not have conducted the public defence of a certain Samian
demagogue (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ii. 20). According to the
story, he subsequently lived at the court of Croesus, where
he met Solon, and dined in the company of the Seven Sages
of Greece with Periander at Corinth. During the reign of
Peisistratus he is said to have visited Athens, on which
occasion he related the fable of The Frogs asking for a
King, to dissuade the citizens from attempting to exchange
Peisistratus for another ruler. The popular stories current
regarding him are derived from a life, or rather romance,
prefixed to a book of fables, purporting to be his, collected
by Maximus Planudes, a monk of the 14th century. In this he
is described as a monster of ugliness and deformity, as he is
also represented in a well-known marble figure in the Villa
Albani at Rome. That this life, however, was in existence a
century before Planudes, appears from a 13th-century MS. of
it found at Florence. In Plutarch's Symposium of the Seven
Sages, at which Aesop is a guest, there are many jests on
his original servile condition, but nothing derogatory is
said about his personal appearance. We are further told
that the Athenians erected in his honour a noble statue
by the famous sculptor Lysippus, which furnishes a strong
argument against the fiction of his deformity. Lastly,
the obscurity in which the history of Aesop is involved
has induced some scholars to deny his existence altogether.
It is probable that Aesop did not commit his fables to
writing; Aristophanes (Wasps, 1259) represents Philocleon as
having learnt the ``absurdities'' of Aesop from conversation
at banquets) and Socrates whiles away his time in prison by
turning some of Aesop's fables ``which he knew'' into verse
(Plato, Phaedo, 61 b). Demetrius of Phalerum (345-283
B.C.) made a collection in ten books, probably in prose
(Lopson Aisopeion sunagogai) for the use of orators,
which has been lost. Next appeared an edition in elegiac
verse, often cited by Suidas, but the author's name is
unknown. Babrius, according to Crusius, a Roman and tutor
to the son of Alexander Severus, turned the fables into
choliambics in the earlier part of the 3rd century A.D.
The most celebrated of the Latin adapters is Phaedrus, a
freedman of Augustus. Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps
the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin
elegiacs. The collections which we possess under the name
of Aesop's Fables are late renderings of Babrius's Version
or Progumnasmata, rhetorical exercises of varying age and
merit. Syntipas translated Babrius into Syriac, and Andreopulos
put the Syriac back again into Greek. Ignatius Diaconus, in
the 9th century, made a version of 55 fables in choliambic
tetrameters. Stories from Oriental sources were added, and from
these collections Maximus Planudes made and edited the collection
which has come down to us under the name of Aesop, and from
which the popular fables of modern Europe have been derived.
For further information see the article FABLE; Bentley,
Dissertation on the Fables of Aesop; Du Meril, Poesies
inedites du moyen age (1854); J. Jacobs, The Fables
of Aesop (1889): i. The history of the Aesopic fable;
ii. The Fables of Aesop, as first printed by William Caxton,
1484, from his French translation; Hervieux, Les Fabulistes
Latins (1893-1899). Before any Greek text appeared, a
Latin translation of 100 Fabulae Aesopicae by an Italian
scholar named Ranuzio (Renutius) was published at Rome,
1476. About 1480 the collection of Planudes was brought out
at Milan by Buono Accorso (Accursius), together with Ranuzio's
translation. This edition, which contained 144 fables, was
frequently reprinted and additions made from time to time
from various MSS.--the Heidelberg (Palatine), Florentine,
Vatican and Augsburg---by Stephanus (1547), Nevelet (1610),
Hudson (1718), Hauptmann (1741), Furia (1810), Coray (1810),
Schneider (1812) and others. A critical edition of all the
previously known fables, prepared by Carl von Halm from the
collections of Furia, Coray and Schneider, was published in
the Teubner series of Greek and Latin texts. A Fabularum
Aesopicarum sylloge (233 in number) from a Paris MS., with
critical notes by Sternbach, appeared in a Cracow University
publication, Rozprawy akademii umiejetinosci (1894).
AESOPUS, a Greek historian who wrote a history of
Alexander the Great, a Latin translation of which,
by Julius Valerius, was discovered by Mai in 1816.
AESOPUS, CLODIUS, the most eminent Roman tragedian,
flourished during the time of Cicero, but the dates of his
birth and death are not known. The name seems to show that
he was a freedman of some member of the Clodian gens. Cicero
was on friendly terms with both him and Roscius, the equally
distinguished comedian, and did not disdain to profit by their
instruction. Plutarch (Cicero, 5) mentions it as reported of
Aesopus, that, while representing Atreus deliberating how he
should revenge himself on Thyestes, the actor forgot himself
so far in the heat of action that with his truncheon he struck
and killed one of the servants crossing the stage. Aesopus
made a last appearance in 55 B.C.---when Cicero tells us
that he was advanced in years--on the occasion of the splendid
games given by Pompey at the dedication of his theatre. In
spite of his somewhat extravagant living, he left an ample
fortune to his spendthrift son, who did his best to squander
it as soon as possible. Horace (Sat. iii. 3. 239) mentions
his taking a pearl from the ear-drop of Caecilia Metella and
dissolving it in vinegar, that he might have the satisfaction
of swallowing eight thousand pounds' worth at a draught.
Cicero, De Divinatione, i. 37; pro Sestio, 56, 58;
Quint., Instit. xi. 3, iii; Macrobius, Sat. iii. 14.
AESTHETICS, a branch of study variously defined as the philosophy
or science of the beautiful, of taste or of the fine arts.
Preliminary definition.
The name is something of an accident. In its original Greek form
(aisthetikos) it means what has to do with sense-perception
as a source of knowledge; and this is still its meaning
in Kant's philosophy (``Transcendental Aesthetic''). Its
limitation to that function of sensuous perception which we
know as the contemplative enjoyment of beauty is due to A. G.
Baumgarten. Although the subject does not readily lend
itself to precise definition at the outset, we may indicate
itsscope and aim, as undeibtood by recent writers, by saying
that it deals successively with one great department of
human experience, viz. the pleasurable activities of pure
contemplation. By pure contemplation is here understood that
manner of regarding objects of sense-perception, and more
particularly sights and sounds, which is entirely motived by
the pleasure of the act itself. The term ``object'' means
whatever can be perceived through one of the senses, e.g.
a flower, a landscape, the flight of a bird, a sequence of
tones. The contemplation may be immediate when (as mostly
happens) the object is present to sense; or it may be mediate,
when as in reading poetry we dwell on images of objects of
sense. Whenever we become interested in an object merely
as presented for our contemplation our whole state of
mind may be described as an aesthetic attitude, and our
experience as an aesthetic experience. Other expressions
such as the pleasure of taste, the enjoyment and appreciation
of beauty (in the larger sense of this term), will serve
less precisely to mark off this department of experience.
Differentiation of aesthetic experience. Its characteristics as feeling.
Aesthetic experience is differentiated from other kinds
of experience by a number of characteristics. We commonly
speak of it as enjoyment, as an exercise and cultivation of
feeling. The appreciation of beauty is pervaded and sustained
by pleasurable feeling. In aesthetic enjoyment our capacities
of feeling attain their fullest and most perfect development.
Yet, as its dependence on a quiet attitude of contemplation
might tell us, aesthetic experience is characterized by a
certain degree of calmness and moderation of feeling. Even
when we are moved by a tragedy our feeling is comparatively
restrained. A rare exhibition of beauty may thrill the soul
for a moment, yet in general the enjoyment of it is far removed
from the excitement of passion. On the other hand, aesthetic
pleasure is pure enjoyment. Even when a disagreeable element
is present, as in a musical dissonance or in the suffering
of a tragic hero, it contributes to a higher measure of
enjoyment. It is, moreover, free from the painful elements
of craving, fatigue, conflict, anxiety and disappointment,
which are apt to accompany other kinds of enjoyment; such as
the satisfaction of the appetites and other needs. To this
purity of aesthetic pleasure must be added its refinement,
which implies not merely a certain remoteness from the bodily
needs, but the effect of a union of sense and mind in giving
amplitude as well as delicacy to our enjoyment of beauty.
Marked off from practical activity,
As the region of most pure and refined feeling, aesthetic
experience is clearly marked off from practical life,
with its urgent desires and the rest. In aesthetic
contemplation desire and will as a whole are almost dormant.
also from intellectual activity.
This detachment from the daily life of practical needs
and aims is brought out in Kant's postulate that aesthetic
enjoyment must be disinterested (``ohne Interesse''), that
when we regard an object aesthetically we are not in the
least concerned with its practical significance and value: one
cannot, for example, at the same moment aesthetically enjoy
looking at a painting and desire to be its possessor. In like
manner, even if less aoparently, aesthetic contemplation is
marked off from the arduous mental work which enters into
the pursuit of knowledge. In contemplating an aesthetic
object we are mentally occupied with the concrete, whereas
all the more serious intellectual work of science involves
the difficulties of the abstract. The contemplation is,
moreover, free from those restraints which are imposed
on our mental activity by the desire to obtain knowledge.
Uniformity of aestetic experience.
While as the highest phase of feeling aesthetic experience
appears to belong to our subjective life, the hidden region of
the soul, it is connected just as clearly, through the act of
sense-perception, with the world of objects which is our common
possession. Being thus dependent on a contemplation of
things in this common world it raises the question whether,
like the perception of these objects, it is a uniform
experience, the same for others as for myself. We touch
here on the last characteristic of aesthetic experience
which needs to he noted at this stage, its uniformity or
subjection to law. It is a common idea that men's judgments
about matters of taste disagree to so large an extent
that each individual is left very much to his subjective
impressions. With regard to many of the subtler matters of
aesthetic appreciation, at any rate, there is undoubtedly
on a first view the appearance of a want of agreement.
The aesthetic judgment.
Contrasted with logical judgments or even with ethical
ones, aesthetic judgments may no doubt look uncertain and
``subjective.'' The proposition ``this tree is a birch'' seems
to lend itself much better to critical discussion and to general
acceptance or rejection than the proposition ``this tree is
beautiful.'' This circumstance, as Kant shrewdly suggests,
helps to explain why we have come to employ the word ``taste''
in dealing with aesthetic matters; for the pronouncements of
the sense of taste are recognized as among the most uncertain
and ``subjective'' of our senseimpressions. Yet viewed as a
species of pleasurable feelings, aesthetic experiences will
be found to exhibit a large amount of uniformity, of objective
agreement as between different experiences of the same person
and experiences of different persons. This general agreement
appears to be clearly implied in the ordinary form of our
aesthetic judgments. To say ``this rose is beautiful''
means more than to say ``the sight of this rose affects me
agreeably.'' It means that the rose has a general power of
so affecting me (at different times) and others as well.
Logical judgment and judgment of value.
The judgment is not the same as a logical one. It does not say
simply that as a matter of fact it always does please---even
if we add the limitation those who for, as we know, our varying
mood and state of receptivity make a profound difference in
the fulness of the aesthetic enjoyment. It is a ``judgment of
value'' which claims for the rose aesthetic rank as an object
properly qualified to please contemplative subjects. This
value, it is plain, is relative to conscious subjects; yet since
it is relative to all competent ones, it may be regarded as
``objective''---that is to say, as belonging to the object.1
Late development of the science.
This slight preliminary inspection of the subject will prepare
one for the circumstance that the scientific treatment of
it has begun late, and is even now far from being complete.
This slowness of development is in part explained by the
detachment of aesthetic experience from the urgent needs of
life. In a comparatively early stage of human progress some
thought had to be bestowed on such pressing problems as to
how to cope with the forces of nature and to turn them to
useful account; how to secure in human communities obedience
to custom and law. But the problem of throwing light on our
aesthetic pleasures had no such urgency.2 To this it must
be added that aesthetic experience (in all but its simpler
and cruder forms) has been, and still is confined to a small
number of persons; so that the subject does not appeal to a
wide popular interest; while, on the other hand, the subjects
of this experience not infrequently have a strong sentimental
dislike to the idea of introducing into the region of refined
feeling the cold light of scientific investigation. Lastly,
there are special difficulties inherent in the subject. One
serious obstacle to a scientific theory of aesthetic experience
is the illusive character of many of its finer elements---for
example, the subtle differences of feeling-tone produced by
the several colours as well as by their several tones and
shades, by the several musical intervals, and so forth.
Finally, there is the circumstance just touched on that much
of this region of experience, instead of at once disclosing
uniformity, seems to be rather the abode of caprice and
uncertainty. The variations in taste at different levels of
culture, among different races and nations and among the
individual members of the same community are numerous and
striking, and might at first seem to bar the way to a scientific
treatment of the subject. These considerations suggest
that an adequate theory of aesthetic experience could only
be attempted after the requisite scientific skill had been
developed in other and more pressing departments of inquiry.
Inadequate theories of subject.
If we glance at the modes of treating the subject up to a
quite recent date we find that little of serious effort to
apply to it a strictly scientific method of investigation.
The whole extent of concrete experience has not been adequately
recognized, still less adequately examined. For the greater
part thinkers have been in haste to reach some simple
formula of beauty which might seem to cover the more obvious
facts. This has commonly been derived deductively from some
more comprehensive idea of experience or human life as a
whole. Thus in German treatises on aesthetics which have
been largely thought out under the influence of philosophic
idealism the beautiful is subsumed under the idea, of which
it is regarded as one special manifestation, and its place in
human experience has been determined by defining its logical
relations to the other great co-ordinate concepts, the good
and the true. These attempts to reach a general conception
of beauty have often led to one-sidedness of view. And this
one-sidedness has sometimes characterized the theories of those
who, like Alison, have made a wider survey of aesthetic facts.
Aesthetics as a normative science.
Aesthetics, like Ethics, is a Normative Science, that is to
say, concerned with determining the nature of a species of the
desirable or the good (in the large sense). It seeks one or
more regulative principles which may help us to distinguish a
real from an apparent aesthetic value, and to set the higher and
more perfect illustrations of beauty above the lower and less
perfect. As a science it will seek to realize its normative
function by the aid of a patient, methodical investigation
of facts, and by processes of observation, analysis and
induction similar to those carried out in the natural sciences.
Aestetics not a practical science.
In speaking of aesthetics as a normative science we do not
mean that it is a practical one in the sense that it supplies
practical rules which may serve as definite guidance for the
artist and the lover of beauty, in their particular problems
of selecting and arranging elements of aesthetic value. It
is no more a practical science than logic. The supposition
that it is so is probably favoured by the idea that aesthetic
theory has art for its special subject. But this is to confuse
a general aesthetic theory--what the Germans call ``General
Aesthetics''---with a theory of art (Kunstwissenschaft). The
former, with which we are here concerned, has to examine
aesthetic experience as a whole; which, as we shall presently
see, includes more than the enjoyment and appreciation of art.
Problems of the science.
We may now indicate with more fulness the main problems of our
science, seeking to give them as precise a form as possible.
Is beauty a single quality in objects?
At the outset we are confronted with an old and almost
baffling question: ``Is beauty a single quality inherent in
objects of perception like form or colour?'' Common language
certainly suggests that it is. Aesthetics, too, began its
inquiry at the same point of view, and its history shows how
much pains men have taken in trying to determine the nature
of this attribute, as well as that of the faculty of the soul
by which it is perceived. Yet a little examination of the
facts suffices to show that the theory is beset with serious
difficulties. Whatever beauty may be it is certainly not a
quality of an object in the same way in which the colour or
the form of it is a quality. These are physical qualities,
known to us by soecific modifications of our sensations.
Beauty not a physical quality.
The beauty of a rose or of a peach is clearly not a physical
quality. Nor do we in attributing beauty to some particular
quality in an object, say colour, conceive of it as a
phase of this quality, like depth or brilliance of colour,
which, again, is known by a special modification of the
sensations of colour. Hence we must say that beauty, though
undoubtedly referred to a physical object, is extraneous
to the group of qualities which makes it a physical object.
Beauty attributed to different qualities in objects.
Beauty is frequently attributed to a concrete object as
a whole---to a flower or shell, for example, as a visible
whole. Our everydav aesthetic judgments are wont to leave the
attributes thus vaguely referred to the concrete object. Yet
it is equally certain that we not infrequently speak of the
beauty of some definable aspect to, or quality of an object, as
when we pronounce the contour of a mountain or of a vase to be
beautiful. And it may be asked whether, in thus localizing
beauty, so to speak, in one of the constituent qualities of
an object, we always place it in the same quality. A mere
glance at the facts will suffice to convince us that we do
not. We call the facade of a Greek temple beautiful with
special reference to its admirable form; whereas in predicating
beauty of the ruin of a Norman castle we refer rather to what the
ruin means---to the effect of an imagination of its past proud
strength and slow vanquishment by the unrelenting strokes of time.
Formalists and expressionalists.
This fact that beauty appertains now more to one quality,
now more to another, helps us to understand why certain
theorists, known as formalists, regarded beauty as formal
or residing in form, whereas others, the idealists or
expressionalists, view it as residing in ideal content or
expression. These theories. however, like other attempts to
find an adequate single principle of beauty, are unsatisfactory.
Form and ideal content are each a great source of aesthetic
enjoyment, and either can be found in a degree of supremacy
which practically renders the co-operation of the other
unimportant. The two buildings cited above, two human faces,
two musical compositions, may exhibit in an impressive and
engrossing way the beauty of form and of expression respectively.
Three ultimate modes of beauty.
Nor is this all. Beauty refuses to be confined even to these
two. There are the various beauties of colour, for example,
as exhibited in such familiar phenomena of nature as sea
and sky, autumn moors and woods. A slight analysis of
the constituents of objects to which we attribute beauty
shows that there are at least three distinct modes of this
attribute, namely (1) sensuous beauty, (2) beauty of form
and (3) beauty of meaning or expression, nor do these
appear to be reducible to any higher or more comprehensive
principle. It requires a certain boldness to attempt to effect
a rapprochement between the formal and the expressional
factor.3 An apparent unification of the three seems at
present only possible by substituting for beauty another
concept at least equally vague, such as perfection,4 which
seems to imply the idea of purposiveness, and to apply clearly
only to certain domains of beauty, e.g. organic form.
Beauty and allied conceptions.
We may now take another step and say that beauty appears to be
a quality in objects which is not sharply differentiated from
other and allied qualities. If we look at the usages of speech
we shall find that beauty has its kindred conceptions, such as
gracefulness, prettiness and others. Writers on aesthetics have
spent much time on these ``Modifications of the Beautiful.'' The
point emphasized here is the difficulty of drawing the line between
them. Even an expert may hesitate long before saying whether
a human face, a flower or a cameo should be called beautiful or
pretty. Must we postulate as many allied qualities as there
are names for these pleasing aspects of objects? Or must we
do violence to usage and so stretch the word ``Beauty'' as
to make it cover all qualities or aspects of objects which
have aesthetic value, including those ``modifications of the
beautiful'' which we know as the sublime, the comic and the
rest? But the wider we try in this way to make the denotation
of the term the vaguer grows the connotation. We are thus
left equally incapable of saying what the quality is, and
in which aspect or attribute of the object it inheres.5
Assumption of objective qualityt of beauty dispensed with.
It seems to follow that in constructing a scientific theory we do
well to dispense with the assumption of an objective quality of
beauty. Aesthetics will return to Kant and confine itself to
the examination of objects called beautiful in their relation
to, and in their manner of affecting our minds.6 The aesthetic
value of such an object will be viewed as consisting in the
possession of certain assignable characteristics by means of
which it is fitted to affect us in a certain desirable way,
to draw us into the enjoyable mood of aesthetic contemplation.
Aesthetic qualities.
These characteristics may conveniently be called aesthetic
qualities.7 Objects which are found to possess one or more
of these qualities in the required degree of fulness claim a
certain aesthetic value, even though they fall short of being
``beautiful,'' in the more exacting use of this word. They
are in the direction---``im Sinne,'' as Fechner says----of
beauty, conceived as something fuller and richer, answering
to a higher standard of aesthetic enjoyment and a severer
demand on our part. The word ``beauty'' may still be used
occasionally, where no ambiguity arises, as a convenient
expression for aesthetic value in all its degrees. Yet
it is better to keep the term applicable to the objects
commonly denoted by it by making it represent the fuller
aesthetic satisfactions which flow from a rare and commanding
exhibition of one or more of these qualities, from what may be
described as an appreciable excellence of aesthetic quality.
By thus dispensing with the concept of beauty as some
occult undefinable quality, we get rid of much of the
contradiction which appears to inhere in our aesthetic
experience. For example, a bit of brilliant colour in a
bonnet which pleases the wearer but offends her superior in
aesthetic matters takes its place as something which per
se has a certain degree of aesthetic value even though the
particular relations into which it has now thrust itself,
palpable to the trained eye, may practically rob it of its
value. In thus substituting the relative idea of aesthetic
value for the absolute idea of beauty we may no doubt seem
to be destroying the reality of the object of aesthetic
perception. This point may more conveniently be taken up later
when we consider the whole question of aesthetic illusion.
Problem of aesthetic effect.
This new way of envisaging aesthetic objects requires us
to make the study of their effect a prominent part of our
investigation. In all the valuable recent work on the
subject, attention has been largely concentrated on this
effect. More particularly we have to investigate and illumine
scientifically the pleasurable side of the experience.
Aesthetics and laws of pleasure.
In doing this we shall make use of all the light we can
obtain from a study of known laws of Pleasure. Thus
we shall avail ourselves not only of the theory of the
pleasure-tones of sensation but of that of the conditions
of an agreeable exercise of the attention upon objects more
particularly of the characteristics of objects which adequately
stimulate the attention without confusing or burdening it.
Problem of aesthetic enjoyment a special one.
Yet this does not require that we should treat the aesthetic
problem as a part of the more general science of pleasure, as
has been attempted by some, e.g. Grant Allen (Physiological
Aesthetics) and Rutgers Marshall (Pain, Pleasure and
Aesthetics, and Aesthetic Principles.) To do so would be
to run the risk of considering only the more general aspects
and conditions of aesthetic enjoyment, whereas what we need is
a theory of it as a specific kind of pleasurable experience.
The attitude of aesthetic contemplation.
What is required at the present stage of development of the
science is a deeper investigation of the aesthetic attitude
of mind as a whole, of what we may call the aesthetic
psychosis. We need to probe the act of contemplation itself,
the mode of activity of attention involved in this calm,
half-dreamlike gazing on the mere look of things unconcerned
with their ordinary and weightier imports. We need further
to determine the effect of this contemplative attitude upon
the several mental processes involved, the act of perception
itself, with its grasp of manifold relations, the flow of
ideas, the partial resurgence and transformation of emotion.
In examining these effects we must keep in view the double side
of the contemplative attitude, the wide range of free movement
which perception and imagination claim and enjoy, and the willing
subjection of the contemplative mind to the spell of the object.
Intellectual and aesthetic activity further differentiated.
A deeper inspection of the contemplative mood may be expected
to render clearer the difference between the mental activity
employed in aesthetic perception and imagination and intellectual
activity proper; between. say, the differencing of allied
tints involved in the finer aesthetic enjoyment of colour
and the sharper, clearer discrimination of tints required in
scientific observation, and between such a grasp of relations
as is required for a just appreciation of beautiful form
and that severe analysis and measurement of formal elements
and their relations which is insisted upon by science. As
a result of a finer distinction here we may probably be in a
better position to determine the point---touched on more than
once in recent works on aesthetics---how far intellectual
pleasure proper, e.g. that of recognizing and classifying
objects, enters as a subordinate element into aesthetic
enjoyment. Is aesthetic enjoyment essentially social?
One point in the characterization of aesthetic experience
has been reserved, namely, the question whether it is
essentially a form of social enjoyment. No one doubts
that a man often enjoys beauty, e.g. that of a landscape,
when alone; yet at such a moment he not only recognizes that
his pleasure is a possible one for others, but is probably
aware of a sub-conscious wish that others were present to
share his enjoyment. Kant went so far as to say that on
a desert island a man would adorn neither his hut nor his
person. However this be, it seems certain that as a rule
we tend to indulge our aesthetic tastes in company with
others. This habit of making aesthetic enjoyment a social
experience would in itself tend to develop the sympathies and
the sympathetic intelligence and thus to promote exchanges
of aesthetic experience. The content, too, of our aesthetic
experiences would be favourable to such conjoint acts of
aesthetic contemplation, and to the mutual sharing of aesthetic
experiences; for, as disinterested and universal modes of
enjoyment detached from personal interests, they are clearly
free from the egoistic exclusiveness which characterizes our
private enjoyments which at best can only be participated
in by one or two closely attached friends. Our aesthetic
enjoyments are thus eminently fitted to be social ones; and as
such they become greatly amplified by sympathetic resonance.
The aesthetic senses.
We are now in a position to consider a point much discussed of
late, namely, the special connexion of aesthetic enjoyment
with the two senses, sight and hearing. Two questions
arise here: (1) Do the other and ``lower'' senses take any
part in aesthetic experience? (2) What are the ``higher''
ones? With regard to the first it is coming to be recognized
that aesthetic pleasure is not strictly confined to the
two senses in question. Common language suggests that we
find in certain odours and even in certain flavours a value
analogous to that implied in calling an object beautiful.
Aesthetic claims of touch.
Hegel excluded the other senses--even touch----on the ground
that aesthetics had to do only with art, in which there was
no place for perceptions of touch. A closer examination has
shown that this important sense plays a considerable part in
art-effects. And even if this were not so, Hegel's exclusion
of touch from the rank of aesthetic senses would be a striking
illustration of the narrowing effect on scientific theory of
the identification of aesthetic objects with productions of
art. To say that the experience of exploring with the fingers
a velvety petal or the smooth surface of a sea-rounded pebble
has no aesthetic element savours of a perverse arbitrariness.
Touch is no doubt wanting in a prerogative of hearing and
sight which we shall presently see to be important, namely,
that being acted on by objects at a distance they admit of
a simultaneous perception by a number of persons--as indeed
even the sense of smell does in a measure. This is probably
the chief reason why, according to certain testimony, the
blind receive but little aesthetic enjoyment from tactual
experience.8 Yet this drawback is compensated to some
extent by the fact that agreeable tactual experience may be
taken up as suggested meaning into our visual perceptions.
Prerogatives of sight and hearing.
The two privileged senses, sight and hearing, owe their
superiority to a number of considerations. They are the
farthest removed from the necessary life functions, with
the pressing needs and disturbing cravings which belong to
these. Even touch, though imoortant as a source of knowledge,
has for its primary function to examine the things which
approach our organisms in their relation to this as injurious or
harmless. The two higher senses present to us material objects
in their least aggressive and menacing manner: visible forms and
colours, tones and their combinations, appear when compared
with objects felt to be in contact with our body, to be rather
semblances or distant signs of material realities than these
realities themselves; and this circumstance fits these senses
to be in a special way the organs of aesthetic perception with
its calm, dreamlike detachment and its enjoyable freedom of
movement. They are, moreover, the two senses by the use of
which a number of persons may join most perfectly in a common
act of aesthetic contemplation. This distinction strengthens
their claims to be in a special manner the aesthetic senses,
and this for a double reason. (1) It makes them sense-avenues
by which each of us obtains the most immediate and most
impressive conviction that aesthetic experience is a common
possession of the many, and is largely similar in the case of
different individuals. (2) It marks them off as the senses by
the exercise of which perceptual enjoyment may most readily
and certainly be increased through the resonant effects of
sympathy. The experiences of the theatre and of the
concert-hall sufficiently illustrate these distinguishing
functions of the two senses. Other distinguishing prerogatives
of sight and hearing flow from the characteristics of their
sensations and perceptions, a point to be touched on later.9
Aesthetic activity and play. (a) Points of affinity between them.
Our determination of the characteristics of the aesthetic
attitude has now been carried far enough to enable us to
consider another point much discussed in recent aesthetic
literature, viz. the relation of this attitude to that of
play. The affinities of the two are striking and are disclosed
in everyday language, as when we speak of the ``play'' of
imagination or of ``playing'' on a musical instrument.
Both play and aesthetic contemplation are activities which
are controlled by no extraneous end, which run on freely
directed only by the intrinsic delight of the activity. Hence
they both contrast with the serious work imposed on us and
controlled by what we mark off as the necessities of life,
such as providing for bodily wants, or rearing a family. They
each add a sort of luxurious fringe to life. In aesthetic
enjoyment our senses, our intelligence and our emotions are
alike released from the constraint of these necessary ends,
and may be said to refresh themselves in a kind of play.
Finally, they are both characterized by a strong infusion of
make-believe, a disposition to substitute productions of the
imagination for everyday realities. In this respect, again,
they form a contrast to that serious concern with fact and
practical truth which the necessary aims of life impose on
us. Little wonder, then, that Plato recognized in the contrast
between the representative and the useful arts an analogy
between play and earnest,10 and that since the time of Schiller
so much use has been made of the analogy in aesthetic works.
(b) Points of difference.
Yet though similar. the two kinds of activity are distinguishable
in important respects. For one thing, aesthetic contemplation
pure and simple is a comparatively tranquil and passive
attitude, whereas play means doing something and commonly
involves some amount of strenuous exertion, either of body or of
mind. A closer analogy might be drawn between play and artistic
production. Yet even when the parallel is thus narrowed, pretty
obvious differences disclose themselves. It is only in their
more primitive phases that the two attitudes exhibit a close
similarity. As they develop, striking divergences begin to
appear. The play mood, instead of approaching the calm
contemplative mood of the lover of beauty, involves feelings
and impulses which lie at the roots of our practical interests,
viz. ambition, rivalry and struggle. It has, moreover, in
all its stages a palpable utility---even though this is not
realized by the player---serving for the exercise and development
of body, intelligence and character. Beauty and art rise
high above play in purity of the disinterested attitude, in
placid detachment from the serviceable and the necessary,
and, still more, in range and variety of refined interest,
comprehended in ``the love of beauty.'' Finally, aesthetic
activities are directed by ideal conceptions and standards
to which hardly anything corresponds in play save where games
of skill take on something of the dignity of a fine art.11
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 zur
Asthetik (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.
2 Cf. Larid, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 330, 361.
3 For example, that hinted at by Bosanquet in his
definition of the beautiful, History of aesthetic, p. 5.
4 Beauty is defined as perfection by P. Souriau,
La Beaute rationnelle, 2eme partie.
5 K. Groos argues well against this violent stretching of
the word beautiful, Einleitung in die Asthetik, pp. 46 seq.
6 Kant, in developing his idea of beauty as subjective,
was probably influenced by Hume, who wrote: ``Beauty
is no quality in things themselves; it exists merely in
the mind which contemplates them'' (Essays, xxii.).
7 On the nature of these qualities see S.
Witasek, Grundzuge der Allgem. Asthetik, p. 11.
8 See J. Cohn; Allgem. Esthetik, P. 96