PART III

FORM

_There is a beauty of form._

§ 19. The most remarkable and characteristic problem of aesthetics

is that of beauty of form. Where there is a sensuous delight, like

that of colour, and the impression of the object is in its elements

agreeable, we have to look no farther for an explanation of the

charm we feel. Where there is expression, and an object indifferent

to the senses is associated with other ideas which are interesting,

the problem, although complex and varied, is in principle

comparatively plain. But there is an intermediate effect which is

more mysterious, and more specifically an effect of beauty. It is

found where sensible elements, by themselves indifferent, are so

united as to please in combination. There is something unexpected

in this phenomenon, so much so that those who cannot conceive its

explanation often reassure themselves by denying its existence. To

reduce beauty of form, however, to beauty of elements would not

be easy, because the creation and variation of effect, by changing

the relation of the simplest lines, offers too easy an experiment in

refutation. And it would, moreover, follow to the comfort of the

vulgar that all marble houses are equally beautiful.

To attribute beauty of form to expression is more plausible. If I

take the meaningless short lines in the figure and arrange them in

the given ways, intended to represent the human face, there appear

at once notably different aesthetic values.

[Illustration of long and short lines]

[Illustration of lines arranged into three facial profiles]

Two of the forms are differently grotesque and one approximately

beautiful. Now these effects are due to the expression of the lines;

not only because they make one think of fair or ugly faces, but

because, it may be said, these faces would in reality be fair or ugly

according to their expression, according to the vital and moral

associations of the different types.

Nevertheless, beauty of form cannot be reduced to expression

without denying the existence of immediate aesthetic values

altogether, and reducing them all to suggestions of moral good. For

if the object expressed by the form, and from which the form

derives its value, had itself beauty of form, we should not advance;

we must come somewhere to the point where the expression is of

something else than beauty; and this something else would of

course be some practical or moral good. Moralists are fond of such

an interpretation, and it is a very interesting one. It puts beauty in

the same relation to morals in which morals stand to pleasure and

pain; both would be intuitions, qualitatively new, but with the same

materials; they would be new perspectives of the same object.

But this theory is actually inadmissible. Innumerable aesthetic

effects, indeed all specific and unmixed ones, are direct

transmutations of pleasures and pains; they express nothing

extrinsic to themselves, much less moral excellences. The detached

lines of our figure signify nothing, but they are not absolutely

uninteresting; the straight line is the simplest and not the least

beautiful of forms. To say that it owes its interest to the thought of

the economy of travelling over the shortest road, or of other

practical advantages, would betray a feeble hold on psychological

reality. The impression of a straight line differs in a certain almost

emotional way from that of a curve, as those of various curves do

from one another. The quality of the sensation is different, like that

of various colours or sounds. To attribute the character of these

forms to association would be like explaining sea-sickness as the

fear of shipwreck. There is a distinct quality and value, often a

singular beauty, in these simple lines that is intrinsic in the

perception of their form.

It would be pedantic, perhaps, anywhere but in a treatise on

aesthetics, to deny to this quality the name of expression; we might

commonly say that the circle has one expression and the oval

another. But what does the circle express except circularity, or the

oval except the nature of the ellipse? Such expression _expresses_

nothing; it is really impression. There may be analogy between it

and other impressions; we may admit that odours, colours, and

sounds correspond, and may mutually suggest one another; but this

analogy is a superadded charm felt by very sensitive natures, and

does not constitute the original value of the sensations. The

common emotional tinge is rather what enables them to suggest

one another, and what makes them comparable. Their expression,

such as it is, is therefore due to the accident that both feelings have

a kindred quality; and this quality has its effectiveness for sense

independently of the perception of its recurrence in a different

sphere. We shall accordingly take care to reserve the term

"expression" for the suggestion of some other and assignable

object, from which the expressive thing borrows an interest; and

we shall speak of the intrinsic quality of forms as their emotional

tinge or specific value.

_Physiology of the perception of form._

§ 20. The charm of a line evidently consists in the relation of its

parts; in order to understand this interest in spatial relations, we

must inquire how they are perceived.[4] If the eye had its sensitive

surface, the retina, exposed directly to the light, we could never

have a perception of form any more than in the nose or ear, which

also perceive the object through media. When the perception is not

through a medium, but direct, as in the case of the skin, we might

get a notion of form, because each point of the object would excite

a single point in the skin, and as the sensations in different parts of

the skin differ in quality, a manifold of sense, in which

discrimination of parts would be involved, could be presented to

the mind. But when the perception is through a medium, a

difficulty arises.

Any point, a, in the object will send a ray to every point, _a', b',

c',_ of the sensitive surface; every point of the retina will therefore

be similarly affected, since each will receive rays from every part

of the object.

[Illustration of light rays]

If all the rays from one point of the object, a, are to be concentrated

on a corresponding point of the retina, a which would then

become the exclusive representative of a, we must have one or

more refracting surfaces interposed, to gather the rays together.

The presence of the lens, with its various coatings, has made

representation of point by point possible for the eye. The absence

of such an instrument makes the same sort of representation

impossible to other senses, such as the nose, which does not smell

in one place the effluvia of one part of the environment and in

another place the effluvia of another, but smells indiscriminately

the combination of all. Eyes without lenses like those possessed by

some animals, undoubtedly give only a consciousness of diffused

light, without the possibility of boundaries or divisions in the field

of view. The abstraction of colour from form is therefore by no

means an artificial one, since, by a simplification of the organ of

sense, one may be perceived without the other.

But even if the lens enables the eye to receive a distributed image

of the object, the manifold which consciousness would perceive

would not be necessarily a manifold of parts juxtaposed in space.

Bach point of the retina might send to the brain a detached

impression; these might be comparable, but not necessarily in their

spatial position. The ear sends to the brain such a manifold of

impressions (since the ear also has an apparatus by which various

external differences in rapidity of vibrations are distributed into

different parts of the organ). But this discriminated manifold is a

manifold of pitches, not of positions. How does it happen that the

manifold conveyed by the optic nerve appears in consciousness as

spatial, and that the relation between its elements is seen as a

relation of position?

An answer to this question has been suggested by various

psychologists. The eye, by an instinctive movement, turns so as to

bring every impression upon that point of the retina, near its centre,

which has the acutest sensibility. A series of muscular sensations

therefore always follows upon the conspicuous excitement of any

outlying point. The object, as the eye brings it to the centre of

vision, excites a series of points upon the retina; and the local sign,

or peculiar quality of sensation, proper to each of these spots, is

associated with that series of muscular feelings involved in turning

the eyes. These feelings henceforth revive together; it is enough

that a point in the periphery of the retina should receive a ray, for

the mind to feel, together with that impression, the suggestion of a

motion, and of the line of points that lies between the excited point

and the centre of vision. A network of associations is thus formed,

whereby the sensation of each retinal point is connected with all

the others in a manner which is that of points in a plane. Every

visible point becomes thus a point in a field, and has a felt

radiation of lines of possible motion about it. Our notion of visual

space has this origin, since the manifold of retinal impressions is

distributed in a manner which serves as the type and exemplar of

what we mean by a surface.

_Values of geometrical figures._

§ 21. The reader will perhaps pardon these details and the strain

they put on his attention, when he perceives how much they help

us to understand the value of forms. The sense, then, of the

position of any point consists in the tensions in the eye, that not

only tends to bring that point to the centre of vision, but feels the

suggestion of all the other points which are related to the given one

in the web of visual experience. The definition of space as the

possibility of motion is therefore an accurate and significant one,

since the most direct and native perception of space we can have is

the awakening of many tendencies to move our organs.

For example, if a circle is presented, the eye will fall upon its

centre, as to the centre of gravity, as it were, of the balanced

attractions of all the points; and there will be, in that position, an

indifference and sameness of sensation, in whatever direction some

accident moves the eye, that accounts very well for the emotional

quality of the circle. It is a form which, although beautiful in its

purity and simplicity, and wonderful in its continuity, lacks any

stimulating quality, and is often ugly in the arts, especially when

found in vertical surfaces where it is not always seen in perspective.

For horizontal surfaces it is better because it is there always an

ellipse to vision, and the ellipse has a less dull and stupefying

effect. The eye can move easily, organize and subordinate its parts,

and its relations to the environment are not similar in all directions.

Small circles, like buttons, are not in the same danger of becoming

ugly, because the eye considers them as points, and they diversify

and help to divide surfaces, without appearing as surfaces

themselves.

The straight line offers a curious object for analysis. It is not for

the eye a very easy form to grasp. We bend it or we leave it.

Unless it passes through the centre of vision, it is obviously a

tangent to the points which have analogous relations to that centre.

The local signs or tensions of the points in such a tangent vary in

an unseizable progression; there is violence in keeping to it, and

the effect is forced. This makes the dry and stiff quality of any long

straight line, which the skilful Greeks avoided by the curves of

their columns and entablatures, and the less economical barbarians

by a profusion of interruptions and ornaments.

The straight line, when made the direct object of attention, is, of

course, followed by the eye and not seen by the outlying parts of

the retina in one eccentric position. The same explanation is good

for this more common case, since the consciousness that the eye

travels in a straight line consists in the surviving sense of the

previous position, and in the manner in which the tensions of these

various positions overlap. If the tensions change from moment to

moment entirely, we have a broken, a fragmentary effect, as that of

zigzag, where all is dropping and picking up again of associated

motions; in the straight line, much prolonged, we have a gradual

and inexorable rending of these tendencies to associated

movements.

In the curves we call flowing and graceful, we have, on the

contrary, a more natural and rhythmical set of movements in the

optic muscles; and certain points in the various gyrations make

rhymes and assonances, as it were, to the eye that reaches them.

We find ourselves at every turn reawakening, with a variation, the

sense of the previous position. It is easy to understand by analogy

with the superficially observed conditions of pleasure, that such

rhythms and harmonies should be delightful. The deeper question

of the physical basis of pleasure we have not intended to discuss.

Suffice it that measure, in quantity, in intensity, and in time, must

involve that physiological process, whatever it may be, the

consciousness of which is pleasure.

_Symmetry._

§ 22. An important exemplification of these physiological

principles is found in the charm of symmetry. When for any reason

the eye is to be habitually directed to a single point, as to the

opening of a gate or window, to an altar, a throne, a stage, or a

fireplace, there will be violence and distraction caused by the

tendency to look aside in the recurring necessity of looking

forward, if the object is not so arranged that the tensions of eye are

balanced, and the centre of gravity of vision lies in the point which

one is obliged to keep in sight. In all such objects we therefore

require bilateral symmetry. The necessity of vertical symmetry is

not felt because the eyes and head do not so readily survey objects

from top to bottom as from side to side. The inequality of the upper

and lower parts does not generate the same tendency to motion, the

same restlessness, as does the inequality of the right and left sides

of an object in front of us. The comfort and economy that comes

from muscular balance in the eye, is therefore in some cases the

source of the value of symmetry.[5]

In other cases symmetry appeals to us through the charm of

recognition and rhythm. When the eye runs over a facade, and

finds the objects that attract it at equal intervals, an expectation,

like the anticipation of an inevitable note or requisite word, arises

in the mind, and its non-satisfaction involves a shock. This shock,

if caused by the emphatic emergence of an interesting object, gives

the effect of the picturesque; but when it comes with no

compensation, it gives us the feeling of ugliness and imperfection

-- the defect which symmetry avoids. This kind of symmetry is

accordingly in itself a negative merit, but often the condition of the

greatest of all merits, -- the permanent power to please. It

contributes to that completeness which delights without

stimulating, and to which our jaded senses return gladly, after all

sorts of extravagances, as to a kind of domestic peace. The

inwardness and solidity of this quiet beauty comes from the

intrinsic character of the pleasure which makes it up. It is no

adventitious charm; but the eye in its continual passage over the

object finds always the same response, the same adequacy; and the

very process of perception is made delightful by the object's fitness

to be perceived. The parts, thus coalescing, form a single object,

the unity and simplicity of which are based upon the rhythm and

correspondence of its elements.

Symmetry is here what metaphysicians call a principle of

individuation. By the emphasis which it lays upon the recurring

elements, it cuts up the field into determinate units; all that lies

between the beats is one interval, one individual. If there were no

recurrent impressions, no corresponding points, the field of

perception would remain a fluid continuum, without defined and

recognizable divisions. The outlines of most things are

symmetrical because we choose what symmetrical lines we find to

be the boundaries of objects. Their symmetry is the condition of

their unity, and their unity of their individuality and separate

existence.

Experience, to be sure, can teach us to regard unsymmetrical

objects as wholes, because their elements move and change

together in nature; but this is a principle of individuation, _a

posteriori,_ founded on the association of recognized elements.

These elements, to be recognized and seen to go together and form

one thing, must first be somehow discriminated; and the symmetry,

either of their parts, or of their position as wholes, may enable us

to fix their boundaries and to observe their number. The category

of unity, which we are so constantly imposing upon nature and its

parts, has symmetry, then, for one of its instruments, for one of its

bases of application.

If symmetry, then, is a principle of individuation and helps us to

distinguish objects, we cannot wonder that it helps us to enjoy the

perception. For our intelligence loves to perceive; water is

not more grateful to a parched throat than a principle of

comprehension to a confused understanding. Symmetry clarifies,

and we all know that light is sweet. At the same time, we can see

why there are limits to the value of symmetry. In objects, for

instance, that are too small or too diffused for composition,

symmetry has no value. In an avenue symmetry is stately and

impressive, but in a large park, or in the plan of a city, or the side

wall of a gallery it produces monotony in the various views rather

than unity in any one of them. Greek temples, never being very

large, were symmetrical on all their facades; Gothic churches were

generally designed to be symmetrical only in the west front, and in

the transepts, while the side elevation as a whole was eccentric.

This was probably an accident, due to the demands of the interior

arrangement; but it was a fortunate one, as we may see by

contrasting its effect with that of our stations, exhibition buildings,

and other vast structures, where symmetry is generally introduced

even in the most extensive facades which, being too much

prolonged for their height, cannot be treated as units. The eye is

not able to take them in at a glance, and does not get the effect of

repose from the balance of the extremes, while the mechanical

sameness of the sections, surveyed in succession, makes the

impression of an unmeaning poverty of resource.

Symmetry thus loses its value when it cannot, on account of the

size of the object, contribute to the unity of our perception. The

synthesis which it facilitates must be instantaneous. If the

comprehension by which we unify our object is discursive, as, for

instance, in conceiving the arrangement and numbering of the

streets of New York, or the plan of the Escurial, the advantage of

symmetry is an intellectual one; we can better imagine the relations

of the parts, and draw a map of the whole in the fancy; but there is

no advantage to direct perception, and therefore no added beauty.

Symmetry is superfluous in those objects. Similarly animal and

vegetable forms gain nothing by being symmetrically displayed, if

the sense of their life and motion is to be given. When, however,

these forms are used for mere decoration, not for the expression of

their own vitality, then symmetry is again required to accentuate

their unity and organization. This justifies the habit of

conventionalizing natural forms, and the tendency of some kinds of

hieratic art, like the Byzantine or Egyptian, to affect a rigid

symmetry of posture. We can thereby increase the unity and force

of the image without suggesting that individual life and mobility,

which would interfere with the religious function of the object, as

the symbol and embodiment of an impersonal faith.

_Form the unity of a manifold._

§ 23. Symmetry is evidently a kind of unity in variety, where a

whole is determined by the rhythmic repetition of similars. We

have seen that it has a value where it is an aid to unification. Unity

would thus appear to be the virtue of forms; but a moment's

reflection will show us that unity cannot be absolute and be a form;

a form is an aggregation, it must have elements, and the manner in

which the elements are combined constitutes the character of the

form. A perfectly simple perception, in which there was no

consciousness of the distinction and relation of parts, would not be

a perception of form; it would be a sensation. Physiologically these

sensations may be aggregates and their values, as in the case of

musical tones, may differ according to the manner in which certain

elements, beats, vibrations, nervous processes, or what not, are

combined; but for consciousness the result is simple, and the value

is the pleasantness of a datum and not of a process. Form, therefore,

does not appeal to the unattentive; they get from objects only a

vague sensation which may in them awaken extrinsic associations;

they do not stop to survey the parts or to appreciate their relation,

and consequently are insensible to the various charms of various

unifications; they can find in objects only the value of material or

of function, not that of form.

Beauty of form, however, is what specifically appeals to an

aesthetic nature; it is equally removed from the crudity of formless

stimulation and from the emotional looseness of reverie and

discursive thought. The indulgence in sentiment and suggestion, of

which our time is fond, to the sacrifice of formal beauty, marks an

absence of cultivation as real, if not as confessed, as that of the

barbarian who revels in gorgeous confusion.

The synthesis, then, which constitutes form is an activity of the

mind; the unity arises consciously, and is an insight into the

relation of sensible elements separately perceived. It differs from

sensation in the consciousness of the synthesis, and from

expression in the homogeneity of the elements, and in their

common presence to sense.

The variety of forms depends upon the character of the elements

and on the variety of possible methods of unification. The elements

may be all alike, and their only diversity be numerical. Their unity

will then be merely the sense of their uniformity.[6] Or they may

differ in kind, but so as to compel the mind to no particular order

in their unification. Or they may finally be so constituted that they

suggest inevitably the scheme of their unity; in this case there is

organization in the object, and the synthesis of its parts is one and

pre-determinate. We shall discuss these various forms in

succession, pointing out the effects proper to each.

_Multiplicity in uniformity._

§ 24. The radical and typical case of the first kind of unity in

variety is found in the perception of extension itself. This

perception, if we look to its origin, may turn out to be primitive; no

doubt the feeling of "crude extensity" is an original sensation;

every inference, association, and distinction is a thing that looms

up suddenly before the mind, and the nature and actuality of which

is a datum of what -- to indicate its irresistible immediacy and

indescribability -- we may well call sense. Forms are seen, and if

we think of the origin of the perception, we may well call this

vision a sensation. The distinction between a sensation of form,

however, and one which is formless, regards the content and

character, not the genesis of the perception. A distinction and

association, or an inference, is a direct experience, a sensible fact;

but it is the experience of a process, of a motion between two terms,

and a consciousness of their coexistence and distinction; it is a

feeling of relation. Now the sense of space is a feeling of this kind;

the essence of it is the realization of a variety of directions and of

possible motions, by which the relation of point to point is vaguely

but inevitably given. The perception of extension is therefore a

perception of form, although of the most rudimentary kind. It is

merely _Auseinandersein,_ and we might call it the _materia

prima_ of form, were it not capable of existing without further

determination. For we can have the sense of space without the

sense of boundaries; indeed, this intuition is what tempts us to

declare space infinite. Space would have to consist of a finite

number of juxtaposed blocks, if our experience of extension

carried with it essentially the realization of limits.

The aesthetic effect of extensiveness is also entirely different from

that of particular shapes. Some things appeal to us by their surfaces,

others by the lines that limit those surfaces. And this effect of

surface is not necessarily an effect of material or colour; the

evenness, monotony, and vastness of a great curtain of colour

produce an effect which is that of the extreme of uniformity in the

extreme of multiplicity; the eye wanders over a fluid infinity of

unrecognizable positions, and the sense of their numberlessness

and continuity is precisely the source of the emotion of extent. The

emotion is primary and has undoubtedly a physiological ground,

while the idea of size is secondary and involves associations and

inferences. A small photograph of St. Peter's gives the idea of size;

as does a distant view of the same object. But this is of course

dependent on our realization of the distance, or of the scale of the

representation. The value of size becomes immediate only when

we are at close quarters with the object; then the surfaces really

subtend a large angle in the field of vision, and the sense of

vastness establishes its standard, which can afterwards be applied

to other objects by analogy and contrast. There is also, to be sure, a

moral and practical import in the known size of objects, which, by

association, determines their dignity; but the pure sense of

extension, based upon the attack of the object upon the

apperceptive resources of the eye, is the truly aesthetic value which

it concerns us to point out here, as the most rudimentary example

of form.

Although the effect of extension is not that of material, the two are

best seen in conjunction. Material must appear in some form; but

when its beauty is to be made prominent, it is well that this form

should attract attention as little as possible to itself. Now, of all

forms, absolute uniformity in extension is the simplest and most

allied to the material; it gives the latter only just enough form to

make it real and perceptible. Very rich and beautiful materials

therefore do well to assume this form. You will spoil the beauty

you have by superimposing another; as if you make a statue of

gold, or flute a jasper column, or bedeck a velvet cloak. The beauty

of stuffs appears when they are plain. Even stone gives its specific

quality best in great unbroken spaces of wall; the simplicity of the

form emphasizes the substance. And again, the effect of extensity

is never long satisfactory unless it is superinduced upon some

material beauty; the dignity of great hangings would suffer if they

were not of damask, but of cotton, and the vast smoothness of the

sky would grow oppressive if it were not of so tender a blue.

_Example of the stars._

§ 25. Another beauty of the sky -- the stars -- offers so striking and

fascinating an illustration of the effect of multiplicity in uniformity,

that I am tempted to analyze it at some length. To most people, I

fancy, the stars are beautiful; but if you asked why, they would be

at a loss to reply, until they remembered what they had heard about

astronomy, and the great size and distance and possible habitation

of those orbs. The vague and illusive ideas thus aroused fall in so

well with the dumb emotion we were already feeling, that we

attribute this emotion to those ideas, and persuade ourselves that

the power of the starry heavens lies in the suggestion of

astronomical facts.

The idea of the insignificance of our earth and of the

incomprehensible multiplicity of worlds is indeed immensely

impressive; it may even be intensely disagreeable. There is

something baffling about infinity; in its presence the sense of finite

humility can never wholly banish the rebellious suspicion that we

are being deluded. Our mathematical imagination is put on the rack

by an attempted conception that has all the anguish of a nightmare

and probably, could we but awake, all its laughable absurdity. But

the obsession of this dream is an intellectual puzzle, not an

aesthetic delight. It is not essential to our admiration. Before the

days of Kepler the heavens declared the glory of God; and we

needed no calculation of stellar distances, no fancies about a

plurality of worlds, no image of infinite spaces, to make the stars

sublime.

Had we been taught to believe that the stars governed our fortunes,

and were we reminded of fate whenever we looked at them, we

should similarly tend to imagine that this belief was the source of

their sublimity; and, if the superstition were dispelled, we should

think the interest gone from the apparition. But experience would

soon undeceive us, and prove to us that the sensuous character of

the object was sublime in itself. Indeed, on account of that intrinsic

sublimity the sky can be fitly chosen as a symbol for a sublime

conception; the common quality in both makes each suggest the

other. For that reason, too, the parable of the natal stars governing

our lives is such a natural one to express our subjection to

circumstances, and can be transformed by the stupidity of disciples

into a literal tenet. In the same way, the kinship of the emotion

produced by the stars with the emotion proper to certain religious

moments makes the stars seem a religious object. They become,

like impressive music, a stimulus to worship. But fortunately there

are experiences which remain untouched by theory, and which

maintain the mutual intelligence of men through the estrangements

wrought by intellectual and religious systems. When the

superstructures crumble, the common foundation of human

sentience and imagination is exposed beneath.

The intellectual suggestion of the infinity of nature can, moreover,

be awakened by other experiences which are by no means sublime.

A heap of sand will involve infinity as surely as a universe of suns

and planets. Any object is infinitely divisible and, when we press

the thought, can contain as many worlds with as many winged

monsters and ideal republics as can the satellites of Sirius. But the

infinitesimal does not move us aesthetically; it can only awaken an

amused curiosity. The difference cannot lie in the import of the

idea, which is objectively the same in both cases. It lies in the

different immediate effect of the crude images which give us the

type and meaning of each; the crude image that underlies the idea

of the infinitesimal is the dot, the poorest and most uninteresting of

impressions; while the crude image that underlies the idea of

infinity is space, multiplicity in uniformity, and this, as we have

seen, has a powerful effect on account of the breadth, volume, and

omnipresence of the stimulation. Every point in the retina is evenly

excited, and the local signs of all are simultaneously felt. This

equable tension, this balance and elasticity in the very absence of

fixity, give the vague but powerful feeling that we wish to describe.

Did not the infinite, by this initial assault upon our senses, awe us

and overwhelm us, as solemn music might, the idea of it would be

abstract and moral like that of the infinitesimal, and nothing but an

amusing curiosity.

Nothing is objectively impressive; things are impressive only when

they succeed in touching the sensibility of the observer, by finding

the avenues to his brain and heart. The idea that the universe is a

multitude of minute spheres circling, like specks of dust, in a dark

and boundless void, might leave us cold and indifferent, if not

bored and depressed, were it not that we identify this hypothetical

scheme with the visible splendour, the poignant intensity, and the

baffling number of the stars. So far is the object from giving value

to the impression, that it is here, as it must always ultimately be,

the impression that gives value to the object. For all worth leads us

back to actual feeling somewhere, or else evaporates into nothing

-- into a word and a superstition.

Now, the starry heavens are very happily designed to intensify the

sensations on which their beauties must rest. In the first place, the

continuum of space is broken into points, numerous enough to give

the utmost idea of multiplicity and yet so distinct and vivid that it

is impossible not to remain aware of their individuality. The

variety of local signs, without becoming organized into forms,

remains prominent and irreducible. This makes the object infinitely

more exciting than a plane surface would be. In the second place,

the sensuous contrast of the dark background, -- blacker the clearer

the night and the more stars we can see, -- with the palpitating fire

of the stars themselves, could not be exceeded by any possible

device. This material beauty adds incalculably, as we have already

pointed out, to the inwardness and sublimity of the effect. To

realize the great importance of these two elements, we need but to

conceive their absence, and observe the change in the dignity of

the result.

Fancy a map of the heavens and every star plotted upon it, even

those invisible to the naked eye: why would this object, as full of

scientific suggestion surely as the reality, leave us so

comparatively cold? Quite indifferent it might not leave us, for I

have myself watched stellar photographs with almost inexhaustible

wonder. The sense of multiplicity is naturally in no way

diminished by the representation; but the poignancy of the

sensation, the life of the light, are gone; and with the dulled

impression the keenness of the emotion disappears. Or imagine the

stars, undiminished in number, without losing any of their

astronomical significance and divine immutability, marshalled in

geometrical patterns; say in a Latin cross, with the words _In hoc

signo vinces_ in a scroll around them. The beauty of the

illumination would be perhaps increased, and its import, practical,

religious, and cosmic, would surely be a little plainer; but where

would be the sublimity of the spectacle? Irretrievably lost: and lost

because the form of the object would no longer tantalize us with its

sheer multiplicity, and with the consequent overpowering sense of

suspense and awe.

In a word, the infinity which moves us is the sense of multiplicity

in uniformity. Accordingly things which have enough multiplicity,

as the lights of a city seen across water, have an effect similar to

that of the stars, if less intense; whereas a star, if alone, because the

multiplicity is lacking, makes a wholly different impression. The

single star is tender, beautiful, and mild; we can compare it to the

humblest and sweetest of things:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye,

Fair as _a star when only one

Is shining in the sky._

It is, not only in fact but in nature, an attendant on the moon,

associated with the moon, if we may be so prosaic here, not only

by contiguity but also by similarity.

Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star

Or vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky.

The same poet can say elsewhere of a passionate lover:

He arose

Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star,

Amid the sapphire heaven's deep repose.

How opposite is all this from the cold glitter, the cruel and

mysterious sublimity of the stars when they are many! With these

we have no Sapphic associations; they make us think rather of

Kant who could hit on nothing else to compare with his categorical

imperative, perhaps because he found in both the same baffling

incomprehensibility and the same fierce actuality. Such ultimate

feelings are sensations of physical tension.

_Defects of pure multiplicity._

§ 26. This long analysis will be a sufficient illustration of the

power of multiplicity in uniformity; we may now proceed to point

out the limitations inherent in this form. The most obvious one is

that of monotony; a file of soldiers or an iron railing is impressive

in its way, but cannot long entertain us, nor hold us with that depth

of developing interest, with which we might study a crowd or a

forest of trees.

The tendency of monotony is double, and in two directions

deadens our pleasure. When the repeated impressions are acute,

and cannot be forgotten in their endless repetition, their monotony

becomes painful. The constant appeal to the same sense, the

constant requirement of the same reaction, tires the system, and we

long for change as for a relief. If the repeated stimulations are not

very acute, we soon become unconscious of them; like the ticking

of the clock, they become merely a factor in our bodily one, a

cause, as the case may be, of a diffused pleasure or unrest; but they

cease to present a distinguishable object.

The pleasures, therefore, which a kindly but monotonous

environment produces, often fail to make it beautiful, for the

simple reason that the environment is not perceived. Likewise the

hideousness of things to which we are accustomed -- the blemishes

of the landscape, the ugliness of our clothes or of our walls -- do

not oppress us, not so much because we do not see the ugliness as

because we overlook the things. The beauties or defects of

monotonous objects are easily lost, because the objects are

themselves intermittent in consciousness. But it is of some

practical importance to remark that this indifference of

monotonous values is more apparent than real. The particular

object ceases to be of consequence; but the congruity of its

structure and quality with our faculties of perception remains, and

its presence in our environment is still a constant source of vague

irritation and friction, or of subtle and pervasive delight. And this

value, although not associated with the image of the monotonous

object, lies there in our mind, like all the vital and systemic

feelings, ready to enhance the beauty of any object that arouses our

attention, and meantime adding to the health and freedom of our

life -- making whatever we do a little easier and pleasanter for us.

A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken

us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or the consciousness

of a right life, can quicken us from within. To humanize our

surroundings is, therefore, a task which should interest the

physicians both of soul and body.

But the monotony of multiplicity is not merely intrinsic in the form;

what is perhaps even of greater consequence in the arts is the fact

that its capacity for association is restricted. What is in itself

uniform cannot have a great diversity of relations. Hence the

dryness, the crisp definiteness and hardness, of those products of

art which contain an endless repetition of the same elements. Their

affinities are necessarily few; they are not fit for many uses, nor

capable of expressing many ideas. The heroic couplet, now too

much derided, is a form of this kind. Its compactness and

inevitableness make it excellent for an epigram and adequate it for

a satire, but its perpetual snap and unvarying rhythm are thin for an

epic, and impossible for a song. The Greek colonnade, a form in

many ways analogous, has similar limitations. Beautiful with a

finished and restrained beauty, which our taste is hardly refined

enough to appreciate, it is incapable of development. The

experiments of Roman architecture sufficiently show it; the glory

of which is their Roman frame rather than their Hellenic ornament.

When the Greeks themselves had to face the problem of larger and

more complex buildings, in the service of a supernatural and

hierarchical system, they transformed their architecture into what

we call Byzantine, and St. Sophia took the place of the Parthenon.

Here a vast vault was introduced, the colonnade disappeared, the

architrave was rounded into an arch from column to column, the

capitals of these were changed from concave to convex, and a

thousand other changes in structure and ornament introduced

flexibility and variety. Architecture could in this way, precisely

because more vague and barbarous, better adapt itself to the

conditions of the new epoch. Perfect taste is itself a limitation, not

because it intentionally excludes any excellence, but because it

impedes the wandering of the arts into those bypaths of caprice and

grotesqueness in which, although at the sacrifice of formal beauty,

interesting partial effects might still be discovered. And this

objection applies with double force to the first crystallizations of

taste, when tradition has carried us but a little way in the right

direction. The authorized effects are then very simple, and if we

allow no others, our art becomes wholly inadequate to the

functions ultimately imposed upon it. Primitive arts might furnish

examples, but the state of English poetry at the time of Queen

Anne is a sufficient illustration of this possibility. The French

classicism, of which, the English school was an echo, was more

vital and human, because it embodied a more native taste and a

wider training.

_Aesthetics of democracy._

§ 27. It would be an error to suppose that aesthetic principles apply

only to our judgments of works of art or of those natural objects

which we attend to chiefly on account of their beauty. Every idea

which is formed in the human mind, every activity and emotion,

has some relation, direct or indirect, to pain and pleasure. If, as is

the case in all the more important instances, these fluid activities

and emotions precipitate, as it were, in their evanescence certain

psychical solids called ideas of things, then the concomitant

pleasures are incorporated more or less in those concrete ideas and

the things acquire an aesthetic colouring. And although this

aesthetic colouring may be the last quality we notice in objects of

practical interest, its influence upon us is none the less real, and

often accounts for a great deal in our moral and practical attitude.

In the leading political and moral idea of our time, in the idea of

democracy, I think there is a strong aesthetic ingredient, and the

power of the idea of democracy over the imagination is an

illustration of that effect of multiplicity in uniformity which we

have been studying. Of course, nothing could be more absurd than

to suggest that the French Revolution, with its immense

implications, had an aesthetic preference for its basis; it sprang, as

we know, from the hatred of oppression, the rivalry of classes, and

the aspiration after a freer social and strictly moral organization.

But when these moral forces were suggesting and partly realizing

the democratic idea, this idea was necessarily vividly present to

men's thoughts; the picture of human life which it presented was

becoming familiar, and was being made the sanction and goal of

constant endeavour. Nothing so much enhances a good as to make

sacrifices for it. The consequence was that democracy, prized at

first as a means to happiness and as an instrument of good

government, was acquiring an intrinsic value; it was beginning to

seem good in itself, in fact, the only intrinsically right and perfect

arrangement. A utilitarian scheme was receiving an aesthetic

consecration. That which was happening to democracy had

happened before to the feudal and royalist systems; they too had

come to be prized in themselves, for the pleasure men took in

thinking of society organized in such an ancient, and thereby to

their fancy, appropriate and beautiful manner. The practical value

of the arrangement, on which, of course, it is entirely dependent for

its origin and authority, was forgotten, and men were ready to

sacrifice their welfare to their sense of propriety; that is, they

allowed an aesthetic good to outweigh a practical one. That seems

now a superstition, although, indeed, a very natural and even noble

one. Equally natural and noble, but no less superstitious, is our

own belief in the divine right of democracy. Its essential right is

something purely aesthetic.

Such aesthetic love of uniformity, however, is usually disguised

under some moral label: we call it the lore of justice, perhaps

because we have not considered that the value of justice also, in so

far as it is not derivative and utilitarian, must be intrinsic, or, what

is practically the same thing, aesthetic. But occasionally the

beauties of democracy are presented to us undisguised. The

writings of Walt Whitman are a notable example. Never, perhaps,

has the charm of uniformity in multiplicity been felt so completely

and so exclusively. Everywhere it greets us with a passionate

preference; not flowers but leaves of grass, not music but

drum-taps, not composition but aggregation, not the hero but the average

man, not the crisis but the vulgarest moment; and by this resolute

marshalling of nullities, by this effort to show us everything as a

momentary pulsation of a liquid and structureless whole, he

profoundly stirs the imagination. We may wish to dislike this

power, but, I think, we must inwardly admire it. For whatever

practical dangers we may see in this terrible levelling, our aesthetic

faculty can condemn no actual effect; its privilege is to be pleased

by opposites, and to be capable of finding chaos sublime without

ceasing to make nature beautiful.

_Values of types and values of examples._

§ 28. It is time we should return to the consideration of abstract

forms. Nearest in nature to the example of uniformity in

multiplicity, we found those objects, like a reversible pattern, that

having some variety of parts invite us to survey them in different

orders, and so bring into play in a marked manner the faculty of

apperception.

There is in the senses, as we have seen, a certain form of

stimulation, a certain measure and rhythm of waves with which the

aesthetic value of the sensation is connected. So when, in the

perception of the object, a notable contribution is made by memory

and mental habit, the value of the perception will be due, not only

to the pleasantness of the external stimulus, but also to the

pleasantness of the apperceptive reaction; and the latter source of

value will be more important in proportion as the object perceived

is more dependent, for the form and meaning it presents, upon our

past experience and imaginative trend, and less on the structure of

the external object.

Our apperception of form varies not only with our constitution, age,

and health, as does the appreciation of sensuous values, but also

with our education and genius. The more indeterminate the object,

the greater share must subjective forces have in determining our

perception; for, of course, every perception is in itself perfectly

specific, and can be called indefinite only in reference to an

abstract ideal which it is expected to approach. Every cloud has

just the outline it has, although we may call it vague, because we

cannot classify its form under any geometrical or animal species; it

would be first definitely a whale, and then would become

indefinite until we saw our way to calling it a camel. But while in

the intermediate stage, the cloud would be a form in the perception

of which there would be little apperceptive activity little reaction

from the store of our experience, little sense of form; its value

would be in its colour and transparency, and in the suggestion of

lightness and of complex but gentle movement.

But the moment we said "Yes, very like a whale," a new kind of

value would appear; the cloud could now be beautiful or ugly, not

as a cloud merely, but as a whale. We do not speak now of the

associations of the idea, as with the sea, or fishermen's yarns; that

is an extrinsic matter of expression. We speak simply of the

intrinsic value of the form of the whale, of its lines, its movement,

its proportion. This is a more or less individual set of images which

are revived in the act of recognition; this revival constitutes the

recognition, and the beauty of the form is the pleasure of that

revival. A certain musical phrase, as it were, is played in the brain;

the awakening of that echo is the act of apperception and the

harmony of the present stimulation with the form of that phrase;

the power of this particular object to develope and intensify that

generic phrase in the direction of pleasure, is the test of the formal

beauty of this example. For these cerebral phrases have a certain

rhythm; this rhythm can, by the influence of the stimulus that now

reawakens it, be marred or enriched, be made more or less marked

and delicate; and as this conflict or reinforcement comes, the

object is ugly or beautiful in form.

Such an aesthetic value is thus dependent on two things. The first

is the acquired character of the apperceptive form evoked; it may

be a cadenza or a trill, a major or a minor chord, a rose or a violet,

a goddess or a dairy-maid; and as one or another of these is

recognized, an aesthetic dignity and tone is given to the object. But

it will be noticed that in such mere recognition very little pleasure

is found, or, what is the same thing, different aesthetic types in the

abstract have little difference in intrinsic beauty. The great

difference lies in their affinities. What will decide us to like or not

to like the type of our apperception will be not so much what this

type is, as its fitness to the context of our mind. It is like a word in

a poem, more effective by its fitness than by its intrinsic beauty,

although that is requisite too. We can be shocked at an incongruity

of natures more than we can be pleased by the intrinsic beauty of

each nature apart, so long, that is, as they remain abstract natures,

objects recognized without being studied. The aesthetic dignity of

the form, then, tells us the kind of beauty we are to expect, affects

us by its welcome or unwelcome promise, but hardly gives us a

positive pleasure in the beauty itself.

Now this is the first thing in the value of a form, the value of the

type as such; the second and more important element is the relation

of the particular impression to the form under which it is

apperceived. This determines the value of the object as an example

of its class. After our mind is pitched to the key and rhythm of a

certain idea, say of a queen, it remains for the impression to fulfil,

aggrandize, or enrich this form by a sympathetic embodiment of it.

Then we have a queen that is truly royal. But if instead there is

disappointment, if this particular queen is an ugly one, although

perhaps she might have pleased as a witch, this is because the

apperceptive form and the impression give a cerebral discord. The

object is unideal, that is, the novel, external element is

inharmonious with the revived and internal element by suggesting

which the object has been apperceived.

_Origin of types._

§ 29. A most important thing, therefore, in the perception of form

is the formation of types in our mind, with reference to which

examples are to be judged. I say the formation of them, for we can

hardly consider the theory that they are eternal as a possible one in

psychology. The Platonic doctrine on that point is a striking

illustration of an equivocation we mentioned in the beginning;[7]

namely, that the import of an experience is regarded as a

manifestation of its cause -- the product of a faculty substituted for

the description of its function. Eternal types are the instrument of

aesthetic life, not its foundation. Take the aesthetic attitude, and

you have for the moment an eternal idea; an idea, I mean, that you

treat as an absolute standard, just as when you take the perceptive

attitude you have an external object which you treat as an absolute

existence. But the aesthetic, like the perceptive faculty, can be

made an object of study in turn, and its theory can be sought; and

then the eternal idea, like the external object, is seen to be a

product of human nature, a symbol of experience, and an

instrument of thought.

The question whether there are not, in external nature or in the

mind of God, objects and eternal types, is indeed not settled, it is

not even touched by this inquiry; but it is indirectly shown to be

futile, because such transcendent realities, if they exist, can have

nothing to do with our ideas of them. The Platonic idea of a tree

may exist; how should I deny it? How should I deny that I might

some day find myself outside the sky gazing at it, and feeling that I,

with my mental vision, am beholding the plenitude of arboreal

beauty, perceived in this world only as a vague essence haunting

the multiplicity of finite trees? But what can that have to do with

my actual sense of what a tree should be? Shall we take the

Platonic myth literally, and say the idea is a memory of the tree I

have already seen in heaven? How else establish any relation

between that eternal object and the type in my mind? But why, in

that case, this infinite variability of ideal trees? Was the Tree

Beautiful an oak, or a cedar, an English or an American elm? My

actual types are finite and mutually exclusive; that heavenly type

must be one and infinite. The problem is hopeless.

Very simple, on the other hand, is the explanation of the existence

of that type as a residuum of experience. Our idea of an individual

thing is a compound and residuum of our several experiences of it;

and in the same manner our idea of a class is a compound and

residuum of our ideas of the particulars that compose it. Particular

impressions have, by virtue of their intrinsic similarity or of the

identity of their relations, a tendency to be merged and identified,

so that many individual perceptions leave but a single blurred

memory that stands for them all, because it combines their several

associations. Similarly, when various objects have many common

characteristics, the mind is incapable of keeping them apart. It

cannot hold clearly so great a multitude of distinctions and

relations as would be involved in naming and conceiving

separately each grain of sand, or drop of water, each fly or horse or

man that we have ever seen. The mass of our experience has

therefore to be classified, if it is to be available at all. Instead of a

distinct image to represent each of our original impressions, we

have a general resultant -- a composite photograph -- of those

impressions.

This resultant image is the idea of the class. It often has very few,

if any, of the sensible properties of the particulars that underlie it,

often an artificial symbol -- the sound of a word -- is the only

element, present to all the instances, which the generic image

clearly contains. For, of course, the reason why a name can

represent a class of objects is that the name is the most

conspicuous element of identity in the various experiences of

objects in that class. We have seen many horses, but if we are not

lovers of the animal, nor particularly keen observers, very likely

we retain no clear image of all that mass of impressions except the

reverberation of the sound "horse," which really or mentally has

accompanied all those impressions. This sound, therefore, is the

content of our general idea, and to it cling all the associations

which constitute our sense of what the word means. But a person

with a memory predominantly visual would probably add to this

remembered sound a more or less detailed image of the animal;

some particular horse in some particular attitude might possibly be

recalled, but more probably some imaginative construction,

some dream image, would accompany the sound. An image which

reproduced no particular horse exactly, but which was a

spontaneous fiction of the fancy, would serve, by virtue of its felt

relations, the same purpose as the sound itself. Such a spontaneous

image would be, of course, variable. In fact, no image can, strictly

speaking, ever recur. But these percepts, as they are called,

springing up in the mind like flowers from the buried seeds of past

experience, would inherit all the powers of suggestion which are

required by any instrument of classification.

These powers of suggestion have probably a cerebral basis. The

new percept -- the generic idea -- repeats to a great extent, both in

nature and localization, the excitement constituting the various

original impressions; as the percept reproduces more or less of

these it will be a more or less full and impartial representative of

them. Not all the suggestions of a word or image are equally ripe.

A generic idea or type usually presents to us a very inadequate and

biassed view of the field it means to cover. As we reflect and seek

to correct this inadequacy, the percept changes on our hands. The

very consciousness that other individuals and other qualities fall

under our concept, changes this concept, as a psychological

presence, and alters its distinctness and extent. When I remember,

to use a classical example, that the triangle is not isosceles, nor

scalene, nor rectangular, but each and all of those, I reduce my

percept to the word and its definition, with perhaps a sense of the

general motion of the hand and eye by which we trace a three-cornered

figure.

Since the production of a general idea is thus a matter of subjective

bias, we cannot expect that a type should be the exact average of

the examples from which it is drawn. In a rough way, it is the

average; a fact that in itself is the strongest of arguments against

the independence or priority of the general idea. The beautiful

horse, the beautiful speech, the beautiful face, is always a medium

between the extremes which our experience has offered. It is

enough that a given characteristic should be generally present in

our experience, for it to become an indispensable element of the

ideal. There is nothing in itself beautiful or necessary in the shape

of the human ear, or in the presence of nails on the fingers and toes;

but the ideal of man, which the preposterous conceit of our

judgment makes us set up as divine and eternal, requires these

precise details; without them the human form would be repulsively

ugly.

It often happens that the accidents of experience make us in this

way introduce into the ideal, elements which, if they could be

excluded without disgusting us, would make possible satisfactions

greater than those we can now enjoy. Thus the taste formed by one

school of art may condemn the greater beauties created by another.

In morals we have the same phenomenon. A barbarous ideal of life

requires tasks and dangers incompatible with happiness; a rude and

oppressed conscience is incapable of regarding as good a state

which excludes its own acrid satisfactions. So, too, a fanatical

imagination cannot regard God as just unless he is represented as

infinitely cruel. The purpose of education is, of course, to free us

from these prejudices, and to develope our ideals in the direction of

the greatest possible good. Evidently the ideal has been formed by

the habit of perception; it is, in a rough way, that average form

which we expect and most readily apperceive. The propriety and

necessity of it is entirely relative to our experience and faculty of

apperception. The shock of surprise, the incongruity with the

formed percept, is the essence and measure of ugliness.

_The average modified in the direction of pleasure._

§ 30. Nevertheless we do not form aesthetic ideals any more than

other general types, entirely without bias. We have already

observed that a percept seldom gives an impartial compound of the

objects of which it is the generic image. This partiality is due to a

variety of circumstances. One is the unequal accuracy of our

observation. If some interest directs our attention to a particular

quality of objects, that quality will be prominent in our percept; it

may even be the only content clearly given in our general idea; and

any object, however similar in other respects to those of the given

class, will at once be distinguished as belonging to a different

species if it lacks that characteristic on which our attention is

particularly fixed. Our percepts are thus habitually biassed in the

direction of practical interest, if practical interest does not indeed

entirely govern their formation. In the same manner, our aesthetic

ideals are biassed in the direction of aesthetic interest. Not all parts

of an object are equally congruous with our perceptive faculty; not

all elements are noted with the same pleasure. Those, therefore,

which are agreeable are chiefly dwelt upon by the lover of beauty,

and his percept will give an average of things with a great

emphasis laid on that part of them which is beautiful. The ideal

will thus deviate from the average in the direction of the observer's

pleasure.

For this reason the world is so much more beautiful to a poet or an

artist than to an ordinary man. Each object, as his aesthetic sense is

developed, is perhaps less beautiful than to the uncritical eye; his

taste becomes difficult, and only the very best gives him unalloyed

satisfaction. But while each work of nature and art is thus

apparently blighted by his greater demands and keener susceptibility,

the world itself, and the various natures it contains, are

to him unspeakably beautiful. The more blemishes he can see

in men, the more excellence he sees in man, and the more bitterly

he laments the fate of each particular soul, the more reverence and

love he has for the soul in its ideal essence. Criticism and

idealization involve each other. The habit of looking for beauty in

everything makes us notice the shortcomings of things; our sense,

hungry for complete satisfaction, misses the perfection it demands.

But this demand for perfection becomes at the same time the

nucleus of our observation; from every side a quick affinity draws

what is beautiful together and stores it in the mind, giving body

there to the blind yearnings of our nature. Many imperfect things

crystallize into a single perfection. The mind is thus peopled by

general ideas in which beauty is the chief quality; and these ideas

are at the same time the types of things. The type is still a natural

resultant of particular impressions; but the formation of it has been

guided by a deep subjective bias in favour of what has delighted

the eye.

This theory can be easily tested by asking whether, in the case

where the ideal differs from the average form of objects, this

variation is not due to the intrinsic pleasantness or impressiveness

of the quality exaggerated. For instance, in the human form, the

ideal differs immensely from the average. In many respects the

extreme or something near it is the most beautiful. Xenophon

describes the women of Armenia as kalai kai megalai, and we

should still speak of one as fair and tall and of another as fair but

little. Size is therefore, even where least requisite, a thing in which

the ideal exceeds the average. And the reason -- apart from

associations of strength -- is that unusual size makes things

conspicuous. The first prerequisite of effect is impression, and size

helps that; therefore in the aesthetic ideal the average will be

modified by being enlarged, because that is a change in the

direction of our pleasure, and size will be an element of beauty.[8]

Similarly the eyes, in themselves beautiful, will be enlarged also;

and generally whatever makes by its sensuous quality, by its

abstract form, or by its expression, a particular appeal to our

attention and contribution to our delight, will count for more in the

ideal type than its frequency would warrant. The generic image has

been constructed under the influence of a selective attention, bent

upon aesthetic worth.

To praise any object for approaching the ideal of its kind is

therefore only a roundabout way of specifying its intrinsic merit

and expressing its direct effect on our sensibility. If in referring to

the ideal we were not thus analyzing the real, the ideal would be an

irrelevant and unmeaning thing. We know what the ideal is

because we observe what pleases us in the reality. If we allow the

general notion to tyrannize at all over the particular impression and

to blind us to new and unclassified beauties which the latter may

contain, we are simply substituting words for feelings, and making

a verbal classification pass for an aesthetic judgment. Then the

sense of beauty is gone to seed. Ideals have their uses, but their

authority is wholly representative. They stand for specific

satisfactions, or else they stand for nothing at all.

In fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas

and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods,

are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for

experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and

surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder

hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and

direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to

bear our ignorance of fact.

The same thing happens, in a way, in other fields. Our armies

are devices necessitated by our weakness; our property an

encumbrance required by our need. If our situation were not

precarious, these great engines of death and life would not be

invented. And our intelligence is such another weapon against fate.

We need not lament the fact, since, after all, to build these various

structures is, up to a certain point, the natural function of human

nature. The trouble is not that the products are always subjective,

but that they are sometimes unfit and torment the spirit which they

exercise. The pathetic part of our situation appears only when we

so attach ourselves to those necessary but imperfect fictions, as to

reject the facts from which they spring and of which they seek to

be prophetic. We are then guilty of that substitution of means for

ends, which is called idolatry in religion, absurdity in logic, and

folly in morals. In aesthetics the thing has no name, but is

nevertheless very common; for it is found whenever we speak of

what ought to please, rather than of what actually pleases.

_Are all things beautiful?_

§ 31. These principles lead to an intelligible answer to a question

which is not uninteresting in itself and crucial in a system of

aesthetics. Are all things beautiful? Are all types equally beautiful

when we abstract from our practical prejudices? If the reader has

given his assent to the foregoing propositions, he will easily see

that, in one sense, we must declare that no object is essentially ugly.

If impressions are painful, they are objectified with difficulty; the

perception of a thing is therefore, under normal circumstances,

when the senses are not fatigued, rather agreeable than

disagreeable. And when the frequent perception of a class of

objects has given rise to an apperceptive norm, and we have an

ideal of the species, the recognition and exemplification of that

norm will give pleasure, in proportion to the degree of interest

and accuracy with which we have made our observations. The

naturalist accordingly sees beauties to which the academic artist is

blind, and each new environment must open to us, if we allow it to

educate our perception, a new wealth of beautiful forms.

But we are not for this reason obliged to assert that all gradations

of beauty and dignity are a matter of personal and accidental bias.

The mystics who declare that to God there is no distinction in the

value of things, and that only our human prejudice makes us prefer

a rose to an oyster, or a lion to a monkey, have, of course, a reason

for what they say. If we could strip ourselves of our human nature,

we should undoubtedly find ourselves incapable of making these

distinctions, as well as of thinking, perceiving, or willing in any

way which is now possible to us. But how things would appear to

us if we were not human is, to a man, a question of no importance.

Even, the mystic to whom the definite constitution of his own mind

is so hateful, can only paralyze without transcending his faculties.

A passionate negation, the motive of which, although morbid, is in

spite of itself perfectly human, absorbs all his energies, and his

ultimate triumph is to attain the absoluteness of indifference.

What is true of mysticism in general, is true also of its

manifestation in aesthetics. If we could so transform our taste as to

find beauty everywhere, because, perhaps, the ultimate nature of

things is as truly exemplified in one thing as in another, we should,

in fact, have abolished taste altogether. For the ascending series of

aesthetic satisfactions we should have substituted a monotonous

judgment of identity. If things are beautiful not by virtue of their

differences but by virtue of an identical something which they

equally contain, then there could be no discrimination in beauty.

Like substance, beauty would be everywhere one and the same,

and any tendency to prefer one thing to another would be a proof

of finitude and illusion. When we try to make our judgments

absolute, what we do is to surrender our natural standards and

categories, and slip into another genus, until we lose ourselves in

the satisfying vagueness of mere being.

Relativity to our partial nature is therefore essential to all our

definite thoughts, judgments, and feelings. And when once the

human bias is admitted as a legitimate, because for us a necessary,

basis of preference, the whole wealth of nature is at once organized

by that standard into a hierarchy of values. Everything is beautiful

because everything is capable in some degree of interesting and

charming our attention; but things differ immensely in this

capacity to please us in the contemplation of them, and therefore

they differ immensely in beauty. Could our nature be fixed and

determined once for all in every particular, the scale of aesthetic

values would become certain. We should not dispute about tastes,

no longer because a common principle of preference could not be

discovered, but rather because any disagreement would then be

impossible.

As a matter of fact, however, human nature is a vague abstraction;

that which is common to all men is the least part of their natural

endowment. Aesthetic capacity is accordingly very unevenly

distributed; and the world of beauty is much vaster and more

complex to one man than to another. So long, indeed, as the

distinction is merely one of development, so that we recognize in

the greatest connoisseur only the refinement of the judgments of

the rudest peasant, our aesthetic principle has not changed; we

might say that, in so far, we had a common standard more or less

widely applied. We might say so, because that standard would be

an implication of a common nature more or less fully developed.

But men do not differ only in the degree of their susceptibility,

they differ also in its direction. Human nature branches into

opposed and incompatible characters. And taste follows this

bifurcation. We cannot, except whimsically, say that a taste for

music is higher or lower than a taste for sculpture. A man might be

a musician and a sculptor by turns; that would only involve a

perfectly conceivable enlargement in human genius. But the union

thus effected would be an accumulation of gifts in the observer, not

a combination of beauties in the object. The excellence of

sculpture and that of music would remain entirely independent and

heterogeneous. Such divergences are like those of the outer senses

to which these arts appeal. Sound and colour have analogies only

in their lowest depth, as vibrations and excitement; as they grow

specific and objective, they diverge; and although the same

consciousness perceives them, it perceives them as unrelated and

uncombinable objects.

The ideal enlargement of human capacity, therefore, has no

tendency to constitute a single standard of beauty. These standards

remain the expression of diverse habits of sense and imagination.

The man who combines the greatest range with the greatest

endowment in each particular, will, of course, be the critic most

generally respected. He will express the feelings of the greater

number of men. The advantage of scope in criticism lies not in the

improvement of our sense in each particular field; here the artist

will detect the amateur's shortcomings. But no man is a specialist

with his whole soul. Some latent capacity he has for other

perceptions; and it is for the awakening of these, and their

marshalling before him, that the student of each kind of beauty

turns to the lover of them all.

The temptation, therefore, to say that all things are really equally

beautiful arises from an imperfect analysis, by which the

operations of the aesthetic consciousness are only partially

disintegrated. The dependence of the _degrees_ of beauty upon

our nature is perceived, while the dependence of its _essence_

upon our nature is still ignored. All things are not equally beautiful

because the subjective bias that discriminates between them is the

cause of their being beautiful at all. The principle of personal

preference is the same as that of human taste; real and objective

beauty, in contrast to a vagary of individuals, means only an

affinity to a more prevalent and lasting susceptibility, a

response toa more general and fundamental demand. And the keener

discrimination, by which the distance between beautiful and ugly

things is increased, far from being a loss of aesthetic insight, is a

development of that faculty by the exercise of which beauty comes

into the world.

_Effects of indeterminate organization._

§ 32. It is the free exercise of the activity of apperception that gives

so peculiar an interest to indeterminate objects, to the vague, the

incoherent, the suggestive, the variously interpretable. The more

this effect is appealed to, the greater wealth of thought is presumed

in the observer, and the less mastery is displayed by the artist. A

poor and literal mind cannot enjoy the opportunity for reverie and

construction given by the stimulus of indeterminate objects; it

lacks the requisite resources. It is nonplussed and annoyed, and

turns away to simpler and more transparent things with a feeling of

helplessness often turning into contempt. And, on the other hand,

the artist who is not artist enough, who has too many irrepressible

talents and too little technical skill, is sure to float in the region of

the indeterminate. He sketches and never paints; he hints and never

expresses; he stimulates and never informs. This is the method of

the individuals and of the nations that have more genius than art.

The consciousness that accompanies this characteristic is the sense

of profundity, of mighty significance. And this feeling is not

necessarily an illusion. The nature of our materials -- be they

words, colours, or plastic matter -- imposes a limit and bias upon

our expression. The reality of experience can never be quite

rendered through these media. The greatest mastery of technique

will therefore come short of perfect adequacy and exhaustiveness;

there must always remain a penumbra and fringe of suggestion if

the most explicit representation is to communicate a truth. When

there is real profundity, -- when the living core of things is most

firmly grasped, -- there will accordingly be a felt inadequacy of

expression, and an appeal to the observer to piece out our

imperfections with his thoughts. But this should come only after

the resources of a patient and well-learned art have been exhausted;

else what is felt as depth is really confusion and incompetence. The

simplest thing becomes unutterable, if we have forgotten how to

speak. And a habitual indulgence in the inarticulate is a sure sign

of the philosopher who has not learned to think, the poet who has

not learned to write, the painter who has not learned to paint, and

the impression that has not learned to express itself -- all of which

are compatible with an immensity of genius in the inexpressible

soul.

Our age is given to this sort of self-indulgence, and on both the

grounds mentioned. Our public, without being really trained, -- for

we appeal to too large a public to require training in it, -- is well

informed and eagerly responsive to everything; it is ready to work

pretty hard, and do its share towards its own profit and

entertainment. It becomes a point of pride with it to understand and

appreciate everything. And our art, in its turn, does not overlook

this opportunity. It becomes disorganized, sporadic, whimsical,

and experimental. The crudity we are too distracted to refine, we

accept as originality, and the vagueness we are too pretentious to

make accurate, we pass off as sublimity. This is the secret of

making great works on novel principles, and of writing hard books

easily.

_Example of landscape._

§ 33. An extraordinary taste for landscape compensates us for this

ignorance of what is best and most finished in the arts. The natural

landscape is an indeterminate object; it almost always contains

enough diversity to allow the eye a great liberty in selecting,

emphasizing, and grouping its elements, and it is furthermore rich

in suggestion and in vague emotional stimulus. A landscape to be

seen has to be composed, and to be loved has to be moralized. That

is the reason why rude or vulgar people are indifferent to their

natural surroundings. It does not occur to them that the work-a-day

world is capable of aesthetic contemplation. Only on holidays,

when they add to themselves and their belongings some unusual

ornament, do they stop to watch the effect. The far more beautiful

daily aspects of their environment escape them altogether. When,

however, we learn to apperceive; when we grow fond of tracing

lines and developing vistas; when, above all, the subtler influences

of places on our mental tone are transmuted into an expressiveness

in those places, and they are furthermore poetized by our

day-dreams, and turned by our instant fancy into so many hints of a

fairyland of happy living and vague adventure, -- then we feel that

the landscape is beautiful. The forest, the fields, all wild or rural

scenes, are then full of companionship and entertainment.

This is a beauty dependent on reverie, fancy, and objectified

emotion. The promiscuous natural landscape cannot be enjoyed in

any other way. It has no real unity, and therefore requires to have

some form or other supplied by the fancy; which can be the more

readily done, in that the possible forms are many, and the constant

changes in the object offer varying suggestions to the eye. In fact,

psychologically speaking, there is no such thing as a landscape;

what we call such is an infinity of different scraps and glimpses

given in succession. Even a painted landscape, although it tends to

select and emphasize some parts of the field, is composed by

adding together a multitude of views. When this painting is

observed in its turn, it is surveyed as a real landscape would be,

and apperceived partially and piecemeal; although, of course, it

offers much less wealth of material than its living original, and is

therefore vastly inferior.

Only the extreme of what is called impressionism tries to give

upon canvas one absolute momentary view; the result is that when

the beholder has himself actually been struck by that aspect, the

picture has an extraordinary force and emotional value -- like the

vivid power of recalling the past possessed by smells. But, on the

other hand, such a work is empty and trivial in the extreme; it is

the photograph of a detached impression, not followed, as it would

be in nature, by many variations of itself. An object so unusual is

often unrecognizable, if the vision thus unnaturally isolated has

never happened to come vividly into our own experience. The

opposite school -- what might be called _discursive_ landscape

painting -- collects so many glimpses and gives so fully the sum of

our positive observations of a particular scene, that its work is sure

to be perfectly intelligible and plain. If it seems unreal and

uninteresting, that is because it is formless, like the collective

object it represents, while it lacks that sensuous intensity and

movement which might have made the reality stimulating.

The landscape contains, of course, innumerable things which have

determinate forms; but if the attention is directed specifically to

them, we have no longer what, by a curious limitation of the word,

is called the love of nature. Not very long ago it was usual for

painters of landscapes to introduce figures, buildings, or ruins to

add some human association to the beauty of the place. Or, if

wildness and desolation were to be pictured, at least one weary

wayfarer must be seen sitting upon a broken column. He might

wear a toga and then be Marius among the ruins of Carthage. The

landscape without figures would have seemed meaningless; the

spectator would have sat in suspense awaiting something, as at

the theatre when the curtain rises on an empty stage. The

indeterminateness of the suggestions of an unhumanized scene was

then felt as a defect; now we feel it rather as an exaltation. We

need to be free; our emotion suffices us; we do not ask for a

description of the object which interests us as a part of ourselves.

We should blush to say so simple and obvious a thing as that to us

"the mountains are a feeling"; nor should we think of apologizing

for our romanticism as Byron did: