# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Aesthetics

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​AESTHETICS, a branch of study variously defined as the philosophy or science of the beautiful, of taste or of the fine arts. The name is something of an accident. In its original Greek form (αἰσθητικός) it means what has to do with sense-perception as a source of knowledge; and this Preliminary definitionis 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 its scope and aim, as understood 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.
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.Differentiation of aesthetic experience. Its characteristics as feeling.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. 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, also from intellectual activity. at the same moment aesthetically enjoy looking at a painting and desire to be its possessor. In like manner, even if less apparently, 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.
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 Uniformity of aesthetic experience.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 be 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. 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 The aesthetic judgment.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 sense-impressions. 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. The judgment is not the same as a logical one. It does not say or imply that as a matter of fact it always Logical judgment and judgment of value.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.
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 Late development of the science.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. 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.
If we glance at the modes of treating the subject up to a quite recent date we find but 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 Inadequate theories of subject.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, 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, Aesthetics as a normative science.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. 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 Aesthetics not a practical science.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.
We may now indicate with more fulness the main problems of our science, seeking to give them as precise a form as possible. 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?” Problems of the science. Is beauty a single quality in objects? Beauty not a physical quality.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 specific modifications of our sensations. 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 is frequently attributed to a concrete object as a whole—to a flower or shell, for example, as a visible whole. Our everyday aesthetic judgments are wont to leave the attributes thus vaguely referred to the concrete object. Yet it is equally certain that we not infrequently Beauty attributed to different qualities in objects.speak of the beauty of some definable aspect 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 façade 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. This fact that beauty appertains now more to one quality, now more to another, helps us to understand why certain theorists, known as formalists, Formalists and expressionalists.regard all 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. 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 Three ultimate modes of beauty. 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. An apparent unification of the three seems at present only possible by substituting for beauty another concept at least equally vague, such as perfection, which seems to imply the idea of purposiveness, and to apply clearly only to certain domains of beauty, e.g. organic form.
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 Beauty and allied conceptions.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.
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 Assumption of objective quality of beauty dispensed with. Aesthetic qualities.our minds. 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. These characteristics may conveniently be called aesthetic qualities. 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.
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 Problem of aesthetic effect. Aesthetics and laws of pleasure. Problem of aesthetic enjoyment a special one. The attitude of aesthetic contemplation. scientifically the pleasurable side of the experience. 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. 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. 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. 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 Intellectual and aesthetic activity further differentiated.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.
​ 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 Is aesthetic enjoyment essentially social?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.
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 characteristics which give the predominance to the two The aesthetic senses.“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. 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 Aesthetic claims of touch.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. 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.
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 important as a source of Prerogatives of sight and hearing.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.
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 Aesthetic activity and play. (a) Points of affinity between them.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, 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.
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 Methods of research in aesthetics.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.
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, Examination of aesthetic objects. Nature as supplying aesthetic objects.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. 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. 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.
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 Use of works of art by the theorist.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. Even here, however, there are sources of uncertainty. Difficulties in using works of art as material.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, an impulse to instruct if not to reform in modern fiction. 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 Effects of custom on artistic preference.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 quasi-aesthetic value to custom, by which is understood its wide and impressive display in the organic and even the inorganic world. 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.
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 Value of primitive art for aesthetics.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. This part of aesthetic investigation should be made as exact as possible. Thus Exact measurement of characteristics of art-work.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.
A proper methodical inquiry into aesthetic objects aided by a ​knowledge of the practices of art would lead to inductions of the type “objects in so far as they possess such and such characteristics are aesthetically valuable.”Aesthetic inductions. 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.Germs of aesthetic preference in children, etc. (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. 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 Aesthetic experiment.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.” 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. Experience and judgments of experts. (b) 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. It may be added that these records are wont to contain reflexions which, though wanting in scientific precision, can be utilized by science.
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 Psychological analysis of material.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.
(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 The sensuous factor. Physiological aesthetics. Psychological problems.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. 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. 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 various 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.
(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 The perceptual factor.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, enabling 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 rhythm—these are some of the points dealt with in more general ​ and in special works. 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. 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.
(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 The imaginative factor.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.
In the poetic contemplation of nature, her forces, her gladness and other moods, this imaginative activity, though still deriving its material from association, takes a freer form, leading to an investment of natural objects with a new and more fanciful meaning, as when we Freer play of imagination.“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. 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 indicated 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.
The theory of a vitalizing play of imagination (Einfühlung) 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 Aesthetic Illusion.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. 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.
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,Variations of imaginative activity. 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.
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 elementaryForm and expression not absolutely distinct. aspects, is not wholly expressionless, but may 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.
In close connexion with the determination of the imaginative factor in aesthetic contemplation, the psychologist is called on to define the special characteristics of aesthetic emotion. That our attitude when we watch a beautiful object, say the curl of a breaker as it falls, or some Aesthetic emotion.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. 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.
The psychological treatment of aesthetic data here sketched out cannot stop at an analysis of the aesthetic state or attitude into a number of recognizable elements each of which contributes its own quantum of pleasurableness.Limits of analysis in aesthetics. 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.
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 Construction of aesthetic norms.up to the formulation of certain ideal requirements in beautiful objects. The work of Fechner in this direction (Vorschule der Ästhetik) 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.
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.Connexion between aesthetic and other experience: (a) with intellectual interests. 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 stops 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.
A similar remark applies to the contacts of our aesthetic with our practical interests. While as dominant factors the latter are excluded from aesthetic activity they may 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 (b) with practical interests.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. 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. 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. 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.
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 Aesthetic theory and problems of art.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.
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.
1. Greek Speculations.—Ancient Greece supplies us with the first important contributions to aesthetic theory, though these are scarcely, in quality or in quantity, what one might have 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 some rational end, whether the security or the gratification of man. Socrates appears to have attached little importance to the immediate gratification which a beautiful 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 (αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν) existing absolutely and out of all relation to a percipient mind.
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 Plato.decidedly to the conception of an absolute beauty, which took its place in his scheme of ideas or self-existing forms. This true beauty is nothing discoverable as an attribute in another thing, for these are 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 καλοκἀγαθία. 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 (μίμησις) 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 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 Aristotle.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 (ἐν πράξει) whereas the latter may exist in motionless things as well (ἐν ἀκινήτοις) 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 (τάξις), symmetry and definiteness or determinateness (το ώρισμένον). 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 (σπρυδαιότερον) 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.
Of the later Greek and Roman writers the Neo-Platonist Plotinus deserves to be mentioned. According to him, objective reason (νοῦς) as self-moving, becomes the formative influence which reduces dead matter to form. Matter when thus formed becomes a notion (λόγος), and its form is beauty.Plotinus. 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.
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 first of the Germans who attempted to develop an German writers. (a) Systematic treatises: Baumgarten.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.
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 Kant.feeling mediates between their respective subjects, cognition and desire (volition). He takes an important 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 (Zweckmässigkeit) in the beautiful object, this being defined as its harmony with the cognitive 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 possessing 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 subjectivity 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 if 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 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 Schelling.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.
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 Hegel.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.
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 Dialectic of the Hegelians.F. T. Vischer (Ästhetik, 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.
The aesthetic problem 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 Schopenhauer.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 imperfect manifestation or objectification of will. In this way the beauty of nature, somewhat slighted by Schelling and Hegel, is rehabilitated.
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 Herbart.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 admits, ethical judgments are in a manner brought ​under an aesthetic form. His typical example of aesthetic relations in 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 presentations 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 complete system of aesthetics by one of Herbart’s disciples, Robert Zimmermann (Ästhetik, 1858).
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 painting, and in so doing he reached general reflexions upon the ends and appliances of art. Among these his distinction Lessing.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 teaching he mainly relies.
Goethe wrote several tracts on aesthetic topics, as well as many aphorisms. He attempts 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 Goethe. Schiller.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 (Über die ästhetische Erziehung 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. Another example of this kind of reflective discussion of art by literary men is afforded us in the Vorschule der Ästhetik of Jean Paul Richter. This is a rather ambitious discussion of the sublime and ludicrous, which, however, contains Jean Paul.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.
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 Contributions by German savants.work of Helmholtz on “Sensations of Tone” is a highly successful attempt to ground the known facts and laws of 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. Brücke, 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” (Zur experimentalen Ästhetik) 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.
3. French Writers.—In France aesthetic speculation grew out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of modern art, and especially poetry, to ancient. The writings of Malherbe Boileau in the 17th century, the development of the the dispute between the “ancients” and the “moderns” at the end of the 17th century Discussions of more concrete problems.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.
The beginning of a more scientific investigation of beauty in general is connected with the name of Père Buffier (see First Truths, English translation, 1780). He confines himself to organic form, and illustrates his theory by the human face. A beautiful face is at once the most common and most rare among members of the species. This seems Theories of organic beauty. Buffier. Taine.to be a clumsy way of saying that it is a clear expression of the typical form of the species. 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 J. 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.
The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French literature are those constructed by the spiritualistes, the philosophic 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 French systems of aesthetics: The spiritualistes. Lévéque.element in aesthetic impressions, appearing to ignore any capability in the sensuous material of affording a true aesthetic delight. J. Cousin and Jean Charles Lévêque 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 vital force. Similarly the beauties of inorganic nature are to be viewed as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial physical 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: (1) 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.
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 The Intuitionists. Shaftesbury.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.
Francis Hutcheson, 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.” The cause of beauty is to be found not in a simple sensation such as colour or tone, but in a certain Hutcheson.order among the parts, or “uniformity amidst variety.” The faculty by which this principle is discerned 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.
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 perfectionReid. 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 adaptation to its end, a perfection which is an expression of the wisdom of its Creator.
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 theHamilton. ​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.
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 Ruskin.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.
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 The analytical theorists. Addison.from objects before our eyes; and (2) secondary pleasures, flowing from 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.
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 unpleasant in the higher senses of sight and hearing. He appears to admit no general characteristic of beautiful objects Home.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.
Passing by the name of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose theory of beauty closely resembles that of Père 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 Hogarth.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’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 Burke.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 contains 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, in his well-known 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 Alison.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 association 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. His 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.—(a) Works on General Aesthetics.
English and American.—There are no more important recent works 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 Problèmes de l’esthétique contemporaine (1884) (Pl., Play); E. Véron, L’Esthétique (1890) (slight Pl.); L. Bray, Du Beau (1902). (Pl., Play); P. Saurian, La Beauté 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. Köstlin, Prolegomena zur Ästhetik (1889) ​(good introduction to subject); K. Groos, Der ästhetische Genuss (1902) (Meth., Judg., Play, Senses, Einf. and Ill.); J. Volkelt, System der Ästhetik (1905) (very full and clear) (Meth., Norm., Evol., Senses, Einf.); J. Cohn, Allgemeine Ästhetik (1901) (Val., Play, Einf.); K. Lange, Das Wesen der Kunst (1901) (Meth., Einf., Ill., Play).
(b) Works on History of Aesthetics.— H. Lotze, Geschichte der Ästhetik in Deutschland; M. Schasler, Kritische Geschichte der Ästhetik (full and elaborate, dealing with ancient and modern theories); E. von Hartmann, Die deutsche Ästhetik seit Kant (Ausgewählte Werke, iii.); K. H. von Stein, Die Entstehung der neueren Ästhetik (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 résumé with quotations). (J. S.)
* ↑ 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. Ästhetik, Einleitung, pp. 7 ff., and Teil i., Kap. 2 and 3.
* ↑ Cf. Ladd, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 330, 331.
* ↑ For example, that hinted at by Bosanquet in his definition of the beautiful, History of aesthetic, p. 5.
* ↑ Beauty is defined as perfection by P. Souriau, La Beauté rationnelle, 2$^{ème}$ partie.
* ↑ K. Groos argues well against this violent stretching of the word beautiful, Einleitung in die Ästhetik, pp. 46 seq.
* ↑ 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.).
* ↑ On the nature of these qualities see S. Witasek, Grundzüge der allgem. Ästhetik, p. 11.
* ↑ See J. Cohn; Allgem. Ästhetik, p. 95.
* ↑ Originally, as pointed out by Home and others, sight was regarded as the sense by which we received impressions of beauty. The recognition of the claims of hearing date back to Plato. (See Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesth. pp. 51-52). For recent discussions of the claims of sight and hearing see article by J. Volkelt, “Der Aesth. Werth der niederen Sinne,” in Zeitschrift für Psych. u. Phys. der Sinnesorgane, vol. xxix. pp. 402 ff.; see also below, Bibliography.
* ↑ Laws, 889 (see Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 54).
* ↑ Plato had a glimpse of the resemblance of art to play (see Bosanquet, op. cit. p. 54). Among modern writers the idea is specially connected with the names of Schiller and Herbert Spencer. In recent works the subject is touched on by S. Wittasek, Grundzüge der allgem. Ästhetik, pp. 223 ff.; Bray, Du Beau, pp. 62 ff., and by Rutgers Marshall and others referred to below in Bibliography.
* ↑ Hence to say, as Bosanquet says (op. cit. pp. 3-4), that art is to nature as the scientific conception of the world to that of the ordinary observer, seems wide of the mark.
* ↑ K. Lange goes very far in attributing a practical motive to features of architecture commonly supposed to have aesthetic value, e.g. a regular series of similar forms (Das Wesen der Kunst, Bd. i. pp. 277 ff.).
* ↑ K. Lange thinks that even symmetry probably has a technical origin (op. cit. pp. 283-284).
* ↑ The question of the place of the historical development of art in aesthetic theory is carefully considered by J. Volkelt, System der Ästhetik, Bd. i. 5ᵉˢ Kap.
* ↑ See, for example, a little work, The Genesis of Art-From, by G. L. Raymond.
* ↑ Kant, stopping short of an analysis of the beauty of a concrete object, said there were no aesthetic judgments of this universal form (see below). On the importance of these inductions see K. H. von Stein, Vorlesungen über Ästhetik (Einleitung).
* ↑ Curiously enough Thomas Reid recognized a germ of aesthetic taste in animals. Essays, Of Taste, ch. v. The aesthetic importance of the observations made on animals is dealt with by L. Bray, Du Beau, pp. 233 ff.
* ↑ See below, and Bosanquet, op. cit. pp. 382 ff.
* ↑ On the value of the judgments of experts see K. Groos, Der ästh. Genuss, p. 149.
* ↑ The chief lines of experimental aesthetics are indicated by W. Wundt in his Physiol. Psychologie (5$^e$ Auflage), Bd. iii. pp. 142 ff. and 147 ff.
* ↑ Examples of a forcina of the physiological method in aesthetics may be found in the Physiological Aesthetics of Grant Allen, and the Aufgabe der Kunstphysiologie, by Georg Hirsch.
* ↑ These aesthetic prerogatives of the sensations of hearing and sight have been well brought out in the article by J. Volkelt, already referred to.
* ↑ On the later investigations into musical consonance and harmony, harmony of colours, rhythmic and pleasing spatial forms, see Wundt, op.cit. Bd. ii. pp. 419 ff., and iii. 135 ff., 140 ff., 147 ff. and 154 ff. Time-form in music is specially discussed by E. Gurney, The Power of Sound, v.
* ↑ K. Lange, who recognizes the influence of nature and custom here denies that proportion is an aesthetic principle (Das Wesen der Kunst, 11ᵉˢ Kap.).
* ↑ Alison and other English Associationists have emphasized the aesthetic importance of the principle of association. Among more recent advocates of it is G. T. Fechner. Vorschule der Ästhetik, and O. Külpe, “Über den associativ. Factor des ästhet. Eindrucks”, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissensch. Philosophie, xxiii. pp. 145 ff.
* ↑ This idea of imitative hand-movement in contemplating form is supported by K. Groos, Der ästh. Genuss, pp. 49 ff.
* ↑ It is commonly spoken of as “feeling oneself into” Einfühlen), or as “sympathetic feeling” (Mitempfinden.)
* ↑ Lipps’ theory is developed in a number of works, the chief of which is Ästhetik: Psychologie des Schönen und der Kunst, see esp. 1ᵉʳ Theil, 1ᵉʳ to 3ᵉʳ Abschnitt; cf. Paul Stern, Einfühlung und Association, in which is to be found an historical sketch of the theory, and A. Hildebrand, Form in der bildenden Kunst. The play of imagination in the contemplation of form is discussed also by P. Souriau, L’Esthetique du mouvement, 3$^{ème}$ part., and La Suggestion dans l’art, pp. 300 ff. Cf. works of Karl Groos and K. Lange named below (Bibliography).
* ↑ See P. Souriau, La Suggestion dans l’art (1$^{ère}$ partie).
* ↑ Cf. K. Lange, op. cit. Bd. i. p. 208.
* ↑ See a curious passage in Home’s Elements of Criticism, chap. iv., in which the emotions excited by great and elevated objects are said to express themselves externally by a special inflating inspiration, and by stretching upward and standing “a-tiptoe” respectively; also an article on “Recent Aesthetics”, by Vernon Lee in the Quarterly Review, 1904, part i. pp. 420-443.
* ↑ See Hume, Essays, “Essay of Tragedy,” and the important discussions on the meaning of Aristotle’s doctrine of the emotions of tragedy and of emotional purification or “alleviating discharge”, (κάθαρσις) touched on by Bosanquet, op. cit. pp. 64 ff. and 234 ff.
* ↑ That beauty implies a peculiar blending of formal and spiritual (geistige) factors is recognized by H. Riegel, Die bildende Künste; pp. 16 ff.
* ↑ See passage in Human Nature (first part of Tripos), ch. viii. § 5 (Molesworth’s edition of Works, vol. iv. p. 38).
* ↑ See among others R. Wallascheck, Primitve Music, pp. 270 ff., and Y. Hirn, The Origin of Art, pp. 9 ff.; cf. W. Jerusalem, Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 116, 117.
* ↑ The idea of this social utility in aesthetic enjoyment is touched on by Kant, Critique of Judgment (Bernard’s trans.), p. 174; and is more fully worked out by Guyau, L’Art au point de vue sociologique, ch. ii. and iii.; cf. Rutgers Marshall, Aesthetic Principles, pp. 81-82.
* ↑ On the nature of the primitive art-culture, see Rutgers Marshall, Aesthetic Principles, ch. iii.; M. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 151 ff: Y. Hirn, The Origin of Art, ch. ii. On artistic genius and its creative process, see H. Taine, The Philosophy of Art, Part ii.; P. Souriau, L’Imagination de l’artiste; G. Séailles, Essai sur la génie dans l’art; E. Grosse, Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien iii.; Arréat, Psychologie du peintre; L. Dauriac, Essai sur l’esprit musical.
* ↑ Only recent works are included. Important points in each are indicated by abbreviations, namely:— Einf., Einfühlung (expressional element in form).  Norm., for the normative function of aesthetics. Evol., for bearings of evolution. Pl., for theory of pleasure. Ill., for aesthetic illusion. Play, for Play and aesthetic enjoyment. Judg., for aesthetic judgment. Senses, for aesthetic value of higher senses. Meth., for method of aesthetics. Val., for aesthetic value.