one loses consciousness of the ordinary self and its world, it
has a certain resemblance to the state of ecstasy and of the
hypnotic trance.30 It is favourable to the play-like indulgence
in a fanciful transformation of what is seen or heard, which
may be described as a ``willing self-deception,'' more or less
complete. Yet as we have seen, something of the real everyday
world survives even in our freer aesthetic contemplation of
form. Hence there is much to be said for the idea that
we have in aesthetic illusion to do with a kind of double
consciousness, a tendency to an illusory acceptance of the
product of our fancy as the reality, restrained by a subconscious
recognition of the everyday tangible reality behind.31
Variations of imaginative activity.
It is evident that both in the more confined and in the
freer form the element of imaginative activity in aesthetic
experience will vary greatly among individuals and among
peoples. Differences in past experience leading to diverse
habits of association, as well as in those natural dispositions
which prompt one person to prefer motor images, another visual,
another audile, will modify the process in this enjoyable
enlargement and transformation of what is presented to
sense. It is for aesthetics at once to recognize these
variations of imaginative activity and to determine the
more common and universal directions which it follows.
Form and expression not absolutely distinct.
The recent inquiry into our way of contemplating form
is, in spite of exaggeration, valuable as showing that our
distinctions of form and expression are not absolute. Just
as there is the rudiment of ideal significance in colour, not
so form, even in its more abstract and elementary aspects,
is not wholly expressionless, but may be be endowed with
something of life by the imagination. The recognition of
this truth does not, however, affect the validity of our
treating form and expression as two broadly distinguishable
factors of aesthetic pleasure. A line may be pleasing to
sense-perception, and in addition illustrate expressional value
by suggested ease of movement or pose. Similarly, a concrete
form, e.g. that of a sculptured human figure in repose, or
of a graceful birch or fern, owes its aesthetic value to a
happy combination of pleasing lines and of interesting ideas.
Aesthetic emotion.
In close connexion with the determination of the imaginative
factor in aesthetic contemplation, the psychologist is
called on to define the soecial characteristics of aesthetic
emotion. That our attitude when we watch a beautiful object,
say the curl of a breaker as it falls, or some choice piece
of sculpture, is an emotional one is certain, and ingenious
attempts have been made by Home (Lord Kames) and others to
equip the emotion with a full accompaniment of corporeal
activity, such as heightened respiratory activity.32 Yet
aesthetic emotion is to be contrasted with the more violent
and passionate state of love and other emotions, and this
difference calls for further investigation. A closer inquiry
into the features of that calm yet intense emotion which a
rapt state of aesthetic contemplation induces is a necessary
preliminary to a scientific demarcation of the sphere of
beauty in the narrow or more exclusive sense, from that
of the sublime, the tragic and the comic. Each of these
departments of aesthetic experience has well-marked emotional
characteristics; and the definition of these ``modifications
of the beautiful'' has in the main been reached through an
analysis of the emotional states involved. This chapter in
the psychological treatment of aesthetic experience has to
consider two points which have occupied a prominent place
in aesthetic theory. The first is the nature of ``revived''
or ``ideal'' emotion, such as is illustrated in the feeling
excited sympathetically when we witness or hear of another's
sorrow or joy. The second point is the nature of those
mixed emotional states which are illustrated in our aesthetic
enjoyment of the sublime and the other ``modifications,''
in all of which we can recognize a kind of double emotional
consciousness in which painful elements accompany and modify
pleasurable ones, in such a manner that in the end the
latter appear to be rather strengthened than weakened.33
Limits of analysis in aesthetics.
The psychological treatment of aesthetic data here sketched
out cannot stop at an analysis of the aesthetic state or
attitude into a number of recoenizable elements each of which
contributes its own quantum of pleasurableness. Our enjoyment
in contemplating, say, a green alp set above dark crags, is an
indivisible whole. And it is a consciousness of this fact which
makes men disposed to resent the dissection of their aesthetic
enjoyment into a number of constituent pleasures. Nor is this
all. Every aesthetic object is something unique, differing in
individual characteristics from all others; and as the object,
so the mood of the contemplator. One may almost say that
there are as many modes of musical delight as there are worthy
compositions. It would seem either that this feeling of a
unique indivisible whole must be dismissed as an illusion, or
that we have to admit an unexplained residue in our aesthetic
experience, which may some day be explained by help of a
larger and more exact conception of aesthetic harmony, of the
laws of interaction and of fusion of psychical elements.34
Construction of aesthetic norms.
We may now glance at the ideal purpose of this scientific
analysis and interpretation, namely, the construction of
norms or regulative principles corresponding to the severally
essential elements of aesthetic value ascertained. The
later psychological treatment of the subject has led up to
the formulation of certain ideal requirements in beautiful
objects. The work of Fechner in this direction (Vorschule
der Asthetik) was a noteworthy contribution to this kind of
construction, at once scientific and directed to the construction
of ideal demands, and is still a model for workers in the same
field. He has taught us how the attempt to formulate one
all-comprehensive principle--e.g. unity in variety, has
led to a barren abstractedness, and that we need in its
place a number of more concrete principles. In formulating
these principles care must be taken to determine their
respective scopes and their mutual relations---to decide, for
example, whether expression, to which our modern feeling
undoubtedly ascribes a high value, is a universal demand in
the same sense as unity or harmony of parts is admitted to
be. A system of norms must further supply some comprehensive
criterion by help of which degrees of aesthetic value may be
determined, as determined by the degrees of completeness of
the several pleasurable activities, --sensuous, perceptual
and imaginative,--and justify the form of judgment ``this
object is more beautiful (or of a higher kind of beauty) than
that.'' Such regulative principles and standards of comparison
will, it is clear, fail us just at the point where analysis
stops. Edmund Gurney urges that an aesthetic principle such
as unity in variety is complied with equally well by musical
compositions which are commonplace and leave us cold and by
those which evoke the full thrill of aesthetic delight, and
he concludes that the special beauty of form in the latter
instance is appreciated by a kind of intuition which cannot
be analysed (see The Power of sound, ix.). The argument
is hard to combat. It would seem that after all our efforts
to define aesthetic qualities and enumerate corresponding
ideal requirements we are left with an unexplained remainder.
This can only be tentatively defined as the concrete object
itself in its wholeness, which is not only a perfectly
harmonized combination of sensuous, formal and expressional
values, but impresses us as something which has a fresh
individuality and the distinction of aesthetic excellence.
Connexion between aesthetic and other
experience: (a) with intellectual interests.
Aesthetics is wont to treat of a certain kind of experience
as if it were a closed compartment. Yet there is in reality
no such perfect seclusion. Our enjoyment of beauty, though
to be distinguished from our intellectual and our practical
interests, touches and interacts with these. With regard
to intellectual interests it is clear that much of the
mental activity which enters into our aesthetic enjoyment
is intellectual--e.g. in the perception of the relations
of form. even though it stood short of the abstract analysis
of scientific observation. Again, in appreciating beauty
of type which involves according to Taine a recognition of
the most important characters of the species, we are, it is
evident, close to the scientific point of view. Similarly,
when scientific knowledge enables us in the mood of aesthetic
contemplation to retrace imaginatively the mode of formation
of a cloud or a mountain form, or the mode in which a
climbing plant finds its way upwards. It is for aesthetics to
recognize the fact, and to discriminate a legitimate aesthetic
function of scientific ideas when they enlarge the scope of
a pleasurable play of the imagination, and are freed from
the control of a serious purpose of explaining what is seen.
(b) with practical interests.
A similar remark applies to the contacts of our aesthetic with
our practical interests. While as dominant factors the latter
influence our feeling for beauty in an indirect and subordinate
way. This is recognized by those (e.g. Home) who insist
on a particular kind of aesthetic value under the name of
relative beauty, or the pleasing aspect of fitness for a
purpose. If a drinking-vessel please in part because of
its perfect adaptation to its purpose, the aesthetic value
ascribed to it seems to derive something from a feeling of
respect for utility itself. In another way beauty reasserts
in modern aesthetics that kinship with utility on which it
insisted in the days of Socrates. The idea that typical
beauty coincides with what is vigorous and conducive to
the conservation of the species is as old as Hobbes.35
Biological treatment of beauty.
Darwin and his followers have developed the biological
conception that sexual selection tends to develop aesthetic
preferences along lines which correspond to what subserves
the maintenance of the species or tribe. Recent writers have
shown how the rude germs of aesthetic activity in primitive
types of community would subserve necessary tribal ends--e.g.
musical rhythm by exercising members of the tribe in concerted
war-like action.36 Yet these interesting speculations have
to do rather with the earlier stages of the evolution of the
aesthetic faculty than with its functions in the higher stages.
Aesthetics and ethics.
An idea of a social utility in aesthetic experience which does
demand the attention of the theorist is that the culture of
beauty and art has a socializing influence, helping to give
to our emotional experience new forms of expression whereby
our sympathies are deepened and enlarged.37 The further
elucidation of this element of humanizing influence in aesthetic
enjoyment may be expected to throw new light on the question,
much discussed throughout the history of aesthetics, of the
relation of the science to ethics, by showing that they have a
common root in our sympathetic nature and interest in humanity.
Aesthetic theory and problems of art.
In order to complete the outline of aesthetic theory we need
