate by the Platonic Socrates. At the same time we may conclude that Plato's mind leaned decidedly to the conception of an absolute beauty, which took its place in his scheme of ideas or self-exisiing forms. This true beauty is nothing discoverable as an attribute in another thing, for these nre only beautiful things, not the beautiful itself. Love (Eros) produces aspiration towards this pure idea. Elsewhere the soul's intuition of the self-beautiful is said to be a reminiscence of its prenatal existence. As to the precise forms in which the idea of beauty reveals itself, Plato is not very decided. His theory of an absolute beauty does not easily adjust itself to the notion of its contributing merely a variety of sensuous pleasure, to which he appears to lean in some dialogues. He tends to identify the self-beautiful with the conceptions of the true and the good, and thus there arose the Platonic formula kalokagathia. So far as his writings embody the notion of any common element in beautiful objects, it is proportion, harmony or unity among their parts. He emphasizes unity in its simplest aspect as seen in evenness of line and purity of colour. He recognizes in places the beauty of the mind, and seems to think that the highest beauty of proportion is to be found in the union of a beautiful mind with a beautiful body. He had but a poor opinion of art, regarding it as a trick of imitation (mimesis) which takes us another step farther from the luminous sphere of rational intuition into the shadowy region of the semblances of sense. Accordingly, in his scheme for an ideal republic, he provided for the most inexorable censorship of poets, &c., so as to make art as far as possible an instrument of moral and political training.
Aristotle.
Aristotle proceeded to a more serious investigation of the aesthetic phenomena so as to develop by scientific analysis certain principles of beauty and art. In his treatises on poetry and rhetoric he gives us, along with a theory of these arts, certain general principles of beauty; and scattered among his other writings we find many valuable suggestions on the same subject. He seeks (in the Metaphysics) to distinguish the good and the beautiful by saying that the former is always in action (`en praxei) whereas the latter may exist in motionless things as well (`en akinetois.) At the same time he had as a Greek to allow that though essentially different things the good might under certain conditions be called beautiful. He further distinguished the beautiful from the fit, and in a passage of the Politics set beauty above the useful and necessary. He helped to determine another characteristic of the beautiful, the absence of all lust or desire in the pleasure it bestows. The universal elements of beauty, again, Aristotle finds (in the Metaphysics) to be order (taxis), symmetry and definiteness or determinateness (to orismenon). In the Poetics he adds another essential, namely, a certain magnitude; it being desirable for a synoptic view of the whole that the object should not be too large, while clearness of perception requires that it should not be too small. Aristotle's views on art are an immense advance on those of Plato. He distinctly recognized (in the Politics and elsewhere) that its aim is immediate pleasure, as distinct from utility, which is the end of the mechanical arts. He took a higher view of artistic imitation than Plato, holding that so far from being an unworthy trick, it implied knowledge and discovery, that its objects not only comprised particular things which happen to most, but contemplated what is probable and what necessarily exists. The celebrated passage in the Poetics, where he declares poetry to be more philosophical and serious a matter (spoudaiteron) than philosophy, brings out the advance of Aristotle on his predecessor. He gives us no complete classification of the fine arts, and it is doubtful how far his principles, e.g. his celebrated idea of a purification of the passions by tragedy, are to be taken as applicable to other than the poetic art.
Plotinus.
Of the later Greek and Roman writers the Neo-Platonist Plotinus deserves to be mentioned. According to him, objective reason (nous) as self-moving, becomes the formative influence which reduces dead matter to form. Matter when thus formed becomes a notion (logos), and its form is beauty. Objects are ugly so far as they are unacted upon by reason, and therefore formless. The creative reason is absolute beauty, and is called the more than beautiful. There are three degrees or stages of manifested beauty: that of human reason, which is the highest; of the human soul, which is less perfect through its connexion with a material body; and of real objects, which is the lowest manifestation of all. As to the precise forms of beauty, he supposed, in opposition to Aristotle, that a single thing not divisible into parts might be beautiful through its unity and simplicity. He gives a high place to the beauty of colours in which material darkness is overpowered by light and warmth. In reference to artistic beauty he said that when the artist has notions as models for his creations, these may become more beautiful than natural objects. This is clearly a step away from Plato's doctrine towards our modern conception of artistic idealization.
German writers. (a) Systematic treatises; Baumgarten.
2. German Writers.—-We may pass by the few thoughts on the subject to be found among medieval writers and turn to modern theories, beginning with those of German writers as the most numerous and most elaborately set forth. The best of the Germans who attempted to develop an aesthetic theory as part of a system of philosophy was Baumgarten (Aesthetica) . Adopting the Leibnitz-Wolffian theory of knowledge, he sought to complete it by setting over against the clear scientific or ``logical'' knowledge of the understanding, the confused knowledge of the senses, to which (as we have seen) he gave the name ``aesthetic.'' Beauty with him thus corresponds with perfect sense-knowledge. Baumgarten is clearly an intellectualist in aesthetics, reducing taste to an intellectual act and ignoring the element of feeling. The details of his aesthetics are mostly unimportant. Arguing from Leibnitz's theory of the world as the best possible, Baumgarten concluded that nature is the highest embodiment of beauty, and that art must seek its supreme function in the strictest possible imitation of nature.
Kant.
The next important treatment of aesthetics by a philosopher is that of Kant. He deals with the ``Judgment of Taste'' in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (J. H. Bernard's translation 1892), which treatise supplements the two better-known critiques (vide KANT), and by investigating the conditions of the validity of feeling mediates between then respective subjects, cognition and desire (volition). He takes an imoortant step in denying objective existence to beauty. Aesthetic value for him is fitness to please as object of pure contemplation. This aesthetic satisfaction is more than mere agreeableness, since it must be disinterested and free—that is to say, from all concern about the real existence of the object, and about our dependence on it. He appears to concede a certain formal objectivity to beauty in his doctrine of an appearance of purposiveness (Zweckmassigkeit) in the beautiful object, this being defined as its harmony with the cognative faculties involved in an aesthetic judgment (imagination and understanding); a harmony the consciousness of which underlies our aesthetic pleasure. Yet this part of his doctrine is very imperfectly developed. While beauty thus ceases with Kant to have objective validity and remains valid only for the contemplator, he claims for it universal subjective validity, since the object we pronounce to be beautiful is fitted to please all men. We know that this must be so from reflecting on the disinterestedness of our pleasure, on its entire independence of personal inclination. Kant insists that the aesthetic judgment is always, in logical phrase, an ``individual'' i.e. a singular one, of the form ``This object (e.g. rose) is beautiful.'' He denies that we can reach a valid universal aesthetic judgment of the form ``All objects possessine such and such qualities are beautiful.'' (A judgment of this form would, he considers, be logical, not aesthetic.) in dealing with beauty Kant is thinking of nature, ranking this as a source of aesthetic pleasure high above art, for which he shows something of contempt. He seems to retreat from his doctrine of pure subiectivity when he says that the highest significance of beauty is to symbolize moral good; going further than Ruskin when he attaches ideals of modesty, frankness, courage, &c., to the seven primary colours of Newton's system. He has made a solid contribution to the theory of the sublime, and has put forth a suggestive and a rather inadequate view of the ludicrous. But his main service to aesthetics consists in the preliminary critical determination of its aim and its fundamental problems.
Schelling.
Schelling is the first thinker to attempt a Philosophy of Art. He develops this as the third part of his system of transcendental idealism following theoretic and practical philosophy. (See SCHELLING;—also Schelling's Werke, Bd. v., and J. Watson, Schelling's Transcendental Idealism, ch. vii., Chicago, 1882.) According to Schelling a new philosophical significance is given to art by the doctrine that the identity of subject and object—which is half disguised in ordinary perception and volition—is only clearly seen in artistic perception. The perfect perception of its real self by intelligence in the work of art is accompanied by a feeling of infinite satisfaction. Art in thus effecting a revelation of the absolute seems to attain a dignity not merely above that of nature but above that of philosophy itself. Schelling throws but little light on the concrete forms of beauty. His classification of the arts, based on his antithesis of object and subject, is a curiosity in intricate arrangement. He applies his conception in a suggestive way to classical tragedy.
Hegel.
In Hegel's system of philosophy art is viewed as the first stage of the absolute spirit. (See HEGEL; also Werke, Bd. x., and Bosanquet's Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art.) In this stage the absolute is immediately present to sense-perception, an idea which shows the writer's complete rupture with Kant's doctrine of the ``subjectivity'' of beauty. The beautiful is defined as the ideal showing itself to sense or through a sensuous medium. It is said to have its life in show or semblance (Schein) and so differs from the true, which is not really sensuous, but the universal idea contained in sense for thought. The form of the beautiful is unity of the manifold. The notion (Begriff gives necessity in mutual dependence of parts (unity), while the reality demands the semblance (Schein) of liberty in the parts. He discusses very fully the beauty of nature as immediate unity of notion and reality, and lays great emphasis on the beauty of organic life. But it is in art that, like Schelling, Hegel finds the highest revelation of the beautiful. Art makes up for the deficiencies of natural beauty by bringing the idea into clearer light, by showing the external world in its life and spiritual animation. The several species of art in the ancient and modern worlds depend on the various combinations of matter and form. He classifies the individual arts according to this same principle of the relative supremacy of form and matter, the lowest being architecture, the highest, poetry.
Dialectic of the Hegelians.
Curious developments of the Hegelian conception are to be found in the dialectical treatment of beauty in its relation to the ugly, the sublime, &c., by Hegel's disciples, e.g. C. H. Weisse and J. K. F. Rosenkranz. The most important product of the Hegelian School is the elaborate system of aesthetics published by F. T. Vischer (Esthetik, 3 Theile, 1846—1834). It illustrates the difficulties of the Hegelian thought and terminology; yet in dealing with art it is full of knowledge and highly suggestive.
Schopenhauer.
The aesthetic prbolem is also treated by two other philosophers whose thought set out from certain tendencies in Kant's system, viz. Schopenhauer and Herbart. Schopenhauer (see SCHOPENHAUER, also The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane, esp. vol. i. pp. 219-346), abandoning also Kant's doctrine of the subjectivity of beauty, found in aesthetic contemplation the perfect emancipation of intellect from will. In this contemplation the mind is filled with pure intellectual forms, the ``Platonic Ideas'' as he calls them, which are objectifications of the will at a certain grade of completeness of representation. He exalts the state of artistic contemplation as the one in which, as pure intellect set free from will, the misery of existence is surmounted and something of blissful ecstasy attained. He holds that all things are in some degree beautiful, ugliness being viewed as merely imoerfect manifestation or objectification of will. In this way the beauty of nature, somewhat slighted by Schelling and Hegel, is rehabilitated.
Herbart.
J. F. Herbart (q.v.) struck out another way of escaping from Kant's idea of a purely subjective beauty (Kerbach's edition of Werke, Bd. ii. pp. 339 et seq.; Bd. iv. pp. 105 et seq., and Bd. ix. pp. 92 et seq..) He did, indeed, adopt Kant's view of the aesthetic Judgment as singular (``individual''); though he secures a certain degree of logical universality for it by emphasizing the point that the predicate (beauty) is permanently true of the same aesthetic object. At the same time, by referring the beauty of concrete objects to certain aesthetic relations, he virtually accepted the possibility of universal aesthetic judgments (cf. supra.) Since he thus reduces beauty to abstract relations he is known as a formalist, and the founder of the formalistic school in aesthetics. He sets out with the idea that only relations please—in the Kantian sense of producing pleasure devoid of desire; and his aim is to determine the ``aesthetic elementary relations'', or the simplest relations which produce this pleasure. These include those of will, so that, as he aomits, ethical judgments are in a manner brought under an aesthetic form. His typical example of aesthetic relations of objects of sense-perception is that of harmony between tones. The science of thorough-bass has, he thinks, done for music what should be done also for other departments of aesthetic experience. This doctrine of elementary relations is brought into connexion with the author's psychological doctrine of presentarions with their tendencies to mutual inhibition and to fusion, and of the varying feeling-tones to which these processes give rise. This mode of treating the problem of beauty and aesthetic perception has been greatly developed and worked up into a comrlete system of aesthetics by one of Herbart's disciples, Robert Zimmermann (Asthetik, 1838).
Lessing.
Lessing, in his Laocoon and elsewhere, sought to deduce the special function of an art from a consideration of the means at its disposal. He took pains to define the boundaries of poetry and upon the ends and appliances of art. Among these his distinction between arts which employ the coexistent in space and those which employ the successive (as poetry and music) is of lasting value. In his dramatic criticisms he similarly endeavoured to develop clear general principles on such points as poetic truth, improving upon Aristotle, on whose teachina he mainly relies.
Goethe. Schiller.
Goethe wrote several tracts on aesthetic topics, as well as many aphorisms. He attempted to mediate between the claims of ideal beauty, as taught by J. J. Winckelmann, and the aims of dualization. Schiller (q.v.) discusses, in a number of disconnected essays and letters some of the main questions in the philosophy of art. He looks at art from the side of culture and the forces of human nature, and finds in an aesthetically cultivated soul the reconciliation of the sensual and rational. His letters on aesthetic education (Uber die asthetische Erzichung des Menschen, trans. by J. Weiss, Boston, 1845) are valuable, bringing out among other points the connexion between aesthetic activity and the universal impulse to play (Spieltrieb.) Schiller's thoughts on aesthetic subjects are pervaded with the spirit of Kant's philosophy.
Jean Paul.
Another example of this kind of reflective discussion of art by literary men is afforded us in the Vorschule der Asthetik of Jean Paul Richter. This is a rather ambitious discussion of the sublime and ludicrous, which, however, contains much valuable matter on the nature of humour in romantic poetry. Among other writers who reflect more or less philosophically on the problems to which modern poetry gives rise are Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two Schlegels and Gervinus.
Contributions by German savants.
A word may be said in conclusion on the attempts of German savants to apply a knowledge of physiological conditions to the investigation of the sensuous elements of aesthetic effect, as well as to introduce into the study of the simpler aesthetic forms the methods of natural science. The classic work of Helmholtz on ``Sensations of Tone'' is a highly musical composition on physics and physiology. The endeavour to determine with a like degree of precision the physiological conditions of the pleasurable effects of colours and their combinations by E. W. Brucke, Ewald Hering and more recent investigators, has so far failed to realize the desideratum laid down by Herbart, that there should be a theory of colour-relations equal in completeness and exactness to that of tone-relations. The experimental inquiry into simple aesthetically pleasing forms was begun by G. T. Fechner in seeking to test the soundness of Adolf Zeising's hypothesis that the most pleasing proportion in dividing a line, say the vertical part of a cross, is the ``golden section,'' where the smaller division is to the larger as the latter to the sum. He describes in his work on ``Experimental Aesthetics'' (Auf experimentalen Asthetik) a series of experiments carried out on a large number of persons, bearing on this point, the results of which he considers to be in favour of Zeising's hypothesis.
Discussions of more concrete problems.
3. French Writers.—In France aesthetic speculation grew out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of modern art, and Boileau in the 17th century, the development of the the dispute between the ``ancients'' and the `moderns'' at the end of the 17th century by B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle and Charles Perrault, and the continuation of the discussion as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the 18th century by Voltaire, Bayle, Diderot and others, not only offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. A more systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding to that of Lessing) is to be found in the Cours de belles lettres of Charles Batteux (1765), in which the meaning and value of the imitation of nature by art are further elucidated, and the arts are classified (as by Lessing) according as they employ the forms of space or those of time.
Theories of organic beauty. Buffier.
The beginning of a more scientific investigation of beauty in general is connected with the name of Pere Buffier (see First Truths), form, and illustrates his theory by the human face. A A beautiful face is at once the most common and most rare among members of the species. This seems to be a clumsy way of saying that it is a clear expression of the typical form of the species.
Taine.
This idea of typical beauty (which was adopted by Reynolds) has been worked out more recently by H. Taine. In his work, The Ideal in Art (trans. by i. Durand), he proceeds in the manner of a botanist to determine a scale of characters in the physical and moral man. The degree of the universality or importance of a character, and of its beneficence or adaptation to the ends of life, determine the measure of its aesthetic value, and render the work of art, which seeks to represent it in its purity, an ideal work.
French systems of aesthetics: The spiritualistes.
The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French literature are those constructed by the spiritualistes, the philosoohic writers who under the influence of German thinkers effected a reaction against the crude sensationalism of the 18th century they aim at elucidating the higher and spiritual element in aesthetic impressions, appearing to ignore any capability in the sensuous material of affording a true aesthetic delight. J. Cousin and Jean Charles Leveque are the principal writers of this school. The latter developed an elaborate system of the subject (La Science du beau.) All beauty is regarded as spiritual in its nature. The several beautiful characters of an organic body—of which the principal are magnitude, unity and variety of parts, intensity of colour, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to environment—may be brought under the conception of the ideal grandeur and order of the species. These are perceived by reason to be the manifestations of an invisible vinal force. Similarly the beauties of inorganic nature are to be viewed as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial ohvsical force. Thus all beauty is in its objective essence either spirit or unconscious force acting with fulness and in order.
4. English Writers.—There is nothing answering to the German conception of a system of aesthetics in English literature. The inquiries of English thinkers have been directed for the most part to such modest problems as the psychological process by which we perceive the beautiful—discussions which are apt to be regarded by German historians as devoid of real philosophical value. The writers may be conveniently arranged in two divisions, answering to the two opposed directions of English thought: (i) the Intuitionalists, those who recognize the existence of an objective beauty which is a simple unanalysable attribute or principle of things: and (2) the Analytical theorists, those who follow the analytical and psychological method, concerning themselves with the sentiment of beauty as a complex growth out of simpler elements.
The Intuitionists. Shaftesbury.
Shaftesbury is the first of the intuitional writers on beauty. In his Characteristics the beautiful and the good are combined in one ideal conception, much as with Plato. Matter in itself is ugly. The order of the world, wherein all beauty really resides, is a spiritual principle, all motion and life being the product of spirit. The principle of beauty is perceived not with the outer sense, but with an internal or moral sense which apprehends the good as well. This perception yields the only true delight, namely, spiritual enjoyment.
Hutcheson.
Francis Hutchinson, in his System of Moral Philosophy, though he adopts many of Shaftesbury's ideas, distinctly disclaims any independent self-existing beauty in objects. ``All beauty,'' he says, ``is relative to the sense of some mind perceiving it.'' One cause of beauty is to be found not in a simple sensation such as colour or tone, but in a certain order among the parts, or ``uniformity amidst variety.'' The faculty by which this principle indiscerned is an internal sense which is defined as ``a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity in variety.'' This inner sense resembles the external senses in the immediateness of the pleasure which its activity brings: and further in the necessity of its impressions: a beautiful thing being always, whether we will or no, beautiful. He distinguishes two kinds of beauty, absolute or original, and relative or comparative. The latter is discerned in an object which is regarded as an imitation or semblance of another. He distinctly states that ``an exact imitation may still be beautiful though the original were entirely devoid of it.'' He seeks to prove the universality of this sense of beauty, by showing that all men, in proportion to the enlargement of their intellectual capacity, are more delighted with uniformity than the opposite.
Reid.
In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers (viii. ``Of Taste'') Thomas Reid applies his principle of common sense to the problem of beauty saying that objects of beauty agree not only in producing a certain agreeable emotion, but in the excitation along with this emotion of a belief that they possess some perfection or excellence, that beauty exists in the objects independently our minds. His theory of beauty is severely spiritual. All beauty resides primarily in the faculties of the mind, intellectual and moral. The beauty which is spread over the face of visible nature is an emanation from this spiritual beauty, and is beauty because it symbolizes and expresses the latter. Thus the beauty of a plant resides in its perfect adapration to its end, a perfection which is an expression of the wisdom of its Creator.
Hamilton.
In his Lectures on Metaphysics Sir W. Hamilton gives a short account of the sentiments of taste, which (with a superficial resemblance to Kant) he regards as subserving both the subsidiary and the elaborative faculties in cognition, that is, the imagination and the understanding. The activity of the former corresponds to the element of variety in a beautiful object, that of the latter with its unity. He explicitly excludes all other kinds of pleasure, such as the sensuous, from the proper gratification of beauty. He denies that the attribute of beauty belongs to fitness.
Ruskin.
John Ruskin's well-known speculations on the nature of beauty in Modern Painters (``Of ideas of beauty''), though sadly wanting in scientific precision, have a certain value in the history of divine attributes. Its true nature is appreciated by the theoretic faculty which is concerned in the moral conception and appreciation of ideas of beauty, and must be distinguished from the imaginative or artistic faculty, which is employed in regarding in a certain way and combining the ideas received from external nature. He distinguishes between typical and vital beauty. The former is the external quality of bodies which typifies some divine attribute. The latter consists in ``the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things.'' The forms of typical beauty are:—(1) infinity, the type of the divine incomprehensibility; (2) unity, the type of the divine comprehensiveness; (3) repose, the type of the divine permanence; (4) symmetry, the type of the divine justice; (5) purity, the type of the divine energy; and (6) moderation, the type of government by law. Vital beauty, again, is regarded as relative when the degree of exaltation of the function is estimated, or generic if only the degree of conformity of an individual to the appointed functions of the species is taken into account. Ruskin's writings illustrate the extreme tendency to identify aesthetic with moral perception.
The analytical theorists. Addison.
Addison's ``Essays on the Imagination''' contributed to the Spectator, though they belong to popular literature, contain the germ of scientific analysis in the statement that the pleasures of imagination (which arise originally from sight) fall into two classes—(1) primary pleasures, which entirely proceed from objects before our eyes; and (2) secondary pleasures, flowing frm the ideas of visible objects. The latter are greatly extended by the addition of the proper enjoyment of resemblance, which is at the basis of all mimicry and wit. Addison recognizes, too, to some extent, the influence of association upon our aesthetic preferences.
Home.
In the Elements of Criticism of Home (Lord Kames) another attempt is made to resolve the pleasure of beauty into its elements. Beauty and ugliness are simply the pleasant and unappears to admit no general characreristic of beautiful objects beyond this power of yielding pleasure. Like Hutcheson, he divides beauty into intrinsic and relative, but understands by the latter the appearance of fitness and utility, which is excluded from the beautiful by Hutcheson.
Hogarth.
Passing by the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose theory of beauty closely resembles that of Pere Buffier, we come to the articulations of another artist and painter, William Hogarth. He discusses, in his Analysis of Beauty, all the elements of visual beauty. He finds in this the following elements:—-(1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye ``a wanton kind of chase''; (6) quantity or magnitude, which draws our attention and produces admiration and awe. The beauty of proportion he resolves into the needs of fitness. Hogarth applies these principles to the determination of the degrees of beauty in lines, figures and groups of forms. Among lines he singles out for special honour the serpentine (formed by drawing a line once round from the base to the apex of a long slender cone).
Burke.
Burke's speculations, in his Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, illustrate the tendency of English writers to treat the problem as a psychological one and to introduce physiological considerations. He finds the elements of beauty to be:— (1) smallness; (2) smoothness; (3) gradual variation of direction in gentle curves; (4) delicacy, or the appearance of fragility; (5) brightness, purity and softness of colour. The sublime is rather crudely resolved into astonishment, which he thinks always retains an element of terror. Thus ``infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with a delightful horror.'' Burke seeks what he calls ``efficient causes'' for these aesthetic impressions in certain affections of the the nerves of sight analogous to those of other senses, namely, the soothing effect of a relaxation of the nerve fibres. The arbitrariness and narrowness of this theory cannot well escape the reader's attention.
Alison.
Alison, in his well-knwon Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, proceeds by a method exactly the opposite to that of Hogarth and Burke. He seeks to analyse the mental process when finds that this consists in a peculiar operation of the imagination, namely, the flow of a train of ideas through the mind, which ideas always correspond to some simple affection or emotion (e.g. cheerfulness, sadness, awe) awakened by the object. He thus makes association the sole source of aesthetic delight, and denies the existence of a primary source in sensations themselves. He illustrates the working of the principle of association at great length, and with much skill; yet his attempt to make it the unique source of aesthetic pleasure fails completely. Francis Jeffrey's Essays on Beauty (in the Edinburgh Review, and Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8th edition) are little more than a modification of Alison's theory. Philosophical Essays consists in pointing out the unwarranted assumption lurking in the doctrine of a single quality running through all varieties of beautiful object. He seeks to show how the successive changes in the meaning of the term ``beautiful'' have arisen. He suggests that it originally connoted the pleasure of colour. The value of his discussion resides more in the criticism of his predecessors than in the contribution of new ideas. His conception of the sublime, suggested by the etymology of the word, emphasizes the element of height in objects.
Of the assoication psychologists James Mill did little more towards the analysis of the sentiments of beauty than re-state Alison's doctrine. Alexander Bain, in his treatise, The Emotions and the Will (``Aesthetic Emotions''), carries this examination considerably further. He seeks to differentiate aesthetic from other varieties of pleasurable emotion by three characteristics:—(1) their freedom from life-serving uses, being gratifications sought for their own sakes; (2) their purity from all disagreeable concomitants; (3) their eminently sympathetic or shareable nature. He takes a comprehensive view of the constituents of aesthetic enjoyment, including the pleasures of sensation and of its revived or its ``ideal'' form; of revived emotional states; and lastly the satisfaction of those wide-ranging susceptibilities which we call the love of novelty, of contrast and of harmony. The effect of sublimity is connected with the manifestation of superior power in its highest degrees, which manifestation excites a sympathetic elation in the beholder. The ludicrous, again, is defined by Bain, improving on Aristotle and Hobbes, as the degradation of something possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion.
Herbert Spencer, in his First Principles, Principles of Psychology and Essays, has given an interesting turn to the psychology of aesthetics by the application of his doctrine of evolution. Adopting Schiller's idea of a connexion between aesthetic activity and play, he seeks to make it the starting-point in tracing the evolution of aesthetic activity. Play is defined as the outcome of the superfluous energies of the organism: as the activity of organs and faculties which, owing to a prolonged period of inactivity, have become specially ready to discharge their function, and as a consequence vent themselves in simulated actions. Aesthetic activities supply a similar mode of self-relieving discharge to the higher organs of perception and emotion; and they further agree with play in not directly subserving any processes conducive to life; in being gratifications sought for their own sake only. Spencer seeks to construct a hierarchy of aesthetic pleasures according to the degree of complexity of the faculty exercised: from those of sensation up to the revived emotional experiences which constitute the aesthetic sentiment proper. Among the more vaguely revived emotions Spencer includes more permanent feelings of the race transmitted by heredity; as when he refers the deep and indefinable emotion excited by music to associations with vocal tones expressive of feeling built up during the past history of our species. This biological treatment of aesthetic activity has had a wide influence, some e.g. Grant Allen) being content to develop his evolutional method. Yet, as suggested above, his theory is now recognized as taking us only a little way towards an adequate understanding of our aesthetic experience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.39—.a) Works on General Aesthetics. which deal with the whole subject. The following will be found helpful: Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, pt. viii. c. 9, ``Aesthetic Sentiments,'' and the papers on ``Use and Beauty,'' ``Origin and Function of Music'' and others in the Essays; A. Bain, Emotions and Will, ``Aesthetic Emotions''; J Sully, Human Mind, ii. ``Aesthetic Sentiment'': (Grant Allen, ``Physiological Aesthetics'' (Meth., Pl., Senses, Play); Rutgers Marshall, Pain, Pleasure and Aesthetics, and Aesthetic Principles (Meth., Pl., Play).
French and Italian Works.—M. Guyau, Les problemes de l'esthetique contemporaine (1884) (Pl., Play); E. Veron, L'Esthetique (1890) (slight Pl.); L. Bray, Du Beau (1902). (Pl., Play); P. Saurian, La Beaute rationnelle (1904) (Meth., Pl., Senses, Einf.); M. Pilo, Estetica (Pl., Senses): A. Rolla, Storia delle idee estetiche in Italia (1905) (full account of ideas of Dante and other medieval writers, as well as of modern systems).
German Works.—-K. Kostlin, Prolegomena zurAsthetik (1889) (good introduction to subject); K. Groos,Der asthetische Genuss (1902) (Meth., Judg., Play, Senses,Einf. and Ill.); J. Volkelt, System der Asthetik (1905)(very full and clear) (Meth., Norm., Evol., Senses, Einf.); J.Cohn, Allgemeine Asthetik (1901) (Val., Play, Einf.); K.Lange, Das Wesen der Kunst (1901) (Meth., Einf., Ill., Play).
(b) Works on History on. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Asthetik in Deutschland; M. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Asthetik (full and elaborate, dealing with ancient and modern theories); E. von Hartmann, Die deutsche asthetik seit Kant (Ausgewahlte Werke, iii.); K. H. von Stein, Die Entstehung der neueren Asthetik (theories of French critics, &c.); F. Brunetiere, L'Evolution des genres (History of critical discussions in the 17th and 18th centuries); B. Bosanquet, History of Aesthetics (very full, especially on ancient theories and German systems); W. Knight, Philosophy of the Beautiful, pt. i. ``History'' (Univ. Extension Manuals, a popular resume with quotations). (J. S.)
1 See below for Kant's view of the aesthetic judgment, as having subjective universal validity. On the meaning of judgments of value see J. Cohn, Allgem. Asthetik, Einleitung, pp. 7 ff., and Teil i., Kap. 2 and 3.