The problem stands, then: how to provide for the presence of
ideas in the work of art, and the definite emotions aroused by
it, either by bringing them somehow into the definition of beauty
in itself, or by showing how their presence is related to the
full aesthetic experience. But, first of all, we have to ask
how the aesthetic pleasure even in formal beauty is constituted,
and to what extent expression belongs to the beauty of pure
form. Form is impressive, or directly beautiful, through its
harmony with the conditions offered by our senses, primarily of
sight and hearing, and through the harmony of its combinations
of suggestions and impulses with the entire organism. I enjoy
a well-composed picture like Titian's "Sacred and Profane Love,"
because the good composition means such a balanced relation of
impulses of attention, of incipient movements, as harmonizes
with such an organism as mine, tending to move toward both
sides, and yet unified and stable; and because the combination
of colors is at once stimulating and soothing to my eyes. So
much for IMPRESSION, beauty of the first term. But it is not
only that harmonious state of my visual and motor functions
that I get out of the form of a picture. No, I have, besides
all this pleasure, a real exhilaration or emotion, a definite
mood of repose or gayety or triumph, without any fringe of
association, which yet certainly contributes to my feeling of
the beauty of the experience, and so of the work of art. How
did it come out of the form?
Well, this very harmonious excitation of the organism has
brought with it just such an organic reverberation as, the
current theory of emotion asserts, must be at the bottom of
all our emotional states. A certain sequence of nervous shocks
and of vasomotor changes, certain stimulations and relations
and contractions of the internal organs have been set up as the
"diffusive wave" from the sense-stimulations, and a particular
emotional tinge is the result. That is a direct impression,
but an expression too. Take the same case on a much lower
level. A glass of wine makes me cheerful, not because it
arouses cheerful ideas directly, but because the organic changes
it sets up are such as belong to the MOTIVATED expression of
joy, and have the same effect. A deep, slow movement played by
an orchestra can affect me in two ways. It may be that I have
usually connected that sort of music with religious experiences,
and all the profound and inspiring feelings belonging thereto;
and so I transfer those feelings to the music and give it those
adjectives. Or the slowness of the rhythmic pulse that is set
up in me, the largeness, the volume, the depth of sound, all
bring about in me the kind of nervous state that belongs to a
reposeful and yet deeply moved feeling. The second experience
is expression through impression, through the inward changes
that the form itself sets up. The first is expression through
the medium of something external,--an idea which brings with it
a feeling,--something that does not belong to the music itself,
but to my own individual experiences.
This distinction between internal and external expressiveness
is perfectly clear for music, and also for architecture. In
painting, too, it can easily be traced. We know the effect
that is produced by broken lines, by upward moving ones,--like
the "always aspiring" of the Gothic cathedral. The low-lying,
wide expanses of some of the old Dutch landscapists give us
repose, not because they remind us of the peaceful happiness
of the land, but because we cannot melt ourselves into all
those horizontal lines without that restful feeling which
accompanies such relaxation; and our emotion is read into the
picture as AESTHETIC pleasure, because it came out of the
abstract forms,--the PAINTING in the picture.
The beauty of form is thus seen to be inseparably allied with
a certain degree of emotional expressiveness in a way that
does not distract, like the association of ideas, from the
pure aesthetic experience. This quality of expressiveness
should not, however, become a part of the definition of beauty,
so that it should be said that the greater the emotional
expressiveness, the more beautiful the object. For if that
were true, such music, for instance, as all acknowledge quite
mediocre, would be felt as most beautiful by those who find in
it a strong and definite emotion; and a Strauss waltz, which
makes us more merry than one by Mendelssohn, should be in so
far more beautiful. This, of course, we are not ready to
concede; and it seems, therefore, most logical to regard the
special emotional effects of formal beauty rather as a corollary
to, than as a part of, the essential aesthetic mood. But if we
give the name emotion to that perfectly vague but unmistakable
excitement with which we respond to purely formal beauty,--that
indescribable exaltation with which we listen to "absolute"
music,--then we must say that that emotion is but another name
for aesthetic pleasure. Objectively, we have formal beauty;
subjectively, on the physiological side, a harmonious action
of the organism, and on the mental side the undefined exaltation
which is known as aesthetic pleasure.