In spite of this, however, a place for ideas must clearly be
found in our definition of beauty; and yet it must be so
limited and bound to the beautiful form that corollaries such
as we have just drawn will be impossible. An interesting
attempt to reconcile these two points of view--to establish
an organic relation between form and idea--is found in "The
Sense of Beauty" by Professor George Santayana. The central
point of this writer's theory is his definition of beauty as
the objectification of pleasure. Aesthetic experience, he
says, is based partly on form, partly on expression, but the
pleasure felt is always projected into the object, and is
felt as a quality of it. All kinds of external associations
may connect themselves with the work of art, but so long as
they remain external, and keep, so to speak, their values
for themselves, they cannot be said to add beauty to the
object. But when they are present only in their effect,--
a diffused feeling of pleasure,--that diffused feeling is
attributed directly to the object, is felt as if it inheres
therein, and so the object becomes more beautiful, for beauty
is objectified pleasure. Professor Santayana designates form
as beauty in the first term, and expression as beauty in the
second term. Beauty in the first term can exist alone,--not
so beauty in the second term. It must have a little beauty
of the first term to graft itself upon. "A map, for instance,
is not usually thought of as an aesthetic object, and yet,
let the tints of it be a little subtle, let the lines be a
little delicate, and the masses of land and sea somewhat
balanced, and we really have a beautiful thing, the charm of
which consists almost entirely in its meaning.
Now here, it seems to me, is a weak point in Professor
Santanaya's armor. If such wonderful elements of beauty can
be projected into a fairly colorless object by virtue of its
fringe of suggestiveness, why should not beauty of the second
term be felt in objects without that little bit of intrinsic
worth of form? Is not such indeed the fact? What else is
the meaning of the story of "Beauty and the Beast"? The squat
and hideous Indian idol, the scarabaeus, the bit of Aztec
pottery, become attractive and desired for themselves by virtue
of their halo of pleasure from dim associations. And all these
values are felt as completely OBJECTIFIED, and so fulfill the
requirements for "beauty in the second term." That small
amount of intrinsic beauty on which to graft the beauty of the
second term is, therefore, not a necessary condition, so that
we are left, on Professor Santayana's theory, with the strange
paradox of so-called beautiful objects which are, nevertheless,
confessedly ugly.
What, then, is the flaw in this definition? While we concede
the objectification of pleasure in all these cases, we cannot,
it would seem, admit a corresponding change from non-aesthetic
to aesthetic feelings. The personal attitude towards an object,
based on sentiments objectified in it, and the aesthetic
attitude are two different things. The truth is, that all this
objectified tone-feeling is directly dependent on the original
real existence of the object that calls it up, and on our
practical personal relation to it, and is thus, by universal
agreement, definitely non-aesthetic. I enjoy the cast of the
great Venus very nearly as much as the original,--but who cares
for casts of the Aztec gods, or of the prehistoric carvings of
the reindeer period? Who wants an imitation scarabaeus? To
have the real thing, to see it, to touch it, to know that it
has had real experiences that would fill me with wonder and with
awe, "to love it for the danger it has passed,"--to feel that
I myself am through it actually linked with its mysterious
history,--that is the value it has for me; not a pleasure of
perception at all, but a very definite, practical interest in
my own personality. If the pleasure lay only in disinterested
perception, any representation of the object ought to have the
same value.
What, then, the author of "The Sense of Beauty" calls "the
beauty of the second term,"--the power to suggest feeling
through the medium of associated ideas,--we may deny to impart
any aesthetic character whatever. Professor Santayana has,
indeed, mediated between the formalists and the idealists;
but his theory would lead us to attributions of beauty from
which common sense revolts; and we have seen the secret of its
deficiency to lie in the confusion of the personal with the
aesthetic attitude. If now we amend his definition, "Beauty
is objectified pleasure," to "Beauty is objectified aesthetic
pleasure," we are advanced no further.